Blake Schwendiman's Blog and Blook

Chapter 42

Saturday, 12 March 2022 – 7:30 p.m. SAST

Daniel pulled himself up from the steps. His phone rang. It was Sireesha.

“What just happened?” she asked without any introduction.

“Brad is dead,” Daniel said. His voice was subdued. All trace of arrogance was gone. “The African I hired to find him just shot him.”

“He was not supposed to die,” Sireesha cut in. Her voice was ice. There was no sound of remorse or emotion, just cold focused anger. “This was supposed to make things more predictable, not less.”

“I understand that. There was no reason ... his wife panicked ... she ran ... the African was there.” Daniel looked across the garden. The African lay sprawled on the dirt and gravel driveway.

“You need to take care of the mess you made there.”

“I will,” Daniel shot back. He didn’t like anyone speaking to him with such condescension. Sireesha generally treated everyone with a level of disdain, but Daniel felt an unusual level of it now. He responded with anger. “Let me finish my job. It will be handled.”

“And how are you going to handle the rest of this? What happened to the network?”

“He activated something ... he did it just before he died.”

“You said he had no network access,” Sireesha shouted.

“I said he had no modern wireless devices,” Daniel countered. It never occurred to him that Brad would still have some old-style connection to the net. He didn’t mention that. “I checked everything I could. It was hidden for a reason. He activated the device with an RF transmitter. I’ll find it and shut it down. It will be clean.”

Sireesha growled. “Keep me informed. I need to know exactly what he did as soon as you know.”

Daniel paused for a moment. So much information scrolled through his visual field that he was unable to concentrate. He looked at the information again then deactivated the view. He had to manage the immediate problem. The murders would be simple to cover. With the ongoing racial tension in South Africa, it would take very little effort to create a convincing robbery-gone-wrong scene. There would never be enough of an investigation to worry about ballistics or accuracy. He just needed to make it look real enough.

The exterior cleanup took a little more than half an hour. Daniel was meticulous about his work. When he had finished, he cleaned himself thoroughly and changed clothes. He then focused on the task of locating the network device that Brad had activated.

He spent nearly an hour tearing through the small house, finally locating the device in a closet adjacent to the master bedroom. It was nothing that he was expecting. A small box sat n the third shelf down from the top, between a small tin containing South African coins and a stack of paperback books. It had two input connectors, one for power and one for network. A small green status light blinked.

Daniel pulled the power and disconnected the network cable then shoved the device into his bag. He glanced around the closet for anything else then grabbed the network connection and followed it to ensure that it wasn’t connected to anything else.

He returned to the living room and made one last check ensuring that he hadn’t left any telling signs. He had been a bit too relaxed about this job. He would never admit that to Sireesha, but the truth of it gnawed him. He called Sireesha.

“I found it,” he reported.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know yet. I need to get somewhere that I can put it on a controlled network to see what it’s doing.”

“Can you do it from there?”

“I doubt it. It’s ancient. I’ll need some things that you can’t just go out and buy these days.” Daniel was amazed that Brad had been able to keep such an old device connected and functioning for so long.

“Can you at least shut it down until we know what’s happening?”

“I already have. I disconnected it immediately.”

Sireesha cursed in Hindi. There was a long pause before she continued. “Do you have any idea what he did?”

“None yet. I’ve had no time to look at it. But it could be so many things. This device could have simply been a trigger to a remote computer ... or it could have been a targeted attack on our switches ... I don’t know.” Daniel rarely found himself in a defensive position, especially as related to networking or software. He always had the answer. But this was unprecedented. Everything had changed in an instant and he was completely unable to explain it.

“I thought our switches were invulnerable to outside attacks.”

“They are,” Daniel barked. Then a light clicked in his mind as he continued, almost whispering, “Unless you have inside information...” He trailed off.

“Get back here as quickly as possible. You need to make this right,” Sireesha ordered. “Is there anything else?”

“No.” Daniel disconnected the call. He re-activated his visual implant and searched the information. Nothing had changed since he had disconnected the device. He quickly searched for any trace of a network attack. Nothing was immediately apparent.

He jumped on his bike and returned to Durban.