Blackquest 40

Chapter Twenty-Three

PAYER/DETAILS REDACTED.

You're kidding.

I click every last pixel in that sub-window to get more info, but nothing leads out. The dollar amount is there, $425,334, but that's it. No company name. No contact phone or address. Zip.

I switch over to the other database and try the next big green block in the series, and the one after, and the one after that. My mouse-knuckle weakens with each hopeless click.

They're all redacted. Somebody wiped the data.

A pregnant crackle fills the office. I have a flash-fear Elite is deploying some futuristic weapon, vaporizing me over WiFi or delivering infrared pain-daggers through the screen, before recognizing the pre-noise of the public address system.

"All engineers, return to the second floor." The voice is Jim Davis's, harried, booming. "Return at once to your workstations."

I glance to the hall. Ashley doesn't know I'm an engineer, but this unusual broadcast—the PA has been used maybe two, three times during my Codewise tenure—might set her on guard.

I open one of Carter's random desktop PDFs and shoot a print-job to the laserjet, then lean into the hall. "Okay found it! Can you check if it came out?"

Ashley's roan coif crests a monitor, then the rest of her. She flashes thumbs-up and disappears up the hall. I wag my hand in thanks and gesture back toward Carter's computer, like some refrigerator repairman who just needs to gather up his screwdrivers.

I pull the door closed, depress its push-button lock, and dash back to the keyboard. Ashley will think it's weird when she finds me locked inside, but I don't care. I'll deal with the consequences.

I am figuring this out. Now.

The paper-pushers can weasel these credits in by Journal Entry, they can redact, hell maybe they incinerated whatever paperwork accompanied the cash too, but they can't destroy data. There is an underlying record, some primordial string of 0s and 1s their money-stinking fingers can obscure but not remove.

I stare at the screen. How deep do I start? It depends how extensive the cover-up of these payments is. Has Finance merely slapped a "Redacted" tag on these records but left the source database alone? Carter and his near-underlings could've pulled this off by themselves. If so, a simple SQL command will cough up what I need.

But what if Carter involved the DBAs? Waltzed into the techies' space spewing aftershave like some morality-twisting mist and made them zap the associated rows from the base table?

That'd be hardcore.

Up to this point, everything about Blackquest 40 has been hardcore.

I punch up a command prompt, freeing myself of Windows entirely, and navigate to the absolute bowels of the Codewise dataworld: /a, the server that stores flat origin files.

Every application, from email to reporting to Jared's 3D Putt-Putt Golf, has its incoming data stashed here before being prettied up with tabs and column headings and human-readable formatting. This data is pure ASCII gobbledygook, primordial as it gets.

Even directory names are nonsense. /wfeoi_2. /3332iEV. I scan for something that'll correspond to the Journal Entry database. I read and tap-tap-tap with dizzy abandon, cross-referencing the reporting software's app-registry strings, narrowing to three possible directories, weighing up file sizes, raising a licked finger to the air and guessing at the most likely, opening a file, squinting at scrunched-together datum, pulling at my yellow spikes. Numbers and letters and out-of-context punctuation waterfall down the screen. My eyes pinch hard for silver flashes, some fish to snatch.

Isn't working. I need a key, some unique sequence to orient me in the gobbledygook.

I return to Windows and pour over the PAYER/DETAILS REDACTED screen. They haven't left me a client name or any kind of code. The amount, $425,334, reeks of rounding—I could try matching it to the flat file, but without knowing how many significant digits that final one-third extends, I don't like my chances.

Then I see. At the bottom of the screen, grayed-out to near invisibility in the app's status bar, that ID passed in from the financials database.

994kSiofwe!__32.

Now that is unique.

I highlight and copy the string, zip back to my command prompt. Paste. Perform a quick regex search ... wait ... down on the second floor, /a spins into action ... an actuator arm traverses disk platter, reading microscopic bytes of data ... tens of thousands of comparisons are made ... more data is read ... more comparisons ...

Finally, my regex returns.

Displaying 1 of 1 result(s): 994kSiofwe!__32|5|17|2017|425333.3333|ELITE_DEVELOPMENT_LLC|6235|np.TpyДa|Voronezh|Russia|394036

My heart gulps. My toes have burrowed a quarter-inch deep in their recycled-rubber footbeds. I could move the text to Notepad and use carriage returns to un-chunk it, but there's no need.

Russia.

Mikhail was no outlier. The headquarters for Elite Development is in Russia. A quick Maps search finds Voronezh near the Ukraine border.

They're Russians, and they've turned this place into a gulag.

And they are paying us. A lot. I count nine of those murky payments, nearly $4 million altogether. And they're still coming.

Could there be an even bigger payment in store, some whopper lump-sum if we complete the software?

Seeing the transactions themselves, the nitty-gritty detail, I dismiss Paul's equity-stake theory. You can't but another company under the table. The government—the SEC, whoever—requires filings up the wazoo, and these backdoor payments wouldn't withstand any sort of rigorous investigation.

No: we're being paid to do something.

I shut my eyes and meld back into the algorithm—the Blackquest algorithm, its loops and slippery seven-variable matrix. Floating through the logic pathways, I am pricked by thorns and thrown by hairpins and seized with an all-around severity. And again, always, I feel purpose. Only now I know more about that purpose. I know it's worth $4 million. At least.

When my eyes open, I find the screen dominated by an alert box.

CARTER K., YOUR ACCESS PRIVILEGES HAVE BEEN REVOKED. PLEASE CONTACT IT@CODEWISE.COM FOR REINSTATEMENT.