Medusa Expose

Joe Espin

Description

Truan's body trembles imperceptively as his mind grasps the enormity of what he has just agreed to do. His mind reels as he thinks about it. This is not stealing money, or masters of records, or proprietary processes, or even states' secrets. This is extremely dangerous! The most dangerous enterprise Medusa has ever attempted!

Sujets

• Thriller

Informations

• Publié par: eBookPartnership.com
• Date de parution: 01 mai 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 5
• EAN13: 9781908400130
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE MEDUSA EXPOSÉ by Joe Espin
Truan’s body trembles imperceptibly as his mind grasps the enormity of what he has just agreed to do. His mind reels as he thinks about it. This is not stealing money, or masters of records, or proprietary processes, or even states’ secrets. This is extremely dangerous! The most dangerous enterprise Medusa has ever attempted!
The Medusa Exposé is a gripping thriller tracing the path of three exceptionally gifted hackers and their enforcer as they use their genius to penetrate many of the most secure systems in the world…. Profits mount, and they have so far escaped notice of the law…. They are about to make a terrible mistake…. one that will put several intelligence and police agencies on their trail. If they survive, their lives will change forever!
Zeeni Anazi , gorgeous Indian princess with dual Masters in computer science and programming.... gone bad?
Jacob Madden , ingenious nerd with a cold heart and a superiority complex.
Ronald O’Leary , ex IRA gunman, death merchant and mercenary recruiter.
Truan Hzing , hardened Vietnamese refugee…The criminal mastermind behind Medusa.
Ranged against them:
Ramon Almendarez , Paris CIA chief of station...In love with a traitor? He is assisted by several agencies in pursuit of the Medusa contingent.
The fast paced action takes you through several continents from the Swiss Alps to the jungles of Malaysia and the red clays of Georgia as well as other locations where Medusa’s tentacles have penetrated.
Acknowledgements
My grateful thanks to my dear friend and indefatigable researcher, Snehalatha Naidu, without whose priceless assistance this work would not have been possible. I extend my thanks to another dear friend, Professor Frank Cavico of Nova University, whose encouragement and review of the early chapters gave me the determination to see this work to its conclusion. My heartfelt thanks to Charleen Davis for staying up all night to read my novel, for her copy-editing and for her continuing encouragement and support. Last but not least, my everlasting thanks to my loving partner and wife, Sarah for just plain putting up with me when in the course of this writing I would shut out the world.
Cover photo by Skelzen.
This first novel I dedicate to the woman who taught me the most important lessons in life, Esther Margarita Sanchez Alfonso de Espin, my mother.
Prologue
The Snakes Uncoil
The room could have been located in any big city morgue. White tiled walls as well as the floor and ceiling combine with the almost inaudible hum of a temperature controlled and dust free environment. The effect is as cold and austere as any corpse locker. Eight figures in white hooded coveralls sit at sleek horseshoe-shaped consoles made out of a transparent polymer. It is hard to discern their gender. Each could be male or female, young, old or middle aged. On each console, a bank of eight monitors casts a bluish light on the spectral figures. Every few seconds one of them types in a short code into the built-in keyboard. After the code is entered, the active window disappears and a new one takes its place.
Hundreds even thousands of miles away, hard-drives regurgitate their entire contents and send them wirelessly to waiting super servers that sort and catalogue the take. Medusa is prowling and the entire computer world will soon be shocked. Dozens of these sterile rooms have been set up in as many countries.
The Medusa of Greek mythology, best known of the three monstrous Gorgon sisters was once a beautiful woman, but she made the mistake of offending the Goddess Athena, who changed her hair into snakes and made her face so unbearably ugly that all who looked upon her were turned to stone.
This Medusa had started out in a similar way, a beautiful program designed by some of the best technological brains in the world to remotely remove viruses, spyware and malware from Macs and PCs. It has now fallen into the wrong hands and been modified to extract any or all information from any target. With some differences, much like its namesake, whoever spots Medusa, will soon be residing under a headstone.
Industrial espionage is child’s play for the millions of snakes that sprout from Medusa and prowl the ether. The same applies to the military computers of every nation, and those of every financial institution in the world. The operators of Medusa do not discriminate. Her services are available to the highest bidder, be they a rogue government, a terrorist organization, dictators or a devious corporate competitor.
The motivation is financial of course. Their first project is the looting of old Nazi accounts in Switzerland. The First National Bank of Zurich holds many of these numbered accounts dating back to the 1940’s, as do other banks in Zurich, Basel, Geneva and Bern. Some of these hold the treasures taken from Jews while others hold the proceeds of artwork stolen from museums and homes in other parts of Europe.
Medusa goes to work. The infiltration of her snakes retrieving account numbers, passwords and codes go completely unnoticed. Millions of dollars from these accounts are quietly transferred to banks in the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands and Panama. Well-dressed men, armed with the new identification codes and account numbers, visit these offshore banks and withdraw the proceeds within hours of their arrival.
Hundreds of these accounts are almost completely sacked, leaving a token few thousand dollars in each to prevent detection of the transfers by curious bank executives who might notice a long dormant account being closed. These initial thefts provide the funding to launch Medusa on a worldwide scale.
Other tentacles concentrate on bypassing the firewalls of military intelligence computers. These provide even greater profits for the controllers of Medusa. In one transaction with an ironic twist, Pakistan pays the controllers three hundred million dollars to obtain the firing codes of India’s nuclear arsenal. The irony is that Pakistan had received the three hundred million as part of a deal with the U.S. government. The money, intended to fight terrorism on its border with Afghanistan. Instead, it is diverted to spy on its next-door neighbor. However, it now fills Medusa’s coffers.
Besides Pakistan, other clients for military info include Al Qaeda, the Castro regime, the North Korean’s not so funny clown, Iran’s fanatical faction and Venezuela’s commie mad man. These are just a few of Medusa’s more infamous clients.
On the industrial espionage side, China, Brazil, Japan, Malaysia and several of the former soviet republics are buying industrial secrets from Medusa on a wholesale scale. It is so easy. A concise e-mail to the right individual describes the procurement of information that can be had for a price. The money flows in.
CHAPTER 1 419.555GG
For months, Medusa’s intrusions go undetected. Then in the first days of 2010, an incident at the United Bank of Bern turns up a discrepancy in numbered account 419.555GG. That account is registered to an Argentine national. One Hans Rosario. It is one of several of the old accounts that are still active. It dates from 12/11/44, when thirty-two million dollars were deposited.
Account number 419.555GG has had a standing order to leave the principal untouched, but for the first forty odd years a check, and later in 1988 an electronic transfer of the accrued interest amounting to some fifty three thousand dollars has been sent to El Banco Nacional de Buenos Aires on the 20 th of every month.
The United Bank of Bern receives a call from a very distraught Mr. Rosario, who incidentally speaks colloquial German, complaining that he has received his interest transfer at an impossibly reduced rate. Mr. Rosario is informed that according to their records, he has transferred all but seven thousand dollars of his account to the Commercial Bank of Cayman Brac. Rosario is livid. "I have made no such transfer, have authorized no such transfer," he yells into the phone. "Sie, den Söhne von Weibchen liegt, versuchen, mein Geld zu stehlen." (You lying sons of bitches, you are trying to steal my money) "Bitte mäßigen Sie Ihre Sprache Herrn Rosario oder diese Konversation wird beenden," (Please moderate your language Mr. Rosario, or this conversation will end) replies Konnig in a no nonsense tone, adding, "We are terribly sorry, Herr Rosario, but we received your request with the appropriate identification codes in the transfer order." The speaker is Klaus Konnig, a dapper, fifty-three year old, senior vice president of the Bern bank. Silver-haired and well put together at just over six feet and still trim at 187 lbs. He is wearing a steel-gray, finely pinstriped, Armani suit. He could pass for a senator from Massachusetts or a news anchor on the 11:00 o’clock news.
Something about Herr Rosario’s tone makes Konnig wonder if the man might be telling the truth. It is impossible for any outside source to access the most securely guarded codes in the banking business. Or is it? Reluctantly, he puts down the phone after assuring Rosario that he will personally look into the matter. But it is Friday afternoon and Konnig is going on an outing early Saturday morning with members of his fly fishing club. They are to visit one of the clear streams in the Ticino Canton. He remembers he has to pick up a new set of hip waders and some of the fly patterns recommended for this particular time of year before the close of business today. Monday will be soon enough to deal with this uncomfortable development.
Donning an exquisite dark blue, cashmere overcoat, Konnig calls for his car and leaves the United Bank of Bern at precisely 3:00 P.M. A valet brings his maroon, M class Mercedes SUV around to the front of the bank and climbing in he drives the two miles to an Orvis fly shop nestled on the west shore of the Bern River.
The heavy old timbers complement many large photos that hang on the walls