Zero Day_ A Novel - Mark Russinovich [101]
“We don’t have weeks!” Jeff exclaimed. “Hasn’t anyone figured that out yet?”
“Sure. You and me. That’s about it. And the people we work with.”
At that moment they reached the Hotel Luxor. They entered the lobby, where Jeff retrieved his key, and she went with him upstairs, all without either of them acknowledging what they were doing.
“Drink?” he said when they entered the room.
“Yes. Bourbon, if you’ve got it.”
Jeff opened the minibar, dug around, then produced a bottle of Jim Beam. “I can get ice, if you’d like.”
“No need. And I’ll drink it from the bottle, so forget about a glass.”
He laughed, handed her the small bottle, then dug out a beer. He popped the top, held it out for a toast. “To getting this asshole.” She smiled wanly and they drank. The beer tasted good going down, and for a second he considered drowning himself in an ocean of pilsner. But he knew that was no answer, having drunk his fair share in the months after Cynthia’s death. And for the first time since this while ordeal began, he had some good news to hang on to, maybe even act on. Suddenly, he was also aware that a beautiful woman, one to whom he was very drawn, was sitting there with him in his hotel room. And he was happy about it. He sat in a chair beside the small breakfast table and looked directly into her serene face.
“I haven’t missed the fact that you’re here in my hotel room,” he said, finally understanding that though Cynthia was still with him, she was now only a memory, albeit a lovely one no one could ever take from him. She’d been perhaps the most practical person he’d ever known, and he knew that she’d approve of where he found himself now.
Daryl sat on a nearby armchair, sipped her drink, and said, “I thought maybe you figured there was a cord connecting me to you, or something.”
“It’s the ‘or something.’” He drank again, his mind back on their immediate problem. “I was thinking about what you said before, about backtracking to find out the identity of Superphreak. I bet that’s how they found Sue Tabor. I traced the e-mail address she used, and it was registered in her name with the law firm address. There’s so much on the Internet now if you know where and how to look.”
“Of course. With that, they could have found a photo, even located some bio information on her.”
Jeff nodded. “‘The Internet: Friend or Foe?’” he intoned. “Sounds like a bad evening-news segment.”
Daryl gave a small smile. “So you really think that whoever is in back of this avalanche of viruses killed her? There are dozens of people working on this.”
“Sure, but her they knew. And all they need to do is just slow things down. There isn’t a lot of time left, remember? They wouldn’t know how important she was to our effort, but if they’re of that mind-set, where’s the harm in killing her? What do they have to lose? And she was the one asking about Superphreak. No one else was.”
Daryl shivered. “It gives me the willies, if you’re right. This means they have assassins available to kill people.”
“If I’m right, it looks like they do. But we can’t know that for sure.”
Daryl took another pull on the bottle. “Okay, killing her might make some sense, but why kill her boss? He was just a lawyer, for God’s sake! You start down that path, where does it end?”
Jeff shrugged. “Because they were together.”
“You mean he got caught at the wrong place at the wrong time?”
“Probably.” Jeff thought back to his meetings with Joshua Greene. The man didn’t deserve his fate. “Consider what we’ve discovered up to now. We have dozens of variants, most encrypted and buried within operating systems protected by rootkits. So far nearly all of them are triggered by the date September 11. And look at all the targets, including the ones we know and the possible ones. We’re talking Wall Street, banks, the Fed, Social Security, to name a few. How about the power grid? You know how sensitive it is to tweaking, and it can be down for weeks, months even. You mentioned a nuclear power plant crashing. And there has to be a whole lot more I haven’t even thought of. Not to mention that