Zero Day_ A Novel - Mark Russinovich [50]
They had met at the university, where Ivana was majoring in computer science and taking a course Vladimir was teaching. Though skilled with computers, her interest in them had waned and she’d turned to languages, but they continued to see each other. By that night, they had been a couple for two years.
As they laughed and joked, Chechen rebels, in reprisal for the Russian president’s latest crackdown in Chechnya, detonated a car bomb just off Red Square, striking at the late-night crowd. Ivana was walking beside a building wall, with Vladimir between her and the full force of the blast. She recalled only a blinding, silent white light and what seemed to her the heavy yet gentle press of Vladimir’s body against her own. Waking in a hospital four days later, undamaged except for a temporary hearing loss, a doctor informed her, “You were one lucky girl, Ivana, to be walking with a gentleman.”
Vladimir had been both lucky and unlucky that night. Lucky, in that thirty-four people were killed by the explosion while another dozen were seriously maimed. He was the closest to the Lada to live, but not without a cost. There, he was unlucky. The blast threw him against Ivana, and the pair of them against the wall. He had just leaned over to kiss her, turning slightly, and took the full force of the explosion on his back. His spinal cord was all but ruptured just below his waist.
When Vladimir swam back to consciousness, he learned in quick succession that Ivana had lived and was expected to recover with no permanent injuries, and that he would never walk again. The same doctor who spoke with Ivana said, “I know you don’t consider yourself fortunate, but you are. The others are dead and have no life at all. You will live, and unless you choose to climb into a bottle of vodka, you can have a good life. It may not seem like that today, but it’s true.”
Vladimir didn’t agree. His life was over. Ivana wouldn’t stay with a cripple. His plans were destroyed. There were no more dreams.
But he’d been wrong, though for one long year he’d done everything he could to make his dark vision a reality. He’d drunk bottle after bottle of cheap vodka, called every friend and every member of his family vile names to drive them from his life. In many cases he’d succeeded, as he wallowed in a pool of debasement.
But Ivana was made of tougher stuff. No matter how hard he worked to drive her from his life, she stayed. She pulled him from despair and gave him life. Two years after the explosion, they were married. The next year she found their apartment, where they’d lived ever since. Life hadn’t been easy. She’d worked all manner of jobs to support them, finally finding steady work as a translator.
Vladimir had long ago given up being bitter over his fate, though he couldn’t avoid bouts of self-pity that overwhelmed him from time to time. He’d slowly learned to live by burying himself in the hacker world he’d discovered on the Internet. He acquired computing skills that gave him a worldwide reputation among those who did such things and regained some of the self-respect he’d lost in the accident.
Later, he learned to earn a modest but growing income, about which he was enormously proud. He’d become so skilled at writing code he’d been recruited by more than one of the new Russian computer companies, but in each case he’d declined good pay to remain his own man. He might be trapped in a wheelchair, but in his work he was free. To be employed by a corporation was to throw away his most important freedom for a paycheck.
Now, as he did from time to time, he reached over and laid his hand on the FireWire drive on his desk. He kept all his work in it and either took it with him on those rare occasions when he left his computer or hid it. It was too valuable to risk. The information there was his private gold mine.
Vladimir took a final pull on