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  He and Daryl had entered into a passionate affair that blossomed into what each believed was a lasting relationship. She’d left the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team, known as US-CERT, where she’d headed a team and served as assistant executive director of the Computer Infrastructure Security Unit at the Department of Homeland Security, or CISU/DHS, before joining him. He’d formally organized his cybersecurity company, calling it Red Zoya, the name coming from the zero day applications used in the al-Qaeda attack. They’d set up their lives and business in a Georgetown town house.

  Following the climactic events in Turkey the following year, Daryl was briefly hospitalized. It had seemed to him then that the chronic separations that previously marred their life together had come to an end. During the time of their recovery from their injuries and wounds, Jeff came to believe that a full and lasting love had blossomed within both of them. Working together, they were a unique and highly regarded team. It seemed to him an ideal life, joined as lovers and professionals.

  But they were each often consumed by their work. One or both of them was frequently absent on assignment, and even when they were together at the town house, they were heavily involved with the business. Daryl had assured Jeff that she would make their relationship a greater priority, and for a few short golden days it seemed she would. But their intended monthlong vacation in Italy after her release from the hospital in Turkey was cut short within a week when an old colleague had called Daryl, desperate for her help. Unable to do the job on the road, she flew back to the States and that had been that.

  Afterwards, nothing changed. They rarely saw each other, and when they were together it was as if they weren’t. Jeff raised the subject of their relationship again and Daryl reassured him—again—but finally he decided they had no future, not like this. His had been a rational decision, though not an easy one. Continuing as they were wasn’t healthy for either of them. He’d seen other working couples go on as they were for years, never remaining connected at the most important level, interacting with each other superficially, as colleagues at work, their sex life little different from a coupling with a stranger. They both deserved better.

  This wasn’t what he wanted. He’d hoped that presenting her with what was in effect an ultimatum would jar Daryl into reality, cause her to carefully examine her priorities. But when he finally managed to get her attention and a bit of her time, the conversation had not gone well. Initially, Daryl had given another assurance, and then, realizing how serious he was, she turned angry. Finally, when the inevitability of his position became obvious, she became stoic.

  Jeff was disappointed and unhappy that she’d chosen to disconnect rather than put their relationship first. It seemed to him that Daryl thought the relationship was going okay and had been offended that Jeff would accuse her of not being committed. From his perspective, she should have been able to see what was taking place. It could not have been more obvious to him. He was deeply frustrated that he couldn’t get her to acknowledge it. All he really wanted was for her to understand that she needed to make a decision, needed to make the right decision for them. But that wasn’t how she’d taken it.

  In the end, before he felt they’d really discussed things, she abruptly moved out while he was on assignment, taking her possessions. She’d given him the benefit of the doubt with those acquisitions that could reasonably be considered jointly theirs, her fairness just one of the many things about her he loved. Her move was impulsive, he thought, something else about her he loved, though not when he was on this end of her actions.

  The tragedy, if that wasn’t too strong a word for it, was that it had been obvious to Jeff that she cared about him as much as he still cared for her, but regardless, their life choices drove them relentlessly apart. And though it was his hope they’d remain friends, he couldn’t see them ever getting together again as a couple. Someone would come along in either of their lives, and in time the other would receive a wedding invitation. He’d seen it with former couples he knew and now accepted that fate as his own. In seeming confirmation, Jeff and Daryl had not talked in the year since the breakup.

  Ironically, Jeff’s reaction to that life change had been to throw himself into work with even greater zeal. During those hours he wasn’t working or asleep, he was most often at the gym. He’d taken up tae kwon do, finding he enjoyed the physical contact and flexibility it gave him. One of the unintended consequences of Daryl’s departure was that he was in the best shape of his life.

  But despite the efforts of attractive women to start something new with him, Jeff had so far declined. He simply couldn’t take that next step. He’d given it considerable thought but didn’t understand why he was stuck. He found himself wondering about Daryl. Was she dating? Living with someone already? He didn’t know and felt he shouldn’t try to find out.

  5

  PINE STREET

  SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA

  5:39 P.M.

  Daryl Haugen stared at her computer screen. She heard the clang of the cable car on California Street and looked out her bay window. The route was a block over, but she never grew weary of the sound. It was like a siren call.

  Fog blanketed her street. She peered into it for a moment, trying to make out the row of apartments across the street, taken once again with how thick the stuff could become in so short a time. Moisture collected on the outside of her window, forming heavy tear-shaped drops that began to creep downward as she watched.

  In her first months in the city, she’d found herself often taking the cable car for no reason other than the experience. Though the line was popular with tourists, she soon learned that half the riders were locals. She got to know them by sight, though no one much talked to each other—except the tourists. They just never seemed to shut up.

  She’d not changed everything about how she lived. She still carried pepper spray, and three mornings a week, she found time to continue personal workouts with an emphasis on defense training. It didn’t matter where you lived, you still had to be responsible for yourself.

  She turned back to her screen. She’d brought work home as usual. This was a contract job for a Midwest insurance company. She was designing an update to its cybersecurity systems that would include antivirus, host-intrusion detection, network monitoring, anomaly alerts, and operational lockdown. She had employed some of the new techniques she learned in her time with Jeff. In fact, she often realized, her time with Red Zoya had been helpful, which was only one more reason for her anger at the change imposed on her.

  She’d been on this project for some weeks and expected to be at it another two months. She’d just returned from an on-site week at the corporate headquarters, where she worked closely with the company’s IT and cybersecurity teams, designing the architecture for the solutions she’d devised. It was best to keep things as similar in design and appearance as the system the company was now using. That consistency was often the most difficult part of a project like this. While on-site, she’d assisted the IT squads in picking vendors for the new cyberproducts her revised system required. As she neared completion, she’d perform the final, and key, function of guiding the new system’s deployment and making it operational. She wasn’t exactly saving the world, but the work was challenging and occasionally satisfying.

  Daryl had been required to deal with the usual problems she encountered as an attractive single woman in her field. Software engineers were typically men, and their female counterparts often tended toward the plain. Daryl was an exception and had come to view her looks as an inconvenience. Her mother was a beauty as well, and they’d talked about the challenge more than once over the years.

  Slender and just over average height, with a fair complexion and blond shoulder-length hair, Daryl stood out. She was a natural athlete and skied at every opportunity. Encouraged by attentive parents, she’d early discovered a natural affinity for language, and by the time Daryl was a teenager, she spoke Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian fluently. Her
parents were convinced she’d become a linguist, but Daryl also enjoyed mathematics and computers.

  She’d been admitted to MIT at seventeen, then completed her Ph.D. at Stanford while living at home. With a world of career choices before her Daryl had given serious thought to what she should do. She’d briefly considered applying to the FBI as the idea of chasing bad guys held a strong appeal, but instead she’d gone to work for the National Security Agency, which had a greater use for her particular skills. The NSA intercepted communication of all types in order to develop intelligence information. To accomplish all that, they relied extensively on computers. Her background, including her command of languages, made her a natural. After several years she moved to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), where she could be more proactive developing and coordinating defenses for the country’s rapidly expanding cyber-infrastructure.

  Daryl checked the time on her screen. She’d have to stop soon. She’d agreed to meet someone for coffee. God, she hated these meet-ups friends were constantly arranging for her. During the first months after moving to San Francisco, she’d refused them all, then reluctantly acquiesced. Yet still she wasn’t ready. No, she’d come to realize that the last thing she wanted right now was a man in her life. She was still trying to get over the last one.

  That’s what comes from thinking it was true love, she’d told her mother one day. She’d thought just being herself and living the life she wanted would have been enough for Jeff. He’d certainly seemed to say that to her. They got along well; the sex was wonderful. Later she’d decided that compatibility had blinded her to specific realities. Core issues existed in every relationship, and in ignoring them, she’d also disregarded the most basic rules.

  As far as she was concerned, Jeff could go to hell. He might be handsome, charming on occasion, faithful—which was a rare enough quality in any man these days—a hard worker, but in the end, she’d found him cold-blooded. That was the hardest part for her, the way he’d thought it all through without a word of warning to her and then just sat her down one Sunday night when she’d been exhausted from three grueling weeks in Vancouver. It was clear that they weren’t going anywhere, he’d said in that steady voice of his, that continuing as they were wasn’t good for either of them. It was time to recognize the reality of the situation.

  Then he said he hoped they’d stay friends.

  That had almost been too much. But she held back her anger, told him that if that was what he wanted, it was just fine with her. She had other options. He was leaving the next day to work in Dallas, and in anger, she told him she’d be gone when he came back.

  They’d spent that night in separate bedrooms, and tired as she was, she found it difficult to sleep. Finally, well after midnight, she drifted off into a fitful slumber. She’d found it hard to discriminate between her restless dreams and those long moments when she drifted, not awake but not asleep either. Once it seemed to her that a form had stood in her doorway—Jeff, she thought. He’d said nothing, stood there unmoving, a comforting presence; then she drifted off. When she next came out of sleep, he was gone, and when she awoke in the morning, she found he’d quietly left on his trip without another word.

  She’d called Clive Lifton that same day. He was a longtime friend to both of them as well as a colleague. Though it had just fifty employees, his San Francisco company, CyberSys, Inc., was highly regarded in cybersecurity, providing both training and consulting. Clive was a diffident man of middle years, a bit scholarly in his manner. He also was the creator and perennial sponsor of CyberCon, a modestly sized but popular event for those specializing in cybersecurity. Clive ran the conference as an indirect way to advertise his company and its services to the security community.

  Both Jeff and Daryl frequently traded information with him concerning attack techniques as well as swapped cyber community gossip. He’d tried to hire them more than once. Now she called to take him up on his standing offer. San Francisco was just about far enough away from Washington, D.C., as she could get, and Daryl thought the profound change in culture would do her good.

  To her surprise, Clive tried to talk her out of making the move. “You and Jeff are special,” he said. “Don’t do anything you’ll regret. You aren’t going to do any better, Daryl, neither of you is. Stay put, give this some time, rethink your priorities. Work is always there, but what you two have, at least from my perspective, is wonderful and worth a bit of sacrifice.”

  But his recommendation had been shared to no avail. She’d told Clive this was Jeff’s decision and that he was talking to the wrong person. Finally, they agreed to terms and Clive had offered to help find her an apartment. Daryl carefully packed her few things, surprised she’d accumulated so little during her time in Georgetown, and then driven cross-country in three exhausting days, her anger toward Jeff hardening with each passing mile.

  What most pissed her off, what really made her mad, was how much she still cared about him.

  * * *

  Clive was true to his word and located two apartments for her, either of which would have been just fine. She’d taken this second-floor one on Pine Street in Lower Pacific Heights because of its 1913 architecture and lovely bay window. On clear days, light bathed her small living room, turning it aglow. She’d placed her workstation there, and when she worked at home, she let the sun wash over her as she listened to the clanging of the cable car bell and the moan of the foghorn in the bay.

  That was one of the many things she had to adjust to, the way one part of San Francisco could be holiday sunny, while another was shrouded in gray fog. When she went for her frequent walks, she always took a light jacket with her since she managed to pass through at least three microclimates every few minutes. She loved it.

  The offices for CyberSys, Inc., were located in a remodeled Victorian home off Sutter Street, between Nob Hill and Chinatown. A brass plaque beside the entrance placed there by a local historical society authenticated that the address had once served as a brothel. Its various rooms were divided into no more than three cubicles each. Still, spending time there was like working in her aunt’s turn-of-the-century house. The hardwood floors glistened and the woodwork never failed to catch her eye. She loved the high ceilings, and Clive, she learned for the first time, was something of a horticulturist. At least he filled the place with plants and managed to keep them thriving when he wasn’t staring at a computer screen.

  The city itself was different from Georgetown, with its own history and culture, and that, along with the new working environment, had been just what Daryl needed. She was already acquainted with two of the employees and soon found that she knew several others by sight. Clive ran a pleasant operation free of drama and even managed to have a fair share of extroverts among his employees. They had all taken an immediate liking to Daryl and were the ones now setting her up for romance.

  She supposed she could bring those efforts to an end if she really wanted to, but some part of her thought that meeting new men was the way to drive Jeff from her memory. Not that there’d been so many. She put in long hours and traveled at least once a month. It was the nature of the work. She’d asked Clive to keep her on the coast and in the West, and he agreed without comment. Distance was another key, she’d told her mother, who she came to realize disapproved of her breakup as well.

  Daryl checked the clock again and reluctantly closed her laptop. She sighed. Maybe tonight over coffee, she’d stop wishing the man across the table were Jeff.

  DAY TWO

  TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11

  NYSE SUPER HUBS CRITICIZED

  Critics Allege Secret System Vulnerable to Attack

  By Dietrich Helm

  September 11

  On the anniversary of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center, a new report from think tank Bearing Institute warns that our financial system is more vulnerable to terrorism than ever. The NYSE is building super trading hubs around the world through which an ever-increasing percentage of all worldwide securit
ies trading will pass. The computer engines within the hubs are the most powerful ever conceived, and they are all vulnerable to terrorist attack, the report claims.

  The report argues that a well-placed bomb could bring any of those hubs, the precise location of which NYSE keeps secret, down with disastrous results to the world financial system and that backup systems aren’t sufficiently powerful to carry trading load and that many transactions would be lost if the primary systems were disabled. If a timed simultaneous attack brought down more than one hub at the same moment, the damage to global finance would be catastrophic. The NYSE, critics charge, has needlessly exposed itself in pursuit of profits.

  Manning Benting, former SEC director, argues that the NYSE has no choice but to construct super hubs. Computers and the connecting infrastructure have made it easier to create any number of international trading exchanges. All those new markets are in direct competition with the traditional exchanges. One response to competitive trading markets is systematic consolidation. Another is to build the super hubs. “The Exchange really has no choice if they plan to remain the major world player,” Benting said in response to the Bearing Institute report. “If they don’t do it, someone else will.”

  It is projected that the bulk of those secret super hubs will be operational within five years. They are designed to be indispensable to any significant trade, anywhere in the world. Even if a trade were to take place outside the NYSE system, some of its elements must pass through one or more of the Exchange’s super hubs, incurring access fees as they do so. NYSE is a concentration of potential financial influence never previously known.

  The problem Benting points out is that by consolidating the flow of data through a handful of key physical locations, the NYSE exposes itself to physical attack. Such an attack could come from a warring nation or from terrorist organizations. “We must keep in mind that the attacks on 9/11 were directed at the World Trade Center in New York City,” Benting said. “The financial underpinnings of the Western economy remain a prime target for them [al-Qaeda].”