Daemon

secretary’s desk. ‘He in?’
    ‘He’s leaving for Moscow in an hour.’
    She barely registered Lindhurst’s presence. A stone-faced woman in her fifties, she was many years in the CEO’s service and effectively had more authority than any two senior vice presidents put together.
    But Lindhurst had more authority than ten. He pushed his way through the towering double doors.
    ‘Garrett!’ she called after him.
    He ignored her and proceeded into the CEO’s cavernous office at a quick pace.
    The tanned, pampered face of Russell Vanowen, Jr., CEO and chairman of Leland Equity Group, looked up from reading a letter. He scowled. ‘Damnit, Garrett, make an appointment.’
    Garrett heard the doors close behind him, and he took a deep breath. ‘This can’t wait.’
    ‘Then just pick up the phone, for chrissakes.’
    ‘We need a face-to-face.’
    Vanowen regarded him like a statue would a pigeon. Vanowen had that obsessively groomed look of the fabulously rich – as though his head were the grounds of Augusta National and a hundred groundskeepers swarmed over it each morning. The ring of white hair sweeping around the back of his head was perfectly manicured like a green. The pores of his skin were flawless. His suit was masterfully tailored to make his husky form look manly and authoritative.
    Yet, for all his obvious fastidiousness, Vanowen did not look soft. He was stocky, intimidating, with a presence that projected itself without having to speak; his eyes scanned a room like twin .50-caliber machine guns. And he had an almost mystical authority in this office, with its bank of tall windows overlooking downtown Chicago and Lake Michigan beyond. This was a fabled seat of power, overlooking the length and breadth of the land.
    Lindhurst proceeded toward Vanowen’s massive teak wood desk, still thirty feet away. ‘We have a major problem, Russ.’
    Vanowen still held a letter in one hand, glaring over his reading glasses. He reluctantly dropped the letter on his otherwise empty desk and removed his glasses. ‘When you say “we,” I take that to mean “you.”’ He glanced at his massive watch, tugging a cuff-linked sleeve up to see the face. ‘I’m heading out to the airfield any minute.’
    There wasn’t any time to finesse it. ‘We’ve lost administrator rights to our network.’
    This did not have the impact Lindhurst hoped.
    Vanowen shrugged slightly and now looked greatlyirritated. ‘So what the hell do you want me to do about it? You’re the CIO; ride your people until they fix it. Jesus, Garrett.’
    Lindhurst sat down in one of the uncomfortable leather chairs, pulling it right up to the desk. He leaned in close, still clutching the rolled magazine. ‘Russ, listen to me: we don’t have any control over our databases.’
    ‘My response is the same. Now would you let me read this letter, please?’
    ‘WE ARE UNDER ATTACK.’
    That got Vanowen’s attention. ‘Attack?’
    ‘Attack. All offices, worldwide. Look, I get in this morning, and I have phone calls from six division heads telling me they can’t log on as admins to our servers. They think it’s a layoff and that they’ve been shut out on purpose.’
    ‘Were they?’
    ‘Not by us. Turns out
no one
can get an admin logon – not even here in the main office. All systems rebooted last night. And somehow, somebody took over our network. We have only limited rights to it.’
    Now Vanowen looked really angry. He pounded his fist on the desk. ‘Jesus Christ, Lindhurst! Why the hell wasn’t I told about this sooner? Our clients must be screaming bloody murder.’
    ‘Hold on a second. Our Web sites are up, and we can access data, no problem. So can our clients. We can even change data, so no one outside Leland knows yet.’
    Confused and getting angrier by the moment, Vanowen gestured, ‘So what’s the problem?’
    ‘The problem is that we can’t back up, restore, or change our servers. We can’t even export data.’
    ‘I may not know much about this stuff, Lindhurst, but I do know we spent thirty million dollars on backup systems. Surely you can take a backup copy and restore it.’
    ‘That’s just it; our backup SANs are toast. Our off-site replication trashed. The log files were faked. We have no backups newer than four months ago.’
    Vanowen squinted at him. ‘How is that possible? I spent forty-seven million dollars on IT last year alone. We were supposed to have the most advanced network security money can buy.