Unknown 9 Read online

  To steal an old song lyric, this time it was more than a feeling.

  He parked his geriatric Popsicle-red Jeep Cherokee on the curb near the edge of the rough neighborhood, a few streets west of the Arts District. He gave his trusty steed a fifty-fifty chance of being stolen. Across the street loomed a warehouse with a fading brick facade and a fresh coat of lime-green paint on the door. A sign above the door read DC CAFÉ AND WORKSPACE.

  Along with the handful of cars and electric scooters parked outside, the café was the only sign of life on the block. Cal scanned the street and scurried through the green door. Inside was an artisanal coffee shop with a glass wall that opened onto a warehouse converted into a shared workspace.

  Behind the counter, a heavily tattooed Samoan woman pushing three hundred pounds, most of it muscle, was arranging a line of pastries and sweets in the display case. Her name was Sefa, and she was rumored to have an IQ over 140.

  “Calvin!” she said. “Good to see you.”

  “Right back at you. Is Dane in?”

  “Let me see if he’s busy. Coffee?”

  Sefa’s pour-overs were legendary, but they cost about three times as much as Cal was willing to pay. “Nope.”

  With a frown, she disappeared through the door in the rear of the café, emerging soon after. “You’re good.”

  “Thanks.”

  She swiped an ID card through the slot beside the glass door, granting access to the workspace. On Cal’s way through, she gifted him with a friendly slap on the back that almost knocked him over.

  At just over two hundred pounds, Cal was not used to being pushed around like a toddler. That woman needs to be in the NFL instead of serving coffee.

  Past the door was an open warehouse with three tiers of loftlike workstations. Cords and wires ran along the floor, draped over movable stands, and looped through hooks in the rafters. A drill press and a 3-D printer took up space in the center. Here and there, the maniacal grin of the Joker—the patron saint of the café—leered from a movie poster, coffee mugs, and other memorabilia.

  Though available to anyone to rent, the workspace attracted a hard-core tech crowd and served as a meeting spot for a hacker group. Cal was a little unclear as to how it all fit together: café, hackerspace, urban collective, tech-oriented coworking space. He supposed it was a millennial thing.

  What he did know was that a man named Dane owned the building and probably ran the hacker group. Dane was also known as Priest—as in, the high priest of technology—and he was an in-demand IT consultant and systems engineer, in addition to having the reputation as one of the city’s best hackers. Cal had worked with him a number of times in the past, stretching back to his journalism career.

  Most of the diverse crowd was hunched over laptops glowing in the dim light. Cal walked to the back and entered a hallway that dead-ended at Dane’s office. A pair of video monitors marked his presence. For once, the cameras felt reassuring.

  He pressed the intercom button. “It’s Cal.”

  A buzzer sounded, and the heavy door swung open. Cal stepped into a room with metal paneling and five monitors mounted above a corner desk. The only decor was a series of framed Batman comics on the wall. Cal had once asked if DC Café was a reference to the comic book publisher, but Dane had told him it stood for “deterministic chaos theory.”

  Which was Cal’s second choice.

  The desk chair swiveled, revealing a thick-necked man in his late thirties. A bushy red beard concealed his face, and a mane of wavy, pumpkin-colored hair fell past shoulders as wide as a coffee table. Though not quite as large as Sefa, the scarily intense owner of the DC Café also shattered the hacker stereotype of a misanthropic weakling.

  Or at least the weakling part.

  Dane was dressed in a pair of black work boots, jeans, and a gray hoodie with a symbol on the front: a white circle with eight arrows sticking out in all directions.

  Two deep-set blue eyes drilled into Cal. “You said you needed to find someone.”

  Dane spoke with a clipped nasal voice that did not match his appearance. His expression rarely changed, and hyperaware eyes blinked too much from screen fatigue.

  “Good to see you too, old buddy.”

  Dane said nothing.

  “You might want to talk to Sefa,” Cal continued. “She almost broke my back again. Maybe some employee sensitivity training?”

  “She only greets people she likes.”

  “Lucky me,” Cal said.

  The café owner frowned and checked his watch. Cal sighed. He knew Dane did not suffer fools and was all business, but over the years Cal kept expecting him to loosen up.

  “A few nights ago,” Cal continued, “someone showed up outside my house in a black van during a show. When I walked outside to confront them, they took off.”

  He finally got a reaction: the computer expert’s eyebrows arched a fraction of an inch. “I assume you don’t know who they are?”

  “That’s why I’m here. I got a plate number.”

  “Don’t you have contacts?”

  “Yeah. LAPD and DMV. According to both, that plate doesn’t exist. It’s freaking me out.”

  “Cali plates?”

  “Yep.”

  “What is it?”

  Cal told him.

  “Sounds like a typical plate,” he said, steepling his fingers in his lap. “Intriguing.”

  “Can you help?”

  “Can I? Probably. Will I? That depends.”

  “On what?”

  Dane paused a beat before he spoke. “I find it hard to believe you have no idea who’s following you.”

  “You know my background. I’ve pissed off a lot of people over the years. It’s more a matter of which one. But I never said I had no idea.”

  Dane spread his hands, acknowledging the point.

  Cal pointed at a chair in the corner. “Do you mind?” After a grunted response from Dane, Cal wheeled the chair closer and took a seat. “During the show, I was discussing a group called the Leap Year Society.”

  Dane gave him a blank stare.

  “It’s an organization I ran across. They’re like a ghost, and I think they might be players. Thirty minutes after I mentioned them on the show—for the first time ever—this black van rolls up right outside my window. I don’t know if they’re related, but—”

  “Did it have a Polybius sticker?”

  “A what?” Cal asked, then rolled his eyes when he remembered the reference. Polybius was an urban legend about a fictitious and highly addictive arcade game planted around the country to data-mine psychological information, serviced by government agents dressed in black. “So you do have a sense of humor.”

  “Thirty minutes?” Dane repeated, unmoved by the comment.

  “Can they track me that fast?”

  “If they’ve got a bot looking out for their name, it will take them straight to the source. They either know the admin or they hacked your show—are you using a proxy?”

  “Uh, not that I know of.”

  Dane rolled his eyes. “Then they meta-track the IP address by comparing it to email accounts or social media, cookies if they’re a bit smarter, Tor or VPN accounts if we’re dealing with a real expert.”

  “Speak English, Tonto.”

  “Yes, they can track an unsecured amateur broadcast like yours. Fast. Maybe speed-of-light fast. But the house visit means they have a physical presence in LA.”

  “That, or they can teleport.”

  “That, or they were watching you already.”

  After cracking his knuckles, Cal crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair. He had thought of that, and it made him queasy.

  “How do you know about them?” Dane asked.

  “Sorry?”

  “The Leap Year Society. If it’s like a ghost, then how did you hear about them?”

  Cal hesitated, debating how much to spill. He knew Dane considered himself a modern-day Robin Hood, redistributing information instead of money. Like
the coffeehouses of old-world Europe, many of the hacker collectives worked toward enlightenment and social reform through the spread of knowledge banned by the elites. A noble goal. Telecomix, a Swedish hacker group, had helped foster communication in Middle Eastern countries where the internet was suppressed.

  Yet Dane was a private and very intelligent man. Cal didn’t know his ultimate aims or allegiances.

  “No names,” Cal said. “But I can tell you a story.”

  Dane reached into a minifridge beneath the desk and cracked a Club-Mate energy drink. He took a giant swig, belched, and held out a palm.

  “I assume you’re familiar with Cicada 3301?” Cal began.

  Dane answered with a smirk.

  The mystery known as Cicada 3301 started as an enigmatic message posted on internet chat boards around the world. It featured the image of a cicada on a black background and the number 3301. A note above the image read: Hello. We are looking for highly intelligent individuals. To find them, we have devised a test. There is a message hidden in this image.

  To those who could crack the first clue, which involved a line of code buried inside a Caesar cipher, a rabbit hole awaited: a series of cryptic puzzles, involving everything from data security to steganography, linguistics, alternate reality games, Mayan numerology, bootable Linux CDs, MIDI files, physical objects, and even references to famous paintings and novels.

  The internet was abuzz. Speculation ran rampant among the techie elite as to the identity of the group, and conspiracy nuts around the globe proffered all kinds of theories. Was Cicada 3301 a cyber mercenary group? A recruitment tool for the NSA, the CIA, MI6? Some unknown government organization? Aliens searching for the best and brightest to take to their home world? The Freemasons, the Illuminati, Skull and Bones? Some type of online cult?

  A handful of people claimed to have solved the series of brainteasers. Some of the solutions were even posted on YouTube. According to one person, passing the final test granted access to a private forum on the dark web where members discussed ways to advance online privacy and freedom of information.

  “Cicada never verified the claims the puzzle had been solved,” Cal said.

  “Maybe because the bored teens in the basement wanted to preserve the illusion of mystery?”

  “Maybe. And maybe not.”

  “That silly dark-web chat room is real,” Dane said. “I’ve been there.”

  “And?”

  Dane caught his meaning. “Sure. I get it. Maybe the chat room was a publicity stunt and there’s another level. It’s all speculation. Why are we talking about this?”

  “About a month ago, I had a conversation with a woman on my own chat board. Or at least she said she was a woman. We know how that goes. Anyway, she claimed her boyfriend found an Easter egg buried on Cicada 3301.”

  “Why does that surprise you?” Dane said. “They probably have dozens.”

  “She said this one led to the Leap Year Society.”

  Dane took a long drink. “Go on.”

  “It gets weird. I won’t give you her online identity—”

  “Why not? Maybe I could trace her.”

  “Journalistic integrity, my man.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  Dane waved a hand, and Cal continued. “She said her boyfriend—let’s call him Bill—found an Easter egg that led to a whole new set of puzzles on the dark web.”

  “What was the egg?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t even think she did. But Bill claimed this mysterious side path was even more difficult than the original, with all kinds of insanely hard clues. He said he got to the end of it too. Guess what he found when he did?”

  “The Leap Year Society?”

  “Give this man a cookie.”

  “Okay,” Dane said. “We’ll assume it’s real for the moment. So what does she know about it?”

  “Nothing. Bill claimed the end of the route was an anonymous webpage with Leap Year Society displayed in the center. After a few seconds, the web page disappeared, and he couldn’t find it again. Or so he said.”

  “Sounds like a prank.”

  “She thought so too. Except three days after her boyfriend told her—about six weeks ago, according to her—he quit his job and disappeared. And she hasn’t seen him since.”

  Dane tilted back in his chair. “Maybe she’s lying. Or maybe he lied to her. Dude probably had a mistress in Argentina, and didn’t want to tell her.”

  “Helluva way to leave a bad relationship.”

  “What did Bill do for a living?”

  “A mathematician and systems integration engineer. Serious creds—MIT and Princeton.”

  “And he’s still gone? He just up and left his job? Have you tried to verify this?”

  “She’s anonymous, he’s anonymous, they could have logged in from anywhere. I could go old-school, but where do I look? Private companies all over the world? Professors? The government?”

  “We can do better,” Dane said, “but back up. Have you talked to her again?”

  “She hasn’t been back. During our chat, she sounded genuinely worried and said she even went to the police. I dug around for everything I could find on the Leap Year Society and came up empty. I finally decided to go public. You know what happened next.”

  “His leaving could be a coincidence.”

  “Anything could be a coincidence.” Cal wagged a finger. “I have two theories. The first is that, as people have thought all along, Cicada is a recruitment tool for highly gifted people who share a similar ideal. Maybe the Leap Year Society is their real name and they set it all up, and the Easter egg is the way in.”

  “To some supersecret hacker group even I’ve never heard of?” Dane crushed his energy-drink, and just missed his toss at the trash can. “It’s not really our style. Hidden from the world at large, sure. But not other hackers. Recognition for genius is kind of the point.”

  “Agreed. So here’s my theory. What if the Leap Year Society noticed Cicada 3301 and decided to subvert it? Use it as a tool for their own recruitment?”

  “A piggybacking Easter egg? That’s devious.”

  “Cicada is world-famous. I’d wager a good number of the world’s best hackers and computer geniuses have taken a shot. If the Leap Year Society is ultrasecret yet also wanted to attract top tech talent, that would be a great way to do it. What if they hacked the hackers?”

  “Someone in Cicada would find out.”

  “Then maybe they got an invite—or the Leap Year Society had a mole inside.”

  Dane crossed his thick arms and regarded Cal in silence. A wolfish gleam entered the computer expert’s deep-set blue eyes, and he swiveled to face one of the keyboards. “Give me a sec.”

  “Sure.”

  As the minutes ticked by, Cal eyed the monitors in the room. He saw a ticker tape of the world’s financial markets, a replay of an Australian rules football game, a video game called Rocket League, a thread about beer brewing techniques on 4chan, and a screen saver depicting a half-naked anime woman wielding a glowing sword.

  One would think, Cal mused as he watched Dane work, that all the new technology and information in the world would be useful for unlocking secrets and exposing conspiracies. And it was. Yet it was also a hindrance: the forms of encryption had grown increasingly sophisticated, and there was an overwhelming amount of information to process. E-books, the internet, entertainment media, podcasts, blogs, VR, AR.

  There was simply too much noise. These days, one could hide in plain sight.

  Cal asked for a beverage and got another grunted reply. Half expecting Dane to bite his head off, Cal reached into the fridge and pulled out a can of Coke. He sighed in pleasure with the first sip. He was a simple man.

  A printer fired up, and the café owner swiveled to face him. “Why do you do what you do?”

  “Excuse me?”

  Dane walked over to grab a sheet of paper off the printer. “We’ve worked together before. Mi
nor stuff.” He looked down at the paper. “I don’t know where this leads.”

  “Isn’t that why we do this?”

  “I know why I do this.”

  Cal snorted. “To fight the good fight, man. Take down the oppressive governments and all that. You’re right, privacy and dataflow isn’t my thing, but outing the new world order very much is.”

  “Okay. I’ll ask again: Why?”

  “Does there have to be an answer to that question?”

  Dane folded the piece of paper in half, swiveled again, and started playing Rocket League.

  Cal threw up his hands. “I’m terrified of North Korea? 1984 wasn’t just a book? Nazis are bad, and it’d be better if that sort of thing never happened again?”

  When Dane still didn’t turn around, Cal said quietly, “It started with my father.”

  The café owner finally paused the game.

  “I’m from Indiana. Dad was an airline mechanic, a real company guy. He lost his job, and then his pension, when the company went belly-up and shed all its debt to right itself. He died broke and bitter, and I never forgot the lesson. I’ve never trusted big business, or big anything, since.”

  Dane turned to face him, lips pursed. “Better,” he said, and handed Cal the piece of paper.

  “Thanks. What do I owe you?”

  “A Coke.”

  Cal squeezed his soda can, stepped back, and shot a fadeaway. He nailed it.

  “Used to play?” Dane asked.

  “Yup.”

  “Still a fan?”

  “Clippers all the way.”

  “Really, man? The Clips?”

  “Even in the old days.” As he backed toward the door, Cal waved a hand in dismissal. “By the way, the story’s true, but my dad was a prick. I guess I just like a good underdog.”

  Durham

  9

  Andie clutched the canister of mace like a lifeline and took off through the woods, into the pressing darkness of the trees, down a footpath she had taken a thousand times on her trail runs. A glance over her shoulder told her the dark-haired man had heard her and was sprinting across the lawn.

  The footpath was straight and narrow. She knew it joined up with a larger trail in about a quarter mile, then branched out. One of the forks led to the river, another doubled back to the main road.