Page 3 of Loverboy
The elevator begins its smooth ascent toward the private living quarters of Max Bayer. His father started this company many years ago as an ordinary security firm. Meanwhile, Max and I graduated from Columbia together and then went off to D.C. to become top ranking intelligence officers together.
It worked. Mostly. But after some years went by, we both wanted out, for different reasons. Max left because an operation he was running went sour. Lives were lost, including someone very special to Max. He felt a lot of guilt. Not that he ever talks about it. Max is a vault.
But after he left, the place wasn’t the same. I was tired of risking my life for a bureaucracy that didn't seem to care about me. Nothing can make a guy jaded faster than upholding dubious government secrets.
“Join me,” Max had said at the time. “I’m going to reinvent private security for the internet age.”
It was a lofty statement, but that’s Max for you. Besides, he has a way of delivering on his lofty statements. And although I’m not half the genius Max is, I was one of about three people in the world he actually trusted. So—in spite of the New York location—it was an easy decision.
Now, as I let myself into Max's magnificent lair, I have to wonder what I've gotten myself into. There's a decanter of single malt sitting on the table. There’s a glass waiting for me, too, with one of those giant ice cubes—the kind that melt slowly, preserving the hundred-dollar shot of whiskey you pour over it.
"What's the occasion?" I ask. "Thanks for the ride and the sandwich. But you can imagine that I’m deeply suspicious.” I look around the vast room, trying to spot him.
My eyes come to rest on a pair of Max-shaped legs. That’s all I can see of him. They’re standing on an upholstered chair that probably cost the GDP of a small nation. The rest of him is inside a large air-conditioning unit that’s mounted through the old brick wall of his converted factory building.
“Moment,” he says.
I wait.
There’s a smallbang. Like the sound of a .22 firing. In the company of another man, that might be alarming. But Max calmly steps down a moment later, removes a pair of headphones and begins to disassemble a Ruger rifle and return it to its case. “Hey, Gunn. Great to see you.”
“What were you doing with that thing? Capping pigeons?”
“Nah, I don’t mind pigeons. But I do mind that the City of New York has decided to install a surveillance camera on my corner. That’s not good for business.”
“So you just—” I make a finger rifle and pop him one.
“It’s very efficient,” he says, carrying the gun to a safe on the wall and locking it away.
“You don't think you'll get caught?”
“Nah. The butt of the rifle is too small to see in the air conditioner grate. I checked the view first with a drone.”
Of course he did.
“Great to see you, man. Let’s drink scotch.”
“What's it gonna cost me? When you start spoiling me, I get nervous.”
He frowns. “What do you mean?”
“You invited your brother Eric over for tacos. Then you shipped his ass to Hawaii. Now he has a baby and he’s engaged to be married.”
Max scratches his chin. “We’re not having tacos. You’ve got nothing to fear.” He picks up the decanter and uncaps it. “The job I have planned for you is a piece of cake. In fact, there are literally cakes involved.”
“Hmm,” I say, because that does sound better than crawling through a sewage tunnel. But I’m too smart to feel any relief. “Get to the point.”
“First let me catch you up on a few developments. Xian Smith is in New York.”
“Interesting.” We’ve been trying to prove that Smith is manufacturing compromised processors in Asia for placement into American devices. It's not easy to stay ahead of the cyber security war. Max is one of the few industry leaders who’s realized that hardware is the new frontier of cybercrime. Instead of hacking into networks, Xian Smith is taking a different tack: hack the modem before it’s out of the box.
It could work, too. Americans love their electronics, and they love to buy them cheaply. Most of our gadgets are manufactured overseas. Smith and his cohort—we still need to know who he’s working with—are underbidding honest manufacturers of smart speakers, modems, and servers. Smith sells the cheap components at a loss, and then slightly reengineers them, inserting spy chips to activate later.
Max works day and night to keep our clients’ products clean. But it isn’t easy, because the smorgasbord of “smart” devices keeps expanding. The people crave their phones, their smart thermostats, and their smart speakers.
If Max and I don’t shut down this ring of savvy information pirates, millions of devices will be used to spy on unsuspecting users. Whoever controls the spy chips can reap our secrets and sell them off to the highest bidder. Blackmail. Industrial espionage. Military secrets. If your toaster or your cable modem is spying on you, nothing is safe.
“Smith has been here in town for three weeks already, with no signs of leaving,” Max adds.
