The End-Time Foretellers Read online

  “Great,” I said, and I folded my arms on my chest. “There is a theoretical possibility of breaking into it, so what’s the problem?”

  “ETF,” said the fat man, and upon the realization that I had no idea what he was talking about, he added, “The End- Time Foretellers, you must have heard of them.”

  “Not really, I’m pretty busy with my own business.”

  Rami approached me. “The End-Time Foretellers, or by their internal slogan – Those Who Calculate the End.”

  “I haven’t heard about that either,” I said with a smile. “What is that? Religious Jews who do your accounts in Bnei Brak?“

  “Probably one of the most radical apocalyptic groups in the US,” he continued, ignoring me. “No one knows where they are based and who are the members of the group.“

  “An apocalyptic group?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he continued. “They want to bring about a ‘new world order,’’, as they call it on their web page. It’s not clear whether their motives are political, religious, social or economic. Their official name is ETF – The End-Time Foretellers, but their internal code name is as I explained - Those that Calculate the End, a concept taken from Judaism. They mix Hebrew, English, Arabic and other languages to obscure the possibility of tracking them down and to lend themselves the appearance of a global coalition or a global underground movement.“

  “What are Those that Calculate the End?“ I asked, ”I mean, originally.“

  The fat man sighed, moved away from us a little, and with his back to me began to lecture in a monotonous voice: “The concept of ‘those that calculate the End’ appears in the Babylonian Talmud - ‘Those that calculate the End shall perish.’“

  “That sounds bad.”

  “You’re right. They are those who tried to calculate when the end will come. And the problem was...“

  “This is entirely irrelevant, “said Rami, “read about it in your spare time, Yoav. The critical difference between the historical calculators and those we are facing today is that the original ones only wanted to calculate the End and the End Time-Foretellers are trying to bring it about actively. It is not clear who is behind them, but what is clear is that they are the ones who are trying to obtain the code and pass it onto the Iranians.“

  “Why?“

  “They like chaos, and if the Iranians send a nuclear missile to Israel, the entire Middle East will start to burn... We have received information that someone leaked to the Iranians that the system has a back door and they are in a race against time to break it. You have to stop them. I have no idea how – you’ll find a way.” He paused for a moment and added, “You always find a way.”

  ***

  “Do you think he bought it?” Asked the fat man after driving in silence for a quarter of an hour.

  Rami lit a cigarette. “I have no idea,” he said thoughtfully. “He’s a smart guy.”

  The fat man took the cigarette out of Rami’s hand and threw it out the window. “I told you not to smoke in here. I have to return the car and I don’t want to leave any traces.”

  The car was very clean, without evidence that it had been used. Even so, the fat man feared that someone in the office would start to wonder about the unplanned trips, that apart from being unplanned, were also unregistered and unreported.

  “Okay, Okay”, Rami shrugged. “We have to put someone on his tail, not leaving him time to think. We don’t have time, we have to act quickly. “

  “Do you believe he’ll be able to track them down?”

  “I’m certain of it, look at it as a first test, to start sweating him and making him feel a sense of progress, there is no need to give him more information at present. It’ll contribute to his motivation. I’ve known him for a long time, I know what makes him tick. He’s a particularly talented hacker, I haven’t met many the likes of him. He has intuitive abilities, a real artist in the field.“

  Rami’s eyes shined: ”It’s not for nothing that he was chosen for the job. Years of training and he has no idea. It’s a masterpiece! Like one long chess game where all the pieces ultimately fall into place. What a rush!“

  “Sure,” said the fat man dryly.

  Rami looked at him with hatred.

  “What about Ehud?” The fat man finally asked. “Are you going to talk to him? To explain to him that Yoav is taking over heading the mission?“

  “I spoke to him,” Rami said, looking out the window,

  ”When?“

  “Yesterday,” Rami said. ”He didn’t take it well. I told him he could quit the mission and he said he couldn’t, that he was too invested. He tried to convince me to have Yoav work under him, but no way, Yoav wouldn’t agree to work under Ehud.“

  The fat man considered Rami’s words. “But you didn’t know that Yoav would agree.”

  “I knew,” Rami smiled. “I know him, he always objects, and in the end he does what I tell him. He’s a good guy, does what needs to be done. That’s just the way it is, he had no choice, that’s his nature, he did exactly what I expected him to do.“

  “There’s no choice?“

  “No,” Rami said, taking out a cigarette. ”It’s a matter of nature,” he added and lit the cigarette.

  8

  Brentwood, Los Angeles

  “Everything is just fine, Farhan, trust me,” said Avi Schetritt, while toying with a Waterman pen between his fingers. He was wearing a burgundy Ralph Lauren vest over a starched white buttoned up shirt. His graying hair was combed neatly to the right, giving him a noble appearance. The wide desk was clean, neat and mostly bare. Beneath the pen was a pad of stationary on which he scribbled during stressful moments in the conversation.

  “I really hope so, there is a tremendous deal of pressure on me, soon everything will blow up,” answered the voice on the other side.

  “You will have the code imminently. You understand that this is a very complex and delicate matter,” Avi said.

  “And expensive,” added Farhan.

  “Exactly,” Avi smiled to himself. “I see that we understand each other well.”

  He hung up and let out a long sigh.

  Avi Schetritt sat in his office in the luxurious villa in Brentwood, one of Los Angeles’ richest suburbs. The office was on the second floor. Through the glass walls he was able to see the manicured trees in his vast yard. He loved the fact that he had a spacious office at home and that he didn’t have to travel to the offices in the city - he hated downtown Los Angeles. His motto was “let the nobodies do the work.”

  The smallness and mediocrity of most of those who worked with him repulsed him. He was involved only in the big transactions, and for those he didn’t need anyone. He was number one in his field, selling arms to both sides through various subsidiaries. Both economical and ideological, as far as he was concerned.

  His cell phone vibrated on the desk. He picked it up quickly and smiled as he saw the number. “Well? Good to go?”

  “What did you need earlier? I couldn’t take the call. Anything urgent?”

  “Has there been any progress?” asked Avi.

  “With what?”

  “You know with what.”

  “We’re working on it.”

  “What do you mean you’re working on it? Are you kidding me?! I promised them. They’re bent out of shape over this, and an announcement is soon to be made in the press that a solution has been found to counteract the system. What does ‘working on it’ mean?”

  “Like I said, Avi, we’re working on it. The fact that you’re scattering promises is a separate matter; you leave the work to the professionals. I told you I’ll get you the code, so I’ll get you the code.”

  “Listen, buddy, this isn’t a game.” Avi said, his voice hardening. “You assured me that you would get the code two days ago, I don’t have much patience.” He dropped the pen from
his hand.

  “There were complications, Avi, it’s not so simple. This isn’t a matter of breaking into the Smallville municipal library. If it doesn’t work out, I’ll get someone else.”

  “I’ve had it with promises, I want deeds.” Avi didn’t wait for an answer. He hung up and pressed a button on the desktop phone. “Liz, tell Ben to get here. Urgently.”

  9

  Yehuda Halevi Street, Tel Aviv

  It was late at night and the street was quiet. Soft lighting from the streetlights painted the balcony in yellowish hues. I took the laptop out to the balcony. There was a bottle of beer on the table. When did I put it there? The beer was still cold. I rested my feet up on the coffee table, the laptop on my lap and the beer in my hand. Sometimes this job isn’t so bad.

  Something in my pocket was bothering me. It was an envelope with a Ministry of Transportation summons for a preventative driving course. I remembered their injustice to Amos. We carried out a mission involving the Ministry of Transport one time. I remembered that I kept the passwords. I found the password for the ministry’s database. I connected to the virtual private network of the Holon branch. The supervisor, instead of bothering to get to work on time, got his cousin to install a remote connection from home. I typed in Amos’s ID number, and his military history appeared before me - or the absence of a military history, to be precise. These people… I thought, what do they care? I deleted his entire record and instead entered: “Unknown.”

  Just before signing out I looked at the envelope and quickly typed in my ID number: 22 penalty points. I rectified the situation, 10 points seemed sufficient. I signed out of the Ministry of Transport’s terminal. The inspector from Holon had done enough damage for one day.

  The laptop beeped. An encrypted email from Rami. I was already thinking that he wouldn’t get in touch. I opened the email, a list of links to message boards. I tried to go into the forum and I couldn’t get in. I checked my mail again and saw that Rami had also sent a fake username and password. I went into forum and started collecting information. I focused on content; the end of the world, a new social order, the end of mediocrity. Cool guys, digital anarchists. If I didn’t know what they were up to I’d join them. There was no mention of places or times, they seemed to be careful about that. A lot of codes, many codenames that it would take me time to learn in order to understand what was being discussed, as befits a secret group.

  The message board’s admin excites the readers, posting apocalyptic quotes, underscoring how important their work is, that the end is near and that everyone has to give of themselves a hundred percent. In short, another crazy sect, thinking Judgment Day is in its hands.

  One conversation caught my eye:

  R7: Friends, let’s calm things down. I think we’ve gone too far. Agents came to my father’s place of work yesterday and went about checking the computers. They said it was a routine check, something related to national security, but I’m certain it had something to do with the activity on the message board, conducted on one of their computers. I think we need to cool it down a little.

  One-without-the-other: R7, stop being such a coward. Perhaps you aren’t suitable for a group of champions. Your cowardly posts are bringing everyone down.

  Bill the_Wizard: The One is right. R7, you’re lowering morale. You should get a grip, or you’ll find yourself outside.

  R7: What’s going to happen? What will you do to me? Something likes Pitbull’s disappearance?

  Moderator: R7, be strong and courageous. Don’t fear the infidels. Their time will come and their destruction is imminent. Your efforts will pay off in the end. The end is nigh and the reward is great. Do not discuss users who have left the message board. Talking about other users will result in your exclusion. Bill and The One - your concern is understandable. Please deal with your own affairs and advance your tasks without involving yourselves in the domains of others.

  It wasn’t clear what the nature of the reward was. Material? Spiritual? The members of the group had an amazing capacity with words, they communicated with each other without revealing a thing, wordsmiths. Even after hours of digging around in the message board it wasn’t entirely clear to me what they were doing or why. It was as if they had several open channels running concurrently - the cyber channel, where everything was concealed, and another, perhaps direct channel for division of tasks or working groups.

  One of the last posts mentioned the “operation.” It had numerous short responses from dozens or even hundreds of different users. What is the size of this group? I started looking at the IP numbers, the users’ web addresses, and I saw that many addresses were from networks that were adjacent to each other, which means that they used the same access providers and were probably in the same geographical area.

  I took a long drink of beer and set the bottle down on the table. Now came the interesting part, where on earth are they? I compiled the addresses of active posters, copied some of them onto my Word Pad, and entered them into the GeoIP system, translating the IP addresses into geographic data. I came up with addresses in Las Vegas and San Francisco, some addresses in Los Angeles and an address in Virginia. It still didn’t help me. I realized it was mainly on the West Coast of the USA, but where exactly, where do I focus?

  I ran the coordinates of the IP addresses I had taken from the message board in order to locate the center of activity. I filtered out the remote addresses to reduce the “noise.” I came up with 33.56 latitude north and 118.24 longitude west. These coordinates verified my hypothesis: the center of activity was Los Angeles, California.

  This was not the most complicated analysis I had ever done. It was strange to me that Rami and the fat man didn’t use a hacker in the US to get them the data. It seems that Rami was so sure he would get me on this mission that he didn’t bother to get hold of all the details. It was only the beginning. They operated out of Los Angeles, but nearly four million people live in Los Angeles.

  Los Angeles. I smiled. The primary gamers and hackers conference was to take place in San Diego a week later - it suited me. I could expense it.

  “Rami?” I said into the cell phone, “You can book me a flight to Los Angeles, I think I’ve located them.”

  10

  “The Fortress,” a computer games store, south Tel Aviv

  I handed Amos the keys. “Don’t you forget to open on time and close on time, and if a kid breaks the seal on a game he has to pay for it.”

  “Even if...?”

  “Yes,” I said,” even if all possible eventualities, do you understand?”

  “Got it”, Amos smiled. “How am I gonna manage without you?”

  “You’ll manage very well. I know you want to be independent,” I said with a smile. “And don’t let anyone buy on credit, yes? Not even Rosenbaum’s kid.”

  It was early morning, no one had come into the store yet. Kids on break don’t get up by this hour, I used to remind myself from time to time, to avoid losing heart in the empty mornings. And still I paid Amos for sitting around, looking after the place.

  The shelves were laden with new titles for the spring, a bounty of colorful and enticing action games. Either the games are getting more violent as every year goes by or I’m getting older, I reflected. There were a few boxes left to unpack and put on display, but I had decided to wait and see what would happen with the inventory already on the shelves. There had been no change in the interim.

  “Of course, of course,” Amos said in a serious tone.

  I exhaled all the air out of my lungs. Goodbye to my quiet world. Adios kids, daddy’s in the army now. Everything was so familiar. I had spent my days waiting for a change for the better that never came.

  “Are you really going to the conference?” Asked Amos.

  “Yes, why?”

  “What are you going to do there?”

  “See what’s new, gadgets, new games.” />
  He looked at me and didn’t say a word.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You’re hiding something,” he said. “There’s more to what you’re going to be doing out there.”

  “Really?”

  “For sure.”

  I wondered if I’d had conversations with Rami or the fat man from the store, I couldn’t remember. Amos was a clever kid, but still... it was strange.

  “I know what you’ll be doing out there,” he said finally. “The hackers’ challenge. You’re gonna try the challenge?”

  I let out a sigh of relief. “Yes, Amos. You’re on to me. I’m going to try the challenge. What do you think, have I got a chance?”

  “A slim chance,” he said and nodded. “Apparently this year the challenge is more difficult than ever.” He looked at me and added, “But I believe you’ll do it. You’ll take the challenge. You’re the best, boss,” he smiled.

  “We’ll see.”

  Amos helped me move a few boxes and then looked at me. “You look a little stressed out. Is everything okay?”

  I was indeed stressed but try to tell the twenty-year-old that you’re flying to the US to hunt down hackers who are stealing code that could destroy the State of Israel. I didn’t believe it would compute. A gaming conference in the United States would seem a logical reason for this trip as far as he was concerned. I gave him a pat on the back. “It’s okay,” I tried to calm down. “It’s a tricky time for me. It’s good that I’m taking a break and going to the US. I’m not quite sure how long I’ll be there, I might decide to meet with gaming companies after the conference. In the meantime, look after the business.”

  “For sure, if you trust me.”

  I was probably the only person who trusted him. The army didn’t take him. His parents thought he was crazy and got confirmation from the army. He was in trouble with them in general. He would be problematic for me too sometimes. He didn’t always arrive on time, he didn’t always answer the phone. But he was all right, on the whole. A good kid, the best I’ve been able to get for the store for any decent period of time.