Alex O'Donnell and the 40 CyberTheives Read online

  Mr. O’Donnell glanced at his wife. “Okay. Well, we’ll have to downgrade—I mean, change over to regular interior doorknobs, but we’ll probably have to wait until we can afford it.”

  “In the meantime, why not just set the interior lock as ‘always unlocked’ for now?” Alex suggested.

  “I guess I could do that,” Mr. O’Donnell said, but he looked a bit deflated.

  “If we wanted to lock them, we could do it with this key, by the way.” He held up a purple card. “When you slide this through either the exterior or interior lock, it locks both sides until the master key opens them.”

  Kateri shook her head. Again, she felt that Mr. O’Donnell’s technical expertise was almost more of a liability than an asset.

  That is, until that evening, when her laptop took ten minutes to boot up.

  She was sitting on the futon in the living area, trying to get it to work, when Mr.

  O’Donnell came through on his way to grab a snack, and heard her groan of frustration.

  “Something wrong?” he asked.

  “It’s just very slow,” she complained, staring at the “Wanted” page of the FBI website, which she had added to her homepage tabs. The photos of the five Most Wanted Cyberthieves were downloading nearly pixel-by-pixel. “Are you trying to put an Internet security cat on it or something?”

  He chuckled. “Haven’t gotten around to that yet. Do you want me to take a look at it for you?”

  “Sure,” she said, handing the laptop to him. “I’m going to help Kitty make dinner anyhow.”

  He took it with him to the lobby, and in a half hour he was back. While she stir-fried dinner, he showed her what he had done.

  “Your problem was spybots.” He held out the computer to her, and pointed to her program files. “Little programs that downloaded themselves to your computer as you browsed the internet. I installed software to keep them out. But here’s what will make it easy.” He opened a yellow notepad file on her desktop.

  “Here’s how many programs you should have in these key folders. You should only have 173 programs in this file folder, unless you install something else. If you have more, then you know you’ve got more spies. See? I did it for all your folders.”

  “Gee, thanks,” Kateri said, taking her laptop back with more than a twinge of gratitude. And she sighed. It was true, perhaps. Compromise was becoming the new theme of her life.

  But regarding Alex? She groaned. Too much of a paradox to think about.

  And she was fairly sure that a quick overhaul of the control panel wasn’t going to fix him.

  On the night before they officially started to accept guests, she and Alex drove down the mile-long driveway to the long wooden sign that stood by the county highway. While Kateri held the banner, Alex hammered in the nails until the large red letters reading “GRAND RE-OPENING” stretched across the bottom of the oversized hotel sign. Alex trimmed the grass around the sign, pulled some weeds, and stood back to admire it.

  “What do you think?” he asked Kateri.

  “I think we’re all crazy,” she said.

  “Oh well,” Alex said with a shrug. “What else are we going to do?”

  Being somewhat of a pessimist, Kateri was sure that the launch of the Twilight Hills Hotel was doomed. But much to her surprise, business in the first few weeks was good, which bore testimony to the Bhatka’s hard work in customer service over the years. The hotel phones rang in a steady stream. Mrs. O’Donnell worked the reservation desk from her wheelchair, answering the phone in a polished manner, taking down guests’ information, and entering it into the new software Mr. O’Donnell had installed. The same software accepted online registrations with a credit card, and made their lives easier.

  Alex adopted the dress of a day manager from the Grand Opening onwards.

  When the guests arrived, they invariably found Alex, surprisingly debonair in his black dress shirt and red jacket, his hair smoothed sleekly back into a neat ponytail, there to meet them. He asked how their trip was, handed out room keys, asked if they had any special requirements, and directed them to their rooms. Kateri had wondered if any guests would look askance at the ponytail, but after a week she had seen so many Southern men with long hair and goatees coming through the hotel doors that she figured that Alex simply fit right in. But it helped that he kept his overall appearance so neat.

  Sam and David took luggage to the rooms. Alex had to do a lot of on-the-job training about how NOT to carry bags, but once Sam and David learned to walk at a normal pace without flinging suitcases around, it became much easier.

  Unfortunately, the younger boys weren’t always around. When a group of retired police officers arrived at the hotel for their annual golf weekend, Kateri was incensed when neither boy was to be found.

  “I’m sorry they’re not here; I’ll go get them,” she told the sandy-haired man she was checking in.

  He chuckled. “That’s okay. I can carry my own bags up.” The other men, all burly retirees, said the same thing.

  But Kateri could barely contain her rage. When the last policeman had been checked in, she stomped into the living area to find Sam and David focused on the huge TV screen, working their joysticks furiously to counteract an alien attack.

  Growling, she marched to the corner and pulled out the TV plug, heedless of the horrified wails from the two boys.

  “No more video games during work hours!” she bellowed over their protests.

  Alex and Mrs. O’Donnell were soon on the scene, and when they heard the story, agreed with Kateri.

  “No iPods in your ears either,” Mrs. O’Donnell said. “It’s very unprofessional.”

  “But we waited around for three hours with nothing to do,” David whined.

  “We just came in here for our break to see if we could get 5000 points in fifteen minutes. We were at 4890 when you pulled the plug, Kateri,” he said accusingly.

  “Oh, I am sooo sorry,” Kateri said, giving free rein to her sarcasm at last.

  “From now on, there will be no computers, video games, or iPods used during work hours,” Alex decreed. “And that’s final.” He turned to his dad, who was standing in the bedroom doorway, the fuss having woken him up. “Does the Board agree?”

  “Agreed,” Mr. O’Donnell said.

  “Agreed,” said Mrs. O’Donnell. “And it’s about time.”

  Sam threw down his console. “What are we going to do, sitting around here for hours waiting for something to do?”

  “You can read,” Kateri interjected. “That’s what my brothers and sisters did.”

  “But that’s boring. Too much like school,” David grumbled. The boys, who were enrolling in the local schools in the fall, had already gotten their required reading lists.

  “Then it will make you so happy to leave it when a guest comes and needs your help!” Alex said. “When you’re on the job, I never want to hear the words,

  ‘Just let me finish this level’ again!”

  Mr. O’Donnell weighed in. “It’s about time you boys started becoming serious readers anyhow. A good book is a great pleasure. So think of it this way.

  While we’re going to ban video games from the job site, you are always permitted to enjoy a book when you’re temporarily off duty.”

  “Cruel and unusual parent,” David muttered.

  As they walked back down the hallway, Kateri complained to Alex, “Why does your family even own video games? I can’t think of anything that’s less likely to ever be useful!”

  “Well, I don’t know,” Alex said, scratching his chin. “Life has a way of making certain skills useful.”

  “I’m not holding my breath,” Kateri said, stomping back to her desk.

  Mr. O’Donnell worked the night shift, being available for any emergencies that occurred between the hours of eight o’clock at night and eight in the morning. Fortunately, there weren’t many, so he spent most of his time sitting at the front desk, figuring out the bugs in the new security system a
t the hotel or working on his software projects. (The ban on personal computer work during job hours did not apply to him.)

  Guests of all stripes came to the Twilight Hills Hotel. Many of them seemed to have stayed at the hotel for years. They inquired about the Bhatkas, welcomed the new management, and seemed pleased that nothing much had changed beyond the addition of homemade cinnamon buns to the breakfast menu.

  Then there were guests who came to the hotel through an internet search, and who had picked it because of location or cheapest rate. (The O’Donnells had shaved a penny off the going rates, which kept them towards the top of the search engines.)

  All in all, the O’Donnells seemed to take to hotel work like fish to water.

  The only one who was having a hard time fitting in was Kateri.

  This was because hotel management was, simply put, a lot of work. She ran the breakfast area, kept it clean, and invariably did the cleanup too. Every evening she made the dough for the buns and set it to rise. First thing in the morning, she baked them. She cleaned up after breakfast. After one week, she abandoned the black dress and red shrug for white scrubs. She wore sneakers and pants. There was just too much mess involved.

  As for the “Maid In Time” service, they were more a Pain In Time, at least in her book. The Maids were mostly Hispanic women who spoke Spanish and seemed to resent her oversight. To Kateri, the speed with which they cleaned rooms was in direct proportion to how many times Kateri poked her head in during the job.

  Kateri took to following them around to ensure that rooms were properly cleaned and found that, sure enough, some of them never vacuumed in the corners or didn’t bother to dust all around the windows. Demonstrating the

  “right way” to do things took up too much of her time and energy. So on slow days, she took to sending them home and doing the job herself. It was easy enough to change bed sheets and clean bathrooms. She pressed Sam and David into service whenever she could to strip beds and vacuum.

  After a while, she persuaded the O’Donnells to redefine the terms under which the maid service was used. Occasionally a riotous party of guests would trash a room, and then Kateri gladly called the service. The Maids seemed to take exception to being made to do the dirty work, and she had a difficult time with the murmurs in Spanish that seemed to erupt whenever she gave them an order.

  No one could say she wasn’t doing her job as Assistant Manager and earning her salary. But even so, Alex found fault with it.

  “You’re not enjoying yourself, Kateri,” he said, one evening when he had gotten off duty and she was still cleaning the kitchen, since a number of unexpected guest departures meant that she hadn’t had time to clean it earlier.

  “I almost get the idea that you don’t like the guests.”

  “The guests are what cause all the trouble!” Kateri said, feeling like the hotel manager from Fawlty Towers. “If we didn’t have them, things would stay clean!”

  “And we’d be out of a job,” Alex pointed out.

  But it didn’t look as though they would be out of a job any time soon.

  Reservations came in daily. For a wedding. For a business conference. For a football team traveling in the fall. Looking ahead at the calendar, Kateri had a feeling the O’Donnells would be doing just fine by September. Alex had already told her he wasn’t going back to finish his college degree in the fall. He was going to stay and help his parents run the hotel.

  But would she still be here? Did she want to be? That was one question she still couldn’t answer.

  One night in the middle of the week a month into their stay, Alex realized there were no guests expected for the next twenty-four hours. The hotel was empty. Having looked at the reservation bookings, which showed several guests arriving tomorrow for another wedding, Alex was actually relieved to have some respite.

  “Taking the night off, Dad?” he asked, when his dad came into the lobby wearing khakis and a polo. His dad usually took over at eight o’clock and worked till eight in the morning.

  “Hardly,” Dad said, and touched his arm. “Alex. I’ve been working on something.”

  “The new security system for the hotel wireless network?” Alex said, shrugging out of his jacket. “Sam showed me. The Security Cat is back, eh? The upgrade looks great. Love how he’s wearing a red jacket now.”

  “No. Something else. I’ve decided to take a risk. For Uncle Cass’s sake.”

  Dad had an intense look in his usually pleasant green eyes.

  “Dad. . .” Alex said, a little warningly. “What?”

  “The cyberthieves’ site. I think I can hack it.”

  “What?”

  Dad took a deep breath. “I’ve been going back there a lot. They changed all the settings, even the Sesame file. I used the old version of Sesame to sort of guess what the new program would look like. And after a lot of work, I managed to hack into the login portal for the site and I trojaned it. I mean, to make a long story short, I did the equivalent of modifying the login files so that all the passwords that were entered were secretly copied and sent to me. Make sense?”

  “Yeah, Dad. Um—did the FBI know you had the ‘Sesame’ program?”

  “Uh—I sort of forgot to tell them I had it. Probably not completely above-board, but they didn’t ask me, so I didn’t tell them.” He wiped his forehead.

  “Last night, I got lucky. I snagged the password of the site administrator. When I used it, I found a private key for the portal to another server. I have a feeling that if I can get in there, I’ll find out a lot more about this website.”

  “And find out who runs it?”

  “Most likely.”

  Alex whistled. “I bet the FBI could use that information. But wait a second—don’t they have their own computer experts working on it?”

  His dad shook his head. “I talked to Agent Randolph the other day, and he said they’ve hit a brick wall. So I think they could use some help.”

  Alex looked over his shoulder, feeling a little spooked. “Okay. So you’re going to try to get the goods on the cyberthieves. Uh—what do you need me to do? Run the desk, distract Sam and David, or something?”

  “No. I—” Dad hesitated. “I guess I’d just like you to know.”

  Alex stared at his dad. This was obviously something that Dad had been thinking about and working on for a long time. And he wanted me to know. Alex recognized that his dad, who spent so much time alone in his work, was asking for moral support.

  It was an easy decision from there.

  “I’m going to watch your back,” Alex said. “What can I do? Let me help.”

  Dad hesitated, but Alex could see he was grateful. “How about you monitor the home network? I’m going to bounce through several other servers to hide my approach, but just in case they figure out where I’m coming from, it might be good to be on the alert. I’m going to start in an hour.”

  “Can Kateri sit with us?”

  “If she wants to.”

  Alex could guess what Kateri would want to do, but he decided she didn’t have a choice this time. He hung up his jacket, slung his tie around the hanger, and went to find her.

  She was upstairs on the second floor changing sheets on a bed and looking very out of sorts.

  “Kat. Hey. How are you?”

  “You want a serious answer to that question?” She lifted up the end of the mattress and tucked two flat sheets underneath.

  “Not really. Hey. Dad is going after the cyberthieves tonight. I’m backing him up. You need to come and watch.”

  She dropped the mattress with a thud. “I thought you and I were going out shopping tonight. You said we could take a break.”

  He had completely forgotten about this. “Uh. Yeah. But I didn’t know about this. Dad just told me.”

  Frowning, Kateri methodically began to pull the lower sheet to the top of the bed and tuck it around the sides of the mattress. Alex knelt down to help her. “What do you want me to do?” she asked.

  “Just be
there.”

  She finished the last tuck then stood up to spread out the top sheet. “So you want me to sit by the computer and admire you both as you type and click?”

  Alex grinned at her. “That would be awesome. I knew you were a quick study.” He threw an arm around her. “But seriously, this could be dangerous. If the hackers pick up that Dad is after them, they might start coming after us.”

  She dropped the pillow she had been snapping into a pillowcase. “Uh. Oh.

  So—you want me to pray.”

  He nodded. “Possibly starting now.”

  The mood was tense in the small office of the Twilight Hills Hotel as Kateri sat down between Alex and his dad. Mr. O’Donnell was on his laptop: Alex was on the hotel office computer, which was now linked to the laptop. Cables and electronic implements were scattered around the office she’d just cleaned that morning. Apparently the operation Mr. O’Donnell was preparing for required some hardware reconfiguration.

  “How are you connecting?” Alex asked his dad.

  “Just using a modem I had on hand. The problem is that it only works with Windows, so I just routed our connection through the front desk computer. But it might help to hide my approach as well.”

  The lobby outside was deserted, silent except for the humming of the front desk computer, and the rest of the family was in the residence suite. Mrs. O’Donnell and David were to answer the phone and the door buzzer if any guests showed up. The summer night was silent. The stars outside glimmered overhead in distant tranquility.

  Kateri shifted in her seat as Mr. O’Donnell plugged in a USB port and said,

  “Here we go.”

  I guess I should start the Rosary now.

  And she did.

  The first part of the hack was fairly interesting, because it involved going into the cyberthieves’ cave, which Kateri and Alex had never seen. The gleaming stone walls and piled jewels gave Kateri an inkling of the curiosity that Mr. O’Donnell must have felt when he first discovered the treasure trove, but they didn’t stay there long. Mr. O’Donnell moved quickly through the cave and clicked on a shape embedded in the wall. An “O” with a slash through it, which glowed faintly and then sank into the wall.