Chapter 11

25. December 2009 by admin.

Previous Chapters

Preface
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10

David Garfunkel, Garf, emerged out of the subway station in Braintree.  He took all possible measures to shake the people who were following him.  He looked around and saw nothing out of the ordinary.  He crossed the street, waiting patiently for the “Walk” signal to show up.  He was walking slowly, enjoying the fresh air, looking around for trouble.  He was wearing a baseball cap now.  Not that he was a fan of the Boston Red Sox, but he figured blending in would cause no harm.

Garf walked into a small pizza parlor a few blocks away from the subway station, said a lazy “hi” to the attendant and walked to the back.  He knocked on a door and it was quickly opened and closed behind him.  They hugged, kissed on the cheeks, and then on the lips.  The polite hello became very passionate very quickly.  Garf pushed his friend gently.  “Please save that thought, we need to talk first”.  The disappointment wasn’t hidden very well, but his friend was anxious to hear what was going on.

Garf knew Alfredo Bello from his undergraduate studies in MIT.  Garfunkel was very task oriented and goal directed.  He started his engineering classes right away, cheated on most of his pre-requisites, particularly the literature, arts, and “light sciences” classes.  He never attended, nor did he ever bother to complete his homework assignments and papers.  He traded everything for computer programs he wrote easily.  On a few occasions, he modified some test results on the school computers.  He didn’t think it was a capital offense.  Freddie took his time.  He wasn’t really sure what he wanted to study.  Since he never really had to work for living, he decided to have some fun in school.

While it took Garf three years to complete a four year engineering program, Alfredo, or Freddie took eight to graduate with an Electrical Engineering degree, not before he finished a full blown pre-med program.  They both graduated with honors, Freddie on both programs.

Freddie was a fellow hacker, who unlike Garf didn’t stop at redirecting satellites and probes, or cracking open government websites.  Freddie was a “computer criminal” by all standards, a convicted felon, who already did time for stealing credit records from a major bank.  If they only knew, Garf thought, what Freddie was really up to.

Freddie Bello, was out on parole, and was keeping a low profile.  He was pretending to be working at the family business, a small Italian restaurant.  The Pizza Tower, a cool name for a pizza place, was probably the only legitimate family business of the large Bello family.  The family, although not identified with the Mob, the Italian Mafia, was a very organized business.  It had hierarchy, rank, and plenty of shady businesses around town.  Freddie grew up as an outcast in the family, as he was the first and only one who actually liked going to school.  He didn’t smoke cigarettes or anything else, didn’t drink, and didn’t pay attention to girls.  He was always leaning towards men.  For an old school Italian family, being homosexual was shameful.  Obviously, he was not the only gay Italian man.  But quite possibly he was one of the most vocal ones.  Freddie and Garf were dating a while back.  In retrospect, it was way more than dating, they had a relationship.

Freddie wasn’t always welcome by his immediate or extended family.  He had a college degree, he was a scholar, and he was gay.  It was quite an uncommon combination.  One day, a relatively senior member of the Bello clan got in serious trouble with the police.  Alberto was charged with laundering money.  The main evidence in the file was some off shore bank records.  Freddie overheard a discussion between Alberto and his lawyer.  He went back to his computer, and an hour later, miraculously, the records were gone.  The case closed a few days later.  The official reason was lack of public interest.  The Bellos were happy and for two good reasons.  Alberto was off the hook, and Freddie was uncovered as a possible asset to the family.  The lazy bastard with the college degree was after all very useful to a family living on the edge of the law.  He gained respect, and the jobs and money followed.  The police followed as well.  Alfredo Bello was marked as a key member in a crime family.  It was somewhat inconvenient, but as Freddie knew already, it wasn’t all bad.

Garf sat down and so did Freddie.  While they both knew there was some unfinished business to take care of, they consciously put it aside for the time being.  Each of them, in their own special way was professional.  And in their lines of business, different as they were, professionalism was everything.  Their friendship went way further than their relationship.  They looked at each other.  Garfunkel spoke first.  He told his friend that to the best of his knowledge, some Federal Agency was after him.  He wasn’t sure which one.  He also told him about Arthur Lewis, showing him the front page of the paper.  He spoke openly and freely.  He told his Freddie that the deceased guy had paid for his services decoding some strange patterns of letters.  He said that he had a strong feeling that something was going on.  He had no idea what.

Freddie listened quietly, occasionally asking questions.  Garfunkel described the first meeting with Arthur Lewis, the

Finally, when Garfunkel was done, Freddie asked to see the patterns.  Garfunkel took a laptop out of his backpack, waited patiently for the thing to go through the boot sequence, entered some complex number-letter combination as password, and put the disk in the drive.  The drive was making the usual whirring noise at the end of which the operating system brought up dialog box apologizing for not knowing to read the disk format.

Garfunkel opened a terminal window, and typed a few commands.  He mounted the drive and used some hacking program to bring up the contents.  Slowly, nicely, in order, long sequences of letters showed up on the screen.  They consisted of four letters, four letters only.  A, G, C, T.  It was meaningless for Garfunkel.  But for Freddie Bello the meaning was very obvious.  His eyes widened.  He looked at his friend and said: “I don’t know what we have here, but one thing is for damned sure”.  He took a deep breath, looked closely at his fingernails, and continued: “it may cause some really powerful people to come after you”.  Garf sighed and said “I think they are on my tail already”.

Freddie suddenly became cheerful.  “Enough work”, he said, “time for food, drinks and fun”.

They left the small room and entered the pizza joint.  Freddie mentioned that the menu was an American menu, but the chef, if we can call him that, was actually Italian from the Old Country.  Alfredo whispered a few words on the chef’s ear.  A minute later he was holding a six pack of Birra Moretti on one hand, and Garfunkel’s hand on the other.  The two friends headed to the booth farthest away from the door.  There was a lot of catching up to do.  Strange letter sequences were not discussed.  It was well after midnight when the two friends were finally exhausted.  The beer and the good home-made Italian food, made them both forget the reason they were together.  Freddie was the one who touched down first.  “You are sleeping over of course”, he said as a matter of fact.  Garf was way too tired and scared to go home.  He was grateful that he had someone to share his problems with.

They went home, which was a couple of blocks away.  It most certainly was one of the safest places in entire Boston that night.  Freddie, just before leaving the restaurant had told his father’s right hand that extra security is needed for the night, and that his friend was a fugitive from the Feds.  Phone calls were made, friends were asked to come over, the perimeter around the Bello residence was extended to four blocks on each side.  Garfunkel thought it was kind of funny to use his friend’s Family to avoid the law.  Then again, he thought, it wasn’t that funny.  In the guest room, in clean sheets, wearing fresh clothes, Garfunkel finally fell asleep.

Freddie took the pack of disks and left for his study.  There was a lot of work ahead.  He wasn’t about to waste it on sleep.  He was a trained biologist and a computer hacker.  Freddie knew that he had a reasonable shot at cracking open the coded combinations of DNA he saw on the disks.  He went over to the study and sat in front of the computer.  The terminal window was still open, still showing the sequences they were looking at the night before.  Freddie started to look at the combinations.  The first step, he thought, was to look at the defining frameworks.  He looked around using complex parsing algorithms, and realized that the data was clearly divided to individual segments.  Each segment had a unique beginning, and the end was denoted by the beginning of a new one.  Each segment had multiple occurrences, each of the later occurrences contained all the earlier ones, and a newly introduced additions.  The sequences were clearly describing history in the sense that each “story” included all previous ones.  He concluded that he was looking at multiple organisms at different points in time.  Freddie had no means of understanding how significant was that conclusion, and how true.

And then, on a hunch, he realized what he was looking at.  Junk DNA, or whatever it was called these days, was a sequence of nucleic acids not responsible for synthesizing protein, and hence, had no part in defining life.  Junk DNA was a relatively esoteric scientific area.  Few grants and second class scientists took part in understanding that area of the DNA.  It was assumed that since it took no part in the creation of life, then it wasn’t an interesting topic.  It was correct, thought Freddie, until now.

It was almost morning.  Freddie made himself a double espresso and had a day old bagel with it.  He picked up the morning paper from the front lawn, while cursing the paper boy for throwing the paper into the thorny rose bushes, again.  He opened the paper and saw a large picture of an unfamiliar guy.  Dr. Michael Moore, the headline suggested, was missing.  The DNA researcher was missing following the murder of his friend and colleague, and the police had asked the public to help finding him.  The body of the article spoke about Michael Moore, his area of expertise, his past and present research projects and his accomplishments.  Freddie’s heart stopped for a split second.  Junk DNA was written all over the place.  He went to wake Garfunkel up.  A person was missing, and they had to get to him before the police do, and before anyone else does.

Garf was groggy and tired.  He didn’t sleep well on the unfamiliar bed.  He needed a coffee, a cigarette, and a shower.  Well, the coffee and cigarette were arranged rather quickly.  The shower would have to wait.  The computer was on, DNA sequences flashing.  Freddie quickly told Garf about his discovery, the historical junk DNA sequences on the disk he was analyzing.  He then mentioned the missing scientist Dr. Michael Moore.  He then searched the web for Dr. Moore.  He found quite a few entries.  Most of the entries were about his past researches, his professional associations, grants and prizes.  But on the second page of results there was a mention of the Annual Computer Hacker Convention where Arthur Lewis was giving the keynote address.  Strange, thought Freddie, where’s the connection?  He copied the link for the convention and then went to investigate the link between Arthur Lewis and Dr. Michael Moore.  Google suggested there was one.  It was not readily obvious, but in one document, they were both mentioned in connection to a grant they were given to research Junk DNA.  What do you know, thought Freddie, Google has the answer to everything, all you need is some common sense and a typing finger or two…

“There you have it” said Freddie to Garfunkel.  Let’s think about our strategy for tonight.  We are going to town.  Many people will be there.  Many don’t like me, many are looking for you, some may have killed Arthur Lewis, and some will be looking for Dr. Michael Moore.  Some may want to have a terminating conversation with him.  We must find him first.

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