A Quest Within Read online

Then everything changed dramatically when the two men experienced the most tragic loss in their lives. Martha was killed in a road accident in Paris where she was working at a fashion exhibition.

  Nothing was the same for Ajay after her death.

  Memories of all the years spent with Martha gradually became too overwhelming for him. Now he wanted to leave, to find some solitude, at least for a few months but, with the current situation at work, all he could afford was a few hours off.

  Jacob had joined Waverley Davis. The only reason for this was for the experience but now he had informed his father about his future plans. Ajay’s reaction was natural.

  “Are you out of your mind?” Ajay was confounded by his son’s decision.

  “No Dad, I’m your son but I’m also Mum’s son as well that’s all,” Jacob had replied calmly.

  “Meaning?” asked Ajay

  “Tell me Dad, why did you reject your father’s request to take care of his business when you were younger?” Jacob threw the ball back into Ajay’s court. Suddenly, Ajay understood the meaning of Jacob’s earlier reply.

  “Dad, I believe that I too deserve a chance in life to be myself without using my father’s name and the reputation of his firm,” Jacob candidly explained his position.

  “Yes, you do and best of luck, Son.” Even Ajay had no clue why he gave that reply.

  Over recent months, Ajay had many times imagined his son continuing to work in his business but this conversation between the two of them had left Ajay wondering if that would ever be a reality.

  There was another matter which was proving to be a bone of contention between father and son. Ajay wanted to make his son understand the law of attraction so that he would achieve success in his life. This desire was even greater than seeing Jacob eventually become the head of Waverley Davis. Jacob, on the other hand, had always found it difficult to reconcile the ideas of universal laws and the connection between humans and unseen forces in the achievement of successful life.

  “No Dad, I’m not interested in going to any seminar of this type.” Jacob rejected the idea of going to a conference entitled “Spiritual Laws of the Cosmos” which was being organized by some Indian-American.

  “The universe is governed by astrophysical laws, Dad. I cannot believe that I am hearing all this from a person who has spent his entire life following those principles.” Once again Jacob’s argument had a strong logical grounding, not easily contradicted. At least that was what Jacob had believed at that moment.

  “And what do those astrophysical laws tell you about the people around you?” Ajay had an equally appropriate response.

  Jacob searched for an answer but there was none forthcoming. He realized that it was time to surrender.

  “For success, we must respect all the laws in the universe and, believe you me when I say this, there is much more in the vast expanse of cosmos than we can define with astrophysical laws. Just a minute ago, you came to realise that there are things which you need to learn.” Ajay continued, making Jacob feel more uncomfortable within. The more he thought about an answer, the emptier he felt himself to be inside.

  “I think I might give it a try, maybe there is something new to learn.” His conscience had told him after failing to provide him with any suitable answer to Ajay’s argument. “But there won’t be anything scientific to learn in this workshop.” Resistance kicked in from within. “Anyway, I’ll go.” Finally a decision was made.

  After this discussion, with Jacob having decided to attend the workshop, on his way to the venue, he constantly thought about his own ideas of the new operating system he had been working on since last year. He wanted to introduce a mobile OS capable of learning the likes and dislikes of its users which could configure and personalize itself according to the trends of its user. The most innovative aspect of his idea was the ability of this OS to study the emerging security risks and make changes in its kernel.

  He took a seat on the back row at the conference and found nothing much to look at there. Soon a presenter appeared and introduced the topic of the workshop. Jacob considered almost all of the ideas presented throughout the workshop to be empty claims with no scientific basis. The presenter promoted the idea of defining a purpose in life without worrying about the means and ways to achieve that purpose.

  “All you need to understand is where you want to go. Don’t think too much about how you’ll get there. Leave that to a power greater than yourself.” One of the workshop participants was on the podium. “Leaving the strategy to some higher power, how is that possible?” Jacob had thought, “and isn’t this in direct contradiction of one of the earlier speakers who was of the opinion that we are the most important component in the greater scheme of things in the cosmos and it’s our own thoughts which define our reality. How can they both be right the same time?” Resistance within had become palpable now. He walked out of the workshop. A few days later, he tried another seminar on a similar topic and had not forgotten to tell Ajay about his visit to this second seminar although he found it to be as equally boring as the first.

  Jacob had not realized at that time that he was not attending these workshops and seminars to learn anything but merely to satisfy his father. This had been his mission since his school days, not to disappoint his father. He had not gained any benefit by attending the workshop and seminar as he had not learnt anything new. While sitting in the seminars he would constantly be thinking about his idea of building a self-learning secure operating system.

  Jacob had idealized his parents as the perfect couple, made for each other. The bond of love between the two had proved to be the biggest inspiration in his life. He imagined a life partner for himself just like his mother had been to his father but he was not lucky like Ajay.

  Jacob had grown up in the post-modern era where many of his friends and even some of his teachers had told him that morality was an excuse of the weak and to attain success in life one must be capable of being ruthless. This was contrary to everything he had seen at home and what his parents had taught him. Most of the time he would think his parents’ guidance was right but, under certain other circumstances, he would consider his teachers and classmates to be correct. This had sown a seed of uncertainty in his subconscious which he was totally unaware of. Now, when he had started to attend these seminars, that seed of conflict within his personality was growing into a tree. This made him doubtful as to whether he would ever find a life partner like the one he imagined.

  Elsewhere, Ajay was worried about his son as well as his business. He was not worried about Jacob’s success in life, he knew that his son was fully capable of turning his dreams into a reality just like Ajay had done in his life. It was his well-considered opinion that, without learning certain secrets of life, his son would find it very difficult to cope with the challenges that lay ahead. Ajay was not wrong in his assessment but he did not realize that he was trying to push his son too soon towards things which he was not yet ready to learn.

  Chapter Two

  What you think you become, What you feel you attract, What you imagine you create.

  Buddha

  Today, Waverley Davis is one of the leading technology firms in the world. It has a business portfolio encompassing many hi-tech domains - IT, Biotech, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Space Sciences and Pharmaceuticals. Each domain is headed by an expert in each specialized field. Ajay had realized that, in order to stay relevant in the market, Waverley Davis would have to grow. Apart from becoming more creative in existing portfolios, the company needed to venture into new domains as well in order to become a pioneer and trendsetter in the technological market.

  Since its inception, Waverley Davis had worked with US military forces but not as a main contractor. Today, Waverley Davis was the leading partner in many US military related projects particularly in satellite engineering, navigational system and robotics. B
ut there was a flipside to this achievement. After accepting military contracts, the firm found itself drawn into high intensity, global cyber warfare between China, Russia and the USA. Many freelance hacker groups had also been involved in this war and they would usually act like guns for hire. Freelance hacker groups were a big attraction for foreign governments and espionage agencies as they would provide plausible scapegoats in case any operation went awry.

  Victor McCrery was a network architecture and internet security expert. He headed the Waverley Davis cyber security wing and reported directly to the CEO. He had designed the Waverley Davis network which had multi-layered security systems developed for special applications implemented through various firewalls, Demilitarized Zones (DMZs) and Virtual Private Networks (VPNs). More sensitive network nodes were completely isolated where only selected people had access. Data backups were heavily encrypted. Very secure and a hard network to hack into; at least this is was what the Waverley Davis security team in the IT department believed before the first wave of highly sophisticated cyber-attacks hit their network.

  The entire IT department was under siege after Victor had discovered that hackers had tried to penetrate the perimeter firewalls. Lock down of the department was one of the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). Victor was getting updates from his team every few minutes. Log files of various network firewalls and intrusion detection systems were appearing on his screen.

  “What’s the status of physical security?” Victor asked tersely.

  “There’s been no physical breach. All premises are secure,” Farrell, his assistant, replied with his fingers skipping quickly across his keyboard.

  “Perimeter firewalls were attacked but there’s nothing in these logs. If they’d succeeded, our web gateways would have been exposed.” Victor was still busy checking the network traffic patterns.

  “Was it DDOS?” he wondered out loud.

  “Distributed Denial of Service?” Farrell queried and continued “The type of DDOS attack where multiple compromised systems are often infected? That means both the end targeted system and all systems can be maliciously used and controlled by the hacker in the distributed attack.”

  “No, I’ve dealt with those types of attacks. This one is too sophisticated to be a DDOS attack.” Victor was convinced that this was no ordinary attempt on their network which was pretty self-sufficient in thwarting ordinary attacks. “They didn’t want to choke the network, they were trying to breach it. Question is, to what end?” Victor expressed his concerns.

  “As far as we know, the traffic packets responsible for this attempt were initiated from Asian and European networks but there were definitely US based hackers involved as well,” Farrell informed Victor about the origin of attack. He was still running his network security suite to generate more analysis reports.

  “That’s not important. Most probably they were all using VPN.”

  “Well, our system pushed them out of our network that’s all that matters in the end,” Farrell announced with satisfaction.

  “How do we know that they’re not going to try it again?” asked Victor grimly.

  “We don’t. But by now they should have a pretty good idea about our network security mechanisms,” said Farrell, still believing in victory.

  “They’ll come with new malware next time, one with an even nastier payload,” Victor expressed his concerns. He knew that hackers liked to penetrate hardened networks. This was characteristic of them. Now the Waverley Davis network was in their crosshair.

  “Boss, I think we’re just overthinking today’s events. Cyber-attacks are an undeniable reality of the 21st century. The CIA, FBI and Office of Personnel Management all got attacked and hacked. Basically, it depends on how strong your network is to prevent a complete hack. To me, some nerdy minds with crazy ideas have tried their luck by breaking into one of the largest corporate networks in the world,” Farrell argued.

  “If you still think they’re going to come with something new and nastier, then they’re not the only ones who can learn from their mistakes. We’ll harden our defences even more by patching any vulnerability in the network,” Farrell continued.

  “Farrell, I want you to run a heuristic analysis of all network traffic in the past three days. There must be some clue there,” Victor instructed. “I need those reports as soon as possible. I want to patch the network to make the intrusion prevention system more pro-active,” he added. Farrell nodded to Victor although he was still convinced that Victor was overreacting to the situation.

  “I’m going to farm to check the status of the isolated nodes,” Victor said standing up. They used the word ‘farm’ for the server farm that was located in the lower basement of the Waverley Davis building.

  Two years ago, Waverley Davis had won the contract for a top secret classified project for the US Navy. The project was of strategic importance because it was about to play a key role in a new war doctrine of the US Navy in strategic hotspots around the globe. The project aimed to implement the rapid deployment and early assessment of the battlefield. Since the beginning of the project, the Waverley Davis communication and IT division had been in the process of developing specialized intelligent algorithms. The US military was going to use the final software application on its next generation spy satellites and destroyers. The distributed systems were to help the US Navy in identifying friendly and hostile ships in open oceans instantly cutting down the critical time in which military ships could track and identify enemy ships after painting them with various kinds of radars. A second goal of the system was to present all the data graphically in Pentagon real time so that operational decision making could be effected as quickly as possible.

  The Chinese, Russians, Israelis and British were all interested in building a similar system. A system like this was going to give the USA and its allies a clear advantage over competitors. The Pentagon had considered this project a fine deterrent against the growing number of maritime assets owned by the Chinese and Russian Navies at a juncture of history where the US Navy was faced with budgetary cuts.

  ***

  Meanwhile, Ping May the overall Chinese Intelligence Chief who returned to China, had carefully considered most of the various possible scenarios which could emerge after the attack. He wanted to have a contingency plan in place for every development. He was particularly concerned about a possible trail he may have left, leading to the Americans investigating this all the way back to Beijing. He was in his office along with a taller younger man. Unlike Ping May, the young man wore civilian clothes but his distinctive body shape and overall demeanor indicated an obvious background in military training. They were waiting there for a further guest who was shortly to arrive from the United States.

  He pulled out his cigarette lighter and puffed on another cigarette, blowing a mottled ring of smoke and, after a slight pause, sighed. Just then his assistant informed him of the arrival of his guest. He welcomed his guest with enthusiasm when he realized it was Jinn Wu. Pleasantries were exchanged and now Jinn Wu was waiting for Ping May to speak.

  There was a long silent pause then, in a quiet voice, Ping May asked “Do you have any update on our cyber plan?” He waited before Jinn Wu answered, “Yes, we’re making some progress, the resistance from their system is far greater than we and our team anticipated but our grid has tried to trace their network and they’re pretty confident that they’ll get into it soon.”

  “Hmm... I see but what have you thought about the aftermath?” Ping May enquired.

  “We’ll have to deal with that later, this project is far too well established to worry about any afterthoughts,” he replied calmly.

  After a moment, Ping May said, “No Jinn Wu, that’s where you’re wrong, we do have to have contingencies in place for every possible outcome. Beijing is concerned about this secretive project and no one in the party would like any possible lead tracing t
hese attacks to China. We’re not doing it for the sake of money or any other short term gain. We want our sea borders and territory secure so that no intruder from the other side of the Pacific Rim can violate our space. It’s about achieving peace by maintaining the status quo which right now favours the Chinese defense systems in the region. This is how important this is as a strategic operation.”

  Perplexed, Jinn Wu asked, “So what do you propose?”

  Ping May considered the question and then replied “I think we must not underestimate the Americans’ superior technical advantage in cyber technology. By now, their cyber command will be investigating these attacks so prepare yourself along with Fu Wang and his team and, whatever happens, make no contact especially via the American communication networks. Most of all, try to maintain minimum contact with him as well,” Ping concluded.

  “We’re already careful in this regard. We use our normal security grid protocol but we’ll take extra care. Most important of all, you must keep our ambassador updated without meeting Fu Wang regularly.”

  “Ok, but I’m going to send Lee with you.” Ping pointed towards the third guy in the room who, until now, had stood silently listening intently to their conversation. He continued, “Lee is one of my top agents and has completed many assignments overseas involving stealth operations, information recovery, espionage and secret program egress, recovering secretive communication and we’ve also used him for human target assassinations.”

  “He’ll help us in communicating with Fu Wang secretly, I guess,” Jinn Wu conceded.

  “If instructed, he’ll do all of the things in his brief or anything else expected of him,” Ping boasted with a smirk on his face.

  “So that does include assassinations?” with a look of confusion, Jinn Wu had finally figured out that Lee was in fact Ping’s hit-man.

  Still perplexed he continued, “But we didn’t discuss any assassination during our meeting.” Looking bewildered, he went on, “Do you realize just how big a problem you have here? And an even bigger diplomatic crisis for China if he gets caught there,” he said panicking.