The twelve Federal Reserve banks together moved over a trillion dollars every business day. It was a fantastic amount of money, and it traveled at a speed approaching light.
The smooth functioning of the federal banking system was absolutely necessary to the economic survival—not growth but survival—of the United States of America.
And it was virtually all transacted by computer.
So, five times a year VP Richmond deliberately crashed the system. It was a hair-raising event. Harlan Richmond lost color in his hair, and a year or two was shaved off his natural lifespan every time he did it.
It was the Saturday night before Labor Day and it was time to crash the system again. This was actually the least dangerous time of year to do it. With two full days until the banks opened on Tuesday, there was time to restore the system. Normally it took a mere eight hours.
Harlan Richmond paced the cool of the computer room where IDC mainframes hummed contentedly. White-coated technicians went about their business nervously.
At exactly 9:00 p.m. he gave the dreaded signal.
"Crash the system!"
A phone rang. He ignored it as one by one the mainframes were taken off-line, their data immobilized but not destroyed. This was after all only a test.
The phone continued to ring.
VP Richmond continued ignoring it. He pushed line three and scrambled the data-recapture team. Then, hitting line five, he instructed the remote backup computers two counties away to take over the Fed's computer lines, in effect relinking the Fed to its satellite banks.
Then he picked up line one.
"Have you crashed the system?" an anxious voice said.
"Just now."
"Damn," the voice said. "Bring it back up."
"Who is this?"
"This is Culpeper."
Culpeper was the code name for the secret Virginia site where his data-recapture team was racing to even now, carrying the Minneapolis Fed backup files for loading on their mainframes. There the system would be recreated, the most recent twenty-four hours' worth of transactions checked and double-checked until every penny balanced.
"What's wrong?" Richmond asked.
"We crashed."
"You crashed?"
"Recall your team. Bring your system back up."
"Got it."
It took a single call to the lobby guard to stop both teams before they left the building.
Richmond exhaled a hot sigh of relief. He never liked these drills. It was just as well not to go through one now. Still, it was strange that Culpeper had crashed. It was brought on-line only for these drills.
"Let's bring us back up," he told his technicians.
The mainframes, like dumb refrigerators, began to hum again. Terminal screens winked open like phosphorescent orbs.
And someone said, "We've got a problem."
"What is it?" Richmond said, rushing to the terminal where a technician waved anxiously.
"The numbers are changing."
"What do you mean, changing?"
"Look. See?"
Richmond bent over the screen. It was very active. Too active. Every digit was counting backward to zero.
"Who's doing this?" Richmond bit out.
No one was doing it. No one in the room. Not a keyboard was being touched.
But at every terminal, transaction files were being accessed, manipulated and money was draining out of the Fed with the horrid velocity of light.
"It's some damn hacker!" Richmond yelled hoarsely, pounding the terminal. It did not to stop the electronic exodus of money.
"How do we stop it?" a technician screamed.
"Cut the phone wires!"
"Where? How?"
No one knew. The system was designed to keep running at all costs.
"Bring everything off-line. Hurry!"
Technicians scrambled but they were mere flesh and blood, and the intelligence that was draining the mainframes like some electronic vampire was quicker than flesh and blood and bone.
Harlan Richmond, tears streaming from his eyes, was reduced to pulling connector cables from the backs of his mainframes with his bare hands. But it was too late.
The money was gone. Into cyberspace.
"At least we have our backups," someone said, hollow voiced.
"Yeah," Harlan muttered with a metallic bitterness everyone in the room could taste. "With no system in place to load them."
Around the country, it was happening in Boston, New York, Atlanta and elsewhere. The Federal Reserve banking system files were simultaneously reduced to zero values.
The chairman of the Fed received the call on his portable cellular phone in the middle of dinner in a fashionable Foggy Bottom restaurant.