by R E Swirsky
CHAPTER 35
Monday 23:45 Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
Jack sat on an overturned bucket in back of the small van. Antonia hovered a few feet away, leaning over the small bench lit with two dim, low-energy LED fixtures mounted to the wall above.
“Before you go, Jack, I want to show you this.” He pointed to one of the five computer screens perched amongst the multitude of wires and cabling that stretched between the screen and various small boxes. To Jack, it was all very foreign and complicated. He had no idea what he was looking at.
“These are signals I’m picking up in the neighbourhood right now.”
“Signals?” The screen showed a list of numbers that looked to be code in one column, signal strength and frequency in another, while others appeared as a gibberish combination of numbers and letters. Jack couldn’t make sense of any of it.
“Yes. Wi-Fi, Bluetooth…pretty much anything in the air right now.”
“Uh-huh. That’s a lot.”
“It is a lot. Over two-hundred and sixty. Most people just think of cell phones and Wi-Fi, but everything out there these days is waiting to be linked up—photocopiers, computers, TVs, VCRs, cars, toys, refrigerators, alarm systems, clock radios, iPod docks, cameras, and even wristwatches and sound systems. I can go on. The list is endless these days. I’m only interested in certain frequencies right now.” He tapped away on the keyboard and the screen blanked out for a second before repopulating, sorted by frequency and signal strength.
“So what am I supposed to be looking at?”
“I’ll show you,” he replied. He touched multiple lines of data on the screen. “These ones, here, here, and here, are our outdoor cameras. This one is the listening device I planted on the kitchen window. Strength doesn’t look good on that one. Might be something wrong there; it happens sometimes.” He scrolled down. “…and this flat one is the land line.”
“Why didn’t the security guys find the cameras when they were searching the property?”
Antonia chuckled. “Security? Those guys aren’t security. They’re night watchmen licensed to carry weapons. They wouldn’t recognize our cameras if I placed one right in their hand.”
“Oh?”
“Not these babies—all battery operated, Wi-Fi, and encrypted. That means no wires. And these are smaller than a pair of dice. We modify them to look like the surroundings.”
“Like what?”
“Trees, rocks, leaves. Anything, actually.”
“That’s amazing.”
“You think that’s impressive. Watch this.”
Antonio clicked away on the keyboard and the screens changed again. He tapped away for a few minutes as the information on the screens scrolled through as they loaded additional rows of numbers, letters, and symbols.
“What are you doing?”
“Hold on to your horses…just a few more to try.…”
Suddenly, one screen stopped loading and displayed signal capture successful.
“Okay…now we step inside.” He tapped away vigorously. “Here she comes…first, we see how many channels.” He continued to type away expeditiously. “This one’s active; someone’s online right now.…”
The third screen suddenly loaded an image. It was a Facebook page moving slowly in short jerks downwards. It stopped. A cursor hovered above the image of a young couple in a bar with the notation, “At Jerry’s. Having the best night out.”
“What is this?” Jack asked.
“What do you think it is?”
“Looks like someone’s Facebook page.”
“It is.”
Jack pointed at the screen in awe. “You just hacked into someone’s Facebook page?”
“Nope. Just their laptop. I see what they see, that’s all.”
“Who’s is it?”
“I don’t know. I only get us across the bridge and inside, but this page is from someone in one of the homes around us. If whoever owns this page scrolls back up to the top, I’ll be able to see who they are and then we can figure out what house we are in. I could try to hack further into Facebook, but I only need to skim the surface on their laptop like this to get what we need. The deeper we go, the greater the risk. Facebook has one of the best firewalls around, and my job, like yours, is to be discreet. We don’t break those firewalls if there are other ways to get information.”
Jack frowned. “Why do you want to look at someone’s Facebook page?”
“I don’t really. I have 260 signals here. I’m going to eliminate them one by one until I find signals coming from Metcalf’s place. If there are any, that is.”
“What if Metcalf’s not on his computer? Then what?”
Antonio burst out laughing as if he was waiting for this exact question. He tapped a few keys and the page disappeared from the screen and was replaced by some random-looking code.
“Each one of these signals is carried on a different frequency and has a different encryption pattern. Over here…” he scrolled over to one of the columns on the right, “…are data on the signal. This one here is a good one. Many of the device signals are easily identifiable if you know what to look for.” He highlighted the one line and began to key a bunch of numbers into his keyboard, typing away for a full five minutes.
“Got it.” he said. The screen loaded with what looked like an index or operating system menu. “Now, let’s scroll down the menu to the setup and configuration.” All options were in clear English, standard font, listed one below the other. Antonia clicked through, making one selection after the other.
“Is that a…cell phone?”
“You’re good, Jack. It is. Now I’m going to drop inside, here…and change this value, and save it.” Antonia clicked, entered a few more commands, and relaxed back in his chair.
A quite rustling sound erupted from the computer speakers. Antonio turned the volume up.
“What did you just do?”
“Shhh. We listen.”
A small hum filled the van with a quiet, rustling sound. What followed next sounded like a plate or cup being placed on a counter. More shuffling. A loud clank.
A voice mumbled quietly, “Damn it.”
The shuffling continued.
“Frank. Can you come in here for a minute?”
“Who is that?” Jack asked?
“My guess is Frank’s wife,” Antonio replied.
“Coming.”
Frank could be heard as he shuffled his way into the room. He coughed.
“What?”
“Can you put this up into the top shelf for me?”
“Sure, love.”
More shuffling and a small thump.
“What are you watching in there?” Frank’s wife asked.
“Border Crossing. How about a cup of tea?”
“At this time of night?”
“And maybe I’ll have a bit of that pie to go with it.”
Antonio turned the volume down.
Jack was confused. He didn’t understand what he just heard. “What was all of that? Who’s Frank?”
“I activated the microphone on one of their cell phones.”
“You did what?”
“Every cell phone is listening for the right signal to travel through the airways to tell it to connect and ring the ringer. What I did was ping the phone and it pinged back. Once I identified the cell phone’s ping, I piggy-backed on in, slipped through a side door, and accessed the phone setup. From there, I turned on the microphone and linked it back here.”
Jack was dumfounded. “You can do that?”
“I just did. Some devices are more complicated to break than others. So for the next few hours, I’m going to go through each one of these 260 signals. If we’re lucky, at least one will be Metcalf’s and we might be able to listen in on what’s going on inside.”
“Can mine be hacked like that?”
“Everything is hackable.”
“Seriously?”
“For guys like me…yes. Everything.”
; “Hmm.” He looked down at his own cell phone. “Can I stop you from hacking it?”
Antonio laughed. “Only by taking the battery out. And in some devices—not your phone—there is a backup battery inside that keeps the unit’s memory and computer chip active. If that backup battery keeps the power to the computer chip actively running, then sometimes these devices are hackable even though they are turned off and the main battery is removed.”
“All of this is tiring me out. I’m going to the hotel. I won’t be able to sleep now that I know about all of this.”
“You want a wakeup call?”
“Through my phone? You can do that?”
Antonia grabbed his own phone from the desk and waved it at Jack. “I mean I’ll call you with my phone. Do you want a call or not?”
Jack chuckled. “No, I don’t need one. But if you do hear anything interesting, don’t be afraid to wake me. It doesn’t matter what time.”
“Will do.”
“Oh, and Lucas is coming down with Myles. He might call you tonight.”
Antonio shook his head. “I forgot to tell you—Lucas called earlier from the airport. The two of them were looking for a lead on Kaito Hui. They said they’d call again if they found him. I guess they haven’t yet.”
“Keep your eyes open.”
