by Mark Dawson
“The man who brought that stick is being held downstairs. He is, potentially, significant to our operations. He says that it has information that would be dangerous to our interests.”
“He’s blackmailing you?” Yossi said.
That irritated Blum, and he frowned. “Yes. He is. How I choose to deal with him depends upon whether he has something on that stick or whether he’s bluffing. I need to know.”
“You understand my reluctance, Director?”
“You made it plain.”
Yossi repeated himself anyway. “We don’t know what’s on it. We don’t know whether there’s anything that could compromise our network.”
“I’m not a child, Yossi. I need to know what’s on it, and I need to know now.”
“Why not wait until I can test it properly?”
“Because he says we have an hour. If he isn’t bluffing and I detain him for longer than that while you work out whether it’s safe to look at it, he says his associate will release the information.”
“And then he has nothing.”
“Maybe it’s not everything. Maybe it’s something discreet to prove his bona fides? Discreet, but damaging. I can’t afford to risk that. And he isn’t the sort of man who bluffs. I need to know.”
Blum could see that the technician was reluctant to proceed, but they had worked together long enough for Yossi to know that it would have been folly for him to push against Blum once his decision was made. He would simply have to find a way to minimise the risk.
He took a MacBook from his satchel and set it on the coffee table, unfolded the lid and booted it up. The machine played its welcoming note and the screen changed from white to a picture of a woman and two children.
“This is against my better judgment, Director.”
“I understand that.”
“This machine is air-gapped. That means that it isn’t connected to the Internet or the network. It’s completely isolated. You could call it a quarantine, if you like. If there’s anything on this stick, anything we don’t like, it’ll manifest itself here, but it will be trapped. It won’t be able to propagate.”
“Fine,” Blum said, waving a hand. He had no interest in the minutiae. He just wanted answers.
Yossi sent the cursor across the screen and opened two applications. “This will check for viruses,” he explained, pointing to one window, “and this will analyse the data.”
Blum couldn’t help noticing that the technician took a breath before he collected the stick and slotted it into one of the laptop’s USB ports.
Nothing happened.
Yossi was staring intently at the screen, his fingers flashing across the keyboard as he entered commands.
Blum waited impatiently, drumming his fingers against the surface of his desk.
“There’s nothing here,” Yossi reported after another minute.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that I can’t find anything. It’s empty. There’s nothing on it.”
Blum scowled. “You’re sure?”
“It’s empty, Director.”
“Check again.”
Milton was bluffing? Really? That didn’t make any sense. He would come to the Mossad, effectively hand himself over in the sure knowledge that Blum would pass him to Bachman, and threaten him with something that could very easily be proven to be a bluff? No. Something was wrong. Blum knew more than enough about Milton to know that he was smart, and that he wouldn’t take that kind of massive gamble without something to back up his threat.
“I need you to be absolutely certain, Yossi. I can’t take any risks that—”
He paused, mid-sentence. He heard a high-pitched whining noise.
“What is that?”
He looked at Yossi. The man’s face bore an unmistakeable cast of concern.
It took Blum a moment to place it. “It’s coming from the computer,” he said, pointing to the laptop.
Yossi was ahead of him, his fingers dancing across the keys again. He cursed in Yiddish. “Fakakta!” he spat. He held his finger on the key used for powering up and down. It should have taken a second to kill the machine, but nothing happened. It kept playing the sound, that same high whine that was just on the edge of what could be heard, an auditory itch in the back of the head. Yossi looked around the room, saw Blum’s computer and the iPhone on the desk, and started to panic, his breath coming in faster and faster gasps. He swore again, picked up the MacBook and, before Blum could say anything to stop him—not, Blum thought, that he would have stopped even if he had asked him—dropped it out of the open window.
All was quiet for a moment, save for Yossi’s breathing, and then, just as Blum was about to ask him what in God’s name had just happened, the whining noise started again.
Yossi surged across the room, barging Blum out of the way, his face a mask of terror. He bolted for Blum’s desktop computer, and, just as he reached it, the screensaver was replaced by a big yellow smiley. It was there for half a second. Yossi yanked the plug out of the wall and the screen flicked to black.
“Switch everything off!” he yelled. “Anything with a chipset—power it all down.”
Blum froze, unsure what was happening and paralysed by uncertainty.
The sound played again.
Yossi grabbed the iPhone off the desk and tossed it through the window. He took his own phone and disposed of it in the same way.
Finally, quiet.
“What’s going on?” Blum said. “What is it?”
The blood had flooded out of Yossi’s face, leaving him as white as a phantom. Wordlessly, he walked to the door, opened it and stood in the doorway, staring out into the open-plan space outside. He closed his eyes, his face set in the fashion of someone expecting a slap, or a piece of the very worst news, then opened them and began to walk. As Blum followed him out of his office, he heard the noise again.
The high-pitched squeal, just detectable, a pulse that nestled in his brain and sent icy fingers to scratch up and down his back.
He heard it again, and again, and again.
Yossi swore again, but quietly, full of dread.
There were forty analysts in the open-plan office. They each had at least one screen, some of them working across two or three. As Blum watched, the documents and programs that they were working on vanished, the screens wiped one at a time and replaced by the same big yellow smiley face that he had seen on his own monitor. The high-pitched tone was like a symphony, all of the terminals playing it from their speakers.
Yossi reached for a desk phone and dialled a number. He turned away from Blum so that he couldn’t hear what was said, but, a moment later, all of the power in the room was killed. The monitors all flicked off, save those that were running on batteries. The lights went out. The emergency doors closed.
Yossi called out. “If you have a computer that runs off a battery, take the battery out.”
People paused, confused.
“Now!”
They started to move, prising the batteries out of laptops.
Blum crossed to the technician and took his arm roughly. “What’s happening?”
The man looked like he was about to cry. “I warned you—”
“You said it was safe,” Blum said, not bothering to hide the accusatory tone. “Air-gapped, you said. Not connected.”
“It was. It should have been. This”—he paused—“this is very sophisticated. Beyond anything I’ve seen before.”
“What is? Explain it. Tell me.”
“It has been demonstrated, in theoretical experiments, that it is possible to transfer data using high-frequency transmissions passed between computer speakers and microphones.”
“So why did you—”
“It’s theoretical, sir. It’s never been done practically. And the experiments only allowed for small data packets. This, though… It’s more than that. I’ll only know when I look into it, but my guess is that whatever this is, it tries to replicate itself through the network
first. If that doesn’t work, it transmits sonically. My computer wasn’t connected, so it went to plan B. I don’t know—maybe it does both right away, doubles its chances. And—”
“What are the consequences?”
“I’ll only know when I—”
“Fuck, Yossi!” Blum spat in an overflow of irritation that he could no longer suppress. “Come on. Make an educated guess.”
Yossi looked down, chastised. “My guess is that it’s opened up our network for someone outside. The first machine was air-gapped. None of these other ones are.”
“Can you stop it?”
“We’ve shut everything down.”
“Is that enough?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
* * *
ZIGGY PENN had his laptop open and an Ethernet cable plugging it into the hotel’s broadband connection. He had no idea whether his little worm would be able to do what he had designed it to do. It was one thing to infiltrate a corporate network. That was easy. He had demonstrated that it could breach the defences of multinationals, but that was easy, too; the firewalls tended to be nominal, justifications for the salaries of the technicians who installed and maintained them, but they were as nothing to a hacker with Ziggy’s talents. McDonald’s was easy. Apple was easy. But taking aim at the servers of the most secretive and well-defended intelligence agency in the world, though? That should not have been easy.
Matilda was sitting on the bed behind him. “Anything?”
“Not yet.”
The worm had taken him a year to perfect. The payload had been rigorously tested in the wild, and he knew that it worked. The script was so pervasive that, as soon as Ziggy had written it, he had almost wanted to fill up his laptop’s USB ports with cement. The means of transmission was something else entirely. He had read about the experiments to transmit data sonically and had been intrigued enough to run his own trials. It was high-end stuff, at the outer limits of his skills, and he had called for assistance from others on the hacking fora that he visited. Eventually, he had succeeded in making it work.
In his opinion, even with his vanity taken into account, BadUSB was the most sophisticated piece of malware that had ever been created. It could transmit itself through a dozen different methods and, once it was established, it hid itself among the lowest levels of computer hardware. Targeting BIOS and firmware, it could escape all but the most thorough forms of detection and survive most attempts to eradicate it. The safest defence against it once a server had been infected was to junk every piece of kit that had ever come into contact with it and start over.
“How long before you know?”
“I can’t say. It depends on how Milton manages. They might not fall for it.”
“And then?”
“And then he’s in a world of trouble.”
And what would that mean for me? he thought.
Tokyo was finished. He couldn’t go back there. South Korea, perhaps. He’d always wanted to go to Seoul. Or maybe China. Somewhere he would be able to disappear. Somewhere—
Wait.
The screen started to flicker as data spooled across it.
“Shit,” he said.
“What is it?”
Packets of data were flooding into his computer.
“Shit, shit, shit.”
Ziggy was on his feet, gaping at the screen.
He now had complete and unfettered access to the Mossad network.
* * *
ZIGGY HAD been wary of swamping the hotel’s connection to the Internet, so he had shut down all other access. No one else—not the hotel staff nor the guests—could get online now. Then he had arranged for the information to be relayed to anonymous servers that would be difficult to trace back to him. He had re-routed the data through a series of relays that further obfuscated his hand in things; by the time the packet of data had been delivered to his laptop it would have been around the world several times. It would buy them a little time until they were detected—and he guessed that would happen quickly. It was already rewriting itself on every machine that it could reach, but, eventually, the system would be shut down and every instance of it would be exterminated. How long did he have? It was impossible to say. Probably a matter of minutes rather than hours. He hunched over the keyboard and worked as quickly as he could.
He had a series of automated scripts on his machine that would do much of the work for him. He set them running, leaving a window open so that he could quickly scan through their results. And then he went into the network himself, trusting his instincts to guide him to the information that he needed. His scripts were sophisticated, but they were unintuitive. They would get to the target eventually, but there was always the chance that he would be able to reach it more quickly than they could.
His fingers flew across the keyboard as he started to arrange the data in the folders that he had prepared. He activated search protocols that would sift and filter it, finding key phrases and identifiers that would alert him that a particular file was worthy of manual inspection. He checked the amount of data that was being pulled in; it had already passed a terabyte. He had four three-terabyte external drives daisy-chained to his machine and, as he saw the volume of data and the speed at which it was amassing, he reached into his bag for a fifth.
The spigot was open. Unless he was careful, it would be like putting a fire hose to his face and trying to take a drink.
“Ziggy?”
“It’s working.”
“You’re getting what you need?”
Ziggy allowed himself a smile at the audacity of what he had just done.
“I’m getting everything.”
1.3 terabytes.
1.5 terabytes.
1.8 terabytes.
“What about Milton?”
“He’s done it.”
Chapter Forty-Seven
BLUM WAS gone for a long time. Milton had no idea what his absence signified. It could, for all he knew, have been an opportunity for him to contact Bachman to tell him that Milton had been apprehended. Or, if he was fortunate, it could denote that Ziggy’s booby-trapped flash drive had done what it was supposed to do. There was no way of knowing what had happened, no way of knowing whether his gambit had been successful or whether it had failed and he had signed his own death warrant by bringing himself here.
If it had worked? The consequences would cause chaos, and Blum would need to be briefed as to the damage that had been caused. And, if it became obvious that their network security had been breached, perhaps Blum would need to take instructions from the government. Blum had survived as the head of the Mossad for years. That was an impressive feat. Longevity in a role such as that was not common and, to manage that, Milton knew that he would have extensive political contacts. It was not impossible that he would need to take soundings before he could make a decision.
And then the lights went out, the room was plunged into darkness, and Milton knew that the ruse had worked. Ziggy’s virus was loose and they were trying to cage it.
Time passed in the darkness. Milton estimated that it was thirty minutes, but it was difficult to be sure. Eventually, the lights came back on again. Some time after that the door was unlocked and opened, and Blum came back inside. His face was a deep purple, the purest fury.
“You are a brave man, Mr. Milton. And one with clever friends.” He spoke tersely, his voice dripping with rage. Some of that splenetic anger was reserved for Milton, but, he knew, most of it would have been directed at himself for falling for Milton’s artifice. Two hours ago, Milton had presented Blum with the opportunity to rid himself of the problem that Avi Bachman had caused him. Now, because he had been fooled, the problem had been doubled.
“I had no choice. I’m not going to apologise. You put me in that position.”
“Quite,” Blum said as he sat down opposite him.
“You said it yourself, sir. This isn’t my first time doing this. If there’s a knife fight, I’m bringing a gun.” Blum stared at him
evenly, and Milton drove his advantage home. “I don’t know how much your technicians have told you, but let me be clear. I’m sure you’ve been told this already, but the worm on that stick will have replicated itself across your network by now. I noticed you shut off the power, but that won’t make any difference. It will have opened a port for my friend, and he will have taken everything that we need. All of your operational data, Director. Everything. We’ll go through it all later, but we’ll obviously have information in there that you won’t want to be publicised. It’ll make whatever it is Bachman’s been holding over your head look like nothing. But you know that.”
“Very good, Mr. Milton.”
“As you say, I have clever friends.”
“You’ve put me in a difficult position. Whichever choice I make, there are serious consequences for my agents. For my country.”
“Avi is to blame. If you had him under control, none of this would have happened.”
“What do you want, Mr. Milton?”
“You know what I want.”
“I can’t give you Avi. And I’m not going to have him killed.”
“I don’t want you to kill him. He’s my problem to fix. I just want a level playing field. I don’t want him to have any backup. Pull the agents back.”
“I can’t. He’ll release the information.”
“Then you have to think about which set of data is the most damaging. Bachman’s data is ten years old. Most of it is historic. I imagine you’ve already started to take steps to minimise the damage if it ever gets out.”
Blum just scowled at him.
“Mine is fresh. You can’t take steps to minimise the damage. You can pull your agents out, but it’ll destroy everything you’ve been working on. Every operation, every sleeper you’ve spent years inserting, every double agent, every mole—I’ll burn every one of them. You can insulate yourself with Bachman. It’ll be inconvenient, but you’ll adapt. But I’ll tear everything down.”
“So? I call the agents off. Then what?”
“I need a reason for Avi to come to me.”
“He doesn’t need a reason, Mr. Milton. He’s coming whatever you do.”
