CHAPTER 21
WEDNESDAY
Langley, Virginia
Sara sat in conference room C. She just received a call from building security downstairs saying her visitors were coming up. It had taken about 40 minutes for Mark to get to Langley, and Sara was tired from pacing around in her office. Sara’s stomach had been doing somersaults as she imagined what Mark had to say.
Why was the NSA about to call us?
She had marched to the command room and told Anderson that someone from the NSA was coming with important intelligence. She wanted him to hear whatever Mark knew. She replayed in her mind how Anderson stared at her when she had told him. His eyes looked like a thousand thoughts were scrolling behind them. After a pause, he had told her in a measured tone “Call me when he’s here.”
Now, sitting in the conference room, the seconds felt like hours as Sara waited for Mark to come into the room. She looked through the window. Outside, past the parking lot, Sara spotted a black swan in a small pond. She had never seen one before.
Suddenly the door opened. A man walked in. He was actually somewhere between a teenager and a man. He looked like he was 20, but was probably 25 or 26, Sara thought. He had medium length blond hair and was wearing a button-down with slacks. He did not wear glasses and looked relatively fit to Sara. He had a runner-type fit, where he was lean and looked like he could run to Washington DC from Langley and quickly catch his breath when arriving.
Behind the young blond man was another, similarly young man. Maybe it’s his analyst, Sara assessed. The second young man had light brown hair, combed neatly, and had a thicker build. He looked like he lifted weights. He was also in a button-down and slacks. He did not wear glasses either.
The blond man stepped towards her. “Hi, Sara. I’m Mark Aubrey. This is one of the analysts on my team, J.D.” Sara shook their hands.
Sara stared at them for a moment longer than felt comfortable.
Are these the right people? They don’t…look…like computer people.
Sara had expected to see someone nerdier. Is that not how most math or computer science wunderkinds looked? These two looked surprisingly normal, and she was taken aback.
They both had the same facial expression. Their eyelids and eyebrows looked droopy and their mouths had no expression at all. This made them look as if they did not care about anything at all. Or maybe it was a look that said, “I’ve forgotten more than most people ever knew.” Sara did not like it. But something about it was attractive, she thought. What a strange contradiction. What do you call that?
J.D. methodically put his bag on the table and started pulling out a laptop. Mark asked, “Is there anyone else joining us?”
“Yes. Let me call my boss.” Sara replied.
Sara picked up the phone in the conference room and called the Command Room. She was passed to Anderson. After a quick “they’re here,” she put the phone down. In what seemed like no time, the conference room door opened. Anderson walked in, his hand extended towards the NSA analysts. “Hi. Nice to meet you. John Anderson,” he said, his face failing to hide his surprise at meeting someone who looked rather young.
“Hi, John. I’m Mark Aubrey.” They shook hands.
“I’m J.D. I work with Mark.”
After Anderson, Matt came in and introduced himself. Sara was glad to see him. At least he probably spoke the same language as these NSA people, she thought.
“Guys, I’m sorry” Anderson started “But I only have two minutes. We have something going on in the other room. What is it that you wanted to tell us?”
Mark got going right away. “Last week, we noticed that a routine message we had sent to one of our embassies over the Internet had, for some reason, rerouted through China before it arrived at the embassy. We had attached a tracer, or a piece of code that sends us back its trip information after an email is received. When we started looking into it, we noticed that there were other emails being rerouted this way. Not a lot—“
“We estimate about 5% of the NSA’s international emails” J.D. added.
“But what we also noticed as we started looking wider was that other government messages and emails were being rerouted this way.”
Sara could feel her heart rate gradually increase, as if Mark was turning up a dial while speaking. Anderson was looking at Mark with ever increasing concern.
Mark continued, “We eventually noticed that there was a small percent of CIA messages being rerouted this way as well. But what was disconcerting was that almost all of the messages being sent through the secure Defense Message System, or DMS, to the military were being rerouted through China. Luckily since we started watching earlier this week, the CIA has not sent too many messages to the military on the DMS. But you were one of the few who did.” He looked at Matt and Sara. His last sentence sounded like a sledgehammer hitting a wall.
Mark continued, “You sent a message on Monday morning to Pacific Command, correct? It went through a city in China called Wuhan before getting to Pacific Command.”
“So what does that mean?” Anderson jumped in.
“We believe we, and you, are victims of what’s known as a ‘Man-in-the-Middle attack’. We call it MIM”
“What does that mean.” Sara asked.
“I don’t understand” Matt said, “The DMS is an encrypted system.”
J.D. walked towards the whiteboard in the room and grabbed a marker.
“Can I use this quickly?” he asked, “Let’s take a typical messaging system, like email. Let’s say Alice wants to send a message to Bob.” J.D wrote the name “Alice” on once side of the board and “Bob” on the other.
“Alice wants her message to be encrypted, or ciphered, so that only Bob will be able to understand the message. The way they do this is Bob first sends his key to Alice. This is like a cipher key that gives her instructions on how to encrypt a message.” He drew an arrow from Bob to Alice and wrote “Bob’s Key” above it.
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