Hide and Seek

by H. L. Wegley

  The man in the dark suit had seated himself, but now he stood and faced Barry. “I’m Agent Stewart, NSA and you would be wise to listen to Mr. Brandt’s advice. We don’t want what we know to become public knowledge until we have found and dealt with all of the conspirators. Maybe not even then. Besides, until Mr. Brandt and Ms. Akihara brief us on what they found, evidently something that very nearly got them killed, we don’t know for sure what, or whom, we’re up against.”

  Barry closed his mouth, sat down, and slumped in his chair.

  A picture popped into Lee’s mind of Barry seated at the table choking on his own foot. He hadn’t seen Barry humiliated before and he couldn’t help enjoying it. He managed not to laugh. But even Joe, who personally had a lot at stake here was grinning from ear to ear at Lee’s outburst.

  Jennifer laid her hand over his and squeezed firmly. Apparently, his spirited defense pleased her. This was a very, very good sign.

  Maybe the ump would reverse the call on the previous pitch. Maybe the sun would shine in Mudville after all. Maybe—he looked at Jennifer’s face. Maybes weren’t good enough. There were things he needed to know…soon.

  Stewart focused on Peterson. “I suggest someone get a nondisclosure agreement form from National Aerospace and modify it as needed. We’ll have Jennifer sign it. That will take care of everything that’s already transpired and it will cover anything we might need to get into today. What do you think, Joe?”

  The man nodded slowly. “A properly worded nondisclosure agreement would make me a lot more comfortable. Let’s do it.”

  “The sooner, the better.” Peterson added. “We’ll need someone in management to take care of it. There’s no one better qualified here than Lee’s supervisor. Besides, he would have to leave before the briefing anyway—not properly cleared and no real need to know.”

  Barry rose with a scowl on his face and strode to the door. “I’ll take care of it.” He closed the door a little more firmly than necessary. Joe continued his grin.

  The forecast today, sunny in Mudville.

  Lee stood. “Do we need anyone else in the room before I brief you?”

  Peterson looked around the table. “Let’s go with this crew. We can bring others in if they’re needed. But…there is one matter we need to attend to first.”

  Peterson pulled out a USGS topographical map of the mountains where Jennifer and Lee spent much of the day. He spread it out on the shop bench. “Mark the cave—the one with the guns.”

  Lee smiled as he placed a small X on the map using his right hand, while his left hand, visible only to Jennifer, scratched his rear end. He heard a muffled giggle.

  “Bastian, we need you to retrieve the automatic weapons the perpetrators left in the cave right here.” Peterson pointed to the mark Lee made then handed the map to Bastian.

  “Sure thing, boss.”

  “And Bastian?”

  “Yes?”

  “Get a hazmat suit to wear in the cave and don’t come back without the weapons.”

  “Wouldn’t think of it. See you in about an hour.”

  Only if you listen to your boss.

  Bastian closed the door behind him.

  “Will he wear a suit?” Lee asked, noting that Peterson hadn’t told the man why he needed a protective suit.

  “I told him to, but he doesn’t always listen to me.” Peterson shrugged.

  When the door closed, Jennifer sat with her hand over her mouth. Her body shook with each partially stifled giggle.

  Stewart looked at Joe and raised his upturned palms. Joe shrugged in return. For now he would let them remain clueless.

  Lee clasped his hands and turned to look at Joe. “Before I begin. Joe, how is Randy? I saw them shooting at him, but Jennifer and I were on the run. We couldn’t tell what happened at the gate shack.”

  Joe dipped his head and smiled. “Randy came through without a scratch, otherwise the response to you two being missing would have been much slower. Who knows? Randy may have saved your lives.”

  “That’s good.” He took a breath and let it out slowly. “I guess Jennifer and I owe Randy one. OK. Some military data were viewed by one of the Indian contractors. These data somehow slipped through the screening process when we loaded the development environment.”

  He remained purposely vague, being kind for Joe’s sake. The data-security breach during data load was National Aerospace’s fault which would reflect upon Joe. “Of course, the guy who accessed the data suddenly returned to Bangalore before we discovered the breach. As nearly as I can tell we were supposed to discover the violation, realize the perpetrator was gone, and since no real damage was done chalk one up for experience. They thought we would forget the incident while we promised our superiors this would never happen again. But this was only a diversion to give the imposter a way to disappear after he completed his real mission leaving us thinking the incident was closed.”

  Joe pounded his fist into his knee. “How in the world did we let an imposter get in?”

  Peterson sighed loudly. “I won’t even attempt to describe the hodgepodge India has to maintain identity. Many Indians can’t prove they were even born, let alone who they are. It would be trivial to slip in someone with a false identity, especially a new hire.”

  Joe raised his eyebrows and stared at Lee. “So what was the real mission?”

  Lee glanced at Jennifer. When she returned his gaze, he smiled and nodded towards her. “Jennifer should take over from here. Everything we learned from this point forward was due to her genius.”

  Jennifer’s initial look of surprise gave way to a smile when their gaze locked. He guessed Jennifer’s stunning looks and her gender probably resulted in her being locked out of many good-old-boy meetings even when her work was being discussed. That wasn’t going to happen today. He voluntarily gave up the floor to her for the sake of her career. When Lee sat down beside her she squeezed his hand.

  Jennifer began to speak, laying out the entire conspiracy including the details of the analysis required and the facts she found. As she described running her analysis from the National Aerospace laptop, using her algorithm and NSA’s Internet database, Agent Stewart winced a couple times. Jennifer would have a few wrinkles of her own to iron out.

  She continued to explain her findings. “The imposter’s objective was to get inside National Aerospace’s firewalls. He left behind some very nasty, well-conceived Trojans. I’ve not seen anything quite like them in my experience. We found them on one laptop equipped with the company’s VPN client. I analyzed them using some tools I developed for the FBI.”

  “So IPSec was how the Trojan got through our firewalls?” Joe asked.

  “Only indirectly. In order for outgoing transmissions to get out through your firewall the Trojan applied a patch to your company’s VPN client, which normally does use IPSec. The patch enabled it to send carefully crafted HTTP. So, to your proxy the transmission looked like a web browser going to some web site—nothing suspicious.

  “However, I believe the HTTP contained encoded account and key information enabling the hacker who received it to login to your VPN server. As long as the hacker logged in within a few seconds the borrowed key would be good and he would be successful. Once logged in the hacker would appear to be a valid employee who was working off site. Masquerading as a legitimate company employee, the hacker could access all resources for which the employee was authorized—personal information, proprietary information, classified data—everything.

  “Over time, Mr. Morrison, they could penetrate deeply into National Aerospace’s data infrastructure and acquire a lot of data that could do a lot of damage to a lot of people.”

  “Not good.” Joe groaned. “And where was the hacker, or hackers, located?”

  Jennifer looked at Stewart. “Does anyone need to leave before I answer that, Mr. Stewart?”

  Stewart glanced around the room and then shook his head. “No. But, Peterson, will you please sit by the door and make sure no o
ne enters while Jennifer completes her briefing.”

  After Peterson scooted his chair in front of the door, Jennifer continued. “The hackers I detected were all at least four IP-address hops away. Each went through a series of compromised machines to disguise their locations. Their physical locations were Iran, Yemen, Colombia, and northern Mexico.”

  Joe whistled through his teeth. “I can see if you upset their applecart you would be destroying months, or perhaps years, of preparation to get inside our company. We have a ton of information that a terrorist could use to cripple weapons systems or sell to raise money. There’s classified military data, trade secrets, and other proprietary information, right down to identity information for our employees.”

  Jennifer continued. “It appears the bad guys wanted ongoing and expanded access inside of National Aerospace. They developed a second Trojan designed to infect the laptops employees frequently carry home. They wanted to infect a sufficient number of machines to intercept all types of data Mr. Morrison mentioned. A laptop at home could send data directly to machines anywhere in the world without having to deal with your web proxy or your VPN—much like when an employee uses split-tunnel access.”

  Joe hung his head and shook it. “That’s one reason why we’ve recently eliminated split-tunnel access at National Aerospace.”

  Peterson sat motionless in his chair staring at Jennifer. “Do you have information linking the hackers to a specific organized-crime, or terrorist organization?”

  Jennifer nodded. “Some information. We tied the IP addresses to routers recently used by two Islamic jihadist organizations and two Latin American drug cartels. I won’t mention names here for security reasons...and because my findings need further analysis.”

  Stewart leaned forward in his chair. “Jennifer, we ran the trap line from evidence taken from the black SUV. In addition to fleas, we found other information we linked to a terrorist group operating in South America, one which has ties to Al Qaeda. There were also ties to a drug cartel operating in northern Mexico. So this seems to confirm most of your preliminary findings.”

  Peterson turned towards Stewart. “It also confirms that these networks of terrorists are getting pretty close to home.”

  Joe ran his scowl around the room. “But National Aerospace is home. And that’s alarming.”

  Stewart leaned forward in his chair and propped his forearms on his knees. “Well, gentlemen, it may very well be that Jennifer and Lee, while violating some protocols, have stopped a serious national security threat, as well as a serious industrial espionage threat to National Aerospace,”

  Peterson stopped writing on his notepad. “Anything else?”

  “No, Agent Peterson.”

  A strategy session ensued until 4:30 p.m., when Dan Robbins interrupted the group. “FYI, an injured man wandered into a clinic about eight miles from here,” Dan reported. “He acted suspiciously. The doctor saw the bulletins released to the media so he called us. We arrested the guy. Funny thing—the man was all swollen up, had difficulty breathing, and had a pink rash over most of his body.”

  Lee became concerned about his suggestion to send Bastian to get the abandoned weapons. How should he phrase this concern? He needed to say something. “Petersen, what if Bastian has trouble on the mountain?”

  “Don’t worry, Lee. I’ll take good care of Bastian. He has a radio and we have a chopper on alert in case we need it.”

  Jennifer grinned, while Joe Morrison gave another palms-up shrug.

  Since Lee was ignorant of protocol and politics in the FBI he thought it best to leave Joe clueless on this matter. Peterson seemed like a good guy. He didn’t want to create any trouble for the FBI agent. But if Bastian didn’t follow his boss’s orders he would pay a very unpleasant price.

  Peterson raised his wrist and glanced at his watch. “It’s 5 p.m. and I think we’ve accomplished just about everything we can at this time. Are we ready to let these two spelunkers go?”

  Stewart stood. “Before we adjourn, there’s one more item we need to cover. Jennifer and Lee, the media will swarm around you at every opportunity. Under no circumstances are you to discuss this incident with anyone unless directed to do so by myself, or Agent Peterson. When the media sees you’re not answering their questions, they’ll likely start throwing their hypotheses at you and asking you to confirm them. If they do simply tell them you cannot affirm or deny any statements presented to you by the media. Refer them to the FBI. Do you both understand?”

  Lee nodded. “Got it.”

  “Sure, I understand.” Jennifer answered.

  Peterson stood. “Meeting adjourned.”

  When they left the makeshift conference room Jennifer pulled Lee to a stop. “So we’re supposed to say we can’t confirm a statement made by the press, even if we really can confirm it?”

  “That’s about the size of it.”

  Jennifer tapped Peterson on the shoulder, interrupting his conversation with Stewart. “Peterson, I know you’re impounding my car for evidence, but I left a few things in it. Things I need. Is there any way I can get them tonight? Then there’s also the issue of transportation for Lee and me.”

  “We can get your things, Jennifer,” Peterson glanced at Stewart. Stewart nodded, and Peterson continued. “Why don’t you and Lee ride over to Kerbyville in my car? We’ll have the police get the items for you.”

  “May I ride along, too?” Stewart asked.

  “Sure.” Peterson replied. “Unless you want to spend the night in the Benson’s shop.”

  After the short ride to the Kerbyville Police Station from the Benson’s house, Stewart unbuckled his seat belt and swiveled to face Jennifer and Lee, who sat in the back seat. His pursed lips stretched into a smile. “Jennifer, NSA is very grateful for your services and has agreed to provide you with the use of a vehicle until you get yours back, or until you make other arrangements.”

  “Thanks. Thank you very much.”

  After Peterson parked in front of the police station he turned to Lee and Jennifer. “The motivation for the attack on you two is gone, but with these jihadist types, you never know what twisted logic drives them. To be safe I’m having both of your apartments watched tonight while your friend is running loose.”

  Stewart pointed across the street. “There’s your vehicle, Jennifer.”

  When she glanced across the street, her eyes widened and her mouth dropped open.

  20

  Lee watched as Jennifer completed her external inspection of the car provided, a large, black SUV, eerily similar to the one that had chased them last night.

  Twin frown lines remained frozen on her brow. She opened the door and slipped behind the wheel. After scanning the interior a smile replaced the frown. The ironic coincidence looked like it may not be disastrous after all.

  Jennifer was clearly being wooed big time by NSA. The events of the past twenty-four hours undoubtedly played an important role in their determination not to let Jennifer slip away from them.

  Lee shared both their sentiment and their determination.

  Stewart walked across the street and handed Jennifer some keys and papers. He couldn’t hear the words they exchanged, but Jennifer nodded and smiled. When Stewart walked away Jennifer motioned to him. “Come on. I’m driving you home.”

  That was an invitation he would not turn down. It would take at least an hour to drive back to the city. Finally, they could talk without wondering if they were uttering their last words. Lee hoped it would be an hour of leisurely driving with no more nerve-wracking suspense. However, with Jennifer at the wheel and her mind in gear, he wasn’t sure what the hour might hold.

  When the car rolled away from the curb, Lee followed suit with the conversation. “Jenn, there’s a lot I’d like to know about you. I got a crash course in your character over the past twenty-four hours. But I—”

  “Did you pass the course, or just crash?” Her face displayed a smirky smile.

  “Uh, I don’t know about me,
but you more than passed my test.”

  The smirk faded. “So, how did you test me?”

  “Let’s see, there was the time in the cave, just before we climbed out, and then on the Benson’s front lawn—”

  “Come on. You know what I mean.” Twin frown lines appeared between her dark eyebrows. “I seldom—well, actually, I never go out with guys. So I don’t get any feedback. None that really matters.”

  He decided to jump in with both feet. “So you’ve never dated at all? That’s hard to believe. I mean look at—”

  “That’s what I don’t mean. Sure guys are always looking at me, or they’re leering. Do you know how that makes me feel?”

  “It’s hard for me to imagine. Devalued as a person?”

  “That’s an understatement.”

  “I’m sorry you’ve experienced all that sordid, hurtful—not all guys are like that.”

  She stared into his eyes. She was supposed to be watching the road. Her look was searching, exploring, and it contained something else. Hoping?

  “The jury’s still out on your assertion about all guys.”

  “I can’t believe you sent the jury into deliberation before I could even present my closing arguments.”

  “Look, it’s my life, my heart, and my courtroom. My rules too, so I can call the jury back anytime I choose. But first, you looked like you wanted to ask me something.”

  She read him well. A good thing if they were forming a permanent bond.

  “I wanted to ask you about the guys you do associate with, classmates, coworkers…”

  “The guys at school are all either somehow intimidated—”