The Blue Nowhere: A Novel

by Jeffery Deaver

  Nothing makes perps more skittish and likely to flee—or attack—than unpredictability and sudden motion by cops.

  He knew he could sprint back inside CCU to safety. But if he did that Shawn would vanish and they might never get this chance again. No, Bishop would no more miss this opportunity to nail the killer’s partner than he’d ignore his son’s tears.

  Keep walking, keep walking.

  It all comes down to this. . . .

  A bit of dark motion ahead, as Shawn, now hiding beside a large Winnebago camper, peeked out to gauge Bishop’s position and then ducked back again. The detective continued strolling over the asphalt, pretending that he hadn’t seen.

  When he was nearly to the Winnebago, the detective ducked to the right, pulling his well-worn gun from his holster, and sprinted as fast as he could around the corner of the camper. He raised his weapon.

  But he stopped fast.

  Shawn was gone. In the few seconds that it had taken him to circle behind the vehicle Phate’s partner had vanished.

  To his right, across the parking lot, a car door slammed. Bishop spun toward the sound, crouching and raising his weapon. But he saw that the noise had come from a delivery van. A heavyset black man was carrying a box from the vehicle to a nearby factory.

  Well, where could Shawn have gotten to?

  He found out a moment later, when behind him the door to the camper flew open and, before he could turn, Bishop felt a pistol barrel nestle itself against the back of his head.

  The detective had a fast glimpse of the slight man’s mustachioed face as Shawn leaned forward and his hand shot out like a snake to rip Bishop’s weapon away.

  Bishop thought of Brandon and then of Jennie.

  He sighed.

  It all comes down to this. . . .

  Frank Bishop closed his eyes.

  CHAPTER 00011110 / THIRTY

  The chime on the CCU computer was merely an off-the-shelf .wav sound but to the team it blared like a siren.

  Wyatt Gillette ran to the workstation. “Yes!” he whispered. “Phate’s looked at the picture. The virus is in his machine.”

  On the screen flashed these words:

  Config.sys modified

  “That’s it. But we don’t have much time—all he has to do is check his system once and he’s going to see that we’re inside.”

  Gillette sat down at the computer. Lifted his hands to the keyboard, feeling the unparalleled excitement he always did just before he started a journey into an uncharted part—an illicit part—of the Blue Nowhere.

  He started to key.

  “Gillette!” a man’s voice shouted as the front door of the CCU crashed open.

  The hacker turned to see someone striding into the dinosaur pen. Gillette gasped. It was Shawn—the man who’d pretended to be Charles Pittman.

  “Jesus,” Shelton called, startled.

  Tony Mott moved fast, reaching for his large silver pistol. But Shawn had his own weapon out of his holster and, before Mott could even draw, Shawn’s was cocked and aimed at the young cop’s head. Mott lifted his hands slowly. Shawn motioned Sanchez and Miller back and continued on toward Gillette, pointing the gun at him.

  The hacker stood and stumbled backward, his arms up.

  There was nowhere to run.

  But, wait. . . . What was going on?

  Frank Bishop, grim-faced, walked through the front door. He was flanked by two large men in suits.

  So, he wasn’t Shawn.

  An ID appeared in the man’s hand. “I’m Arthur Backle, with the Department of Defense Criminal Investigation Division.” He nodded at his two partners. “These’re Agents Luis Martinez and Jim Cable.”

  “You’re CID? What’s going on here?” Shelton barked.

  Gillette said to Bishop, “We’re linked to Phate’s machine. But we’ve only got a few minutes. I’ve got to go in now!”

  Bishop started to speak but Backle said to one of his partners, “Cuff him.”

  The man stepped forward and ratcheted handcuffs on Gillette. “No!”

  Mott said, “You told me you were Pittman.”

  Backle shrugged. “I was working undercover. I had reason to suspect you might not cooperate if I identified myself.”

  “Fucking right we wouldn’t’ve cooperated,” Bob Shelton said.

  Backle said to Gillette, “We’re here to escort you back to the San Jose Correctional Facility.”

  “You can’t!”

  Bishop said, “I talked to the Pentagon, Wyatt. It’s legit. We got busted.” He shook his head.

  Mott said, “But the director approved his release.”

  “Dave Chambers is out,” the detective explained. “Peter Kenyon’s acting director of CID. He rescinded the release order.”

  Kenyon, Gillette recalled, was the man who’d overseen the creation of the Standard 12 encryption program. The man who was the most likely to end up embarrassed—if not unemployed—if it was cracked. “What happened to Chambers?”

  “Financial impropriety,” narrow-faced Backle said prissily. “Insider trading, off-shore corporations. I don’t know and I don’t care.” Backle then said to Gillette, “We have an order to look through all the files you’ve had access to and see if there’s evidence related to your improper accessing of Department of Defense encryption software.”

  Tony Mott said desperately to Bishop, “We’re online with Phate, Frank. Right now!”

  Bishop stared at the screen. He said to Backle, “Please! We have a chance to find out where this suspect is. Wyatt’s the only one who can help us.”

  “Let him go online? In your dreams.”

  Shelton snapped, “You need a warrant if—”

  The blue-backed paper appeared in the hands of one of Backle’s partners. Bishop read it quickly and nodded sourly. “They can take him back and confiscate all his disks and any computers he’s used.”

  Backle looked around, saw an empty office and told his partners to lock Gillette inside while they searched for the files.

  “Don’t let them do it, Frank!” Gillette called. “I was just about to seize root of his machine. This is his real machine, not a hot one. It could have addresses in it. It could have Shawn’s real name. It could have the address of his next victim!”

  “Shut up, Gillette,” Backle snapped.

  “No!” the hacker protested, struggling against the agents, who easily dragged him toward the office. “Get your fucking hands off me! We—”

  They pitched him inside and closed the door.

  “Can you get inside Phate’s machine?” Bishop asked Stephen Miller.

  The big man looked at the screen of the workstation uneasily. “I don’t know. Maybe. It’s just . . . If you hit one key wrong Phate’ll know we’re inside.”

  Bishop was in agony. This was their first real break and it was being stolen away from them because of pointless infighting and government bureaucracy. This was their only chance to look inside the electronic mind of the killer.

  “Where’re Gillette’s files?” Backle asked. “And his disks?”

  No one volunteered the information. The team gazed defiantly at the agent. Backle shrugged and said in a cheerful tone, “We’ll confiscate everything then. Doesn’t matter to us. We’ll just take it and you’ll see it in six months—if you’re lucky.”

  Bishop nodded at Sanchez.

  “That workstation there,” she muttered, pointing.

  Backle and the other agents started looking over three-and-a-half-inch floppy disks as if they could see through the colorful plastic coverings and identify the data inside with their naked eyes.

  As Miller stared at the screen uneasily, Bishop turned to Patricia Nolan and Mott. “Can either of you run Wyatt’s program?”

  Nolan said, “I know how it works in theory. But I’ve never cracked into somebody’s machine with Backdoor-G. All I’ve done is try to find the virus and inoculate against it.”

  Mott said, “Same with me. And Wyatt’s program is a hy
brid he hacked together himself. It’s probably got some unique command lines.”

  Bishop made the decision. He picked the civilian, saying to Patricia Nolan, “Do the best you can.”

  She sat down at the workstation. Wiped her hands on her bulky skirt and shoved her hair out of her face, staring at the screen, trying to understand the commands on the menu, which were, to Bishop, as incomprehensible as Russian.

  The detective’s cell phone rang. He answered, “Yes?” He listened for a moment. “Yessir. Who, Agent Backle?”

  The agent looked up.

  Bishop continued into the phone. “He’s here, sir. . . . But . . . No, this isn’t a secure line. I’ll have him call you on one of the landlines in the office. Yessir. I’ll do it right now, sir.” The detective scribbled a number and hung up. He lifted an eyebrow at Backle. “That was Sacramento. You’re supposed to call the secretary of defense. At the Pentagon. He wants you to call on a secure line. Here’s his private number.”

  One of his partners glanced at Backle uncertainly. “Secretary Metzger?” he whispered. The reverent tone suggested that calls like this were unprecedented.

  Backle slowly took the phone that Bishop pushed toward him. “You can use this one,” the detective said.

  The agent hesitated then punched the number into the phone. After a moment he came to attention. “This is CID agent Backle, sir. I’m on a secure line. . . . Yessir.” Backle nodded broadly. “Yessir. . . . It was on Peter Kenyon’s orders. The California State Police kept it from us, sir. They got him out on a John Doe. . . . Yessir. Well, if that’s what you’d like. But you understand what Gillette’s done, sir. He—” More nodding. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to be insubordinate. I’ll handle it, sir.”

  He hung up and said to his partners, “Somebody’s got friends in fucking high places.” He nodded at the white-board. “Your suspect? Holloway? One of the men he killed in Virginia was related to some big White House contributor. So Gillette’s supposed to stay out of jail until you collar the perp.” He hissed a disgusted sigh. “Fucking politics.” A glance toward the partners. “You two stand down. Go on back to the office.” To Bishop he said, “You can keep him for the time being. But I’m baby-sitting till the case is over with.”

  “I understand, sir,” Bishop said, running to the office where the agents had thrown Gillette and unlocking the door.

  Without even asking why he’d been sprung Gillette sprinted to the workstation. Patricia Nolan gratefully yielded the chair to him.

  Gillette sat down. He looked up at Bishop, who said, “You’re still on the team for the time being.”

  “That’s good,” the hacker said formally, scooting closer to the keyboard. But, out of earshot of Backle, Bishop gave a laugh and whispered to Gillette, “How on earth d’you pull that off?”

  For it hadn’t been the Pentagon calling Bishop; it was Wyatt Gillette himself. He’d rung Bishop’s cell phone from one of the phones in the office where he’d been locked up. The real conversation had been a bit different from the apparent:

  Bishop had answered, “Yes?”

  Gillette: “Frank, it’s Wyatt. I’m on a phone in the office. Pretend I’m your boss. Tell me that Backle’s there.”

  “Yessir. Who, Agent Backle?”

  “Good,” the hacker had replied.

  “He’s here, sir.”

  “Now tell him to call the secretary of defense. But make sure he calls from the main phone line in the CCU office. Not his cell phone or anybody else’s. Tell him that’s a secure line.”

  “But—”

  Gillette had reassured. “It’s okay. Just do it. And give him this number.” He’d then dictated to Bishop a Washington, D.C., phone number.

  “No, this isn’t a secure line. I’ll have him call you on one of the landlines in the office. Yessir. I’ll do it right now, sir.”

  Gillette now explained in a whisper, “I cracked the local Pac Bell switch with the machine in there and had all calls from CCU to that number I gave you transferred to me.”

  Bishop shook his head, both troubled and amused. “Whose number is it?”

  “Oh, it really is the secretary of defense’s. It was just as easy to crack his line as anybody else’s. But don’t worry. I reset the switch.”

  Then, it seemed, all thoughts of phone company hacks and Washington politics vanished from Gillette’s mind and, as he squinted at the screen, his fingers began pounding out the magic incantation they hoped would bring the killer within their reach.

  Gillette’s variation of the Backdoor-G program launched him right into the middle of Phate’s computer. The first thing he saw was a folder named Trapdoor.

  Gillette’s heart began to pound and he sizzled with a mixture of agitation and exhilaration as his curiosity took over his soul like a drug. Here was a chance to learn about this miraculous software, maybe even glimpse the source code itself.

  But he had a dilemma: Although he could slip into the Trapdoor folder and look at the program, he would be very vulnerable to detection because he had root control. The same way that Gillette had been able to see Phate when the killer had invaded the CCU computer. If that happened Phate would immediately shut down his machine and create a new Internet service provider and e-mail address. They’d never be able to find him again, certainly not in time to save the next victim.

  No, he understood that—as powerfully as he felt his curiosity—he’d have to forgo a look at Trapdoor and search for clues that might give them an idea of where they might find Phate or Shawn or who that next victim might be.

  With painful reluctance Gillette turned away from Trapdoor and began to prowl stealthily through Phate’s computer.

  Many people think of computer architecture as a perfectly symmetrical and antiseptic building: proportional, logical, organized. Wyatt Gillette, however, knew that the inside of a machine was much more organic than that, like a living creature, a place that changes constantly. Each machine contains thousands of places to visit and myriad different paths by which to get to each destination. And each machine is unique from every other. Examining someone else’s computer was like walking through the local tourist attraction, the nearby Winchester Mystery House, a rambling 160-room mansion where the widow of the inventor of the Winchester repeating rifle had lived. It was a place filled with hidden passages and secret chambers (and, according to the eccentric mistress of the house, plenty of ghosts as well).

  The virtual passageways of Phate’s computer led finally to a folder labeled Correspondence, and Gillette went after it like a shark.

  He opened the first of the subfolders, Outgoing.

  This contained mostly e-mails to Shawn@MOL.com from Holloway under both of his usernames, Phate and Deathknell.

  Gillette murmured, “I was right. Shawn’s on the same Internet provider Phate is—Monterey On-Line. There’s no way to track him down either.”

  He flipped open some of the e-mails at random and read them. He observed right away that they used only their screen names, Phate or Deathknell and Shawn. The correspondence was highly technical—software patches and copies of engineering data and specifications downloaded from the Net and various databases. It was as if they were worried that their machines might be seized and had agreed never to refer to their personal lives or who they were outside of the Blue Nowhere. There wasn’t a shred of evidence as to who Shawn might be or where he or Phate lived.

  But then Gillette found a somewhat different e-mail. It had been sent from Phate to Shawn several weeks ago—at 3:00 A.M., which is considered the witching hour by hackers, the time when only the most hard-core geeks are online.

  “Check this one out,” Gillette said to the team.

  Patricia Nolan was reading over Gillette’s shoulder. He felt her brush against him as she reached forward and tapped the screen. “Looks like they’re a little more than just friends.”

  He read the beginning to the team. “‘Last night I’d finished working on the patch and lay in the bed. Sleep w
as far, far away, and all I could do was think about you, the comfort you give me . . . I started touching myself. I really couldn’t stop. . . . ’”

  Gillette looked up. The entire team—DoD agent Backle too—was staring at him. “Should I keep going?”

  “Is there anything in it that’ll help track him down?” Bishop asked.

  The hacker skimmed the rest of the e-mail quickly. “No. It’s pretty X-rated.”

  “Maybe you could just keep looking,” Frank Bishop said.

  Gillette backed out of Outgoing and examined the Incoming correspondence file. Most were messages from list servers, which were e-mailing services that automatically sent bulletins on topics of interest to subscribers. There were some old e-mails from Vlast and some from Triple-X—technical information about software and warez. It wasn’t helpful. All the others were from Shawn but they were responses to Phate’s requests about debugging Trapdoor or writing patches for other programs. These e-mails were even more technical and less revealing than Phate’s.

  He opened another.

  From: Shawn

  To: Phate

  Re: FWD: Cellular Phone Companies

  Shawn had found an article on the Net describing which mobile phone companies were the most efficient and forwarded it to Phate.

  Bishop looked at it and said, “Might be something in there about which phones they’re using. Can you copy it?”

  The hacker hit the print-screen—also called the screen-dump—button, which sent the contents on the monitor to the printer.

  “Download it,” Miller said. “That’ll be a lot faster.”

  “I don’t think we want to do that.” The hacker went on to explain that a screen dump does nothing to affect the internal operations of Phate’s computer but simply sends the images and text on the CCU’s monitor to the printer. Phate would have no way of knowing that Gillette was copying the data. A download, however, would be far easier for Phate to notice. It might also trigger an alarm in Phate’s computer.

  He continued searching through the killer’s machine.