He drifted into a semi-sleep as one does on an airplane. His thoughts drifted to Nicky and her sweet innocence. The twins were divine. Maybe he would log into his favorite website later. He got a little aroused just thinking about it. Why couldn’t life be that simple? No, he was a man on a mission from on high. There were debts to collect. His enemy would need to pay up. He must not be weak. After all, he was the Leopard.
CHAPTER 51
NEAR MISS
Nobody had slept since yesterday and it was taking its toll. My shoulder still throbbed from my near miss encounter with the Leopard. “Near miss”—I’m sure 226 wished theirs was a near miss. What did that term really mean after all? Either it was a “miss” or it wasn’t. How could it be a “near miss?” I smiled to myself. My mind always seemed to wander off into these stupid tangents. Better to laugh at yourself, than get crazy about it. The truth was that the country had had a near miss, but we were still in grave danger.
I walked down the hall, tapping the cool glass windows as I went. I knew where Little’s office was. I guess they had accepted me around headquarters by now since they no longer accompanied me with a security guard.
Little was standing, leaning over his desk. He looked a lot more frazzled than the last time I saw him. His hands were flat on the surface, arms extended. His tie hung loosely from his open collar. “This guy is a slippery Mother F–. We need some new approach to the problem. Any ideas?”
Of course I had been thinking about it, but this might just be an insolvable problem. I had always prided myself on the ability to figure things out, especially tough problems. But the last couple of days had shaken me up and destroyed my confidence. This was just a whole new ballgame on a field on which I had never played before. Still I had to keep trying. Too much was at stake. “I have my team working all the cyber angles. What kind of profile do you have on this guy? I mean I had asked Al to get in touch about putting a profiler on this. Maybe if we understood him better, we could try to think like he thinks. Then maybe we could anticipate his next move.”
Little lifted a manila file folder from his desk and let if fall open while he pulled his reading glasses down from his forehead to the end of his nose. He looked up at me, his eyes above the rims, then he looked down through the glasses and said, “Al did reach out. We had already started our top profiler on it. Here’s what we have so far. Born 1977 in Saudi Arabia to an upper-middle-class family. Not royalty, but his family was very comfortable. His father managed an oil operation. He went to college in Cambridge, UK and that’s where we suspect he got his jihadist fervor. He belonged to a group called the Ottoman Network. Graduated in 1997 with honors and was recruited into the Saudi Intelligence Agency. Here’s where it gets interesting. He excelled at covert operations. We’re not sure whether he was actually a double for Barin or recruited by them when he was in the field. He is a known operator suspected of training Hezbollah agents, masterminding several western embassy attacks, and personally assassinating over 100 people.”
“I was almost 101,” I mused. “Anything there that could help us?”
Little continued flipping through the pages. “This is a thick folder so I’ll skip ahead. I see some notes on his obsession with young girls. That’s no surprise. Here’s something interesting. You said, ‘Think like him.’ If you had this sexual obsession and you couldn’t fulfill it when you needed to, what would you do?”
I thought about that. “You’d look for other outlets. Maybe online?”
“Exactly. NSA has some tracers on the Leopard logging into child porn sites. One in particular seems to be a favorite –Younglovedownunder.ru. ‘RU’ is Russia. If we could somehow hack that site and ID his logins, maybe we could geo-locate him.”
“That’s a lot of ‘ifs.’ Also, I’d assume most of the pervs who visit do so anonymously.”
“Ah, but how many of the same IP addresses were in the Mideast on Monday, New York on Tuesday and LA on Wednesday? That may narrow the field to one or two users at most. We just need to get to the log file for the site, preferably in real-time.”
“That’s all, huh?” I couldn’t help but laugh. Non-technical people assumed that if you could state what you wanted in simple terms, any nerd could make it happen. “We’re not on NCIS here, but we may have a unique resource that could help.”
Little finally seemed to gain some energy and get excited. He finally looked up and pulled his glasses off. “I’ve got the best and brightest at NSA standing by, which is no mean feat. What have you got?”
I started feeling the adrenaline myself. “If you’ve got NSA ready to go, I’d suggest you let them loose on it. But I’ve got a guy who actually lives inside the Internet. Frank may be able to penetrate where others fail.”
“Then let’s get going,” Little said as he picked up the desk phone and started dialing.
CHAPTER 52
SIGNAL AND NOISE
Back in the lab, I flipped on my monitor and called Frank. His face appeared jumbled at first, like Max Headroom again, and then it took shape.
“Sam, how are you?”
“I’m a bit frazzled at the moment. Did you get my message about running tracers on the sex site?”
“I did, but it’s amazing how the Internet has become more like a human brain. You know how when you sit down to concentrate on something, all these random thoughts come into your mind? Does that happen to you?”
“All the time, but what does that have to do with this?” I persisted.
Ignoring me, he went on. “Do you ever get a song stuck in your mind and you can’t shut it off, no matter how hard you try? I think they’re called ‘Earworms.’ Or the same distraction keeps pulling your focus away? How about repetitive dreams?”
Now I was getting frustrated, but I tried to keep my voice even. You never want to piss off your IT guys. “Frank, with all due respect, you need to focus. I enjoy your musings, but I don’t see the relevance here. Can you trace the site’s users or not?”
“Everybody thinks everything on the Internet is binary: 1’s and 0’s. But there are so many programs and queries flying from all directions at the same time, that sometimes they collide. Unwanted data enters your path of inquiry like unwanted dreams or repetitive songs, keeping you from your destination. In the old ham radio days, they used to call it signal versus noise. The signal is what you wanted to get, but sometimes the static and noise would totally block it out and sometimes just partially obscure it. Right now we’re getting a lot of noise and I’m trying to filter it out to get the info you need.”
“Could it be intentional blocking or is it just a random thing?”
“I’m not sure yet. A few years ago, hackers would sometimes launch DSAs—Denial of Service Attacks—against big websites like Yahoo or Amazon. If you flooded the sites with millions of simultaneous queries, automatically generated virtual users hitting the site, you could bring the site’s servers to its knees. Fortunately, software was recently developed to detect and thwart these malicious attacks. So I’m not sure if what I’m seeing is just random or maybe a new form of a DSA.”
This got me thinking. “I’m trying to put myself in the Leopard’s shoes—I mean paws. Sorry, bad joke. If I had the capability to bring down or hack the air traffic control system, what else could I hack that might create the most damage and terror?”
Frank jumped in. “I see where you’re going. Could he be planning a major Internet disruption?”
“He has the resources I believe to do it. If his attack was really effective, it would bring down not only all businesses online, but it could shut down utilities and even emergency services. Just thinking of an example. 911 calls don’t go over traditional phone lines and switches anymore, they use VOIP—Voice over IP, Internet Protocol. No Internet, no 911.”
“Holy shit!”
I’d never heard Frank curse before.
“I’ll shift my search for the moment to see if I can detect a pattern or source for all the excess noise. I’ll still
try to trace the sex site, but as you know I’ve become quite agile at multitasking in my new digital body.”
Despite the situation, I had to laugh. Frank no longer had a body, but he had a hell of a mind times ten. “I’ll let Little know, so he can put his NSA guys on it as well. It’s just a theory at this point, but we might be facing the ultimate cyber attack. If we don’t stop him, the results could be devastating.”
CHAPTER 53
KEEP THE CHANGE
LaSalam landed in New York and jumped in a yellow cab at LaGuardia. Biden was right, that airport was still worse than any back desert airport in the Middle East.
“Where to, my brother?” the cabbie asked in a thick accent.
The Leopard gave the cabbie the address in lower Manhattan speaking in Farsi. The cabbie smiled. “Salom Alechem.”
“Alechem Salom, my brother,” the Leopard answered with a smile. The address he had given the cabbie was ten blocks from his true destination. He could not risk the cabbie or his dispatcher knowing where this passenger went. The cabbie pulled up to the curb on Barrow Street.
“That will be thirty-five dollars,” the cabbie said, turning his head to look at his passenger through the little portal in the safety glass between the seats.
LaSalam handed him a fifty-dollar bill. “Keep the change.”
“Thank you, my brother!” The cabbie said his final words.
The Leopard lifted his silenced pistol and, shattering the safety glass, put one shot into the cabbie’s forehead.
“You are helping the cause,” he said to the lifeless body in the front seat. “You will be recognized in heaven.”
If anything, the Leopard was careful and a master of tradecraft. He would never have given the cabbie the correct address or left a murder victim near his intended destination. So, he walked, zigzagging the ten blocks to the control center. He walked through an alley, down a few steps and faced the metal door. He knocked twice, then three times, and finally once. A small eye hatch slid open then closed and the door swung open.
LaSalam was greeted by Eskabar. “It is good to see you again, sire.”
The Leopard had a menacing little grin. “You as well. How are things here?”
Trying to muster some confidence, the small man answered, “We are making good progress for sure. I believe we will be ready for the next phase, or at least to test it, tomorrow.” They took the elevator together down ten floors.
CHAPTER 54
QUANTUM STATE
Frank looked up on the screen as if he had been reading a book. “Maybe we need to take a quantum approach to this investigation.”
Bart swiveled from the other screens he had been working on to face the Frank monitor. “What are you talking about?”
“Our minds tend to work, like computers, in a binary fashion. Something is or it isn’t, it’s a ‘1’ or a ‘0.’ The Leopard is either here or he’s there. But I believe, just as in quantum physics, that reality is more a matter of probabilities. There’s only a certain probability that an object is here or there or nowhere. The extreme in quantum theory is that same object could be in two different places at the same time. That’s not even so far fetched, as you see, I have no problem being in two places, everywhere or nowhere at the same time.”
I had to step in. “Frank, you are the most brilliant man I have ever met, but, with all due respect, how does this help us?”
Frank smiled. “I love that phrase, ‘With all due respect.’ It usually precedes an opposite statement, like ‘With all due respect, you’re brilliant, but in reality, you’re an asshole.’” We all laughed and he continued. “But in a funny way, it proves my point—you can be both at the same time. It’s not binary. It’s more a matter of ‘state’ than place. Brilliant, asshole, here, there—we, one, some or all at the same time. So let’s look for the Leopard by probabilities and what could be his current state or states.”
Bart jumped in. “I get it. That’s why the human mind can sometimes be better at problem solving because we can handle ambivalence and conflicting facts better than a binary machine. So, how would we apply this quantum approach to our current crisis?”
Frank knew he had us, so he began to pick up steam. “I wrote some programs based on a quantum, instead of a binary, approach to solving certain types of problems based on incomplete or conflicting data sets. In English, I have some tools that may help here. Let’s feed in all the data points we have on LaSalam—not only all his known locations and times, but his behavior patterns, background, known aliases, etc.”
For the first time today, I felt like we might have a way forward. “We also have a new and maybe very important data point. We have a ping to the sex website from an outer cell tower in Kansas.”
Loretta, who had been listening quietly, got excited. “Does that mean he is in Kansas?”
Frank, who now seemed like the wise grandfather talking to his grandchildren, said, “Remember we are now going to work in probabilities, which allows us to open our minds to other possibilities. Traditional law enforcement would take that data point and act like my six-year-old grandson’s soccer team. Did you ever watch little kids play soccer? It’s a hoot. Somebody kicks the ball and all the kids on both teams run to the ball. The result is twenty kids bunched together kicking the ball into each other’s shins.”
Loretta was not really in the mood for a lecture. “But shouldn’t we dispatch the authorities to Kansas. Maybe he’s still there?”
Frank was being very patient, like the professor he had been. “Let’s think about that. What’s the probability that our suspect is in Kansas? Has he ever been there before? Is there any reason for him to be there? Could there be alternate explanations, like maybe he was in a plane flying over Kansas? By asking these types of questions and running my program, my guess is that the probability will be low that his current state is Kansas. Let’s identify the higher probability states and start our physical investigations there.”
“Brilliant…with all due respect,” I said and everyone laughed again. Amazing how laughter clears the mind and calms the soul. “Let’s get on it.”
CHAPTER 55
A STROLL
The Leopard paced his hotel room just like his namesake might do. He did not pace out of anxiety. It was more like preparation to pounce on his prey. But he was impatient. He was used to getting what he demanded, when he demanded it. Yet he knew the programming process was complex. After he killed a couple of programmers, he learned the hard way it would be ready when it would be ready. Coercion on his part would only slow the process or just be self-defeating. Dead programmers aren’t very productive after all.
He could indulge Johnny and calm himself down, but his adrenaline was running. Nothing would calm him down except a successful kill. The hotel room was feeling small so he decided to go out into the cool New York night air where he could walk and pace as much as the streets would allow. New York at night might be the best cure for his restlessness and insomnia or it might be dangerous. He relished the thought of either possibility.
It was 2:00 AM, but the streets were still alive with the city’s night people. Hookers held their corners, fruit vendors were still open and young men in hoodies and earbuds prowled. He stopped and bought an apple from one of the fruit vendors. He peeled off the Cortland sticker and polished it on his overcoat sleeve. When he took a big bite, the crunch was satisfying and the juice dribbled down his chin. Apples like this were a pleasure he could not get in his country. Why the infidels should enjoy the pleasures they did was beyond him. He knew his role was to change that, to break things down, to seek revenge and to cause pain. That would be his greatest pleasure.
As he walked the darker side of 9th Avenue, a young man in a hoodie leaned into LaSalam and bumped his shoulder. The young man turned. “Sorry man. I just lost my wallet and I need subway fare to get back to Brooklyn. Got five bucks you can spare?”
LaSalam grinned. “I need plane fare to get back to Teheran, got a thou you can spare
…man?”
The young man’s expression became suddenly severe. “Very funny man. You a fuckin’ terrorist or sumfin’?” He pulled a Glock out of his hoodie pocket and pointed it at LaSalam’s head. “Just give me your money funny man.”
The Leopard maintained his grin. “Do you believe in heaven, young man?”
The young man tilted his head and looked both angry and perplexed at the same time. “What the fuck are you talking ‘bout?”
The Leopard swung his right arm up in one smooth motion, grabbing the young man’s wrist and twisting up and over. He then used his left hand on top and jammed the gun into the young man’s ribs, breaking the skin with the tip of the barrel. Guts make a very good silencer. The young man groaned in pain. The Leopard looked him in the eye and said, “Well you’re not going there,” and he pulled the trigger. The firing gun made a muffled thump. The young man slumped and LaSalam grabbed him under the arm, like he was helping a drunk friend. Limping along, he propped up the body and turned into an alley. Dropping the body behind a dumpster, he could smell the rotting garbage piled up.
Fortunately, his overcoat was dark and the blood splatter didn’t really show. He looked both ways and emerged from the alley. No one seemed to be nearby. He dropped the gun in a sewer opening and resumed his stroll. Just the kind of diversion he needed. He felt much better now.
CHAPTER 56
40/70 RULE
“Brief me,” Longford said.
Not So Dead: A Sam Sunborn Novel Page 12
