It hadn’t taken Frank long to conclude that once the hacker succeeded in intercepting a pollster’s time check signal, he had been able to create and send back a response that the pollster system’s firewall would allow to pass. After he was inside, the hacker had to make only one very minor change to the system’s operating system: simply replace the Internet address the computer called on to receive a time stamp with the address of a server owned by the hacker. Now, instead of calling on one of the many official time servers, the pollster’s system would call on one that the hacker controlled.
But what happened next? No one had been able to find any alteration of the polling software at all. That’s where the hacker’s second clever trick came in. Instead of changing the polling software to do everything the hacker wanted and leaving it that way, he had made a minute change to a single routine in the program. All that was necessary to put his plan into motion was to add a single byte of data to the time stamp request that the polling software sent out when it was asked to generate a report. That would alert the hacker’s server that it was time to leap into action.
The first thing the hacker’s server did was to upload a module of code to the pollster’s system that would falsify the data included in the report. Once the report had been generated, the same module would uninstall itself, leaving not a trace of its existence for an investigator to discover. Brilliant.
Frank estimated it wouldn’t take the hacker ten minutes to update the module each time a new candidate entered the field. Once more, he shook his head in silent admiration. Any decent programmer could come up with something complicated and easy to spot. It took a real master coder to devise such an ultra-stealthy and minimalist approach. Who could it possibly be?
His musings were interrupted by a rare sound: the ringing of his satellite phone. He debated ignoring it, but then thought better. Besides one or two Marvinites, only his daughter had that number. Better pick it up.
He regretted that decision when he heard the grating voice of Len Butcher. But the call ended better than expected.
“Hi Frank – it’s Len. Just wanted to thank you on behalf of the agency for figuring out how the poll results were hacked.”
“Yeah, well, it wasn’t actually all that difficult, once I finally figured out the right place to look.”
“That’s what I told my boss, but she insisted I call you anyway.”
You bastard, Frank thought. Then why didn’t any of your people think of it?
“Anyway, I wanted to let you know we’d like to keep you on the payroll, at least through a good part of the primary season. That way, if it looks like the hackers are at it again you’ll be available. Are you up for that?”
Of course, he thought. What’s not to like about all pay and no work?
“Sure, I guess. Why not?”
“Glad to hear it. If anything comes up, we’ll be in touch.”
Frank replaced the phone in his camper, and went back to staring out over the canyon. The primary season would begin in just a few weeks. Would the unknown hacker rise to that challenge? And if so, would he come up with as elegant a ploy again? He’d have to wait a few weeks for the answer to that question.
He began tapping his fingers on the arm of his chair. It had been uncommonly warm for this time of year. Any day now, the temperature would surely plummet. If he hung around at 8,500 feet much longer, he’d have to start working inside the camper – maybe he’d even get snowed in for a couple of weeks.
He was feeling restless. And he was ready to kill for a decent meal. It was time to move on.
* * *
12
Vive la Revolución!
Frank scrutinized the establishments on both sides of the main drag of Cedar City, Utah with consummate attention. He’d lost nine pounds, and it was payback time.
He’d left his campsite before sunrise, driving on dirt tracks for four hours before reaching a paved road. Now it was almost noon, and he had waited long enough. Impatient drivers swung around him as he rolled slowly up the street, compiling a mental index of every restaurant, bakery, ice cream parlor and other type of food emporium in town.
At the end of the street, he reshuffled his priorities and his order of attack while making a U-turn. So far, the ice cream shop was hanging on to first place; his very soul cried out to become one with the lush richness of one of their more complex offerings. But he was intrigued by the possibility that denying himself that reward until after dinner might amplify the intensity of the ingestive experience.
But what if his sense of taste was satiated by then? It seemed like too great a risk to take. Perhaps he should have one cone now, and another later?
The swirling visions of ice cream, pizza, and cheeseburgers that commanded his attention provided a welcome diversion from his latest obsession. Since early that morning, he had been feeling like Paul Newman in the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, constantly wondering, who are these guys? Now he was trying to devise a plan to answer that question. He told himself it was because it would be fun to show up Butcher’s boys one more time rather than that he was simply avoiding his book issue.
So far, he’d had no luck, in part because the hackers had withdrawn from the field. Nothing suspicious was probing his virtual system now. And the poll results he read in the news seemed like they might be tracking the reality of public opinion. So where to begin, with the trail now cold? Maybe a change of scenery would loosen up his thinking.
It was time to head back east, he decided. Not all the way, necessarily, but at least close enough to score the occasional creature comfort when the spirit moved him. That’s where he would drive next. But not until after lunch.
* * *
An hour and a half later, a painfully bloated and remorseful Frank Adversego wheeled his camper back onto Interstate 15, heading north. He thought he might be sick at any moment, and was beginning to think it might be a good thing if he was. Thank goodness the town’s main street wasn’t any longer.
Maybe thinking about his destination would distract him from his abdominal distress. His first highway option to head east would be Route 70, and the interchange linking the two highways was not far ahead. Route 70 would take him into Colorado. What was in Colorado? The Rocky Mountains? No sense stopping there. Too much snow.
Where did the highway go from there? He glanced at the road atlas on the passenger seat. Hmmm. Kansas. Was there anything in Kansas besides cornfields? What other options did he have?
There was a Route 76 heading northeast from Denver. That led to Route 80 in Nebraska. More cornfields.
He was about to flip the page back to Utah to see what lay farther north when he noticed where Route 80 went after it left Nebraska – Iowa.
Immediately, he was transfixed. That was where the first real test of the primary season would be held – the Iowa caucuses! If the hackers that had attacked the pollsters’ systems were still up to no good, wouldn’t that be where they’d strike next? He keyed Des Moines, Iowa into his dashboard GPS and glanced at the readout. Just over 1200 miles. He could be there in a couple of days.
* * *
Judd Powell was sitting alone in his car, parked for privacy behind a fast food restaurant a few blocks away from the motel where the rest of the Wellhead entourage was settling in.
“Yes, I was right beside him. I’m always right beside him. But what do you want me to do? Throw a bag over his head every time it looks like he might say something stupid?”
The voice at the other end of the line was characteristically icy. “I don’t care what you do. The reason I pay your unreasonable rates is so I don’t have to orchestrate your every move. Your job is to keep Wellhead from getting cornered by journalists to begin with.”
“How do you expect me to do that? He’s a candidate, for Pete’s sake! And if he doesn’t end up on the eve
ning news every night, then you’re calling me out for underexposing him!”
“That’s your problem, and I suggest that you solve it immediately. There are plenty of handlers that would jump at the chance to replace you.”
Powell gave an involuntary shiver, but not from the cold. This guy simply gave him the creeps. Getting screamed at by high strung clients was a given in his business. But yelling was easy to ignore. You just set the phone down until the guy was done blowing off steam.
But this guy never yelled. In fact, his voice never betrayed any emotion at all. When you were in the same room with him, his eyes never quit boring into your own. Lately, Powell had begun referring to his client as “the Cobra.”
He picked at the remainder of his cold fries. Oh well. To be fair, the reporter from the local network affiliate had caught Wellhead being even more asinine than usual, which was saying a great deal. Instead of letting the press lampoon the other candidates over their own ridiculous comments, Wellhead had tried to get in on the fun, with predictably disastrous results.
Powell turned his car on, and the radio picked up the evening news. He cringed as he listened to Wellhead’s unmistakable, folksy drawl utter the statement that had so delighted the liberal pundits – and infuriated his boss:
Well, I can assure you that if I’m successful in my quest for the Oval Office, I won’t just offer my opinion on whether Fidel Castro will end up in heaven or the other place. Nope, I’ll just send a few secret agents down to Cuba and force the Almighty’s decision on that matter…
That was as far as Wellhead got before Powell hustled him away from the reporter’s microphone. But it had been enough to guarantee him airtime on every radio and TV news show for the rest of the day. Powell braced himself for whatever commentary on his candidate’s remarks would follow. But instead, he heard this:
Former Cuban dictator Fidel Castro later published an editorial in which he wrote: “The selection of a Republican candidate for the presidency of this globalized and expansive empire is – and I mean this seriously – the greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance that has ever been.”
Powell couldn’t help smiling as the knot in his stomach began to loosen. Maybe that crazy old bastard of a revolutionary wasn’t such a lunatic after all.
* * *
A few blocks away, Randall Wellhead’s most trusted advisor put down the phone in his motel room. If his plan was to bear fruit, it was clear that he’d need to surround his candidate with additional layers of defense. Luckily, those defenses didn’t need to be perfect. A previous candidate from Texas had proven that you could be quoted making less than cogent statements on a consistent basis and still be elected president – not once, but twice. That was a reassuring bit of recent history.
No, all he needed was to keep Wellhead from going so far off the deep end that no one could believe it when the primaries started to turn in his favor, ultimately giving him enough delegates to sew up the nomination. Or later, when the election went his way as well.
He poured himself a scotch and settled in to watch the rest of the broadcast on POX News. Happily, Wellhead’s quote of the day wasn’t noticeably more off message than those of several of his rivals.
It would be an annoying challenge to keep his candidate in check until the election, but really, it didn’t matter all that much. He had already made sure that Randall Wellhead would be the next president of the United States.
* * *
White Crow sat at his desk, staring thoughtfully through the one-way glass at the sparsely attended casino floor on the other side. It was mid-afternoon on a weekday, and just a few early arrivals from the casino motel were sitting at the quarter slots. The only staffer present was the bartender, and he was leaning against the bar, watching one of the big TV screens on the wall.
The news he had received from Butcher – that the means by which the pollsters were being hacked had been discovered and blocked − was disappointing, but not in the way that Butcher had supposed. In fact, White Crow hadn’t been using Butcher’s polling data for betting purposes at all; that story had been for Butcher’s consumption alone. With all the money available to him from other sources there was no need for poll wagering. But having advance access to the pollster data – whether manipulated or not – had been very helpful to him in planning his own political moves. Now that Butcher’s agency was closing down its investigation, data would no longer be accessible.
Or would it? If Butcher’s agency had learned how to block the hack to the pollsters’ systems, then they must know how to unblock it as well. And also how the hacker had managed to manipulate the data to begin with. Being able to alter the public’s perception of who was the candidate most likely to win would open up possibilities he’d never dreamed of before.
He called Butcher.
“Hello?” Butcher was surprised to receive a call from Ohanzee so soon after his visit. He’d been hoping he could maintain a greater distance for at least a while, now that he no longer had access to any doctored polling information.
“I have some further questions. Tell me, have you informed the pollsters that they have been hacked?”
“Ohanzee, I can’t —”
“Answer my question.”
Butcher rose and closed his office door before returning to his desk and his private mobile phone. “No, and we don’t intend to. Nobody wants the public to know the integrity of the election has been compromised in any way. You can bet the pollsters will be happier not knowing. And anyway, we wouldn’t want to take the chance one of them would let the information slip out.”
“Good. So what action have you taken in response?”
Butcher squirmed. He had just told White Crow what his agency would not do, and the thought of revealing what his agency would do filled him with dread. Surely that had to raise the ante if he was ever caught.
“C’mon, Ohanzee. You know I can’t tell you anything like that. Please, you’ve got to cut me a break this time.”
Ohanzee was not surprised. He had already guessed that forcing Butcher to take this next step might require a face-to-face meeting.
“Perhaps you are right. But since we’re on the phone, I’m having a poker game Saturday night with a few close business associates. I’d like you to attend and I think it will be worth your while. Don’t worry about the cost. I’ll stake you and will send you the plane tickets.”
“Me? Why? And I thought you never gambled?”
“In the casino, no. But privately, on occasion. I find it helps me understand my customers better. We’ll start at 10:00 PM. I’ll see you then.”
* * *
13
Knock Knock (Who’s There?)
Frank shook his head in disbelief as he turned the radio off. Who could have predicted that someday talking media heads would look to Fidel Castro for a cogent assessment of an American primary season? Frank might be having a hard time writing a non-fiction book, but thank goodness he wasn’t trying to write a satire about U.S. elections. How would you parody a parody? All you could do would be to quote the actual candidates.
Anyway, that wasn’t his problem. What he was wrestling with was what to do when he got to Iowa. Heading to where the political action was had seemed like a great idea the day before. It wasn’t until he was well across Colorado that he remembered that Iowa was a caucus state, leaving almost no opportunities for a hacker to cause any mischief.
How could they? Votes would be hand-tallied in school cafeterias and community centers while the voters were still hanging around. Those tallies would be telephoned in to statewide party headquarters and added to a master list that would be reprinted in newspapers. Any attempt to tamper with the totals would be spotted immediately.
Maybe he should be heading for New Hampshire instead? They’d be using electronic voting machines there.
&nbs
p; But the New Hampshire primary was still ten days away. That would be a long time to hang around with nothing to do. Better to chill in Iowa for a couple of days and hope to catch the scent of something that might prove interesting.
* * *
It was a busy Friday night at Max’s Stockyard Steak House in Chicago. The popular restaurant was packed, and as always, Max Ginnople was standing at one of the vantage points he would frequent throughout the evening, taking in the carefully orchestrated bustle of the main dining room. He took pride in his establishment’s reputation for excellent service, and there was no better way to maintain it than for each employee to feel his critical eyes incessantly surveying the room.
Overhead, orange lights flickered in ranch lanterns attached to wagon wheel chandeliers, bathing the diners in barnyard ambience. The walls on three sides were festooned with longhorn cattle horns and sepia tinted photographs of stiffly-posed cowboys. On the fourth, the cheerful hubbub of the bar crowd tumbled over the shoulder-high, recycled horse stall barriers that divided the bar from the dining room. Max glanced at his watch with satisfaction: every table was full, and it wasn’t yet 6:30. It would be another good night.
He was paying particular attention just now to the hostess, and to the wait staff entering and exiting through the door that led to the private dining room. He wanted everything to come off without a hitch for the special party that had reserved it, so he crossed the dining room as soon as he noticed two men in dark suits appear in the vestibule.
“Good evening gentlemen. Are you with Mr. Barbash’s party?”
“Yes. We want to make sure everything’s in order before he arrives.”
“Of course, of course. May I take your coats and bags?”
“We’ll hang on to them, thanks.”
The Lafayette Campaign: a Tale of Deception and Elections (Frank Adversego Thrillers Book 2) Page 8
