by Bruce Buff
“I appreciate what she did. Something just didn’t feel right about her, there was definitely something odd and unsettling.”
“Given how your life’s going lately, the last thing you should trust is your instincts.”
“I’d be careful. Those are the same instincts that are telling me to help you.”
“Maybe they need to be recalibrated for different circumstances.”
“Perhaps. Nonetheless.”
“Get over it. I know Trish Alighieri really, really well. She did incredible things for Ava. Perhaps just think of that,” Stephen answered in an sharp-edged voice.
“I’m sorry I upset you. Maybe it’s just my state of mind,” Dan said, while thinking he knew what he knew, even in his present, less than optimal, state.
“Your car is just to the left of the front door. Why don’t you pull it up while I wait for Ava?” Stephen suggested while handing Dan the keys, still sounding a bit annoyed. “By the way: Trish is going to be at the Cape for the afternoon. She is going to help out a doctor at Falmouth Hospital and visit a patient.”
Dan couldn’t decide whether he was pleased or annoyed by the news.
Chapter 22
Dan stood in Stephen’s front yard waiting to leave for the Cape. The drive back from the hospital had been mostly silent, the atmosphere tense.
The sky was overcast, like his mood had once again become.
Thinking back to his meeting with Ava’s doctor, Dan was surprised that Stephen was so offended by his reaction. At worst, it was nothing more than awkwardness. He felt indignant at Stephen’s response and questioned his decision to help him.
Anger and resentment began to occupy his mind. He felt himself being dragged toward the same dark places that he had been pulled toward in recent weeks. The only thing that kept him from seeing what was there was the dread that he might not be able to return, that what had been him would be gone, replaced by a shell. But he was weakening, and the assaults on his resistance were becoming more frequent—almost voices—and harder to overcome. A climactic battle was coming, and he feared its outcome. Everywhere he turned, he saw pointlessness and futility. Everything was a lie.
He began walking toward his car, tempted to get in and drive home.
As he passed a thick-trunked tree in the middle of the front yard, he was so wrapped up in his inner thoughts that he didn’t notice the tip of a sneaker sticking out at the base of the tree. Too late, he heard a whump and instinctively started to go into a tuck position. Something hard, smooth, and damp slammed into his cheek and he fell to the ground. A weight pounced on his chest and he heard high-pitched laughter. Looking up, he saw Ava’s beaming face above him.
“You used to be quicker than that.” Laughing, Ava added, “I’m sorry the ball hit you in the face. I was aiming for your body but you ducked. Are you all right?”
Dan blinked several times as his vision cleared and the dark thoughts vanished, replaced by gradual warmth. He was not too far gone to appreciate the joy of children, especially this one, and their naïve optimism. It gave him something to hold on to.
After a moment, he smiled and said, “If you weren’t such an angel, I’d say you were being devilish. Of course you know I allowed you to do this.”
“You’re not kidding anyone. You didn’t even know where I was. I kicked the ball pretty hard, didn’t I?”
“You sure did. Must have been practicing a lot since the last time I saw you; maybe even taking steroids to get stronger.”
Ava gave him a weird look, and he realized she probably didn’t even know what steroids were. But then Ava slapped his chest and said, “Tag! You’re it,” and sprinted off.
Dan chased her around bushes, trees, and other obstacles. While he was faster, she was quick, short, and more nimble, changing directions in a flash or ducking under most of his attempts to tag her. They did this for several rounds, alternately tagging each other and running off. Dan slipped on the damp grass a few times, streaking his jeans in the process. The exertion felt good. Ava’s laughter and squeals felt better. He was no longer aware of his earlier, dismal thoughts.
Then Ava ran to the soccer ball and launched another shot at him. Alert this time, he caught it and handed it back to her as she hugged him around his waist.
Dan said, “You weren’t going to get me twice like that, even though you are smarter than the average bear.”
Looking perplexed, Ava replied, “Who said bears are smart?”
Laughing, Dan answered, “You need to watch The Yogi Bear Show.”
“Is he that guy in the commercial with the talking duck?”
“Yogi Bear, not Yogi Berra! Man, kids today really are missing out on the good things. We’re going to have to watch old cartoons together this weekend.”
Before Ava could reply, the front door opened, and Nancy appeared in the doorway and called out, “Okay you two, time to cut it out. Ava, come on in and take a shower. Dan, Stephen will be out in a minute.” Ava walked into the house. Nancy smiled, winked at Dan, then went back inside, closing the door behind her.
While waiting, Dan tried juggling the soccer ball. Although the sky was still overcast, he felt sunny. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but he felt that the dark places were no longer a threat. He was not going to vanish into an abyss.
Leaning back against the tree from which Ava had sprung, he filled his lungs with the late-spring air. This far north, plants bloomed late, especially after a cold spring like this year’s. While the lilacs were almost past peak, and the lavender was just emerging, they still scented the air. The rhododendrons had yet to put on their show. He marveled at the beauty of the world. With the darkness pushed back, the tension was gone as well, and he felt a pleasant, relaxed tiredness that reflected the sleep he still needed to catch up on.
His brief rest was interrupted by Stephen striding out of the house carrying his suitcase and computer bag. Smiling at Dan, he said, “Don’t tell me a little girl just out of the hospital wore you out that quickly?”
“She’s pretty athletic. Obviously takes after her mother.”
Dan wondered whether Stephen’s friendliness was real or feigned. How could he put their disagreements behind him so easily?
Together they walked to the car. Dan turned to Stephen, tossed him the keys, and said, “Since I’m such a tired old man, you’d better drive.”
Looking surprised, Stephen said, “Now that’s a first. How do I merit such an honor?” Dan almost never let anyone drive his cars. He was known for needing to feel in control.
“You don’t. I need to rest since I was up most of the night getting stuff ready for you, “ Dan replied, exaggerating his lack of sleep. But he was tired, thought he could nap, and wanted to take advantage of it while he could. The respite from his restlessness might prove brief.
Stephen’s eyes widened, belying his characteristic calm. “Did you finish figuring out my cyber-security setup already?”
“I just need to show you how to use it once we get to the Cape. And I need to decide how much to charge you,” Dan said in jest and with a broad smile.
“We can discuss that so-called fee later,” Stephen replied as they got into the car. “If this is all it took, I need to get you out more.”
“As I said yesterday, make things interesting enough and I might be game.”
“Now it’s your turn to be careful what you ask for.”
“I can handle it.”
“I wasn’t so sure of that when I saw my daughter getting the better of you.”
Remembering the morning, Dan straightened up and asked, “Is Ava really okay?”
“She’s fine, thank God.”
Dan thought, For what, not being as cruel as usual?
As the car accelerated onto the road, Dan drifted off, hoping for reasons to believe in a better life.
Chapter 23
> The midday sunlight bounced off the vigorous chop, spraying dancing patches of white light across the walls of the second floor study that overlooked the beach. A brisk sea breeze easily penetrated the screened windows, filling the room with marine-scented air that infused Dan’s lungs and invigorated him. In the distance, Martha’s Vineyard’s contours were clearly visible, while closer to shore, a regatta of sailboats from nearby Falmouth Harbor erased a winter’s worth of creases from their sails as their crews competed to reach the next mark.
After a ninety-minute drive that seemed far shorter, Dan was in Stephen’s summer home.
With Stephen standing nearby, Dan opened an old brown Coach satchel, pulled out a metal-cased laptop and flip-style cell phone, and placed both on the desk that faced the windows and the water. As Stephen reached for the computer, Dan said, “Remember, this is a two-way street. In exchange for what I’m doing, you’re going to tell me everything about your work. With the risks I’m taking, I have a right to know.”
Stephen answered, “Agreed. But after a major experiment on Tuesday. I’ll know a lot more myself then.”
“Why not tell me now?”
“We’re just getting comfortable with each other again. I need to reestablish my credibility with you before I explain some remarkable things, and having the evidence from the experiment will be helpful. Also, to be honest, I want to know more about your state of mind.”
“Fine. Keep in mind that my security requires dual keys to access it. I provide one for accessing the servers and you pick another for encrypting your directories. Without mine, which I can change anytime, you can’t do anything,” Dan replied.
“I guess that makes us partners.”
“I suppose, except at the moment, I’m the one at legal risk with the technology I’m giving you.”
“Then why are you doing this?”
“Based on what you’ve told me, you need the best tools to protect your work. I’m the only one who can get you them. Plus, perhaps I think I’m too clever to be caught, or in my state of mind I don’t care much about what happens, or maybe I just like the idea of putting you at risk with me,” Dan said with a half-smile.
“I like the first reason more than the last three,” Stephen said.
“They’re a package deal. Anyway, for starters, the computer and cell phone are both as secure as any device of their kind in the world. No one, not even the government, should be able to get data off this computer without your consent. The cell phone has a special secure channel that cannot be hacked, tapped, or listened in on. It’s a flip phone because it’s a more secure interface and was easier for me to obtain. I have a secure smartphone, and we can use them to communicate with each other. There are two other important parts of the setup. The first is encryption—how we prevent unauthorized people from reading whatever you’re working on or storing. The second is network masking—how we prevent people from monitoring your communications, or in fact even knowing that you are communicating, whether with another person or with remote servers. You’ll need help with both of these. As I’m sure you know, encryption is a series of steps that translates comprehensible data into apparently random gibberish. The trick to it is to set up sufficiently complex translation steps and the key that determines how those steps operate. The longer the key, the more difficult it is for someone to crack the code and access whatever it is you have encrypted. Got it?”
“Yes.”
“Good. The next part of this is the masking. If people don’t know you’ve stored anything, they can’t find it and try to decode it. However, in today’s day and age, almost anything can be monitored. Network sniffers, hacking into Web servers, wireless snooping, really any technology you can imagine can be used to monitor electronic communications.”
“Your old colleagues in the government have made this abundantly clear. What can we do about it?”
“The trick is misdirection, masking, and physical separation. If you break things into enough pieces, send them to lots of different directions, make it seem like they’re something else, and have them appear to jump out of the network only to reappear in a disconnected point that’s off the monitored grid, then you stand a pretty good chance of being unobservable. And that’s really important, because what can’t be decrypted today might be easily decoded in the future with much faster computers.”
“Where are the computers you’re using? And where’s the data storage?”
“All over the place. Mostly cloud-based. Some privately hosted.”
“I’m impressed. I knew I asked the right person for this.”
“Don’t forget, there’s significant risk to both of us. You’ll be in possession of classified capabilities, and I’ll have broken federal laws in giving them to you. We could be charged with serious criminal offenses.”
“I’d be happy if that’s our biggest risk,” Stephen said.
“They’re not our only computer risks.”
“What do you mean?”
“Watch what I found out a little while ago,” Dan said, then opened his computer.
After a few moments a network diagram with a lot of dots and lines connecting them appeared. One green dot near the center had a green circle around it. A little to the right side of it, a blue dot had a blue circle around it.
Dan pointed to the green dot and said, “That dot represents the internet gateway for your network at HBC. The blue dot represents the remote server I’m using. Watch what happens when I initiate a transmission that appears to try and hack in to HBC.” Dan entered a few commands. A line between Dan’s server and the HBC gateway pulsed briefly. Immediately afterward, a line pulsed from HBC to a dot on the far left. Then several lines from the far left pulsed briefly to the blue dot that Dan had initiated the original command from. Periodically, the pulses repeated.
“See that? My attempt to probe HBC triggered a reaction from a monitoring layer outside of HBC to other servers that then sought to probe me. Of course, I let them see my server, or at least what they think is my server.”
“So HBC has good security and is trying to track you down. Why is that a bad thing?”
“It’s not that simple. Now watch this.” Dan entered a few more commands, and lines pulsed from his server to the servers that had sought him. Rapidly, a myriad of lines pulsed from the left of the screen and seemed to besiege his server, trying to find a path from that location to the computer in front of him and their location. “What you’re watching is a widespread cyber attack that has figured out my server is a dummy server and is trying to find us. They won’t succeed, at least not today. I’ve terminated all connections. What’s particularly interesting is the origin of the attacks and the HBC monitors.” Dan hit a function key and a map was superimposed over the network diagram. The far left of the screen was all within China. “Do you want to explain to me why a large number of Chinese hackers, which is what these network addresses belong to, have to do with HBC, and why such sophisticated technology is being used to monitor your company? While Chinese hackers are commonplace, they usually try to break into things, not keep others out.”
Stephen got up, walked to the window, looked at the water, and said quietly, “I can’t answer that.”
“You can’t or won’t?” Dan demanded.
“Can’t. Though maybe you can help me find out,” Stephen challenged.
“You’re going to have to let me,” Dan replied.
Stephen looked back at computer screen as a large number of lines pulsed all over in an ongoing attempt to find them. He nodded, then said, “How are you able to find all of this out without being observed yourself?”
“I made sure that I initiated my probing using proxy servers that are set up specially to capture and transmit this information without being monitored themselves. I also used a ‘ghosted’ server for my communications. It seems physically real, in a specific location, when in fact it
’s not. A non-network relay, untraceable unless you know where to physically look for it, routes communications to my computer here.”
“Impressive. Why do you have this setup?”
“I got bored with my agency work and wanted an anonymous way of operating.”
“Can you find out what’s going on with those other computers?”
“I can try. Watch this,” Dan said, entering a few commands.
Moments later, the screen pulsed with lines flashing from the China-based networks to a new dot on the map.
Dan pointed to it. “Do you know where that is?”
Looking at the superimposed map, Stephen said, “It’s near DC.”
“It’s actually a secret computer facility for the NSA. By now, alarms are going off and they are going to do everything they can to find out the source of the attacks and deal with them. They’ll do our work for us, without even knowing it.”
“You like playing with fire.”
“The heat reminds me I’m alive.”
“Get too close to it and that won’t be a question you’ll be able to ask again.”
“How did you get involved with an outfit like HBC?” Dan asked.
“They had been pursuing me for a while, but I wasn’t interested. Then I had Ava’s genome tested for predispositions for a set of inheritable diseases that new tests could detect. Ava’s showed the potential to develop a nasty form of leukemia. I decided to join HBC to find a treatment for it in the event she might need it. Our research also looks at the possibility of gene editing, and I want to know where that is going and what I can do to help direct its ethical use. Shortly after I joined HBC is when I discovered the DNA coding, and I formed a small team, with Alex, to try to decode it. After Alex died, I put the decoding on hold and focused on understanding what I already had. Soon thereafter, Ava did actually develop leukemia, but not as nasty a type as we first feared.”
