Death of Secrets

by Bowen Greenwood

  "Wait!" Colleen yelled. "You forgot the password!" Hurriedly she reached for the mouse. Her hand came down over his, and she pushed to the appropriate location on the screen. In the other window, they saw the other visitor starting the program to monitor the system.

  "Thanks," he breathed, and went to type in a password. His face turned to hers and his eyes sparkled for just a moment as he said, "I know the perfect one."

  Colleen was still trying to decide whether to ask what it was or urge him to hurry when she saw the password typed out on the screen.

  "KH12."

  She beamed at him, but he was already looking back at the screen, closing the window where they'd been sabotaging the code. "One last thing," he breathed, his voice tight with the knowledge that they could be found out at any time.

  "The log," she agreed. "Do you have time?"

  Jakarta glanced at the screen. "Their security program takes a few seconds to load," he replied. "I think I can make it."

  He made a couple mouse clicks, opened the file that logged all connections to the server, and deleted the entry for their connection.

  He closed that window. He broke their connection.

  CHAPTER 13

  "Did we get away?"

  "Yeah. He would have cut us off if he'd seen us."

  "Are you sure?" Colleen pressed.

  "As sure as I’m going to be," the hacker replied.

  "You have to go back at this time tomorrow?"

  "Yeah."

  "Well, I guess you’ll find out for sure then whether you got caught or not."

  He nodded and shrugged. "But by then we should have you and your friends back to your normal life. Tomorrow morning I’ll get some guys to drive you back to your hotel."

  ***

  Carlos first dialed the NSA. When he reached Jacobs, he said, "They broke their connection right after I logged on. I think they were monitoring us again, keeping an eye out for anyone else on the network. I'm not sure whether they had time to finish or not before they left."

  Jacobs grunted. "Well, it doesn't matter that much. We got their location out of it – they're in some high-rise apartment complex on Wisconsin Avenue. I've got an agent out to roust Judge Wrolski right now. We'll have him in custody before the night's over."

  Carlos wasn't quite as sure about that. Kathy – he had no doubt she and her friends were behind the attack – had proven pretty darn hard to catch up ‘til now. And if the reports he'd had were anything to go by, Jacobs was actually helping them. He wondered if the man knew whom he was likely to find on the other end of his chain of traced IP addresses. But by way of answering, he said, "I hope you nail him. If you need any testimony from us, count on having it."

  "I will," Jacobs agreed. "Any idea what they were up to?"

  "Well, I haven’t fully analyzed everything yet," Carlos replied, which was true. "But at this stage it looks like the same thing I told you about earlier. Possibly trying to modify our code, maybe put in their own back door."

  He heard Jacobs growl on the other end of the phone, then say, "Well, I’ll have him in custody shortly, and he can tell us what back door he put in."

  Carlos agreed and then signed off. His next call was to D.W. Tilman. The groggy answer on the other end of the line told Carlos he'd woken the man up. Well, too bad. He'd want to know about this.

  "You'll need to come in," were his first words of the phone call.

  "Carlos? What time is it? You are aware that I've got a very important meeting tomorrow, right?"

  "I know," Carlos replied. "But I'm about to roll up Katherine Kelver and company, and you said you wanted a chance to deal with the Congressman yourself. If we can have them taken care of by tomorrow morning, it would make your meeting go a lot easier, wouldn't it?"

  "OK," Tilman agreed. "Yeah, I'll come into the office. You going to meet me there?"

  Carlos answered in the negative. "No, I'm going out after them. I'll bring them back here and you can talk to them."

  Tilman grunted. "OK, but since you've gone to the trouble of waking me up, you'd better actually have them when I get in. Remember, I want to talk to them. Don’t kill them before."

  "I understand."

  His next call was to the specialists he hired for this kind of work. The average Joe’s he kept on staff as security guards at the building weren’t nearly qualified, and letting all of them in on the operation would be a security risk. Instead, he dipped into the deep pool of disgruntled muscle available in Washington. For the right price, men with paramilitary training and a decent helping of brains were always available.

  The people Carlos hired billed themselves as a security firm, though in fact the things they did were more about breaking through other people’s security than enhancing their own. He’d checked out their camouflage quite thoroughly himself before hiring them.

  In fact, the people of Stiletto Security were paramilitary operatives, all of them. They had helped him set up the hit on Harrison. They had helped him try to snatch Kathy off the street The fees they charged him had gone up substantially since two of their number had died in the raid on Vincent’s home, but they were still worth it. It took less than two minutes on the phone to hire four of their people and one of their vans for a quick bit of work.

  Carlos hung up and walked out of his office. He rode the elevator down to the ground floor and walked up to the security desk. The guards there greeted him.

  The entryway was brightly lit during the day, but at night it had a creepy emptiness to it. Carlos tried not to let it bother him, but the vast open space, echoing tile floor, and distant walls gave it a spooky feel.

  The man behind the desk in the front lobby was the night shift manager of the security guards. He had two other people on duty with him tonight, one patrolling the building and the other patrolling the grounds. All of them knew Carlos by sight – as the director of security, he briefed them daily when they came on duty.

  "Jerrold, I've got some clients coming in a little bit who are pretty uptight about wanting to keep their business with us quiet," he told the manager. "Why don't you and the rest of your shift take the rest of the night off, they don't want to see anybody but me in here when they arrive."

  Jerrold chuckled. "More guys from the CIA, boss? They're sure paranoid."

  Carlos had done this last night, too, when he brought John in here. His guards weren't privy to the truth about the GigaStar project and the means they were using to keep it secure. None of them were overly bright, in Carlos's estimation, and he didn't want to take the risk of them blabbing it.

  Carlos gave him a knowing smile. "You know I can't say. But don't worry. You get paid for a full night's work and only have to put in half of it."

  Jerrold smiled. "Won't get any complaints from me, boss." With that he lifted his radio to let the two patrolling guards know.

  Carlos walked out of the building and headed over to his reserved parking place. On the way he caught sight of the guard, walking inside after getting the radio call. He opened the driver’s door of his Mercedes and got in. If he could, he wanted to get to Kelver before Nathan did. And if he couldn't, maybe he could kill her before she spilled the beans.

  ***

  As it happened, the NSA people hadn't even needed to wake anyone up. Judge Wrolski – one of the NSA's favorite FISC judges – was up late watching a TV movie with his wife, and gruffly signed the warrant after being shown a letter indicating that the investigation involved national security. The NSA liked Wrolski because he pretty much always just rubber stamped their requests.

  The local FBI field office had been equally easy to put in motion. According to the legal delineation of duties, Nathan’s agency had responsibility for spying on the electronic communications of people planning activities that threatened the U.S. Government. But when they left the electronic world behind and had to put actual law enforcement personnel on the ground, that was the job of the FBI, at least within the country’s borders.

  Jacobs m
ade the call to the FBI field office and gave them their marching orders. Not long thereafter he rode along through the streets of Washington in one of three unmarked cars, on his way to the hacker's location. They still had no idea who they were about to catch, but it didn't matter. In a lot of electronic crime cases, agents ended up waking unknowing parents when they knocked on the door and hauled off some teenage kid who they'd assumed was up late doing his homework. But they weren't all that easy. All of the agents were armed, in case this one turned out to be more threatening than a pimply faced kid.

  Technically, there wasn't much reason for Jacobs to go along, but he enjoyed a show much as the next guy. Since he didn't have any specific duties on the raid tonight, his mind was free to wonder about other things. Were Mike and Kathy on Jakarta's trail, had they just gotten his help to decrypt the drive, or had they actually started working with him? Had they gotten so desperate to find what was on that flash drive that they made an ally of a known criminal? He didn't think Mike would do that, but he was less sure about Kathy. And he knew that Mike would follow Kathy just about anywhere.

  His conscience nagged him about the fact that he had never reported this to his chain of command. Knowing some kind of crime was being committed – at the very least, someone had committed attempted murder on the Congressman – and not doing anything went against every professional scruple he had. Jacobs wondered idly whether Mike understood just how far out on a limb he had gone for him.

  If Vincent didn't turn up soon, Nathan decided, he was going back to going by the book, whether the Congressman wanted it or not.

  ***

  Colleen paced the room. Hugh/Jakarta had led her to a bedroom – not much more than a mattress and a sleeping bag – before going off to his own. There was a time in her life she would have followed him to his, but… maybe Kathy was rubbing off on her.

  Finally she pulled on her pants and a T-shirt. Silently, she tiptoed to the door.

  Whenever she couldn't sleep, Colleen fooled around with a computer. It was her security blanket, her good book, her warm bath, and her television. The computer was Colleen's all-purpose feel-good pill, and now she wanted to play with one.

  She padded silently down the hall until she found the computer room. She eased the door open. The chilly night air raised goosebumps on her arms.

  She didn't click a light on; she rarely bothered. The monitor was more than bright enough. One of these computers was bound to have Call of Duty on it.

  A new box perched on the table, next to the computer she and Jakarta – Hugh – had been using. Generally square in shape, it looked to Kathy like it might be a flat screen monitor. But a closer look belied that. The surface was gray and dull, rather like the touch pad on a laptop computer. But it couldn't be a mouse, it was way too big and cumbersome, no one would use a surface that big as a pointing device. It was literally as big as the monitor next to it.

  Colleen leaned over the top of it. The back side was open, with circuit boards and wires showing. The light was too dim to make out many details but it looked pretty haphazard, as if it had been thrown together from spare parts. She pondered going to the light switch and turning it on, to have a better look at the thing. But then she noticed the wire going out the back. She took it in hand, and followed it a short distance to see that it was plugged into the back of the computer she'd been using earlier with Hugh.

  She'd been so fascinated by the device itself that she hadn't looked at the computer screen yet. Now she gave the monitor a look to see if she could find anything there about what it was.

  Her mouth dropped open. Only her quick reaction to lock her jaw shut saved her from screaming. On the screen, she saw a simple text window, tracking input.

  >New subject acquired.

  >Subject expresses interest in object to front.

  >Subject studies object.

  >Subject expresses interest in new object.

  >Subject self-identifies as COLLEEN CHRISTINA.

  >Fight or flight reflex triggered.

  >Onset of mild panic.

  >Subject expresses strong interest in object to front.

  >Subject feels extreme anger.

  >Uncatalogued input.

  >Fight or flight reflex triggered

  >Subject begins moving at high speed.

  >Identified input: "I've got to tell kathy and mike!"

  Colleen hurried down the hall as fast as she could, not seeing the screen in the room behind her as it registered the recurring thought, "That liar!" Her second thought was to remember the diagram and other files he’d given to Jerry. "Analyze the code?" she whispered to herself as she searched for her friends. "You gave him those so he could build you your own copy of this gadget you said was so evil."

  Not knowing what else to do, she started trying random doors as quietly as she could. The first door opened to a storage room. She shut that and tried the next. That was an unused bedroom, and she moved on. The third door she opened looked like a workshop.

  Colleen paused for a moment and looked around. She saw soldering irons, coils of electrical wire, circuit boards lying about, and a number of other gadgets. This, she had no doubt, was where Jerry had built their oversized version of the GigaStar "wiretapping device." The original design might be smaller than a pencil’s eraser, but that kind of miniaturization required a state of the art manufacturing facility.

  Clearly in a place like this, he wouldn’t have the tools to make anything even half that small. The greater size of the device she’d seen was simply a matter of low budget. She shook her head to chase out the random thoughts, reminding herself that Jakarta or Jerry could wake up at any minute. Colleen went back to looking for Kathy.

  The next door she tried was another unused bedroom, and she began to wonder just how big an apartment Jakarta rented for himself. Though of course, since he just stole whatever money he needed, there was no practical limit on the size of his place. Cursing again about her mind’s tendency to wander, she opened another door.

  A king-size bed filled up most of the floor space. In the middle of it, snoring lightly, lay Jerry. The leading edge of a screech slipped out of her lips before she clamped her jaw shut, and Jerry stirred in his bed. She held her breath and didn’t move, praying he wouldn’t come fully awake. For a full ten seconds she stood there, staring and praying.

  The snores resumed.

  Breathing a quiet sigh of relief, Colleen closed that door ever so gently. Her random trial and error finally led her to the kitchen.

  There she found Mike and Kathy. Without apologizing at all for barging in she said, "Come on, you've got to see this!"

  Kathy and Mike looked a little startled, but both stood up and followed after Colleen as she led them out of the room.

  When Mike and Kathy didn’t move as quickly as her, Colleen said, "Hurry! I gotta show you guys this. And be quiet, we don't want to wake Hugh." She laced the name with a generous dollop of venom.

  Once she found the door and led them in, Colleen walked right up to the monitor and pointed at it silently.

  "So what?" Kathy asked. "So he can afford a flat screen monitor. We noticed that before…"

  Kathy noticed what was on the screen just as she finished her sentence.

  >Subject COLLEEN CHRISTINA reacquired, identified from file.

  >Second subject acquired.

  >Third subject acquired.

  >Subject two feels confusion.

  >Subject two says "So what? So he can afford a flat screen monitor. We noticed that before."

  >Subject COLLEEN CHRISTINA feels frustration.

  >Subject two feels amazement.

  >Fight or flight reflex triggered in subject two

  >Subject three experiences interest in topic "Kathy."

  >Subject two self-identifies as KATHERINE KELVER.

  >Uncatalogued input from subject three concerning topic "Kathy."

  >Subject KATHERINE KELVER feels embarrassment.

  >Subject three self identifies a
s MICHAEL VINCENT

  >Subject MICHAEL VINCENT feels strong interest in object to front.

  >Fight or flight reflex triggered in subject MICHAEL VINCENT

  >Subject MICHAEL VINCENT feels strong embarrassment.

  Colleen broke the silence. "See? See? He wasn't just sabotaging it! He was building his own! He lied to me! He totally lied! I wonder if his name is even Hugh!"

  Kathy found her voice. "This… this… this reads our minds?"

  Colleen nodded. "It receives and interprets the functional radiation of a human brain."

  "But… but… how?"

  "We went through this earlier, Kathy. Your brain radiates when you think, just like any system that uses electricity. And just like a radio antenna receives and interprets the radiation of a radio broadcast, this receives the radiation your brain broadcasts."

  "But how does it know what I'm thinking?"

  "I showed you earlier, remember? The pattern matching library? Obviously the programmers have identified a number of patterns of human thought-radiation and catalogued them. When the computer receives the input that your brain radiates out, it compares it against that library and prints the result. Did you see the "uncatalogued input"? Those are thoughts it hasn't cataloged yet."

  A skeptical frown crossed Kathy’s face. "Jakarta can’t have identified all that many thought patterns or whatever already! He just got the flash drive tonight."

  "No, Kath, The original authors did that, Electron Guidewire, remember? He just stole their flash drive with the code on it."

  Finally Michael spoke. "But… but… this can't be GigaStar. It's huge! GigaStar is smaller than an eraser head on a pencil."

  Colleen growled. "I'm sure this little jerry-rigged operation didn't have the miniaturization capability that a full fledged factory would have. For something built by hand, it's pretty good. But we don't have time for this! We have to get out of here and tell someone!"