Bio-Strike pp-4

by Tom Clancy

  “Eighty large is high—”

  “Not for us, it isn’t. And the total is a hundred thousand. Nonnegotiable. There’s a fifth member of the team at the control station.”

  Salazar gave him a look of hard appraisal.

  “Nonnegotiable,” he echoed.

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t like your position, I can take this contract elsewhere.”

  The little man’s eyes glittered.

  “You can,” he said. “But you won’t get the same thing we deliver.”

  Salazar kept looking at him. He motioned toward the Walther.

  “Your tricked-up piece doesn’t impress me,” he said. “I’m not concerned with anything but results.”

  “I understand that. This isn’t about flash. We just like people to know some of what’s behind our asking price.”

  Salazar was quiet. Then he released a long sigh.

  “Okay,” he said. “We have a deal.”

  The little man nodded.

  “We’d better go over tonight’s timetable,” he said.

  * * *

  The first application Ricci accessed on Palardy’s computer was his E-mail reader, thinking it would be the logical place to search for contacts. Before checking his address book, Ricci scanned the unopened messages on his queue. Most were from subscriber lists related to countersurveillance issues. A few were obvious junk mails. One was an order confirmation from an E-bookseller.

  Only the third description caught Ricci’s interest. It said:

  FROM SUBJECT RECEIVED

  DPALARDY@UPLINK.COM NONE 11/14/2000 4:36 AM

  Ricci turned to Nimec in the chair beside him, pointing toward the mailer’s address.

  “Look at that,” he said. “Palardy sent it to himself.”

  “Early Tuesday morning,” Nimec said.

  “Very early.”

  And almost a full day after anybody at UpLink last heard from him, both men thought.

  Nimec leaned forward. “Well, open it already. What are we waiting for?”

  Ricci highlighted the description on the screen, double-clicked his mouse, and read the contents of the email:

  RHJAJA00BHJM00WHRH!JM00WHBHJA00

  TJAJ00?!CAJBJTRH

  GWRHMVGCRHUGBHAJ00RHJBAJ00.

  RHBHCAJBJTRHGCBHGWJA00TJ: CARHJA00

  CATJJAOOUG?!BHJBJAMVGCRHJA00

  RHJBJA00RHGW!!

  RHJA“”ALRHMFTJJAUGRHBH

  :MVGCRHJA00TJJGWH!

  AJ00JPGCTJTJJA00UGRH!?

  JA00RHUGBHMVBHJARHJTRH

  JA00GWRHJB.JAMVJGTJJA

  00”“MVGCBHAJMV,TJGCJBJMJMRHJA

  JGTJJA00! CA!BHJTRHGWRH.

  He looked at Nimec again.

  “What the hell’s this?” he said.

  * * *

  In their full-faceplate biohazard ensembles they might have been astronauts exploring another world. But this was no alien landscape. This was the Gordians’s home and hillside, and the team of state and CDC virus hunters called in by Eric Oh had to comb every inch of their property for the dried rodent excreta known to transmit hantavirus to humans.

  The white space suits with their protective apparatus were burdensome and tiring to wear. Communication between team members was enabled only through two-way radio. Their air packs weighed forty pounds. Their thick, multilayered gloves made it difficult to get hold of things. Their heavy, steel-toed boots made walking itself a rigor.

  The suits could be hard on their surroundings as well. Preservation of Ashley’s lovingly maintained gardens was impossible in the scrupulous probe for contaminants. It was imperative to inspect any area that might be visited or inhabited by field mice and similar creatures. Her herb patch was dug up, delicate rosebushes were sheared, the mulch around her shrubs was shoveled and bagged. Climbing plants that had flourished on her arbors for a decade were lopped off near the ground, where the little mammals might forage among the root beds. In some instances, the bowers and trellises themselves had to be taken down for the biologists to get at likely sites for established nests or burrows. Dozens of traps were set for live specimens that would be tested for the presence of virus.

  Nor was the interior of the house spared these disruptive but necessary intrusions. Mice and voles common to the region used the smallest openings to enter and exit from the outdoors, and these were often found in places normally screened from sight. Furniture was moved, rugs lifted, carpets unstapled. Library shelves were cleared of books, wainscoting panels detached from the wall. Gordian’s cluttered basement workshop was virtually taken apart piece by piece. In the kitchen, cooking cupboards were emptied, and utensils and appliances were swept from their shelves. The built-in stainless steel refrigerator, freezer, dishwasher, ice maker, and wine captain had to be removed from their cabinets, their outer insulation pulled away. As outside the residence, many traps were laid.

  Miles to the south at Julia Gordian Ellis’s new home in Pescadero, a second group of investigators in moon suits conducted a procedurally identical hunt for the source of contagion. Forced to abandon the premises, Julia went to stay with a friend, bringing only her dogs and a suitcase full of clothing. Intense focus was put on the section of backyard where her father had been building his greyhound corral, the theory being he might have disturbed an underground rodent den while excavating soil for its posts. The standing section of fence was disassembled, its laboriously installed posts extracted from the ground.

  These painstaking efforts of course proved fruitless, for in the end, not a trace of virus was uncovered.

  * * *

  “Hello. Eric Oh, please.”

  “Speaking…”

  “Eric, it’s Steve Karonis over at Sobel Genetics. I know you asked me to call on your direct office line, but I must’ve misplaced the number. Had to go through the switchboard…”

  “No problem. What’ve you got on Gordian’s virus specimens?”

  “Everything is strictly unofficial, okay? Even with our whole staff on this, we need twenty-four hours minimum to make a reliable determination, and it hasn’t even been—”

  “It’s unofficial.”

  “All right, hold on to your seat. The PCR screening shows your isolate doesn’t match any known strain of hantavirus. Which from what you’ve already told me, shouldn’t come as a surprise—”

  “Then why am I still supposed to be worried about falling down?”

  “Because… and again, this is only based on initial results… but there appear to be RNA sequences that don’t occur naturally in the species. Or in the family. They’re at the regulation sites on the genome, right where you’d expect to find them if, well, components had been inserted—”

  “Are you telling me the virus was artificially modified?”

  “I’m telling you there are signs of genetic modification, yes.”

  The phone cradled between his neck and shoulder, Eric looked down at his hand.

  He was indeed holding on to his seat, literally holding on, his knuckles white as bleached bone.

  * * *

  “You want to say the words, or have I got to be the one who jumps first?” Ricci said from behind Palardy’s computer.

  Nimec’s eyes were still on the E-mail they had opened.

  “It looks like code,” he said. “Some kind of code.”

  “And we’re off into space.”

  “What do you make of it?”

  Ricci shrugged, staring at the screen in contemplative silence.

  “Be straight with me,” Nimec said. “When Hernandez was in here with us, I heard you question him about Palardy maybe leaving a notebook computer around here. I saw you look for it in the drawer. And that made me pretty sure you noticed more at Palardy’s house than you’ve let on.”

  Ricci turned to him. “How come you didn’t say anything to me?”

  “Figured you had your reasons for being quiet, and you would talk when you were ready.”

  Ricci nodded.

  “I wasn’t trying to keep
secrets,” he said. “I just like to have my thoughts in order before I lay them out. And I’m not sure that I do. That any of what’s on my mind makes sense.”

  “You asked me to jump, and I did,” Nimec said. “Your turn.”

  Ricci regarded Nimec another moment, then nodded again. He told him about the marks he’d seen on the door to Palardy’s condo, about the odd positioning of his body given the presumed cause of death, about the cables he’d noticed under Palardy’s desk.

  “I looked everywhere for a computer before the cops showed, Pete. And I can tell you there wasn’t one in the place,” Ricci said. “No computer, not a single diskette, either. And that bothered me. Bothers me even more now that we know Palardy sent an E-mail from some machine at a time we can assume he was at home.” He paused. “Another peculiar thing caught my eye before I left. Palardy’d installed one of those floor bolts behind the front door. Lets you open the door to see who’s outside when there’s a knock, and not have to worry about a robber pushing his way through. You trigger it with your foot from inside. Know the kind I mean?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, it wasn’t locked. You figure somebody goes to the trouble and expense of having something like that installed, he’s going to shoot the bolt while he’s home at night.”

  “So you think somebody opened the door with a credit card, reached inside to disengage it, let himself in. That it?”

  “Wouldn’t take a master thief,” Ricci said.

  Nimec looked curious. “Okay, say it happened. What’s next? The intruder lifts Palardy’s computer and data storage media for some reason?”

  “Yeah,” Ricci said. “Or maybe he kills Palardy first, then takes off with it—”

  “Hold on. You’ve told me yourself that Palardy was obviously sick.”

  “Sick isn’t dead, Pete. Sick can still talk.” He nodded at the screen. “Or send coded messages to his office.”

  Nimec didn’t comment for a while. Then he said, “Give me your theory.”

  “There are poisons that aren’t easy to detect or might be overlooked by a coroner if the vic’s already on his way out and somebody wants to speed along his exit. You used to be on the job same as me. How many times you respond to a sudden death call, take one look around, another at the DOA, and know on account of what you saw that it was a murder disguised as something else? An accident. A routine suicide. A heart attack. I’m telling you, Palardy’s body was arranged for viewing.”

  “You got that from the appearance of the scene, okay. I’m not doubting your eye. But where’s the connection to Gord in this? They’ve found virus in his blood specimens, so we know he wasn’t poisoned.”

  Ricci shot him a look. “We’re in thin air together, right? So just between us, Pete, what if the boss and Palardy were both infected with the virus? On purpose. If that’s the case, we don’t know what Palardy could have told us about it or who’d want to stop him from talking.”

  Nimec took a deep breath.

  “The cops and public health investigators are rushing Palardy’s autopsy. I’ll stay close to them. Make sure they conduct a toxicological exam for anything that could mimic or speed up the symptoms of the disease.”

  “Sounds good.”

  Nimec thought a minute. “Okay, then what? Let’s suppose they find Palardy and Gord were exposed to the same germ. Or turn up some forensics that would bear out your suspicions about the circumstances of Palardy’s death—”

  Ricci interrupted him. “There’s no reason we should wait for them to get that far. Wait for any of their results to gain ourselves a head start. And we goddamn well know there’s something funny about Palardy’s message. Why not have the people in our crypto unit put on their decoder rings?”

  “That’s already occurred to me,” Nimec said. “I can have them on it right aw—”

  He noticed the computer display unexpectedly go blank, and out of habit checked the power light to see whether it had lost current or gone into a sleep mode. Then cartoonish winged clocks and watches began floating across it in random patterns, satisfying his interest.

  “Screen saver,” he said, voicing his minor realization aloud. “Time flies.”

  Ricci glanced at the display. “Fits,” he muttered.

  TWENTY

  VARIOUS LOCALES NOVEMBER 16, 2001

  “Something like this, one look at it tells you almost as much as it doesn’t,” James Carmichael said without elaboration. He was seated behind Palardy’s computer, studying the enigmatic series of letters and punctuation marks in his E-mail.

  Nimec and Ricci exchanged glances from where they stood, bookending him. His statement itself struck them as a bit mysterious, but that was almost expected. Before Roger Gordian lured him into his employ, Carmichael had been a third-generation National Security Agency analyst, his grandfather having worked for the crypto-logic intelligence organization from the time of its Cold War inception by secret presidential memorandum — back when the government was still mum about its existence, and Washington insiders cheekily referred to the NSA acronym as standing for No Such Agency.

  “How about you walk us through,” Nimec said. “Starting with whether we’re all on the same page about it actually being a code, and not what happens when somebody’s out of his skull with fever and doesn’t know what he’s typing.”

  A thirtyish man in shirtsleeves with sharp blue eyes and a bumper crop of wavy black hair, Carmichael looked over his shoulder at Nimec.

  “Sorry,” he said. “The minute I start to sound condescending, permission’s granted to whump me across the back of the head.”

  Nimec smiled a little. “We’ll allow you one free pass.”

  “Deal.” Carmichael turned back to the screen. “Okay, first, I think we can rule out that it’s the product of an incoherent mind. It’s too systematic in its construction. I also think what we’ve got in front of us isn’t strictly speaking a code but a cipher. People use the terms as if they’re interchangeable, but there’s a distinction, and it’s important for more than semantic reasons. Codes substitute whole words with letters, numbers, symbols, phrases, or other words. Ciphers create substitutions for independent letters or syllables, and they allow for more complex communications. They’re the basis of modern electronic encryption. A good way to keep them straight might be to compare codes to ancient hieroglyphics or pictographs, ciphers to the alphabet. Imagine Shakespeare trying to write Hamlet using pictures on the wall, and it’ll be apparent why ciphertext is more refined and efficient.”

  “You can tell the difference right off?” Ricci said.

  “Usually, yeah.” Carmichael said. He indicated several spots on the lines of characters. “Frequent recurrences of letter groups are a fair giveaway that they’re replacing small linguistic units. See the letter pair, or bigram, ‘BH’? It appears ten, eleven times. You wouldn’t expect the same word to be repeated that often within a relatively short message… but a letter or syllable, sure. And then there’s the back-to-back use of the polygram ‘JM00’. That probably equals a double-letter combination in plaintext—”

  “Plaintext being…”

  “The words you’re trying to conceal,” Carmichael said. “As opposed to ciphertext, which would be the characters you’re using to conceal them.”

  Ricci was nodding his head. “That’s all there is to this nut, it should be easy to crack,” he said. “The regular… the plaintext… alphabet has twenty-six letters. Which means you’d have an equal amount of ciphertext groups, right? One group for each letter, A through Z. Run all the possible matches through a computer, how long would it take to kick out the one that lets you form real words that add up to real sentences instead of nonsense? Simple math, there are only so many possibilities.”

  Carmichael looked at him. “Your logic makes sense as far as it goes, but leaves us with a couple of big problems,” he said. “One, let’s assume Palardy’s ciphertext groups correlate to letters in the English alphabet, and not some other with a grea
ter or lesser number of characters. Figuring out that part might just be the first step toward getting to the clear — the hidden message — since we don’t know that there aren’t added levels of encryption. And two, any cipher worth the thought and effort needed to create it incorporates nulls. These could be letters, digits, symbols, maybe punctuation marks that don’t fit the system and can complicate things.”

  “Wouldn’t your computers be able identify them for that very reason?” Nimec asked. “Exclude them because they don’t fall into the pattern?”

  “With time,” Carmichael replied tersely, looking at him in a way that conveyed he was all too aware of its desperate shortage.

  Silence hung a minute. Then, from Nimec: “It’s crazy. Palardy composes a secret message before he dies, E-mails it here. He must want us to be able to get at it. I can’t see why else he goes to the trouble.”

  Carmichael nodded. “Agreed. Even if his purpose was to frustrate us, put us through our paces… and we don’t know it was… I still bet he’d provide a key. Either separately or hidden within the cryptogram.”

  “You think you can do it?” Nimec asked Carmichael. “Find the key, whatever Palardy’s intentions might’ve been?”

  “I’ll have my people go over every bit of data on this terminal’s hard drive. And any removable storage media he might have left behind. See what we learn from them.” A sigh. “I know we can do a successful cryptanalysis. Break the system without a key. But truthfully, I can’t estimate how long it would take. Could be hours, days, even weeks.”

  “Goddamn it.” Ricci frowned. “If Palardy wasn’t playing games with us… wanted to tell us something… what the hell was he thinking? Why bother encrypting his message?”

  “The only reason I can figure would be to keep it from whoever got into his apartment and carried away his notebook,” Nimec said.

  “If that’s it, he could have sent the message in plain language and then wiped it from his notebook’s memory,” Ricci said. “Reformatted his hard drive to be positive it couldn’t be recovered.”

  “Unless he was worried about somebody being able to pull it from our mainframe.”