The Gillespie Five (A Political / Conspiracy Novel) - Book 1 (42)

by T. K. Harris

  "Move it!"

  His anger flared but he quickly squelched it. He knew the drill about how to act during captivity. Stay quiet, don't make a scene and be as cooperative as you can without giving away anything sensitive. Not that he had anything to give away. At least not anything they would know about.

  He followed a guard down the hall, into a series of twists and turns that even he had trouble remembering, until he was led up a set of stairs he recognized as the ones that led outside. A wave of intense heat slammed into him as the door opened and he was led back into the fenced off yard. It was like stepping into a heated oven.

  Ignoring the heat, Alex blinked rapidly against the glare of the harsh desert sun and looked for Tommy. He quickly found him standing by himself in the far corner of the yard. Nodding to the others, Alex walked over to his nephew, approaching slowly.

  "Tommy?"

  Tommy started, looking at his uncle for a moment as if he didn't recognize him. Alex waited until recognition set in before sitting down beside him. He kept a few feet between them as Tommy seemed to be having an issue with proximity.

  "How are you doing?"

  Tommy looked past the fence, staring into the desolate area beyond. After a time he responded with, "Okay."

  "Good. You know, we're going to get out of here soon right?"

  The corner of Tommy's mouth quirked. "Right."

  "Tommy. Look at me."

  He waited a few minutes then adopted a tone he'd heard Karen use with her son. "Tommy. I said look at me."

  Tommy looked up. Alex made sure he had eye contact before saying, "I promise you, I will find a way to get us out of here. Do you understand?"

  Tommy nodded and started to turn back.

  "Tommy."

  He looked at his uncle again.

  "Do you believe me?"

  Alex waited while Tommy stared at him, emotions flitting across his face. Fear, doubt, hope, doubt, anger, despair. Finally he seemed to come to a decision. "Yes. I believe you. I just don't know how you're going to do it."

  "I-"

  "Alex Moore!"

  He turned to see a guard standing at the door. "Time's up." Alex sighed. "I gotta go kid. You just remember what I said, okay?"

  Tommy's face held worry as he glanced at the guard and then back to his uncle.

  Slowly, Alex reached out and patted him on the arm. "It'll be fine, kiddo."

  "Move it!"

  Tommy looked at the guard and muttered, "Asshole."

  Alex heard, chuckling in response. "Asshole and then some."

  Alex saw a smile flicker across his nephew's face. It was gone as quickly as it had appeared but Alex smiled in response before turning toward the guard. The brief smile had stirred a bit of hope that his nephew just might be okay. Eventually.

  The loud guard led him to the interrogation room and Alex began to mentally prepare himself. Things had not been as bad the last few days, but that didn't mean they wouldn't change their minds.

  The door opened and Alex clenched his jaw as he caught sight of the doctor. He had seen very little of her recently, and though Tommy had mentioned how she had been nice to him, Alex knew that it had been coupled with periods of drug induced interrogations.

  His thoughts, as he gazed at the doctor, moved from anger to wariness to an attraction that he couldn't bring himself to accept. Under normal circumstances if she weren't who she was and he wasn't where he was, he could understand it. She was a petite, beautiful, strong and intelligent woman. But she and the people she worked with had caused his nephew possible irreparable harm. And that he could not reconcile.

  Moving to the far corner of the room, he crossed his arms and waited.

  011001010110001101101111011011010110010100100000

  The initial flutter in her chest that Jane had started experiencing each time she saw Alex quickly died at the look of guarded anger he now gave her. Why this bothered her she didn't know; she had to admit to herself it was understandable. After all, with her line of work, she was well liked by anyone really. Just once, she wished someone understood what she was doing and why.

  Mentally shrugging it off, she reached in her bag to press the scrambler. She had asked the guard to wait until she was ready and then help her test the recording system to make sure it was working. When she was ready and knew it wouldn't work, she motioned for him to step outside and then spoke. "This is Doctor Lyndsay speaking. Testing. Testing."

  A moment later, the guard stepped back inside. "Ma'am, it's not picking up."

  Trying to contain her nervousness, she sighed audibly and looked at Alex. "I guess we're not going to get to chat today."

  Alex looked at her, eyes cold. "Now that's a damn shame."

  She swallowed the sudden lump in her throat and nodded to the guard. "Please escort Mr. Moore back to his cell."

  As he motioned for Alex to follow, she followed with, "Oh. I just remembered I need to do a physical. Please handcuff him to his bed and leave the door unlocked. I'll follow shortly with my things."

  She tried to make herself relax as she saw the guard hesitate. Giving him her sternest look she asked, "Is there an issue?"

  "Agent Barrett requested that any conversations be carried out in the interrogation room."

  Forcing herself to stand straight and firm, she replied, "First, none of the agents are here right now, which means I'm in charge. Second, it really doesn't matter if I question him here or not if the recording devices are not working now does it?"

  Without waiting for a response, she continued, "Lastly, I said I was going to be giving him a physical. You are more than welcome to report this to Agent Barrett if you like and I will be happy to do the same and inform him that you saw fit to prevent me from doing my job. Anything else?"

  Keeping her gaze steady, she waited. Finally the guard nodded and she followed him out, turning left to go to the offices as they turned and went right. Her heart was racing for a different reason now. The first two parts of her plan had gone well. An anonymous email sent to the FBI late last night, alerted them to a possible sixth member of the hacker group they now held. Knowing she needed to make the message convincing, she had taken from memory other messages from informants that she had read while preparing for other assignments and combined the format with ‘hacker’ speak. Or at least her attempt at sounding like a hacker, borrowed from the chats she had seen when she had been pretending to be Alex online. The message had been written to hopefully send the FBI team chasing a false trail in the north east corner of the U.S. for a few days. Barrett had thankfully taken the bait and left early this afternoon. And now, with the interrogation room's equipment deemed 'not working', she had a chance to get to Alex while in his cell. Now all she had to do was get the guards to give them privacy for several minutes.

  Grabbing her other bag, Jane took several deep breaths to help calm down. She couldn't afford to show any nervousness if she was going to pull this off.

  A few moments later she was standing at Alex's cell. She nodded to the guard to open the door, where she found Alex handcuffed to his bed as she had requested. Turning to the guard she said, "Give me about fifteen minutes."

  Ignoring the guard's hesitation, Jane walked into the cell and closed the door firmly behind her. To Alex she said, "I'm just here for a standard checkup. If we have time, I'll need you to verify a few statements as well.

  Lips pursing at Alex's lack of response, she quickly took a needle filled with saline, her stethoscope and the laptop out of her bag. Doing a few cursory checks of his pulse and breathing, she opened the laptop and whispered, "I got a message from your friends last night. Encased in an entire laptop. Damned if I know what the message is supposed to mean though."

  Not waiting for a response she hit the button to bring it out of sleep and straight to the email. "Here it is. I’m hoping it means something to you."

  She handed the laptop too him only to realize he was handcuffed. He rolled his eyes at her when she cursed.

  "Fine. N
o matter. Just take a look."

  Sitting down beside him, she showed Alex the email. He stared down at it.

  "This is it?"

  She nodded her head. "Not what you expected either, huh?"

  He looked at it for a long while and then his eyes widened. "Open up the email's properties."

  "How do I do that?"

  She did as he instructed and when the information popped up asked, "Okay, what are you looking for?"

  He suddenly leaned forward, "Holy Shit! It can't be."

  "What?"

  "A Steganos script."

  "A what?"

  "A pipe dream. A fantasy. Something coders have been trying to create for years. I can't believe this is real. Click the link. If I'm right it will ask for a key and that key will use whatever program is on this computer to decrypt the message."

  "What message? There is only a single word."

  He smiled, seeming to forget about everything but what was in front of him. "Exactly. It's like a Zaglo script on steroids."

  "What the hell are you talking about and hurry it up. We've only got a few more minutes."

  "Click the link."

  Once again the empty box with the blinking cursor appeared.

  He gave her a few names to try to which she responded, "I already tried those last night."

  "Read other people's mail much?"

  Ignoring him, she asked, "What else do you have?"

  "Give me a second to think about it."

  Jane's jaw began to tick. She looked at her watch and then the door. They were running out of time and Alex was speaking a foreign language.

  "While you're thinking about it, tell me what a Zaganos Script is."

  "Steganos. It's a script that allows the user to take a single character, say the letter 'A' for example and by using a combination of a special computer and a common identifying character that lets the decoder know if two bits belong together, can encode an entire message inside that one letter. The result is a very dense message, so the size is disguised by including a picture or video with the word and link."

  Jane felt a headache coming on. She was about to say as much and ask that he decipher his explanation in English when she saw Alex glance back at the email and smile.

  "I've got it. Type in 'All persons more than a mile high to leave the court.'"

  "What has that got to do with your friends and their hitchhiking the universe or whatever it is?"

  "It's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and it has quite a bit to do with it. In Alice in Wonderland, that is Rule 42, as stated by the king in response to Alice's trial."

  "And 42 in the Hitchhiker's Guide means something about the answer to everything."

  "The answer to life, the universe, and everything."

  "How do you even know this stuff?"

  "That's classified."

  He winked at her and she felt her face grow warm. Turning back to the laptop before he could notice, she typed in what he said and hit the Enter key.

  At first nothing happened and then the screen began to scramble until the word 'Alice' had expanded and rearranged into five sentences. One sentence for every letter.

  Will send keyloggers with a friend. Paris on the Platte-Coffee. Wednesday at 7:00. Place loggers near Barrett and Gillespie's work computers. Does not need to be attached.

  Jane reread the message. She started to ask a question when suddenly the screen went blue.

  "What happened?"

  "A security measure. If anyone tries to access the laptop's content, they'll find nothing worth looking at. A self-destruct if you will."

  "Paris on the Platte-Coffee? What does that mean? And Wednesday at 7:00, that's only two days from now. What is this and who am I meeting?"

  "I'm sure they'll find you at this Paris place and get you the keyloggers. They must be having an issue hacking into Barrett's and Gillespie's machines. A keylogger will get rid of that problem."

  "And a keylogger is?"

  "A device that can log most keyboard strokes, sometimes even through walls. Our buildings actually have protection against this and we’ve even banned some types of keyboards because of their vulnerability."

  "Are you telling me I could be typing in my apartment or hotel room and someone could be in an adjacent room recording what I type?"

  "Sure. But there are other more common ways to break into someone's computer that don't require someone sneaking in and planting such a device. Heck, I could use an SMS tracker that could hack your phone without ever touching the device physically."

  "Seriously?" She waited for him to elaborate.

  Instead, he asked, "So can you get these near their computers?"

  "I don't know. I mean probably. But as much as I want to get you guys out of here I don’t know how I feel about breaking in to steal their information."

  Alex gave her an incredulous look. He opened his mouth to say something which, by the looks of his expression, was going to be sarcastic, but then slammed his mouth shut. Taking a deep breath, he asked instead, "Do you have a better idea? I suppose we could wait to rot here. Or better yet wait until they drag us before a federal court with a case file full of lies."

  Sighing, she nodded her head. "You're right. I think I can get it into the room where Barrett usually works when he's here. But he takes his laptop home with him."

  "That's okay. They just need to log enough to get passwords."

  "How do I get it back to them?"

  "If they're smart, they'll be using keyloggers with wireless transmitters. You won't have to do anything but get the devices near their computers and they can do the rest."

  "Will wireless work down here?"

  "Don't you have wireless running now?"

  "Yes, but I thought being underground prevented the signals from being read, you know, outside."

  He smiled at her, saying, "Where there is wireless, there is a landline." As if that meant anything to her.

  And the things he had mentioned had her having double and triple thoughts about her own computer security. "I'll see what I-"

  She heard the door squeak and jumped up, quickly stashing the laptop in her bag. By the time the door opened, she was calmly putting her medical equipment away. She nodded at the guard. "You can uncuff him now. Thank you."

  Walking to her office, she quickly formed a message in her mind that she could send to Barrett about why she needed to take a sudden trip to Denver. She was overdue, so didn’t really expect any issues. She could ride out tonight on the helicopter bringing in some of the other agents.

  Driving to the hotel, she did a quick search on her laptop, and found that Paris on the Platte was a café and bar located several miles from where the helicopter landed at the Centennial airport. Which meant she would also need a car. Once she had all the information together, she called and made arrangements for what she needed and, a few hours later, was ready. At least for the first part of the plan. As to how she was going to get into Gillespie's office? That was going to take some more thought.

  As she waited for the helicopter, her thoughts drifted back to her conversation with Alex. Between all the words he had said that she didn't understand, she had understood enough to realize that it seemed all too easy for anyone to get information. Of all kinds. The thought was disturbing. And she'd seen a lot of disturbing things before, a few of a similar nature.

  Just two years ago she had traveled into what soldiers called 'in country' deep within the Zagros Mountains of Iraq. She had gone with a small group of rangers and two CIA operatives, looking for several high ranking insurgent leaders. She had been brought along to make sure the right questions got answered and answered correctly. The CIA agents had been there to record it all. Live.

  When they had first told her this, she had been incredulous. There was no electricity out there, let alone internet connectivity. They had just nodded at her questions and begun pulling out several gadgets, each looking more alien than the other, until they had assembled a video conferenc
ing unit with satellite uplink. As the screens came online, she noted several suits sitting in an office staring at her. She soon found out they were all sitting in an office in D.C. and were there to watch the interrogations. She had then been asked to conduct her interviews while people from D.C. watched, occasionally prompting her with questions. In the middle of desert mountains with no electricity or internet.

  Later she had watched as similar looking equipment was used to fly drones into a targeted area and destroy it. All without the pilot ever leaving the safety of a base camp hundreds, even thousands, of miles away. The technology had been surreal then, even scary. But she'd never felt that it had the potential to invade her privacy. Now, she was looking at it from a totally different perspective, feeling more than a bit naïve for not realizing this sooner.

  Of course, technology like that could be used to invade her privacy. She'd read about it often enough and it was why Gillespie was running this operation. Hackers stole people's identities all the time. It had always seemed like something that happened to other people. Not her. But that was just more naiveté on her part and, no doubt, the part of millions more like her who just didn't think it could happen to them. And she didn't think she liked it.

  Reluctantly, she found herself beginning to understand a little bit more about Barrett's almost overzealous pursuit to stop people from being able to do this. But that didn't give the government the right to just take people from their homes and interrogate them at their leisure. Or to completely ignore their rights in the pursuit of stopping hackers. And it certainly didn't give them the right to hold innocent people.

  Whether it destroyed her career or not, she was going to try and do something to free the detainees and stop it from happening again.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Jane tried to shake her nervousness as she headed toward the rendezvous point. She had given herself an hour’s buffer in case she became geographically dislocated - something she was, unfortunately, all too prone to do - and was feeling confident and a little excited as she headed toward the congested and quaint area the coffee shop was located in.