“So I’ll be leaving today. I can go back to my apartment.”
“Okay. You are welcome to stay if you need to.”
Lee nodded. “No, I should get going. Thank you so much for all your help.”
“It’s my pleasure.” Okoye glanced at her laptop. “You’re still doing research?”
“I’m going through the information I retrieved from this network I hacked into last night. I’m trying to figure out what it may mean, if it does mean anything at all, as to who these people are.”
“Any luck so far?”
“Some.”
“Such as?”
“For example, I found a few folders crammed with information about a technology called OFDM.”
“OFDM. I have heard of it, but it’s been too long.”
“It’s an acronym for Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing. It has to do with sound signals.”
Okoye said, “It sounds familiar, but I do not think I’ve ever studied it in detail.”
“OFDM is a combination of modulation and multiplexing. With multiplexing, information is mapped on to a carrier signal using changes in frequency, phase, or amplitude or a combination of these. Multiplexing deals with allocation of bandwidth.”
Okoye’s eyes widened. “Oh, yes, I think this is all about embedding signals in sound waves.”
“That’s it, yes.”
Okoye remained silent. Lee said, “I found a lot of files on OFDM in the server I ransacked last night. I’ve been wondering if the Chinese have been using sound signals to get information out of the Brooklyn facility.”
“With the levels of security we have, I think it would take something like this to get anything out of there clandestinely. Something—how should I say—something unusual.”
“All of the information related to Project Magus has been locked down for some time now. I have to assume Monroe has been investigating all of our electronic transactions since he found out about the leak. What are our protocols for paper documents?”
“Paper copies of documents are all printed over in the Hammond Building. Each piece of paper has a digital tag in it that is tracked at all times until it is destroyed. It isn’t—”
“Wait, you mean each paper document is tracked?”
Okoye nodded. “Yes.”
“I didn’t know that.”
Okoye shrugged. “The benefits of being on the security team. Anyway, it isn’t possible to carry paper documents out of the facility, sometimes even outside of pre-specified areas within the complex, without proper approval.”
“Hmmm. Would it be possible to broadcast signals out of the complex?”
Okoye laughed softly. “It seems unlikely, but the only thing I can think of off the top of my head is the radio station.”
“The radio station? You mean the studio over in the Hoover Building? The one that broadcasts the FM channel?”
“Yes, that’s the one.”
“Would it be possible to print paper documents related to Magus and carry them to the studio without alerting security?”
“Let me check,” Okoye said. Okoye grabbed Lee’s laptop and ran a search.
A couple of minutes later, Okoye said, “It looks like the answer to your question is that it depends on which Magus documents you are referring to.”
Okoye turned the laptop toward Lee.
“This chart shows the security levels. Magus has a ton of documents, some in each classification level. The only ones that would not be allowed in the Hoover Building are the level ones, the highest level. But all of those documents have been taken offline completely and are housed in a separate repository.”
“So they could be printed in Hammond and then physically taken over to Hoover, where they could be copied using a scanner and transmitted.”
“Yes, that would be possible. But keep in mind that the security team does keep an eye on the printouts. For example, if there was a single individual who was printing an inordinate number of documents, they would know about it. They look for unusual patterns.”
“Most of the Magus research is being done over in the Carnegie and Eisenhower buildings, whereas the radio studio is over in Hoover. It would be unusual to have so many Magus documents taken over to Hoover.”
Okoye shrugged. “Yes, possibly. Something like that may be flagged. I’m not privy to the tolerances.”
The two of them fell silent for a few moments. Finally, Lee said, “I’ve heard rumors of an old tunnel linking the Kennedy building with Hoover.”
“I’ve heard of this rumor, as well. That there are a few old tunnels left over from the World War Two era.”
Lee shrugged. “I wish I could get back into Kennedy.”
“I thought you’ve been absolved of this whole thing; that you’re free to go back to your normal life?”
“I haven’t been in touch with anybody at Brooklyn Capital yet.”
“I’ll poke around over there as soon as I get a chance.”
“I know you’ll let me know if you find anything.”
The whites of Okoye’s eyes dipped as he acknowledged her assumption. “I’m going to leave you alone, now.” Okoye twisted his body and stepped down onto the ladder. “Congratulations on getting your freedom back.”
Lee slid the HUD on and she appeared as Okoye’s avatar in the central landing of the cathedral near the fountains. She found another spot away from the traffic of the main corridors within the visually protective confines of a cozy little bamboo pavilion hidden within the dark, twisting branches of a cluster of Japanese maple trees, their pink flowers in full bloom. They made her long for spring, and she could virtually smell the fragrance of the flowers.
She brought a tablet up and began running some keyword searches. Within twenty minutes, she had pulled a pair of archived articles from 1958 and 1979, respectively, and a pair of building schematics for the main complex dated from 1942 and 1994. According to the article, a tunnel had been built in the original buildings, but had fallen out of use once an aboveground corridor between the Kennedy and Hoover buildings had been constructed in the early 1990s. By overlaying the schematics, Lee determined that the tunnel, if it was still there, had extended from a room she had occupied many times in her recent past. It was the room that now contained the avatar scanner for the portal. She emailed the information to Okoye, and began to dress for a trip into Manhattan. She still had a lot more information from her trip to Zhang’s compound to sort through. She would find one of her quiet sacred study places from her school days to continue her investigation.
Chapter 41
Manhattan, New York
Saturday, March 8, 3:07 p.m. EST
Rose paced back and forth along the rear of the main room in the operations command center, a room that was buzzing with activity as they had a whole gamut of proceedings related to Operation Crimson Shield going on at the moment. They had temporarily diverted a number of agents from the New York and New Jersey offices to assist in tracking down Jialeng Meng, Qianfang Zhang, and his son David as well as conducting raids of their residences and other real estate assets. This activity had been ongoing for a few hours, and Rose had been anticipating progress for a while now. It was progress that had not yet materialized. They had raided Zhang’s offices and one of his executives had revealed that Zhang was going to be on a flight out of J.F.K. to Shanghai later that day. However, Lyn Lee had revealed that Zhang’s firm owned a private jet that flew out of Teterboro in New Jersey, and so they had dispatched a couple of agents to the airport in case the J.F.K. story had been an attempt at diversion. They had already confirmed with officials at J.F.K. that Zhang was not registered on any flights out of that airport that day, but he had not heard anything back from Teterboro.
His cellphone buzzed and he saw from the caller ID that it was Reardon. “What’ve you got for me, Milt?”
“We’ve got Zhang.” Reardon let the statement hang for a moment. We’ve got Zhang. Rose’s heart skipped a beat and he sighed heavily. “
He was on his way to China,” Reardon continued. “But we got the plane stopped while it was still on the runway. He’s in custody and we’re on our way back up to headquarters as we speak.”
“Thanks, Milt. Let me know when you get in to headquarters.”
“I sure will.”
A couple of minutes after Reardon had disconnected, Rose’s phone rang again. “John, this is Greg Jefferies.” Jefferies had been leading the forensic examination of David Zhang’s computers at the young man’s place of residence, an apartment in Midtown Manhattan.
“Yes, Jeff, what’ve you got?”
“We’ve finally gotten into Zhang’s network account. Thanks to Tao Ye’s expertise and assistance.” Tao was a young Chinese-American woman who was splitting time as a Chinese specialist between the FBI’s Intelligence and Cyber divisions, and one of the few people in the employ of the FBI at the time who could provide the specialized assistance required.
“Have you found anything of value?”
“Oh yes, we’re just getting started but there’s a ton of information here. It looks like we’ve gotten into a whole network of information. We have multiple different types of communications including emails, instant messaging, video, and more. We’ve been examining some of the emails and we’re already seeing some of these same names that your source has already passed along. We’ve got emails here from Meng Jialeng, Zhang Qianfang, and many others. These emails have references to Brooklyn Capital and we even have one that mentions Dr. Sam Than, who was, if I’m not mistaken, one of the abductees.”
Rose felt a wave of exhilaration and satisfaction, chased by a feeling of extreme fatigue. “Indeed he is, Terry. Take care with your investigation. Do everything by the book. If politics don’t get in the way, the information in that network is going to put these guys behind bars.”
“Yes, sir.”
Rose was tired, but he felt at this moment that the investigation was finally tipping in the FBI’s favor. He strolled to his temporary office and shut the door. He would call Charlie Monroe with the news and then allow himself a few moments of rest. He was going to need it as the pace of the investigation was only going to accelerate over the next few days.
Brooklyn, New York
Wednesday, March 12, 6:38 a.m.
Pan-Ik: What are you doing up so early?
ElectricPanda: Going back to work today.
Pan-Ik: Oh? Since when?
ElectricPanda: Since yesterday afternoon.
Pan-Ik: Well, then. I guess that’s a good thing.
ElectricPanda: Yep.
Pan-Ik: Congrats.
ElectricPanda: Thanks. Couldn’t have done it without you.
Pan-Ik: Awwww. I doubt that. You’re always so…
ElectricPanda is unable to reply as this participant has left the conversation.
Pan-Ik: Stylishly late?
Pan-Ik: I do enjoy being taken for granted.
Brooklyn, New York
Wednesday, March 12, 2:04 p.m. EST
“We’re happy to say that the case is progressing rapidly, thanks to Ms. Lee,” Reardon said.
Charlie Monroe rose from his chair behind his desk and strolled to the rear of his Brooklyn office in the Kennedy Building, where his attention seemed to shift to a series of sketches affixed to the wall. The sketches contained intricate patterns of parallel and perpendicular lines with alpha and numerical descriptions scrawled in strategic locations. To Reardon, they appeared to be a set of electrical schematics for some crazy espionage device he was working on.
Monroe adjusted his suit coat and straightened his tie. “Please elaborate, Mr. Reardon. I’m keenly interested in any information you can divulge at this time.”
Reardon already knew he was going to dislike this meeting, which was turning into an interrogation by Monroe. “The information we were able to obtain from the online network we accessed through one of Zhang’s servers is damning in and of itself. We’ve been able to piece together the workings of this organization, which appears to be a syndicate consisting of a mix of both private and state elements. At the highest levels, we have corporate titans such as He Zuoxiu and Yingying Huang as well as Qing Zhang and Li Ding, who are both senior-level officials within the C.C.P. At the mid-level we have a mix of people, including Zhang Qianfang, Meng Jialiang, and Ambassador Li Jeheng, and Hanghu Chen, the man who purchased the firehouse. These are, we believe, the men who managed all of the action here in New York. Then we have the people with connections inside Brooklyn Capital who have been executing the theft. This includes people such as Dr. Wu Xiang and Dr. Liu Sanli who were both lead researchers in Project Magus, and Ms. Melfang Zhu who was a technician. Then we have a number of people who played a support role, such as Wu Wencong, Fu Yong, Leo Liu, and Yang Dongping, the four men who were named by the Chinese personnel in the sea vessel. We now believe Xinuan Ai, the man who purchased one of the vans used in the abductions, fits into this category. We’ve identified over thirty such people in the New York and New Jersey area.
“We know all of these people have been working alongside the Chinese military and intelligence apparatus in multiple ways, including the monitoring and holding of your researchers, the abductees. Many of their communications have been funneled into and out of servers owned and operated by the Chinese military.
“As you know, Mr. Monroe, we’ve discovered folders containing copies of your intellectual property stashed in their servers. The thing that remains out of our grasp is an understanding as to how this information was transported out of Brooklyn Capital’s facilities. We are still optimistic that we’ll figure it out as we have a good portion of the network data still to examine.”
“Do you have any of these people in custody?” Monroe asked.
“At this time, the only major players we have physical custody of are Zhang Qianfang, Dr. Wu Xiang, and Ms. Zhu, the technician, and a handful of the lower-level support people, including the four men previously mentioned who were named by the Chinese on the Imperial Empress. There was a point, if you recall, when we had surveillance on those men and we thought we were actually going to catch them in the act of carrying out an abduction. They’ve all hired very good, professional representation and, as you might imagine, they are exercising their right to silence. There certainly doesn’t seem to be a shortage of money available to these people. We believe this syndicate has had an excellent communication network in place from the beginning, which has allowed most of these individuals time to leave the States before we were able to launch any efforts at apprehending them.”
Monroe said, “May I ask, Milt, if you’ve determined how those four men—the four men named on the vessel—knew they were being tracked?”
Reardon shrugged, careful not to mention Lorren’s internal mole inquiry. “We’re not sure. We’re still hoping the information obtained from one of the individuals we have in custody will provide a clue or else the information remaining in the syndicate’s network that we haven’t yet examined.”
“That information wasn’t included in Zhang’s statement?”
“No, sir. We’ve been able to corroborate virtually all of the information in Zhang’s testimony with the information obtained in the network. But, unfortunately, we’re still not sure exactly what happened. As I said, we still have a lot of information to sort through and we’re still hopeful we may get more information from those individuals we have already taken into custody.”
Monroe said, “Do you have any ideas as to how these people—Dr. Xiang and Dr. Liu, for example—were able to extricate my Magus data from our facilities?”
Reardon shot a glance at Jillian Frank. Frank said, “Admittedly, it has been disappointing that we have not yet been able to determine how your property was stolen. We believe the answer to this question probably resides within the data we continue to retrieve from the syndicate’s network, but there is a tremendous amount of technical data there. We just have not yet had time to sort through all of it. It could be that they have been
keeping these records someplace else—in a different server somewhere, for example.”
“In your estimate, based on the information available to you at this time, how responsible is the Chinese state for this whole affair?”
Again Frank glanced at Reardon before speaking. “It’s far too early to tell, Mr. Monroe. There are indications in some of the emails that there was a fair amount of discord between the state actors and the private. To be honest, we’re not sure exactly what to make of it.”
“May I ask what you’ve found at these varying locations to this point?”
Reardon said, “We’re still in the evidence collection process. Please keep in mind, Mr. Monroe, that this has been and continues to be a massive and fast-moving investigation. We have multiple sites secured and we’re moving as quickly as we can with, admittedly, some strained resources at the moment.”
The three of them fell into silence for a moment before Frank said, “May we ask how the four survivors are faring, Mr. Monroe?”
“As you can imagine, this has been a very trying few weeks, ever since Dr. Halberstom was taken from us in January. I’ve coordinated three funerals over the past few weeks for three very remarkable people.” Monroe had to take a moment to compose himself. “But, thank goodness, we have been able to save the last four. They were all found dehydrated and malnourished, but Dr. Clemente has had the most difficult time, it appears. She is getting better physically, but she’s dealing with an apparent case of post-traumatic stress syndrome. Of course, they are all in good hands in terms of their care and I’m hopeful that, given time, they will be back to normal.”
“Hopefully,” Reardon said. “Given time.”
“What do you think are the odds of another abduction?” Monroe asked.
“We think, at this point, that the odds are very low,” Reardon said. “With what Ms. Lee has done, we seem to have caught them by surprise and they are clearly in a wholly defensive posture, retreating to places outside the U.S.”
The Thought Cathedral Page 53
