Otherwise, the next best course of action was the path of least resistance: send someone knocking on the door of this physical address. Just go on in and grab that damn megaserver using honest to goodness brute force. Besides, Walter Koslowski was primarily looking to confirm the IP address, and Josh had certainly done that. So he drafted his simple email reply, then cut and pasted the server’s IP address into the message, added a polite suggestion to call the embassy and get a CAT team on a plane ASAP, and sent it off into the ether.
After all, even the NSA’s Signals Intelligence Directorate had its limits.
The Guardian @Guardian • 1m
Interpol helps authorities across Europe dragnet smuggling rings that have been monetizing bounty payments for @Bounty4Justice.
trib.al/52xRTty
# 70.01
@ London, England
Bermuda remained an independent overseas territory of the British monarchy, yet the Brits had no embassies there; therefore, Burls was being fed information through the crown’s next closest point of contact: the British embassy in Washington, D.C.
The United States had no embassy in Bermuda, either, but maintained a small consulate of forty employees to protect its citizens traveling abroad and to aid investigations in drug trafficking and money laundering. Novak had dealt with the consulate in the past, but he held off on making any calls just yet; he’d left a voicemail for Knight requesting guidance and was awaiting a call back.
While the deputy director wrapped up his phone conversation, Novak and Michaels listened to the live news coverage streaming on Burls’s computer monitor. The British Broadcasting Corporation was getting its information from another BBC: the Bermuda Broadcasting Company. By all accounts, the shocking violence of a double shooting had rocked the tiny island colony of twenty square miles and sixty-five thousand inhabitants, which had seen its share of gun violence over the years, but nothing like this.
The shooting took place at the Seadog Pub shortly after noon today. The victims, both tourists, have been identified as Randall Scott from Odenton, Maryland, and Jeremy Grimes from London, England.
The passport photos of the two men came up on the screen. Novak recognized Grimes right away. He opened his folio and flipped to the same photo in the dossier Knight had sent him. He didn’t recognize the bespectacled Randall Scott.
…shot in the head with a large-caliber bullet by a shooter who has thus far remained unidentified. Here is what the pub’s proprietor had to tell us.
The newscast cut to a prerecorded interview with the sunbaked British expat, who, with his shaved head and hoop earrings, looked appropriately twenty-first-century piratical:
I was inside when I heard the first gunshot. I ran outside and heard the second shot go off, but I couldn’t quite tell where it was coming from. I went around to the patio to ask the chaps outside if they’d seen anything, and that’s when I saw them there, on the ground, blood everywhere. What an awful sight it was. There was practically nothing left to their heads. Awful.
The field correspondent came back on-screen, saying,
We do know that both men arrived on-island this morning and reported to customs agents that they were traveling for leisure. However, inside sources have told the BBC that both Scott and Grimes work for intelligence agencies in their respective countries, setting off immediate rumors of conspiracy and adding yet another element of intrigue to this most shocking crime. The BPS Forensic Support Unit is on the scene, and police are encouraging residents and witnesses to report any tips or clues as soon as possible…
Burls ended his call and said, “They’ve got very little to tell so far. But they have plenty of questions for us about Grimes’s reasons for being in Bermuda. The consulate has already gotten calls from the BPS Financial Crimes Unit, because Grimes and Scott were registered officers of a company located there on the island, in Hamilton, called Archer Offsite Systems.”
“So you have no idea why he was there?” Michaels asked.
Burls shook his head. “I’ve not a clue. I know that after all that drama with the baron, he’d requested some time off. Perfectly reasonable. It was quite a harrowing experience.”
“Were you aware that he was in contact with Randall Scott?” Michaels asked.
“Not at all. I’ve never heard the name. Certainly never seen that face,” he said, looking at the man’s photo, which was back up on the screen.
Knight pinged Novak’s BlackBerry.
“Hey, Tim.”
“Got your message. I can’t believe what a mess this is turning into.”
“Do we know anything about this Randall Scott?”
“He’s NSA, Novak,” Knight replied bluntly. “Just got confirmation.”
Novak felt as though the air had been sucked from his lungs. Maybe Borg’s suspicions about who was really behind Bounty4Justice had been spot-on all along: If I had to guess, it’s the wonks with the BEST tech: the ones who listen in on all our calls.
“Won’t take long for the news to figure it out,” Knight added. “I’ve been advised that until we have more information, we’ve got to keep a tight lid on things. Understand?”
“Sure thing.”
“And get this: the consulate in Bermuda told headquarters that the forensic folks pulled two slugs from the wall of that pub. They’re going to run ballistics on them, but they’re sure they came from Lapua Magnum cartridges.”
“That’s an interesting coincidence,” Novak said.
“Indeed it is,” Knight replied. “We’ll have to see if they can pull signatures on the slugs before we draw any conclusions. In the meantime, I’ve got some good news. Walter’s sitting here next to me, and he just received confirmation from the NSA that they’ve positively identified the location for a server that they believe is hosting Bounty4Justice.”
“You’re kidding. That’s great,” Novak said, wondering again if the NSA was, in fact, playing games with them.
“Don’t celebrate just yet. It’s in Estonia. I have Walter flying straight there tonight. I want you and Michaels to meet him there tomorrow.”
Vatican - news @news_va_en • 17m
Holy Father to preside over candlelight vigil in St. Peter’s Square @ 8:00 PM to pray for peace and tolerance.
rv.va/OMert435
USA TODAY @USATODAY • 19m
Pope condemns vigilante justice but calls on authorities to uphold law without favoritism.
usat.ly/1tgIMyrfl
# 71.01
@ Virginia Beach, Virginia
Thursday, 11/09/2017
05:28:50 EST
“That’s a mighty fine boat you’ve got there,” Jonathan Farrell said to the heavyset middle-aged Italian.
“She’s not very pretty,” Fabrizio replied, “but she flies like the wind.”
“I’d say,” Farrell agreed. The sleek custom yacht was tethered to the dock, bobbing in the moonlight. Sabrina measured thirty-nine and a half feet long, weighed just shy of nine tons, and was powered by a pair of FPT C90 650 engines. Fabrizio had told him it was modeled after a military boat used by his Italian special forces unit, back in the late nineties. A few years ago, a similar model captained by a different Italian had traversed nearly eight hundred miles from New York to Bermuda in just under sixteen hours to break a long-standing speed record. Though the marina in Virginia had a hundred-mile advantage over New York, Farrell was pretty sure that mile for mile, Fabrizio had beaten that record hands down, both coming and going. But this was one speed feat that wasn’t going to be publicized.
“Grazie,” Farrell said, handing him the second installment of fifteen thousand dollars, cash.
“Anytime, my friend. I’m sorry about your weapon. She was a beauty.”
Farrell shrugged. “It was the right thing to do. She and I had a good run.”
He’d taken the two kill shots using the same AWM rifle he’d used in Manhattan, per Oz’s directive. The hide he’d selected was on the shore of a small island situated along
Bermuda’s Town Cut channel, where the big ships navigated through the reefs to enter St. George’s Harbour. The distance to the target location Oz had provided was nearly four-tenths of a mile, which wasn’t all that sporting, but there’d been plenty of wind to make it a challenge. He’d kept on a wet suit and full dive gear, supplied by Fabrizio, and immediately following the shooting he’d gathered up his spent brass and packed everything back into its waterproof sleeve, slipped on his dive mask, and slid back into the harbor, leaving nothing behind except a few bent branches. Even the talcum-like gunpowder residue had been scrubbed away by the briny water. He’d given the AWM an honorable burial at sea, sinking her into a crevasse at the base of the deep channel. Then he’d finned his way back out into the ocean and along the reefs to where Fabrizio kept Sabrina lazily adrift, just offshore.
Farrell offered a handshake, but the Italian shook his head. “You Americans are such prudes.” He stepped forward and embraced Farrell. “You take care of yourself, eh.”
Farrell patted him on the back. “You, too, my friend.”
The fraternity of contract killing. Sometimes you needed to use the buddy system. They’d met in Yemen a few years ago, right before Fabrizio retired from the Gruppo Operativo Incursori and moved from Sardinia to be closer to his daughter in Virginia. They’d corresponded occasionally, but this was their first job together.
“Come see me again soon. We’ll go fishing and have some drinks and find some pretty ladies who like to party.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
Farrell walked back to his rental car and stashed his duffel bag in the trunk. Then he got behind the wheel and set off for the house he’d rented on the beach to rest up before his long ride back to Colorado.
WIRED @WIRED • 11m
Humans beware! MIT professor says @Bounty4Justice uses #StrongAI that could fast-track the #singularity
bit.ly/1aeJRx334
# 72.01
@ Tallinn, Estonia
14:23:01 EET
The flight time from Stansted Airport to Tallinn was two hours, fifty minutes; during the trip, both Novak and Michaels brushed up on Estonia by reading the executive primer sent via email from headquarters.
The pint-sized E.U. nation of Estonia had a population smaller than that of the city of Phoenix, with only 1.3 million mostly ethnic Estonians, whose ancestry traced back to the Vikings. Owing to its strategic orientation on the world map—the Baltic Sea and the Nordic countries to its north and west, Russia to its east, and its Baltic neighbors to the south—it had been squabbled over for centuries by Danes, Swedes, Poles, Germans, and Russians. Following the withdrawal of Soviet troops in 1994, independence had helped transform Estonia into a beacon of prosperity in Eastern Europe—the “Baltic Tiger.”
Its capital city of Tallinn, situated on the Gulf of Finland, was a financial powerhouse with an ultrarobust telecommunications network that earned it top ranking among the world’s digital cities. Often referred to as the “Silicon Valley of the Baltics” and one of the “smartest cities in the world,” Tallinn had embraced technology wholeheartedly; the Internet was the lifeblood of its culture, digitizing and automating every aspect of everyday life, from voting and tax collection to phone service, shopping, and parking.
In 2007, however, Estonia’s greatest strength had been turned against it when, in diplomatic retaliation for removing a bronze statue of a Soviet soldier from a public park in Tallinn, Russia engaged the country in a month-long cyberwar that crippled government offices, banks, corporate giants, and the media. The situation had gotten so dire that NATO, the European Union, Israel, and the United States had sent their best cyber teams to help Estonia build up its digital defenses. Ever since, the new generation of Vikings had been at the helm of the world’s most advanced Internet, fortified by the secrets of the world’s top cybersecurity experts and locked behind systemwide 2,048-bit encryption. And though Estonia was the birthplace of Skype Voice over IP and Playtech online gambling software, it was also the progenitor for some of the world’s most insidious malware, like the DNSChanger browser-hijacking botnet whose core technologies bore striking similarities to the Razorwire platform that powered Bounty4Justice.
In 2008, the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence—classified as an “international military organization”—set up its headquarters in Tallinn. Shortly thereafter, the Secret Service established an outpost, and the FBI embedded its first-ever full-time cybersecurity expert in a foreign country.
Estonia was ground zero for the fight over Internet dominion. So it was only fitting, Novak thought, that it was where Bounty4Justice had placed its central brain.
“Pretty ironic that we’d end up here,” Michaels told Novak. “I know what happened in Russia a couple of weeks ago was an accident, but after reading this, it sounds like they got a bit of payback.”
“If that’s the case,” he said, “let’s just hope the vendetta ends with Russia.”
# 72.02
The taxi from Lennart Meri Tallinn Airport delivered them downtown to the Radisson Blu Sky Hotel, only a short drive from the Estonian Information System Authority, where the strategy session would be held the next morning. After they’d checked in, Novak received a call from Walter, whose flight had arrived ahead of schedule. So he called their local cyber liaison, FBI Special Agent Helena Öpik, and confirmed that they would meet at the hotel bar at 4:00 P.M.
The chic Lounge 24 had been aptly named for its lofty perch atop the hotel tower. Novak ordered a pint of A. Le Coq beer, and Michaels opted for a Moscow mule. Then they braved the deep chill of the rooftop terrace to admire the enchanting views of Tallinn Bay and the Old Town’s storybook spires, medieval walls, and Hanseatic architecture.
“It’s so pretty here,” Michaels said. “It’s hard to imagine that this twisted, dystopian game show we’ve been living through could come from a place like this.”
“Looks sure can be deceiving,” Novak agreed.
“Do you think that deep down, when the pressure’s on, we’re all just a bunch of savages masquerading as a civilization?”
He looked out to the cruise ships docked at the Port of Tallinn and considered her question. “As hard as it is to imagine, we’re living in one of the most peaceful eras in human history. The dark side of the Internet doesn’t really compare to the horror of plagues or world wars, which we’ve somehow managed to avoid for the past few decades.”
“Are you saying that Bounty4Justice just exposed a few rotten apples?”
He shrugged. “Most people are moral and simply want to live in peace and have a fair shake at a good life.”
“But that’s gotten a lot harder for most folks nowadays. Especially the decent ones. The deck’s been stacked against them,” she said, sipping her drink.
“I suppose it has.”
“And let’s not forget that the darkest periods in human history always begin with the bad guys—the instigators—seizing control of the information that reaches the masses and manipulating it. Wouldn’t you say that, in the wrong hands, the Internet would far and away be the most potent propaganda machine ever conceived?”
“Absolutely.”
“Then I guess it’s no wonder that so many people think Bounty4Justice is on their side.”
“Too bad they don’t realize just how wrong they are about that.”
“Tere!” a voice called to them. “Is that you, Agent Novak?”
Novak turned and saw a young, pretty blond woman bundled in a bright pink muffler coming over to greet them with a cosmopolitan in her hand.
The White House @WhiteHouse • 2h
Oval Office @ 8:00 PM: POTUS to respond to hostilities in Russia, lay out DHS strategy to combat state-sponsored cybercrime.
go.wh.gov/1ZYuBm25
# 73.01
Novak, Michaels, and Special Agent Helena Öpik sat in the cozy lounge while they waited for Walter to arrive, talking about the wild twists and turns of Operation CLICKKILL: Bount
y4Justice’s amazing ease in harnessing the herding behavior of the masses to do its bidding; how it had taken the world by storm; and how, like any viral sensation, it had peaked and plateaued fairly quickly.
Some of the falloff, they agreed, could be attributed to the authorities’ regaining control of the credit card settlement networks and intercepting the website’s cash intermediaries, which now made it difficult for average participants to interface with the website. Public relations had played its role, as well, particularly when it came to the accounts of the attempted abduction of innocent children in Washington, D.C., and the horrible case of mistaken identity in Athens. Many stories just like those had played out across the globe: a gunman in Munich had taken out a target in a drive-by shooting, but only after killing three innocent pedestrians with stray rounds from his Uzi; in Bruges, a hotel bombing had eliminated its intended target along with the young couple in an adjoining room.
In most cases, the agents speculated, Bounty4Justice had proved that vigilantism, by its very nature, was relegating the administration of justice to those least equipped to operate in the broader interests of civilized society.
It was during this philosophical detour that Walter arrived.
# 73.02
“There is an abandoned railway that runs along the piers in the northern subdistrict of Kalamaja,” Helena said, pointing out the windows toward the harbor. “All along it, one finds empty factories and old buildings dating back to the Soviet occupation. A particular building there had been in a terrible state of disrepair until a couple months ago. Contractors had been called in to fix it up—basic repairs like a new roof and windows, and plumbing, of course. That’s to be expected. But then there are the peculiar power lines and fiber optic connections installed in the building, which are of the quality and capacity one might expect to find at an industrial facility. We’ve confirmed that both lines have been very active. And somewhere at the end of those lines is where your IP address resides.”
Bounty Page 34
