Black Hat Blues (24 page)

saying, like maybe she could hire me or get me a job when I finish

school and that sounded really great and all. So this afternoon I get this

text message from her and she wants to meet with me and talk things

over, but she wants to do it not here but in her room which isn’t even

in this hotel but over across the way at the Omni.”

“Hey, tell me something, what does this lady look like?” he asked.

“She’s real pretty, kind of exotic looking you know? Like maybe she’s

part Indian—Indian like from India—and dresses really nice. Suits

and stuff. But she’s fun too, not all serious. I was kind of flattered she

was talking to me since there were like dudes all over her. That’s also

kinda why I think she might be a fed or something, she wasn’t paying

no mind to the other guys and people once she heard me say some stuff

I shouldn’t have.”

Chloe could almost see the thoughts and hints clicking into place

behind his eyes. According to c1sman, Heidi had passed on the basics

of Oliver’s warning to the trusted Shmoos and Chloe’s description

matched the general stats they had for Sandee, or Toni as they were

thinking of her. “Interesting,” he said. “And so you think she might be

a fed, OK, sounds like maybe you should avoid her.”

“But she might not be a fed, right? And if she can actually hook me

up with a job, that would be awesome. So I want to meet her, but I’m

scared to sort of, even though, honestly, I didn’t really do half the stuff

I sort of hinted to her that I did do. So I was wondering if, like, the

feds check in with you guys or whatever and if there was some way you

could look up if she was legit?”

“No feds have checked in that I know of,” he said. “Not that they

usually would unless they were on a panel. Now, you said she’s staying

over at the Omni, not here?”

“That’s what she said, yeah. I’m supposed to go over there and ask for

her at the front desk.”

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“And what did you say her name was?”

“Terri Robinson, she said she’s a security consultant of some sort, but

that could be anything right?”

“Well, I’m not sure what to tell you. I’ve got no idea if she’s a fed or

not, and there are some strange people out there, so if you don’t feel

comfortable with it, I’d just forget the whole thing. If she’s not here

actually at the con, I don’t think there’s much we can do about it.”

“I was just hoping someone might know her or something.” Chloe

was hoping he’d suggest the next move, but he didn’t. She wasn’t even

sure if the thought had occurred to him, so she tried to throw a hint

his way. “I’d like to talk to her and be sure, but I’m a little freaked

out about seeing her over there by myself.” Nothing from him, he just

nodded in sympathy. Fine, she’d just ask. “Is there any way maybe you

could come over there with me, just to make sure, like, she’s not crazy

or whatever? Or maybe find out if she’s a fed or an undercover reporter

or something. Like that woman from Def Con a couple years ago?” A

reporter had tried to pose as a hacker and get people attending Def Con

to go on record saying or bragging about black hat types of things, but

she’d been outed almost at once and in a very public and embarrass-

ing manner that was all over YouTube within hours. Chloe hoped that

maybe the allure of outing another such infiltrator might appeal to

the man. Just to help matters, she stuck out her chest a little too, and

stopped just short of batting her eyelashes at him.

“Hmmm, I don’t know what good it would do, but if it’ll make you

feel more comfortable, I suppose I could come along. Maybe snap a

picture of her and see if anyone else on staff recognizes her as a fed.”

Chloe imagined he was hoping to show the picture to Heidi or Oliver

and see if this mystery woman was indeed the same as Oliver’s mystery

woman. At least that’s what she hoped he was hoping.

He used his radio to tell his fellow security staffers that he was going

on break, and then the two of them walked the block down the street

to the Omni. Chloe kept up an amiable chatter with him as they went,

talking about the con and Washington DC and other innocuous topics.

She marched him up to the front desk and asked for Terri Robinson.

The woman behind the counter returned with an envelope with the

name of Chloe’s alias, Penny, on it. It contained a room key and a slip

of paper with a room number and instructions to come on up. They

both agreed that this was pretty weird behavior for a fed or anyone else,

but they took the elevator up to the fifth floor and went to the room.

Chloe knocked first, but got no answer. She waited, knocked again,

then finally used the key card to open the door.

Rick Dakan

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Inside they found a normal looking hotel room with a single king

sized bed and a small disposable cell phone sitting in the center of it.

Ten seconds after they’d closed the door, it rang. They both stared at it,

surprised. It rang three times before he said, “Maybe you should answer

it?” She looked nervously at him and picked it up on the fourth ring.

“Hello, Penny,” said the voice on the other end, a woman’s voice.

“Hi, um, Terri. How are you?”

“Sorry I had to run out for a meeting, but I wanted to talk and it had

to be secure, so I left you this phone.” Chloe was holding the handset

so both of them could lean forward and listen.

“Um, OK,” said Chloe, mouthing to him, “This is really weird.”

“We talked about you doing some work for us last night, are you still

interested?”

“What, um, what kind of work are we talking about?”

“Oh, things like you were talking about last night. The kind of jobs

you said…”

Chloe punched the off button and tossed the phone on the bed.

“Jesus!”

“What?” he asked, “Why’d you hang up?”

“Are you kidding? This whole set up is weird. I’m getting out of here.

You were right. I should have left it alone.” She headed for the door and

turned back when she saw he wasn’t following. He was reaching for the

phone. “Leave it!”

“Why?”

“Because she might want it back or she might have it bugged or it

might be trapped or who knows what!” Chloe raised the pitch of her

voice, almost screeching by the end. “Are you not freaked the fuck out

by all this?”

“I guess it’s pretty weird,” he said, drifting towards the doorway

where she stood.

“So she’s a fed and it’s creepy, or she’s not a fed and it’s even creepier.

Whichever one it’s got nothing to do with me anymore. Come on, come

on, come on.” She reached in and grabbed him by the arm and pulled

him back out with her. Then she slammed the door shut, leaving the

phone and the room key locked inside on the bed. “We’re leaving.”

“I really don’t think she was any kind of fed,” he said as they walked

back.

“Why not?”

“Feds don’t need to be that sneaky and, well, weird.”

“They do if they’re trying to entrap you in some sting or something.

If they were trying to get me to be all hackery and evil or whatever,

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then they might be all strange like that.”

“Maybe, but I think it’s something else. We got word that there was

some woman matching your description of this lady who talked to you

who’s been going to hacker cons and trying to trick people into doing

black hat style jobs for her. I’m pretty sure this was her.”

“You’re serious? Really? What the hell is that all about?”

He told her the whole story, or at least a fourth-hand version of it that

got most of the details wrong but still contained the core truth about

what had happened with Oliver. If he was telling her that easily, the

whole story would be spread throughout the hacker community by the

end of the convention. And now they’d added their own little chap-

ter of misdirection to the mix, hopefully giving any curious Shmoos

plenty of false leads to chew on. The hotel room they’d rented as a back

up three nights earlier in case they needed some place close to stay or

retreat to. Sacco had checked in under a false ID and no one but him

and Bee had been in since, and she’d only been there long enough to

drop off the phone and the key. There was nothing that would lead

back to the Crew.

When they got back to the hotel driveway, Chloe thanked him for

escorting her and said she was going to go into McDonald’s and get

something to eat and try and calm down. He said he needed to report

in but would be happy to talk with her about it some more later if she

was still freaked out. She said she might take him up on that, then went

into Mickey D’s long enough for him to walk up the driveway. Then

she ducked back outside and took the escalator down into the Woodley

Park Metro stop and left the hotel and Shmoocon far, far behind her

with no plans of ever stepping foot inside again. Hopefully Paul had

gotten everyone and everything else out without any difficulty.

It was a bad time to bug out. Not the worst possible time, but certainly

a bad time. Saturday evening would be a high-traffic period for the

hotel lobby, with the last talks wrapping up around 7 PM and people

milling about the bar area trying to decide where to go to dinner and

which room parties might be fun and whether to take a cab or walk

all the way over to the dance club in Adams Morgan that was hosting

the Saturday night party. Plus Sandee couldn’t help. As soon as Chloe

reported back what had happened, Sandee changed into boy clothes,

pinned his hair up under a baseball cap, and got the hell out of the

hotel. And since Chloe said she needed the Omni room for her scheme,

that meant he’d had to go all the way to fall back position two, a Days

Inn out in Maryland.

That left Paul and Sacco to try and clear out a room full of computers

and other gear without attracting too much attention, since their emer-

gency protocol dictated no one who had had any contact with anyone

in the Shmoocon staff could now return to their HQ suite for fear of

drawing some unwanted attention or cementing some future connec-

tion between them in a hypothetical investigation. So that ruled out

Bee, c1sman, and now Chloe, and Sacco only had two hours to help

before he had to go back out in the field to oversee tonight’s candle-

light vigil/protest at Wolverton’s fundraiser. The two of them scrambled

around the room, stuffing everyone’s clothes into whatever suitcase they

fit in and trying to pack up electronics gear such that it both wouldn’t

break and wouldn’t attract attention as it traveled through the lobby. All

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the while Paul kept checking the two laptops that were mirroring the

targets’ email and phones to make sure nothing unexpected happened.

It took them three trips to load up the cars, and he knew that he’d

gotten at least one curious look from a hotel staff member even though

he used a different exit each time. But they got everything packed up

and out the door in under an hour, giving Sacco enough time to get on

over to Georgetown.

As he drove towards the Bethesda Days Inn to meet Sandee and wait

for Chloe, Paul kept checking the one laptop he had a mobile internet

connection for, hoping that nothing transpired that needed his atten-

tion. But at this point all the wheels that they’d set in motion were

spinning on their own momentum, and most of it he couldn’t stop

even if he wanted to. He’d followed up the afternoon’s dramatic protest

with links and tips via e-mail and even a couple of calls to help stir the

media plot, and the story was now out there at places like Daily Kos

and Firedog Lake, waiting for the papers, cable shows, and networks

to start Googling when the night’s protests hit the wires. One gang of

rowdy, disaffected youth was a minor event. Two obviously coordinated

protests in one twelve hour period smacked of pre-mediation, planning,

and a bigger story.

And the story wasn’t new, it had just largely been ignored by the

mainstream media. The U.S. protectorate of the Marianas Islands was

a haven for sweat shops and forced labor. Clothing companies with fac-

tories there operated outside the reach or interest of U.S. labor laws but

still got to print “Made in the USA” on their labels. The owners not only

kept their laboring class in slave-like conditions, they often imported

them from other countries, trapping them on the island with no sup-

port network and no recourse. And working in the factories wasn’t the

sole dehumanizing endeavor on the island. Many of the women were

forced into prostitution in the island’s bars and nightclubs, and if some

slimeball sex tourist should get one of them pregnant, well, forced abor-

tions were the order of the day. This was horrible news, but it wasn’t

new news, and it had gone on not just under the noses of Congress,

but with their explicit consent and support. While back in the day the

defrocked Tom Delay might have been the slavers’ main champion,