Death of Secrets (2 page)

"Well, there are several files on it, but I’ve got no idea
what kinds," she said after a couple moments of clicking and typing.
"They’re probably either binary or encrypted – possibly both. Let me hack
on it for a while, and see if I can find anything else out."

With a sigh, Kathy rose from her chair and began pacing the
room. From long experience, she knew she’d have trouble getting any more
intelligent conversation out of Colleen until she either knew what was on the
flash drive or had given up on it.

Colleen clicked a few icons, and the jarring beat of the latest
in electronic dance music poured out of her speakers. Intrigued, Kathy found
her feet wanting to dance. "Nice tune, what is it?" she asked.

"Uh, not sure. Some new techno rave stuff. I swiped it off
a torrent. Quit bothering me if you ever want me to learn anything from
this." Colleen turned back to her screen.

Kathy shrugged and turned away. Colleen's ability to get free
music was the one thing that gave Kathy any desire to learn more about
computers. For a kid working her way through college, free sounded way better
than 99 cents a song. But it was obvious her roommate wasn’t in the mood to
teach her about it tonight. With nothing to do but wait, Kathy gazed longingly
at her bed, but didn’t go to it. There was no point. Adrenaline coursed through
her veins from the incident, and she knew this night held no sleep for hours
yet. Pacing gave way to rehearsing a few steps of her composition for modern
dance class, and then to an attempt to read. Nothing held her attention for
long, though, and soon enough Kathy was back to watching Colleen at the
computer.

Colleen never even noticed. She alternated between long periods
of staring off into space and moments of furious typing. After an hour, though,
she stood up. "I don’t know what it is, and neither does anyone else I
asked. Heck with it, let’s go to bed."

Kathy pointed at the window, where the sun peeked over the
athletic field. "Might be a little late for that."

Colleen grunted. "Pull the shades, then. I don’t have
class ‘til noon, and I’ll need some sleep before I go."

***

Early Wednesday morning, D.W. Tilman' car pulled up at the gate
to the Electron Guidewire compound, one of dozens of high tech businesses
located in the northern Virginia suburbs along the Dulles Airport Access road.
He drummed his fingers as the guard cleared him through. He knew the security
procedures were necessary; he just didn't like having to wait for them.
Patience came even harder to him when he’d been out ‘til two in the morning and
not had any sleep.

A retractable panel sealed him off from the driving compartment
of the limo, and for the hundredth time Tilman berated himself for driving
himself last night instead of calling for the limo.

When the car pulled up at the curb he could see his building
out the side window. The architecture lacked soul, he knew. It was a four-sided
glass box in the tradition of modern, utilitarian construction throughout the
Washington D.C. metro area. But in a way that pleased him. It was efficient and
functional. Tilman liked function. He didn't entirely approve of wasting
hard-earned money on frivolous things.

He let the driver hold his door open. Tilman didn't carry a
briefcase, so he walked unencumbered toward the front door of the Electron
Guidewire building. His hand-tailored navy blue suit succeeded in hiding his
growing paunch. The electric door slid open to welcome him, and it was the only
welcome he wanted. He nodded away the security guard's wave of greeting, and
strode directly to the express elevator, which he boarded and rode to the fifth
floor.

The entire fifth floor was dedicated to the executive offices –
mostly his. He didn't want a lot of people working in the same area as him. The
only other people who worked on this floor were his executive assistant and his
chief of security.

Tilman knew from the moment he thought of going into business,
that he would work largely on federal contracts. He knew how to get those –
knew the right hands to shake and the right backs to scratch. But when you did
work for the intelligence community, they expected you to be able to keep
secrets. So he'd hired a security chief as his first employment decision, and
kept him around ever since. He was a former federal  agent, and he'd done
very well at shepherding Tilman’s company through the industrial espionage so
common these days.

His assistant smiled and greeted him by name as the security
guard downstairs had. This one Tilman took the time to return with a smile of his
own. He was much closer to his secretary than he ever would be to his security
guards.

She was new on the job – had only been with him for a month, in
fact. But then, few women lasted longer than a year in this job, and most, less
than that. By successful application of large quantities of cash, he managed to
avoid any lawsuits about it.

His office stretched the entire length of the building. Every
morning Tilman debated the merits of this huge space. It was a pain to enter
the room and still have a long walk before he reached his desk. But on the
other hand, the effect on visitors was always the same: awe, intimidation, and
respect for the man behind the desk at the far end.

He couldn’t help but smirk. In his political days, he’d worked
out of a cramped office with two telephones going at the same time all day
while three people tried to talk to him in person. He’d worked from sunup until
long after sundown, and been sweating through the whole experience. In every
way his current life was an improvement. In every way but one: politics had the
feel of destiny to it. Working on a campaign made people feel like they were
going to change the world. Tilman frowned about that for a moment, missing the
old days. With the regret came the usual anger – anger at the people who'd
robbed him of his role in politics. But shortly he reminded himself that he
could change the world from here, too. A thin smile crept over his lips.

The walls of his office were paneled in walnut, and a long conference
table of the same wood occupied the front half of the floor. But the room was
dominated by the giant video screen that filled one entire wall. It, like the
lights, was hooked to motion sensors that detected his presence in the room.
The lighting slowly came up to a comfortable level as the screen showed a
soothing pastoral scene.

He made it to the desk and sat down. In the time he'd been
gone, employees had e-mailed him three different status reports, all on
different projects. One of them covered the GigaStar project, the one he’d been
discussing with Vincent last night.

GigaStar was a network surveillance device for the National
Security Agency. It monitored traffic on any network to which it was connected.
It transmitted data about all that traffic back to the NSA. It was faster,
harder to detect, and harder to interfere with than any current technology. It
could connect to a wireless network from a much greater distance than anything
else on the market, which would make it harder for the people being monitored
to spot.

In short, the GigaStar was a technical work of genius. There
was only one problem: in the current political climate, making the government
more effective at surveillance was politically unpopular.

Hugely so, in fact. The NSA had risen to compete with the IRS
as America’s most unpopular government agency. Revelations that they monitored
the private phone calls of American citizens, as well as their e-mails, were
still making waves in the media and Congress. That made what should have been
an easy sell into something that required expert lobbying.

Tilman smiled at that. He never hired a lobbying firm. With his
contacts, he could do it himself. Now, in the crucial days before the
Intelligence Committee vote on GigaStar, all the members received the full
effect of his charm. Allies got fun evenings out on the town, like the one with
Mike Vincent last night. Opponents got power lunches with him and his top
staff, where they could be bombarded from all sides with rosy information about
the GigaStar. Next Monday, members of the committee were invited over here for
a last minute breakfast presentation before the vote. Tilman considered himself
a master of arm twisting, and not without reason. Whatever had been taken from
him when he'd been driven out of the campaign world, his skills and contacts
were still there.

He closed that report, and moved on to the next. His schedule
didn't call for any interruptions until much later, so he could finish reading
the e-mail and still have time for his assistant before real work began.

Unfortunately, the security chief disappointed his plans,
walking in without knocking. Tilman sighed. Of all the people who worked for
him, only the security man would do that. But the man wasn't a total dunce – he
never walked in unannounced if the secretary wasn't at her desk.

He straightened in his chair and prepared to hear whatever the
worry of the week was. The security chief looked grim, but then he always did.

***

Nathan Jacobs eased his chair back until he could sling his
feet up onto his desk. He felt like crap. Sitting up straight was too much
effort. For the tenth time that morning, he swore off alcohol forever.

He’d been out drinking with his friends Mike Vincent and D.W.
Tilman last night. By the time they left the night club, he’d already been
feeling rough. Then came the near-accident. He’d been laying down in the back
seat when it happened. He’d slid off the bench seat and been jostled so bad he
threw up.

I’m never drinking again.

Jacobs tried to make his mind focus on work. He was employed in
the government office that protected key portions of the nation’s electronic
infrastructure from electronic attack.

In the years since September 11
^th
his office’s name
had changed so many times he’d lost count. They performed an intricate
bureaucratic ballet, shuffling back and forth between the FBI, the Department
of Homeland Security, and now the National Security Agency. It seemed to vary
with the political outlook of whoever sat in the White House.

Whatever one called the office, they had oversight duties over
many government and private entities involved in information assurance. That
was a fancy way of saying they helped stop computer crime.

Nathan Jacobs was one of the government’s top hackers and he
loved his job.

There were times when he wondered if it was too much. There
were times when he wondered if the things said about his agency in the press
and in politics might have a point.

But right in the middle of a massive hangover was not one of
those times. He tried to force his eyes into a shape that could see the text on
his computer screen. 

A report from a major corporation about a possible attack was
on his screen when one of Jacobs' people walked in. "Got a hot one here.
One of our decoys got hacked late last night. He was there for ten
minutes."

One of the initiatives Jacobs had spearheaded upon taking
office was to drastically increase the number of decoy computer systems the
government employed. They were computer systems designed to look like naive,
innocent home users to lure hackers in. Once the criminal broke into the decoy
machine, though, the NSA could track his every action.

Jacobs clapped his hands together and grinned. "Great! I
knew that idea would pay off. What did we catch him at?"

His subordinate shrugged. "Nothing really. Just surfing
and chatting."

Jacobs nodded. "OK, that's a start. I want him watched,
obviously."

***

At eleven forty-five, Kathy showered and got ready to go to class.
As she washed her hair, Colleen stood outside the shower door and yelled
something about taking the flash drive the computer lab to check it out.

That flash drive spoiled Kathy’s entire day. In acting class
she missed a cue, forgot three lines, and actually tripped walking across the
stage.

It wasn’t just her acting class. Kathy’s work was all off in
her courses. Since the incident with the police, her mind stuck to the dead
man, and the mystery drive he’d pressed into her hand. She endured criticism
and raised eyebrows from her professors. She slumped against the wall of the
elevator as it carried her up, then trudged down the hall to her room.

The door hung wide open, swinging in a light breeze. Kathy
knew
that she’d closed and locked it when she left.

Kathy knew her roommate’s schedule by heart. Colleen would not
be home from her last class until seven.

Seconds dragged into minutes as she simply stood there and
stared at the door. A long list of reasonable explanations presented itself to
her mind, but after last night she wasn’t in the mood for any of them. Her
internal battle showed itself in little beads of sweat on her forehead, and in
the whispered prayers slipping out of her mouth. Finally curiosity triumphed
over caution. She took a moment, then tiptoed through the final few steps to
the door.

No one was in the room – they wouldn’t have had space. All
their possessions, their dresser and desk drawers, the mattresses of their
beds, and everything they owned on earth was strewn about on the floor.

***

Colleen came home at seven to find her roommate sitting on the
floor, legs splayed to either side and head propped up on her arms. The streaks
of dried tears spoiled Kathy’s usually perfect makeup. The reason for them was
equally clear.

"What in the heck happened here?" Colleen asked,
kneeling down to bring herself to Kathy’s level.

"Someone broke in."

That much was obvious, but Colleen didn’t comment. Instead, she
cast a belated glance at her desk.

With a shriek, she bolted up from the ground and across the
room. Pieces of her PC decorated the entire desk and the floor around it.
"Son of a…" Following that, Colleen issued a stream of profanity to
make a sailor blush as she stood and gaped at the remains of her pride and joy.

Kathy had already sorted through much of the detritus on their
floor. She’d gathered up her textbooks, her journal, her Bible, and put them
back on the shelves. Thus far, she’d found nothing of hers missing. Colleen's
loss, on the other hand, was her most prized possession. She got up from the
floor to hug her roommate.

Tears ran freely down Colleen's face. "Why on Earth would
anyone do this?" She cried. "Stealing it I can understand, but why
this?"

Kathy responded only by hugging her tighter.

"I built that thing myself! Down to the processor I built
it. I’ve been upgrading it by hand for a year!"

Colleen's mood faded from hysterical anger to lethargy. She
sank down to her bed and simply sat there, staring at the wall.

Eventually she sighed. "I suppose we should call the
police."

Kathy frowned. "I can hardly stand the thought of seeing
them again, after the way they treated me last night."

"Well, let’s call DOPS, then," Colleen replied,
referring to Georgetown’s Department Of Public Safety, the campus police force.
The acronym was usually pronounced "dopes" by the students.

After Kathy agreed, her roommate got up to make the call.
Waiting for DOPS to arrive, she sunk back into her stupor, contemplating the
loss of her computer.

Kathy placed a hand on each of her friend’s shoulders, and
shook once, lightly. "Colleen, listen to me. I don’t know, but I don’t
think you should sleep here tonight."

Her eyelashes dropped down in first one blink, then another.
Colleen nodded. "Yeah, I guess you’re right. I haven’t thought ahead at
all. All I can think of is how much of my life requires that computer. I’ve got
all the files backed up, of course, but that doesn’t do me any good without a
computer to put them on. It’s like… Sorry. I’m rambling. Anyway, you’re right.
I’ll call my so-called boyfriend and sleep over at his place tonight. Where are
you going to go when you get off work?"

"I haven’t thought of that yet. I may just spend the night
at the club."

"They let you do that?"

"Yeah, nights can run pretty late there, and it’s not
unheard of for team members to spend the night on a couch in the back
room."

Colleen shrugged. "OK. Catch you tomorrow for lunch?"

Kathy agreed.

It took half an hour before the public safety officers arrived,
and when they did they didn’t do much more than fill out some paperwork. But
the two girls felt better for at least having reported to someone in authority.
Colleen called her boyfriend and headed out for his place carrying the flash
drive, which she’d brought back home from class. Kathy took a while longer
getting ready, but soon she was off to work.

A long bus ride later, Kathy strode into the Neon Nightclub and
made her way to the employees’ door at the back. She smiled at a few of the
regulars, then disappeared into the employees lounge.

She sank down onto one of the room’s couches and kicked off her
shoes before changing into her uniform.

"No offense, Kathy, but you look like a wreck."

Kathy smiled at her coworker. "Thanks, I feel it."

"Cheer up before you go out. That Congressman is here
tonight, and he asked me about you."

Kathy smiled. "You know that federal debt they’re always
talking about? I think he spends it all on booze here."

"Yeah, and tipping you. If you’re going to hook up with a
customer, you could do a lot worse than that one."

Kathy laughed again. "He’s a politician. You have to
wonder about one of those so-called family values guys hanging out in a night
club chasing cocktail waitresses."

"Not waitress
es
Kathy. Just one waitress. And I
don’t think there’s anything wrong with a single guy meeting a girl he likes
and trying to spend more time with her. Seems like basically how people start
living those ‘family’ values."

"Yeah, but I’ve never heard him talk about anything that
really matters to me."

Her coworker gave her a look. "Maybe it's there and you
just haven't looked for it yet."

Kathy smiled. "It almost sounds like you want to date
him."

"No, I want to be your wingman. Get out there."

Kathy put on the club's uniform, which was all black and too
short, and headed out to get to work.

A couple hours later, at her first break of the night, Kathy
disappeared into the employees’ lounge and kicked off her shoes. But she’d
barely even sat down when another waitress walked past and dropped a folded
piece of paper in her lap. She didn’t need to read it.

"Buy you a drink?" were the only words on the paper.

She lifted herself off the couch, and left the employee lounge.
Leaning against the back corner of the club, she looked at the Congressman for
a while.

Seems like a nice guy whenever we talk. Trying to do something
he believes is right with his job. Nice looking. But who is he really? Who is
he deep down?

She walked over to Mike’s table.

He asked, "How’s it going tonight?"

She shrugged, sat in the chair across the table from him, and
leaned back, crossing her arms. She made a noncommittal noise that fell short
of an actual word by way of answering his question.

"Kathy, what’s wrong?"

She smiled at him and tried to open up her body language a bit.
"Nothing, Mike. Just a bit tired."

"Seriously, Kathy, I can tell you’ve got something on your
mind. You can tell me."

She didn’t answer Michael, staring off into the distance,
sipping the vodka cranberry he’d had waiting at the table for her.

He reached across the table to touch her hand lightly.
"Kathy, you know I want to help."

She sighed. Michael seemed nice enough. She was upset about the
break-in, and taking it out on him.

She made herself smile at him. "Thanks for being patient
with my mood. I’ll come out and spend my lunch with you. We'll talk then."

That gave her time to think it over.

***

Sam Franken’s eyes kept wandering away from the shift
commander. There’d been nothing new in the briefing so far, and he was
expecting nothing new before it ended. But it was bad form to be too obvious
about ignoring it, so he snapped his eyes back to the front again.

"… Finally, the string of burglaries around Dupont Circle
got longer by one last night, so obviously the perp is still at large.
Jefferson, Berenbaum, you’re riding out there tonight, so keep your eyes open.

"Any questions? Dismissed."

The shift commander turned around and the assembled police
officers rose to their feet. Franken walked toward the door, but stopped when
the commander waved at him. "I wanna talk to you before you go,
Franken."

In the commander’s office, he took a chair and waited to hear
what this was all about. The shift commander was Lieutenant Eric Washington,
short and fanatical about physical fitness. His reputation as a hard nose was
legendary in the precinct.

"What’s this crap you filed last night?" Washington
asked, easing his rear down into the chair behind his desk.

"What’s wrong with the report, sir? Did I miss a section
of the form?"

"No, idiot! You didn’t miss a section of the form, you
filed a possible homicide when you should have filed a false alarm
report!"

"Well, sir, the witness…"

"Was obviously some drunk college kid. Dead bodies don’t
get up and walk away leaving no trace of blood behind!"

"Well, I figured she just made a mistake about whether he
was dead or still kicking…"

"More likely she made a mistake about whether there was a
body at all. Fix this screw up, Franken. Change this report to a false alarm."

He knew better than to argue. He stood up, promised to make the
change, and headed for his desk.

***

Wind scratched at the windows of his fifth floor office,
wanting to get in. D.W. Tilman was not a man given to staring out windows, but
as Wednesday evening became Wednesday night, it seemed appropriate.

He didn't like to be in this late if he didn't have to. Many
executives allowed their position of power to capture them, but Tilman didn't
count himself among that number. Leaving his office at five or even before was
one of the perks he felt entitled to, given that he owned the company.

But today was different. Very much so.

One of his employees died today; a computer programmer. The man
went up to the roof of the building to smoke a cigarette. He did that four
times every working day. This time, though, he made a wrong step and fell more
than fifty feet to his death. Tilman sighed.

The man's name had been Ivan Krupotnik, a Russian programmer.
Tilman spotted the man's talent in a few programs he'd written and distributed
for free over the Internet. He'd offered Krupotnik a very generous salary
and
an expedited employment visa, bringing him to the United States.

Krupotnik never made many friends in the company or in the
country. His few social contacts had been Internet relationships, people he
chatted with over thousands of miles. The fact that he'd been a Russian
national severely complicated his death.

Naturally, the entire company had been in a state of shock all
day. Between that and the necessity of dealing with the bureaucratic machinery
with which modern society handled untimely death, he'd gotten nothing done on
several projects that merited his attention. And staring out the window wasn't
helping.

With one more sigh, he turned around and stared at his computer
screen. Thursday – tomorrow – he'd testify before the House Judiciary Committee
about the product he was selling to the NSA. This hearing was key to the
program’s success. If he could put to rest some of the privacy concerns
tomorrow, then next Monday’s breakfast meeting with the same members would go
like clockwork.

It didn't help that Krupotnik had been the heart of the
GigaStar program. Had he lived, he and Tilman would have spent the afternoon
going over questions he might be asked by the Congressmen, and possible
responses. Instead, Tilman had spent the afternoon dealing with his death, and
now he had to prepare for the questions without the guidance of the man who
knew the project best.

And there weren't others he could turn to, either. The problem
with being a government contractor was that much of the work done by his
company was classified. The government – and especially the NSA – took
classification very seriously. In most cases, one employee wouldn't even know
what another was working on. None of the other employees knew the GigaStar
program like the guy who made it work.

Oh, Krupotnik had a supervisor, of course. She knew what he'd
been doing. But only in the supervisory way, not like the guy who'd actually
done the work. So she wouldn't be any help.

Tilman uttered a mild oath and got to work.

***

"I saw someone die last night, Michael."

The Congressman leaned forward in his chair and laid his hand
over Kathy’s. "Oh, Kathy, that’s horrible! What happened?"

"I was coming home from here and he got shot right in
front of me. I ran up to see if I could help, and he gave me a flash drive and
then died. It was so awful! There was blood everywhere, all over him and the
sidewalk… I nearly puked. Somehow I ran home to call an ambulance. When I came
back, the cops and EMTs were there, but no body. He was totally gone – no blood
on the sidewalk or anything. It was like he’d never been there. The cops
practically accused me of calling a false alarm, and my roommate was half way
to thinking I was crazy."

Michael patted her hand. "That’s terrible. I’ve never seen
someone die right in front of me before."

Kathy nodded, and took a sip of coffee. He’d had another vodka
waiting for her when she came back, but she didn’t feel like drinking. It was
hard to even hear Mike over the thumping bass of the music, and idly she turned
her eyes to the dance floor. She sighed and turned back to Michael.

"To make matters worse, today our dorm room was broken
into. It was so
awful
! They totally ransacked everything, and all our
junk was all over the floor, and my roommate’s computer was smashed up… it was
just the worst."