Death of Secrets (21 page)

She sucked in a breath. "They don't know we're here?"

He shook his head. "When I took down the firewall I took
down their ability to detect intruders easily. There are only two ways they
could find out about this. One is by checking their server logs tomorrow, which
I'm sure they'll do, and the other is if one of their employees logs onto their
network and checks who else is connected. The first one I'll fix before we log
off by messing with their log files. The second is harder to prevent, but
unlikely because of the hour.

"It is possible, though, so to be safe I'll pop open a
little window to monitor network connections, so I'll know if anyone else logs
on. Maybe we'll also pop open their surveillance feeds. That'll help know if
anyone's about to start looking for us."

 Jakarta clicked through a directory called surveillance.
Each file represented a day's footage taken from cameras mounted around the
offices of Electron Guidewire. He could only find recordings, not live feeds.

The first one he opened turned out to be almost completely
useless in terms of letting them know if someone else was monitoring them. It
held recordings from cameras in the roof of the building. Soon he was fast-forwarding
through scenes of EG employees coming out for cigarettes and, in some cases,
lunch breaks.

Then he saw footage that made the whole enterprise feel a lot
more serious.

He stopped fast forwarding and his jaw dropped open as Colleen gave
a tiny scream.

"Replay that," she breathed.

In stunned silence, they watched a man standing near the edge
of the roof, savoring a cigarette. But the smoke had only burned half an inch
when a strong-looking man wearing a ratty, unshaven beard walked up behind him
and calmly shoved him off the edge.

"We just watched a murder," Colleen said when she was
finally capable of words.

Jakarta nodded. "That should clear up any questions you
had about the kind of situation you're dealing with here," he said.
"They killed one of my friends too."

"I've got to tell Mike and Kathy," she said.
"They said the guy who broke into Mike's house had a beard like
that."

"We'll get them in a bit," Jakarta said. "First,
let's get back to work, before we get caught in here."

He closed the video files and went back to looking for the
GigaStar code. A few more moments of searching brought a shout of triumph to
the young man’s lips. "Bingo! Now, to make the modifications."

"What are you going to do, precisely?" Colleen asked.
"How are you going to change the code to make it unworkable."

Jakarta talked as he typed. "Well, I've been thinking
about that since you guys brought me the flash drive. I want to make it as hard
as possible for EG to notice the flaw, so this is what I've come up with. I'll
put in a few lines of code that will destroy the program – actually wipe out
the whole hard drive –
unless
a password is entered every twenty four
hours."

Colleen blinked. "So you'll have to keep hacking in here
once a night until you decide it's time to wax them?"

He nodded. "Exactly. The benefit is that they will
never
be able to give a working copy to the NSA, because I'll only be logging
into the Electron Guidewire server to enter the password, not the NSA server –
that one’s too much for me. So even if I keep entering the code forever at EG,
I'll never enter it at NSA, and thus every time they give the code to NSA the
package will self-destruct in twenty four hours."

She whistled. "That's beautiful, but it imposes quite a
risk on you, doesn't it?"

He turned to her and nodded. "It's worth it, though, to
stop this thing."

Colleen smiled at him. "Brave."

Jakarta shifted uncomfortably in his seat, then nodded and
turned away. "Now, let me write for a sec." With that his fingers
began flying over the keys, entering new lines into the program.

Colleen watched as the code poured out of him, scrolling up on
the screen as he wrote. No doubt the man was brilliant. It was actually much
harder than he let on, as Colleen knew quite well from her own experience. But
he was flying through the code. This kind of talent could be earning him a
seven-figure salary in Seattle or any of the big Silicon Valley companies. But
of course, in private practice, he just created all the money he needed.

A few minutes into the programming, one of the other windows on
his screen beeped.

Colleen's eyes went wide and Jakarta sucked in a quick breath.
"Another network connection," he said, his voice just a bit too loud.
"Someone at Electron Guidewire logged in. I knew I'd want those
surveillance cameras. I need to get out of here
now
, before they check
to see if anyone else is on."

"Maybe they won't check," Colleen replied, hope
threading through her voice.

"Only reason for someone to be on at this hour is a
security check," he replied. He returned to his coding, and now his
fingers veritably flew over the keys. Colleen watched the login process as
whoever was behind the new connection entered a password. In less than a
minute, though, Jakarta was done, and about to close the text window.

"Wait!" Colleen yelled. "You forgot the
password!" Hurriedly she reached for the mouse. Her hand came down over
his, and she pushed to the appropriate location on the screen. In the other
window, they saw the other visitor starting the program to monitor the system.

"Thanks," he breathed, and went to type in a
password. His face turned to hers and his eyes sparkled for just a moment as he
said, "I know the perfect one."

Colleen was still trying to decide whether to ask what it was
or urge him to hurry when she saw the password typed out on the screen.

"KH12."

She beamed at him, but he was already looking back at the
screen, closing the window where they'd been sabotaging the code. "One
last thing," he breathed, his voice tight with the knowledge that they
could be found out at any time.

"The log," she agreed. "Do you have time?"

Jakarta glanced at the screen. "Their security program
takes a few seconds to load," he replied. "I think I can make
it."

He made a couple mouse clicks, opened the file that logged all
connections to the server, and deleted the entry for their connection.

He closed that window. He broke their connection.

"Did we get away?"

"Yeah. He would have cut us off if he'd seen us."

"Are you sure?" Colleen pressed.

"As sure as I’m going to be," the hacker replied.

"You have to go back at this time tomorrow?"

"Yeah."

"Well, I guess you’ll find out for sure then whether you
got caught or not."

He nodded and shrugged. "But by then we should have you
and your friends back to your normal life. Tomorrow morning I’ll get some guys
to drive you back to your hotel."

***

Carlos first dialed the NSA. When he reached Jacobs, he said,
"They broke their connection right after I logged on. I think they were
monitoring us again, keeping an eye out for anyone else on the network. I'm not
sure whether they had time to finish or not before they left."

Jacobs grunted. "Well, it doesn't matter that much. We got
their location out of it – they're in some high-rise apartment complex on
Wisconsin Avenue. I've got an agent out to roust Judge Wrolski right now. We'll
have him in custody before the night's over."

Carlos wasn't quite as sure about that. Kathy – he had no doubt
she and her friends were behind the attack – had proven pretty darn hard to
catch up ‘til now. And if the reports he'd had were anything to go by, Jacobs
was actually helping them. He wondered if the man knew whom he was likely to
find on the other end of his chain of traced IP addresses. But by way of
answering, he said, "I hope you nail him. If you need any testimony from
us, count on having it."

"I will," Jacobs agreed. "Any idea what they
were up to?"

"Well, I haven’t fully analyzed everything yet,"
Carlos replied, which was true. "But at this stage it looks like the same
thing I told you about earlier. Possibly trying to modify our code, maybe put
in their own back door."

He heard Jacobs growl on the other end of the phone, then say,
"Well, I’ll have him in custody shortly, and he can tell us what back door
he put in."

Carlos agreed and then signed off. His next call was to D.W.
Tilman. The groggy answer on the other end of the line told Carlos he'd woken
the man up. Well, too bad. He'd want to know about this.

"You'll need to come in," were his first words of the
phone call.

"Carlos? What time is it? You
are
aware that I've
got a very important meeting tomorrow, right?"

"I know," Carlos replied. "But I'm about to roll
up Katherine Kelver and company, and you said you wanted a chance to deal with
the Congressman yourself. If we can have them taken care of by tomorrow
morning, it would make your meeting go a lot easier, wouldn't it?"

"OK," Tilman agreed. "Yeah, I'll come into the
office. You going to meet me there?"

Carlos answered in the negative. "No, I'm going out after
them. I'll bring them back here and you can talk to them."

Tilman grunted. "OK, but since you've gone to the trouble
of waking me up, you'd better actually have them when I get in. Remember, I
want to talk to them. Don’t kill them before."

"I understand."

His next call was to the specialists he hired for this kind of
work. The average Joe’s he kept on staff as security guards at the building
weren’t nearly qualified, and letting all of them in on the operation would be
a security risk. Instead, he dipped into the deep pool of disgruntled muscle
available in Washington. For the right price, men with paramilitary training
and a decent helping of brains were always available.

The people Carlos hired billed themselves as a security firm,
though in fact the things they did were more about breaking through other
people’s security than enhancing their own. He’d checked out their camouflage
quite thoroughly himself before hiring them.

In fact, the people of Stiletto Security were paramilitary
operatives, all of them. They had helped him set up the hit on Harrison. They
had helped him try to snatch Kathy off the street The fees they charged him had
gone up substantially since two of their number had died in the raid on
Vincent’s home, but they were still worth it. It took less than two minutes on
the phone to hire four of their people and one of their vans for a quick bit of
work.

Carlos hung up and walked out of his office. He rode the
elevator down to the ground floor and walked up to the security desk. The
guards there greeted him.

The entryway was brightly lit during the day, but at night it
had a creepy emptiness to it. Carlos tried not to let it bother him, but the
vast open space, echoing tile floor, and distant walls gave it a spooky feel.

The man behind the desk in the front lobby was the night shift
manager of the security guards. He had two other people on duty with him
tonight, one patrolling the building and the other patrolling the grounds. All
of them knew Carlos by sight – as the director of security, he briefed them
daily when they came on duty.

"Jerrold, I've got some clients coming in a little bit who
are pretty uptight about wanting to keep their business with us quiet," he
told the manager. "Why don't you and the rest of your shift take the rest
of the night off, they don't want to see anybody but me in here when they
arrive."

Jerrold chuckled. "More guys from the CIA, boss? They're
sure paranoid."

Carlos had done this last night, too, when he brought John in
here. His guards weren't privy to the truth about the GigaStar project and the
means they were using to keep it secure. None of them were overly bright, in
Carlos's estimation, and he didn't want to take the risk of them blabbing it.

Carlos gave him a knowing smile. "You know I can't say.
But don't worry. You get paid for a full night's work and only have to put in
half of it."

Jerrold smiled. "Won't get any complaints from me,
boss." With that he lifted his radio to let the two patrolling guards
know.

Carlos walked out of the building and headed over to his
reserved parking place. On the way he caught sight of the guard, walking inside
after getting the radio call. He opened the driver’s door of his Mercedes and
got in. If he could, he wanted to get to Kelver before Nathan did. And if he
couldn't, maybe he could kill her before she spilled the beans.

***

As it happened, the NSA people hadn't even needed to wake
anyone up. Judge Wrolski – one of the NSA's favorite FISC judges – was up late
watching a TV movie with his wife, and gruffly signed the warrant after being
shown a letter indicating that the investigation involved national security.
The NSA liked Wrolski because he pretty much always just rubber stamped their
requests.

The local FBI field office had been equally easy to put in
motion. According to the legal delineation of duties, Nathan’s agency had
responsibility for spying on the electronic communications of people planning
activities that threatened the U.S. Government. But when they left the
electronic world behind and had to put actual law enforcement personnel on the
ground, that was the job of the FBI, at least within the country’s borders.

Jacobs made the call to the FBI field office and gave them
their marching orders. Not long thereafter he rode along through the streets of
Washington in one of three unmarked cars, on his way to the hacker's location.
They still had no idea who they were about to catch, but it didn't matter. In a
lot of electronic crime cases, agents ended up waking unknowing parents when
they knocked on the door and hauled off some teenage kid who they'd assumed was
up late doing his homework. But they weren't all that easy. All of the agents
were armed, in case this one turned out to be more threatening than a pimply
faced kid.

Technically, there wasn't much reason for Jacobs to go along,
but he enjoyed a show much as the next guy. Since he didn't have any specific
duties on the raid tonight, his mind was free to wonder about other things.
Were Mike and Kathy on Jakarta's trail, had they just gotten his help to
decrypt the drive, or had they actually started working with him? Had they
gotten so desperate to find what was on that flash drive that they made an ally
of a known criminal? He didn't think Mike would do that, but he was less sure
about Kathy. And he knew that Mike would follow Kathy just about anywhere.

His conscience nagged him about the fact that he had never
reported this to his chain of command. Knowing some kind of crime was being
committed – at the very least, someone had committed attempted murder on the
Congressman – and not doing anything went against every professional scruple he
had. Jacobs wondered idly whether Mike understood just how far out on a limb he
had gone for him.

If Vincent didn't turn up soon, Nathan decided, he was going
back to going by the book, whether the Congressman wanted it or not.

***

Colleen paced the room. Hugh/Jakarta had led her to a bedroom –
not much more than a mattress and a sleeping bag – before going off to his own.
There was a time in her life she would have followed him to his, but… maybe
Kathy was rubbing off on her.

Finally she pulled on her pants and a T-shirt. Silently, she
tiptoed to the door.

Whenever she couldn't sleep, Colleen fooled around with a
computer. It was her security blanket, her good book, her warm bath, and her
television. The computer was Colleen's all-purpose feel-good pill, and now she
wanted to play with one.

She padded silently down the hall until she found the computer
room. She eased the door open. The chilly night air raised goosebumps on her
arms.

She didn't click a light on; she rarely bothered. The monitor
was more than bright enough. One of these computers was bound to have Call of
Duty on it.

A new box perched on the table, next to the computer she and
Jakarta – Hugh – had been using. Generally square in shape, it looked to Kathy
like it might be a flat screen monitor. But a closer look belied that. The
surface was gray and dull, rather like the touch pad on a laptop computer. But
it couldn't be a mouse, it was way too big and cumbersome, no one would use a
surface that big as a pointing device. It was literally as big as the monitor
next to it.

Colleen leaned over the top of it. The back side was open, with
circuit boards and wires showing. The light was too dim to make out many
details but it looked pretty haphazard, as if it had been thrown together from
spare parts. She pondered going to the light switch and turning it on, to have
a better look at the thing. But then she noticed the wire going out the back.
She took it in hand, and followed it a short distance to see that it was
plugged into the back of the computer she'd been using earlier with Hugh.

She'd been so fascinated by the device itself that she hadn't
looked at the computer screen yet. Now she gave the monitor a look to see if
she could find anything there about what it was.

Her mouth dropped open. Only her quick reaction to lock her jaw
shut saved her from screaming. On the screen, she saw a simple text window,
tracking input.

>New subject acquired.

>Subject expresses interest in object to front.

>Subject studies object.

>Subject expresses interest in new object.

>Subject self-identifies as COLLEEN CHRISTINA.

>Fight or flight reflex triggered.

>Onset of mild panic.

>Subject expresses strong interest in object to front.

>Subject feels extreme anger.

>Uncatalogued input.

>Fight or flight reflex triggered

>Subject begins moving at high speed.

>Identified input: "I've got to tell kathy and
mike!"

Colleen hurried down the hall as fast as she could, not seeing
the screen in the room behind her as it registered the recurring thought,
"That
liar
!" Her second thought was to remember the diagram
and other files he’d given to Jerry. "Analyze the code?" she
whispered to herself as she searched for her friends. "You gave him those
so he could build you your own copy of this gadget you said was so evil."

Not knowing what else to do, she started trying random doors as
quietly as she could. The first door opened to a storage room. She shut that
and tried the next. That was an unused bedroom, and she moved on. The third
door she opened looked like a workshop.

Colleen paused for a moment and looked around. She saw
soldering irons, coils of electrical wire, circuit boards lying about, and a
number of other gadgets. This, she had no doubt, was where Jerry had built
their oversized version of the GigaStar "wiretapping device." The
original design might be smaller than a pencil’s eraser, but that kind of
miniaturization required a state of the art manufacturing facility.

Clearly in a place like this, he wouldn’t have the tools to
make anything even half that small. The greater size of the device she’d seen
was simply a matter of low budget. She shook her head to chase out the random
thoughts, reminding herself that Jakarta or Jerry could wake up at any minute.
Colleen went back to looking for Kathy.

The next door she tried was another unused bedroom, and she
began to wonder just how big an apartment Jakarta rented for himself. Though of
course, since he just stole whatever money he needed, there was no practical
limit on the size of his place. Cursing again about her mind’s tendency to
wander, she opened another door.

A king-size bed filled up most of the floor space. In the
middle of it, snoring lightly, lay Jerry. The leading edge of a screech slipped
out of her lips before she clamped her jaw shut, and Jerry stirred in his bed.
She held her breath and didn’t move, praying he wouldn’t come fully awake. For
a full ten seconds she stood there, staring and praying.

The snores resumed.

Breathing a quiet sigh of relief, Colleen closed that door ever
so gently. Her random trial and error finally led her to the kitchen.