Trojan Horse (10 page)

“What is OFDA?” Jeff asked.

“Sorry. The Office for Disarmament Affairs in Geneva. It will source the report. They want nothing to go astray. They are under tremendous pressure.”

He didn’t volunteer why that might be the case and Jeff didn’t ask. “Have there been other incidents since I arrived?” he asked. “These things rarely occur in isolation.”

“Yes,” Yates said. “We’ve had two more computers refuse to execute OW files. Before you ask, one was again from UNOG while the other was from the UN in New York.”

“It’s spreading,” Jeff said. “Here’s what I have. Yes, obviously the problem was caused by a Trojan. It’s brand-new and uses a zero day. That alone makes it stand out. It is also stealthy, utilizing a new and devious technique to conceal itself. It also turns off and on at random, and calls home for instructions in a way I cannot block except by taking it off-line and that’s no systemwide solution.”

“That’s distressing,” Walthrop said.

“Is it targeted to us?” Yates asked.

“I think it is,” Jeff said. “It’s certainly not generic.”

“I see. So what does it do?” Yates asked.

“It’s designed for government espionage, in my opinion,” Jeff said. “At the very least, its purpose is to read your files. And while I have no conclusive evidence, the pointers suggest the government employing it is Iran.” Walthrop visibly reacted to the news but didn’t comment. “As I said, I believe it gives access to content, but . . .” Jeff hesitated. How to say the rest?

“Yes?” Yates said to encourage him.

“I suspect it allows an outside source to edit documents.”

Walthrop sat up straight in his chair. “What?”

“If it executes and gains access, the interloper can change the contents of an OW document,” Jeff said. “This happens, of course, before the digital signature is applied. The document for all purposes appears genuine. Of course, if the author of the document reviews the copy he sent he’ll catch the changes. That’s unlikely, though. People assume a document is the same as when they last saw it on their computer.”

Walthrop eased back in his chair. “So Franz may be telling me the truth. Let me collect my thoughts on this. You’re saying that this nasty piece of code gives access to our documents and allows them to be altered?”

“Yes,” Jeff said. “That appears to be the case.”

“And I think it’s a genuine document when I receive it?”

“Yes.”

“How long has this been going on?” he asked.

“I can’t say,” Jeff said.

“My God,” Walthrop said. “It may already have read, even altered, thousands of files.” All his fears about computers were coming true. He knew, he just
knew,
it would come to this someday.

“What else do you have?” Yates asked.

“The clues suggest Iran, as I said. But that could be a plant intended to throw us off. This is a very shady digital world we’re dealing with.”

“I’m curious. Why did my computer have a problem the first time but then opened the file when I tried again?” Walthrop asked. “If Herlicher was infected, his computer had no problem with the virus.”

“I don’t know what security UNOG is using,” Jeff said. “That’s likely the reason. As for the other, my guess is there’s a glitch in the virus. It crashed OfficeWorks the first time you tried but not the second, but in neither case did it successfully activate. I suspect that whoever wrote this code didn’t compensate for at least one of the OfficeWorks security checks.”

“Is there anything more to be done here?” Walthrop asked.

Jeff shook his head. “Blake is perfectly qualified to clean the Trojan out of your computers, if it managed to get onto any of them. He’s got the code and he knows where to look if necessary. I’d say my next stop is UNOG, assuming I’m to continue with this. I still need to write the detection program for you and I need to find out how this thing works. Any virus that’s exploiting a loophole in the digital signature system is a serious threat. But I’d need to access Herlicher’s system to confirm that’s what happened here.”

“We and our counterparts at UNOG are agreed that you should follow up at Geneva,” Yates said. “You can understand this is a potential source of friction between Her Majesty’s government and the United Nations. They are eager to see that possibility eliminated. There’s a Swiss International Air Lines flight leaving at six thirty this evening, which you can just catch. You’ll be in Geneva later tonight. Thank you for your help and we wish you luck.”

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND

UNITED NATIONS OFFICE AT GENEVA (UNOG)

OFFICE FOR DISARMAMENT AFFAIRS

PALAIS DES NATIONS

4:47 P.M. CET

F
ranz Herlicher entered his office, glanced about for any signs that someone had been in it while he was gone, saw none, then quietly closed the door before sitting at his workstation. Carlos Estancia, his manager, had summoned him earlier for a quick meeting. Ostensibly it was to inform him that an expert was arriving from London to examine his computer.

Herlicher wasn’t fooled. There was surely more to it than that. There always was. He’d worked for the Spaniard long enough to recognize that look. Estancia thought he had something on him and was just waiting for the so-called expert to give him the cover he needed. UNOG had its own computer people. Hadn’t he been cooperating with them? Who said he wasn’t? Why bring in someone from outside?

Herlicher glanced at his computer. The techs had done some work on it, then abruptly stopped. He’d been told to leave it alone but he couldn’t help wonder what was there to be found. Everywhere he’d browsed was cached away in some electronic recess, at least that was what he understood. He had no taste for pornography and if he had, he counted himself smart enough to know their IT staff would catch him at it at work. It had happened to others. He didn’t squander work hours browsing aimlessly; he knew that was monitored as well. And he certainly never wrote anything disparaging about the UN or the Office for Disarmament Affairs. That was the last thing he’d ever consider.

Estancia had confirmed what the IT people had said, that his computer had been hacked. That was the word he’d used, suggesting by his manner that somehow it was Herlicher’s fault, as if computer security wasn’t a matter for IT. Didn’t they have programs to prevent that sort of thing? Firewalls? They’d been told their Internet security was second to none. Yet, now Estancia was trying to make this his fault.

There was no question of taking this London expert at face value. Something much more significant was taking place. Was he the target? Herlicher wondered, or just a cog in a much bigger game? Was there any way he could know?

Estancia had said nothing about Lloyd Walthrop but it was clear to Herlicher that a document he’d sent the man had been the cause of the problem. The fact that the experts were coming from Britain suggested to him that Walthrop had his own concerns. Shouldn’t that get him off the hook now?

Herlicher couldn’t make sense of the disaster. Estancia, the techs, everyone seemed to be speaking in double-talk. He pressed his hands to his head, feeling one of his migraines coming on. This was all so complicated.

He abruptly straightened with sudden realization. Estancia knew he’d contacted Walthrop about the Iranian report; had
been
regularly contacting Walthrop.
And providing privileged information.
There’d been no way to avoid using his office computer for those contacts though they were against policy.

Herlicher turned on his screen and opened his e-mail program. He began systematically deleting every message he’d ever sent Walthrop.

MAKU, IRAN

IMAM STREET

HOTEL SEYHAN ADANA

9:58 P.M. IRST

S
aliha Kaya stood back from the window as she stared at the dark street below. There were few streetlights and most of those no longer functioned.

It was always this way on these trips. Fly from Prague to Ankara, hire a car, drive in one long day to the border with Iran, wait to cross, then check into the hotel. The woman had come and gone. It was done, so why couldn’t she sleep?

It was all exhausting and she didn’t know how many more of these trips she was willing to undertake for Ahmed. The pay was good—not great but good—but the inconvenience was considerable. The flight itself was no problem. She enjoyed airplanes and she often met businessmen who gave her their cards, promising to help her find work wherever it was they lived. She knew what they meant but each card represented an opportunity. Her relationship with Ahmed was going nowhere and every time she went back home, she grew more depressed at the prospect of returning to Turkey.

Her father had died the previous year. Two sisters and a brother still lived at home with her increasingly aging mother. Though her other siblings gave what they could, it fell to Saliha to be the family’s primary support. After all, she lived in the rich West and earned far more than the rest of the family combined.

She’d arrived from Prague in the afternoon, taken a taxi to the apartment where’d she’d grown up, and surprised her family, as she always did. Ahmed had made it clear that she was never to announce her trips to anyone. The girls and her brother were as delighted to see their big sister as she was to see them. She had gifts they excitedly opened and it warmed her to see the happiness she could bring them.

The apartment was on the ground floor and there was a small garden in back. As a child she’d worked it with her grandmother, providing fresh vegetables for the family during the summer and fall. Now that she was gone and her grandmother dead, the garden had turned fallow. With the death of her father, her mother had no time at all to garden. She’d been at the market when Saliha had arrived so she was playing with the children when her mother returned. She smiled warmly and embraced her daughter.

“You are so thin. Don’t you get enough to eat?” she’d said.

Saliha had laughed. “It is the fashion in the West. And I am not so thin as that.” She slipped folded bills into her mother’s hand.

Her mother bowed her head, then said, “Thank you, my daughter. Without you . . .” The rest she left unspoken.

Yes, without me,
Saliha thought. What would the family do? Suffer, go hungry, struggle. Her two sisters would likely be forced into prostitution, her brother be turned into a pimp or thief or both. She knew. She’d seen it enough. She’d escape that fate but would they?

Her older sister was married to a truck driver, the oldest brother worked in Istanbul on the docks. He’d not married so he could give his mother as much of his earnings as possible. To do so he lived in squalor. But the time was approaching when he must look to his own future and begin to save.

That night, Saliha treated the family to foods they normally didn’t enjoy, then helped her mother prepare dinner. Her two sisters had crawled into bed with her, whispering, dreaming until they’d all drifted off. As always it had been a wonderful visit, but too short. These were the best moments of her life.

In Prague, Saliha worked with young women who’d forgotten their families. Money that should have gone home was spent on expensive clothes, a nice apartment, trips. They dressed and behaved like whores and in the process Saliha watched them become hard and bitter. How could anyone turn her back on home? On her family? She didn’t understand it.

Early the next morning Saliha set off to rent a car, telling her mother she’d be back in a few days with more gifts. Her mother stood in the doorway, watching her retreating figure, waving a final time as Saliha turned the corner.

The drive from Ankara to the border with Iran took all of a long, hard day. She drove north and east of Ankara until she joined E80, the Trans-European Motorway or TEM, a divided highway that began somewhere far away in Western Europe and ended just short of the Turkey-Iran border. It crossed the broad Anatolian plain, then wound through long narrow mountain valleys over ancient passes. As she ate up the miles driving at a brisk pace, the true life of so-called modern Turkey unfolded before her. Aged men on donkeys, children herding sheep, exhausted fields struggling to produce one more crop so a family wouldn’t starve. She’d seen it all before and the more time she spent in the West, the more desperate and impoverished her native country looked.

In this region of Turkey, a woman traveling alone was a curiosity. Twice she pulled off the highway to take a short break. When she entered the adjoining small villages she ignored the disapproving looks she received from old men and women, the aggressive stares from young men.

Ahmed had cautioned her to mix up her routine, to take different routes. She’d done that the first three trips and disliked it as any other route took a full, grueling two days. Now she traveled the best and fastest route. The trip was demanding enough without adding his silly rules.

That afternoon as she traveled east, the mountains grew higher, the road become less well maintained and the region more primitive. When she neared the border, she turned down a narrow dirt road. After a short distance she stopped beside a lovely stream lined with poplar trees, shielded from the highway by heavy vegetation. There she opened the car doors and snacked on food prepared by her mother as she listened to the bubbling water. Spring was later here and the air was cool though rich with the fragrance of the mountains. In late summer, the nearby pomegranate trees would be heavy with fruit. Their scent was one of the few pleasures in these trips.