Cyberwarfare

by Pendelton C. Wallace

  Ted reluctantly took the picture. It was of a young girl with an unhappy look on her face. She stared menacingly at a violin on the table in front of her.

  He just shook his head. “This is bullshit.”

  Once again, the interrogator repeated, “Ted, I want you to tell me what happened leading up to the sketch, what’s happening in the sketch, and what happens after the sketch.”

  Rolling his eyes to the ceiling, he held the sketch up in front of him. “Let’s see … There’s a girl looking at a violin. Okay, before the picture, she got a call from her friend who wanted her to come over and play.”

  Dr. Moore jotted something down in her notebook.

  “Her mom told her she had to practice the violin first, and she’s not happy.”

  When he paused, the interrogator just stared silently at him.

  “Uh, let’s see … after the picture, the girl practices her violin, then goes to play with her friend.”

  “Thank you, Ted.”

  One by one, Dr. Moore gave Ted five more sketches and asked for a story. Ted hesitated each time.

  What’s this all about? What’s she trying to find out?

  When he finished the last story, the doctor made a few more notes then got up. “I’m going to leave you for a while. Sit tight, Ted. I’ll be back soon.” Then she knocked on the door and the guard opened it.

  ****

  “What did you learn, Hanna?” Elaine Jefferson, the head of the NSA’s Tailored Access Operations, asked.

  Dr. Moore shook her head. “He’s very consistent. He values family, maybe above all else. That’s certainly something we can use. He’s one of the most confident prisoners I’ve ever interrogated. He’s supremely self-assured and totally poised. I don’t think we’re going to get him to break down in tears.” How do I get to this young man?

  “So …” Elaine let the word hang in the air. “How are you going to approach the confrontation phase of the interview?”

  Hanna Moore looked at her notes. “I’m going to play up the family angle. That’s the theme here. Does he want his mother to worry about him, not knowing where he is or what’s going on? I’ll tell him that he’ll feel much better if he clears his conscience, that his family will be able to forgive him if they can understand.”

  “Okay, go get him, girl.”

  “Let me make a few notes first. Let’s let him stew for a while.”

  Dr. Moore stared at her notebook. Is he guilty? I didn’t get an iota of remorse from him. I don’t have the feeling he’s being deceptive. He’s going to be a tough nut to crack.

  Chapter 25

  Ted stared at the ceiling. He got up and paced. He sat back down and closed his eyes. The waiting was interminable.

  He was familiar with this tactic. He had to wait them out, not get rattled, no matter what they did.

  How far will these bastards go? Will they use water boarding, some other torture? What the hell do they want from me anyway?

  He’d been tortured before and wasn’t looking forward to it again.

  The door opened, and Dr. Moore re-entered the room. “I’m sorry to keep you so long, Ted. Shall we continue?”

  She sat in the other chair. “Ted, I want you to listen to me. Don’t interrupt, just hear what I have to say.

  “Ted, I have a very good friend who has been in your shoes. She was a hacker. She hacked into a big bank and transferred money into her account. She was very smart. She only did it a little at a time. She set up an account for Rose Zeus. Whenever the bank rounded a dollar amount, she transferred the dropped amount into her account. This went on for years and she built quite a little nest egg.

  “One day, the bank got a call from a little old lady named Judith Zwicky. She didn’t understand where all the money in her bank account was coming from.”

  “You know what happened, Ted. Rose’s hack put the money into the last account on the bank’s records. When Mrs. Zwicky opened her account, it was alphabetically after Zeus, so she got the money. If not for that, Rose would probably never have been caught.”

  Ted sat unmoved. I heard this urban myth in college.

  “Ted, the story has a happy ending. With someone as talented as Rose, the government couldn’t waste all that capability. She now works for the FBI’s cyber division.”

  “What does that have to do with me?”

  “Don’t interrupt, Ted. Just listen to what I have to say.” She hefted a thick file folder in her hands. “I know you, Ted. I probably know you better than you know yourself.”

  She’s a profiler. That’s it, that’s why she asked me to tell her those lame-ass stories, but build a profile on me? Why? “What’s this all about?”

  “Don’t interrupt, Ted. Just listen to what I have to say.” Dr. Moore pulled a sheet of paper out of the file. “I know about your family. How your mom and dad came here from Mexico, how your dad struggled to put food on the table, how he won the lottery and bought the restaurant where he worked. I know about your sister, how she graduated from UC Davis. How she owns one of the most successful restaurants in Seattle. I have to eat there the next time I’m in Seattle. I love Mexican food.”

  Ted stared down at his folded hands.

  “I know you, too, Ted. I know that you went to the University of Washington on a football scholarship.” Dr. Moore leaned closer to Ted. “I know that you graduated in computer science and went to work for Catrina Flaherty as a hacker for hire. We’ve been watching you since you got mixed up with that Al-Qaeda cell in Canada. You’ve been on our radar for some time.”

  Ted’s mouth dropped open.

  “We’ve wondered how you were involved with the drug cartels in Mexico. How you managed to kill off the leaders so that your girlfriend could take over the drug market in Baja California.”

  “No!” Ted stood from his chair. Maria! This is all about Maria.

  “Don’t interrupt, Ted. Sit down. Listen to what I have to say.” Dr. Moore continued. “We know you have extraordinary hacking skills. We watched you unravel the Millennium Systems scandal. We also know you have exceptional private investigator skills. You worked on the missing bikini barista stand-owner case. You see, Ted, I know all about you. I know who you are and what makes you tick.”

  “I call bullshit. You don’t know anything about me.”

  “Don’t interrupt, Ted. Just listen to what I have to say.” Her voice was nice and steady. She pulled a sketch from her file without showing it to Ted. “You met someone in Canada, didn’t you, Ted? He was disaffected, felt marginalized by his country. He wanted a way to strike back. That’s why they attacked that cruise ship. You understood him. You could sympathize with him because you have been marginalized yourself.

  “You grew up in the barrio where it was every man for himself. You didn’t fit in the white world. You didn’t even start speaking English until you went to elementary school. All of your life, white society put you down. Ted, I understand. What do you think it’s like being a woman in a man’s world? We have more in common than you think.”

  Where’s she going with this?

  “Ted, your resentment grew and grew. Even when you became a successful business man, you couldn’t get over the hatred. They scarred you, and they mistreated your people every day. You had to find a way to strike back at them.”

  Ted shook his head and let out a long breath.

  “So, you began the campaign to launch a series of cyber-attacks against your country. You wanted to make them pay. I understand that. I might have done the same thing if I had the abilities you have.”

  “That’s cra …”

  “Don’t interrupt, Ted. Just listen to what I have to say.” She pulled on both edges of the sketch she held in her hands. “You planned your attacks well; you planned for your escape and made sure you had enough money stashed away to live for the rest of your life.”

  “Huh?”

  “We know about the off-shore accounts, Ted. Over one hundred million dollars pilfered from Wells Fargo a
nd Bank of America. Did you think we wouldn’t be able to trace it?”

  Ted shook his head in disbelief. What’s she talking about?

  “Ted, it’s time to think about your family, your mother, your brothers and sisters. Do you want them to suffer because of you? Do you want them to lay awake at night wondering what happened to you? Where you went? Why you haven’t contacted them? Ted, think of the shame they’ll have to live with.

  “You can help them. I know you love them. Tell me about it. When you shut off the electricity, you never thought they could get hurt did you?” She paused.

  Ted didn’t respond.

  “When you backed up the sewers, it wouldn’t affect them, would it? But you went too far. When you started taking control of cars and crashing them, things got out of hand. You never meant to kill anyone.”

  Ted’s eyes widened.

  “You must feel an overwhelming amount of guilt, Ted. I’ll bet you’re relieved that Hope wasn’t killed, but you caused her a lot of pain. Why Ted? Why did you attack your sister’s car?”

  Ted shook his head. “NO! I didn’t do it!”

  Dr. Moore tried to hide a look of surprise.

  “I want to show you this sketch again.” She handed it to Ted. “Take a good look at it. Remember it? Remember the story you told me?”

  Where’s she going with this? Ted looked at the sketch. It was of a young man with his back to the viewer, working on a computer. He looked over his shoulder with a furtive look, as if he was checking to make sure he was alone.

  “Your story, Ted, was that he was a hacker. He hacked for the pure joy of it. He hacked into the phone company system and set his and all his friends bills to zero. Do you remember that? And afterwards, his friends thought he was a hero. Remember, Ted?

  “Ted, it’s time to come clean. Think how much better you’ll feel if you get this off your chest.”

  “Fuck you! I didn’t do any of those things.”

  “Don’t interrupt, Ted. Just listen to what I have to say.”

  “No! It’s time you listened to me. I was set up and I know who did it. I know where he’s going to strike next. I know he will cripple the country with his next attack. You’re wasting your time with me. The real threat is still out there. He’s going to attack again; he’s going to kill again. I can help you. I can put this guy out of business, but you’re so fast to blame this on someone, you grabbed the first easy target.”

  Chapter 26

  President Ford sat in the War Room, tapping his fingers on the table, sweating profusely. He was about to launch the second nuclear attack in history.

  How many people will I kill? How many innocent people that had nothing to do with the attack?

  “George,” the President turned to the Secretary of Defense, “have we repaired our systems?”

  “Yes, sir.” The heavy, balding man replied. “All systems up and running.”

  “And have we hardened them against another attack?”

  The SecDef took a deep breath. “As much as we can. We try to anticipate all possible threats, but the bad guys are always coming up with something new. We can patch our defenses against the last attack, but we can’t provide defenses against the next attack if we don’t know what it is yet.”

  The President harrumphed. “How about our cruise missiles? That was a sixty-million-dollar disaster. How can we make sure it won’t happen again?”

  SecDef looked down at this notebook and sighed. “We tracked the problem to a software glitch. Someone messed around with the software on the missiles. They prevented them from establishing contact with the ships, so the missiles self-destructed. We’ve checked our inventory to make sure none of our remaining missiles has that glitch.”

  “How did it get in the missiles in the first place,” the Veep asked. “And why only those missiles? It’s almost as if someone knew that we were going to launch that attack and took counter-measures.”

  “That we don’t know yet, Madam Vice President.” The SecDef shook his head. “These people are one step ahead of us. We have airtight security around our arsenal now; we’ve cut off all contact outside of our buildings. We’ll only open those channels when the missiles are launched. I believe that there is no way anyone can mess with the software again.”

  The President scanned the room. All of his most trusted advisors were there. “Okay, where do we go from here? Do we know enough yet to launch a counter-strike?”

  “Sir,” General Joseph McNamara, the head of Cyber Command spoke. “I do not believe that we know for certain who launched the attack. I caution restraint in striking back until we know without a shadow of a doubt.”

  Silence hung in the air.

  “Mr. President,” Hiram Johnson, the Director of National Intelligence, spoke up. “We have a person of interest in custody. He isn’t a foreign terrorist. He’s home-grown.”

  “What?” the President almost came out of his chair. “Why haven’t I heard about this yet?”

  “We’re still interrogating the suspect. We don’t have definite proof. We have a pile of circumstantial evidence, but no confession yet.”

  “What are you doing to get that confession?”

  “We have our best man on it, Dr. Hanna Moore. With her advanced interrogation techniques, she can get to anyone.”

  “Well, make it happen, and damned fast. I don’t care if you have to use water-boarding. Hell, I can give you one of the CIA’s interrogators. They never fail to get what they’re after.”

  “Sir!” the DNI interrupted. “We can’t use torture against an American citizen.”

  The President pulled himself up to his full height. “This is war, Mr. Johnson. We’ll do whatever we have to, to defend ourselves.”

  “We need to consider all possibilities. It has come to light that another attack is planned. Maybe this Ted Higuera can help us stop it. We don’t want to alienate a potential source of information.”

  “Mr. President,” the Director of the FBI broke in. “We arrested Higuera. He has a long history of criminal behavior. We firmly believe that he is the unsub. I see no reason not to lock him away for life. If he’s locked up, he can’t launch another attack.”

  “Gerry,” the DNI said. “Think about it a minute. No single human being could’ve caused the devastation we’ve seen. He must have helpers. A whole team of disaffected hackers. If we take him out of the picture, the others will continue on with his master plan.”

  “We’ve pinned the source of the attack down to Seattle.” The FBI man said. “If it came from Seattle, then Higuera is involved. He’s hacked some of the most secure systems in the country.”

  “Shit!” The President banged his hand on the table. “Don’t we know anything yet? What are we, the Keystone Kops? This is the most powerful brain trust of the most powerful nation in history. You find out who this Higuera is and what he’s up to or heads will roll.” He stopped to let that sink in. “Do I make myself clear?”

  ****

  The guard led Ted into a different interrogation room. This one had a table and three chairs. The single chair on one side of the table was bolted to the floor.

  The guard herded Ted towards the chair and pointed with his baton. Ted sat. The guard unlocked one of Ted’s handcuffs and locked it to a steel ring jutting out of the table top.

  After the guard left, Ted looked around. With the exception of the table and an extra chair, it was identical to the last room.

  Two chairs … that means that there will be two of them this time. Playing good cop/bad cop I’d think.

  He didn’t have to wait long to find out. Dr. Elaine Jefferson, head of the NSA’s Tailored Access Operations (TAO) entered the room with Dr. Hanna Moore in tow.

  “Mr. Higuera,” Elaine said.

  Ted sat silent.

  “Ted,” Dr. Moore started, “we need more information. I’m inclined to believe that you had nothing to do with the cyber-attacks.”

  “Then let me the fuck out of here.”

 
“Others in the NSA hold a different opinion.”

  Ted rattled his handcuffs. “At least get me out of these things while we talk.”

  “Mr. Higuera,” Elaine put a folder on the table and leaned towards Ted. “If what you say is true, then you can help us determine the identity of the cyber mastermind.”

  “I’m not saying another word until you unlock these.” Ted lifted his left hand to show the cuffs. I have to exert some sense of power. I have to show them that they aren’t in charge.

  Elaine pulled a key from her pocket and unlocked the cuff. “Okay. Tell us what you know.”

  “I already told you, I know who he is, where he lives.”

  “Then share that information with us.”

  “No way. I’m not telling you anything until I’m released.”

  “Ted, that can’t happen,” Dr. Moore interjected.

  “She’s right. I can’t let you go until we have this madman in chains,” Elaine said. “So start talking.”

  “I’m not saying anything without my lawyer. You want my information, you’re going to have to negotiate a deal with him.”

  He was delighted to see the look of frustration in their faces. “You can hold me ‘til the cows come home. I’m not saying a word. When the whole economy comes crashing down around your ears, it will by your fault. You had the chance to stop it and you didn’t.”

  “Ted, think of your country, your family,” Dr. Moore said. “Can you really stand by and let this terrible thing happen that will do irreparable harm to them?”

  “I want to talk to my lawyer.”

  ****

  “What do you think?” Elaine asked Hanna Moore as they walked down the hallway.

  “I’m inclined to believe that he knows something. Maybe something important. I also think that he won’t say a word unless we meet his terms.”

  Elaine pushed her hair back out of her eyes. “He has no legal right to demand such a thing. If we give in to him, we’re setting a dangerous precedent. I’d need to run this by the Attorney General.”