by Rahul Bhagat
“We have to prove that she is Knot0. Best thing would be if she confesses,” Stump said.
“Sure. I’ll order that. And would you like a side of fries with it?” Natalie said in a taunting voice.
They laughed.
“But no, seriously,” Natalie continued, “have you seen stuff like this? What are we supposed to do? We know she did it.”
“That’s another thing you’ll have to get used to,” Stump said. “You heard about Blackstone’s formulation—better that ten guilty people escape than that one innocent person suffer. Innocent until proven guilty.”
“Don’t we have enough proof?” Natalie said.
“Not really. Remember the district attorney? He wants a smoking gun.”
“A smoking gun.” Natalie threw up her hands. “Where am I going to find a smoking gun?”
She left in a huff, and Stump went back to his card game.
Half an hour later, Natalie popped up on Stump’s screen on a video call.
“I have a conference call with Gunther. You’re welcome to join,” she said.
“Who?”
“The technical guy from Vinur. It’s technical stuff.”
“I’ll pass. Fill me in later.”
Natalie was more than happy to oblige. Half an hour later, she showed up again at his office door.
“We have a plan,” she announced, one hand on the doorframe.
“We do?”
“I’m going to make her confess.”
“Really? You are?” Stump was not sure where she was going with that.
“Remember we found chat messages between Gabriel’s Vinur and Knot0?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I have three days’ worth of messages from the NSA database, and that’s enough for me to assemble the Vinur’s personality. We know how he interacts with Lizbeth.”
“Personality? I’m confused,” Stump said.
“Yes, personality. Every digital partner adopts a personality when it interacts with someone for a long time, just like humans do. Gabriel committed suicide, but that doesn’t mean his Vinur is dead too. It lives on the Internet, in the cloud. I can pretend to be his Vinur, and Lizbeth will believe it because I’ll chat like it did.”
“How did his Vinur interact with Lizbeth?”
“Like a terrified younger sibling.”
“And Gabriel?”
“Like a dominating partner.”
“Really.” Stump laughed, and Natalie joined him.
“Okay, even if you chat with her and make her confess, how are you going to prove that she is Knot0?” Stump asked.
“By intercepting her communication and matching it with Knot0’s activity pattern,” Natalie said.
“You’re speaking Greek.”
“It’ll take time to explain.” Natalie shuffled her feet.
“Guess that was the wrong question,” Stump said with a laugh. “What do you need from me?”
“We have to be on the ground. In her town. Ashville,” Natalie said.
SEVENTEEN
THE Ashville FBI field office was on the second floor of an inconspicuous two-story building, off the main street. Stump and Natalie climbed a narrow staircase to a landing on the second floor and tentatively entered a poorly lit corridor. It ran the length of the building and had a small window at the other end. They passed doors and eventually found the director’s office near the other end.
The field director, a portly guy with chubby cheeks and beefy arms, was waiting for them. He wore an expensive suit and a lime-green tie, and his hair, swept back, glistened with gel. There was another person in the room. A tall, bony man with deep-set eyes and a thick goatee. Stump guessed him to be in his midthirties. The director introduced him as Raymond, their expert in cyber crimes.
The office was small, and it didn’t help that both corners of the back wall were occupied by huge metal cupboards. Stump broke into a sweat and found it hard to breathe. It was a good thing Natalie was doing the talking.
“And how do you intend to prove that she is Knot0?” the director asked Natalie.
“Pick up her Wi-Fi signal, record the activity pattern, and engage her in a chat,” Natalie said.
“She’s planning to match the time of the chat messages with data spikes of her Wi-Fi signal,” Raymond added to make it clear.
“We’ll need a tap-and-trace court order.” The director pointed his yellow pencil at Raymond.
“What about the chat log?” Raymond asked Natalie. “She must be using encryption.”
“I’ll have the chat log at my end,” Natalie said.
“Not going to cut it. They’ll throw it out,” the director said and pushed back his chair. He told Raymond to take the surveillance van and tap Lizbeth’s Wi-Fi. “Bring me something concrete. Throw me some red meat,” he said.
Raymond took Stump and Natalie to the underground garage. A wide van stood in the corner. Painted a drab white color, it looked like a utility truck, with windows only in the front. Inside, the back half was occupied by a U-shaped table and two swivel chairs. The entire wall around the table was a continuous OLED screen, a living wall. The front half of the van had seats facing each other.
They took the van to Lizbeth’s address and parked across from her apartment. It was a crowded neighborhood in the old part of the town. Her apartment was on the second floor of a three-story white building with blue balconies. They all moved to the back of the van, and Raymond planted himself in one of the swivel chairs. He brought up a video feed of Lizbeth’s apartment on the living wall. “So crowded. This is going to take some time,” he said.
Raymond bent down and opened a drawer under the table. He took out a box and, from within the box, pulled out a couple of drone birds. They were drab grey-brown in color and looked like house sparrows. He unfolded the legs, took off the restraining band from the wings, and set the birds on the table. He tapped a few keys on his tablet, and the birds moved their heads. The drones went through their readiness checklist. They spread out their wings then flapped them slowly. They turned their heads all the way from one side to the other, opened their beaks, lifted their legs, and walked. The birds were ready.
“What are you doing?” Stump asked from behind him.
“Triangulation. These birds are going to sit around her apartment, and we have the van here. We’ll analyze all Wi-Fi signals in this neighborhood from the three points and pinpoint where each signal is coming from. The signal coming from her apartment is her Wi-Fi.”
Raymond stood up, opened a hatch in the roof of the van, and set the birds free. A short time later, the birds sent back video images of Lizbeth’s apartment from where they were perched. On a large map of the neighbourhood, a lot of red dots appeared, with tiny labels beside them.
“There it is,” Natalie said, pointing at Lizbeth’s apartment. “C9XP9—that’s her Wi-Fi signal.”
EIGHTEEN
STUMP sat alone at the controls. Raymond and Natalie were taking a break. It was late evening, the sky had become dark, and people had turned their lights on. In the video images from the drone birds, Stump saw dark silhouettes of buildings with brightly lit windows.
A movement in one of the windows caught his eye. It was a woman with long hair, and it looked as if she was starting to undress. Stump scrambled to find the controls, the tablet with virtual dials and buttons and sliders. He wanted the control for zoom, and his first instinct was to go for the dials.
Dial one. Nope. That was for turning the bird’s head sideways.
Dial two. That was for tilting the bird’s head.
It was the third dial. But it focused on the wrong spot. He zoomed back out and turned the bird’s head to center on the window with the woman. Fluttering leaves were obstructing the video feed, and it looked as if she was almost done. He moved the bird and focused and zoomed—just in time to catch her naked back as she strode away from the view.
It was frustrating. Then he noticed on the other bird’s video feed that lights had come on in L
izbeth’s apartment. He zoomed in. Yes, she was home. Stump immediately messaged Natalie and Raymond.
They came running back. Natalie fired up her program and started tracking the Wi-Fi signal of Lizbeth’s router. The bar that displayed data transmission of her Wi-Fi was sitting still at the base of the graph. And then it jumped. She was on the Internet. The graph bobbed up and down as Lizbeth sent and received data from the Internet.
In the dark glow of the van, Natalie’s face looked ghostly. Stump saw her click on an icon on her laptop screen, and a chat window popped up. Her face was still, eyebrows knitted together. She wiped her palm on her pants and started typing.
“Hey, Knotty, haven’t heard from Gabriel in a long time. Wonder how he’s doing. I miss him.”
No response. Everyone held their breath.
After what felt like an eternity, Natalie abruptly got up from the chair. “Fuck it! She’s not taking the bait,” she said.
She turned to Stump and dragged him away from the controls. “Let’s go home. I’m sorry. I’m just a catty little bitch who thinks she can do anything.”
Natalie was losing it, and Stump focused his attention on getting her to sit down.
“Have a seat,” he said and, with a little effort, was able to get her down in a chair at the front of the van.
She drank some water from the bottle Stump handed her.
“Thanks,” Natalie said.
“Hey... hey... hey. She’s replying,” Raymond said from the back of the van, getting up on his feet.
Natalie rushed back to her laptop.
A message on the screen: “Gabby is dead, Vinur. He is a deceased client—you’re supposed to deactivate.”
Natalie thought for a moment. “What do I say?” She looked up.
“Be Gabriel’s Vinur,” Stump said.
“How did he die? He had no disease. Did he die in an accident?” Natalie typed.
“No. He committed suicide.”
“Oh God. Did he actually jump?”
“Vinur, you don’t remember?” Lizbeth typed.
“I haven’t had any input in a long time. Maybe my interfaces are corrupt. I hope he is in a happy place,” Natalie typed then immediately cursed herself.
“Looks like I’ve gone too far,” she said.
“I don’t know. It’s going pretty good. Get her to confess,” Raymond said.
There was another message from Lizbeth.
“Yes. He is in a happy place.”
“Did we do the right thing, Knotty? We made him jump off the bridge. Was that the right thing to do?” Natalie typed.
“It was the right thing, Vinur. You did the right thing. Have you contacted any one else?” Lizbeth typed.
“No, just you. I was waiting for input. I sent him a message, but it bounced back, so I contacted you.”
“Good, Vinur. I’ll send you a software patch—please install it.”
“Okay, Knotty. Bye-bye. Have a good night.”
“You too, Vinur.”
“You pulled it off.” Stump beamed at Natalie. They high-fived and hugged each other.
Natalie quickly compared the time of the chat messages with data spikes in Lizbeth’s Wi-Fi signal. It matched perfectly.
“Good job,” Raymond said. “I have a bottle of wine stashed up front. Let’s have a drink.”
They went to the front of the van. Raymond retrieved the wine bottle and was looking for glasses when they heard the ping of an incoming message.
Natalie went back to check.
“What is it?” Raymond asked.
“A software patch for Vinur from Lizbeth,” Natalie said.
“Put it in a sandbox. Put it in a sandbox, then open.” There was urgency in Raymond’s voice, as if the patch were a bomb.
“I know. Don’t worry. It’s a poison pill,” Natalie said.
Stump had followed Natalie to the back of the van.
“What’s a poison pill?” he asked.
“A virus to corrupt Vinur’s memory. Lizbeth is trying to deactivate it,” Natalie said.
NINETEEN
THE director was wearing a pink tie. With a serious expression on his face, he listened intently to Raymond. At the end of Raymond’s briefing, he broke into a grin.
“This is good,” he said. “People are fucking evil. But what we have is not enough. Is a pattern grounds enough for prosecution? Eh... I don’t think so. We need to build a watertight case.”
“But we also have her confession,” Natalie protested.
“She said you did the right thing, not we,” the director reminded Natalie of the exact words that Lizbeth had used.
“Really? Does anyone really think she is innocent?” Natalie asked.
“Not me,” the director said. “But the defense lawyer can easily make it to mean a hundred different things.” He turned to Raymond. “She’s got a Jabber account, right?” he asked.
“Yes,” Raymond confirmed.
The director looked at the faces around the room. “Jabber client archives all its messages. Everything,” he said. “Even when the messages are deleted, it stays on the server until that account is closed. If we can get hold of her Jabber client, we’ll have the entire history of her chat messages, including her instructions to Vinur.”
“Yes, but we don’t know which server she is running. Her chat history could be stored anywhere in the solar system,” Natalie said.
“We can find that out from her chat client,” the director said.
“For that you’ll need her laptop, with her logged into her account.”
“Then we’ll do exactly that.”
“How?” Natalie asked. She sounded exasperated. “I’m sure she has autodestruct programmed in her laptop.”
“It’s not the first time we’ve done something like this,” Raymond said. He gave an enigmatic smile to the director.
“Exactly,” the director said.
“Remember the Frank Underwood case?” Raymond chuckled.
“Exactly what I was thinking. It’s a similar operation,” the director said.
Stump saw Natalie give him an arched-eyebrow look. He just shrugged. He didn’t know what was going on.
“Do you guys mind sharing what the plan is?” Natalie asked.
“Leave it to us. We know exactly what we’re doing,” the director said. “Raymond, get hold of some birds and shadow her for a week. Find out the places she frequents.” He turned to Natalie. “You’re going to bait her. We’ll tell you when to engage her in a chat.”
“Are you going to give us any details?” Natalie asked.
“No,” the director said.
“This is not fair,” Natalie said.
“It is what it is. This is our operation. Just do your part,” the director said.
After the meeting, Natalie tried to find out more through Raymond, but he was equally short on details. He gave a vague excuse, something about maintaining the integrity of the operation. “Just come along for the ride,” he said.
Natalie was furious, and she let it out when she was alone with Stump.
“What if they blow it up? They have totally hijacked our case.”
Stump tried to explain that it was all about the turf. They were outside their jurisdiction, and the local FBI office was not interested in sharing the glory.
*
Over the next several days, Raymond and his drone birds trailed Lizbeth. They followed her everywhere—to the office, yoga studio, grocery stores, her boyfriend’s place, where she stayed over a couple of nights, and the cafe next door. Raymond stopped tracking her after he figured out her routine at the coffee place. He reported back to the director. Stump and Natalie were invited to the meeting.
“The coffee place,” Raymond said to the group. “We are setting up the operation in the cafe.”
“What’s the plan?” Natalie asked.
“She goes there every Saturday morning and writes her weekly blog post. That’s our best chance.”
“What are we g
oing to do? Pick up her laptop?” Natalie asked.
“Something like that.” The director gave an enigmatic smile.
“All she has to do is shut the lid or hit the lock key,” Natalie said. She sounded nervous. “If we screw this up, then that’s it. There’s no way we’ll be able to prove she did it.”
“We have a good plan.” The director dismissed her concerns. “All right, the operation is set for next Saturday. Everyone, be here bright and early.”
TWENTY
NEXT saturday, early morning, Raymond called Stump at his hotel room to inform him that there was no need to rush. Lizbeth was not home; she was at her boyfriend’s place. The plan was to meet at noon in the office to assess the situation.
Later, over breakfast in a nearby diner, Stump filled in Natalie.
“I don’t like this field director,” Natalie said between bites.
“I checked up on him,” Stump said. “He used to be with an office in the southwest. Blew up a large sting operation but survived and is still a director. Political connections, you know. He is known to be stubborn and uncooperative.”
“It’s so insulting that he won’t trust us with the details.”
“I’ve seen worse.” Stump was in a philosophical mood.
Later in the afternoon, the team assembled in the director’s office. Besides Raymond, there were a couple of beefy guys with guns hanging around their waists.
“Twelve p.m. Still not home?” The director looked at Raymond.
“No, and I need to swap the birds. They’ve been sitting there for a week now and are going to run out of juice soon,” Raymond said.
“Okay, do that. Dispatch their replacement, and tell us the moment she comes back,” the director said.
Stump and Natalie decided to check out the cafe where the operation was supposed to have taken place. The cafe was in a large industrial building with pillars that spread out at the top like mushrooms. The place was brightly lit in a swirl of lights embedded in the roof and pillars. Long tables were scattered around the place, with rows of chairs around them. The idea was that people would share the table, and that would build the spirit of community. Some of the walls had countertops with high stools under them, for those who’d rather sit by themselves.