by Andrew Watts
Firewall
Andrew Watts
FIREWALL
Copyright © 2021 by Point Whiskey Publishing, LLC.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Severn River Publishing
www.SevernRiverPublishing.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
ISBN: 978-1-64875-111-0 (Paperback)
ISBN: 978-1-64875-112-7 (Hardback)
Contents
Also by Andrew Watts
Part I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Part II
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Part III
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Next in Series
Also by Andrew Watts
Thanks for Reading
Read Agent of Influence
About the Author
Also by Andrew Watts
The Firewall Spies
Firewall
Agent of Influence
* * *
The War Planners Series
The War Planners
The War Stage
Pawns of the Pacific
The Elephant Game
Overwhelming Force
Global Strike
* * *
Max Fend Series
Glidepath
The Oshkosh Connection
Books available for Kindle, print, and audiobook. To find out more about the books or Andrew Watts, visit
AndrewWattsAuthor.com
Part I
“Artificial intelligence is the future, not only for Russia but for all humankind . . . Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world.”
* * *
– Vladimir Putin, 2017
1
Seattle, Washington
Colt McShane sat at the rear of the Westin conference hall, looking at his phone. “Damn. Cell signal here sucks.”
His coworker looked at him. “Yeah, well, this is the biggest tech conference in North America. Between all the smartwatches and tablets and phones and computers, the network juice is getting sucked out of the air.”
“You know I’m just a money guy, but I don’t think that’s how it works. Technically inaccurate description aside, however, I think you’re right,” said Colt. His friend chuckled. Both worked for a New York investment bank. They were at the conference to evaluate companies in attendance, network with clients, and size up potential new investments.
But Colt had an additional mission, one his colleague knew nothing about.
Colt said, “Hey, I think I’m going to skip this next one. I might try to catch a few innings of Yankees/Red Sox at the hotel bar. Can you let me know if I miss anything?”
“You’re going to miss Jeff Kim? He’s the main event. Just connect your phone to the conference WIFI and check the score.”
“No way. One of these techies will have my credit card and social media password inside of five minutes.”
“You’re paranoid.”
“I’m cautious.”
“People here aren’t hackers. They’re engineers and marketing nerds.”
A woman in the row ahead of them turned at the comment.
“Sorry. Not you.” Colt’s coworker held up his hands. He turned back to Colt, lowering his voice. “Stay for Jeff Kim. He’s the main event. Besides, they’re part of our portfolio.” Colt’s company was handling the next fundraising round for Pax AI, Jeff Kim’s company.
The lights in the conference hall dimmed and the crowd noise fell to a hush. Colt checked his watch and whispered, “All right, I’ll stay for a few minutes.”
In truth, Colt’s cell signal was good enough to check the score, and he was only slightly paranoid about the WIFI being used as a medium to hack into his phone. The CIA had assured him that with the software they had installed, he was protected against such attacks.
But he didn’t want to be late for the meeting with his agent.
Colt watched as the CEO of the hottest artificial intelligence company in the world walked onto the stage. The audience of several thousand clapped approval, and Jeff Kim gave a wave. He was in his mid-thirties, Korean-American, and notoriously introverted. He rarely conducted interviews, but that had been changing lately. His company was about to get a jolt of funding and begin a rapid expansion. CEOs like him had to go on media tours like politicians, jazzing everyone up before taking their money.
The event host began speaking. “Ladies and gentlemen, our next guest really needs no introduction. In my preparation for this interview, I found the phrases most often used to describe him are ‘genius,’ ‘revolutionary,’ and ‘master of innovation.’ Last year he was shortlisted for Time magazine’s man of the year. He’s often compared to Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, and even Albert Einstein. Jeff Kim, welcome.” The audience clapped again.
The interview went on for twenty minutes. It was standard fare. Background. Leadership lessons.
There was one unexpected moment when a protester ran into the auditorium, shouting and holding up signs. “AI is our destiny! Trinity is the truth! Jeff Kim, release your code! The end is coming!”
The man was tackled by security and dragged into the hallway. People’s shock at the disruption turned into snickering after the man was subdued. The host on stage shook his head and apologized before continuing.
The rest of the interview went smoothly. Questions about what the future might look like as AI became more sophisticated. Jeff Kim dropping hints at new breakthroughs. The audience ate it up, and the session ended with a standing ovation and thunderous applause that filled the convention hall. Colt remained seated, pulling out the phone that had just buzzed in his pocket. His coworker looked down at him, Colt’s face lit by the screen.
“I thought you weren’t getting a signal?”
“Must have squeaked through.” Colt shrugged. “Hey, I got to run. I’ll try to catch you later.”
Colt could still he
ar the clapping as he pushed through the swinging door in the back of the room. He walked at a brisk pace, picking up his phone to double-check the message.
Marisha Stepanova, senior lieutenant of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), had just arrived at his hotel.
2
Outside the conference hall, Colt passed a group of police officers questioning the handcuffed protester who had burst into the auditorium. He rode the escalator down to the first floor of the Seattle Westin, scanning the vast hotel bar area. Comfortable couches and spacious lounge chairs under thirty-foot ceilings. Waiters in suits carrying expensive cocktails and appetizers. Patrons happy to wind down after a busy day of conference lectures and business meetings. In the center of the room stood a horseshoe-shaped bar with brightly backlit liquor shelves. A handful of TVs, each tuned to a different sporting event.
Most of the people sipping drinks were conference attendees. Engineers, marketers, and salesmen hawking their newest product or service. Some were bloggers or industry journalists trying to get the scoop on the Next Big Thing. Many at the bar were in town to do business with one of the city’s thriving corporations. Creative ad agencies, suppliers, and manufacturers came to Seattle daily from around the world. Tech and commerce had transformed the city seemingly overnight.
But scattered among the jungle of programmers and branding experts, AI engineers and venture capitalists, was an altogether different species.
The spy.
Colt knew that within this room, more than a few intelligence officers from around the world were present. They would be posing as other jungle animals. Salesmen or journalists or marketers or . . . investment bankers. Any cover legend that could help them blend into the wilderness of tech and allow them to creep up on unsuspecting prey.
Colt sat down at the bar, scanning the room for anything or anyone out of place. He searched for his agent’s face among the crowd, knowing she shouldn’t be here but checking just to be sure. This meeting was too important, the conference too well-attended, to risk being seen together.
As one of the CIA’s elite non-official cover operatives, Colt McShane had been ushered away from any official US government business as soon as he finished his training at The Farm a decade earlier. Since then, Colt had been operating almost completely alone. Reporting only to his CIA handler, Ed Wilcox, now the agency’s station chief in Vancouver.
Everyone else who had graduated from Colt’s CIA training class had gone on to become operations officers in the Clandestine Service. These men and women lived and worked in US embassies and consulates overseas. They held official government covers like Agricultural Advisor or Economic Attaché. The blander the better. If they got caught spying, countries like Russia or China would usually expel them back to the United States, who would repay the favor by expelling a proportionate number of “diplomats.” The rules of the game were clear, and in a way, gentlemanly.
But non-official cover operatives like Colt had no such protections.
If he was identified by a foreign intelligence service, there were no rules. So it was crucially important he not get caught. His cover had to be airtight, and he had spent years working in the world of corporate finance, carefully cultivating a cover legend with minimal agency contact, choosing the time, location, and manner of his agent debriefs with painstaking attention to detail. Meetings like tonight were the test to how well that cover held.
Colt motioned to the bartender, who nodded in his direction.
“What can I get you?”
“Actually, my wife was here earlier and put my tab on the wrong room number. Redhead. White coat. She said she ordered a glass of the Malbec.”
“Sure, she was just here a few minutes ago.”
“She asked me to double-check that it was on the right room; would you mind?”
The bartender walked over to the stack of bills and flipped through the first few until he found the right one.
“Here you go.”
Colt checked the room number and memorized it. He also saw the faint underline below it, his agent’s signal that she was not under duress. The old-fashioned technique served as a double verification outside their normal means of communication.
“Okay. That’s the right room. Sorry about that.” Colt slipped the man a tip and headed toward the elevator.
Three minutes later, he was looking out his room’s panoramic window on the sixteenth floor. The hotel was constructed of two identical towers, positioned about one hundred yards from each other. From his vantage point, Colt could see into the rooms in the opposite tower. It was getting dark, and the contrast made it possible to make out individual details.
He withdrew a magnifying camera lens from his travel bag and attached it to his phone, which he had set up on a small tripod near the front of his desk. Then he removed a grease pencil and ruler, making a series of markings directly in front of him on the glass window. He silently counted up from the ground floor and over until he had marked the room number he had memorized at the bar. Colt positioned the camera and set up the encrypted chat on his computer.
On his phone screen, the zoomed-in image of Marisha Stepanova appeared. Marisha, one of the CIA’s most valuable assets inside Russian intelligence, had been recruited several years ago when she was a junior SVR officer stationed in Vancouver. Wilcox and the CIA quickly determined they needed a special way to collect information from her on a regular basis while protecting her from Russian counterintelligence. Colt, with his non-official cover, had been made her handler.
Now Marisha sat at her own desk, looking out her window into the dark chasm between their two hotel towers. As she began typing, Colt noticed two small bottles of wine resting on her desk, one of them empty. Hitting the minibar early tonight. She liked to drink. He would need to monitor that.
Marisha: Good evening.
Colt typed on his laptop, which had been modified by CIA technical security experts to protect against electronic surveillance.
Colt: Good to speak with you.
Marisha: Same.
On the video, Colt saw Marisha peering at his silhouette in the hotel tower across from her.
Marisha: Five.
Five was her challenge. As was their custom, Colt subtracted three from her challenge number, then flashed his desk light on and off twice. This signaled that everything was copacetic on his end. He had video.
Marisha didn’t like Colt using his cellphone to view her, seeing it as a security risk. But over time, he had convinced her it was actually the opposite. Another level of verification that she was the source of communication, and not under duress. The video was not recorded, to ensure no one in the US government other than Colt would know her true identity. To those who held a high enough security clearance to read Colt’s intelligence reports, Marisha was known only by the cryptonym SANDSTONE.
In some locales, Colt was able to meet with his Russian agent in person. But high-risk areas such as this Seattle tech conference were brimming with foreign intelligence agents and surveillance teams.
Their comms procedure in high-risk areas was to use an encrypted text messaging app. The history of their texts would be deleted instantly from the app and their phones, and the encryption was so good even the NSA had trouble penetrating it. Theoretically, this technique allowed both parties to plausibly deny taking part in the meeting and hide the evidence. In reality, it wasn’t that simple. There were many ways they could be caught. But every layer of concealment helped. And it kept them from being seen together, which would be the end of both of their careers . . . and maybe more.
During these debriefs, Colt bombarded her with questions pre-written by Langley analysts, every answer transmitting back to Langley in real time via encrypted satellite communication. He tried not to think about whether any foreign intelligence services had cracked this encryption, or the social media app that the NSA swore by. You could drive yourself crazy worrying about all the technological obstacles to spy craft these days.
Marisha’s role as an SVR officer stationed in the Russian consulate in Houston, Texas, came with elevated risk. She—along with a handful of other Russian intelligence officers in Houston—were assigned to run agents in the North American tech hubs. Marisha was an incredibly valuable agent for the CIA, a treasure trove of information. The Russians had teams from SVR counterintelligence—Line KR—whose sole job it was to uncover moles like her. It was a treacherous game.
Colt typed away, his eyes darting to his phone screen so he could see her face, gauging her mental and emotional state of mind as she typed her responses. Marisha informed him of the updated names of every Russian diplomat, military attaché, and intelligence officer stationed in the Houston consulate with her. She provided Colt with details on their latest assignments, their comings and goings in the US, drinking habits, gambling habits, who was sleeping with whom, and who wanted to be sleeping with someone else. Of special interest were the operational activities of her SVR superior, a man by the name of Petrov. He was the SVR’s senior man in the Houston consulate, and head of all Russian economic espionage operations in North America. Petrov had been spending a lot of time in West Coast cities lately—San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, and Vancouver. But Marisha didn’t know what he was working on.