by Mark Goodwin
She shook her head, nearly paralyzed by anxiety. “Everything is on my computer. I don’t know what it is. I just know the code isn’t supposed to be there.”
The tech looked on at Kate, as if he felt sorry for her. “Larry, why don’t you get her a bottle of water and give her a chance to calm down. She looks a little rattled.”
Larry grunted and started to go out the door. He spun around before leaving. “Give me your cell phone.”
She handed it over without a fight.
Larry stuck it in his pocket and handed her a plain white envelope.
“What’s this?” she asked skittishly.
“It’s a National Security Letter. Basically a gag order. You can’t discuss anything you’ve seen in the past two days. Not even with the people who helped you identify the code.”
“Okay, I won’t. But how are we supposed to fix it?”
“Don’t worry about that. We’ll take it from here.” Larry began to walk out but turned around again. “Oh, and I need the names and telephone numbers of everyone you’ve told about this situation. And don’t try to lie to me thinking you’re saving them from getting in trouble. I have your phone and I’m going to dump all of your communications from the last two days.”
Kate felt horrific, like she’d committed high treason.
Larry finally left.
“I’m Oscar. Don’t let him bother you. You’re not in any trouble.”
Kate wondered if it was some kind of good-cop-bad-cop routine. In the end, she didn’t care. She was simply happy to have someone who wasn’t barking at her like a rabid dog.
“I’m with Tailored Access Operations. Have you heard of my department?”
She avoided direct eye contact. “You guys developed EternalBlue and DoublePulsar.”
He crossed his hands. “I wish I could answer that, but I’m sure you wouldn’t be surprised if I told you I can’t.”
She expected nothing different.
Oscar spoke softly. “What can you tell me about what you found on the bank’s network?”
She explained that they’d discovered two pieces of code. She minimized the details, still feeling like she was in trouble for something.
“What languages were they written in?”
Kate immediately recognized that Oscar was digging. Why would he think to ask such a specific question? She shrugged. “Um, it looked like SQL on the mainframe but I didn’t recognize the functions. The one in the HR files was either C or C++.”
“You don’t know the difference?”
“I do, but again, the code wasn’t anything I’m familiar with.”
“Agent Ulasen said one of you speculated that the language seemed abnormally foreign; as if it might have been written by artificial intelligence.”
She shook her head. “I’ve never seen code written by AI, so I wouldn’t know.”
Oscar said politely, “Okay. If you can just write down those names and numbers for Larry, you can go on home for the day. You guys did good work finding the code. But make sure you keep it to yourself. We don’t want to start a panic.”
“Absolutely.” Kate pulled the National Security Letter out of the envelope and began writing down the names of the people she’d talked to on the manila paper. “Agent . . . Larry has my phone. I’ll need it to get the numbers.”
“Of course. He should be back with that in a moment.” Oscar smiled benignly.
CHAPTER 8
That they may know from the rising of the sun to its setting that there is none besides Me. I am the Lord, and there is no other; I form the light and create darkness, I make peace and create calamity; I, the Lord, do all these things.
Isaiah 45:6-7 NKJV
At her home Thursday evening, Kate looked despairingly at the two empty pint containers of midnight-cookies-and-cream ice cream. She gripped her phone, feeling worse than horrible about what she had to do next. The only possible thing more dreadful than telling her brother how she’d given his information to the NSA was not telling him.
She knew Terry would understand. But what about Vijay, Shu, and Willow? Yet more than any of them, she worried about how Gavin would feel about it.
“Best get this over with,” she said aloud. Kate sent a text to Terry. NSA stopped by today. Wanted to know who else knew about what was going on at work. They dumped my phone so I had to tell them. Long story short, I’m not allowed to talk about it. Don’t be surprised if they come see you.
She sighed, then duplicated the communication to Vijay, Shu, and Willow via the Wire app.
Terry texted her back. Are you home?
Yes. She typed her reply.
I’ll come over after dinner.
OK. Kate looked up from her phone and exhaled.
A message came in from Vijay. No worries.
Shu was next to reply. Thanks for the heads up.
Shortly thereafter, Willow’s reply simply said, Not your fault.
Kate anxiously messaged Gavin through the Wire app. Then, she waited. She fidgeted with her hair, staring at the screen but no reply came. After thirty minutes of nothing, she got up from the couch. She collected the empty ice cream containers and took them to the trash. She checked the freezer to make sure she didn’t have a third pint stashed behind a stack of frozen vegetables.
Her heart jumped when she heard a knock at the door. She checked the peephole before turning the deadbolt and removing the chain.
Terry walked in. He looked around her apartment. “Are we alone?”
She glanced at her phone. “Not really; we live in an Orwellian surveillance state. Big brother is always listening.”
He pressed his lips together tightly.
“Did anyone come to see you?” Kate asked.
“Not yet, but I saw some of them in the elevator before I left the office. It’s like an invasion.” He looked around again, as if he thought he might be able to spot a poorly-disguised microphone planted at the base of one of Kate’s lamps or in an air vent. “Why don’t we go get something to eat.” He nodded at her phone. “We can leave our tracking devices in the car.”
Kate wanted to talk to him about everything. She needed to vent and welcomed the idea of getting away from anything the NSA might be using to eavesdrop on her. “Sure.”
She followed Terry out the door and to the elevator. Kate continued to check her phone for a reply from Gavin on the way to the restaurant. It would be sheer torture if he didn’t respond before she went inside and she had to abandon her phone. Still, no message came.
Terry drove to the restaurant and said nothing on the way. Once he’d parked and the two of them were out of the car, he asked, “Is everything okay? You look distressed.”
“The visit had me shook up, but I’ve calmed down from that. I notified Gavin of the visit. He hasn’t messaged me back. I think he’s mad at me for telling the NSA that he knows about the breach.”
“I’m sure he’ll contact you. Give it time.” Terry chose a seat near the window and slid into the booth opposite of Kate.
Kate scanned the room to make sure they hadn’t been followed. Once they placed their order, she quickly explained to Terry what had happened at work.
“Wow. A National Security Letter. That’s serious.”
“Yeah. You might have your own copy soon. I will say it’s high-quality paper with an embossed seal on the letterhead. Were it not for the nature of the communique, it would be suitable for framing.”
Terry forced a smile. “So what are you thinking?”
“I think all of this is a result of some highly-sophisticated cyber weapon that they lost control of. But, I think the genie is out of the bottle and they know they’ll never get it back inside.”
“Hmm.” Terry stared pensively at his ice tea.
“It’s a time bomb, Terry. We need to be ready when it goes off.”
He interlaced his fingers. “What do you want to do?”
“I want to make a run up to Waynesville and stock up the cabin.”
> “Are you going to take stuff with you or are you going to buy it there?”
She shook her head. “I haven’t given it that much thought yet. I suppose I’ll take my old clothes; things I don’t wear anymore. But they have a Walmart and plenty of grocery stores. I guess I’ll buy the other supplies when I get there. It might be more than I can haul in one trip anyway.”
“How much stuff are you going to buy?”
“I don’t know. A few months’ worth maybe. I don’t even know what a month’s worth of food looks like.”
“Would this be a project you could take on yourself? Out of an abundance of caution, I took a few thousand dollars out of the bank. I can give you some money to stock up food for us.”
“I can do that.”
“When do you think you’ll go?”
“Seems the NSA doesn’t want me around the office. I guess I’ll go first thing in the morning. Who knows how long we have until this thing blows up.”
“You’ll come back to Atlanta, right?”
“If nothing happens by the time I have to go back to work, I guess I will. But that’s a big if.”
Terry pulled a white bank envelope out of his back pocket. He extracted a stack of one-hundred-dollar bills and counted them out. “Will five thousand be enough?” He passed the pile of bills across the table.
“I would imagine that will buy a lot of canned goods.” She took the money.
She looked from side to side. “The NSA already made me feel like a terrorist. Now I feel like a drug dealer, too.”
The food arrived and the two discussed what types of items might come in handy if a widespread cyber-attack were to incapacitate the country’s most basic services.
Afterward, Terry paid the check and the siblings exited the restaurant. Terry held the door open for Kate. “Are you going to tell Boyd?”
She huffed. “I can’t talk to anyone about any of this, remember?”
“Yeah, but you could pose it as it just being us taking precautions because of the attacks this week. You wouldn’t be disclosing anything that hasn’t been all over the news.”
“You want me to tell him?”
Terry sighed. “He’s more likely to listen to you than me.”
“I’ll say something to him. I’ll give him a call on the way up tomorrow. But I doubt he’ll pay any attention to me. Even if I could tell him everything he wouldn’t take it seriously. There’s no way he’ll want to act based on a few temporary service outages.”
“But our hands will be clean.” Terry opened the door of his Mercedes.
Kate got in the passenger’s side. “If anything happens and he knows we’re stocked with supplies, you know he’ll show up after the fact.”
Terry bit his lip. He pulled the envelope back out and counted off more bills. “Here’s an extra thousand. Stock up for him, too.”
Kate stuffed the cash in her purse. She powered on her phone. She had a notification of a new Wire message. She hesitated before opening it. Sure enough, it was from Gavin.
G-men came by. Couldn’t talk. Check your spam.
Kate figured she’d received an encrypted communication via email. She also knew the NSA was watching her and couldn’t be sure what types of surveillance tools they were running on her phone. Rather than risking it, she waited until she got home.
Terry pulled up near the front door of Kate’s apartment building. “Do you want to come out to the house? You could stay with us tonight. You might sleep better.”
She wanted to get in contact with Gavin. “No thanks. I’ll be fine. I want to get an early start tomorrow. If I get to the cabin by lunch, I can make a few runs to the store before evening.”
“Okay. Be safe and drive carefully.”
She exited the vehicle. “I will.”
Once inside her apartment, she pulled out an old laptop which she’d refurbished with a fresh hard drive and memory stick as a project machine. She powered up the computer and booted the TAILS operating system, which left no trace of any online activities. Next, she opened a TOR browser and then opened her email. She checked her spam folder.
She read the first subject line out loud. “Work from home to earn extra income and fast cash 100% free program in Charlotte.” Kate laughed. “Every word in the subject line except Charlotte flagged this message as spam. He’s over the top.”
She read the name of the sender. “Get rich quick scam at Gmail.com.” Right away, she knew Gavin would never use Gmail for the actual communication. She figured another email address had to be hidden in the message.
Once opened, the email had a lame photoshopped image of a guy on a beach with a computer and stacks of cash. The email had no text. Kate downloaded the image then read the name of the image file. “NC hacker boy at Proton.”
“I got you.” Kate quickly went to ProtonMail and opened a new account. “How about GA hacker girl?” She quickly entered a password and composed an email. Got your message.
She entered Gavin’s secret ProtonMail address and sent the correspondence.
Seconds later, a notification popped up in her inbox. She opened the email. We need to talk.
It’s not safe, she replied.
The next message contained only a frowny face emoji.
She did something she never did, she took a chance. Kate typed back, Going to your state tomorrow.
How far from me? Gavin inquired.
She paused before typing in the answer. She didn’t want it to be obvious that she’d already done the math on the distance between Charlotte and Waynesville. Looks like about two and a half hours.
Could we meet for lunch?
Excitement bubbled up inside her like a warm root beer. She replied, Sweet Onion. It had been her father’s favorite restaurant in Waynesville. Other than revealing the name of the restaurant, she’d taken every precaution and still said nothing that would get her in trouble with the NSA. Still, she’d say nothing of the hack until they finished eating. Then, they’d stash their phones in the car and go for a walk to discuss the forbidden topic.
CHAPTER 9
The Lord is good, a strong hold in the day of trouble; and he knoweth them that trust in him. But with an overrunning flood he will make an utter end of the place thereof, and darkness shall pursue his enemies.
Nahum 1:7-8
Late Friday morning, Kate drove up the steep gravel driveway to the rustic log cabin. The old home always evoked feelings of nostalgia. Kate remembered going there with her family as a child. Terry had made sure the cabin was meticulously maintained. He’d put a metal roof on it three years earlier and paid to have the exterior re-stained every five years like clockwork. Kate always offered to chip in, but Terry would never accept her money.
At 3,000 feet above sea level, the late September air was much cooler than it had been in Atlanta. With her backpack over her shoulder, Kate climbed the familiar wooden staircase to the front porch and unlocked the front door. The initial smell inside was a touch musty, but like the flavors in a complex wine, it held many other distinct fragrances. Notes of strong coffee, charred wood, and comfortable quilts mingled with the stale aroma. Kate dropped her pack by the door and went through the cabin, opening all the windows so it could air out. She looked around for a while, allowing a few moments for sentiments before hauling her pack upstairs to her room. She tossed the bag on her bed, checked the time, and went into the bathroom to freshen up.
“Don’t act like a dork,” she told the girl in the mirror. “Or a stalker.” Kate brushed mascara through her lashes, checked her teeth, and turned out the light. She descended the stairs with enthusiasm, locked the door behind her, and made her way to the car.
She arrived at the restaurant shortly after noon. She walked inside and scanned the tables for a single guy. She didn’t see Gavin anywhere.
“Kate?”
She turned around to see him right behind her. “Hey. You made it.”
“Yeah, I should have thought to ask what time you eat lunch. I’ve b
een here since eleven.”
“Oh, sorry to keep you waiting. Did you eat already?”
“No. I’ve been at the bar, hassling the bartender.”
“For an hour? You’re not sloshed, are you?”
He chuckled. “No. I had one cream soda. I rarely drink, and certainly not at eleven o’clock.”
“Table for two?” The hostess picked up some menus from the stand.
“Yes, please,” Gavin answered and trailed behind the hostess.
Kate followed Gavin. Once they were seated, she asked, “Did you leave your phone in the car?”
“Yeah. You?”
“Yep.”
Gavin looked at her silently for a while. “You look great.”
“Thanks.” She turned away bashfully.
He picked up his menu. “So, the boys from Fort Mead came to see you, too?”
“Yeah, but I’d rather talk about it after lunch.”
“Don’t want it to spoil your appetite?”
She looked around. “I don’t want to take the chance that they bugged the restaurant.”
Gavin seemed to be fighting a grin. “Wow! They’ve really got you spooked. I think they have about all they can handle right now. I seriously doubt they have the resources to hack an encrypted email dialogue between two unknown parties and send out a team to bug the whole restaurant.
“If they possessed a billionth of the competence you give them credit for, this thing never would have happened in the first place.”
She looked around once more, considered Gavin’s logic, then said very softly. “So you think the locusts are a product of the NSA.”
He casually studied the menu. “I think they are a product of a product of the NSA, yes. The way those guys were acting yesterday, they know something. They didn’t seem a bit surprised by anything I told them. We found four zero-day exploits in four machines. I don’t care who you are, information like that should raise an eyebrow.”
“Are they looking through your servers at the bank?”