But what would “yes” mean?
Frank settled back in his chair and sorted through the few alternatives he could imagine. The only one that seemed to make any sense was for him to figure out who was actually stealing documents from the Library of Congress and turn that person in. So he added “Find hacker?” and two more slanted “yes/no” lines. Now what?
He decided that there were actually two parts to that question – was it likely enough that he might catch the hacker to make it worth the effort, and was there any reason not to try? He thought enough of his own abilities to opt for “yes” on the first part, and turned to the second – would launching a personal crusade to catch the hacker be a smart move, or another dumb one? After all, why not just let the powers that be muddle through?
Frank decided that question had an easy answer, and that the answer was “no” – because the powers-that-be were a bunch of bungling chowder heads when it came to security. Look at how often the government had been hacked already, and how infrequently it had gotten to the bottom of it. All they did was look more and more foolish each time it happened. Why would the CIA be any more successful this time than before?
Frank looked up from his notes and stared at the ceiling. Was that the end of the decision tree, or was there another critical question he hadn’t thought of yet?
Maybe. How important was it that he find the hacker? And how much time did he have to do so?
Okay, he thought, let’s assume that the Feds don’t catch the hacker, and that things just keep getting worse. Chairman Steele’s Cybersecurity subcommittee was already out for blood, based on other security breaches that were in the news. There would be hell to pay if an agency had to admit at a public hearing that it had not only been hacked, but that it was still being hacked by someone leaving animated calling cards behind. And this at the same time it was supposed to be proposing a plan to make itself hack-proof!
Okay, but so what? So what if the CIA never catches the wily Alexandrians? If he just kept his nose clean, what could they do to him? Hell, it had taken the FBI years to find someone it could credibly charge with responsibility for the post-9/11 anthrax scare!
Frank suddenly remembered that the authorities investigating that case hadn’t taken long at all to leak the name of a suspect – who later turned out to be innocent. Frank turned to his laptop and found the guy’s name in a few key strokes: Dr. Steven Hatfill.
How convenient that had been, he reflected cynically. The public was screaming for the FBI to catch the culprit, but the case was turning out to be almost impossible to solve. Leaking the name of a “person of interest” was a neat way to take the heat off, because the media could be relied upon to take it from there. And so they had – the newspapers and cable shows pounced on the poor S.O.B like the packs of jackals some of them were, making the researcher’s life hell. Hatfill had to spend a fortune in court before he was finally exonerated – seven years later.
Frank was beginning to feel queasy. He returned to his decision tree and added another question to his chart: Was scapegoating by the Feds standard operational procedure in tough cases or not? If no, then his problem wasn’t urgent. But if yes, then he was not only in danger, but time might be short. He Googled “terrorist scapegoat” and waited for the hits to display.
3,250,000. That wasn’t good.
The search reminded him of another situation that had been in the news years ago, involving the guard who found a pipe bomb at the Atlanta, Georgia Summer Olympics and came to regret it. Frank typed “Atlanta pipe bomb guard” into the Wikipedia search window, and there he was – Richard Jewell. Frank clicked on the link and read:
…Early news reports lauded Jewell as a hero, for helping to evacuate the area after he spotted the suspicious package. Three days later, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution revealed that the FBI was treating him as a possible suspect, based largely on a “lone bomber” criminal profile.
Ouch! The mention of criminal profiling hit pretty close to home. For the next several weeks, the news media publicly dissected Jewell, Frank read. It sifted through every detail it could uncover about his past to see how well it mapped to the “lone bomber” profile developed by the FBI. Conveniently, that had been leaked to the press as well. Many in the media rushed to portray Jewell as a failed law enforcement officer who had likely planted the bomb so he could find it and be a hero. Two of the bombing victims even filed lawsuits against Jewell on the basis of this reporting alone.
Now that was really great, Frank thought. Maybe Agent Carl had used the Jewell profile as a starting point for what even Frank was starting to think of as his own psychological portrait.
He sat back. The playbook seemed clear enough: if you can’t catch the right guy quick, any convenient dolt will do if they match any halfway credible profile. Next, leak his name to the press – or hey, why not a House Subcommittee – and relax. They’ll take it from there.
Frank tried to tell himself he was being paranoid. But if this was paranoia, how to explain all the “guilty man found innocent” stories that were flooding the newspapers these days, now that DNA testing was so cheap? Just about every single case involved the victim of a tough, very public case and a lazy prosecutor. Only a lab test had eventually cleared those who had been falsely accused, in many cases after they had spent years, or even decades, languishing in prison.
Except there weren’t any DNA tests to clear you if you were accused of stealing computer files. Matter of fact, there really wasn’t any way to exonerate you, Frank realized – except by catching the real culprit.
“For Pete’s sake, Frank, will you stop with the drumming!”
Frank looked up in surprise, and then down at his hands, catching them in mid-beat. He grabbed the edge of his desktop to make his digits behave.
“Sorry, Mitch,” he called over the top of the cubical wall.
Okay, he told himself. This is ridiculous. I’m panicking for no reason. Cummings is probably just your average self-absorbed secret agent wannabe making himself feel important. Get a grip on yourself and get back to work.
It was then that Frank noticed an almost imperceptible green flicker at the top of his laptop screen. As always, his laptop was turned on and sitting next to his desktop computer. He stared at the laptop and waited. Sure enough, there it was again. Someone was watching him using the video camera on his own computer!
Frank’s eyes widened. When could his laptop have been compromised? Just about any time, he realized. It was always lying out on his desk at work, and as often as not, even when he was at home he was logged on to the LoC system. It could have happened while he was trading jibes with Carl – or days ago. Maybe even before he had deleted the Alexandria Project screen shot and then immediately defragmented his hard drive.
Frank’s head began to spin. What else had been placed on his computer? A keystroke logger recording every letter he typed? Did Cummings know every website Frank had visited over the past week? And what kinds of sites had he been visiting?
All kinds, Frank realized. Notorious cracker sites. Security sites. Hell, he’d just now been looking up famous terrorist attacks on the Wikipedia. Anyone who needed a scapegoat could ignore 99% of the sites he’d visited in the last week and tie the rest as tight as you please back into that stupid, lame, profile.
For the second time that day, Frank broke out in a cold sweat. Whoever was attacking the LoC site was damned good. He’d left no tracks at all, other than those he’d meant to be found. Frank doubted the CIA would get to the bottom of the hack quickly, if ever. And Congressman Steele’s subcommittee meetings would resume in a week.
Well, that brought him to the bottom of the decision tree, didn’t it? Yes, Frank decided, it certainly had. He took the thumb drive with the Alexandria Project screen saver on it out of his pocket and idly contemplated it. Then, on a whim, he took off the chain with the St. Christopher’s medal he’d worn out of habit since he was a child. Opening the chain, he slipped the thumb drive on ne
xt to the medal. He might not be religious, he reflected, but he sure could use all the good luck he could get. Then he stood up and put on his coat.
“So – did you drum yourself out of here, Frank?” Mitch asked as he walked by.
Frank gave a dry laugh. “Yeah, Mitch. I guess that’s a pretty good way of putting it.”
* * *
8
Face Off with Fearless Fosdick
To frank’s disgust, it was love at first sight for Lily when Carl Cummings arrived to relieve Frank of his passport. But Frank’s chagrin turned to glee when he realized that the CIA agent was terrified of dogs. Frank stepped out into the hall to better appreciate Carl’s frantic and ineffective efforts to fend off the obese corgi’s surprisingly energetic advances.
Predictably, Mrs. Foomjoy popped like a jack-in-the-box out of her door across the hall to see what the ruckus was all about. Frank thought she looked magnificent in her full regalia of house dress, fuzzy pink slippers, and curlers. He watched with new respect as she lit into Cummings for his lack of appreciation for canine affection. At last, she snatched Lily up, and then, as suddenly as she had appeared, Frank’s apparition of a neighbor vanished behind her energetically slammed door.
Carl turned wide-eyed to Frank, a helpless look on his face. But Frank simply smiled and tucked his passport in the agent’s jacket pocket. “Sorry for my bad manners, Carl. Next time I’ll introduce you.” He closed the door in the bewildered agent’s face.
Chuckling, Frank walked back up his apartment hallway. Once he had decided a few hours ago to fight back, his spirits had immediately begun to improve. Ever since, his mental wheels had been spinning with mounting excitement as he scoped out his next moves.
Frank took the first one on his way home, stopping at a convenience store to buy a six-pack of Heineken, two cans of soup, a quart of orange juice – and two disposable cellphones, each loaded with $100 of prepaid time. While hardly complete, his plans were already beginning to take shape.
With Carl’s visit behind him, Frank could return to those plans. But as he put his groceries away, he heard his doorbell ring and a key rattle in the lock of his apartment door. Moments later, Marla arrived breathlessly in the kitchen. Still wearing her coat, she threw herself down in a chair by the table.
“Tell me – please TELL me – that Carl Cummings wasn’t here to visit you?” Marla demanded. “It’s just a coincidence he was walking out of this building, right?”
Frank was both amused and shocked. “You know not-so-special agent Cummings?”
“Oh – my – God, yes. What was he doing here?”
“Picking up my passport, as it happens. Today he informed me in so many words that I’m Numero Uno on the CIA’s suspect list. He made it clear that he’d be keeping a close eye on me.”
“You! Whatever for?”
“Well, it seems like the Feds are still very much in the profile business, and the profile they’ve come up with fits me like a glove.”
“That’s crazy. You’re the last person on earth likely to pull off something like this. And even if they thought you were responsible, what can they do without anything to tie you to the security breaches?”
“Well, as you just saw, for starters they took my passport – that’s what Carl stopped by for. I probably should have made him get a court order first, but it seemed smarter to not make a fuss and just give it up. And speaking of court orders, I expect he could also get a friendly judge to approve a wiretap on my phone. Or a microphone in my kitchen, for that matter. Want to take a walk? It’s a lovely evening for a walk, isn’t it?”
Marla began to object, and then got the point. “Sure. Just lovely.”
Neither of them spoke as Frank locked his apartment door. A few moments later they were walking up 16th Street towards the Starbucks on the corner.
“Dad, do you really think this is serious?”
“I don’t rightly know, kid. On the one hand, there’s nothing I’m aware of to link me to what’s going on. But on the other hand, George’s cover story isn’t going to stand up if any more files disappear. When that happens, everyone at the LoC will be looking for the culprit. Worse yet, next week George will be testifying – under oath – in front of Congressman Steele’s subcommittee. What happens if George gets asked the wrong question, and has to admit that the Library of Congress is being hacked right now, and he has no idea by whom?”
“Well, what does happen? And whatever happens, why does that become your problem?”
“Because the FBI and the CIA don’t enjoy looking like a bunch of donkeys, even if some of their people do exhibit a strong family resemblance. They’ll need a fall guy, and at the moment I’m afraid I may be the most conveniently located candidate for the job. All they need to do to buy some breathing room is to have someone like Carl provide a reporter with a tip from, ‘a source who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak.’”
“Dad, that’s ridiculous! What kind of person would carry out an order like that?”
Frank opened the coffee shop door and held it for his daughter. “So what’s your opinion of Carl Cummings?”
Marla’s mouth opened and shut twice. Then she walked past Frank, and kept on walking until she reached the last table in the back of the coffee shop.
Frank smiled to himself and bought a couple of lattes to give Marla a chance to digest the news. Rejoining her, he took a seat across the table from his daughter and raised his eyebrows.
“So?”
Marla held her cup in both hands, and paused before she spoke. “Carl Cummings is a jerk.”
Frank looked up at the ceiling. “You know, that’s not the most insightful observation you’ve ever shared with me. As a matter of fact, I’d already reached pretty much the same conclusion through my own finely tuned powers of deduction.”
Marla frowned but said nothing.
“So let me try again. How did you come to know Fearless Fosdick?”
“Fearless who?”
“Later. Now give.”
Marla put down her coffee and took a deep breath. “So, it’s like this. My first year at George Washington I took a big lecture course with a couple hundred other freshman, and Carl was the grad school teaching assistant assigned to my discussion section. I was stuck with the cretin for a whole semester.”
“Okay, so two hours a week with a cretin may be annoying, but it’s not exactly waterboarding. As I recall, you decided your first roommate was a cretin, too, and now you’re the best of friends. So why such a negative reaction?”
Marla squirmed and then gave up. “Alright, so maybe I went out with Carl a few times.”
Frank suppressed a smile with difficulty. “With... Carl. Okay. So if he’s such a cretin, and you only went out with him a few times, how come you weren’t surprised to learn he now works for the CIA?”
Marla gave him a pitying glance. “Dad, everyone – well, everyone who doesn’t already have a foot in the grave – has a Facebook page.”
Suddenly, the words came tumbling out. “It was really low rent of him. Professors and teachers aren’t supposed to date students – there’s, like, even a policy against it. You know I didn’t date much in high school, and he is pretty good looking. And he knew how to dress. All the girls in my section thought he was, like, totally hot.”
Frank wrinkled his nose. “Don’t say ‘like’ all the time like that.” Marla ignored him. “So when he took an interest in me, I was flattered. Soon, we started going out pretty heavy.”
Frank decided that the conversation had reached a Too Much Information inflection point and cut her off. “I’m assuming it didn’t end well.”
“Hah! Let’s just say that to top it off, he gave me a C on my final exam.”
Frank winced. Neither of them said anything for a minute. “So who’s Fearless Fosdick?” Marla asked at last.
Frank turned on his cellphone, glad for the change of topic. “Fosdick was the creation of Al Capp, a brilliant cartoonist wit
h a strip called Li’L Abner that ran for more than forty years, beginning during the Depression. It was filled with oddball characters with outrageous names like Moonbeam McSwine, Senator Jack S. Phogbound, and Appassionata Von Climax. The strip was still running when I was a kid, and I loved it.
“Capp lampooned everyone, and everything. One of the things he spoofed unmercifully was another comic called Dick Tracy, a drama strip that ran for almost exactly the same time period under its original author, Chester Gould (somebody else does it now – badly). Tracy was always pursuing equally bizarre evildoers with names like Flattop Jones, Pruneface, and The Mole. Each had a face to match.
“Gould’s Tracy was supposed to be the all-American, straightshooter type (literally) – tough, smart, and invincible. Capp created Fosdick, of course, to be the same, but exaggerated the same characteristics outrageously. He pulled it off by creating another strip within the Li’l Abner series, and made Fosdick Li’l Abner’s “Ideel.” Abner would rush to the post box every day to read Fosdick’s latest exploits. Here – read this from Wikipedia – it’s how Capp described his own character:
Fearless is without doubt the world’s most idiotic detective. He shoots people for their own good, is pure beyond imagining, and is fanatically loyal to a police department which exploits, starves and periodically fires him.
“Sound like anyone you might know?” Marla laughed. “Here – let me find you a picture.”
Frank took back the cellphone and hunted up an image of Fosdick.
He handed the device back to Marla.
“My God!” Marla almost shrieked. Serious-looking people with laptops stared their way in annoyance. Embarrassed, she leaned forward and whispered, “Take away the little mustache, and that’s him!”
“So now you know what I’m concerned about. I’m afraid that your buddy Fearless may get a lot of heat from upstairs if he doesn’t produce results. And if he can’t produce results, well, maybe a little diversion might be the next best thing.”
The Alexandria Project: A Tale of Treachery and Technology (Frank Adversego Thrillers Book 1) Page 8