“The FBI? How did that happen?”
“No clue – all I know is that I got a message asking me to be part of an operation up in this pass. Either your friends at the CIA aren’t your friends after all, or the FBI’s going rogue behind their back. Which wouldn’t be the first time. Either way, it’s time you got the hell out of here, and not in that camper, either.”
Damn, Frank thought. It must have been that call from Marla – he should never have let his guard down after being so careful for so long. “How much can your Rover hold? There’s a lot of electronic gear I’m going to need, and there’s other stuff it wouldn’t be smart to leave behind.”
“More than enough, but let’s get moving, or it won’t matter.”
Frank smiled. “Oh, I’m not too worried about that. I think we’re going to have all the time we need.”
* * *
Cummings wondered what lay behind the urgent text message from Marla: “Mt me frnt Air Spce Msm 10.” That was all. He could see her now up ahead now, and she didn’t look happy.
When he was a few steps away, she saw him and walked rapidly towards, and then right past him.
“Whoa, girl! I thought you wanted me to meet you here?”
“Quiet!” she hissed. “Walk a step behind me and just listen.”
Well, this was different. Carl adjusted his pace and fell in behind as she headed towards the street, and then flagged a cab.
“What do you know about a SWAT team trying to capture my father?” she asked urgently.
Carl skipped a step in surprise. “Nothing! Nothing at all, I swear it!”
“Well, find out.”
With that, Marla slammed the door of the cab and left him standing at the curb.
* * *
“Mr. Marchand for you, sir.”
John Foster Baldwin looked at the phone warily. “Gwen, please ask him what it’s about.”
After a pause she was back. “He says it’s urgent news about the Alexandria Project.”
Hmm. Depending on what Marchand might or might not yet know, this could be awkward. Better to find out sooner rather than later, though.
“Alright, then, Gwen. Please put him through.”
“Good morning George, good to hear from you. What’s the news?”
“Actually, sir, that’s what I was calling to ask you. I’ve learned through Adversego’s daughter that a SWAT team tried to take him out yesterday. Luckily, he got away, but unless we have a mighty good explanation, we’re not going to have further access to him.”
Adversego was alive! Baldwin thought quickly – so he must not have been in the camper after all. Baldwin suddenly felt a bit queasy – who was it he had blown away, then?
“Yes, George, that’s right. I owe you an apology for not telling you sooner, but things were happening very quickly.”
“You mean we did try to capture him?”
“No, no, of course not – nothing of the kind. It seems that our friends at the FBI, however, decided to get into the act. Luckily, I got wind of their plans just in time. I put a high altitude Predator over the clearing immediately.”
Now what should he say? Did George know how the operation had turned out? If so, how would he explain that? Then he had a sudden flash of inspiration.
“We saw Frank get away before the FBI arrived, so just as the SWAT team made their move, we took the camper out with a Hellfire missile before they could realize he wasn’t inside.”
George was startled. “How did you explain that to the FBI?”
Baldwin was starting to feel in control again. “No need to worry about me, George. You don’t get to sit at a desk like this without learning how to be quick on your feet.”
* * *
Frank and his father were nearing Des Moines, Iowa, when Frank first spoke to Marla. Now that he was off his mountain and back on the move, it seemed safe to communicate again with Marla, both using disposable cellphones. And he was hungry for news.
Frank turned to his father. “So here’s the party line. According to Cummings, the FBI was trying to make the CIA look bad by hauling me in. Since the CIA knew I was a security expert working for the Library of Congress and had dropped out of sight after being questioned, they could not only win points by hauling me in, but could claim the CIA was asleep at the switch. Should I believe that?”
His father gave a laugh. “Hell yes! Or anyway, Hell maybe. Some things never change. It makes perfect sense, with Congress and the press bashing both agencies for not getting to the bottom of the security breaches. I’m not saying I’m crossing this one off the list yet, but it’s not crazy on its face.”
Frank looked out the window and let that sink in. He decided he felt better about his own security and a lot worse for his country’s. Then he remembered the rest of the conversation.
“Oh – and there’s other big news – Marla and Cummings have found an operative that really is part of the ring that’s behind the breaches. Turns out it was a neighbor of mine all along. But they don’t know yet who she’s working for.”
“Well, that’s good news, as far as it goes. Now what?”
Frank mulled that over. What indeed? Then he did what he always did when his mental wheels needed lubricating.
“Well, let’s review what we do and don’t know. What we do know, or at least think we know, is that the booksellers weren’t behind anything except the LoC breach. That means whoever is behind the other attacks probably adopted the old guys’ story about exposing the vulnerability of the Internet infrastructure as a cover for whatever they’re really up to.
“That means we’ve still got the same two problems to solve: who’s behind the breaches, and what it is they’re trying to pull off? We can try and tackle one problem before the other, or both at once.”
“Sounds right. So which will it be?”
Frank watched the bare fields roll by. The fact was, he didn’t know where to begin on either one. “Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? What do you think?”
His father chuckled. “What’s so funny?”
“Happens it does that a choice must you make.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake! You’re not planning on going Yoda on me again, are you?”
“Happens it does that your best thinking you do when Yoda I go on you.”
“Alright, alright.” Frank sighed. After all, his father was right. So which problem should he tackle first? He stared blankly out the window as the news came on the radio, distracting him from his thoughts.
Acting President Henry Chaseman issued a tough warning to the North Koreans today, informing them that any act of provocation would be met with an immediate and disproportionate response from the United States.
Frank jerked to attention. “Turn that up!”
His father did as requested, a surprised look on his face.
Chaseman’s warning came in response to yesterday’s saber-rattling statement by North Korean General Chan Bach Choy. In that statement, the General announced that the rogue regime would tolerate no restrictions on its nuclear and missile development and deployment activities, and that the previously announced test firing of two new intercontinental missiles would proceed as planned.
The rapid exchange of escalating messages has raised tensions to the highest level between the two nations since the armistice was signed, more than fifty years ago.
Meanwhile, American allies are urging calm, especially while President Rawlings remains in critical condition in the coronary intensive care unit of the Walter Reed National Medical Center.
Frank reached over and clicked the radio off. “Well, now I know who we’re up against.”
“All ears am I.”
“It’s the North Koreans. Ever since I laid eyes on her, my neighbor has reminded me of Jong Kim-Lo.”
“Well, that’s certainly convincing evidence. Are you sure she’s even North Korean?”
“Actually, I don’t know. I mean, I don’t have any proof.” He paused. “Actually, she al
ways said she was Chinese.”
The car drove onward, but Frank offered nothing further. “True it is that a North Korean a Chinese is not.”
“Okay, okay, but still, maybe she really is North Korean. Wouldn’t she hide that, if she truly was up to no good? And what if there is a connection between the security breaches and what’s going on now internationally? The North Koreans can’t possibly beat us militarily, at least outside their borders, but security attacks are another thing. If I was an enemy with limited resources that wanted to bring the war home against a much larger opponent, that’s where I’d focus.”
His father gave a shrug. “Okay. Suppose let us that right you are. Many types of attacks can there be. But launch which one, will they?”
Frank thought out loud. “I don’t know. But our next step should be to get all the data together that we’ve got and then look for a pattern or discrepancy – anything that might provide a clue and point us in the right direction.”
“Pull off the highway the next time you see a shopping mall; I want to find a Radio Shack and get a splitter outlet for your cigarette lighter. And if your battery’s old, let’s get a new one, because I’m going to be running a lot of equipment off it.”
* * *
Baldwin stared at his speakerphone. George Marchand was asking him to stick his neck out, and that was something Baldwin made a point of never doing.
It didn’t bother him that Marchand was asking for permission to send Adversego a dump of the hard drive of the computer he had copied. Or even that Marchand wanted to provide the CIA’s complete database of networks the Alexandria Project had hacked as well. He could justify that easily, since if Frank really was the bad guy he would already have access to the same information. But Marchand was also asking permission not to log any of his actions into the Homeland Security database.
That made obvious sense, because otherwise the FBI would learn that Adversego was alive, and that would never do. But it would also be a violation of Homeland Security rules, and they both knew it.
There was only one way he could safely give that kind of permission, and luckily for him Marchand was trusting or foolish enough – either way the man was clearly a fool – to seek verbal rather than written permission. If Marchand’s actions later came to light, they couldn’t be denied. But Baldwin’s words could.
“Permission granted, George. Let me know if it gets us anywhere.”
* * *
High in the mountains of Nevada, FBI Agent Ralph Johnson was overseeing the painstaking forensic examination of the wreckage of the Solar Avenger. Behind him, a support crew was setting up lights powered by a portable generator. As night fell, wisps of fog wafted up from the damp ground and hissed against the lenses of the blinding klieg lights. Above the barely visible horizon far away, an almost full moon began to rise. Johnson gave an involuntary shiver, realizing that the temperature was likely to drop even lower.
They would need to work quickly. Bureau Chief Burke had made it abundantly clear that the Director of the FBI expected to find a preliminary report on his desk the next morning.
Burke had also left him with no doubt that they had better find out who had tipped Adversego off, or they’d both be looking for new jobs.
* * *
28
Here’s to the Company!
Frank, Sr. Swung his ancient Land Rover back onto the highway, a server humming in the back and Frank, Jr. tapping away in the front on his laptop. Power and connector cables snaked between the two seats.
“I’ve only got a wireless AirCard to work with, but if we’re lucky I’ll have Foomjoy’s entire hard drive replicated by the time we cross the Mississippi. I’ve already got the list of hacked sites from the CIA, so let’s see what that shows.”
Frank pored over the data as they drove eastward into the night. There seemed to be no order or pattern to the 192 sites that had been attacked to date. Every type of host had been hit – newspapers, universities, retailers, government sites, non-profits – you name it. After the first few high profile targets, the most obvious conclusion seemed to be that the victims had been chosen at random.
What to make of that?
Randomness would be consistent with the goal of raising concerns over security, since it would make everyone feel vulnerable and therefore get everyone screaming for a fix. But who would care about raising security concerns enough to risk going to jail for easily twenty years? Not your average geek hacker, anyway.
Not a security company, either. That would only showcase how inadequate their current products were. And no career cyber-criminal would have a motive, since the panic was making everyone beef up their security. A foreign enemy would want to keep you vulnerable, too. So who would gain anything from exposing how vulnerable current networks were?
It just had to be a cover for something else – one of those 192 sites must be the real target. But how to figure out which one it was?
He realized his father had been whistling for a while now, and the tune he had just started rang a distant bell.
“What’s that song?”
“Oh, just an old Irish drinking song. It’s called, ‘Oh, Dear, What Can the Matter Be?’ I’m surprised you recognize it.”
Frank was, too. Then the answer came to him.
“Remember when we took the cross-country camping trip all those years ago? The drive took forever, and you sang all these great old songs to keep me from getting bored.”
His father smiled, remembering. “Right you are. Your generation doesn’t know what a good song is – and doesn’t spend any time singing, either. Back when I was young, we did a lot of singing – in the army, in school, in a whole lot of bars – you name it. Sentimental songs, nonsense songs, sly songs – there was a lot of great music back then, and everybody knew the words, too.”
“So how did that ‘What Can the Matter Be?’ song go? Do you still remember the words?”
“Which words? It’s an old song, with lots of different versions. Let’s see if I can still remember the one that I was probably singing back then….”
He sang half to himself for a few lines, but then picked up confidence as the words came back to him:
Oh Dear, What can the matter be?
Seven old ladies locked in a lavat’ry.
They were there from Sunday to Saturday.
And nobody knew they were there.
“That’s the song!” Frank laughed, “But the only verse I remember any of is the one about the lady who forgot her nickel.”
“Well, you’ll have to wait a few verses before she gets her turn.” He started singing again.
The first was a lady named Eleanor Humphrey.
Who sat herself down just to make herself comfy.
And when she got up she could not get her bum free.
And nobody knew she was there.
Frank smiled, but this wasn’t solving anything. He tried to focus again on the puzzle that had been challenging him for weeks. If the public attacks were just a cover, what were they a cover for?
The next to come in was dear Mrs. Mason
The stalls were all full so she pissed in the basin
And that is the water that I washed my face in
And nobody knew she was there.
He made a face at that verse, just as he had when he was 11.
The third old lady was Amelia Garpickle;
Her urge was sincere, her reaction was fickle.
She vaulted the door; she’d forgotten her nickel,
And nobody knew she was there.
That was his favorite verse! He tried to block the verses out, but eventually gave it up and listened to his father finish out the song:
The sixth old lady was Emily Clancy;
She went there ‘cause something tickled her fancy,
But when she got there it was ants in her pantsy
And nobody knew she was there.
The seventh was the Bishop of Chichester’s daughter
She went
in to pass some superfluous water
She pulled on the chain and the rising tide caught her
And nobody knew she was there.
The janitor arrived in the early morning.
He opened the door without any warning,
The seven old ladies their seats were adorning,
And nobody knew they were there.
His father repeated the last line, drawing out the syllables with gusto:
And no-bo-dy knew they were t-h-e-e-r-e!
“THAT’S IT!” Frank screamed, slamming both hands down on the dash board.
“JEE-sus, Mary and Joseph!” his father yelled back as the car swerved. “You almost made me run off the road. What the hell’s the matter with you!”
“That’s what they’re up to!”
“Who? The janitor? Or the little old ladies?”
“Not them, the hackers! I know what they’re up to!”
“Wonderful! Great! That’s terrific! Now please share your revelation in a calm, quiet voice, if you please, so I can focus on driving safely at 70 miles an hour.”
“Okay – sorry. Only I’ve been going crazy for weeks trying to figure out what the real strategy behind the public attacks has been, and now I’ve got it!”
“So what is it? And what made it come to you just then?”
“The last line of your song – it took seven verses and the finale, but there it was, staring me in the face, the way it has been all along: ‘Nobody knew they were there!’
The Alexandria Project: A Tale of Treachery and Technology (Frank Adversego Thrillers Book 1) Page 25