While it certainly was not uncommon to have a tech leave a drive in a server port during maintenance and then leave the cabinet unlocked, it did seem odd while at sea. Still, Specialist Marks didn’t want to be the guy to get some IT tech in trouble for a simple mistake, so he just unloaded the drive from the server port and decided to check it out using the office desk computer.
When Specialist Marks went to slip the drive into the office desk computer he noticed that the thumb drive was exactly the same type as the one Mr. Walker had stored his email on. That did seem a bit of a coincidence.
Specialist Marks took the thumb drive and plugged it into the computer to see what was on it. He decided that if it was obviously just an update to a common ship’s application, or some test program for one of the ship’s navigation systems, he would just put the drive back in the lost and found where all the other lost tech equipment went. However, when he tried to open the contents of the thumb drive it only had two files on it. One was titled Auntie1 and had an MSI extension, the other was titled One-Shot and had a config extension. Since these types of files are used to install software, and were clearly not something normal for the cruise ship computers, Specialist Marks realized it was time to let someone know what was going on.
Funny thing about staff meetings, only half the people pay attention, and the half that do pay attention, don’t really care. So when First Officer “Sparky” Martins told his engineering team that the captain wanted anything out of the ordinary reported immediately, the words “anything” and “out of the ordinary” never did register with Chief IT Officer Reynolds. Reynolds had been so busy playing with his ship’s phone and dealing with the constant messages from his underlings that the only message that soaked in from the security meeting was that it kept him from getting all his work done. So when Specialist Marks reported to Officer Reynolds about the mysterious thumb drive, it ended up as just one more line item in his daily status report.
Thus, when First Officer Martins read IT Officer Reynolds’ department report, which contained only a small passing note in the report of the mysterious thumb drive, there was no reason to view it as out of the ordinary. It became nothing more than an innocuous line item in the captains situation report. Before Captain Pickard had the time to read the ship’s situation report from First Officer Martins, the Maurou had completed its stop at Castaway Cay and was thirty-seven nautical miles out to sea and on its way to the ship’s last destination in Key West.
A captain’s situation report is divided into five sections and is used to provide a quick snapshot of ship readiness. The report is presented to the captain both on the way into, and out of, each port-of-call. Usually the situation report lists such mundane issues as reports from the hospitality section stating that the wine steward has noted a drop in the high-end red wine stock and they may need to replenish supplies at the next port. The worst situational report Captain Pickard had ever received was when the medical staff reported that they had numerous guests and staff presenting with norovirus symptoms, and that they were recommending to return directly to Miami. After that trip, the captain reluctantly found himself on the evening news as his ship had been the third cruise ship in two months to report the virus had sickened passengers.
When Captain Pickard first read the situational report, the line item about the thumb drive did indeed seem quite innocuous since the report didn’t include any details about Specialist Marks’ mysterious encounter with Mr. Walker. It could easily have been glossed over, but the captain was indeed a thorough type and he started asking questions to First Officer Martins about the details of the IT portion of the report. It didn’t take the captain very long to realize that IT Officer Reynolds and the rest of his executive staff knew nothing more about the situation than what was written down. Captain Pickard asked IT Officer Reynolds to have Specialist Marks meet with him as soon as possible.
At first, Specialist Marks was hesitant to tell the captain the whole story as he was sure it was going to somehow get him in trouble. After all, it’s not often that a specialist 3rd mate is called to a private meeting with the captain. Eventually though, Captain Pickard was able to reassure him that all he wanted was to make sure everything was safe on the ship and that any information he had about the mysterious thumb drive would help him do so. Captain Pickard’s words were chosen carefully and tactfully and so the message Marks heard from the Captain’s words was, “we are all in this together,” and not, “I’m going to hang you out to dry.” Specialist Marks finally relaxed and told the whole story of his encounter with Walker from the beginning.
To his credit, the captain kept his cool in front of Marks. It wasn’t until after he asked him to return to his quarters that the usually reserved seafarer let his emotion out. The wood table in the corner, now in several pieces, broke much easier than Captain Pickard thought it would. It was clear the captain needed to do three things right away: get his IT chief to check over every system in the engineering room, get Mr. Walker in his office for a chat, and get Agent Jim Scholes on the phone.
First Officer Sparky Martins practically ran out the door after his meeting with Captain Pickard. In quick order, the entire IT team (except for Marks) was busy running diagnostic tests, checking their anti-virus reports, and validating the primary and secondary operational systems that ran the Maurou. Captain Pickard’s meeting with John Walker did not go quite so smoothly. In fact it didn’t go at all. Despite numerous pages, Mr. Walker had not responded. A check of his room found it empty of any personal belongings. A check of the boarding manifest, however, showed he never left the ship. Captain Pickard told his staff to look everywhere on the ship and find Mr. Walker. Unfortunately for the searchers, a ship that is almost as big as a nuclear aircraft carrier takes a lot of looking to find someone when they don’t want to be found.
While the search was on to find Walker, Captain Pickard placed a call to Agent Scholes. Fortunately, instead of some underling, Agent Scholes answered the phone himself. Captain Pickard wasted no time in recanting the adventures of Mr. Walker and the mysterious thumb drive. At the same time Captain Pickard was telling the story, Agent Scholes was relaying the pertinent bits to someone else on his end, or as Captain Pickard suspected, to someone else listening on the line. After Captain Pickard had relayed all the details, Agent Scholes started giving Captain Pickard some information about Walker.
“It looks like Mr. Walker bought his ticket in cash from one of your local ticket offices. He used a Canadian passport for ID, and ... hmm… the address and phone number he used are not a proper Canadian residence. There doesn’t seem to be any more information on him at all. It looks like his identity started when he bought his ticket. One other odd thing, John Walker is the name of one of the most notorious navy spies we ever caught. That probably is no coincidence. My information says you are now in open waters. Did Mr. Walker leave the ship in Castaway Cay?”
Captain Pickard was surprised how Agent Scholes could have so much information so fast.
“Yes sir. We are now approximately eighty miles east of Castaway Cay. We have a system that tracks our passenger whereabouts. According to it, Mr. Walker did not leave the ship.”
Agent Scholes was relieved.
“Perfect, that means we can drop in a team and pick up Mr. Walker, or whoever he is, before he gets a chance to get off in Key West.”
The captain sheepishly added:
“Scholes, I forgot to mention, I have already sent out a page for Mr. Walker and as yet he has not responded.”
Agent Scholes was not happy to hear that bit of news.
“Pickard, please tell me you sent out that page after you left port.”
“Oh, definitely. Yes we were well underway before we started looking for him.”
Agent Scholes was somewhat relieved.
“Good. If you do find him, do not tell him you are suspecting anything or mention anything about the thumb drive. Just make up some story about the cruise line wanting to give him his w
elcome-onboard packet or some bullshit like that. Do not do anything until I have someone on board. Now tell me you have that thumb drive in your possession.”
“I do, yes. It’s sitting right in front of me.”
“Perfect, I want you to put it in your personal safe, and don’t give it to anyone until I have an agent in your office and I personally give you the agent’s name. Also, do not speak about the thumb drive to anyone on board and be sure to explain to anyone from your IT department that already knows about it to do the same.”
Captain Pickard was starting to let some emotion into his thinking.
“Scholes, what kind of horseshit are we into here? Should I be rerouting my ship back to Miami, or should I continue on to Key West? Are we even sure this is a real threat? What should I tell my company?”
Agent Scholes took a long time to answer.
“So far we have no specific information from our sources of a direct threat made against the Maurou. Obviously, we do need to talk to Mr. Walker to understand what he has been up to so that we can determine if his activity has been of the nuisance kind, or if it has a more sinister intent. You, of course, have the final say as to what you do with the ship and, at this point, I cannot order you to change the final two days of your trip. I can tell you that your boss and company have been fully apprised of the situation by my staff and will continually be updated of the Maurou’s status. Under no circumstances should you contact them or anyone else using ship communication. We will handle all that from here. The only line of communications off your ship other than for normal communications should be through this number to me. I assume you have your IT staff going over every system on board. Have they been able to find anything to worry about?”
“No sir, they have not reported anything out of the ordinary yet.”
“Okay, one last thing. I am going to be sending you a message with a picture file attached. When you get it, ask Specialist Marks if the person in the picture is Mr. Walker. Return the message with a confirmation either way as soon as you get an answer.”
Captain Pickard thanked Agent Scholes and hung up. While he waited for the message with Walker’s picture he weighed the options in his head. If there was a real terrorist attack on board, it was obvious that his number one goal was to get the ship and guests home safely. But he also realized that returning the ship to Miami early, if there was no valid threat, would mean mountains of bad press, not to mention millions of dollars in fares returned. If Mr. Walker turned out to be some punk hacker trying to get his fifteen minutes of fame and the captain overreacted, his career would be over. Captain Pickard decided that his decision on whether to abort the trip early would depend on the answers to two questions. Was Walker the guy in the picture Agent Scholes was sending, and would his IT team come up with anything definitive to worry about?
When the message with the picture arrived from Agent Scholes, Captain Pickard was disappointed. All he could see was a long-distance grainy image of some average-looking guy in a Panama hat sitting in some downtown café drinking a coffee and watching the people go by. Nothing about the man screamed scary bad terrorist. Just a guy. When Captain Pickard showed the picture to Marks, the best guess he could give the Captain was a 75% sure that’s him. Just perfect. After Captain Pickard relayed Specialist Marks’ non-committal reply about the man in the picture back to Agent Scholes, the next order of business was to see if the Maurou’s IT team had any answers for him. Captain Pickard told the IT team managers and ships executives he wanted a meeting at 2000 hours in his staff room. The meeting lasted all of about sixty seconds.
“Well, Reynolds, what have you boys found?”
IT Officer Reynolds was very contrite.
“Nothing, sir. All our tests came back normal. No virus, no hidden files, no change in any operations system software. My guess is that whatever was on that drive did not get transferred to the server it was plugged into. I am guessing he plugged it in but then got scared off before he loaded anything.”
The captain was relieved.
“Have you completed your testing?”
“Yes, sir. We have examined every piece of code even remotely related to the server the drive was in and we found nothing unexpected.”
Captain Pickard pressed on.
“Did you test both the online and backup systems?”
“Yes sir.”
“Okay then. Remember this is not to be discussed by anyone. Make sure your staff is aware that discussing this issue will be a quick way to never work on the Maurou again.”
“Yes, sir. That message has already been made known.”
To Captain Pickard, the scales had now definitely tipped in favor of continuing on to Key West where they would be comfortably in port by 0600. Agent Scholes’ men would no doubt be waiting there to assist in looking for Walker. Captain Pickard called Agent Scholes’ number but he was not available, so the captain relayed his decision to continue the trip to some underling who represented Agent Scholes.
The remainder of the evening was quiet. The passengers obliviously dined and danced and the crew went about the business of keeping the passengers happy. For the first time in many hours, Captain Pickard allowed some relief to drift in.
By 0130 the entire ship had become quiet. The dancing in the ballroom had been over for an hour now and after a long sunny day at the beach in Castaway Cay, or snorkeling off the islands’ coast, even the heartiest of party animals were now fast asleep on their $1900 memory foam mattresses. Captain Pickard walked slowly from the main control room to the officer’s deck. The wind had some chill to it, just enough to make the old salty dog take notice. What a day, he thought to himself. I sure hope tomorrow is less exciting.
The only questions still on his mind when he stared off into the blackness was who Mr. Walker really was, what he was up to, and where the hell he was. Captain Pickard decided those answers were not coming for another day, so he might as well get a few hours sleep before the Maurou made its arrival in Key West. The good captain had no doubt that new adventures would be waiting for him in the morning.
As the captain turned to leave the bridge deck he noticed something odd about the lights on the forecabin. The starboard lights appeared slightly lower than the port side lights. It could have been that they were never level to begin with, or that he was more tired than he thought, but thorough as he was, the thought of it just wouldn’t leave him. Before he turned in for the evening he asked the deck commander to check it out and report back to him at 0630. Had the deck commander had the same instincts of the old captain, he would have done more to follow up on the request than just take a quick look at the deck lights through the command deck windows. The next few hours may have ended quite differently if he had.
At 0230, First Assistant Engineer Ballmer was hanging a picture in the aft engine room when he realized that the bubble in his level was showing that the picture was level, but his eyes were telling him a different story. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing; the Maurou appeared to be listing several degrees to starboard. That was, of course, impossible. The advanced ballast system would never allow that and even if it somehow did, the alarms on the panel in front of him would be going nuts. He called up to the bridge. They replied that all indications there were showing the ship was on the charted course and that all the instruments were showing normal status. Despite that, they were getting a sense that something felt odd to them up there as well. Even though all the ballast gauges were reading normal on the bridge gauges, the deck officer asked Ballmer to check on them from his engine room instruments.
Ballmer examined the instruments on his computer that showed ballast status and even looked over all the old analog style ballast gauges. Something was definitely wrong. Every ballast level was shown to be exactly the same. Ballmer knew that even on a flat sea with little wind, the ship was never sitting in the water with the exact same weight. There was always more weight in the aft section due to the massive ship’s engines. Even with all the p
eople in their rooms for the night the weight offset aft by the engines should be at least 8%. That would cause the ballast adjustment to be approximately 4% forward to counter that weight. The instrument readout for the ballast system had to be wrong.
Ballmer’s next system check was even more puzzling. He noticed that despite what the bridge had told him, his instruments showed the starboard propeller speed was at 92 RPM and the port propeller speed was 87 RPM. If the ship was in fact level as the ballast reported, the ship should now be turning a long circle to port. But the bridge was reporting it was on the proper track.
By the time Ballmer made his way up to the main bridge, the ship’s list to starboard was now discernable to everyone there even without instruments. The first officer placed an emergency call to Captain Pickard and told him to report to the bridge. Captain Pickard didn’t wait to get to the bridge, he ordered his bridge officer to shut down the ballast pumps, whatever they were doing, and throttle back both engines to 10% power. That should at least keep things stable until he got there. Despite the effort to enact those commands, the Maurou was listing still further starboard when the captain entered the bridge. The captain didn’t even get a chance to ask what was going on before Bridge Officer Adams was yelling at him from across the room.
“Captain, we have tried to shut down the ballast pumps but they are not responding to our commands. I have Ballmer back in the aft engine room and he is telling me that his instruments now say all the transfer pumps are fully opened and are transferring the ballast in all port tanks to starboard, and that all aft tanks are pumping forward. Additionally, he is reporting the port propeller speeds are changing proportionally to match the weight transfer. Sir, we are nosing in. The only thing keeping us semistable is the increased push by the starboard thrust.”
Captain Pickard took it all in, checked the instruments himself and saw that from the bridge they all still showed normal operation. He ordered the communications officer to contact the Coast Guard and to notify the company. Then he told the deck officer to ready all life boats, just in case. Then Captain Pickard surprised everyone in the control room by going out onto the foredeck to make a phone call.
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