Effected Intent

by Alan Ross

  Chapter 18

  Bill Finds More Information and an Ally

  As Bill looked through the output of his mail filtering program he dug a bit deeper into the mail server to look at the messages that were between Foundation and the CIA. All of the CIA messages came from one person, Robert Swanson, and they started a couple months ago. It was impossible to know if the person on the other end was really Robert Swanson but the first couple of messages were to a Robert Wall, who was a Vice President of Foundation. This is where the initial meeting was set up between the CIA and the chemical company. The last message from Swanson to Wall provided details that there was a “matter of National security” and the CIA was interested in pursuing some of Foundation’s upcoming technology around bioresorbable polymers as a vaccine delivery system. Specifically it called for Steven Pfister, the chemist who invented the polymers, be assigned to this special project and that the CIA could not provide any additional details. Bill found a note from Wall back to Swanson stating that Foundation would support this project.

  This was becoming complicated, there might really be national security implications and Bill’s digging could potentially compromise everything. He hesitated and decided to open his favorite program, visio, to document what he found. Bill put two buildings on the diagram to represent Foundation and the CIA and then copied a few “people” on to the picture, which he labeled Swanson, Wall and Pfister. He had reviewed all the messages between Wall and Swanson so he put a link between them and added a few comment boxes that detailed the communication. He set out to follow the conversation between Swanson and Pfister but little information about the project was detailed in any of the mail messages. There were details of a location for the project work to continue, which was also in the greater Cleveland area, located in an industrial park in Independence. Bill added another building to the diagram to represent the project location.

  It was past four o’clock and Bill didn’t want to go back to his cell for the night with empty hands so he dug through the mail server and grabbed the rest of the mails without reading them. He also printed out his visio diagram so he could update the sketch directly until lights out. The rest of the messages were brief so Bill wasn’t walking out with a ream of paper. He shut down and wondered again what he’d gotten himself into, trying to figure out how bioresorbable polymers could be used to deliver vaccines, maybe the information was on one of Foundation’s servers and he could figure it out. If he was able to make sense of this project and everything that was going on it was going to be far enough, would leave it at that. This had been one of the most exciting things Bill had ever done and it made him wonder what he would have done with his life if he hadn’t ended up in prison. Network and computer security was a very interesting field, especially for someone who spent a lot of time as a thief.

  The last few messages between Swanson and Pfister discussed a need for the chemist to go to Washington for a meeting but there were no details of the meeting. The tone had changed and the text had gone from HTML, or web based, to text based messages, which made Bill suspicious. He would have to check those messages in the morning to see if something had changed in the way they were constructed or where they’d come from. What was strange is that the last couple of messages also communicated public based email accounts for the two to start using when emailing each other instead of using Foundation and the CIA’s mail servers. Bill thought that the CIA must have strong, current encryption technologies that could be employed to thwart eavesdropping on the conversation, why would they need to use public email accounts? This was the last thing he jotted on the page before lights out but as he lay in bed he thought about all he’d found. There were some notes from the chemist that talked about test results of the spheres, where the dyes were being released on time. Maybe there was a complicated vaccine that required updates over a time period and these spheres would release the next phase of the vaccination as needed. This seemed like a good idea but Bill thought of the shots he’d had from doctors over the year and tried to picture a sphere the size of a golf ball under his skin, not the most comforting thought to ease into sleep with.

  “What’s been on your mind, you’re a million miles away from this place.”

  “Busy with a project in the office William, nothing bad, just trying to figure some stuff out. Luckily the boss is on vacation this week and next so I’ve got time on my hands to crack this nut.”

  “Most be some serious shit, you’re usually not this distracted unless something’s going on. Something to do with your mom coming down over the weekend? Thanks for those cookies and brownies, been a real treat.”

  “No problem, I’ll bring you some more, she brought enough to feed the entire population of the prison. I think I’ve blocked their visit, it was a real trip for me. My mom and sister were fine but Mike Watts’ mom also came down for the visit. Mike was with me for the car crash, he was my best friend. I watched him die, trapped in that car.”

  “Damn, no wonder you’re finding something else to distract you. Did she bring you a guilt trip?”

  “The opposite, said it was time to forgive myself and that she forgives me for what happened. She lost her husband earlier this year and thinks that carrying around all the bitterness the past twenty years helped drive him into the ground. She made me promise to try and forgive myself.”

  “Maybe it’s time, brother. The parole board would most likely let you out. If the new evidence they found in my case exonerates me we could get out at the same time.”

  “Not sure what it would be like to live outside William. I’ve spent almost half my life in this place and the thought of how big the world is scares the shit out of me.”

  “Just remember that there’s pussy out there and there’s none in here. If nothing else will motivate you to get out, that should do it. When we’re outside this place it’s going to be a lot of catching up.”

  “We’ll see, at least you’re innocent so when you get out there won’t be guilt on your shoulders. I’m not sure I could live a normal life knowing what happened to my friends.”

  “Damn Billy, we’ve been down this path enough times during the past five years. You’re a model prisoner, have helped so many others and there’s no fucking way the parole board would deny you.” William shook his head, anger rising. “When are you going to figure this out? Even your friend’s mother told you to forgive yourself. How much more do you need than that?”

  “I need to run, time to start work. Later.” Bill got up from the table.

  “That’s real adult of you Bill, just run away from the discussion. When you’re really ready to talk about this shit, let me know.”

  Bill lost the conversation, clutching the papers in his hand. Wanted to figure out what was going on with this project and that’s all he wanted to do. If anyone brought up parole for him today he was going to freak out. The office was quiet, everyone still enjoying their vacation time away from the boss and nobody paid any attention to him as he got some coffee and dug in for some more detective work.

  He was going to attack the public email accounts directly but decided that it was more likely someone at the major providers would be watching. If the chemist was working remotely he was probably using software to connect back to Foundation’s network. Bill knew how they did remote connectivity, using a virtual private network, or VPN. He logged on to the VPN server and looked for connections from ‘spfister’, which was the user account that the chemist had with Foundation. The last connection was last night and the one before that was the previous morning. Bill flagged the account to let him know when it was being used to connect and got back to documenting all that he knew at this point. It was getting a bit more complicated but still using email as a primary method of communicating. Since they had dedicated lab space for their project they may also work together a lot in person, which would alleviate the need to share a lot of detail in email. Bill was contemplating this when he got a pop up on his screen, letting him know that user
spfister had connected to the VPN server at Foundation.

  Bill used one of the generic administrator accounts from the chemical company to log on remotely to Pfister’s computer. He couldn’t use a remote desktop solution because that would log the chemist off the computer and he couldn’t use a screen sharing session because it would require permission to start the session. Bill could browse the file system, see which programs were open, and could also install additional programs on to the remote computer. Bill opened another window on his computer and connected to a different system on Foundation’s network and downloaded some spyware, which he renamed to “PatchMon”, to make it look like a legitimate program. He copied the installation file to the chemist’s PC, hoping he would stay online long enough to get it installed and copy some files. He installed the spyware but didn’t start the program, going first to the antivirus program on Pfister’s computer and creating an exception patchmon.exe, so no alarms would be raised.

  Luckily this hadn’t taken long and the chemist was still connected to Foundation’s network. Bill set up the spyware to capture keystrokes as well as images of the screen every couple minutes when the chemist was using a web browser. This would help him but he needed to be careful not to transmit too much data or the computer’s network performance might suffer to the point where the chemist became suspicious. He decided to send the text and keep the screen images local to the computer so he could review them when connected. The chemist must have been using a web browser because the screen captures were showing up in the directory as Bill watched the remote computer in use. He opened the first few and found that Pfister was logged on to a Vietnam veteran’s forum, a discussion board that covered a lot of different topics. Bill didn’t know such things existed but based on the number of active users (forty three according to the note on one of the screen captures), it was a busy forum.

  The chemist was in a POW forum, talking about what it was like to try and survive against the odds and torture of the VC. Bill took a note about this fact and added it to the document he was building about Pfister. There were many more shots from the forum, mostly boring. Bill decided to leave the computer and check in on it later, the spyware would notify him when Pfister was on the web, even if he wasn’t connected to Foundation’s network. Bill found another directory on the computer in the documents folder called ‘current project work’ and opened it. There were around thirty files and Bill didn’t know which were good so he downloaded all of them. He disconnected from the remote computer and all of Foundation’s systems, something in the back of his mind telling him that someone might be watching, though he knew from the past few weeks that was highly unlikely.

  The documents he downloaded included some good presentations about the polymer work Steve was doing around bioresorbable polymers. These materials degraded at a specific rate that was predictable and if inert materials were used the body would process them normally. The assertion was that this method could be used to create spheres that would release medicine in a patient over a predetermined interval. There were several United States patent applications in the directory but the wording used in these documents might as well have been Greek to Bill. He stuck to the presentations the chemist had put together to describe the idea to co-workers and management. The size of the spheres was amazingly small, seems that most medicines are diluted in saline or another inert solution. The invention promised to help millions of people who didn’t follow up on their children’s immunizations, getting the first set of shots but then missing others, which created a lot of cost to the medical industry.

  It was all very interesting, even if the actual chemistry was above his head. The chemist showed detailed results where he’d used different colored dyes and was able to predict to within an hour the release of the next color over the course of a few weeks. This was good work and the story was compelling. If Bill had money he would invest in the chemical company, thinking that this type of invention could make them a lot of money over the next few years. There hadn’t been any updates to the documents in the project directory over the past few weeks, which led Bill to believe that whatever he was doing with the CIA was consuming his time and may not be stored on this computer. He would have to go back and run a search to see what new documents had been created in the past few weeks, maybe the chemist was keeping the CIA project information separate from the chemical company work.

  Bill extracted some of the key information from the presentations and reports and added it to his expanding notes about the chemist. He was torn, needing to continue this work but finding that it was likely some eccentric application of the polymer work Pfister has been doing and not much more than that. The chemist’s computer would be giving Bill information over the next few days, no reason to sit and create conspiracy theories. Besides it was lunchtime. Bill heated up his tuna casserole and then joined Kathy and Margie for lunch, thinking he’d been ignoring them too much this week.

  “Jack, where have you been?”

  “I’ve been here Mom, just had a lot on my mind this week.”

  “That’s pretty obvious. I’ve been by your desk two dozen times and you never notice, even without headphones on. Can’t remember you being this way for more than an hour at a time, usually you’re all nerves when working on a tight deadline.”

  “Sorry about not noticing you, taking the time while Don’s away to do some research and try and help a friend of mine inside to get some information about his case.”

  “Let us know if you need any help, we’re kind of bored this week too.”

  “Thanks Margie, I appreciate it and will let you know if I need anything. I’m going to take a break from it this afternoon, is there anything you guys need from me?”

  “Yes there is, son. We’re going to spend the afternoon in the conference room, playing card games and telling stories. Everyone is a bit lost this week and it will be a good way to blow off some steam. I’ll be back, going to spread the word.” Kathy took off like a woman possessed. Bill and Margie had to laugh.

  “She’s something else Margie, don’t know what I’d do without her.”

  “That makes two of us, she’s been taking such great care of Joshua that he’ll probably end up calling her grandma.”

  “How’s he doing? Is he crawling yet?”

  “Good guess, he’s been starting to scoot around, funny how fast they change.” Kathy was back, waving them to the conference room. The rest of the afternoon was spent laughing and joking around, a great diversion for all.

  Bill came in the next morning and saw that there were new files on his computer. Pfister wasn’t online but had been the night before. The keylogger file was big, meaning the chemist had typed a lot of things. Bill started from the top and found his email account password and logged on as to the mail provider as the chemist. There were a number of messages from Claire Pfister, apparently his wife. She was excited about an upcoming vacation they were going to take to Canada and was just about done with the school year, must be a teacher. No talk of children but Pfister was probably pushing sixty years old so they might all be grown and moved on. There were a few messages from someone called ‘Quiet Storm’ that Bill opened next, which is where his world went completely sideways.

  He opened the messages from the earliest, which had been sent yesterday morning. Robert was telling the chemist that they were now bound together and their mission couldn’t fail. He also reminded Steve that his commitment was not retractable. Bill thought this was a bit ominous and wondered if there was some kind of CIA plot against someone that the chemist had got himself in the middle of. The next message was a reminder to Steve that he needed to provide a list of equipment and resources required to start production of the “vaccine”, odd to Bill that the word would be in quotes. Pfister had replied to this message with a long list of chemical equipment and a request for a few assistants who were at least smart enough to be trained in the basics of lab technician work if there wasn’t anyone on the team who had direct e
xperience working in a chemical lab. He also reminded Robert that they were going to do the injection testing and they’d need a doctor or a nurse to administer the inoculations for their trials. Bill was starting to wonder why they were testing on themselves already, according to the project documents from Foundation the method was going to just begin trials in the lab and it was projected to be at least a year before they were cleared to test on humans.

  The next message thanked Steve for the information and said he’d follow up on it immediately. He also wished the chemist a safe drive back to Cleveland and said he’d see him at the project facility the day after tomorrow. The last message had been sent and not even opened by Pfister yet. Bill clicked on the message, needing to remember to mark the message unread when he was done. He made a little note to that effect, didn’t want to forget and compromise his investigation. This message simply had a web site address that was all numbers, meaning that it had not been registered in the domain name service, which is a large integrated directory that helped translate IP addresses into friendly names that users could remember, such as www.google.com. Bill wrote down the logon information to the site, marked the message unread and then typed the IP address into his browser. The site that came up was unremarkable, simply prompting for a username and password combination. Bill entered Steve’s information and pressed the ‘continue’ button on the screen.

  The site was eerily decorated in red with black skull and crossbones pictures in a random pattern, appearing to be floating in blood. The text was white and outlined “The Cause”, which was led off by a paragraph detailing how the United States government had been tried and convicted of treason against its citizens and armed forces over the past forty years. It read like any anti-government website but then the content shifted to a much more ominous tone, outlining a plot to overthrow the government by spreading smallpox around the world. Bill thought of the current economic conditions in the country and knew that something like a smallpox outbreak would cause the country to panic and potentially collapse.

  The plan was outlined and it sickened Bill to read it, thinking of this new strain of smallpox and the millions of people that would die around the world. Bill was stunned as he read the hate spewing from the site and thought about the implications. He tried to determine where the site was but the route to the server was obfuscated by a number of network points that wouldn’t divulge information. It was most likely hiding somewhere outside of the United States, anonymized from the world. Even though Bill couldn’t determine where the site was, he had more information than he wanted about this diabolical plan. His hands were shaking as he tried to capture the information in his document. There is also specific information for all of the members of “The Cause” to stop using email for communication and to use the discussion board on the website for all communication. Bill didn’t want to click on the board for a couple of reasons. If he showed up as logged in, they might shut the site down. The chemist was driving from D.C. to Cleveland and wouldn’t be stopping to check out the web site. The conspirators, or more accurately terrorists, thought that using a single repository for communication would prevent data from traversing the web, the way email does. What they didn’t seem to understand was the data to show the forums would be transmitted the same way a mail message would and since Bill had compromised the security of one of the PCs involved, he’d have access to almost everything they were doing, as long as he was careful not to get caught by the terrorists.

  This has all hit Bill like a ton of bricks, the seriousness of the situation setting in. No longer a game, this is a matter of life and death and Robert Swanson was right when he approached the chemical company. It is a matter of national security, just not in the way it was communicated by the CIA agent. Bill has to act, they are getting ready to start testing and production of the virus strain that will kill a significant portion of the world’s population. It’s no longer about giving up his privileges or having additional sentence time tacked on, he needs to act. There is a chance that he’ll be able to act anonymously but he’s not sure who to approach, it just can’t be anyone in the CIA. He thinks about the chemical company again but even if they lose the chemist at this point they might be able to mobilize somewhere else and launch the plan. There is no way in hell most people would believe him, he doesn’t even know if he’d believe himself in this situation.

  Bill decides to turn to the web to see if he can find someone to approach. This isn’t going to be easy but it has to be done. The department of Homeland Security was a separate entity from the CIA and had even been at odds with them from time to time.

  Searching for stories, he found one that looked promising. There were some stories from earlier in the month where a huge fraud ring had been broken up by Homeland Security. The thieves were praying on people whose homes were in foreclosure and had bilked millions of dollars from innocent victims just trying to hang on to their houses. The lead agent was shown in one of the articles, Darren Ward. Bill decided that he would try to reach out to Agent Ward and see if he’d do something to help stop this evil plan.