“Me! Romantic! I’m the least romantic person I know.”
“You’re teasing me, right?”
“No. I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“How much time did you spend thinking about Josette?”
“None. None whatsoever!”
“Ahem. Dad?”
“In that case I consider that a highly inappropriate question for a daughter to pose to her father.”
“Okay. How about Simone?”
“Well, some, of course. We were seeing each other, after all.”
“You were more than seeing each other. I saw how you held her chair for her and took her coat.”
“I do the same for you—that’s just being a gentleman.”
“The expression on your face wasn’t the same as when you hold a chair for me.”
“Young lady, this conversation is ov—OOOF!”
She laughed as he jumped backward from the poke she’d just taken at his stomach. “Okay. Have it your way. Let’s just say the two of you looked awfully cute together.”
She ducked through the door before he could retaliate, leaving him frowning. Romantic? Romantic was proclaiming undying love and leaving a single rose on someone’s pillow.
Wasn’t it?
Still frowning, and with lips pursed too, he opened his computer and typed “define: romantic” in the search bar. The second definition read: of, characterized by, or suggestive of an idealized view of reality; “a romantic attitude toward the past”
“OOOF!” he said again, this time to himself.
* * *
4
Frank Gets a Boy Friday
“So what can I tell you that isn’t in the report?” Koontz tapped his mechanical pencil on the table.
“It’s not really extra information I need. It’s a little help following how you came to some of the preliminary conclusions. Mostly, I want to understand why you believe Foobar’s planning a cyberattack instead of something else.”
Koontz pushed back from the table. “First off, we don’t. But we do believe it’s more likely than any of the other possibilities.”
“Okay. So why is that?”
“Look, just so you’re clear on this, until we can confidently eliminate a possibility, we’ve got to work up a defense against it, just in case. So let’s say we are overweighting this one. So what?”
“Well, maybe we’ll miss something that would lead you to the real attack.”
“No way. Like I said the first time we met, yours isn’t the only Tiger Team. There are as many teams as there are identifiable attack vectors. One’s been instructed to assume Foobar is planning a biological or chemical terror attack. Another assumes he’s planning to launch hundreds of physical attacks against civilian targets spread out all over Europe and the U.S. The next team is covering nuclear threats, like an attack on a power plant, or using radioactive material to stage a ‘dirty bomb’ attack, or even somehow getting hold of a working atomic bomb. Unless and until we have conclusive proof identifying what the attack, or attacks, will be, we have to assume that anything is possible.”
“Okay, I get that. But I still want to understand the evidence-based starting point for the threat I’m working on. What makes you think this guy’s followers have any sophistication in waging cyber war at all? The report you gave me has references to specific data supporting all kinds of conclusions—it’s a really impressively documented analysis. It took me a while to notice that I couldn’t find even one reference to data indicating that Foobar’s people had the skills to pull off any kind of cyberattack, much less a catastrophic one.”
Koontz tapped his pen on the table harder now. “I’m finding that hard to believe. But let’s say you’re right. Foobar apparently believes he can take down America—and Europe besides. Assuming he’s not delusional, how is he going to manage that? He’s only been able to recruit about eighteen thousand soldiers, not millions. We’re pretty sure that no one, not even North Korea—so far, anyway—has sold him any sophisticated weapons. So when it comes to traditional weaponry, all he’s got to work with is what his followers have captured in the field. That includes a few planes they don’t know how to fly and no ships at all. So he can hardly expect to successfully invade Europe, much less the U.S. You with me?”
“No argument so far.’”
“Good. So what does that leave? Foobar’s only got four possible options to pull off something on a grand scale—biological and chemical, nuclear, physical, and cyber. All of them seem unlikely but for different reasons.”
“How so?”
“Nobody’s going to sell chemical weapon precursor materials to Foobar, and biologic doesn’t sound right, either, because we don’t think his people have the ability to make their own materials and agents.”
“You’re changing the rules now,” Frank objected. “You haven’t pointed out any evidence that they have cyber skills, either.”
“Hold on a minute—most of the best hackers have been self-taught, right?”
“Okay, I’ll grant you that.”
“Right. Now how about this: ever heard of a do-it-yourself anthrax expert? No? I thought not. We track every single person who’s capable of creating bioweapons, and not one of them has gone missing. If Foobar’s ragtag band of fanatics can’t make their own biologics, where are they going to get them? We’ve already destroyed almost all of Syria’s chemical and bioweapons, and it turned out there weren’t any Iraqi chemical or bioterror weapons left when Saddam fell.
“Same goes for nukes. All of the tactical and strategic nukes from the former Soviet states have either been repatriated to Russia or removed and destroyed by us. And we don’t think the Pakistanis, Indians, Chinese, or North Koreans are going to share any of theirs. So that leaves just a cyberattack or a coordinated series of bombings. Of the two, he can do a lot more damage with a cyberattack than a physical attack, if he chooses the target wisely. What doesn’t make sense about that?”
“Don’t get me wrong, I agree with that part of your analysis. I’ve never understood why rogue states and terrorists haven’t hit us harder with cyberattacks in the past.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“What I said before—there’s nothing in the report at all, as far as I can see, that says that Foobar is recruiting true believers with the right skills, or hiring a bunch of Black Hats from Eastern Europe to write malware for him, or trying to train any of the people he’s already got. Before 9/11, bin Laden sent teams of foot soldiers over here to learn how to pilot civilian airliners. But nothing in the report indicates Foobar’s mounting an equivalent cyberattack preparation effort here.”
Koontz shifted in his chair. “I think that’s a bit of an overstatement. He’s been doing everything he can using social media to recruit young people from all over the world to become jihadists. It’s fair to assume that a lot of them would have computer training. And you wouldn’t expect him to tip his hand by advertising for experts to launch his biggest attack, would you?”
“Granted. But your average twenty-something isn’t a cybersecurity specialist. If he’s going to try and learn, he’s going to have to be all over the dark Internet learning the ropes, and the Agency should be able to detect that. Has it?”
“I have no idea.”
“Well, there’s all kinds of Agency data cited in the report relating to the other threats. If there’s nothing on cyber-training, doesn’t that suggest they couldn’t find anything?”
“Now you’re the one making assumptions.”
“No, I’m just asking questions. How many expert hackers has he recruited?”
“I have no way of knowing. But if he doesn’t have folks that can take us down, we’ve got nothing to worry about in that threat space. And that would be good news.”
&nb
sp; “Really? Isn’t there another possibility?”
“What’s that?”
“Traditional attacks using explosives. al-Qaeda’s been bombing civilian targets all over the world for more than a decade, and a lot of their best people are working for Foobar now. They’ve got plenty of experience with traditional explosives.”
Koontz leaned forward and smiled. “Come on, Frank. You must know better than that. Look at the attacks al-Qaeda, ISIS, and Foobar have pulled off so far. They’ve been terrible as far as loss of life is concerned, but with the exception of the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, the physical damage in the U.S. has been less than trivial. Why do you suppose that would be?”
“There could be lots of reasons,” Frank said. “The most obvious one is that all the U.S. attacks so far have been committed by ‘lone wolves,’ and it’s easier for them to buy guns and then just go blast away.”
“Maybe,” Koontz responded. “Or it could be that they don’t have access to enough explosives to pull off something dramatic. And it would take a hell of a lot more than a truck bomb—or even a dozen truck bombs—to seriously interrupt the Internet in even one country, let alone the U.S. plus all of Europe.”
“Well, why not more truck bombs then? Why not a hundred? Or a thousand?”
“Because you have to load them with something that explodes! The Middle East is awash in Iraqi and Syrian munitions captured by terrorists, so they can blow things up over there any time they want to. But that material is there, and we’re here. A thousand truck bombs would take two thousand tons of explosives. Where is Foobar going to get that kind of ordnance from? He can’t order the stuff from Amazon like disposable diapers.”
“How about fertilizer, then? That’s what Timothy McVeigh used to destroy the Federal Building in Oklahoma City.”
“Right. And that’s why not just anybody can buy it anymore. Weaponizable fertilizer is strictly controlled now. It’s inconceivable to me that anyone could stockpile the amount of material you’re talking about. Pulling off a single act of terror that kills and maims a lot of people is one thing. You can do that with a bomb made out of a pressure cooker and a few pounds of the kind of gunpowder people buy to reload their own shotgun shells. The Tsarnaev brothers proved that at the Boston Marathon. But the most damage you could do with a bomb like that would be to take out a single power transformer. Whatever you took down wouldn’t amount to much and would be back up in hours, if not minutes.”
Frank frowned, annoyed with himself for letting Koontz think he’d won the point. And in fact it was hard to argue with Koontz’s answers. But he still wasn’t satisfied.
“Okay, so I get everything you’re saying. But I guess we can agree that if Foobar is planning on launching a cyberattack, he’s going to have to be pretty damn smart about how he does it, and so far, it doesn’t look like he’s got a lot of talent to work with. So that makes me want to know more about where our points of greatest weakness are. I didn’t see anything about that in the report, either.”
“That’s because it’s already well documented elsewhere as part of the federal Critical Infrastructure Program.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s been around for decades, so there was no need to clog up the report with that information. Basically, it’s a working list of whatever is critical to maintain defense, commerce, and society—highways, the power grid, et cetera—and the requirements for how you have to protect it. We can give you as much background as you want on that.
“As a matter of fact”—he turned toward Slattery—“Tim is just coming off his ethics officer placement now. New management hires rotate through a series of positions for two years before they settle in to a long-term role. Special projects is one rotation, and I could second him to you for a while to feed you anything you want, within reason. How about that?” Koontz looked at his watch without taking the trouble to be tactful about it.
Until now, Frank had pretty much lumped Slattery into the same category as the conference room furniture. Now he examined the young man more closely. He noted that Tim was likely a bit taller than he was, dark-haired, with a thin, angular face made more serious looking by black-rimmed glasses.
Slattery’s face wasn’t giving a lot away, and Frank wasn’t exactly in the market for a sidekick. Still, the idea of having a full-time research assistant who could plumb the depths of the CIA’s databases was tempting.
“That would be great.”
“I can also give you access to one of our big data engineers. If there are specific data sets you want to analyze, he or she can do that for you. Is there anything else you want to talk about today?”
“No, that should do it.”
Koontz stood up. “Good. In that case, let Tim know what you want, and I’ll get back to business.”
Clearly, Koontz was fobbing Frank off to a glorified intern to facilitate his escape. Well, the heck with him. If Koontz couldn’t see the flaws in his own team’s work, Frank would be happy to expose them for him.
Slattery piped up as Koontz left the room. “Can you be a bit more specific about what you’d like me to research for you, Mr. Adversego? I’d be happy to get whatever you’d like.”
“Call me Frank. What I want to understand is what cyber critical infrastructure targets should be at the top of Foobar’s list. Obviously, if he could crash a big part of the power grid, everything relying on it would come to an immediate halt, so that’s clearly a potential target. Taking down the entire air traffic control system wouldn’t be as bad, but it would drastically cut down the number of planes that could be in the air at any one time.”
Frank leaned back and looked toward the ceiling. “So one factor would be what we depend on most. After that, I’d say which systems would be easiest to take down. And then I guess there’s the recovery time—which systems would take the longest for us to get up and running again. Combine those three factors, and that should tell us what threats to look for hardest in the available data. Maybe there are some other considerations to take into account as well—you should spend some time thinking about that, too—and don’t limit yourself to what you find in government documents. Some of them are probably out of date.”
Slattery nodded with obvious enthusiasm; he seemed almost painfully eager to please. “Got it. I’ll start by sending you the critical infrastructure materials Mr. Koontz mentioned right away. I’ll also review them and make a list of what infrastructure looks the weakest to me, and then we can compare notes.”
“Sounds good.”
But Slattery wasn’t done yet. “After that, I’ll get the big data engineer Mr. Koontz assigns to us to take a deep dive into our databases and see if there’s any evidence that someone’s been probing or surveilling the systems you decide are most at risk.”
Frank paused before answering. He was pleased Slattery was showing initiative and annoyed that now he would have to share his own thinking with someone on an ongoing basis. “Okay, sounds reasonable. Have you worked in this area before?”
“Well, not exactly. I’ve got an MBA and a BA in philosophy, focusing on ethics. But I’m fluent in Arabic.”
“That doesn’t sound like the usual background for a career in the CIA.”
“No, probably not. But after the congressional report on Abu Ghraib, the Hill has been keeping the Agency on a lot shorter leash. Every department has to have an ethics officer now, with assistants, who reports directly to an oversight committee outside Langley. That way there’s always someone around who can speak up immediately if someone suggests something that’s over the line and squash it before it goes any further. That’s the long-term role here that appeals to me.”
Great, Frank thought. In other words, he didn’t have any useful experience at all and had probably been kept on the sidelines and in the dark as much as possible ever since he
arrived. But the ability to read Arabic could come in handy. He stood up. “Well, I hope they give assistant ethics officers their own food tasters in the Langley cafeteria. That way they’ll feel safer and won’t have to eat alone all the time. Anyway, you can email me any time if you have any questions.”
* * *
Frank woke up thinking about what he had fallen asleep obsessing over the night before. He continued to do so, just as he had every morning lately, no matter how hard he tried not to, while robotically brushing his teeth and suiting up for his morning run. To his surprise and dismay, all of his feelings from long ago had come flooding back as soon as he’d unfolded Clare’s farewell letter, as if he were Rip Van Winkle, waking up to discover that all the people who were still alive to him were now dead.
He also found himself dwelling on all the companionship he’d missed over the long, solitary years. True, he’d had other relationships since he and Clare had separated. He hadn’t handled most of those well toward the end, either. But in every case, he’d eventually gotten past the emotional bruises. With Clare, it had been different. There had always been this churning cauldron of issues and feelings he had never been able to resolve. That and the conviction there was something unique and wonderful about her and the bond between them he’d never experienced with anyone else again. What particularly haunted him now was a question for which he had no answer: what had driven him to so adamantly refuse to have any contact with her ever again?
He got up and opened the hall closet door. He still hadn’t sorted through one box, one he’d opened and then set aside after he realized what it contained. Now he picked it up, set it on his kitchen table, and began to empty it. Finally, he found what he both hoped and feared it would hold. There it was, next to his first scientific calculator and a selection of T-shirts from fraternity rush week: a thick, sealed, ten-by-thirteen-inch manila envelope.
He stared at the envelope for a long time before pouring himself a cup of coffee and walking into his disordered living room. He stood by the window, ruminating over the past and watching neighbors he did not know, entering and leaving his building. Then he set his unfinished coffee aside and put on his jacket. It was undeniably time for a long run.
The Doodlebug War: a Tale of Fanatics and Romantics (Frank Adversego Thrillers Book 3) Page 4