Night Talk

by George Noory

  “How do you know the government found out about the file?”

  “That’s easy. Even if you succeed in hacking into a super-secure site, you have to get in and out fast because the entry will send off alarm bells. It may take a while for them to find out who made the entry, but they would have quickly found out the site had been accessed.”

  She wasn’t telling the truth. Not all the truth, he was sure of that. He believed what she said about Ethan, but not that she was the innocent bystander she claimed to be. She struck him as too sharp, too perceptive to fall from grace so easily. But so was he and they were both on the run.

  It was also a sure thing that she didn’t completely believe or trust him, either. The money transfer and Ethan’s accusation over the phone were pretty strong evidence to others that he was more involved than he’d let on.

  “Why did Ethan implicate me in this thing?” he asked.

  She faced Greg. “I assume because you and he made a deal to get out to the world revelations about the NRO treading on our civil liberties.”

  “He told you that?”

  “No, but in a way your friend Mond did.” She shrugged. “The NRO, NSA, even the CIA have hackers working out their sins by using their talents for the government. When Ethan suddenly dropped from sight a couple of days ago and rumors started swirling that he had gotten into something big, I got a hacker to show me how to access the NRO’s internal security site. Strange as it sounds, it’s one of the least protected areas on the agency’s computer system because it’s administrative, not a working project. But everything concerning internal security goes through there, including Mond’s reports to his boss. That’s how I knew they were on to you, that your apartment was going to be searched.”

  “You give me tight jaws every time you connect me with Ethan and stealing secrets. If you can’t believe I wasn’t involved in anything with Ethan we might as well part company right now. The first time I heard about the God Project or that he worked at the NRO is from you.”

  “You got no information from Ethan?”

  “I got nothing from Ethan except the quagmire I’m drowning in.”

  “Why do they believe you did?”

  “Because twenty-five thousand dollars was transferred from my bank account to Ethan.”

  “All right. How do you explain that?”

  “I don’t know who did it but how it was done is easier to guess. It wouldn’t take much for a good hacker to transfer money between accounts. And whoever did that could have also accessed my broadcast archives and erased Ethan’s calls to my program. We had zero security except a password. And it wouldn’t be hard for someone who claims she’s not a hacker but seems to be able to crack even the internal security site at one of the world’s most secretive spy agencies.”

  She grinned. “Touché. But I didn’t do it.”

  He stopped and faced her. “You’re lying. You knew about the bank transfer; it would have been in Mond’s reports.”

  29

  Novak sat in the operation room at a control position that faced a wall-size electronic map of the greater Los Angeles region. The geographical area covered by the map was about fifty miles long by twenty-five miles wide. Hemmed by ocean, mountains and desert, the region was larger in physical area than Rhode Island and had a population of over fifteen million people.

  The purpose of the display was to give a bird’s-eye view of people, places and events. Calling the big screen the war board was Novak’s idea, an exaggeration but it worked well with her rigid military mind-set.

  From her position she could zoom in at any place on the display and convert from map to satellite not unlike Google Maps, but with many more options and much more precision. With the press of a button she could bring up live feeds from all around the world.

  Satellite imaging was important, particularly when it could be directed to a particular area by planning ahead. However, when tracking a subject on the move, cameras on the ground and overhead carried by planes and drones were usually more effective.

  The average American had little idea of how frequently they were filmed by a camera during the course of a day. A person living, working or going to school in a metro area was filmed an average of two hundred times a day as they left their homes and went by cameras at buildings and parking lots; out onto the street, past gas stations and convenience stores, ready tellers, strip malls and big malls; getting tracked by traffic control and traffic violation cameras and so on, ad infinitum. But they were lucky they don’t live in the UK—in London, the average person is viewed over three hundred times a day.

  Despite the vast array of filming being done by satellites soaring around the planet and the millions of cameras on the ground, not everything was being filmed everywhere all of the time. Most cameras on the ground were closed circuit TV. There was an increasing effort by the government to have the capacity to bring CCTVs online wherever they were. Any of those brought online could end up on the war board.

  Which ones to bring online was guesswork for Novak because she didn’t know the exact route the suspects were taking. The requests to bring the CCTVs online to view the screen took time to process because the cameras could belong to a variety of different government agencies or security businesses, from traffic cams to ATM machines.

  Once Novak had an idea of where to search, she had the ability to bring online CCTVs, drones, planes and satellites and display them on the war board, making it hard for even a mouse to avoid surveillance.

  If the purpose was to take the subject into custody, a press of a button showed the location of every federal, state and local law enforcement agency in range for a takedown, though in almost every case the Interagency used only its resources for dealing with the apprehension and interrogation of suspects.

  Mond had ordered a satellite surveillance of the street in front of Rohan’s apartment when they realized from Greg’s route and attempt to contact Rohan that he was on his way there. But the tracking of Greg Nowell had begun much earlier, as soon as Mond and his search team walked out of the broadcasting studio. Left behind in every room were miniature film and sound devices. The building’s elevators and hallways were also bugged with sound because the security cameras used by the building did not have audio.

  The same procedure was followed when Mond had Greg removed from his apartment. Cameras were placed so his movements were tracked in every room—even bathrooms, which were a favorite place for criminals and spies to hide evidence and run the water in the sink like they’d seen characters do in movies because they thought it would prevent them from being heard. Every toss and turn during the night was recorded.

  Following Greg to Marina Del Rey had not taken surveillance skills. With bumper-to-bumper traffic and frequent jams, the agency didn’t bother having Greg followed closely by agency vehicles. Instead a GPS tracking device had been placed on the undercarriage of Greg’s car. Several flybys by drones with cameras confirmed Greg had not discovered the tracking device and put it on another vehicle.

  “Bring up the satellite images of the street in front of the apartment,” Mond said. “Take it back to Nowell arriving.”

  “Do you want our personnel to monitor high-interest areas while we use the big screen in here?” The standard procedure was for a team of analysts to be checking high-interest areas for Nowell—airports, rail stations, bus depots and key freeway cams, along with his credit cards and ATM uses.

  “No. All monitoring is to be in here. And you are not to mention what goes on in this room to anyone, not even your supervisor. Is that clear?”

  It wasn’t clear to Novak, it sounded like a surprising waste of time and resources, but she merely said, “Yes, sir.”

  When the video appeared on the war board, Novak said, “That’s Greg Nowell’s car.”

  The Jaguar pulled into a parking space and Greg got out. Mond zoomed the image to get a closer look as Greg left the car and disappeared into the apartment building.

  “Are there
cameras inside and outside the building?” Mond asked.

  “There are, but the system was down at the time Nowell arrived and the man he was visiting, Rohan, was killed. Contact was made with the building manager and he said the circuit breaker had been thrown, possibly from an electrical surge.”

  The video froze as soon as Greg went into the building.

  “What’s happened?” Mond asked. “Why has it stopped?”

  Novak checked and looked up from her console. “That’s all there is of satellite images.”

  “What? That can’t be. I ordered a four-hour surveillance. That wasn’t forty seconds.”

  “There’s been an override on your order.”

  “Does it say who overrode the order?”

  “No, sir, but I can—”

  “Leave it. The satellite was probably needed for something more urgent.” He stared at the war board for a moment. “Back it up to where Nowell gets out of his car.”

  When the image of Greg appeared, Mond said, “Use emotion detecting on the subject.”

  Novak zoomed onto Greg. As she ran the video of him walking from his car to the apartment building, she began the program that analyzed a subject’s mood from his body language, looking for extremes. Emotion detecting was designed to detect nervousness, anger and other strong feelings of people going through high-security checkpoints, the theory being that someone about to blow up himself and others is not going to be calm despite the attempt to hide his emotions.

  Emotion detection was another example where use of a program to fight terrorism had been expanded to spying on the general public. Programs had been developed by merchandise marketers to reveal the likes and dislikes of people as they looked at merchandise, watched commercials or saw pictures or videos of politicians. Employers were using them to get an idea of how comfortable and honest applicants were during job interviews.

  The programs scanned facial expressions, the slightest smile or frown, a minute lifting of an eyebrow or tightening of the lips, changes in expression that might go unnoticed by a person but were easily picked up by the electronic scan.

  Mond wondered if the emotion scans would start being used by matchmaking sites to provide an electronic profile of the perfect mate. But emotion detecting wasn’t new. He had been told that Middle Eastern rug sellers could tell what carpet a person was interested in and gauge the desire by observing his eyes—the pupils widened a tiny bit when a buyer saw what he liked and would most likely buy.

  “Sir, it, uh, appears Nowell is tense, very tense, determined. Coiled and ready to release and maybe that’s what he did when he got upstairs and confronted that man Rohan.”

  “Does it show anger, rage?”

  “No emotions off the norm, except a great deal of tension.”

  “All right. Where’s Nowell’s car now?”

  “Still parked on the street,” Novak said. “Our people never saw him come out of the building. After Rohan’s body was found on the street below the balcony, as soon as they could without being seen, our people made a discreet entry into the man’s apartment. Nowell was gone. They took a look out back but he wasn’t in sight. When the police arrived, they avoided contact with them. And we don’t have satellite footage of the man’s fall. We would have it if the satellite imaging had not been cancelled. It’s rather unusual for our agency to have its satellite surveillance order cancelled. Are you sure you don’t want me to—”

  “We don’t question orders. Are there any images of the apartment building from drones?”

  Novak checked. “Just up to the point of Nowell parking. We didn’t think it was necessary—”

  “Obviously you were wrong. That’s the problem with having the finest equipment and programs on the planet. The people using them are not as capable as the equipment. You should have had the drones as a backup. Roll it back to the beginning when Nowell arrived and parked.”

  As Nowell parked, a white van parked up the street from where Greg parked and then a red convertible Mini Cooper passed by as Greg was walking to the apartment building.

  The small convertible was driven by a woman.

  Mond said, “The brake lights in that red car went on as it neared Nowell walking into the apartment building.”

  “What, uh, do you make of that, sir?”

  “A Freudian slip.”

  “Come again, sir?”

  “The car’s not really slowing down as it passes Nowell’s car and the front of the building, but the driver’s unconsciously revealing her interest by touching the brake pedal. The woman also looked over, interested in his movements. But she barely moved her head, obviously not wanting to expose her interest even though Nowell had his back to her. She probably was hiding her interest in case she was filmed by the building’s camera. Fast-forward so we can see if we still had satellite coverage when she came around again.”

  The car came around again. This time the brakes lights only went on in front of the building.

  “Check the car’s registration,” he said. “Back up the street there has to be an ATM, business or apartment building with a camera that showed the plates.”

  Novak ordered cameras in the area to be brought online and found one in a supermarket’s parking lot that picked up the Mini Cooper’s license plate well enough to read.

  She ran the license plate through the California Department of Motor Vehicles and it came back as belonging to an Alyssa Neal.

  Mond told her to bring up Neal’s driver’s license.

  “There’s just one thing wrong,” Mond said, looking at the driver’s license picture. “The woman driving the car is not Alyssa Neal.”

  30

  Alyssa looked at a loss for words and gave Greg a nervous laugh. “You’re right, I did. You caught me.”

  “So why are you pretending to be so innocent?”

  “I am innocent, at least when it comes to the God Project. Whatever Ethan got out of it, he never shared it with me. Maybe he was trying to protect me. He knew that cracking open a top-secret file would mean real jail time, the life sentence variety.”

  Greg kicked it around for a moment. “Maybe he intended to give it to me. What’s the good of hacking into secrets if you can’t send shockwaves around the world with what you find? Besides, he was very idealistic when it came to spying on our own people. Ethan might have thought of me as the way to get the dirt out, if that’s what he found. But that doesn’t explain why he made a bizarre accusation, saying I had killed him. Or how and why money from my bank account got transferred to him. That took a good hacker and he’s the only one I know—other than you.”

  “Rest assured that I know more about the theory of hacking than actually doing it. Like succeeding at most anything, the fine art of hacking is serious work done by people who make it their life. I know enough to call people who know how to crack a site and have them tell me how to do it.”

  “Including the God Project.”

  “No way, that’s out of the class of anyone I know except Ethan.”

  “Since you have access to Mond’s reports, let’s get into them and find out what’s going on.”

  “Can’t do it. When I entered, alarms went off in the system. I got in, downloaded his most recent report and got out before the system slammed the door. Now that vulnerability is closed permanently and I don’t know how to open another. Even if I called someone who could help, it would take a couple days to get back in and they will have set a trap, tracking intruders.”

  They continued walking as Greg digested what she told him. His gut told him to trust her—but not completely. He asked, “Are you sure Ethan actually hacked into a secret program as opposed to just bragging about it?”

  “I haven’t seen the actual files he got into, but I know he did it. He contacted me after he succeeded in cracking the program. He was high and pretty weird, rambling about how they really were trying to play God, something about remaking people in their image. He believed that some sort of entity, alien or some life force
different than the rest of us, was trying to dominate the world. Did he tell you that?”

  “He talked about it on the air briefly, but he was so wasted on whatever his drug of choice was that we had to cut him off.”

  “I know people talk about that sort of thing all the time on your show. Is that what you believe? That E.T. has landed and wants to take control?”

  “You make a joke out of it because you’ve been brainwashed to believe that UFO sightings all stem from people photographing Frisbees as a joke. But catch this, Ali Neal. From the earliest advent of people on this planet, there has been a general belief that we are controlled by extraterrestrials.”

  She did a double take. “Wow. I have a niece who would call that statement epic because it’s so astonishing. I know there’s some drawings scratched on cave walls that look like flying men or chariots, but I don’t recall reading in any history books they gave me at school that most people have always believed we’re controlled by aliens.”

  “Sure you have, you just never made the connection. It’s in a very old book your parents and my parents had at home and that we learned from every Sunday. It’s called the Bible. God and angels are classic extraterrestrials. They live in outer space, are invisible, have super powers and pretty much control our lives. They can strike us dead for disobeying them. And that’s been the case since prehistoric people scratched their beliefs on cave walls.

  “In ancient times it was the gods of Olympus or the Nile manipulating mankind, and then the Eastern and Western religions came along and now are almost universal. But gods East and West either start out or end up as extraterrestrials. When you call people paranoid because they believe extraterrestrials or some terrestrial entity is out to control their lives, they are simply reflecting what humans have always thought.”

  “So they believe aliens in flying saucers are controlling us rather than the God of the Bible.”

  “I didn’t say that. There is no contradiction between a biblical entity and aliens crash landing at Roswell or hovering over a lonely highway in the desert. We are an infinitesimal part of a vast universe that we are constantly probing deeper into and learning more about. We know that there are planets that can support intelligent life, so many of them that it’s inevitable that someday intelligent life will be found—or will find us. There is no reason God isn’t the deity of extraterrestrials as He is with the life on Earth.