by Jack Bowie
To Walker’s right, a tourist longboat floated at its dock further up the river, and the Chain Bridge glowed in the darkness. The bridge was a majestic symbol of Budapest, representing the unity of the city and the joining of East and West. It was the first permanent bridge across the Danube in Hungary, opening in 1849 and extensively rebuilt after World War II. At the time of its construction, it was one of the longest suspension bridges in the world. It shone with the simple elegance of the Brooklyn Bridge in New York or the Golden Gate in California.
The most dramatic scene, however, was across the river where the Buda Royal Palace rose like a floating city over the opposite shore. The massive Baroque structure was built on Castle Hill in the twelve-hundreds to serve as the home of the Hungarian kings. Standing at one end of the Chain Bridge, the entire complex was ablaze in golden light, a monument to the political and cultural history of the city.
Walker had read that while much of the original interior had been gutted during the Communist government in the mid-twentieth century, the new century had seen a resurgence in restoration. It now housed the Budapest History Museum and Hungarian National Gallery, both items on Walker’s to-do list for later in the week.
She remained on the terrace, savoring the spectacular vista and slowly sipping her wine. The aroma reminded her of the dinner with Braxton. It had been nice. But why had she blathered on about her history? She never did anything like that. She must have had too much to drink.
Fifteen minutes later, the wine was gone and she had only had to discourage two lonely conference mates. At least she hadn’t had to break any of their arms.
She went back inside and headed to her room. Just one more task before a much-needed night’s rest.
* * *
Braxton walked out of the Tysons Tower Plaza level doors and onto the elevated plaza extension. The air was dry and the sky clear with a blazing yellow sun, a welcome change from the previous days’ rain and clouds. It almost improved his mood.
Just ahead, he saw Lambkin pacing circles on the sidewalk. He was dressed in a leather jacket and heavy cargo pants, which seemed odd for the weather until Braxton realized the explanation.
“Trevor,” he called as he approached. Lambkin turned and they shook hands.
“Good to see you again, Lieutenant,” Lambkin replied.
“You rode?”
“How could I not on a day like this? It’s perfect.”
“Which one?”
“The BMW of course.”
Lambkin was a motorcycle fanatic. He had a storage unit filled with motorcycles. Classic Harleys and even a mid-twentieth century Indian. But his favorite was a 1972 R75 BMW. Not his most valuable ride, or the most sophisticated, but with its double horizontally-opposed cylinders sticking out between his legs, it drew attention wherever he went.
“Where should we go for that drink?” Braxton asked.
“Well, ah, I’m not that thirsty. Let’s walk.”
Something was wrong. Lambkin never turned down an opportunity for a drink. He turned and walked off across the pedestrian overpass to the plaza in front of the Hyatt Regency.
“I have something I need to ask you,” Lambkin said after they had escaped the crowd at the Tower.
“Okay. But what’s wrong Trevor?”
“Do you know the name of the site?”
“What site? The dark web site? Have you found it?” Braxton’s pulse started to pound.
“So you’re not working with the CIA?”
Braxton stopped dead and grabbed Lambkin’s jacket pulling his friend toward him. “What about the CIA? What have they got to do with this?”
Lambkin’s face turned ashen. “Please let’s keep walking. I don’t want to draw attention.”
Braxton released his death grip on Lambkin’s jacket. They continued into the open plaza. It was a sprawling open area, covered in gray pavers highlighted with circles of red; a peaceful oasis huddled in the commercial bustle of Tysons.
“I got a call from the CIA a couple of days ago asking about a dark web auction site.”
“Who? Who asked?” Braxton knew he sounded like a maniac, but he didn’t care. “Was it someone named Slattery?”
“I don’t know that name. I only deal with the guys in Science and Technology. The name of the site is Principia Militia.”
Braxton had attended Saint Ignatius High School in Ohio, and the Sisters had tried their best to teach him Latin. “Principia Militia” would translate to “principles of warfare”. The name sounded a little like Principia Mathematica by …
It’s Singer. He’s behind it all!
“Tell me about it.” Braxton was almost yelling. “Is it an auction site? What does it say?”
“Adam, you’ve got to calm down.” Lambkin’s eyes scanned the area. “Please. I could lose my clearance telling you this.”
Braxton could barely breathe. He stopped for a moment and leaned against the back of a bench. When his breath returned, he continued with Lambkin.
“Do you know why the CIA is looking at the site?” Braxton knew what he was asking. But he had to know.
“Just that they think it’s some kind of auction site for military secrets—a combination of WikiLeaks and eBay. And to answer your original question, no, we don’t know what is actually on the site. We haven’t been able to log in or locate it physically.”
“Have they mentioned Scheherazade?”
“No. And I haven’t told them. I’m sorry, Adam but I can’t be in the middle of this. Business has to trump our friendship. I can’t sandbag the CIA. It’s my career. And the future of my company. I can’t tell you anything more.”
Braxton felt he was so close. And Singer was behind it all. But if the CIA knew about the site, did they know the leaks were coming from Jason? He doubted Lambkin would know. And he didn’t dare ask him.
“Adam?”
“Sorry, Trevor. It’s just a lot to take in. And I do appreciate your telling me. I guess I need to take this on myself.”
“Maybe not completely. I know someone in Germany. His name is Dieter Hoch, but his handle is Gandalf. Along with Scheherazade, they’re celebrities in the Western Europe hacker community. I’ve worked with him on some investigations. He’s a Gray Hat: he’s done work for Interpol, but also has, ah, other activities. But I trust him.”
Lambkin reached into his pocket and handed a folded slip of paper to Braxton.
“This will tell you how to reach him. Remind him he owes me for cracking the ISIS site in Amsterdam. The paper also has the URL for the dark web site. You won’t be able to do anything with it now, but maybe Dieter can help.”
Braxton held back the urge to open the paper and instead pushed it into his pocket.
“Thank you, Trevor. Truly. I know how hard this must be for you.”
Lambkin forced a smile. “No worries, Lieutenant. Good luck. And please give Karen my best.
“Now if you don’t mind, I think I’d like to walk back on my own.” He strode off down the plaza, leaving his friend standing alone.
Braxton turned and walked slowly back to the Tower. He had a lot to think about.
Chapter 22
Budapest Marriott, Budapest, Hungary
Friday, 7:00 a.m.
Walker had gotten a reasonable night’s sleep. She had awoken at two a.m., restless and fuzzy-headed, but she had managed to get back to sleep. When she awoke again at seven o’clock, she was refreshed and ready for the day.
As she swung out of bed, she had finally noticed the view out her window. Her room was just a single, but still offered a fantastic vista across the Danube to the Royal Palace. The scene was beautiful. She needed to return to this city.
Her first stop was to her laptop. Before she had gone to bed the night before, she had gotten Donnelly’s room number from the front desk—they were only too willing to accommodate the attractive conference attendee who had left her purse in the room—and had stuck a miniature wireless camera to the molding outside of his door.
The camera had been another of the special items she had retrieved from her apartment before she left D.C.
She pulled up the video. Donnelly had entered his room a little after ten o’clock, only a bit tipsy from the reception and likely dinner. His door had remained closed until he exited, seemingly refreshed, at seven-thirty this morning. So there had been no clandestine overnight liaisons. It had been a hail-Mary, but she felt better having done it.
Then she went downstairs to the hotel’s gym and worked out for thirty minutes, showered, dressed and had a light breakfast in her room.
Time to go to work.
Walker spent the rest of the morning sticking her head into sessions, looking for Donnelly. The search had been unsuccessful, but she had managed to confirm her complete lack of understanding of the fine points of cryptographic technology. How anyone was able to sit through three days of these mind-numbing presentations was beyond her.
Her stomach had started growling a few minutes before noon. She joined the crowds exiting the last morning session and made her way to the DNB Budapest upstairs. The restaurant was busy, but she finally spotted Donnelly in an isolated corner booth studying the menu. A surprisingly spook-like location. He continued to be a puzzle.
“Ian,” she called as she approached. “Good afternoon.”
He looked up and smiled broadly. “Sydney. Good afternoon to you as well. I hope you slept well.”
“Fine, actually. I think the wine at the reception helped.” She took a seat opposite Donnelly and opened her menu.
“Did you take in any sessions this morning?”
She did her best to keep a pleasant face. “Ah, I did sit in on a few. They were very … interesting.”
Donnelly’s smile took a wry twist. “I’m sure.” He picked up his menu. “What looks good to you?”
* * *
It had been a friendly, and innocuous, lunch. The only uncomfortable moment was when Donnelly had launched into a lecture on the new cryptographic capabilities in Walker’s cell phone.
That’s what I get for checking my email.
“This was nice, Ian,” Walker said after the waitress had cleared their table. “You said there was something you wanted to ask me?”
For the first time since she had met him, Donnelly looked uncomfortable. “Well, yes. Would it be presumptuous to ask if you’d have dinner with me?”
That’s a question I hadn’t been expecting.
She thought hard about the invitation. She would generally hesitate to have dinner with a colleague, but Donnelly was, in more ways than one, her job. And all the time she spent with him was time she didn’t have to be sneaking around trying to figure out what he was up to. Finally, to be honest, he was a smart, attractive man.
“I would like that. Do you have time?”
“Well, I do have a conference dinner tonight with some colleagues, but tomorrow night is open. I know a very nice restaurant just down the street. And I’d really like to get out of this hotel and away from the other attendees. Mostly, they just want to sell me their research ideas. What do you say?”
“Okay, then. Thank you. Your paper is also tomorrow?”
“Yes. The ten o’clock session on innovative cryptographic techniques.”
“Am I going to understand anything?”
Donnelly grinned. “Of course. I’m a great teacher. And the whole session should be good background. Oh, and this afternoon, you should check out the ‘Foundations of Cryptography’ session. They hold it every year. It’s very popular and quite interesting.”
She saw her entry and jumped in. “Speaking of interesting, that’s the word Andy used to describe your last engagement. Did it involve ‘innovative cryptographic techniques’?”
Donnelly glanced around the restaurant. It had thinned out significantly since Walker had entered. She guessed it was time for the next session.
“Ah, I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to talk about it. Hypothetically, of course. And apparently, you’ve got the clearance. So what do you know about GPS?”
It sounded like Donnelly was going Socratic. Just like an academic.
Okay, I’ll play along. For a while.
“GPS-enabled devices use satellite signals to determine their position. The determination is based on the transit time, and thus the distance, of the signals from the satellite to the device.”
Donnelly leaned back in the booth. “Wow. That’s quite a description. Sure you haven’t done this before?”
Walker smiled. “I do have a … diverse background.”
“Okay, then. The American GPS system is based on thirty-one geosynchronous satellites. They transmit an open CDMA signal with location and timing information.”
“The ‘American’ system? There’s more than one?”
“Yes. Actually, there are six. Besides us, China, Russia, India, Japan and the EU all have systems of varying coverage. We have the most satellites, at the moment, and the systems vary in frequency, type of encryption and data format. So they are not compatible. But that’s not the problem.”
“What is?”
“Dependency. Do you have any idea how dependent we are on GPS? Military operations, weapons systems, naval ships, airplanes are now all dependent on GPS for correct operation. GPS has been called the most critical single point of failure for US security.”
This was new even to Walker. She sensed there was more to come. “So you were called in to find a way to safeguard the capability?”
Donnelly’s expression soured. “Uh, not exactly. We were asked to find ways to defeat it.”
“You found ways to hack GPS?”
“Not so much hack it as disable it. GPS jammers already exist. But they are bulky and relatively expensive. Possible for in-theater military use but that wasn’t the concern. Think about where civilians use GPS: the stock market, banking systems, ATMs, law enforcement, emergency services, taxis, personal automobiles. I have friends who would drive off a cliff if their Garmin told them to. My nephews can’t read a map. GPS is as bad a stupidity-enabler as the calculator.
“Imagine if a terrorist group could jam all of Manhattan with a huge number of small, inexpensive, impossible-to-find jammers. It would be chaos.”
“That’s what you designed.”
“Hypothetically.”
“Can we develop a new system? Something better?”
“It would take billions of dollars and a decade.”
Shit.
* * *
The lunch with Donnelly had left Walker more unsettled than she could have imagined. His GPS threat had sounded all too real. And it was technology terrorists would pay millions for. Was Donnelly going to leak his report to Singer for purchase by some rogue state or terrorist group? Or was she just being paranoid?
Jason did hundreds of studies every year. According to Hawthorne, only a few had been exposed. She wanted to catch the traitor but prayed Donnelly was innocent and this study would stay secret.
After her lunch, Walker had tried to follow the Jason through the halls of the conference, but eventually gave up. With all the crowds, there were too many opportunities for dead-drops or hand-offs. She would never have been able to see one.
Most of the afternoon sessions had been far beyond her comprehension, and her interest. Braxton would have probably enjoyed them, but she couldn’t see sitting through more hours of wall-to-wall cryptographic technology.
Still, she decided to try the session Donnelly had recommended. Walker had gone through the standard DIA Signals course on cryptology, of course, but it was all specific techniques: the things she needed to do to send and receive messages. She had never felt like she really understood what she was doing.
“Foundations of Cryptography” was very different. It started with simple Caesar ciphers and moved on through Vigenère to Enigma. One of the most interesting parts was the introduction to public-key encryption. Walker had always figured that to send a secure message, the receiver always had to have some kind of key, even if that
was just the rules used to encrypt. But the presenter had shown her something new.
Say Alice and Bob, apparently the cryptography community’s personification of a message transmitter and receiver, want to exchange messages. Alice writes her message and puts it in a box. Then she puts a padlock on the box—only she has the key—and sends it to Bob. All Bob does is put his padlock on the box and send it back. Alice now takes her padlock off the box and sends it to back Bob. Since the only lock on the box is now Bob’s, he can open it and read the message. No keys were exchanged. And Eve, the evil eavesdropper, can’t intercept the box and open it because she doesn’t have any of the keys.
Pretty cool. Maybe not all that realistic, but it had shown the possibility of secure communication and had been the idea that sparked the public-key revolution that was now used all over the web.
Maybe the conference hasn’t been such a waste of time.
“Foundations” was the last session of the day. She looked around for Donnelly, but again, it was fruitless. She gave up and decided to go back to her room, order an expensive room service dinner and hit the sack.
* * *
Singer’s Sig Sauer 226 lay in parts on the table. He had always found cleaning his weapons to be oddly calming. Perhaps it was the pungent odor of Hoppe’s, or the precise ballet of motions, performed in a state of pure mindlessness, he used during disassembly and assembly. It was almost as effective an analgesic as meditation.
“Hey, Singer. I think I found out how your friends found us.”
The glaring voice broke his tranquility.
“How?” He set the weapon down and walked over to Shahid and her wall of monitors.
“There’s been a lot of chatter on the Washington conspiracy sites that the CIA discovered who was behind the acoustic attacks in Cuba and China. Tied into some covert op in Islamabad that no one will comment on. What do you think?”
“I think that damn Sandura screwed up. He’s always had more money than sense. We told him to keep the attacks short. Go in and get out. Don’t let anyone catch on. He let his anger at the U.S. get the better of his judgment.”