by Taiyo Fujii
Most websites had fixed widgets for displaying several advertisements, and apparently someone was using this convention to merge fragments into a program and steal personal information.
“So where’s the information going?” asked Sekiguchi.
“The IP address is assigned by AT&T in Washington.” The MAC address containing the manufacturer name, device name, and serial number for the receiving server, Akari explained, indicated that it was a Chinese brand of mobile router. The information was probably being received with a laptop or tablet rather than a virtual server in a data center.
“We definitely need to report this,” said Sekiguchi, and wrote “Shadow-Ware: Transmission Destination Washington State” on one of the slips of paper on the whiteboard. “Let’s have NORAD contact the CIA or FBI about it.”
Sekiguchi went on to explain that the CIA and NSA held on to the web connection records of AT&T. If they had NORAD inquire with these two organizations about it, they would know immediately which antenna had been used to go online at that time.
“There’s also the phone number and voice record,” said Akari, projecting a fourteen-digit number starting with 01125 onto the whiteboard. After a pop from the projector speakers, Kazumi heard the cheering of a familiar voice. Next was the voice of someone who sounded like an announcer. Overlaid on this was faint breathing and a woman saying in English, “Hello, Mary. Mary? Can you hear me?”
Sekiguchi stared at Akari in wide-eyed astonishment. “What? How? Numbers with 125 after the country code 01 are for Chinese cell phones. They must have been using a roaming SIM card!”
“I’m the one who set up the call tracking system that Mary uses for customer support. This recording is an answering machine message left last night. Sekiguchi-san, do you recognize the voice?”
“Yes, it’s the woman from earlier. She called once to scope out the situation. Please play it again. When I heard it before, there was no background noise.”
The cheer played again, and Kazumi realized who it was. The voice was Judy Smark’s. And the announcer was praising the success of the Loki 9 launch. Whoever the woman was, she had called Mary from a room with a television.
“The television is playing KFFV Television, right, Akari?” said Sekiguchi.
“Yes, Seattle,” Akari replied immediately. “Apparently KFFV is a local, independent terrestrial station. They seem to have a weak signal because there are some reviews online complaining that it’s difficult to tune in from other cities.”
“You’re incredible,” said Sekiguchi, “figuring all this out.” On the whiteboard he wrote “Agent Hideout: Seattle.”
Akari stood up, pulled a display out of her ’fro, and put it on the table, as text continued to flow across the screen. “I’m going to Seattle, too,” she said. “We’re going to catch whomever the shadow-ware is transmitting to.”
Kurosaki leaned forward in his seat and said, “Hold on! What are you thinking here? You think I’m going to let you play spy like that? And—right! Passports. Do both of you have passports?”
“I have one,” said Kazumi, pulling his passport out of his pocket. Akari also held out the red-covered booklet of a Japanese passport, and then Sekiguchi produced his as well with a smile.
“Kurosaki-san,” he said. “People these days use it instead of a driver’s license. It’s one of the few photo IDs available. And it’s not such a bad idea for Akari to go to Seattle.”
“Hold on! Sekiguchi—”
“Either way,” Sekiguchi interrupted, “we were planning to have Kazumi flee overseas, right? In that case, I think it makes sense for Akari, who can provide engineering support, to accompany him. But more importantly than that, she says she wants to go.”
Akari pointed to the word Seattle on the whiteboard. “If I go, I can help out in all kinds of ways. The only way I can figure out the rules AT&T uses to supply IPs, for example, is by being on the ground in America.”
“So you think Shiraishi has something to do with this, do you?” said Kurosaki, staring at Akari.
Kurosaki’s low voice made Akari tremble. “… That’s not it. It’s the shadow-ware destination, I—”
“Just hypothetically speaking,” said Kurosaki, “if you did find Shiraishi, what would you do?”
Akari bit her lip and cast her gaze down. It wasn’t just about the advertisement. It was also about the successor for the tether-propulsion system, the space tether, that Shiraishi was said to have been involved in.
Sekiguchi broke the tension in the air with a clap. “Let’s definitely have these two head off to Seattle,” he said. “It’s a nice town. Maybe a bit cold, but the coffee and clam chowder are delicious. As long as it’s okay with Kazumi, that is.”
“If Akari doesn’t mind,” said Kazumi. “I’d be happy to have her along.” He was going to need her help with analysis of the space tethers. And if she was going to search for the man called Shiraishi, he wanted to help with that, too. Then Kazumi might be able to discuss the space tethers with him.
“Sekiguchi,” said Kurosaki. “Do you have any idea what you’re saying?”
“Kurosaki-san, let’s not waste time like this,” said Sekiguchi. “We still have no idea what North Korea is after. The English translation of the speech was saying they might target the ISS, but it’s hard to imagine they’d do that with Russia’s involvement in it. We’d be best off teaming up with America, since its relationship with North Korea is frigid to begin with. We can’t overlook the possibility that the Wyvern Orbital Hotel could be their target. If they’re planning something, they’re bound to strike this week while the two Smarks are aboard.”
Sekuguchi went on to outline the rest of his plan. The two JAXA employees, Sekiguchi and Kurosaki, would be in charge of contacting the Ministry of Defense, the cabinet, and other relevant foreign organizations. That way, they could seek the cooperation of specialists in analyzing and observing the space tethers. However, while they spent their time bringing these specialists up to speed with the knowledge already held by Kazumi, the space tethers would continue to fly around freely in orbit.
Crossing his arms and closing his eyes, Sekiguchi said, “Let’s narrow down our potential collaborators to the ones who can actually get things done. NORAD is ideal. Also, if we take refuge overseas, we can force North Korea to start their hunt over again from square one. And if Akari accompanies Kazumi, she can take care of his Internet security. Really, if we start fresh in a new location, anywhere will do. So how about Seattle, then? I doubt the agents we’re looking for would expect us to come right to their doorstep.”
With inquiring eyes, Kurosaki looked at Kazumi, then Akari, then Sekiguchi in turn. “Fine. The responsibility for all this … As if there was a way for anyone to take it in our situation … Count me in! Seattle it is!”
“Excellent,” said Sekiguchi. “Now that that’s settled, I’ll book the flights and arrange for all the things we might need. Everyone else, please get your documents together.”
Sekiguchi put on the jacket he had draped over the sofa and dashed out of the room.
Mon, 14 Dec 2020, 06:58 -0700 (2020-12-14T13:58 GMT)
Peterson Air Force Base
“Kurosaki, eh? How unexpected.”
Colonel Claude Lintz was looking over the list of emails Jasmine had sorted for him when an unexpected name caught his eye. Kurosaki was his counterpart at JAXA. Since NORAD’s international operations had been cut back several years ago as part of restructuring, they hadn’t been in touch, but Lintz still remembered his dedicated work ethic.
The email’s subject was “Urgent: Unusual SAFIR 3 Orbit Caused by North Korea,” and its body was encrypted with PGP. Lintz and Kurosaki had exchanged a PGP key in accordance with military protocol, but he couldn’t recall their ever having used it for normal communications. That he was using it now told him it must be a highly urgent matter.
Lintz reopened the email in a separate window. It had two attachments. Rare for an email written by a Japanese person, Kurosaki’s greeting was short, but as Lintz read through the rest of it, that wasn’t his only surprise. Space tethers? Iranian scientist? North Korean agents?
“What on earth … ?”
A Japanese engineer had analyzed SAFIR 3’s abnormal behavior using his own personal resources and, with the help of an Iranian scientist, had uncovered the existence of a spacecraft composed of over ten thousand separate units that were all floating in orbit. At the same time, their efforts to interfere with North Korea were progressing.
The attached report was remarkable, and the engineer who wrote it was obviously highly capable. He had skillfully summarized all the central points and, most importantly, grasped the space tether, an unknown craft, with such completeness it was as if he’d built it himself.
Reading the final sentence, Lintz sighed. Why did Japanese people always put the most important part of their emails at the end?
“I’m sending two key members of our team who are being hunted by North Korea to Seattle. Would it be possible to place them under your protection?”
Linz glanced at the Speedmaster on his wrist. It was currently 11:00 p.m. in Tokyo. If I send a response now, he wondered, will Kurosaki have a chance to read it? But forget about that. First he had to arrange for a security escort.
Lintz raised his voice and called through the open door, “Jasmine! Send over Sergeant Freeman, would you?”
“What’s this?” she replied. “Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed? He’s already here!”
“Is there something I can assist you with, sir?” asked Sergeant Daryl Freeman, poking his head in from one side of the doorway with an orange backpack slung over his shoulder.
Suddenly Lintz remembered. Freeman had been dispatched to Lintz’s room to babysit the CIA. There was no need for him to be there so early, but he’d probably felt pressured when the two early bird operatives made snide remarks about NORAD’s work ethic.
“Sergeant, I’m going to have Second Lieutenant Fisher take over for you in looking after our CIA friends.”
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“Some Japanese who’ve solved the riddle of SAFIR 3 are coming to Seattle, and you’re going to make sure nothing happens to them.”
It took several seconds for Freeman’s look of suspicion to shift into a broad smile.
Papers piled up before Daryl’s eyes: request to travel on duty, plane ticket, hotel reservation chart, application to use a credit card … Lintz’s assistant Jasmine laid on the documents one after the other.
Lintz placed a credit card on the desk. Stuck to it was a Post-it with a four-digit number on it. This Chase MasterCard, with a white star and yellow wings on a deep-blue gradient, was for use by air force staff only.
“I’m not expecting too many expenses, sir …”
“Our guests will arrive here with nothing but the clothes on their backs. They had to leave everything behind, from their computers to their toothbrushes. Seattle is freezing. We’ll probably even need to buy them jackets.”
Jasmine put another paper folder on the desk in front of Daryl. It contained a receipt from a travel agency he recognized.
“I borrowed the car from Air Force Travel Zone,” said Jasmine. “It’s a Chevy wagon. You can drop it off at any federal facility. I’ve booked a block of three rooms in the Western Days behind the Needle. One is for our Japanese guests, one is for you, and one will serve as your operations center.”
“ ‘Guests’ plural?” asked Daryl.
“According to the email from Kurosaki,” said Lintz, “Mr. Kazumi Kimura, who is investigating SAFIR 3, will be accompanied by a female engineer named Akari Numata. I’ll explain the situation to Chris and Bruce.”
“Understood.”
“Proceed with the utmost caution, Sergeant. I doubt those North Korean agents will make any big moves out in the open here in America, but the moment you sense danger, take the two of them and run!”
Daryl continued to sign the growing stack of papers, mentally shouting for joy. Fantastic! He’d never guessed that SAFIR 3 might have been driven by impacts. But that was the least of his excitement. Space tethers?! He’d heard of tether-propulsion systems before, but what could be more thrilling than the chance to analyze real ones in action?
Mon, 14 Dec 2020, 07:22 -0700 (2020-12-14T14:22 GMT)
Guest House, Peterson Air Force Base
Sitting across from Chris as she worked on her salad, Bruce wiped some latte foam from his trim mustache, flicked his eyes to his smartphone, and said, “Hey, Chris. Is it just me, or does everyone in a uniform have muscle for brains?”
Staring up at him from the reservation chart for Air Force Travel Zone, a business under surveillance by the CIA, was the name of a hotel and a Chevy wagon rented in the name of NORAD. Beginning yesterday, all communications related to Freeman had been flagged for monitoring.
Interestingly, the email sent to Lintz from Japan had been encrypted with PGP. It had been decoded with Lintz’s private key and provided to the CIA by the air force, and the plaintext version had been relayed over. The care taken by the JAXA official, Kurosaki, to use strong encryption had been pointless in the end, but as a result Lintz’s sloppy operations had been exposed. In other words, the surveillance had paid off: Bruce and Chris would be able to protect two private citizens coming from Japan, Kazumi Kimura and Akari Numata.
“I can’t imagine what’s come over them that they would rent a car that might as well have ‘Soldiers On Board’ spray-painted on the doors when they’re picking up two private citizens chased by spies!” said Bruce. “And separate hotel rooms to boot! What are they going to do if someone comes for them? Unbelievable!”
Even assuming that Lintz was right to change Daryl’s assignment under his own authority and have him escort these guests carrying secret information, sending his subordinate off to rent a car at a military travel agency like Air Force Travel Zone revealed a serious deficit of imagination. Bruce himself had used the service back when he was in the army, but when they brought out a drab olive Land Cruiser with a huge white star plastered on the side, he’d been simply appalled.
“They just aren’t grasping how serious it is that they’re being targeted by enemy agents,” said Chris. “It can’t be helped.” She picked up a cracker, crushed it in her hand, and sprinkled the crumbs on her bland salad. “This Japanese guy comes out of the woodwork, and all of a sudden he’s this incredible information hub. He’s got JAXA and even the Iranian professor involved. Do you remember what Daryl said yesterday?”
“About what?”
“About instantaneous acceleration. An identical phenomenon was recorded in the data Kimura extracted from Cunningham’s observational data. We were so focused on Cunningham’s involvement with North Korea that we completely overlooked the activities he himself was engaged in.”
“Well, there’s no point in worrying about that now.” Bruce shrugged. In the investigation being conducted at the McLean CIA headquarters, they were treating Ozzy Cunningham as either a spy or a puppet and trying to uncover traces of North Korea in his communications. No one had even considered the possibility that clues might be found in his observational data already available to the public online. So while it was true that the CIA could monitor everything, they could still go way offtrack without the right search method.
“What do you think of Kimura’s space tether hypothesis?” asked Chris. “That’s the line of inquiry I’d personally like to follow.”
“Sounds good to me. If the Rod from God is really the diversion it seems to be, that would iron out a lot of inconsistencies. But, wow, did they ever fool us!” Bruce thought back on his exchange with the NASA officials. When asked about the Rod from God, astronautics specialists could only state that the whole idea of an orbital weapon
targeted at Earth was ludicrous. But Bruce and his team had been so distracted by the illustration created with information held only by North Korea that they had bent this explanation to match their own perception of the situation. “The North Korean strategist behind this is a capable fellow indeed. Even just looking at the IT tricks that woman Numata uncovered, you can tell he’s like no one we’ve ever dealt with before.”
Bruce brought his mug of latte up to his nose and let the steam rise into his mustache. The translation corpus contamination that the engineer Numata had discovered had definitely jumbled the decision-making of everyone concerned. The phrase “iron hammer” that had appeared in the English subtitles of the North Korean leader’s speech suggested a specific weapon of some kind. Even after learning that no such nuance could be found in the original text, the expectation that those words had instilled in them only bolstered their belief in Cunningham’s Rod from God report.
“This shadow-ware that piggybacks on advertisements is an incredible piece of workmanship, too. It might be the first time that the Cyber Front has employed such a sophisticated method in their operations.”
The services provided by private corporations such as Google and Amazon now covered the entire world and had changed the way that information flowed. Even an organization like the CIA, said to command twenty thousand regular employees and 1,600,000 contractors, used Google to check maps. Bruce had never suspected that North Korea’s intelligence capabilities had grown so strong that they could pull off an information attack capable of causing such widespread misunderstanding through contamination of these services.
“So should I call a halt to Seed Pod, then?” asked Chris.
“Can’t be done. The military unit will be assembling today.”
The American military was superbly organized. It should have been cause for celebration that after only two days NORAD’s test-run team was already on standby waiting for an order to engage, even though on paper all that had happened was that they had been transferred. No matter how rapid the preparations, however, it was all irrelevant if their objective wasn’t right.