by Peche, Alec
“I just got a notice that my passport has been revoked and that I will have to visit the Embassy of the Netherlands in San Francisco or Chicago to leave this country. I would definitely appreciate help from Agent Porter to see this resolved,” said a worried Nick.
“The question is, are these notices real or fake?” probed David. “A good hack could fake a notice and an awesome hack could get into all of these computer systems. Since he got into so many while we were at dinner, I would guess that the notices are fake.”
“We’re lucky to have such a computer whiz in our midst, especially one that thinks like Bogachev does. First thing when we return to the hotel will be to determine real or fake,” declared Jill.
They had been walking toward their hotel during this discussion. They could hear the sound of more than one snowplow in the distance. After their previous experience, no one could be faulted for looking for places to run and hide from the plows; everyone picked up their pace. It was soon apparent that Bogachev had taken over the plows like remote control Hot Wheels cars. Unfortunately these were twelve foot by twelve foot tall plows rather than the two inch by three inch cars. They could see no drivers in any of the three plows coming from different directions towards them.
“David, doesn’t this guy have to be near us to see where he is driving the plows?” asked Angela.
“No, if he has an accurate GPS, he could drive them remotely; in fact it would be easier to do that given that he is trying to track all three. He must have hacked into one of our cell phones to know where we are. Why doesn’t everyone turn off their cellphone after they put it in airplane mode. That may block him from figuring out our location. Then we need to turn away from this path and see if the plows follow us.”
Everyone quickly followed David’s instructions and after a short debate, they agreed on a different path to the hotel. Sure enough, the plows didn’t make the same turns and follow them. Still, everyone would be more comfortable once they reached the hotel. In another few minutes, they heard silence. The diesel snowplow engines were turned off.
“Before we pat ourselves on the back, let's see what else he has in store for us,” suggested David as everyone was grinning.
“I would rather go on the offensive,” said Jill. “How can we figure out his location and let our FBI friends take him into custody.”
“Let me think a moment,” replied David as the group was entering the hotel and continuing to their suite.
“How about if we move out of the hotel and go to either my cabin or Jake’s. I have a landline there that we can use, since there is a great need not to turn on our cell phones. This will hide our location and give us phone use. I’ll have to think about computer usage. I wouldn’t trust any of the computers in our hotel rooms. I also think any other computers attached to the internet will be a problem. At the same time, we need the internet to identify physically where this guy is hiding. Does anyone have suggestions on how to accomplish that?”
“Sorry David, but I don’t understand how we leave a trail on the internet to give someone the opportunity to monitor our activity. Maybe if you explained in layman’s terms how you would personally track my activity on the internet then I might have a suggestion for you,” offered Angela.
“Okay, here goes. A hacker could implant a piece of software like a virus on a computer using remote access or by intercepting a shipment of new computer supplies and implanting spy software which will then notify another computer of activity whenever a computer is powered on. Also your IP address identifies your longitude and latitude settings.”
“So with the implanting of spy ware, that would be dumb luck for Bogachev if such malware was implanted in advance of whenever he needed to use it,” replied Angela. “It sounds like there is no way to stop that kind of location knowledge if indeed it was planted on all of our computers at the time of manufacture. So the latitude/longitude measurement - can you turn off that feature or remove the GPS widget from our computers while we are in this hotel and then we will move the computers to another location? It sounds like if as long as we keep those location features turned off, that we would be safe at your or Jake’s place.”
“Yes, you are right and thanks for being my sounding board. That will work for our purposes. I wonder if we should try to go to a different location from our homes as Bogachev likely knows those locations. We could try another hotel or late night restaurant with Wi-Fi access.”
They were disrupted by smoke alarms going off in the suite, followed shortly by sprinklers. Jill made a dash for her computer, notes, and murder board. The noise from the alarms was so loud that they couldn’t communicate with each other. Everyone started picking important things up and covering them in ski jackets, plastic bags and anything else they could think of that was waterproof. The agents assisted them by grabbing their belongings and getting them out of the suite. No one saw any flames or smoke and many of them thought of Bogachev. This seemingly false alarm and subsequent water mess had his computer hacking skills written all over it. They sent one agent in the elevator with their luggage while the remainder of the party exited via the stairwell carrying purses and computers.
The lobby was calm and silent when they reached it. There were no smoke alarms or sprinklers going off. In fact the person at the front desk was unaware that there were alarms going off in their suite and looked very surprised to see all of them wet from the sprinklers. One of the agents walked security staff back to their suite so he could see the damage. Meanwhile the agent with their luggage was stuck in the elevator. She might be there for hours since a repairman had to come up from Denver. The local fire department was going to try and get her out but there were risks to that if someone else was in control of the elevator.
The hotel meanwhile had offered to switch their rooms, but Jill was afraid that Bogachev would find them and do further damage to the hotel.
“Well, where to now? I’m wet as is everyone else and my dry clothes are in the elevator,” stated Jill. “None of us can take much exposure to the outside cold.”
“Does anyone’s computer work?” asked David. “If our technology is working, that gives us many more options on where to go. If we don’t have internet access, I would suggest we go to Silverthorne or perhaps Denver.”
Everyone took a moment to check their technology and fortunately about ninety percent of it was working. So now they just needed to find lodging. Fortunately Jake came through; he had a cabin that belonged to a friend that had conveniently left the key close to the cabin.
“How is the agent doing?” asked Jo. “Are they going to be able to get her out tonight?”
“Yes, actually the fire department thought they would be able to release her and the luggage in the next fifteen minutes. They are bringing the elevator to the ground level,” Nick explained as he had been keeping tabs on the effort to release the agent. Since he managed hotel security in Europe, he had often dealt with stuck elevators.
Marie commented, “So now we need transportation to the new cabin and we need to make sure that we can’t be followed.”
David announced, “I have that covered. I have a friend who is in town at the moment and he is going to make as many trips as necessary to move us to the new space. I warned him that we would need some evasive driving and he was looking forward to the challenge. He understands and is relishing the risk with transporting us.”
“That sounds like a plan are you sure he understands that his own safety is not guaranteed? We had several team members nearly die this afternoon,” noted Jill. “Does he have a computer with him? We are one short, at this point thanks to the sprinklers.”
“Yes he has both a laptop and an iPad so he can make up for that shortage and he does understand the risks. He is appreciative as am I, for what you have done for me in bringing Joseph’s murderer to justice, and wants to help your team.”
Just then the agent that had been stuck in the elevator strolled toward them with several pieces of luggage in tow.<
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“Glad to see you free!” exclaimed Jo. “Was it scary being stuck in there?”
“It wasn’t scary once the elevator stopped,” the agent replied. “I don’t know if you realized, but he sent me on a ride to the top of the building and then to the bottom about ten times. If he had kept it up for another few minutes, I might have had to vomit on your luggage, but fortunately it didn’t come to that and thankfully, we are only in a four story building.”
“Yikes I would have felt claustrophobic so I guess I would have been happy with the distraction of the elevator movement,” declared Jo.
“Is everyone ready to move to a new location?” asked one of the agents. “There is room for all of us to have a bed at Agent Porter’s friend’s cabin. I would advise you to leave your luggage here in case there is anything implanted in it and take your nightclothes as well as clothes for tomorrow.”
After a few minutes of everyone sorting through their belongings and grabbing the essentials to put into plastic bags provided by the hotel, they were ready to go and the remainder of their belongings was put into storage. David’s friend drove a massive SUV that was able to take seven of them at a time. With an agent watching out the back of the car, and with the driver taking several unnecessary turns, they were assured they were not followed. A second trip in the same manner saw all of them ensconced in the large cabin of Agent Porter’s friend, and as promised, everyone had a bed.
Chapter Sixteen
After losing an hour and a half of research time due to the problems at the hotel, they were all back at trying to find Bogachev. Jake had meanwhile sent two more agents to the cabin in case they were needed to apprehend Bogachev.
“Let’s talk about where Bogachev might be from a location prospective,” suggested Jill. "David, with the credit cards, snowplows and now sprinklers events, could Bogachev have been in Denver conducting these computer malfunctions?”
“Yes and no. Yes they could be directed from anywhere on the planet with a high speed internet connection. However my mathematical mind tells me that the timing has been exquisite on these events which makes me think that either he has a camera trained on one of you at all times or he is in the area for some of these events. The credit cards and snowplow events could have been coordinated through the GPS feature in your phone. The moment you walked into the restaurant, he likely cut off the credit cards, he could have played at any time with your travel arrangements, and I think the snow plows were chasing our phone signals. The hotel smoke alarms and elevator stoppage required a little more coordination. Plus this has a revenge feel to it. What is his motivation for messing with you? If indeed anger or revenge is his motivation wouldn’t he need to be around to enjoy your misery?”
“Those are all good points,” said Jill thinking aloud. “What is his motivation for messing with us? Perhaps he is on a power trip showing off his prowess with computer systems. Does he care about the arrest of Jason? Is he knowledgeable about Henrik taking over the security at the resort therefore blocking his access to all those credit cards? I would ask if he is any good at hiding, but clearly he is since he has been on the most wanted list for almost five years. How would we determine his location?”
“Let’s start with where we have seen him,” stated Nick. “When I worked with the Belgian police and we were looking for a criminal, we would look first to where we had sighted them previously as that was a good predictor of the future. David, would you be able to write a program that searches all the footage we have from the resort and identifies every time he is visualized on the tapes. I would also look to our FBI agents to see if they could hustle up the film from cameras around town by contacting the local police.”
With those suggestions, they set to work. Marie was looking at what she could find on Bogachev on social media. Nick, Angela, and David had their heads together on what was the best way to find all of the pictures of their suspect. Nathan and Jo were trying to figure out the travel problems to see if they were real or fake. The agents were working their channels to gain access to any around town cameras. Jill had taken her temporary murder board with her when they evacuated the suite. Now she was staring at it while pacing - trying to think of any other avenue to track Bogachev. She didn’t understand computers, but if the FBI had been able to crack his Zeus and Gameover programs why couldn’t they take it a step farther and infect his computer? Perhaps the agents in the cabin could connect her to the agent or agents that had discovered Bogachev’s thieving ways. She walked over to where the three of them were conferring with Denver and the locals.
“I have another idea on how to locate Bogachev that I would like to discuss with your cyber experts. Specifically I would like to speak with the programmer that worked on the Zeus and Gameover software detection. Can you connect me to him or her?”
The agent that had listened to her request looked thoughtful. Then she began scrolling through her phone and dialed a number.
“Before I call, let me warn you that the FBI programmer, the cyber expert, is a teenager by the name of Sophie. She resists all efforts to be called an agent. She may be the most abrasive and bright FBI employee you will ever meet.”
“Sounds interesting I can’t wait to speak with her,” replied Jill.
“Sophie, it’s me Agent Sanders. How are you doing?”
After a pause in which Sophie must have provided a decent answer to the question, Agent Sanders continued.
“Look Sophie we are all huddled together in Colorado reviewing data on your friend Bogachev.”
Sophie must have responded with some rather colorful language, as Agent Sanders held the cell phone away from her ear for a few seconds wincing.
“Yes that is all true but I have a non-FBI person that wants to speak with you. Before you ask me a hundred questions, I’ll warn you that she is standing next to me and can hear my end of the conversation.”
Again there was a pause on the part of Agent Sanders while she listened to Sophie with patience; then without a word she handed the phone to Jill.
“Hello this is Dr. Jill Quint, I’m a private forensic pathologist. You must be Sophie.”
“Yes this is Sophie, what is your question about Bogachev? I don’t have much time to talk to you.”
Jill had spoken with many abrupt people in her career. She wondered what lay behind Sophie’s unconventional behavior.
“I don’t know how much you know about what is happening in Colorado with Bogachev, but I wanted to pick your brain for some ideas on how to locate his position,” said Jill deciding she had better keep talking before the woman cut her off or hung up on her - all a possibility. “We have sighted him via cameras up on the mountain and around town. We even were face to face with him in a bar here, although we didn’t know it at the time. Tonight he has managed through his computer to cut off our credit cards, cancel a passport and airline tickets, chase us with snow plows and turn hotel smoke alarms and sprinklers on us. So let me fire away questions to you - would he need to do that from this town, what are the ways he could have tracked our locations, is the passport and airline ticket cancellation likely legitimate, and can you create a virus that would infiltrate his computer system to tell us where he physically is hiding?”
“Well those are the most interesting questions I have heard all week. I hate to say this but I admire how Bogachev has caused you problems tonight. Explain what happened with the snow plows.”
“Snow plows in this town are large and sophisticated and there is software that operates the big machines rather like the large combine used in farming. He remotely hacked into the plows, started them up and tried to mow us down. Then we powered off our cellphones, putting them on airplane mode so he could no longer locate us. His timing in the hotel was excellent such that we think he had to be close by to watch his handiwork. He hacked into the resort computers, stopping chairlifts at the perfect time so that his friend could attempt to kill people with guns or poisonous darts.”
“So you know he is co
nnected to the internet while he is carrying out these various deeds and you want to use that to tract his location. Yes?”
“Yes that is correct,” said Jill deciding to play to Sophie’s tech knowledge ego. “I figured that since you solved the Zeus/Gameover software problem that you might be our best source for solving Bogachev’s location. Can you do it?”
“Hmm let me think, then I will call you back on Agent Sanders phone,” said Sophie ending the call before Jill could respond.
Jill looked over at Agent Sanders and shrugged handing her the phone, “Well Sophie has a different personality. I think she will call me back on your phone sometime in my life.”
Agent Sanders just grinned at her. “She is very good at what she does. She can work magic with computers, but not with humans. If she said she would call you back, she will do so likely in the next hour. I would bet that she is experimenting with computer code right now, thinking about the challenge you launched at her.”
“Good.” Unable to think of anything else she could do to solve this crime she checked in with the various groups to see if they were making progress.
David had written a program that had located all of Bogachev’s images and now they had them lined up by date and time with the camera that had caught him. They could use this same program on the city’s camera feed if the agents succeeded in gaining access to the footage. By the sounds of their conversation, they were close. They were speaking with the employee that knew how to obtain footage from the system and it sounded like he would forward them the last forty-eight hours of footage within the hour.
Nathan and Jo’s search of the passport and airline ticket situation was proving interesting. Bogachev had managed to cancel their tickets and Nick’s passport, but by working with the airlines and explaining the hacking situation they were getting reinstated. It helped that there had not been an approval from any of them agreeing to the fees for a cancelled ticket. Nick’s passport situation would be handled by the Dutch embassy and Nick didn’t need to appear in person.