“How will you know when all that’s happened? Or if it’s happened?”
“It will happen, but it will take some time; a couple days, at least. Then when we send our activation signal, any affected machine will go into spasms.”
“What about the mainframe?” asked Mason. “Will that go down?”
“It doesn’t have to. We only need to prevent them from seeing what we’re doing on the Net, right?”
“I suppose that’s true. How long will it take?”
Norbert shrugged. “Once we send the signal, things should happen pretty fast. Could be a matter of minutes. The real question is how long will it take them to recover. That’s what determines our window for bringing the new equipment on line.”
Mason was satisfied with what he had seen. “Okay. Keep in touch with Pampas. He’ll be coordinating the installs with the field techs. Once they’re finished doing their thing, we’ll put the blinders on the Bureau.”
“Just say when, Chief.”
Mason gave Norbert a look of warning. “And stop calling me ‘Chief’”.
***
At the FBI regional data center, Justin was about to end his shift when his screen flickered, then turned an ugly light blue–the characteristic behavior of a PC crashing. He quickly went through his re-boot sequence, waiting impatiently for the series of password requests and messages to complete. Finally the main screen came back, and Justin launched a security program to ensure that no harmful viruses or other malicious programs had entered his system. He looked around at the other operators, but saw no sign of trouble.
“Hey guys. Anyone notice a blip just now?”
Several heads shook back and forth in the negative. Justin nodded his acknowledgement and turned back to his monitor, as his security program concluded its run. Nothing unusual was found.
Satisfied that he had been the victim of nothing more serious than an operating system general fault, he made a note of the event in the log, shut down his computer, and left the center.
***
Slocum’s apartment seemed to be deserted. The decision to return to this place had been carefully considered, and the building was approached only after observation from a safe distance for nearly an hour. Katherine pulled the car around back, out of sight of the street, and the group slowly approached the side door to the apartment.
“Easy now,” said Slocum, as he took the lead, checking for any signs of disturbance. After closely examining the door and nearby windows, he announced that it was clear.
Katherine took stock of the surroundings as they entered the apartment. “Looks just like when I left.”
Slocum looked at her. “When you left?”
“Yes. After the agency thugs kidnapped Stanley and Bobby, I came back here.”
“Are you sure you weren’t followed?”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “They didn’t even know I was with Stanley.”
Slocum looked at Kayoko. “Is that true?”
Kayoko flopped down in a chair, exhausted. “I think so. I mean, I wasn’t in on every meeting, but at the end they seemed to take me into their confidence. They made a big deal about Stanley. Bobby, too. I don’t recall anything about Katherine.”
Slocum pressed her. “They said nothing about this place?”
“No.”
He nodded. “Then we’re probably okay.” Slocum looked around at the group of people that filled his apartment. “What now?”
When no one responded, Bobby stepped forward. “Let’s eat!”
The simple honesty of the exclamation caused everyone to laugh. It provided a moment of relief after the stressful events of the past several days.
“Okay, son,” said Stanley. “What do you feel like?”
“Burgers.”
Stanley looked around at the others. “What do you say, folks? Anyone else up for burgers?”
Of course it was unanimous, and Slocum volunteered to get the food.
“I should go,” said Katherine. “If they’re out looking for us, they’ll have less chance of spotting me. They probably don’t even know what I look like, since the only time they might have seen me was during the accident today.”
Slocum was impressed. “You would have made a good implementer.”
“Thank you,” said Katherine. “But I’m more comfortable on the technical end of things.”
“Some of the stuff our tech people do would blow your mind,” said Kayoko.
“We have to talk about all this,” said Stanley. “After dinner we should compare notes.”
Katherine stood up to leave. “I’ll be back in a jiffy.”
With a wink at Bobby, she disappeared through the door.
***
“Damn, George, what happened to you?”
Mason wasn’t easy to impress, but Pampas had done it with his appearance. Although the white bandage around his head seemed a bit melodramatic, there was no mistaking the fact that he had been in a fight–and it looked like the other guy had won.
“I got hit by a brick.”
“Looks more like a steamroller. I guess Slocum must have put up a fight.” It was one of those rare moments when Pampas was unable to look Mason in the eye. Mason caught it right away, and didn’t like the vibes he was getting. “What gives, George?”
“He got away. They all got away.”
At first Mason didn’t react, and when he did, it wasn’t what Pampas expected.
“She’s a fox.”
Pampas looked at Mason in confusion. “Who?”
“Kayoko. She duped us all. But we have work to do, don’t we?”
Pampas didn’t know whether to be relieved that Mason wasn’t having him shot, or concerned at his apparent indifference towards a dangerous situation.
“Sir, as head of security, I have to point out that now we’re missing not only a palmtop and an implementer, but one of our scientists as well. Not to mention the fact that a small group of outsiders has seen the inside of the agency.”
When Mason responded his voice was so low that Pampas could hardly hear him. “In the end, Pascua is the victor.” His voice trailed off as his eyes lowered towards the floor.
Pampas cleared his throat. His head was throbbing. “Do you want me to keep looking for Slocum and the others?”
“Yes, of course. Go find them, before they bring the whole agency down.”
Pampas gave Mason a final look of appraisal before shuffling slowly out the door. When he was gone, Mason went to his desk and turned on his computer, entered a series of passwords, and opened his favorite file. It was the computer code for the program to bring down the FBI data center that Norbert had sent him earlier. As line after line scrolled past, he hummed a tune known only to him, occasionally muttering just under his breath the phrase ‘pascua florida’.
***
When Katherine returned with dinner, she found the others gathered around the television.
“What’s up?” she asked.
Kayoko motioned for her to come closer. “Trouble.”
Katherine walked up to the television in time to see a picture of Slocum’s face fill the screen, followed by that of Kayoko. The newscaster explained that the police were seeking the two in connection with the murder of a local man. Apparently in a case of road rage, the two criminals had dragged the man from his car and beaten him to death in front of several witnesses. Considered dangerous, and possibly armed, the police were asking that anyone seeing the pair call a number listed on the screen. The newscast then switched to the weather, and Stanley turned the set off.
“Wow,” said Katherine.
“Yeah,” said Kayoko. “I guess you were right about them not getting a good look at you, Katherine. Otherwise your face would have been on the tube, too.”
Bobby looked at his father. “What’s it mean, Dad?”
Stanley glanced briefly at Katherine before answering. “Well, son, the people who took us to that building aren’t very nice.”
“No kiddi
ng.”
“You know that we have something they want.”
“The palmtop,” said Bobby.
“Right. But also, now we know where they’re located, and they don’t want others to find out.” Bobby nodded as Stanley continued. “You saw what happened today. Was it anything like what the news reported?”
“No. It didn’t happen that way at all.”
“Well, the people who we escaped from want the police to think that’s how it happened. That way both the police and everyone who saw the news will be looking for Mr. Slocum and Kayoko. That’s how they think they can find us.”
“Oh,” said Bobby. He took it all in stride, and asked if he could watch a rerun of a sitcom, which Stanley agreed to. The food was then quickly distributed, and as Bobby watched television, the adults discussed their situation.
“You know,” said Katherine, between bites. “You probably should fill us in on just what this agency is about.” The comment was directed towards Kayoko.
Kayoko was relishing her food. She hadn’t eaten since morning. “Yeah, well, it’s like this. Robert, feel free to chime in.” Slocum bobbed his head once. “About fifteen years ago the agency was created as a government commission, at the federal level, as a watchdog, of sorts.”
“What were you watching?” asked Katherine.
“Our way of life.” Katherine shook her head. She didn’t get it. “Think of it,” continued Kayoko. “Many of the major empires in history, like the Romans or even the Soviets, collapsed largely from within. Had they known that their demise was imminent, perhaps they could have taken measures to prevent their own downfall. Like it or not, America is also an empire–the last surviving superpower in the world. Our mission was to determine whether we, as a society, were facing any dangerous trends that might lead to our loss of status as the premier world power.”
Katherine was intrigued. “What then? Suppose you identified such a trend, what could be done about it?”
“That part wasn’t our mission. We were tasked to create a societal profile, a snapshot of what Americans were thinking–as a society–at any given moment. We were to use this profile as a tool to identify potentially dangerous trends, anything that might lead to destabilization. The intent was to make sure we knew when our own ‘empire’ might be headed down the tubes.”
Kayoko looked at Slocum. “Want to add anything?”
He shook his head in the negative. “I didn’t even know that much. They paid me to meet with clients and conduct transactions. Sometimes they were less than aboveboard. The transactions, that is.” He thought about it for a moment. “Well, maybe the clients as well.”
“But you didn’t know what the agency was about?” Kayoko was surprised.
“Nope. Not until two minutes ago.”
Stanley leaned forward. “How did you do it?”
Kayoko went on. “Prior to the Internet explosion, it was an exercise in guesswork. But once we could tap into the Net and monitor the vast amounts of data passing back and forth, it became a matter of statistical analysis.”
“You said that at first you were set up as a federal agency. Did that change?” asked Stanley.
“Yes,” said Kayoko. “We were made an independent commission. I’m not quite sure how it happened, but they lost track of us. Maybe someone wanted the work done, but didn’t want to be associated with us if the public found out what we were doing. I don’t know. At any rate, with our initial level of funding, and with other sources coming from I don’t know where, we became completely independent, and very hush-hush.”
“But how do you do it?” asked Stanley. “You must require vast amounts of data to create your ‘societal profile’.”
“To tell the truth, all I know is that we have some kind of hardware devices all over the Internet infrastructure. These somehow transmit data back to our computers, which use algorithms to extract identifiable patterns. My specialty is psychology, specifically applied social psychology. I see the data after the computer center has sucked it in, done some initial screening, and fed it into a matrix.”
Stanley nodded. “So you must have people in the field, technical people, who install or maintain the hardware that’s out there.”
“Naturally. I believe we even own several telecommunications companies.”
“So you read emails, stuff like that?” asked Katherine.
“No. We could, I suppose. But our interest is in what society is thinking or talking about, not what one individual is writing to another.”
“Why did you help us?” asked Stanley.
Kayoko sat back in her easy chair. There it was, the question she knew she would have to answer, and the answer that would lead to what she would have to ask them to do.
“I’ve been at the agency since its inception. I believed in the mission from the start, and I still think it’s a good idea.” She paused. “But for some reason things have changed recently. I’m not sure when it started–maybe with all this concern over the missing palmtop.”
“Those are important,” said Slocum. “It’s how we communicate securely with the agency from out in the field.”
“It’s also the agency’s weakest link,” said Stanley. “It let us access the data stream that the agency uses.”
“Anyway,” continued Kayoko, “its loss caused quite a stir. The whole profiling effort nearly came to a standstill while they tried to find the palmtop, and then they went a step too far.”
“Kidnapping,” said Katherine.
“Yes. What you may not be aware of, though, is that they had no intention of releasing Stanley or Robert.”
“What about Bobby?” asked Katherine.
Kayoko shook her head. “He would have been sent to a foster home, told that his father had died. In reality both he and Mr. Slocum would have been committed to a mental hospital, staffed by doctors on the agency payroll.”
Everyone except Slocum seemed shocked. “The beloved agency values nothing so much as secrecy. You must know that, Kayoko.”
“Yes, which is why I had to tread lightly at the end. We were very lucky to get out, you know.”
They silently pondered what could have been a much less fortunate outcome. Kayoko cleared her voice before continuing, obviously having a hard time bringing up a difficult subject.
“Listen, guys. After what you’ve been through, I don’t blame you if you want to get as far away from the agency as possible. I want the same thing, frankly. But I think we have to consider a different course.”
“What did you have in mind?” asked Katherine, crumpling the remaining papers from her meal.
“We have to take the agency down.”
Slocum softly chuckled. “Kayoko,” he said. “Do you realize the resources the agency has at its disposal? They’re into everything. You and I were on television, wanted for a crime that we didn’t commit–that wasn’t committed. We have no place to turn for help.”
“I know,” said Kayoko. “That’s why we have to do it ourselves. Somehow we have to disrupt what the agency is doing, either by hacking into their computers and destroying them, or by revealing them to the rest of the country. I don’t know how, but somehow we have to bring them down.”
“We’ll never do it by going public,” said Stanley. “That would just alert them to our location, and anyway, we’d all be arrested, you and Robert for supposedly killing that man, and the rest of us for harboring fugitives. How long would it be before the agency had us back in their clutches?”
“Not long,” confirmed Slocum. “That’s how they got me. I was in jail and they sent in a couple of guys posing as federal agents. They took me straight out of the slammer, right to the agency, no problem.”
“Then it’s a technical matter,” said Kayoko. “I understand you two are some kind of experts?” She motioned towards Stanley and Katherine.
“Sort of,” said Stanley. “We’re probably the world’s leading authorities on penetrating the agency’s data stream. At least, we were good enoug
h to make them think we’re a threat.”
“Excellent. How did you do it?”
Stanley explained. “Without the palm unit it would have been impossible. In fact, without it, none of this would ever have happened.” He looked at Katherine. “Speaking of that, where is our favorite handheld device?”
“In the flour jar, on the counter. I put it in a baggie and covered it before I came to get you.”
Stanley smiled at her. “Pretty creative.”
“Thanks.”
“So how did you two manage to tap into the agency’s data stream?” asked Kayoko.
“We used the palmtop in conjunction with some equipment from the company we used to work for,” said Stanley.
“Used to?”
“When the agency raided it, we took off. At that point we knew you had Robert, and figured you’d take us as well, so we beat it.”
Kayoko had a confused look on her face. “You lost me.”
“Our company–ScanDat–you raided it, remember?”
Kayoko shook her head. “No, we didn’t. That was the FBI, I think.”
Stanley and Katherine looked at each other. Now it was their turn to be confused.
“But why?” asked Katherine. “Only the agency knew of our intrusion into the data stream.”
“Apparently that’s not the case,” said Kayoko.
“Could it be we have another player?” asked Slocum.
***
In an underground communications substation in downtown Philadelphia, a pair of men in coveralls worked to quickly disassemble a nondescript gray box that enveloped a fiber optic bundle. Careful not to disturb the access point into the jacket itself, they first removed the outer protective cover of the box, ignoring the prominent lettering that read ‘Property of Phone Company. Do Not Disturb’.
The optical regenerator, placed here two years earlier, was now visible. With a nod at his partner, one of the men removed a panel, revealing a series of short fiber bundles, and an enclosed module into which the bundles disappeared. He depressed a recessed switch on the side of the module, temporarily deactivating the laser inside. After he removed the entire unit, his partner handed him a new one, which was installed in its place. The fiber cabling was reconnected, the access panels replaced, and twenty minutes later the team was en route to their next location.
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