Palm Sunday

by William R. Vitanyi Jr.

  “Di-gi-com…” He never finished the sentence, or phrase, or whatever he wanted to say. He was dead.

  Agent Sharon slowly lowered his friend and colleague to the ground. “I’m sorry, John.”

  He walked over to the other bodies. Both had clearly been dead for a while. He rolled the agency technician over with his foot, so he could see the back of his coveralls. DigiComm United Technologies. Sharon wondered if that was what John had been trying to tell him. He pulled out his notebook and jotted down the company’s name. Next, he started a careful examination of the premises.

  His survey of the crime scene indicated that the technicians had been working near the cable, and must have been surprised by John and his partner. Sharon knew there was at least one other man, because he found the spot where the missing device had been. Clearly someone had departed with it, and the extra set of footprints clinched it. He carefully examined the severed ends of the fiber cables. It was not a tidy job; whoever had removed the equipment was obviously in a hurry.

  As he played his light along the floor of the tunnel, Sharon discovered several bits and pieces of electrical equipment, mostly very small pieces. He gathered these up and placed them in his handkerchief. After twenty minutes, he felt he had done all he could, and prepared to leave. He looked at the bodies. What to do about that?

  That his own career was over was, in Sharon’s mind, a given. He didn’t consider that the verbal authorization he had obtained to inspect the substation would cut much mustard with Roberts. In fact, it would probably only help Roberts get rid of him, maybe even prosecute him. But Sharon didn’t care about that. His friend and another agent were dead, and only because he had asked for their help. He was determined that their sacrifice would not be in vain. He also was more convinced than ever that something very sinister was happening with the American Internet infrastructure, and he resolved to get to the bottom of it before Roberts had him removed.

  “Sorry, John, to leave you like this. But someone will be here for you real soon.”

  Sharon made sure he had left nothing behind, then quickly left the tunnel and returned to his car. He stopped at the first pay phone he came to and placed an anonymous call to John’s office. It would have been safer to simply call the local police and let things filter up, but there was a code, and this was a Bureau matter.

  ***

  The team sent to monitor the test of the device being built by ScanDat quickly took charge of everything, and everyone. Naomi Johnstone, the slim brunette who headed the delegation, made it clear that she was the boss not only of her own company, but of ScanDat as well. This didn’t sit well with Klugman.

  “Now look,” he said, his diminutive frame dwarfed by her six-foot height. “I’m sure we can work together just fine, but these are my people, and this is my shop.”

  “Mr. Klugman, I find your loyalty to your people and equipment very touching, but let’s not forget that both were purchased with my company’s money. Now let’s get on with the demo, shall we?” Without waiting for an answer she motioned to two technicians, both young men, to start setting up their monitoring equipment.

  One of them looked at Klugman. “Where can we plug in?”

  Klugman looked at Boyd. “Would you show these two gentlemen where they can attach their probes.”

  Boyd suppressed a smile. He didn’t know if Klugman was trying to be funny. “You mean the hardware interface connectors?” The technicians nodded. “Sure. Come with me.” Boyd led the way to the device.

  Meanwhile, Johnstone grilled Klugman. “Where will you run the demo from?” she asked.

  “I won’t be running it,” said Klugman. “Two of my engineers will handle that. In fact here they come now.” As Stanley and Katherine approached, Klugman made the introductions. “This is Stanley Whipple, our lead software engineer, and Katherine Ritaglio, who handles the electronics.”

  “A pleasure. My name is Naomi Johnstone, and for the duration of the test you should consider me your boss. Any problem with that?”

  Stanley and Katherine looked at each other, then at Johnstone. They answered in unison.

  “No.”

  “Good; then let’s get started. Where’s your operations center?”

  “We’ve arranged to run everything from the conference room,” said Klugman. “Katherine, are we ready?”

  “Yes, sir. We’ll be inputting commands from a terminal set up there, and all operations will be monitored on the big screen. The only thing you won’t be able to see is the device itself.”

  Johnstone smiled. “That’s okay–my boys will be keeping an eye on it with their direct links.”

  She didn’t miss a trick. She wasn’t going to have someone manually feeding anything into the device without her knowledge. The laptops that her technicians were connecting would reveal any tampering with the signal to the hardware interface, and would also flag any suspicious software activity for later analysis. Her boys signaled that they were ready.

  Johnstone looked at Klugman. “It’s your show.”

  Klugman nodded once at Stanley. “Let her rip.”

  Stanley had already opened a link to the Alpha, and now entered the command to start the test. As soon as he hit the Enter key, the ScanDat device came to life, and cycled through a diagnostic routine. As the results were displayed on the large screen set up at the front of the room, Stanley explained their meaning.

  “I’ve just turned it on, and it’s running through a series of electronic tests, basically to make sure that its circuitry is intact and that no software flaws are detected.”

  “What happens if there are flaws?” asked Johnstone.

  “It would depend on the severity. Sometimes errors occur for relatively minor reasons, and the software can handle these automatically. Right now our error tolerance threshold is quite low, so anything that isn’t normal is flagged and reported. It would require manual confirmation of the suggested course of action.”

  “Isn’t that very time consuming?” she asked.

  “In the beginning that’s always the case. We need the empirical data before we can let it run fully automatic. That will come with time.”

  “How much time?”

  “Gathering sufficient samples would take three to six months, assuming a normal machine load.”

  Johnstone nodded, apparently satisfied. Klugman looked at Stanley and winked. He was too busy to notice, as a series of messages flashed across the screen.

  Stanley continued. “The device has completed its diagnostic phase, with no errors reported. The initialization sequence will now commence, as the device energizes its internal matrix and aligns the optical input.”

  Johnstone interrupted again. “Is that the connection with the outside world?”

  “That’s right,” said Stanley. “Typically the fiber from the telecomm provider would feed directly into the device, while the opposite end would provide your sanitized data.”

  “Other devices filter garbage from the Net. What’s different about this one?”

  “It taps directly into the fiber stream. There’s no conversion to an electrical signal required, because the device is an optical network. Or more accurately, an intelligent optical matrix.”

  “Interesting.”

  “In addition, there’s never a need to update. It dynamically learns the host system, so the matrix is always current.” Stanley turned back to his console. “The initialization is complete. We can now sync up the interface with the fiber input.”

  He typed in the command to create the link, although the mechanism that did so was actually removing a barrier, rather than creating anything.

  He went on. “The optical interface is active and operating at nominal levels. The simulated data stream is now being generated.”

  As Stanley monitored this activity in the conference room, Boyd looked over the shoulders of the technicians next to the actual device. “How’s it looking, guys?”

  Neither took their eyes off their display. “T
he flow is commencing now,” said one of the technicians. “Looks like the OI came on line correctly. Let’s see how the software performs.”

  Boyd swallowed hard. With the optical interface running smoothly, the only hurdles that remained were the software itself, and his test data. Of the two, he knew which was the most likely to fail.

  The technician continued. “The data stream is flowing normally. We should see the first hiccup just about…now.”

  Right on cue a warning light came on, indicating that a suspicious element had been isolated in the data stream. The technicians, and Boyd, knew that it would contain the signature of the infamous ‘nimda’ virus. The suspect file was caught and routed to a holding area for future evaluation, while the rest of the stream continued unabated. The process literally took no time at all.

  “First event successfully managed,” said the technician next to Boyd. He made a note on a pad, and turned back to his screen. “Event two in ten seconds.”

  Back in the conference room Johnstone was impressed. “So, Klugman, you actually have a functioning unit.”

  “You seem surprised.”

  Johnstone shrugged. “I’ve seen many promising technologies flop when you switch them on. Let’s just say I’m a show-me kind of girl.”

  “Here comes the next one,” announced Stanley. “This should simulate an attempt to violate our access control list.”

  The moments passed without incident. Finally a full minute had lapsed.

  “What happened?” asked Johnstone.

  “Nothing,” said Stanley. “At least not that you would notice. The attempt was detected and a trace route was automatically started to determine the source of the intrusion. The results were logged off line, and the normal data stream continues to flow, uninterrupted. Again, that’s the whole point–to evaluate the data stream while it’s still an optical channel.

  Johnstone leaned forward in her chair. “So far I’m impressed. What’s next?”

  “Trojan horse virus. This particular strain is nasty. It’s delivered as an attachment to an email message, but once inside the system it emerges in a very different form. Next event should start now.”

  Stanley watched his monitor, and could see that the Alpha had injected the next element into the data stream. He knew it would take only seconds for the intruder to be trapped and the event logged. He watched with concern as the time for interception passed, and nothing happened. Seconds later a warning light went off, indicating that the intruder had successfully infected its target computer.

  Boyd was sweating. This was the moment he had feared, the precise instant when it was clear that he had screwed up. But the worst part was that only he knew. Had others been deriding him for his failure, he could easily have thrown up a technical smoke screen, especially for Klugman. But his torment lay in the fact that he alone knew the truth.

  “Crash and burn.” One of the technicians made an entry in his notebook. The other shook his head.

  “Must’ve been a glitch. I’ll check the logs,” offered Boyd.

  “No, don’t touch them,” said the technician. “We have to maintain the integrity of the evidence.” He made it sound as though a crime had been committed.

  Boyd nodded, and knew he was toast. The logs would reveal exactly what the problem was. He started thinking up excuses. In the conference room, Klugman was having his own problems.

  “How do you explain that?” demanded Johnstone. She looked questioningly at Klugman, who turned to Stanley.

  “Well?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure,” said Stanley. “We ran that simulation dozens of times in the past week and it always got trapped. I don’t know what happened this time; obviously we’ll have to evaluate the situation and make whatever corrections are needed.”

  Johnstone watched Stanley with curiosity. “You seem remarkably calm considering the enormity of the screw-up.”

  Stanley had temporarily halted the test. The display at the front of the room now showed a constant dark blue pattern. “As I said, we don’t know how serious of a setback this is. We won’t know until we run some tests. I suggest we continue with the demo and see if anything else crops up, then go on from there.”

  Johnstone slowly bobbed her head–the queen permitting an indulgence. “Proceed.”

  For the next hour Stanley carefully monitored his console as one event after another was thrown at the device. In all additional cases it performed flawlessly. One exception was when Johnstone insisted that Stanley cut power to the unit to test for an unexpected electrical interruption. When power was restored, the unit could not re-initialize without manual intervention.

  “We’ll have to fix that,” said Stanley. “But I don’t think it will be difficult. Otherwise, it’s back on line and running within normal parameters.”

  Johnstone stood up. “Does that conclude the demo?”

  “That’s it,” said Klugman. “I assume you’ll want to go over the results?”

  “Yes,” said Johnstone, her voice a mix of authority and curiosity. “Tell my technicians to come in here.”

  Klugman hurried from the room, and within five minutes the device had been powered down, and everyone was seated around the conference table. Johnstone wasted no time getting the ball rolling.

  She addressed her senior technician. “What were your findings?”

  He knew she didn’t like fluff, and made his presentation brief and to the point. “The demo was successful with the exception of three areas. First, the test data we sent was not properly synchronized with the device’s hardware interface. This resulted in a failure to detect a critical invasive event, which could have proven catastrophic in real life. Second, the power coupling lacks an automatic re-initialization routine. This should be self-contained and incorporate triple redundancy. At present there’s nothing. Third, access to the internal hardware is not secure enough. The device needs to be re-engineered for anticipated use in physically hostile environments.”

  Klugman took exception to the last point. “This is a prototype of a piece of computer equipment, not a tank.”

  Johnstone held up her hand. “Yes, yes. I’m sure my technician is referring to anticipated field deployments. You don’t need to be concerned about that at this time.” She looked at the technician. “Anything else?”

  “No, other than to reinforce that the test data has to be treated with greater seriousness.”

  Boyd visibly cringed.

  “So, when will we find out if we still have jobs?” asked Klugman, smiling.

  Johnstone gave him a cold look. “I suppose that’s your cute way of asking if you passed the test.” She appraised the group from ScanDat. “You can thank this man,” she indicated Stanley, “that you still have jobs. I’m recommending that funding for the project continue.”

  ***

  The fallout from the death of the two Philadelphia agents had yet to reach Agent Sharon, but he knew it was only a matter of time. The fact that the two dead agents had been working on a case outside of their supervisor’s direct knowledge complicated the situation, and bought Sharon some much needed time to conduct his own investigation.

  The only clue he had were the few components that he had recovered from the tunnel. He had brought them to a friend who worked in the small lab in his building, asking him to take an unofficial look. Impatient for results, he picked up his phone and called him a short time later.

  “Mark?”

  “Yeah. Agent Sharon?”

  “Uh huh. Got anything on the samples I gave you?”

  The lab technician hesitated. “I do, but it’s a little odd. Can you come down here?”

  Ten minutes later Sharon stood bent over a microscope, peering into the eyepiece. “I don’t see anything.”

  “Look near the edge,” said Mark.

  “I see a bluish coloring. Is that it?”

  “That’s part of it. Follow it towards the center.”

  Sharon shook his head. He wasn’t seeing anything un
usual. Then he had it. “It looks like a straight line. What is it?” Sharon straightened his back.

  “I’m not sure what the substance is yet, and it might not really matter. What does matter is that what you were looking at is the partial serial number of an IC.”

  “An integrated circuit? A chip?”

  “That’s right,” said Mark. “But the number has been chemically removed.”

  “Who would go to that kind of trouble?” asked Sharon.

  “I don’t know, but it would entail some effort.”

  “Is there any technical reason to do that?”

  Mark shook his head. “The only reason I can think of is security. Maybe even paranoia.”

  Sharon gestured towards the rest of his samples, sitting next to the microscope. “What about these?”

  “One partial that wouldn’t be traceable.”

  “What was it?”

  Marked picked up a tiny scrap. “The bottom half of one digit, probably from a serial number, on a piece of ceramic.”

  “What kind of ceramic?” asked Sharon.

  “It was used in a capacitor. The shape of the digit was curved, like it could have been a six, or maybe an eight or a five. It would have come from the second part of the string of numbers, based on its positioning. That’s all I’ve got. Want your stuff back?”

  “Yeah. Thanks a lot, Mark. And if anyone asks, I was here to see if you wanted to go out for a drink some night.”

  “Gee, a date. I’m flattered.”

  Sharon laughed. “You should be.”

  ***

  Sharon was impressed with Justin’s abilities, but especially valued his obvious loyalty. The young man’s discretion regarding the use of Omnivore had proven his trustworthiness. Sharon told him about the electronic components he had found, but decided for Justin’s sake not to reveal the details about where they came from, or the events in the tunnel.

  “We need to find the manufacturer of ceramic-based capacitors that look something like this,” said Sharon. He held up a picture of a sample that Mark had printed out for him. “The original was fried, but part of it was left behind, and someone doesn’t want us to find out where it was made.”