The Hidden Truth: A Science Fiction Techno-Thriller

by Hans G. Schantz

  “This is what all the trouble is about?” Mr. Patel was incredulous. “This old physics book is what they call cyber-terror?”

  “It’s all a cover story of some kind,” my father explained. “Somehow, this Lodge book is a clue to a very important secret: a secret so important that someone high up in the government is willing to go to extreme lengths to suppress it and keep people like our sons from looking into it.”

  “The state troopers here last night,” Mr. Patel began, “they were here looking for my boy, all because of this?”

  “I’m sure the state troopers have no idea about the Heaviside paper or the Lodge book or whatever the hidden truth is,” my father clarified. “They honestly believe what they’ve been told – that ‘cyber-terrorists’ were trying to break into a TVA nuclear plant from the truck stop. If they find our boys, they will be arrested, handed over to the people who do know the score. They might even kill our boys. The girl who gave my son the list with this book on it was murdered. The co-worker from whom she got the list was murdered. Some of the historical evidence the boys found suggests that a number of the famous scientists who worked on this problem a century ago were killed or silenced. I thought it was all a coincidence, but the fact that there could be all this trouble, this extreme reaction, it all makes me think there’s really something to it. We need to be very, very careful.”

  “This can’t happen.” Now Mr. Patel was angry. “This is supposed to be a free country. We work hard. We build a life here. We raise our boy right. And they want to come after him because of some old physics book?”

  “I know some good men, honorable men, men who believe in this country and what it can and ought to be,” my father assured him. “I’ve set up a meeting at their law office this afternoon. I hope you and Amit can come with us.”

  “No, you don’t understand!” Mr. Patel was getting insistent. He spoke with a quiet intensity. “They are here already. They are right here in my hotel, up on the second floor! They checked in late last night. They took a copy of all my surveillance video, and a print out of all the guest information. They are right on top of us!”

  Amit looked stunned. Then his eyes narrowed. “What room are they in, Dad?” He began opening his laptop. His father told him the room numbers. “Maybe we’re right on top of them.” Amit pulled open his software and clicked around a bit. “I have the log files for their internet usage. It looks like a lot of the traffic went over a VPN.” His father looked confused. “A Virtual Private Network. It’s an encrypted tunnel to try to keep your Internet traffic safe from the kind of poking around I’m about to do.”

  “Is this a good idea?” Amit’s father asked him.

  “Is there any way they can detect what you’re doing?” my father asked.

  “I own this network,” Amit said possessively. “They’re playing on my turf now, and there’s no way for them to know what they’re leaving behind in my log files or if I fork their traffic and make a copy of it. If they want to try to frame us for cyber-terror, I want to fight back.”

  “I think you should let him,” my father said. Amit’s dad nodded his head in agreement.

  “I can’t tell exactly what they were looking at last night because all I have right now are the IP headers in the log file – the addresses where all their traffic was going. That’s about to change, because I’m setting the server to record all their traffic in the future.” He paused a minute, fingers clicking decisively across the keyboard. “Done,” he said confidently. He went back and began scrolling through the log file. “Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy. The point of a VPN is to shield all your traffic by encrypting it and routing it to a secure server back at your office. But look at these lags! Their VPN is crap!”

  “You think you can read it?” I asked.

  “Probably not,” Amit acknowledged. “VPNs are always encrypted, or what’s the point of having one. But apparently, the VPN these guys use is so slow that they did a bunch of Omnitia searches outside their secure tunnel. They probably got fed up with the lags.” He kept scanning the log file. “Oh, and here’s something interesting! One of these guys is checking out the Hook Up Landing website. No wonder he doesn’t want the main office IT staff to know about this.

  “What is this Hook Up Landing website?” Mr. Patel asked his son.

  “It’s a dating website…,” Amit began. Then he realized the trap he was getting into. “I… I understand it’s for people interested in… ‘short-term’ relationships.” He looked flustered. “I read about it somewhere,” he insisted. “It has a bad reputation.”

  His father looked at Amit severely.

  “In any event,” Amit continued, regaining his composure, “all this traffic outside the VPN is protected by a much less powerful default encryption. I might be able to hack into it.”

  “That’s a project for another day,” my father cautioned. “We need to get out of here without being seen. You two really do need to accompany us to Knoxville to speak with my lawyer.”

  “I’ll have to come up with something to tell your mom, Amit,” his father said. “I’m not sure she’d be able to deal with our guests if she knew the truth.” Amit’s father led us out the back door. “We’ll see you at the lawyers’ this afternoon.”

  * * *

  “Hi there!” Amit said cheerfully to the receptionist at the law office.

  She looked us over, suspiciously. “May I help you gentlemen?”

  “We’re here to see Greg Parsons,” my father told her.

  “Yes, sir,” the receptionist responded. “Please have a seat, and he’ll be out in just a moment.” She called back to tell Mr. Parsons we were waiting. Amit lingered as the rest of us took our seat.

  “I still have a boyfriend,” the receptionist pre-empted him.

  “So does my girlfriend,” Amit assured her, confidently, “but I don’t have time to compare notes with you just now. I was wondering where the bathroom is?”

  Not long after Amit got back, Mr. Parsons and another man came out and led us back to a conference room.

  “Bill Burke,” the stranger introduced himself to Dad and then shook hands. We all introduced ourselves.

  “Greg said this might be a criminal matter,” Mr. Burke began. “I usually defend more white-collar crimes like fraud, but I may be able to help you.”

  “Before we begin,” Dad cautioned the lawyers, “this is highly confidential. How confident are you that this room is secure?”

  “We take our security very seriously here,” Mr. Burke assured us. “We do a weekly sweep for electronic devices, and we have a professional security company that sweeps through every month or so.”

  “May I ask you to leave your cell phones outside the room?” Dad asked. “We didn’t bring any.”

  Mr. Burke and Mr. Parsons complied with Dad’s request although they probably thought they were humoring him.

  “You know that big ‘cyber-terror’ case in the news this morning? These boys are being sought for it.” Dad explained how we’d uncovered mysterious edits and omissions in old physics books, and how we’d been wardriving to download scans. He handed over a copy of my note from Nicole with the book list and Xueshu Quan’s contact information. He explained how we’d found out about Nicole’s murder and the murder of her co-worker. Finally, he handed out copies of the critical page from Lodge’s Modern Views. They looked dumbfounded. There was a lot of that going around.

  “This has to be the craziest story I’ve ever heard,” Mr. Burke said, shaking his head. He looked at Amit and me. “Boys, I’m your lawyer now. Anything you tell me is protected by attorney-client privilege. That means I cannot be forced to disclose anything you might share with me. Whatever secrets you have are safe with me. If I disclose them, I’m likely to get myself disbarred. That means I lose my job. I get some clients who don’t want to come clean with me and tell me the whole story. They hold back information that eventually comes out anyway, and it takes me by surprise. If there’s anything relevant, you need
to tell me about it now. We can take action to avoid worst-case scenarios, and minimize the likelihood of fines or a jail sentence. You’re both underage, so you might get off with probation. I can’t protect you very well, though, if you let me get surprised when the facts turn up, as they inevitably will.

  “Did you hack into any nuclear or TVA computers?”

  “No, sir,” Amit and I concurred.

  “Now I know computers can be complicated and sometimes you end up doing something you didn’t truly mean to do,” he continued. “So, tell me, did you access them at all, even by mistake or accident?”

  “No, sir,” we confirmed.

  “To the best of your knowledge, this cyber-terror alert is all about these old physics books and this Xueshu Quan person?”

  “I suppose, sir,” I began, “I mean it’s possible that there actually was a cyber-terrorist at the same truck stop at the same time, but I don’t think it’s likely.”

  “Neither do I,” Mr. Burke agreed. “You have two basic options. Normally, I would make sure I had all the facts and then accompany you to the police or the agency investigating the alleged crime. In this case, I don’t see that you have committed any crime. The feds might argue your access to the truck stop wireless network was unauthorized. I don’t think they’d be likely to prevail on that theory since the truck stop gave you the password at an earlier visit and the network is set up for their customers’ use.

  “I’d like to do a little digging first.” Mr. Burke offered. “I think this must be some kind of national security issue – something considered classified or otherwise secret. I want to poke around a bit. I have a private investigator I work with in the DC area. He’s trustworthy and discrete. I can ask him to investigate Xueshu Quan – see who picks up the mail from Quan’s box and where they go.”

  “It would be unwise for any of this to lead back to you, let alone us,” Dad pointed out. “They must know we have their address. They’ll be on guard. And I’d hate for your investigator to get in trouble with these folks. These people have been killing to keep their secrets.”

  “As I said,” Mr. Burke assured Dad, “my investigator is very discrete and very careful, particularly if I emphasize the risks.”

  “Investigators, particularly good ones, are expensive. How much will this cost?” Mr. Patel asked.

  “Seeing as how my son got your son into this, I’ll be paying for it,” Dad offered.

  “I appreciate the offer,” Mr. Patel said, “but let’s discuss it between ourselves later.”

  “While we’re looking into this further,” Mr. Burke continued, “I should advise you what to do if you are approached by the police or federal agents. If they want to ask you questions, you should politely decline to answer any questions without your parents present. If they continue to press you, all you have to do is say the magic words, ‘I refuse to answer any questions without my attorney.’ Then, you should ask ‘Am I free to go?’ In principle, this requires them to either arrest you or let you go. Either way, you don’t talk unless I’m present. In practice, however, they’re likely to keep trying to persuade you to talk.”

  “Don’t they have to read us our rights?” Amit asked.

  “Only if they arrest you, but, they might not arrest you immediately,” Mr. Burke warned us. “Lying to federal officers is a crime, and there’s nothing they like better than to engage you in a long rambling conversation. Then, if they can trip you up the least little bit, find the slightest error or misrepresentation in what you said, they can charge you with lying to federal agents and use the case as leverage against you.

  “In any given situation, you should use your judgment, and you don’t necessarily want to escalate to immediately demanding a lawyer. The general rule is you should never volunteer information to an officer or agent that might in the least way be pertinent to some kind of investigation that might be related to you.

  “The Supreme Court Justice, Robert Jackson, who also served as the prosecutor of the Nazis at the Nuremberg trials, said, ‘Any lawyer worth his salt will tell the suspect in no uncertain terms to make no statement to the police under any circumstances.’”

  “We’ll keep that in mind,” I assured him.

  “It’s trickier than just that,” Mr. Burke added, smiling at our naïvety. “Police can be ruthless and devious in how they get you to incriminate yourself. They can deceive you, lie to you, pressure you, and trick you in order to get an admission from you, to help the prosecutor build a case.

  “They’ll leave you alone in a room a long time to soften you up – bright lights, uncomfortable chair, one-way observation mirror. They’ll send in a scary, intimidating interrogator to work you over in hope of getting you desperate and scared enough to then confide in a friendlier, more supportive interrogator who’ll come along later. That trick is so common it has its own name. It’s called the ‘good-cop, bad-cop’ routine.

  “They’ll take you and your friend in, interrogate you separately and tell each of you that the other has confessed to everything and your only chance to avoid a long sentence is to admit your guilt. They’ll tell you that they already have all the evidence they need to convict you and that it will go easier on you if you take responsibility. They may tell you that they already have your fingerprints or a video of you. They’ll ask you to write a letter of apology – and there’s little more incriminating than a confession written in your own hand. They’ll hand you a cup of coffee, and then take the empty cup when you’re done to surreptitiously collect a sample of your DNA.

  “They have years of experience breaking down hardened criminals. Don’t talk with them. Don’t play their game. Just say the magic words, ‘I refuse to answer any questions without my attorney.’ And, unless they’ve already arrested you, you should ask, ‘Am I free to go?’”

  * * *

  The next morning, Amit got me up to speed on events at the hotel. He’d compared the IP log from the hotel’s current “FBI” guests to the IP activity from some FBI agents who’d stayed at one of the Knoxville locations of the hotel. “Totally inconsistent,” he explained. “Different VPN IP address and completely different protocols. I don’t think they’re actually FBI agents. I told Dad, and he called the sheriff. Dad explained to the sheriff that his new FBI guests seemed a bit suspicious, and would the sheriff please confirm that they were truly FBI agents. So apparently, Sheriff Gunn called the Knoxville office of the FBI, and they had no record of these guys. He told Dad to keep an eye on them and came out with a couple of deputies. They stopped the guys in the lobby as they were coming in and asked them for identification. Sheriff Gunn called the Knoxville office again right in front of them and they said they had no record of them. The sheriff was about to run them in for impersonating Federal agents when they told him to tell the Knoxville office to call the Director of the FBI in Washington. There was a long pause – a couple of minutes or more – and then suddenly the sheriff was apologizing for the misunderstanding.

  “After the FBI guys left, my father apologized to the sheriff for getting him in trouble with the false tip, but the sheriff said, ‘No, that was a good call on your part. There’s something just not right about those guys. The FBI is very territorial. I’ve never heard of FBI agents operating independent of the local office. They should at least have checked in. The Knoxville office seemed pissed off about it, but apparently, someone in the Director’s office told them to mind their own business. Keep an eye open, and don’t hesitate to let me know if you pick up on anything else.’”

  “That doesn’t sound like Sheriff Gunn to be so talkative,” I noted.

  “He and Dad have a good relationship,” Amit explained, “Dad tips him off all the time when he sees suspicious activity. It makes the sheriff look good to the state troopers when he gets an arrest or tips them off. Trust me, you don’t want to have to clean up a room after someone has used the bathtub to make meth.”

  “Who are those guys, really,” I wondered.

  “Some s
ecret group within the FBI?” Amit speculated. “Some group with the power to pose as FBI agents and make the FBI back them up in a pinch? It’s hard to tell.”

  * * *

  With all the anxiety and pressure, neither Amit nor I felt like preparing for the pre-season debate tournament. Both of us had begun the summer with the goal of getting prepped for it, but between all our other projects, we hadn’t done as much preparation as we should. The tournament was a full day affair. Our top competition would be Emma and her partner Sharon. They had just missed out on going to the national debate tournament representing Tennessee and were expecting to go all the way in their senior year. They were very good, very creative, and very formidable.

  David and my Cousin Shawn and were also contenders. They were slick, smooth, and totally unscrupulous. At a tournament last year, I’d caught David strategically editing quotations, removing key words or phrases and inserting ellipses to change their meaning. We proved it to the judge and they not only lost, but also got a reprimand and a suspension. They’d had it in for us ever since.

  The final contenders were Alex and Daniel. They would be sophomores this year and had taken an interest in debate. They didn’t have much experience, but I understood that our debate coach, Mr. Stinson, had been working with them over the summer to get them up to speed.

  The intraschool debate tournament was something of a tradition with Mr. Stinson, our debate coach and teacher. His notion was to get us thinking early about the debate topic and working to collect research. By having our first tournament experience at the beginning of the school year, and by continuing to practice, review and improve ourselves, we’d be experienced veteran debaters by the time the first interschool tournaments rolled around in late October. Mr. Stinson’s insistence on an early start gave the Lee County High debate team a huge advantage, even over the top Knoxville debate programs.

  We beat Sharon and Emma in our first match-up, and handily trounced Alex and Daniel, in both our debates with them. We’d also lost one round to Shawn and David. Going into the sixth and final round, we had a rematch with Sharon and Emma that would decide the tournament.