by Jack Bowie
And what he really didn’t need was the “help” from the FBI.
Couldn’t Rodgers see how fishy this whole thing was? All Fibbies ever wanted to do was to stick their noses in your business, come up with a startling revelation, and grab your case. He doubted they’d even spend any more time on it.
He was pissed at Rodgers for putting up with their crap but knew the captain didn’t have a choice. There wasn’t any real proof that the terrorist story was false, but there were too many little things that were off. He had to get some proof.
There was this odd consultant. He thinks he knows more than God, but he might turn up something useful. If he finds anything, Fowler would throw it back in all their faces. But if his assistance ever got out, the detective would be lucky to keep his pension.
* * *
Braxton trudged up the last flight of stairs. He was sweaty, tired, and in a foul mood. The taxi had hit traffic on the way to National and they had inched along the GW Parkway for an hour. He had missed the 6:30 shuttle, had been forced to settle for a packed one at 7:30, and had spent the flight wedged between two patent attorneys recounting their day’s conquests. At least the trip on the T had been uneventful. It was now 10:30 and he could think of nothing better than a hot shower before calling it a night.
He dropped his bag on the floor of the hall and fished in four different pockets before he found his keys. As he reached to turn the deadbolt, he froze.
It was already pulled back.
Options raced through his head: call out for help, rush downstairs, hope for surprise and storm in. There hadn’t been much crime in this part of Cambridge for the past few years, but you always had to be careful. On the other hand, maybe he just forgot to set the lock when he left.
He cautiously pushed open the door a few inches and saw light coming from the room. Just as he was about to retreat to the manager’s office he heard a familiar clicking coming from inside. Grabbing his bag, he tossed it into living room and went immediately to the study.
“Paul, what the hell are you doing here this time of night?”
Terrel was hunched over his MacBook. The floor of the study was littered with listings and an empty pizza box teetered on the edge of the desk. A heavy odor of garlic floated in the air.
Without bothering to look up, Terrel blurted out a “Hi man! How was the trip?”
“The trip was fine. Now what are you doing here?”
“I have to get my manual for the new quant routines finished by tomorrow. I knew you were out of town so I didn’t think you’d mind if I used the place.” He finally finished typing and turned to look at his neighbor. “You look beat, man. You need to get more rest.” Terrel turned and went back to his typing.
Braxton shouldn’t have been that surprised. He didn’t mind Terrel using the hookup but he wished he would be a little more careful.
“Next time lock the door please. No use inviting trouble.”
“Sure thing, Adam. I’ll be done in a few minutes.”
Braxton shook his head and smiled. “Don’t stay too late, Paul. I’m gonna take a shower and pack it in. And please don’t forget to lock up.”
Terrel was still pounding away when Braxton fell into a deep sleep.
Chapter 20
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Thursday, 6:30 a.m.
THE CHARLES RIVER slices Greater Boston into two pieces: an upper half with Cambridge and its ivy-covered universities, high tech companies, and eclectic population; and Boston proper with its soaring skyline, gold-domed State House, and ethnic neighborhoods. The river is both a geographic and recreational focal point for the area. On its wandering course to the Massachusetts Bay, the river passes some of the State’s most revered, and valuable property: Harvard University, Boston University, Northeastern University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Boston Museum of Science, and the Esplanade’s Hatch Shell, site of the Boston Pop’s renowned Fourth of July concerts. The river is also home to innumerable private, scholastic, and university crew teams whose pencil-like shells can be regularly seen on its surface from April through November.
Alongside the river run two of the area’s busiest roads: Memorial Drive on the Cambridge side, and Storrow Drive on the Boston shore. Every morning tens of thousands of commuters use the roads to reach in-town offices. Running paths, squeezed between the heavily traveled routes and the river’s edge as a contribution to healthy living, complete the urban transportation complex.
The paths especially, are truly a social catalyst. Dedicated joggers brave the worst of Boston’s weather throughout the year to log their daily run. Completely egalitarian in nature, the paths accept executives, students, and laborers alike, many of the participants forming friendships only consummated along the winding macadam trails.
Seven bridges cross the slow, lazy water in the short five and one-half miles between the river’s elbow at Harvard Stadium in the west and the Charles River Dam in the east: Eliot Bridge at Route 2 and Mt. Auburn Hospital; the JFK Memorial Bridge on Boylston just outside of Harvard Square; the Western Avenue Bridge near Harvard Business School; the Mass Turnpike access at the River Street Bridge; the BU Bridge connecting Boston University to its Cambridge colleagues; the Harvard Bridge at Massachusetts Avenue, the primary route from the Back Bay to MIT and Harvard Square; and the Longfellow Bridge at the foot of Charles Street next to the Massachusetts General Hospital. The bridges connect the paths on each bank of the river like the rungs of a ladder and make a thankfully varied landscape for the thousands of runners that frequent the Charles’ banks.
Braxton had returned from a run one summer morning and explained to his wife that there were 254 unique circuits possible starting at the JFK, looping around the river, and returning back to Boylston Street, never retracing a particular segment.
She had declared him an incurable nerd.
She had probably been right.
This morning, Braxton had risen early, put on his running suit, and headed out for the Charles. It was a bright, clear Boston spring day. The chill from the hostile New England winter had passed, and the humidity of Boston’s summer had not yet laid its oppressive blanket over the city. The blossoms were just coming out on the dogwood trees planted along the Charles’ banks, and gave a sweet smell to the air as Braxton ran the tour. It was a time of rebirth and awakening for the city; a time to put the solitude of a long cold winter into the past.
He chose a leisurely pace, one conducive to thoughtful introspection. Despite the difficulties of his trip to D.C., he felt more positive than he had in a long time.
The morning sun was warm on his face as he crossed the JFK Bridge to the Boston side of the river. It was still early and there were few other runners on the pathway. He turned at the Law School and headed east toward Boston.
As he jogged along the pathway his mind returned to the Ramal case. Could there be a connection between the student’s death and the incident report? He wasn’t so naive to believe that high technology couldn’t raise dangerous passions. Companies like Amazon and Google continued to invest billions in e-commerce. His previous employer, Century Computer, had bet its future on the technology and pulled itself out of near bankruptcy. If there was a connection between Ramal’s death and the CERT/CC message, they all were facing a very dangerous threat.
When he passed Harvard Business School, he decided to cut his run short and turned left to return to Cambridge over the Western Avenue Bridge. He needed to get back to his computer and finish the traffic analysis on the GW gateway. He didn’t want to get melodramatic, but he felt an urgency that he couldn’t shake. He would see what the program had caught, then decide his next steps.
Terrel was just leaving his apartment when Braxton reached his door. “Morning, Paul.”
“Hey, Adam, how’s it going?” The gangly programmer was dressed in jeans and a tie-dyed T-shirt. His hair was loose, a tangle of black curls. “Did you get my mail?”
“Yup. Looking forward to the
trip. Thanks. Like to come in for a drink before you head out?”
“Sure.”
Braxton knew that he and his friend shared a unique trait; they both took their morning caffeine cold. He retrieved two Cokes from the refrigerator and they collapsed on the living room sofa.
“You look a lot better than last night,” Terrel finally offered. “The trip must have been a killer.”
Braxton smiled. “An interesting choice of words, Paul. The guy I was looking for is dead.”
Terrel’s head snapped up. “Jesus, Adam. When? What happened?”
Braxton related his experiences at GW and his discussions with Detective Fowler. “I looked through all of Ramal’s stuff but I couldn’t find anything that looked like a monitor program. There wasn’t a log either. He was a hell of an organizer but he sure didn’t leave any tracks.”
“Do you think he was really a terrorist?”
“I don’t know. They found a bunch of flyers and some electronics for explosives, but I couldn’t find any electronic files on terrorism or explosives. I checked his bookmark file and the links were all straight computer science. Nothing at all from any of the fringe sites. It just doesn’t make sense.”
Braxton felt his early morning bravado eroding away. Maybe he was reaching. Every time he went over the events, they just raised more questions. He had made little progress and there were no signs that this investigation was going anywhere.
“Look, there’s got to be some explanation for his message,” Terrel responded. “He must have been running a fairly sophisticated detector. I wonder why you couldn’t find it?”
“Beats me,” Braxton said. “The monitor I wrote before I left for D.C. did generate some interesting results. There were definitely messages coming out of the gateway that shouldn’t be. But how did Ramal find it?”
“What about the time?”
Braxton looked at his watch. “It’s about 7:45. That reminds me. I have to call Fowler this morning and send a note to Flanagan at the Center.”
Terrel shook his head. “No, Adam. Not the time now. The time on Ramal’s files. Can you track his activities by the time stamps?”
“Damn. Of course. The directory listings the FBI left didn’t show the time stamps. I forgot all about them.”
Braxton felt like an idiot. Computer systems routinely “stamp” or mark a file every time it is modified or created. This piece of information becomes a part of the hidden information in the header of the file. Unless it is specifically requested, it might not be printed in a directory listing. “GW gave me access to Ramal’s network files. Let’s see what he left us.”
He rushed into the study. Terrel followed and pulled up one of the extra chairs. Braxton logged in and accessed Ramal’s account at GW. He requested a directory listing with dates and times, and they watched as the lines filled the screen.
“When did you say Ramal died?” Terrel asked.
“Sunday,” Braxton replied.
“Something’s weird here, man.”
“You’re right.” Braxton ran his finger down the screen. “The most recent date on these files is Friday. Ramal sent us that note just before he died. He would have had to update some of his files since then. Especially the analysis files. Someone deleted all of the most recent versions.”
“Could the FBI have done it accidentally?”
“No. I’m sure they had the SysOps at GW do the dump. Someone wanted to erase any record of Ramal’s recent work and the easiest way would be to simply delete everything after a certain date.”
“And that would also be a lot less obvious than deleting all the data files or all the executables,” Terrel added.
“Well, it sure fooled me.” Braxton dropped his head into his hands and rubbed his forehead. He could feel the muscles clamping around his temples. “Somebody knows what they’re doing.”
“Can you recover the files?” Terrel asked hopefully.
“Not from the server. If we still had his laptop, maybe, but it’s long gone.” He turned back to the keyboard. “But let’s see if we can piece together anything more.”
* * *
On his way into the Capitol, Nicholson had finished working out his strategy. He had arrived in his office at 7:30 and by 8:00 had listed the critical steps he would take.
He had determined that the remailer used was of the Pseudonymous type. These systems were theoretically crackable since they supported replies. The from address was an artificial address on the remailer. An internal table on the system kept the correspondence, or map, between the generated address and the actual sender. When a reply was received, the remailer simply looked up the real address and forwarded the email.
All he had to do was break into the system, find the mapping table, and read it to find the original sender. Unfortunately there were two problems. First, the mapping tables were encrypted, in this case with a military–grade algorithm. Second, the messages didn’t go through a single remailer, but multiple, operating in collaboration. Emails were passed from one to the next before reaching their destination. Each system had its own map table, compounding the tracking process.
He might be able to crack it eventually, but the time and effort would be prohibitive. He needed a different approach.
The messages could only be coming from someone familiar with the Lynch case. That meant the cops, the media, or someone close to the family. The police would never take so circuitous an approach, it was too close to entrapment, so that left reporters or the family. He needed to find someone that had access to personal information on the Lynches as well as to the public newspaper files.
The timing of the threat was also confusing. Why wait until now to come forward? Was the information just discovered? Why did the blackmailer choose this time to use his knowledge? Did it have to do with any of the Senator’s current activities? There were too many possibilities.
He would put these questions aside for the moment. Most important was tracing the whereabouts of everyone connected with Senator Kenneth Lynch twenty years ago.
Normally Nicholson would simply order Potterfield’s interns to do the leg work, but he needed to avoid any undue visibility. They could work on the follow up, after he had some specific individuals identified. Connections to the Lynch affair had to be kept completely invisible.
He left the Russell Building at 9:00 and walked down 2nd to the Library of Congress. After a little help from a friendly library matron, he was hard at work. Two hours later his eyes were teared and bloodshot, but he had the name of every reporter who had covered the scandal. Most were from the Washington Post and Baltimore Sun, but there had been a few from smaller Virginia and Maryland papers. None sounded familiar to Nicholson. He expected they all had either retired or found jobs on other papers over the ensuing years. At least neither Woodward nor Bernstein was on the list.
The same papers had also covered Lynch’s funeral, despite the fact that Lynch had been “old news” at the time. He had left a wife and daughter. The photographs were faded but he could still make out the pain and anguish on their faces. The previous year’s scandal had taken its toll on them as well.
Aside from the reporters, there were few mourners at the graveside. Nicholson knew the hypocrisy of the Washington scene. No one ever wants to be associated with a fallen idol. It’s too painful a reminder of one’s own fallibility. That had all been factored into their plans.
Nicholson did recognize Senators Fitzgerald and Okima, longtime Lynch colleagues, and Gowling, the representative from Lynch’s Virginia district. A couple of other faces were unfamiliar, so he made a copy of the article for later reference.
The computer index found no other citations for Lynch. The wife had simply disappeared. He would have to try another route to track her down.
Nicholson returned to his office and assigned the list of reporters to two new interns from the University of Virginia. He told them he needed backgrounds and current locations to verify their credentials for possible freelance w
ork. They excitedly left his office, eager to help the wheels of Congress move more smoothly.
Pleased with the progress so far, at 11:45 Nicholson left to get some lunch.
Chapter 21
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Thursday, 10:30 p.m.
BRAXTON AND TERREL had spent over two hours analyzing Ramal’s files and looking for any clues as to what he had been studying. The results were disappointing. Whoever had cleaned the account had been very effective.
They went back to Braxton’s program and reviewed the data it had collected over the past two days. There had been a total of seventeen incidents reported by the detector. They occurred at all times of the day and under a range of traffic conditions on the gateway. In almost all ways they appeared to be random.
“So what have we got?” Braxton summarized. “All the incidents are correlated with an unmatched outbound message, and all only occur on one of the two gateways. A program inside that gateway is sending some kind of message to somebody. We don’t know what the message is or who it is going to. That about sum it up?”
The scowl on his face said it all. He was tired and frustrated. The roller coaster ride of this investigation was going downhill and the rest of his life with it.
“Hey, come on man,” Terrel coaxed. He put on his best supportive smile. “We’re making some progress. You’ve verified Ramal’s claim by identifying some kind of a rogue. Maybe it’s a bug but maybe it’s . . . a mole. We’ve isolated it to a single gateway. What’s so special about that gateway? Is it the same as the other?” Terrel’s unbridled enthusiasm could not be ignored.
“A mole, huh? You do have a vivid imagination. Okay, we’ll look at the gateways.” Braxton went back to the screen. “One is an old Sun running UNIX. It probably became overloaded so they bought . . .” he tapped on a few more keys, “ . . . a Century NetGate Model 2400.”