Текст книги "Gideon’s Sword"

Автор книги: Lincoln Child

Соавторы: Douglas Preston
сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 2 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

4

Midnight. Gideon Crew slouched down the street, hands in his pockets, baseball cap turned backward, filthy shirt untucked beneath a greasy trench coat, baggy pants hanging halfway down his ass, thinking how lucky he was that today was trash day in suburban Brookland, Washington, DC.

He turned the corner of Kearny Street and passed the house: a shabby bungalow with an overgrown lawn surrounded by a white picket fence only partially painted. And, of course, a lovely overflowing trash can sat at the end of the walkway, a fearful stench of rotting shrimp hovering in the muggy air. He paused at the can, looking about furtively. Then he dove in with one hand, digging deep, groping among the garbage as he went. His hand encountered something that felt like french fries and he pulled up a handful, confirmed they were fries, tossed them back.

He saw a flash of movement. A scrawny, one-eyed cat came slinking out from a hedge.

“Hungry, partner?”

The cat made a low meow and crept over, tail twitching warily. Gideon offered it a fry. It sniffed at it suspiciously, ate it, then meowed again, louder.

Gideon tossed the cat a small handful. “That’s all, kiddo. Any idea how bad trans-fatty acids are for you?”

The cat settled down to nosh.

Gideon dove in again, stirring the garbage with his arm, this time turning up a wad of discarded papers. Quickly sorting through them, he saw they were some little child’s math homework – straight A’s, he noted with approval. Why were they thrown away? Should be framed.

He pushed them back in, dug out a chicken drumstick, and set it aside for the cat. He reached in again, both hands this time, wriggling downward, encountering something slimy, fumbling deeper, his fingers working through various semi-solid things before encountering more papers. Grasping them and working them to the surface, he saw they were just what he was looking for: discarded bills. And among them was the top half of a phone bill.

Jackpot.

“Hey!” He heard a shout and looked up. There was the homeowner himself, Lamoine Hopkins, a small, thin African American man, excitedly pointing his arm. “Hey! Get the fuck outta here!”

In no hurry, glad of the unexpected opportunity to interact with one of his targets, Gideon shoved the papers into his pocket. “Can’t a man feed himself?” He held up the drumstick.

“Go feed yourself somewhere else!” the man shrilled. “This is a decent neighborhood! That’s my trash!”

“Come on, man, don’t be like that.”

The man took out his cell phone. “You see this? I’m calling the cops!”

“Hey, no harm done, man.”

“Hello?” said the man, speaking theatrically into the phone, “there’s an intruder on my property, rifling my trash! Thirty-five seventeen Kearny Street Northeast!”

“Sorry,” Gideon mumbled, shambling off with the drumstick in one hand.

“I need a squad car, right now!” shrilled the man. “He’s trying to get away!”

Gideon tossed the drumstick in the direction of the cat, shuffled off around the corner, and then picked up his pace. He quickly wiped his hands and arms as thoroughly as he could on his cap, discarded it, turned his Salvation Army coat inside out – revealing an immaculate blue trench coat – and put it on, tucked in his shirt, then slicked back his hair with a comb. As he reached his rental car a few blocks off, a police cruiser passed by, giving him only the briefest of glances. He slipped in and started the engine, rejoicing at his good fortune. Not only did he get what he’d come for, but he’d met Mr. Lamoine Hopkins in person – and had such a lovely chat with him.

That would come in handy.

From his motel room, Gideon began cold-calling the numbers on Hopkins’s phone bill the next morning. He worked his way through a succession of Hopkins’s friends until on the fifth call he struck pay dirt.

“Heart of Virginia Mall, tech support,” came the voice. “Kenny Roman speaking.”

Tech support.Quickly, Gideon turned on a digital recorder plugged into a line-splitter on the phone line. “Mr. Roman?”

“Yes?”

“My name is Eric, and I’m calling on behalf of the Sutherland Finance Company.”

“Yeah? What do you want?”

“It’s about the loan on your 2007 Dodge Dakota.”

“What Dakota?”

“The loan is three months overdue, sir, and I’m afraid that Sutherland Finance—”

“What are you talking about? I don’t have any Dakota.”

“Mr. Roman, I understand these are difficult financial times, but if we don’t receive the amount currently overdue—”

“Look, buddy, dig some of the wax outta your ears, will you? You’ve got the wrong person. I don’t even own a pickup. Suck​—​My​—​Dick.” There was a clickas the line went dead.

Gideon hung up. He snapped off the digital recorder. Then he listened three times to the exchange he’d just recorded. What are you talking about? I don’t have any Dakota,Gideon mimicked aloud. Look, buddy, dig some of the wax outta your ears, will you? You’ve got the wrong person. I don’t even own a pickup.He repeated the phrases many times, in different combinations, until he felt he had the inflections, tone, rhythms down just about right.

He picked up the phone and dialed again: this time, the IT department at Fort Belvoir.

“IT,” came the response. It was Lamoine Hopkins’s voice.

“Lamoine?” Gideon said, whispering. “It’s Kenny.”

“Kenny, what the hell?” Hopkins sounded instantly suspicious. “What’s with the whispering?”

“Got a fucking cold. And…what I got to say is sensitive.”

“Sensitive? What do you mean?”

“Lamoine, you got a problem.”

“Me? I got a problem? What do you mean?”

Gideon consulted a sheet of scribbled notes. “I got a call from a guy named Roger Winters.”

“Winters? Winterscalled you?”

“Yeah. Said there was a problem. He asked me how many times you’d called me from work, that kind of shit.”

“Oh my God.”

“Yeah.

“He wanted to know,” Gideon-as-Kenny asked, “if you’d called me on your office computer, using VoIP or Skype.”

“Christ, that would be a violation of security! I’ve never done that!”

“Man said you had.”

Gideon could hear Lamoine breathing heavily. “But it isn’t true!”

“That’s what I told him. Listen, Lamoine, there’s a security audit going on over there, I’ll bet you anything, and somehow they’re on your case.”

“What am I going to do?” Hopkins fairly wailed. “I haven’t done anything wrong! I mean, I couldn’t make a VoIP call from here even if I wanted to!”

“Why not?”

“The firewall.”

“There are ways to get around a firewall.”

“Are you kidding me? We’re a classified facility!”

“There’s alwaysa way.”

“For Chrissakes, Kenny, I knowthere isn’t a way. I’m IT, remember? Just like you. There’s only one outgoing port in the entire network, and all that it allows past is passphrase-​encrypted packets from specific nodes, all of which are secure. And even then the packets can only go to certain external IPs. All the classified documents in this archive are digitized, they’re super-paranoid about electronic security. There’s no way in hell I could call out on Skype! I can’t even send out e-mail!”

Gideon coughed, sniffed, blew his nose. “Don’t you know the port number?”

“Sure, but I don’t have access to the weekly passphrases.”

“Does your boss, Winters, have access?”

“No. Only, like, the top three in the organization get the passphrase – director, deputy director, and security director. I mean, with that passphrase you could pretty much e-mail out any classified document in here.”

“Don’t you guys in IT generate the passphrases?”

“You kidding? It comes down from the spooks in a secure envelope. I mean, they walkthe sucker over here. It never enters anyelectronic system – it’s written down by hand on a piece of frigging paper.”

“Problem is that port number,” said Gideon. “Is that written down?”

“It’s kept in a safe. But a lot of people know it.”

Gideon grunted. “Sounds to me like you’re being framed. Like maybe one of the top guys screwed up and is looking for someone else to take the fall. ‘Let’s pin it on Lamoine!’”

“No way.”

“Happens all the time. It’s always the little guys who get shafted. You need to protect yourself, man.”

“How?”

Gideon let the silence build. “I have an idea…it might be a really good one. What was that port number again?”

“Six one five one. What’s that got to do with anything?”

“I’ll check some things, call you back at home tonight. In the meantime, don’t say anything about this to anybody, just sit tight, do your job, keep your head down. Don’t call me back – they’re no doubt logging your calls. We’ll talk when you get home.”

“I can’t believe this. Listen, thanks, Kenny. Really.”

Gideon coughed again. “Hey, what are friends for?”

5

Hanging up the phone, Gideon Crew began flinging off his clothes. He slid open the closet door and laid a garment bag on the bed. From it he removed a fragrant, custom-cut Turnbull & Asser shirt, shifted his lanky frame into it, and buttoned it up. Next came a blue Thomas Mahon bespoke suit. He pulled on the pants, belted them, whipped on a Spitalfield flower tie (where did the English get those names?), tied it with a crisp tug, shrugged on the jacket. He massaged some hair gel between his palms and used it to slick back his floppy hair. As a final touch, he combed a smidgen of gray into his sideburns, which added an instant five years to his age.

He turned to look at himself in the mirror. Thirty-two hundred dollars for the new persona – shirt, suit, shoes, belt, tie, haircut – twenty-nine hundred for travel, motel, car, and driver. All on four brand-new credit cards obtained and maxed out for just this purpose, with virtually no hope of being paid off.

Welcome to America.

The car was already waiting for him in front of the motel, a black Lincoln Navigator; he slipped into the back and handed the driver the address. Gideon settled himself into the soft kid leather as the car pulled away, arranging his face, composing himself, and trying not to think of the three-hundred-dollar-an-hour price tag. Or, for that matter, the much higher price tag attached to the scam he was about to perpetrate, if he were to get caught…

Traffic was light and thirty minutes later the car pulled into the entrance to Fort Belvoir, which housed INSCOM’s Directorate of Information Management: a low, 1960s-modern building of exceptional hideousness set amid locust trees and surrounded by a huge parking lot.

Somewhere inside the building sat Lamoine Hopkins, no doubt sweating bullets. And somewhere else inside the building was the classified memo written by Gideon’s own father.

“Pull up to the front and wait for me,” said Gideon. He realized his voice was squeaky with nervousness, and he swallowed, trying to relax his neck muscles.

“I’m sorry, sir, but it says No Standing.”

He cleared his throat, producing a smooth, low, confident voice. “If anyone asks, say Congressman Wilcyzek is meeting with General Moorehead. But if they insist, don’t make a scene, just go ahead and move. I shouldn’t be more than ten minutes.”

“Yes, sir.”

Gideon exited the vehicle and headed down the walkway; he pushed through the doors and headed for the reception/information desks. The broad lobby was full of military personnel and self-important civilians briskly coming and going. God, he hated Washington.

With a cold smile, Gideon went up to the woman at the desk. She had carefully coiffed blue hair, neat as a pin, clearly a stickler for procedure – someone who took her work seriously. Couldn’t ask for better. Those who followed the rules were the most predictable.

He smiled and​—​​speaking into the air just a few inches above her head​—​​said, “Congressman Wilcyzek here to see Deputy Commander General Thomas Moorehead. I’m…” He glanced at his watch. “…three minutes early.”

She straightened up like a shot. “Of course, Congressman. Just a moment.” She lifted a phone, pressed a button, spoke for a moment. She glanced at Gideon. “Excuse me, Congressman, can you spell your name, please?”

With a sigh of irritation he spelled it out, making it abundantly clear that she should have known the spelling already—​​indeed, he was careful to cultivate an air of someone who expected to be recognized, who had only contempt for the ignorance of those who did not.

She pursed her lips, got back on the phone. A short conversation followed, and then she hung up. “Congressman, I’m terribly sorry, but the general is out for the day and his secretary has no record of the appointment. Are you sure…?” She faltered when Gideon fixed her with a severe look.

“Am I sure?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

Her lips were now fully pursed, her blue hair beginning to quiver with suppressed offense.

He looked at his watch, looked up at her. “Mrs.…?”

“Wilson,” she said.

He slipped a piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to her. “You can check for yourself.”

It was an e-mail he had concocted, allegedly from the general’s secretary, confirming the appointment with the general he’d already known would be out. She read it and returned it to him. “I’m very sorry, he doesn’t seem to be in. Shall I call his secretary again?”

Gideon continued to glare at her, fixing her with a subzero stare. “I should like to speak to his secretary myself.”

She faltered, removed the phone from its cradle, and handed it to him, but not before dialing the number.

“Excuse me, Mrs. Wilson, but this is a classified matter. Do you mind?”

Her face, which had gradually darkened, now flushed rose. She stood up silently and took a step away from her desk. He put the receiver to his ear. The phone was ringing, but turning to block her view, he depressed the button and, almost imperceptibly, dialed another extension – this time, the secretary to General Shorthouse, the director himself.

Only, like, the top three in the organization get the passphrase​—​director, deputy director, and security director…

“Director’s office,” came the secretary’s voice.

Speaking quietly and rapidly, and summoning the voice of the man who’d confronted him at the trash cans the night before, he said: “This is Lamoine Hopkins in IT returning the general’s call. It’s urgent – a security breach.”

“Just a moment.”

He waited. After a minute, General Shorthouse came on. “Yes? What’s the problem? I didn’t call you.”

“I’m sorry, General,” said Gideon, speaking like Hopkins but now in a low, unctuous tone, “about the lousy day you must be having.”

“What are you talking about, Hopkins?”

“Your system being down, sir, and the backup not kicking in.”

“It’s not down.”

“General? We’re showing your whole grid as down. It’s a security violation, sir – and you know what thatmeans.”

“That’s preposterous. My computer’s on right now and working perfectly. And why are you calling me from reception?”

“General, that’s part of the problem. The telephony matrix is tied into the computer network and it’s giving false readings. Log off and log back on, please, while I trace.” Gideon glanced over at the receptionist, who was still standing to one side, making a conscientious effort not to overhear.

He heard the tapping of keys. “Done.”

“Funny, I’m not reading any packet activity from your network address. Try signing off again.”

More tapping of keys.

“Nothing, General. Looks like your ID might have been compromised. This is bad – it’s going to require a report, an investigation. And it wouldbe your system. I’m so sorry, sir.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Hopkins. I’m sure we can fix it.”

“Well…we can give it a shot. But I’ll have to try resetting, and then accessing your account from down here. I’m going to need your ID and passphrase, please.”

A pause. “I’m not sure I can give you that.”

“You may not realize this, but in the case of network resets the passphrase is automatically changed, so you’re allowed to release the passphrase internally to IT. If you feel uncomfortable with that, sir, I understand, but then I’ll have to call the NSA for a passphrase override, I’m really sorry—”

“All right, Hopkins. I wasn’t aware of that regulation.” He gave Gideon the passphrase and ID. Gideon jotted it down.

After a moment, with huge relief in his voice, Gideon said: “Whew. That reset did it, sir. Apparently, it was just a hung screen. No security breach. You’re good to go.”

“Excellent.”

Gideon depressed the key and turned to the receptionist. “Sorry to bother you,” he said, handing her the receiver. “Everything’s straightened out.” He walked briskly out of the building to the waiting car.

Thirty minutes later he was back in his motel room, stretched out on the bed, laptop connected to an unsecured computer in the bowels of the General Services Administration that he’d remotely hijacked. He had chosen to target the GSA – the vast government bureaucracy that handles supplies, equipment, procedures, and the like – because he knew it would be a relatively easy mark, and yet one still within the government security perimeter.

Hopkins had explained—​unwittingly, of course—​​that the INSCOM archive could only send documents to previously authorized IP addresses, and unfortunately most of those were also inside classified perimeters…except for one: the National Security Archives at George Washington University. This private archive, the largest in the world outside the Library of Congress, collected vast amounts of government documents, including virtually everything being routinely declassified as part of the Mandatory Declassification Review: the government’s program for declassifying documents under several laws requiring them to do so. A veritable Amazon of information flowed into this archive on a daily basis.

Via the GSA computer, Gideon sent an automated request to the INSCOM secure archive at George Washington via port 6151, directing that a PDF file of a certain classified document be transmitted out through the same port, authorized via General Shorthouse’s passphrase, to be added to a routine dump of Cold War declassified documents headed for the National Security Archives daily batch files. The file was duly transmitted; it passed through the firewall at the sole authorized port, where the passphrase was examined and approved; and the document was subsequently routed to George Washington University and stored with millions of others in one of the archive databases.

Thus, Gideon had successfully arranged for the erroneous declassification of a classified document and hid it within a huge stream of data leaving the secure government perimeter. Now all that remained was to retrieve the document.

The next morning, at around eleven, a certain rumpled yet undeniably charming visiting professor by the name of Irwin Beauchamp, dressed in tweeds, mismatched corduroys, beaten-up wing tips, and a knitted tie (thirty-two dollars; Salvation Army) entered the Gelman Library at George Washington University and requested a slew of documents. His identity was not yet in the system and he had lost his temporary library card, but a kindly secretary took pity on the scatterbrained fellow and allowed him access to the system. Half an hour later, Beauchamp departed the building with a slender manila folder under his arm.

Back in the motel, Gideon Crew spread out the papers from the folder with a trembling hand. The moment of truth had arrived – the truth that would make him either free, or merely more miserable.

6

A Critique of the Thresher Discrete Logarithm Encryption Standard EVP-4: A Theoretical Back-Door Cryptanalysis Attack Strategy Using a Group of φ-Torsion Points of an Elliptic Curve in Characteristic φ.

Gideon Crew had studied plenty of advanced mathematics in college and, later, at MIT, but the math in this paper was still way over his head. Nevertheless, he understood enough to realize what he had in his hands was the smoking gun. This was the memo his father had written to critique Thresher, the memo his mother said had been destroyed. Yet it hadn’t been. Most likely, the bastard responsible – believing it too difficult or risky to destroy the document outright – had stuck it into an archive he believed would never be declassified. After all, what American general in the era of the Berlin Wall would have believed the Cold War could ever end?

He continued reading, heart racing, until, finally, he came to the final paragraphs. They were written in the dry language of science-speak, but what they said was pure dynamite.

In conclusion, it is the author’s opinion that the proposed Thresher Encryption Standard EVP-4, based on the theory of discrete logarithms, is flawed. The author has demonstrated that there exists a potential class of algorithms, based on the theory of elliptic functions defined over the complex numbers, which can solve certain discrete logarithm functions in real-time computing parameters. While the author has been as yet unable to identify specific algorithms, he has demonstrated herein that it is possible to do so.

The proposed Thresher standard is therefore vulnerable. If this standard is adopted, the author believes that, given the high quality of Soviet mathematical research, codes developed from this standard could be broken within a relatively short period of time.

The author strongly recommends that Thresher Encryption Standard EVP-4 not be adopted in its current form.

That was it. Proof that his father had been framed. And then murdered. Gideon Crew already knew all about the man who had done it: Lieutenant General (ret.) Chamblee S. Tucker, currently CEO of Tucker and Associates, one of the high-profile defense industry lobbying firms on K Street. They represented many of the country’s largest defense contractors, and Tucker had leveraged himself to the hilt in order to finance the firm. He was raking in huge bucks, but they managed to go right back out the door thanks to his extravagant lifestyle.

By itself, this document meant little. Gideon knew that anything could be counterfeited – or be claimed to have been counterfeited. The document wasn’t an endpoint; it was a starting point for the little surprise he had planned for Chamblee S. Tucker.

Using the remote computer he had previously hijacked at the General Services Administration, Gideon stripped the document of its classification watermarks and sent it to a dozen large computer databases worldwide. Having thus secured the document from destruction, he sent an e-mail directly from his own computer to [email protected] with the document as an attachment. The covering e-mail read:

General Tucker:

I know what you did. I know why you did it. I know how you did it.

On Monday, I’m sending the attached file to various correspondents at the Post, Times, AP, and network news channels – with an explanation.

Have a nice weekend.

Gideon Crew