John Sandford - The Fool's Run

When he came up this time, there was no What?

Tried to trace the tracers. Not go to FBI, go to NSA. Scary shit. Recommend stay off wires, use back door only.

Okay. Recommend that you change your main number, leave me only special line.

Will do now.

Need more money?

You got more?

Sure. Will send $10K

'Bye.

Frankly, what I did in Vietnam-it sounds silly now, when I think about it-was run up and down the Ho Chi Minh trail and bug VC telephone lines. Most people don't think about the VC having phone lines and operators and all that, but they did, of course. I'd find a good place, tap into a line, lead it out to a battery-operated radio disguised to look like a lump of mud or a polly-wog or whatever the backroom boys at the CIA thought was good that month, and sneak away. For the next couple of weeks, we'd listen to their phone calls, which, I was told, went mostly like this: "Hey Vang, you see the knockers on that PFC came down with that load of bike tires yesterday? Honest to Ho, I wanted to crawl right in between them and play motorboat, you know what I mean?"

In the course of gathering this intelligence, I met dozens of people from the CIA. Most of them were okay, a few were stone killers, and one or two were terminally stupid. I met only two guys from the National Security Agency. Both were frighteningly smart. Somewhere at the back of my head, I tucked away a personal memo that said, "If you get your ass out of this, don't fuck with the NSA."

After Bobby's warning, I began entering the Whitemark computer through the satellite, the computer that used the codes from the Mersenne Prime. It was an old machine, a minicomputer with its own phone lines. It wasn't used much, but it did have that direct line into the main system. I would call into the satellite, and from there, plug into the main system. If the NSA was watching only the incoming phone lines for the main computer, I could still get in without being noticed. If my presence in the main machine was detected, it would seem that I was working from inside the system itself.

On the morning of day 26, I put in several minor bombs calculated to alter some critical bits of software in a way that would not be immediately detectable, but which would thoroughly screw selected work output.

On day 27, on the same day the Justice Department announced a special task force to investigate the Whitemark relationship with Defense Department officials, I changed the code that did Whitemark's floating-point mathematics. The change would be virtually undetectable, and the resulting design problems would be almost impossible to pinpoint.

At one o'clock on the morning of day 28, as I was working on a couple of final items, Bobby called again.

More phone changes. Believe monitoring entire exchange for data transmissions. Recommend shutdown.

Can I get in one last time?

There was a pause, and then:

If you call special number, can piggyback on me. I call Whitemark, when get in, you put in code, I watch lines. One time only.

Okay.

Tomorrow 10 a.m. your time.

LuEllen was back the next morning, and she and Dace came in with Maggie to watch over my shoulder as we put the last program in. Or tried to.

"Is there any possibility that they could trace us here?" LuEllen asked.

"I don't think so. But with the NSA, you can't be sure. If they do, Bobby will know. We'll get out."

LuEllen looked around the room. "What about fingerprints and everything? We're all over this place."

"If they're good enough to trace us through Bobby's intercepts, we're cooked," I admitted. "All we can do is run for it and hope Anshiser's interference will pay off. Even if they pick up prints, we'd have a day or two. You guys can get out to Mexico, Maggie can get back to Chicago, and I'll take off in my car."

"Shit. That doesn't sound so good," LuEllen said.

"What's the risk, what's the benefit?" Maggie asked.

"I've got a nice finishing touch to put in. And to tell you the truth, I think Bobby's at least as good with phones as anybody at NSA. Besides, they're not expecting him. They don't know we can see the traces coming out."

She thought about it for a minute, pulling at her lip. "Let's do it," she said.

You on line with code?

Yes. 9-second squirt.

Be ready.

Bobby dialed us into Whitemark through the satellite. When it came up, I punched it in, and our modem started transmitting. Two seconds into it, the transmission shut down as though cut with an ax.

"Holy shit," I muttered.

"What?" LuEllen said anxiously.

"Bobby shut us down. I hope."

"You hope?"

"Yeah. I hope it was Bobby."

A second later the phone rang, and we all looked at it like it was a cobra. After a couple of rings, I picked it up and heard the familiar carrier tone. I turned on the modem again.

Those suckers fast. They on line, followed me at least to Rome. Maybe all the way to banana stand.

You okay? We okay?

Yes. But you must shut down now. No more entries or they get us.

Yes. Will call later, still special line.

'Bye.

"What's the special number?" Maggie asked.

"It's a cutout. I don't know the details, but it signals him that I'm trying to reach him. He's changed the main number, the one I used to have, and I don't have it anymore. We don't know exactly what NSA might do if they caught us, but just in case. I mean, if they use chemicals, it's better if I don't know how to get him. If they get the special number out of me, and try to use it, he'll see the trace and get out."

"Good luck on that," LuEllen said.

We all sat and looked at the monitor for a moment. There was nothing on it.

"That's it," I said, feeling suddenly tired. "We're all done."

"Jesus," said Dace.

I looked over at Maggie. "Satisfied?"

"I'm going in to Chicago," she said. "Dillon will be doing a final analysis."

"We'll shut down here. Are you coming back, or should we come there?"

"You wait here. There might be something else Dillon thinks we should do-I don't know what. But maybe something. I'll bring the rest of the money."

She looked pinched, taut. If the job wasn't done now, it would never be done.

Dillon would know.

The figure of Maggie was the best painting I'd ever done. She looked at it when it was finished and said, "It's mine." The day after the end of the attack, I rolled it and slid it into a shipping tube as she packed her clothes.

"This has been a strange experience," she said on the way to National. She had the window down and her hair blew out behind her. "A team like yours opens up all kinds of possibilities. When I get back to Chicago, I'm going to ask Dillon for a crash study of corporate aggression. To work out the limits and the consequences."

"Tell him to call me," I said. "I have some thoughts about it."

"Yes." She turned and stared out the window, lost in thought. "This attack on Whitemark. there's a temptation to write it out, document it, then stash it somewhere. It could be a classic someday. Like Clausewitz's On War."

"Don't use my name," I said. "Call me Ann Smith. Or something equally innovative."

At the airport, I waited until her plane was called and kissed her goodbye. She walked out through the gate with the painting tube under her arm. She looked back once and smiled.

Dace and LuEllen finished packing his apartment. The few things he wanted to keep were put in storage, and the rest of it was sent to a Goodwill store. I spent the afternoon working at the apartment, disassembling the office and cleaning up. A little portable computer with a built-in modem watched the phone, in case Bobby called.

The attack programs we used against Whitemark had been written in a deliberately structured, functional, but inelegant programming style. If NSA or the FBI had a textual analysis capability for computer code, the structured programs wouldn't match any examples of my usual programming style. It was a small piece of security, probably unnecessary, but who knows?