Independence Day (34 page)
“Do I make myself clear?” asked Calibrisi.
“What’s his name?”
“Dewey Andreas.”
“You want me to find Cloud and bring him to this agent, Dewey?” said Malnikov, a hint of contempt in his voice. “Treat him like a little baby?”
Calibrisi was silent for a few moments.
“I realize you think this is some sort of deal that’s gone bad for you, Alexei,” he said calmly, “but it’s much more than that, and you need to drop the attitude and accept the situation you’re in. If that nuclear bomb goes off inside the United States, we will scour the earth until we find you, and then you’ll die. Got it?”
“Yeah, I got it.”
IN THE AIR
Katie Foxx stared out the window of Delta flight 35, the 9:10
P.M.
Chicago-to-Atlanta direct. She was seated in first class. Next to her was Rob Tacoma, leaning against her shoulder. He’d been asleep since taking off from O’Hare.
Katie imagined that everyone surrounding them thought they were married, or a couple, but Tacoma was like a little brother. In fact, his snoring was annoying the shit out of her. She flared her elbow up, cracking him solidly in the neck. He opened his eyes, looked at her with a dazed, confused look, then shut his eyes again and leaned even farther into her seat.
Tacoma and Katie had worked together for more than a decade, first at the CIA, where she ran Special Operations Group under Bill Polk. Tacoma was her most reliable paramilitary agent, a tough-minded, fearless in-theater operator with stunning athletic skills. He was the best face-to-face combatant she’d ever seen. He wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer by any stretch, but with Katie around, he didn’t need to be.
When Katie left Langley to start a consulting firm, Tacoma was the only one she took with her. The firm, which didn’t have a name, provided a wide complex of services to individuals and corporations alike, all under the general rubric of security. These services usually involved doing things, in foreign countries, that were against the law.
Katie and Tacoma operated with the express approval and permission of the CIA. In fact, Langley was their biggest client. The firm enabled Langley to occasionally move faster and with more savageness than usual.
The serenity of the first-class cabin was interrupted by an announcement over the intercom.
“Ladies and gentleman, this is Captain Fletcher. I’m afraid we have a slight change of plans. We are having a medical issue involving two of our passengers, nothing to worry about, but we’re going to land in Columbus and make sure everything’s all right. I apologize for the inconvenience.”
Tacoma opened his eyes. He looked at Katie. She returned his look.
“This should be interesting,” Tacoma said.
Ten minutes later, the Boeing 737 touched down at Columbus International Airport, then taxied to a stop in the middle of the tarmac. A set of mobile air stairs was driven from the terminal building to meet the jet. Behind it sped a black Chevy Suburban.
A stewardess opened the cabin door as the air stairs were moved into place. Tacoma and Katie stood up, grabbed their bags from the overhead bin, walked to the door, and climbed down the stairs. They sprinted across the tarmac to the Suburban. The Suburban crossed two runways, then came to a stop next to a shiny light blue Gulfstream G100, its engines humming. A minute later, the jet was ripping through the sky, toward New York City.
SHENNAMERE ROAD
DARIEN, CONNECTICUT
Just before midnight, under a dark sky, Calibrisi’s Sikorsky S-76C helicopter dropped from the sky upon a bucolic Connecticut estate, landing on a large, circular pebble-stone driveway before a rambling mansion, now dark, except for a lone light in a first-floor window. Calibrisi, Foxx, and Tacoma jumped from the cabin of the chopper as the rotors continued to slash the night air.
Calibrisi had already briefed Foxx and Tacoma on the situation in Russia.
In the driveway was a pair of vehicles. One was a black Range Rover, the other a convertible Porsche 918 Spyder, yellow with black racing stripes along its sides.
They moved quickly toward the large door that marked the mansion’s entrance, a copper lantern dangling from above. Two men stood watch, both dressed in jeans, running shoes, and T-shirts. Both men clutched submachine guns.
Calibrisi, Foxx, and Tacoma nodded at the gunmen as they slipped quickly into the mansion.
The house was fully furnished and appeared lived in. Another gunmen stood inside the entrance hall. He nodded to a door at the side.
They stepped into a library. The walls were lined with bookshelves. Old taxidermy hung from the walls. The room contained only one desk. A man with long blond hair was typing frantically. In front of him, three computer screens were lit up. The center one showed a map of the world, lit up digitally. The other two screens displayed what looked like thousands and thousands of slow-moving rows of numbers and letters, in orange and green, scrolling over a black screen.
Calibrisi shut the door.
“Igor, this is Katie Foxx and Rob Tacoma.”
Igor turned, nodded, then turned back to the keyboard and kept typing.
Foxx and Tacoma glanced at each other, then at Calibrisi.
“This is the guy who’s going to find someone who just pried his way into the CIA?” asked Foxx.
Igor kept typing, ignoring her.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but Cloud sounds like he might be slightly more capable than some guy in an Aerosmith T-shirt that’s two sizes too small.”
“Oh, he’s much more capable,” said Igor as he continued to type without turning around. “He is on a level that is several generations more sophisticated than the U.S. government.”
“I doubt that,” said Katie.
Igor stopped typing and turned.
“Then you’re a fool,” he snapped, turning back around. “If you want to catch a hacker, you have to put aside self-delusion about the greatness of the brilliant men and woman at the CIA and the National Security Agency. No doubt they are all patriots, but catching a hacker has nothing to do with patriotism. It is a function of numbers and letters, and their arrangement in a three-dimensional grid, over time.”
Igor struck the keyboard.
“Tell me a city where Langley has a sphere of operations, Ms. Foxx.”
“It’s Katie.”
Igor scanned her up and down.
“You are beautiful, by the way,” he said, smiling.
“Tokyo,” said Katie.
Igor typed for a half minute.
Suddenly, the digital map of the world zoomed down onto Japan, then kept moving in, focusing, until
Tokyo
appeared. Igor typed, and different areas of the city flared up in pockets of red. Igor typed again. The screen to the left flashed a checkerboard of black-and-white photographs; they appeared to be some sort of surveillance photos.
“This is just a small example,” said Igor. “In fact, I was able to do this within one hour of arriving at my desk.”
Katie stepped forward. She studied the sheet and pointed to one of the photos. It showed a man climbing out of a car.
“That’s Kilmer,” said Katie, taken aback. “This was an operation. Last year. That’s off of my computer.”
“Yes, it is,” said Igor, “sorry about that. For what it’s worth, I didn’t look at any of your naked pictures.”
“I don’t—” said Katie, shocked. “My God. He hacked—”
“That is nothing. Watch this.”
Igor typed furiously. The right screen shot white, then came into focus. A note was written and he enlarged it.
“What is it?” Katie asked.
“That is computer code. Do you like it? A few little lines, like a haiku. Those lines were how I got them to drop you off in Columbus, Katie. Is that short for Katherine, by the way? Are you busy after we find this guy?”
“My God,” she said again.
“Yes, that is the proper reaction. Self-delusion doesn’t work in Cloud’s world. What does work is numbers and letters, arranged in a three-dimensional architecture—”
“Over time,” added Katie, “yadda yadda yadda.”
“Think of a cube,” said Igor, ignoring her. “That cube has a wrapper on it, a wrapper that is composed of numbers and letters, and they are constantly changing. But if we can unwrap it, inside we will find our hacker. Where we are going, Katie, there is no room for human emotion. Where you and I are going, however, after we find him, there is plenty of room for human emotion.”
“So do they know we’re here?” asked Katie.
“No,” said Igor.
“Why not?”
“Because I told them you’re not,” said Igor, smiling at her.
“Can you guarantee with one hundred percent certainty you’re going to find him?” asked Tacoma.
“Eventually, yes, I will find him,” said Igor. “By the time the nuclear bomb gets here? No, I can’t guarantee that. At best, I give it a twenty percent chance.”
“Then I want to understand what you’re trying to do,” demanded Katie.
Igor paused, looked at Calibrisi, then back to Katie.
“I understand,” said Igor patiently. “I will explain how we’re going to capture Cloud. Then you need to leave me alone.”
“Deal.”
Igor typed.
“Hacking in point of fact is the process of exposing human frailty, then taking advantage of it,” he said, gesticulating with one hand while he typed with the other. “The computer networks that run the CIA, KKB, a bank, a person’s e-mail account—they’re all a collection of computer code, written by human beings. They’re all protected by different forms of encryption, which is also built by human beings. Most of these encryption keys are terribly built. Some are better. Some are, in fact, nearly perfect. But none is perfect. Because a human being built it. Hackers attack by finding those human flaws. Once they find a flaw, they can gain entry into the computer network. The best hackers are not only able to penetrate the most secure networks, they’re able to do it without being noticed.”
He pointed to one of the screens in front of Katie. The screen showed a dizzying sheet of numbers and letters, which scrolled down very rapidly. She leaned forward to look.
“Is that Chanel Number Five?” he whispered.
Katie glanced at him.
“Can you please focus?” she snapped, but in a whisper.
“Oh, I’m focused,” he whispered back.
“What I meant was, could you explain what that is?” she asked, pointing. “You’re not my type, anyway.”
“What is your type?”
“Not you. Now will you explain what those numbers and letters are.”
“That screen shows processing activity at a server farm. A warehouse full of computers are all right now focused on finding errors in the encryption algorithms that safeguard the Central Intelligence Agency.”
“Where are they?”
Igor typed. The scrolling letters were replaced by the inside of a brightly lit warehouse, the size of a football field, filled with rows upon rows of high-powered servers.
“Iceland.”
“Are they yours?” she asked.
“Not exactly.”
“So what you’re saying is, we’re going to hack into Langley?” asked Katie.
“Oh, we’ve already hacked in,” said Igor. “I’ve found six separate vulnerabilities thus far. But I haven’t found Cloud yet.”
Katie nodded, making no effort to hide her doubt. She glanced at Calibrisi, who stared back with a blank expression.
“Cloud is a great programmer,” said Igor. “One of the best hackers in the world. In fact, some might say
the
best. But those people would be wrong. There’s one hacker who’s better than Cloud.”
“Who?” asked Katie.
“Another Russian.
He
is the best hacker in the world. At least he was. He hasn’t hacked in many years. He disappeared. Some people speculate that he may have died. The truth is, he’s not dead. He simply chose to stop breaking the law. Not that he ever would’ve been caught, but he didn’t want to do it anymore.”
“Can he help us?” asked Katie.
“He’s trying to,” said Igor, smiling. “But he’s having a hard time getting any work done because you’re asking him too many fucking questions.”
Katie nodded, then grinned.
“Lawbreaker, huh?” she said.
Igor smiled.
“Is that closer to your type?”
“A little.”
Igor pointed at the live video stream coming from Iceland.
“That warehouse generates so much heat that it had to be situated near cold water or else the air-conditioning would’ve been cost prohibitive. Right now, every computer in that room is scouring Langley’s technological infrastructure. Once we find the precise vulnerability point that Cloud is accessing, that is, his trapdoor, that, Katie, you beautiful American girl, is when you will have Cloud.”
“How long will that take?”
“If I had to guess, a week.”
“A week?” asked Katie.
“Then again, if a certain American woman with the most gorgeous blue eyes I’ve ever seen were to want to go to dinner with me, it might inspire me to do it quicker.”
“Well, I do want to find him,” said Katie, smiling mischievously at Igor, “but not
that
badly.”
“What happens if you can’t find him?” asked Tacoma.
Igor’s smile disappeared as his eyes roamed to Tacoma.