The Blue Nowhere-SA (4 page)

He keyed some commands and with an excited churning in his groin he heard the rising and falling whistle of his modem's sensual electronic handshake (most real hackers would never use dog-slow modems and telephone lines like this, rather than a direct connection, to get online. But Phate had to compromise; speed was far less important than being able to stay mobile and hide his tracks through millions of miles of telephone lines around the world).

After he was connected to the Net he checked his e-mail. He would have opened any letters from Shawn right away but there were none; the others he'd read later. He exited the mail reader and then keyed in another command. A menu popped up on his screen.

When he and Shawn had written the software for Trapdoor last year he'd decided that, even though no one else would be using it, he'd make the menu user-friendly - simply because this is what you did when you were a brilliant codeslinger.

Trapdoor

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Main Menu

1. Do you want to continue a prior session?

2. Do you want to create/open/edit a background file?

3. Do you want to find a new target?

4. Do you want to decode/decrypt a password or text?

5. Do you want to exit to the system?

He scrolled down to 3 and hit the ENTER key.

A moment later the Trapdoor program politely asked:

Please enter the e-mail address of the target.

From memory he typed a screen name and hit ENTER. Within ten seconds he was connected to someone else's machine - in effect, looking over the unsuspecting user's shoulder. He read for a few moments then started jotting notes.

Lara Gibson had been a fun hack, but this one would be better.

"He made this," the warden told them.

The cops stood in a storage room in San Ho. Lining the shelves were drug paraphernalia, Nazi decorations and Nation of Islam banners, handmade weapons - clubs and knives and knuckle-dusters, even a few guns. This was the confiscation room and these grim items had been taken away from the prison's difficult residents over the past several years.

What the warden was now pointing out, though, was nothing so clearly inflammatory or deadly. It was a wooden box about two by three feet, filled with a hundred strips of bell wire, which connected dozens of electronic components.

"What is it?" Bob Shelton asked in his gravelly voice.

Andy Anderson laughed and whispered, "Jesus, it's a computer. It's a homemade computer." He leaned forward, studying the simplicity of the wiring, the perfect twisting of the solderless connections, the efficient use of space. It was rudimentary and yet it was astonishingly elegant.

"I didn't know you could make a computer," Shelton offered. Thin Frank Bishop said nothing. The warden said, "Gillette's the worst addict I've ever seen - and we get guys in here've been on smack for years. Only what he's addicted to are these - computers. I guarantee you he'll do anything he can to get online. And he's capable of hurting people to do it. I mean, hurting them bad. He built this just to get on the Internet."

"It's got a modem built in?" Anderson asked, still awed by the device. "Wait, there it is, yeah."
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"So I'd think twice about getting him out."

"We can control him," Anderson said, reluctantly looking away from Gillette's creation.

"You think you can," the warden said, shrugging. "People like him'll say whatever they have to so they can get online. Just like alcoholics. You know about his wife?"

"He's married?" Anderson asked.

"Was. He tried to stop hacking after he got married but couldn't. Then he got arrested and they lost everything paying the lawyer and court fine. She divorced him a couple years ago. I was here when he got the papers. He didn't even care."

The door opened and a guard entered with a battered recycled manila folder. He handed it to the warden, who in turned passed it to Anderson. "Here's the file we've got on him. Might help you decide whether you really want him or not."

Anderson flipped through the file. The prisoner had a record going back years. The juvenile detention time, though, wasn't for anything serious: Gillette had called Pacific Bell's main office from a pay phone what hackers call fortress phones - and programmed it to let him make free long-distance calls. Fortress phones are considered elementary schools for young hackers, who use them to break into phone company switches, which are nothing more than huge computer systems. The art of cracking into the phone company to make free calls or just for the challenge of it is known as phreaking. The notes in the file indicated that Gillette had placed stolen calls to the time and temperature numbers in Paris, Athens, Frankfurt, Tokyo and Ankara. Which suggested that he'd broken into the system just because he was curious to see if he could do it. He wasn't after money.

Anderson kept flipping through the young man's file. There was clearly something to what the warden had said; Gillette's behavior was addictive. He'd been questioned in connection with twelve major hacking incidents over the past eight years. In his sentencing for the Western Software hack the prosecutor had borrowed a phrase from the judge who'd sentenced the famous hacker Kevin Mitnick, saying that Gillette was "dangerous when armed with a keyboard."

The hacker's behavior regarding computers wasn't, however, exclusively felonious, Anderson also learned. He'd worked for a number of Silicon Valley companies and invariably had gotten glowing reports on his programming skills - at least until he was fired for missing work or falling asleep on the job because he'd been up all night hacking. He'd also written a lot of brilliant freeware and shareware

- software programs given away to anyone who wants them

- and had lectured at conferences about new developments in computer programming languages and security.

Then Anderson did a double take and gave a surprised laugh. He was looking at a reprint of an article that Wyatt Gillette had written for On-Line magazine several years ago. The article was well known and Anderson recalled reading it when it first came out but had paid no attention to who the author was. The title was "Life in the Blue Nowhere." Its theme was that computers are the first technological invention in history that affect every aspect of human life, from psychology to entertainment to intelligence to material comfort to evil, and that, because of this, humans and machines will continue to grow closer together. There are many benefits to this but also many dangers. The phrase "Blue Nowhere," which was replacing the term "cyberspace," meant the world of computers, or, as it was also called, the Machine World. In
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Gillette's coined phrase, "Blue" referred to the electricity that made computers work. "Nowhere" meant that it was an intangible place.

Andy Anderson also found some photocopies of documents from Gillette's most recent trial. He saw dozens of letters that had been sent to the judge, requesting leniency in sentencing. The hacker's mother had passed away - an unexpected heart attack when the woman was in her fifties - but it sounded like the young man and his father had an enviable relationship. Gillette's father, an American engineer working in Saudi Arabia, had e-mailed several heartfelt pleas to the judge for a reduced sentence. The hacker's brother, Rick, a government employee in Montana had come to his sibling's aid with several faxed letters to the court, also urging leniency. Rick Gillette even touchingly suggested that his brother could come live with him and his wife "in a rugged and pristine mountain setting," as if clean air and physical labor could cure the hacker of his criminal ways.

Anderson was touched by this but surprised as well; most of the hackers that Anderson had arrested came from dysfunctional families.

He closed the file and handed it to Bishop, who read through it absently, seemingly bewildered by the technical references to machines. The detective muttered, "The Blue Nowhere?" A moment later he gave up and passed the folder to his partner.

"What's the timetable for release?" Shelton asked, flipping through the file. Anderson replied, "We've got the paperwork waiting at the courthouse now. As soon as we can get a federal magistrate to sign it Gillette's ours."

"I'm just giving you fair warning," the warden said ominously. He nodded at the homemade computer. "If you want to go ahead with a release, be my guest. Only you gotta pretend he's a junkie who's been off the needle for two weeks."

Shelton said, "I think we ought to call the FBI. We could use some feds anyway on this one. And there'd be more bodies to keep an eye on him."

But Anderson shook his head. "If we tell them then the DoD'll hear about it and have a stroke about us releasing the man who cracked their Standard 12. Gillette'll be back inside in a half hour. No, we've got to keep it quiet. The release order'll be under a John Doe."

Anderson looked toward Bishop, caught in the act of checking out his silent cell phone once again.

"What do you think, Frank?"

The lean detective tucked in his shirt again and finally put together several complete sentences. "Well, sir, I think we should get him out and the sooner the better. That killer probably isn't sitting around talking. Like us."

For a terrible half hour Wyatt Gillette had sat in the cold, medieval dungeon, refusing to speculate if it would really happen - if he'd be released. He wouldn't allow himself even a wisp of hope; in prison, expectations are the first to die.

Then, with a nearly silent click, the door opened and the cops returned.
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Gillette looked up and happened to notice in Anderson's left lobe a tiny brown dot of an earring hole that had closed up long ago. "A magistrate's signed a temporary release order," the cop said. Gillette realized that he'd been sitting with his teeth clenched and shoulders drawn into a fierce knot. With this news he exhaled in relief. Thank you, thank you

"Now, you have a choice. Either you'll be shackled the whole time you're out or you wear an electronic tracking anklet."

The hacker considered this. "Anklet."

"It's a new variety," Anderson said. "Titanium. You can only get it on and off with a special key. Nobody's ever slipped out of one."

"Well, one guy did," Bob Shelton said cheerfully. "But he had to cut his foot off to do it. He only got a mile before he bled to death."

Gillette by now disliked the burly cop as much as Shelton, for some reason, seemed to hate him.

"It tracks you for sixty miles and broadcasts through metal," Anderson continued.

"You made your point," Gillette said. To the warden he said, "I need some things from my cell."

"What things?" the man grumbled. "You aren't gonna be away that long, Gillette. You don't need to pack."

Gillette said to Anderson, "I need some of my books and notebooks. And I've got a lot of printouts that'll be helpful - from things like Wired and 2600."

The CCU cop said to the warden, "It's okay."

A loud electronic braying came from nearby. Gillette jumped at the noise. It took a minute to recognize the sound, one that he'd never heard in San Ho. Frank Bishop answered his cell phone. The gaunt cop took the call, listened for a moment, flicking at a sideburn, then answered, "Yessir, Captain And?" There was a long pause, during which the corner of his mouth tightened very slightly. "You can't do anything?

Okay, sir."

He hung up.

Anderson cocked an eyebrow at him. The homicide detective said evenly, "That was Captain Bernstein. There was another report on the wire about the MARINKILL case. The perps were spotted near Walnut Creek. Probably headed in this direction." He glanced quickly at Gillette as if he were a stain on the bench and then said to Anderson, "I should tell you - I requested to be removed from this case and put on that one. They said no. Captain Bernstein thought I'd be more helpful here."

"Thanks for telling me," Anderson said. To Gillette, though, the CCU cop didn't seem particularly grateful for the confirmation that the detective was only halfheartedly involved in the case. Anderson asked Shelton, "Did you want MARINKILL too?"

"No. I wanted this one. The girl was killed pretty much in my backyard. I want to make sure it doesn't happen again."

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Anderson glanced at his watch. It was 9:15. "We should get back to CCU." The warden summoned the huge guard and instructions were given. The man led Gillette back down the corridor to his cell. Five minutes later he'd collected what he needed, used the toilet and pulled on his jacket. He preceded the guard into the central part of San Ho.

Out one door, out another, past the visitors' area, where he'd see a friend once a month or so, and the lawyer-client rooms, where he'd spent so many hours working on the futile appeal with the man who'd taken every penny that he and Ellie had.

Finally, breathing fast now as the excitement flooded into him, Gillette stepped through the second-to-the-last doorway - into the area of offices and the guards' locker rooms. The cops were waiting for him there.

Anderson nodded to the guard, who undid the wrist shackles. For the first time in two years Gillette was no longer under the physical domination of the prison system. He'd attained a freedom of sorts. He rubbed the skin on his wrists as they walked toward the exit - two wooden doors with latticed fireglass in them, through which Gillette could see the gray sky. "We'll put the anklet on outside," Anderson said.

Shelton stepped brusquely up to the hacker and whispered, "I want to say one thing, Gillette. Maybe you're thinking you'll be in striking distance of some weapon or another, what with your hands free. Well, if you even get an itchy look that I don't like you're going to get hurt bad. Follow me? I won't hesitate to take you out."