The Prometheus Deception (68 page)

“But to try to enter the Manning estate on your own—”

“Will be difficult. But with your help—your expertise at computer systems—we may have a chance. One of the articles mentioned that the security at Manning's house is monitored both locally and at Systematix headquarters.”

“That doesn't really help us—Systematix is probably even more secure than Manning's residence.”

Bryson nodded. “No doubt. But the point of vulnerability may be the link. How would the house be connected to the company?”

“I'm sure they'd use the most secure method possible.”

“What's that?”

“Fiber-optic line. Buried in the ground and physically connecting the two locations.”

“Can fiber-optic lines be tapped?”

She looked up suddenly, startled, and then a slow smile started across her face. “Just about everyone believes it's impossible.”

“And you?”

“I
know
it's possible.”

“How do you know?”

“We've done it. A few years ago the Directorate devised several clever techniques.”

“You know how to do it?”

“Of course. It takes some equipment, though nothing you can't get at a decent computer store.”

Bryson kissed her. “Terrific. I have a lot of equipment to buy, and I need to conduct some surveillance on Manning's house and property. But first I need to make a phone call to California.”

“Who's in California?”

“A company in Palo Alto I've dealt with before, in one of my Directorate aliases. Founded by a Russian émigré, Victor Shevchenko, an optics genius. He's got a Pentagon contract and yet he used to sell a fair amount of obscure, classified equipment on the black market, which is how I got to know him, during an international sting operation. I left him in place, didn't report his activities to Justice, because I figured he'd be more useful as a lead to much bigger fish. He was deeply grateful for my forbearance—and now it's time to collect. Victor is one of the very few sources for the instrument I need, and if I get to him now he may just have the time to air-freight it to us by this evening.”

*   *   *

Bryson spent the next hour conducting discreet surveillance of Manning's estate, using small but high-powered binoculars, from the national forest land that adjoined it. The lakeside property occupied five acres. On the other side was a far more modest house on about an acre and a half.

The security, or at least as much as Bryson could observe, was extremely sophisticated. The chain-link perimeter fence was eight feet high, with fiber-optic stress-sensor line enmeshed throughout it. This ruled out climbing over the fence or attempting to cut through it. The bottom of the fence was buried in concrete, which made digging underneath difficult. Buried under the topsoil in front of the fence was a distributed pressure–sensor system, also fiber-optic lines, which detected the footsteps of intruders above a certain pre-set weight: pressure on the sensors disturbed the light flow and set off an alarm. In addition, the entire area was watched by surveillance cameras mounted on poles along the fence. Getting in this way had to be ruled out.

But every security system had its vulnerabilities.

For one thing, there was the forest that adjoined the Manning property, where he now stood. Then there was the lake, which seemed to Bryson to present the best opportunity to infiltrate undetected. He returned to the rented Jeep, hidden among the trees and far from the nearest road. As he drove down the access road he passed a small white van that was turning into the gated Manning estate. It was painted with the words Fabulous Food. Caterers, no doubt preparing for the evening's festivities. He caught a glance of the van's passengers.

Another possibility had just suggested itself.

*   *   *

There were errands to run, purchases to make, and far too little time remaining. Bryson had no difficulty locating a sporting-goods store specializing in mountain climbing, not in this capital of the Pacific Northwest. It was a large and well-stocked shop that also catered to the diverse need of hunters, which eliminated the need to make two other stops. But scuba-diving equipment had to be obtained at a separate dive shop. The yellow pages identified for him the location of an industrial safety products supply house, which serviced construction companies, telephone linemen, window washers, and the like; there, he found precisely what he needed: a portable electric winch, battery operated and quiet, in lightweight aluminum housing with a self-retracting lifeline—two hundred and twenty-five feet of galvanized steel cable, a controlled descent device, and a centrifugal braking mechanism.

An elevator parts supply company had exactly what he needed, as did a military surplus warehouse, where an employee recommended a decent shooting range close by. There he bought a .45 semiautomatic pistol for cash from a young, grubby-looking man practicing with it, who shared Bryson's vocal disgust with the goddamned gun-control laws and the goddamned waiting period, especially when a guy just wanted to pick up a piece for recreational purposes on the way out of town for a camping trip.

Batteries and bell wire were easily found at an ordinary hardware store, but he expected it to be far more difficult to find a decent theatrical supply house than it turned out to be. Hollywood Theatrical Supply, on North Fairview Avenue sold and rented a complete range of equipment for stage and motion-picture industry use; Hollywood studios and production companies often went on location in the northwest and needed a local supplier.

All that remained was the single exotic piece of classified military equipment. Victor Shevchenko, the inventor of the virtual cathode oscillator, had been reluctant to part with one, of them, but relented when Bryson let him know that there was no statute of limitations on violations of U.S. national security law. That, and fifty thousand dollars wired into the scientist-entrepreneur's Grand Caymans account, was enough to twist his arm.

By the time Bryson returned to the Four Seasons, Elena had purchased what she needed. She had even downloaded a U.S. geological-survey topographical map of the national forestland abutting Manning's estate.

After he explained what he had observed on his visit to the area surrounding the Manning estate, she asked, “Wouldn't it be much simpler for you to get in as a caterer, or maybe a florist?”

“I don't think so. I've thought it over, and my calculation is that the florists are probably accompanied in, they do their work, and they're accompanied out. Even assuming I could somehow enter with them, which I wouldn't count on, it would be next to impossible for me to disappear into the house—to not leave with the others—without putting the whole place on alert.”

“But the caterers—they come in, they stay throughout the festivities…”

“The caterers may well turn out to be useful to me. But from what little I've read about Manning's security paranoia, we can assume that all of the caterer's employees are going to be background-investigated, photographed and fingerprinted, and issued electronic security passes only upon arrival. Getting into the house as a caterer will be next to impossible. I've rented a boat; it's the only way to get up on shore.”

“But … but then what? I'm sure he has the front lawn protected!”

“No question about it. But from everything I can tell, it's the least secure entry point. Now, what have you learned about the security system link between Manning's house and Systematix?”

“I'm going to need a van,” she said.

*   *   *

Outside of Seattle the U.S. Department of Agriculture maintains a garage facility where the Seattle-area employees of the U.S. Forest Service kept their government vehicles. In the adjacent open-air parking lot were several small green trucks marked with the forest service pine-tree shield. The security was virtually nonexistent.

Bryson drove Elena into the woods adjoining the Manning property. She was attired in green pants and shirt purchased at an army-navy surplus store, the closest thing they could get to a U.S. Forest Service uniform on such short notice.

Four hours remained before their strike time of nine o'clock
P.M.

They walked through the forest near the high-security chain-link fence that marked the boundary of Manning's estate, careful to keep back far enough from the cameras and the pressure-detection alarm system next to the fence. Elena was looking for a buried fiber-optic cable that ran from the Manning mansion through a small area of the national forest.

She knew it was there. Manning's house was approximately three miles from Systematix headquarters, the communications linked by fiber-optic cable. During the construction of the house, Manning's contractor had filed an official request with the U.S. Department of Agriculture for an easement to run just twenty feet of fiber-optic line between his house and the public road. The form, which was a matter of public record and easily obtained on-line, mentioned one detail that especially intrigued Elena: the need to put down a device called an optical repeater. This was a box that served in effect as an amplifier, to boost the signal along the way, since there was always some leakage over long distances.

A repeater could easily be tapped into, if you knew what you were doing. Most did not; Elena most certainly did.

The only question was: where was the line?

A few minutes later she punched out a Seattle telephone number for the contractor listed in the easement request, the one who had installed the miles of cable.

“Mr. Manzanelli? My name is Nadya; I'm calling from the U.S. Geological Survey. We're taking soil samples to test for acidification, and we want to make sure we don't accidentally cut any fiber-optic cable out here.…”

When she explained what section of the national forest she was digging in, the contractor replied, “Jesus Christ, come on! Doesn't anyone there remember the hassle you folks gave us over digging the trench through government land?”

“I'm sorry, sir, I'm not familiar—”

“Goddamned Forest Service wouldn't permit it, and Mr. Manning was willing to kick in half a million bucks for new plantings and everything! But no—we had to run an above-ground conduit right along the fence!”

“Sir, I'm terribly sorry to hear that—I'm sure our new administrator would happily have granted Mr. Manning's request.”

“You have any idea what kind of money Manning pays in property taxes alone?”

“At least there's no chance of our severing one of Mr. Manning's lines. Next time you speak with him, you tell him that all of us here at the U.S. Geological Survey appreciate what he's done for the country.”

She disconnected the call and turned to Bryson. “Good news. We've just saved ourselves more than three hours.”

*   *   *

At shortly after four o'clock
P.M.
, Bryson was notified by Pacific Air Freight that a delivery had been received at the Seattle-Tacoma Airport. There was a problem, however: it could not be trucked into Seattle until the next morning.

“You gotta be kiddin' me,” Bryson roared into the phone. “I need it at the quality-control lab
tonight
, and I got a fifty-thousand-dollar contract ridin' on it!”

“I'm sorry, sir, but if there's anything we can do to help you out in the meantime…”

At a few minutes before six o'clock, Bryson pulled the rented U-Haul van into the Pacific Air Freight terminal at the airport, where the thousand-pound machine was loaded onto the van by means of a hoist and the assistance of three apologetic employees.

Within an hour he drove the van deep into the thickly forested area next to the Manning property, a hundred yards from the green forest-service truck. He backed the van up so that its tail end faced the chain-link perimeter fence, though far enough away that it would not be detected by the security cameras. He slid the van door up and then positioned the machinery so that it had a direct line-of-sight to the Manning compound. The numerous trees and dense foliage that blanketed Manning's property and concealed his estate were no problem at all. Quite the opposite: they helped camouflage the Russian scientist's device.

Then he took a knapsack full of small round disks, each one connected to a firing pod that would detonate when it received a signal from a wireless transmitter. He hiked almost a quarter of a mile through the woods, back toward the main road. Then, strolling along the property line, out of sight of the cameras and removed from the pressure-triggered intrusion-detection system, he began tossing the disks over the fence, one by one, each separated from the other by approximately two hundred feet. The cartridges were small enough that they would attract no notice. If anyone happened to be monitoring the cameras—which was unlikely; the cameras were mostly there to provide a set of eyes in case one of the perimeter alarms went off—he would see nothing more than a blur, something presumably dropped by a bird, perhaps an insect. Nothing worth a second look.

*   *   *

Inside the cargo bay of the green forest-service truck, Elena quickly assembled her tools. Her laptop was now connected to the optical repeater by means of a twenty-foot cable that ran undetectably under the truck, concealed by dirt and leaves, and right to the junction box. She had a tap in place, at first just listening and watching, not transmitting anything. She had come prepared with loads of software, both commercial and specially written for the occasion. She did what was called a “stealth scan” to fingerprint the system, see what sort of intrusion-detection software was present; and she inserted a pre-written script designed to overload the system with an unexpectedly large quantity of data—create a buffer overflow. Then she ran a network packet sniffer to map out the systems on the security network, to find out what kind of network traffic was being sent and received, what the basic organization looked like.