34
Their journey to Chicago had been a quiet one, with Nolan driving and an overworked Kelsey sleeping the entire way there. Sensing Kelsey’s weary state, Nolan’s sister-in-law, Maureen, immediately made plans for the physicist’s recovery. Unfortunately, John Kilkenny felt no such compassion toward his younger brother and immediately put him to work. While Kelsey and Maureen spent most of Thursday being pampered at a luxurious spa, Nolan and John demolished the old garage to make room for a new addition.
By Friday morning, with two full nights of sleep in her system, Kelsey had returned to her normal self. As she entered the kitchen, she found Nolan and his brother seated at the table, eating breakfast and reading the newspaper.
‘Good morning,’ Kelsey said with a lilt in her voice.
‘You ready to head downtown for our meeting?’Nolan asked.
‘I guess so. After yesterday, I’d put that part of my brain on hiatus. I think that masseur removed my bones. I feel like I’m made out of Jell-O.’
Nolan slowly turned his head, rotating it from side to side. There was an audible snap as he leaned forward. ‘I could use a little of that right now.’
‘Allow me.’
Kelsey stood behind Nolan’s chair and began kneading his neck and shoulders. Nolan let his head sag forward as she released the tightness from his sore muscles.
‘Hey, Mo,’ John called out as his wife entered the kitchen, ‘how about doing me?’
‘No way. The last time I did that, I ended up pregnant.’
‘Can’t blame me for trying,’ John replied while studying the National League box scores.
‘Did you tell Nolan about the dress you bought?’ Maureen asked, prompting Kelsey.
Kelsey hesitated for a minute. ‘Maureen took me to this fabulous dress shop down on Michigan Avenue and I found this stunning blue silk dress.’
‘It’s the same color as her eyes.’ Maureen was many things, but subtle wasn’t one of them. ‘Our next project is to find some accessories.’
‘Now all I need is a reason to wear it.’
‘Kelsey, when was the last time you had a date?’Nolan asked.
‘That would be Scott, so about seven months ago.’
Nolan closed his eyes, enjoying the healing magic Kelsey was performing on his neck. ‘We might have to do something about that.’
Kelsey glanced over at Maureen, who stood grinning by the refrigerator. Maureen gave her a thumbs-up before reaching in for the orange juice.
Nolan and Kelsey arrived at the Moy Electronics complex, both hoping to find an answer to the Gatekeeper problems they were experiencing by talking with the man who had designed it. Tall and rumpled, Bill Iverson met them in the main lobby and proceeded to give Kelsey and Nolan what he called ‘the nickel tour’ of the facility. Iverson showed them nothing classified, but the public spaces, research labs, and the automated production facility were enough to make Kilkenny consider updating his resume. After the abbreviated tour, they settled down in a conference room to discuss their situation.
‘So, this is the dump you ran Wednesday?’ Iverson asked rhetorically as he slipped Kilkenny’s disk into the computer. ‘You got me thinking about something that I need to check.’
Iverson loaded a split-screen editor onto the conference room’s computer. He then loaded the current generation of the Gatekeeper code on the left side and placed Kilkenny’s code on the right.
‘I’m going to run a simple text comparison of these two versions of the Gatekeeper program,’ Iverson explained. ‘This one on the left is the one our computer claims it installed on your device before it was shipped last January. I can understand someone goofing and forgetting to update the header, but let’s see what we’ve really got here.’
Iverson issued the commands and the computer began a line-by-line comparison of the two programs. Four hundred lines into the comparison, Iverson halted the procedure. ‘I think I’ve seen enough to know that the program you got wasn’t what our computer says it sent you. Excuse me while I make a phone call.’
Iverson dialed an inside line and asked the person on the other end to come over to the conference room.
Kilkenny looked over the comparison with Newton while Iverson finished his phone call. ‘Bill, does this version of the program have any bearing on my hacker problem?’
‘This program by itself? No, not at all.’ Iverson joined Kilkenny at the wall monitor. ‘In fact, if your Gatekeeper was running this program, I expect you would have called us months ago to ask for your money back.’
‘What do you mean “if”?’ Newton asked. ‘This is the program our Gatekeeper is running, isn’t it?’
Iverson shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. This version was flawed, prone to crashing the system two or three times a day at the data-transfer rates you’re using. I checked around, and the only current use we have for the beta version is as a decoy to protect a similar device.’
Before Iverson could elaborate, the conference room door opened and a heavyset older man in a gray suit entered, followed by a younger man in a dark blue suit.
‘Good morning, Professor Newton, Mr Kilkenny. My name is Cal Mosley and I’m with the CIA. My associate here is Dan Harmon of the FBI. The fact that Mr Iverson has asked us to join you means that your problem has just gotten a lot worse.’ Mosley then turned to Iverson. ‘Before we go any further, I think I should brief them on security with regard to the device.’
‘Now is as good a time as any,’ Iverson agreed.
‘It’s an understatement for me to say that everything you’re about to hear is classified.’Mosley then pulled out a copy of Kilkenny’s service record from his briefcase. ‘Actually, I was quite surprised to discover that you hold a security clearance almost as high as mine.’
‘I held a fairly high clearance as a SEAL,’ Kilkenny admitted modestly, ‘but I’m a civilian now.’
‘Nolan’-Mosley thumped the cover of the service record-‘your clearance, with all its privileges and responsibilities, has been reinstated to allow you to assist us in this investigation. Professor, your Department of Defence security clearance has been upgraded, as well. We’re going to tell you only what you need to know about the Spyder Project, and you are both bound by law not to reveal any of this information.’
Security clearances, particularly high ones, weren’t the easiest credentials to come by. Kilkenny and Newton nodded to each other. ‘We understand our obligations,’ Newton replied, speaking for them both. ‘What does this Spyder Project have to do with our hacker problem?’
Iverson slid two color product brochures across the table. Each bore a nearly identical photograph of a black cube; one was titled Gatekeeper, while the other read Spyder.
‘Think of the Gatekeeper and the Spyder as opposite sides of the same coin. Both devices operate from the same basic kit of parts, but they use those parts a little differently. The Gatekeeper was designed to maintain a clean flow of information through a computer network, for legitimate users, while keeping undesirables off the system. For that latter aim, we built in a variety of tools the Gatekeeper could use to track and identify unauthorized users.’
‘I selected the Gatekeeper for its I/O handling capabilities,’ Kelsey added. ‘It was the only thing that could keep up with my processor.’
‘And that part seems to be working fine,’Nolan agreed.
Iverson nodded and continued his explanation. ‘The Spyder takes this scenario one step further. The CIA is concerned with illegal technology transfers to nations considered unfriendly to the United States. Every once in awhile, a high-end computer mysteriously finds its way across the borders of one of these nations. A Spyder placed inside one of these computers would do everything the Gatekeeper is programmed to do, and more. Using the same algorithms, the Spyder could track its way out of the hostile computer network, looking for a way to call home and tell us what its host computer is up to. Once the Spyder made contact, it could be programmed to do all sorts of
