would protect the rest of his system from damage if the virus started running wild.
Despite his misgivings, Thorn had to admit he was impressed by the sheer amount of linked hardware in the room and by the evident ease with which the other man handled his equipment.
New lines of text popped into existence on the central monitor.
“All right, here we go,” Kettler muttered to himself. He slid the disk into a drive and typed in another set of commands.
“All right, it’s just one big file. Okay, baby, let’s see if we can find out just what you’re made of.” Kettler conducted a running monologue with himself while he started running a series of keyboard controlled tests, probing around the file’s periphery. Rossini stood over his shoulder, answering questions about the known behavior of the virus.
“Oh, yeah.” Kettler nodded knowingly. “Same kind of trick we’re supposed to have pulled on the Iraqis during the Gulf War.”
Thorn looked at Rossini. “Is that true?”
“Uh-huh,” the older man agreed. “The story showed up in a number of the journals. According to them, we planted a virus in the printers inside their air defense computers in Baghdad. It would have worked pretty much the same way.”
Thorn whistled sharply. Maybe Amir Taleh’s belief that Iraq was behind the effort to rebuild radical Islam’s terrorist forces was right after all. Was this a case of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth?
The big monitor suddenly filled with jumbled numbers. “Yes!” Kettler exclaimed.
Thorn looked over Rossini’s shoulder. “That’s it?”
“Yeah, in octal code,” Rossini answered.
“This will make more sense,” Kettler announced, and hit a key. The numbers vanished. They were replaced by text grouped in three-letter combinations.
Assembly code, Thorn realized. That was one step up from octal, but it was still Greek to him.
Kettler, however, studied it as if he were reading a road map. Tracing his finger across the columns of code, he scrolled the screen up and down. There were pages of the stuff. Oblivious to the two men, he murmured to himself and scratched notes on a pad.
Thorn fought the urge to check his watch.
After what seemed like an eternity, Kettler shouted, “All right!” for the umpteenth time. Spinning around in his chair to face them, he smiled, almost beaming. “It’s the Bulgarian!” “You’re sure?” Rossini demanded.
“Absolutely,” Kettler asserted. “This is his stuff. I know viruses. I have to in my line of work. See?”
The computer expert took a key from his pocket and unlocked one of the desk drawers. He pulled it open and lifted out a long disk box that had been marked with yellow-and black striped tape.
He held the box carefully, as if afraid to jostle its contents. “This is my collection. Every virus I’ve ever heard of, including some that were stopped before they hit the street.” He patted it almost lovingly.
Rossini looked at the box in horror, as though the codes it contained were about to leap out and infect him personally. Like any good analyst, he was instinctively repelled by the idea of a program deliberately created to destroy information.
Kettler flipped open the lid and pulled out three neatly labeled disks. “All three of these babies hold viruses created by the Bulgarian, and the similarities are unmistakable. Some of the subroutines are identical.”
Rossini saw Thorn’s impatient look and explained. “He’s right, Pete. Programmers are like other artists. They’ve each got their own styles and their own bags of little tricks favorite techniques they use to achieve specific ends. To somebody who knows how to read this stuff like Derek here, those are as good as fingerprints or signatures.”
Kettler was still engrossed in the machine code showing on his monitor. “God, Maestro, this is beautiful work! Whoever paid to have this little monster made sure went to the right place.”
Unable to contain himself any longer, Thorn cut in. “Much as I hate to break up this little mutual admiration session, can either of you tell me just who the hell this Bulgarian guy is?”
Rossini filled him in, with Kettler interjecting occasional comments.
Only a few viruses had ever been traced back to people with names. Several, the nastiest of a nasty breed, had been linked to a mysterious individual “the Bulgarian.”
Nobody knew his name, but detective work, much of it unofficial, had traced some viruses back to Bulgaria and to a master programmer working covertly there. Bulgaria’s secret service had always had an evil reputation. It had been involved in several assassinations, and even linked to an attempt on the life of the Pope. As a result, many in the computer world assumed the Bulgarian had originally been trained and paid by that country’s now-defunct communist government, probably as part of a plan to wreak havoc on the technologically advanced West. Whatever he had once been, it was now clear that the virus-maker was working as a cybermercenary selling his destructive wares to the highest bidders.
Kettler finished by saying, “Whoever made the deal for this program paid pretty dearly for it. There’s all kinds of gossip on the Net, the computer bulletin boards, about what the Bulgarian charges to do his thing including some pretty wild guesses. But I’d bet you’re talking at least a couple of million bucks to craft this baby, and probably a lot more.”
“Several million dollars?” Thorn raised an eyebrow and looked at Rossini. “You believe that a white racist group or a band of black radicals could raise that kind of cash without anybody hearing about it?”
“Not a chance. That has to be a government’s money,” Rossini said flatly. “Whichever it is, I’d say your theory is looking better and better. This campaign is being orchestrated from overseas.”
Kettler stared at both of them. “Let me get this straight. You guys think these terrorists are working for some foreign government?”
They nodded slowly.
“Wow.” Kettler shook his head. “Far freaking out. This’ll sure rock some boats on the Net.” He pawed through the diskettes on his desk and came up with a stack of four. “See these? That’s almost four megs of traffic on the terror wave alone. Practically everybody with a modem and two brain cells to knock together has his or her own theory about what’s going on.”
The computer expert slipped his diskettes back into place and shrugged.
“Between this terrorism shit and the code controversy, I’ve been on the Net almost constantly.” “Code controversy?” Thorn asked.
Rossini nodded. “Some government agencies wanted to restrict commercially available E-mail encryption programs to ones the government could break…”
“Hell, no, Maestro. Not that old gripe. That’s yesterday’s news,” Kettler interrupted. “This is a privacy issue deal. It broke out a couple of months ago when some guy started bitching about unbreakable, coded E-mail he’d spotted on CompuNet, one of the worldwide computer bulletin boards. Said he’d been intercepting a ton of scrambled posts from somewhere in England to a bunch of users scattered across the country all using an encryption program he’d never seen before. Boy, did that set off fireworks!”
The computer expert smiled at the memory. “Geez, you should have read all the screaming about the sanctity of private electronic mail, and the First Amendment, and all the usual shit…”
“Hold it,” Thorn broke in, his mind racing in high gear. Two or three months ago? The timing could be coincidence, but he’d been wondering how the terrorists coordinated their attacks. Were they using computer hookups to communicate? He looked down at the younger man. “Are you saying someone has spotted coded messages coming from a foreign source to people here in the U.S.?”
“Yeah,” Kettler answered with a nonchalant shrug, “and as far as I’m concerned, they can put them in left- handed Swahili. I don’t give a rat’s ass. I’m just getting a kick seeing how loud all the Net prudes squawk about it.”
Thorn took a step closer and spoke slowly, intensely. “You’re missing the point. We’ve got terrorist attacks going on right and left, and now you’re telling me someone’s been intercepting coded messages?”
Kettler nodded, a little taken aback, but starting to understand.
“Yeah. But that’s not necessarily unusual. A lot of Email these days is PEM, privacy-enhanced E-mail. It’s just that these messages are using a real high level encryption program nobody’s ever heard of.” He shook his head. “Like I said, a bunch of us have been arguing the issue on some of the Net forums. It’s not general knowledge. Cripes, if CompuNet or any of the other public bulletin boards knew that someone was routinely breaking into their
