private message files, they’d have a conniption fit.”
Thorn cut him off sharply. “I don’t give a goddamn about the legalities, Mr. Kettler.” He leaned forward, towering over the openmouthed computer expert. “Do you know the person who’s been making those interceptions?”
“Only by his handle. He calls himself ‘Freebooter,’ ” Kettler replied hesitantly. “He’s a real top-gun hacker. He’s a little strange.”
Thorn didn’t say anything, though his mind reeled slightly at the thought that the computer expert could find anyone else odd.
Rossini joined in. “Can we contact this guy, Derek?”
“I can dial him up, I guess. I know where he usually hangs out in cyberspace.” Kettler absentmindedly scratched his beard. “Freebooter won’t talk to you directly, though, Maestro. You work for the Man.” He didn’t even mention Thorn.
“Whatever. Just do it.” Rossini almost pushed Kettler into his chair.
“Do you think he’ll be there?”
Kettler nodded, typing fast again. “Freebooter’s always there. He practically lives on the Net.”
The strange lines of machine code vanished as he shunted back to the CPU he had dedicated solely to monitoring the computer bulletin boards.
A speaker suddenly spat out a dial tone, followed by the sound of a number being punched in at high speed. The screen flickered and then blinked into another image. This one showed a rippling black flag emblazoned with a white skull and crossbones. Bold text letters spelled out: WELCOME TO THE PIRATES’ COVE.
Kettler looked apologetic. “It’s a hacker’s BBS. I like to keep my ear to the ground here… you know, just kind of see what’s new.” He bent over the keyboard again, fingers flashing through long-practiced combinations as he logged on and called up a list of those currently on-line. He leaned closer, scrolling through the names and then nodded sharply. “There he is!”
Thorn focused on the list and saw it. A line read: FREEBOOTER, IN THE TAVERN.
The computer expert punched a few more keys and leaned back. “Okay, he’s chatting with someone else right now, but I just paged him.” “Good,” Thorn said simply. “Now, you know what we want?”
Kettler nodded rapidly. “Yeah. A data dump of every encrypted message he’s collected, right?”
“Right.”
“Okay,” Kettler said. “Listen, Lemme work on him for a while. This could be kinda tricky. Freebooter’s a touchy bastard. If we screw this up or he gets spooked, he’ll drop off the Net, change his handle, and then we’ll never find him.”
Thorn frowned. Despite Kettler’s demonstrated computer expertise, he was reluctant to trust something so important to someone so flaky. Still, he had to admit the bearded whiz kid knew a hell of a lot more about the strange subculture they were fishing in than he did. He nodded. “All right, Mr. Kettler. We’ll do it your way. You reel him in.”
Kettler hesitated. “There’s just one more thing.”
“Yes?”
“This guy won’t do shit for free, Colonel Thorn. He lives on secret knowledge. It turns him on. Makes him feel good. Know what I mean?”
Thorn nodded. He’d seen others in the intelligence game with the same compulsion.
“So we’ve got to offer him something,” Kettler continued. “Trade stuff he’d be interested in for those message files.”
Thorn nodded again. He thought fast. “Does Freebooter usually blab his secrets? Or try to sell them?”
“No.” Kettler shook his head. “At least, I don’t think so. I think he only started posting stuff about the codes because he got so frustrated that he couldn’t crack them. He even dropped out of the Net debate once he realised no one there had the kind of decryption software he needed.”
“Fine. Then you offer him what we just learned about the Midwest Telephone virus. The Bulgarian connection. The fact that we now suspect the terrorist campaign is under foreign control. The whole bit. You emphasise that it’s knowledge that only a very few people in the U.S. government possess. And you promise a first look at whatever our codebreakers come up with if they can crack those messages. Think that’ll make him bite?”
Thorn carefully avoided locking at Rossini as he spoke. What he was proposing was a massive breach of security. But damn it, they needed those message files. Trying to track them down on their own would take too much time.
Kettler nodded slowly, thinking it through. “Yeah. That might do it. Freebooter knows I’ve got some Pentagon connections.”
He sat upright as text began appearing on his display. “Here we go. He’s answering my page.” His hands came down again over the keyboard.
Thorn felt Rossini’s touch on his arm and stepped back. Nothing more would be served by crowding Kettler now. Strange as it might seem, he would have to rely on the oddball computer expert who was busy wheeling and dealing over the ether to acquire illegally obtained information from an electronic Peeping Tom. It was an uncomfortable, if unavoidable, position.
The time dragged by, punctuated only by a steady clicking as Kenler typed in offers and responded to counteroffers.
Thorn paced impatiently, matched almost step for step by Rossini. His mind whirled with the information that might be contained in those encrypted messages. Proof that a foreign government was behind this wave of terror. The hiding places and plans of the separate terrorist cells. A target.
That was what he wanted. What the whole country needed. Something or someone to focus their anger on, to strike back at to destroy. Knowing their enemy would change everything. Maybe.
“Got it!”
Thorn’s head snapped up at Kettler’s triumphant cry. He crossed to the computer expert’s side in two long strides. “Where?”
“There.” Kettler pointed to the blinking red light on one of his machines indicating a hard drive in operation. “I’m downloading Freebooter’s files now. Shouldn’t take more than another minute.”
This time Thorn stood impatiently by, waiting for Kettler to pull up a directory of the files he’d just received. There were more than a hundred of them, some dating back to early October when the mysterious Freebooter had first stumbled across them. Others were more recent.
“Pull that one up,” he ordered, pointing almost at random.
“Right.” Kettler complied swiftly, his own curiosity now clearly engaged.
All three men stared at the message that popped onto the display.
From: magi@univ.london.comSAT NOV 22 00:15:35 GMT Received: from sub-ingul~by by relay7 (comnet.com) with SMPT (234.281 778/M8) id AA 314935146; NOV 22 00:15:35 GMT Text follows:
*
The main body of the message was an indecipherable hash of numbers, letters, and characters.
“Go to another,” Thorn commanded. He barely noticed Rossini pulling in chairs so that they could all sit grouped around the monitor as Kettler began dancing through the encrypted messages first at random and then in chronological order.
Even a cursory check of the time/date stamp each message contained began to reveal a distinct pattern. Communications from a single, unidentified, foreign source, “Magi,” were being sent to at least ten separate users in the United States. And those users communicated only with Magi never with each other. More damning still, there appeared to be a rough correlation between the messages from Magi, the deadliest terrorist attacks, and the messages back to Magi.
Thorn felt his pulse starting to accelerate. To his trained eye, the sequence was a familiar one: operations orders and postaction damage assessment reports. He felt the strange elation of seeing a long-sought enemy
