Conspiracy

The NSA routinely monitored transmissions from several countries, collecting literally mountains of data every day.

There was so much, in fact, that much of it was never inspected by a human. Even the automated programs that looked for things like key words or “hot” e-mail routes couldn’t inspect every single message.

Once the Deep Black mission was initiated, a team of analysts specifically assigned to Desk Three began culling through the data. Their efforts were still primarily guided by automated programs, which helped them analyze the information in a variety of ways. Not even the most optimistic member of the team expected to find a specific message that said “kill this person.” What they hoped to spot was a sequence of communications that indicated some sort of conspiracy — transfers of money, communications that did not fit an “ordinary” diplomatic pattern, and that sort of thing.

Gallo was assigned to work with those analysts, looking to see if there were systems that were not being tapped and which deserved to be. When the analysts developed a theory that an assassination team might be a private enterprise only partly supported, if at all, by the government, they gave him a list of servers being used by Vietnamese businesses. He began penetrating them, using “bots” or automated programs, in this case similar to viruses, to get the servers to give up information about themselves.

Angela DiGiacomo helped him handle the bots, which had a tendency to get “lost”—though bots were rarely tripped up by security protocols, errors in programming on the host’s end occasionally scuttled them. DiGiacomo was very good at debugging the systems, figuring out where the problems lay, and adapting the programs to work around them without being detected.

She was also extremely attractive. Gallo found himself stealing glances at her breasts as she complained about the inept coding of a Chinese gateway that had been giving her all sorts of hassles.

“What do you think I should do?” Angela asked him.

Gallo felt his palms starting to sweat. What he wanted her to do had nothing to do with work.

“Fix it for them?” he stuttered finally.

She rolled her eyes and went back to work.

37

having failed to get in through the front door, Karr resorted to Plan B — the back door.

Or more precisely, the back basement door, which was not only locked but also connected to a burglar alarm system.

Neither problem was insurmountable. The same pick that would have opened the door to the stairs worked equally well on the basement lock. The alarm system employed a magnetic sensor that would set off an alert as soon as the magnet was removed or the circuit broken. There were a number of ways around this; the easiest — in this case — was by using a second magnet and a metal shim.

The difficulty came from the fact that the building’s rear door could be seen from several restaurants and storefronts across the street. So to prepare his way, Karr had to first find a way to become invisible.

A large truck had been parked just up the street. Too bad it hadn’t been parked about ten yards to the south, thought Karr; then it would easily block the view.

Well, that wasn’t really a problem, was it?

Within a few minutes Karr had jumped the truck and moved it behind the building. The view of the door now cut off, Karr went to work. He used his handheld PDA as a gauss-meter, locating the alarm system’s magnet sensor mounted in the threshold. Though it was an unusual spot, it was not difficult to defeat; Karr slid a small neodymium-iron-boron magnet into place as he pushed open the door. A wadded Vietnamese newspaper kept the spring-loaded door ajar, giving him an easier escape route if needed.

The door opened into the bottom floor of the stairwell Karr had been trying to enter earlier. Karr put on his night glasses and started climbing.

“Tommy, Marie thinks you ought to wait until Dean comes over to back you up,” said Rockman. “Shouldn’t be too long now.”

“Great idea,” said Karr, continuing up the steps.

“I thought you were going to wait.”

“I didn’t say I would wait. I said it was a good idea.” Karr moved as quickly and as quietly as he could up the steps. He stopped when he reached the fifth floor, double-checking to make sure there was no alarm on the door.

“Clear or not clear?” he asked Rockman.

“We don’t have video.”

“I’m looking for a bet,” said Karr. He got down to his knees and slid a small video bug beneath the door.

“Clear,” said the runner in a resigned voice.

The door was locked, and once more Karr had to break out the pick.

“Guess they never have fires in Vietnam, huh?” He slipped the pick in, pushed up gently, then stepped into the darkened hallway.

Thao Duong’s office was near the end of the hallway. Surprisingly large, it had a simple metal desk and a comfortable chair, but no other furniture, not even a bookshelf or a place for a visitor to sit. Papers were stacked along the left wall, some as high as Karr’s waist.

“Single computer on the desk,” Karr told the Art Room as he checked the sole drawer. It contained only two pens. “PC.

No network card that I see.”

“Wireless network?” asked Rockman.

“Not sure.” Karr took out his PDA and tapped the screen, bringing up a simple wireless detection program. The dialog button on the screen remained brown — no wireless signal.

“Nada.”

Karr inserted a small electronic dongle into one of the computer’s USB ports at the rear, then booted the computer.

Karr’s dongle, about the size of a lipstick, allowed him to bypass the computer’s normal operating system, making it easier to upload its contents to the Art Room. As the machine came to life, he took a wire from his pocket and inserted one end into a second USB port, then connected it to his sat phone. When that was done, he went over to the papers.

“This is all Vietnamese to me,” he told Rockman, removing his PDA from his pocket. He slipped a camera attachment on it and began beaming images of the stacked pages to the Art Room.

“Agricultural reports,” said Thu De Nghiem.

After a couple of stacks, Karr realized that each pile represented a different province. The stacks contained an assortment of agricultural information dating back six or seven years.

Not exactly what he’d hoped to find.

“How’s that download coming?” he asked Rockman.

“We’re about halfway done.”

Karr sat down in front of the desk, considering where he should plant the audio bug he’d brought. Given the lack of furniture, the most logical place was in the computer, but that also meant it would be the most likely place anyone would look for it.

Under the pile of papers?

Hard to tell when they might be moved.

There was a thermostat on the wall.

Karr decided there was no sense being too cute and decided to simply stick the bug under the desk. Since he was already sitting on the floor, he leaned back and crawled under. But as he started to put the bug in place he saw a large envelope taped to the bottom of the desk in his way.

“What have we here?” he said, pocketing the bug. He undid the tape and took the envelope down.

“Tommy — Thao Duong is walking toward the building.”