Black Tide (25 page)

Luckily I was on the first floor, in Room 120, which was the last unit on the end of the building. Moving in my luggage and gear was tiring, and I was glad for no neighbors, for I'm sure they would wonder why I had so many boxes, and by this time I was too tired to lie to anyone face to face.

But not too tired to lie over the phone.

When I was moved in, I checked the time and forced myself to calm down. It was 4:05 P.M. I had twenty minutes to get ready. The room had dark green carpeting that seemed as if it had been cut from the same bolt of Astroturf that had just redone the Giant's stadium in New Jersey. There were two single beds that shared the same style of dark brown patterned bedspread. The beds were separated by a nightstand that had a lamp and a digital clock .

After locking and bolting the door, I began unpacking the boxes I had brought in. They contained my Apple Macintosh Plus (now obsolete in home computer terms but still very capable of fulfilling my needs, the 160-megabyte hard disk, printer, modem, and length of telephone cable. It took me only a few minutes to connect the equipment on one of the single beds ---- all the while thanking profusely the Apple engineers who had designed the gear that allowed me to do everything without a single tool ---- and then I was ready. I powered up the Apple and inserted a backup floppy disk, and then called up a stored file that contained several months' worth of columns for
Shoreline
. I told the printer to start printing, and in a minute the little room was filled with the sound of the printer churning out old columns.  Then I really got to work.

I think my hands were shaking as I dialed the phone number using the stolen access code I had used earlier that day, and the phone was answered instantly. "Pentagon, Office of Administration and Management," came the brisk female voice.

"Extension four-one-one-two," I said.

As I waited the long seconds for the phone call to be transferred I thought about the victim I had chosen. It had been years since I had last walked the long and warren like corridors of the Pentagon, but I still remembered many of the names and several of the phone numbers of people who had worked in other sections of the Department of Defense. I had also written them down to be extra sure I would always have that information in case my memory ever got fuzzy. My particular section was now dead --- both literally and bureaucratically ---- but I was sure some faces were still going to be there.

"Personnel, Grier," came the answer after one ring.

I tried to put some cheerfulness in my tone. "Hi, Peg. This is Walt Davis, down in System Security. How's it going?"

"Fine, I guess. What's this all about?"

I had just won the First Gamble. She had just accepted me as being a member of the Pentagon's security outfit that controlled their computer systems, and I'm sure my happy little Apple, busily printing away on a motel bed in upstate New York, was helping matters along by providing the necessary sound effects.

Trying not to sound relieved, I said, "Peg, we're having some system problems this afternoon with DefNet. Has the system been slow today?"

I knew the answer to that already. Everyone thinks his or her computer system is too slow, and Peg was no exception. I had just won the Second Gamble.

"Yes, and it seems to be getting worse," she said, breathing into the phone. "Listen, I really need to get going here- --- it's almost four-thirty. What's up?"

"Peg, it'll only take a minute to explain." Remembering Peg from my tour at the Pentagon, I knew she was a bit intimidated by the phone system, and was only introduced to the Department of Defense Network --- DefNet --- through some not so subtle threats.

I said, "The system has been crashing at odd intervals, and only affecting certain nodes. Some sections have lost months of work.”

"Oh my."

"Yeah. So we're trying to stem the tide, so to speak, and we find that so far the crashing is affecting those old users that the system is identifying. When was the last time you changed your password?"

I could tell that there was concern in her tone. "Oh, maybe five or six months ago. Listen, are my files threatened?"

"Yes, they are ---"

"Well, you've got to do something," she said, her voice getting a bit higher. "There's an audit I've been getting ready for months now, and I can't lose that work!"

Trying to keep my voice cheerful was beginning to be a chore.  "Tell me, are you logged on to DefNet right now?"

"Yes, but I was going to log off and catch the bus home."

"Peg, there are two ways of taking care of the problem. One takes me about a half hour to talk you through ---"

Her voice was getting panicky. "I can't miss my bus!"

"--- and the other involves just changing your password. We’ve found that new users --- people whose passwords are less than a week old --- are immune to the system problem. If you change your password now, you'll be all set and you can catch your bus."

There was a sigh, and I heard over the phone some desk drawers being opened. "I swear it was easier back when I started. Typewriters and filing cabinets. Everything you can hold in your hand. You know, when I first started working on these damn things, I lost a whole day's work because of a thunderstorm? Sweet Mary. Hold on, here's the manual… Okay, I've got the direction on changing passwords. It says, 'Press Control P.''

"Okay," I said, dimly remembering what the screen probably looked like to her. "What do you get?"

“It says, 'Password Options' and underneath it says, 'To change current password, press 1.' Is that the one?"

I started typing on my own Mac, just typing gibberish, so she would hear the keyboard sound over the phone. "Fine. Peg, I’m monitoring you through my own terminal, and now the system is telling you to type in your old password, and then type in your new one. Do you see that?"

"Hmm," she said. "That's right. Okay, here goes. Old password.” From the phone I heard her own keyboard clicking away, and then she said, "Here's the new one. Okay, it tells me to re-type the new password to verify it and it's accepted."

"Damn," I said, trying to put some conviction in my voice

Her voice, concerned again. "What's wrong?"

"Oh, I've got a glare problem with the phosphor system on my monitor," I said, making up this verbal gibberish to go along with the typing gibberish that I was performing on the keyboard. "To ensure that the system's fine and your files are protected, need to verify your new password. All I can tell is that it look like it begins with the letter 'P.' Am I right, Peg?"

"No, Walt. It should be an 'R.'" Please, God, I said. Please.

“An R,'" she added, "for my favorite hockey team. The Rangers. "

I typed in some more keystrokes and said, "Peg, you’ve saved your files. Good going. Look, you go get your bus, and the next time I see you in the Pik Quick Cafeteria, I'll buy you lunch. "

"That's a deal, Walt," and she hung up, and I hung up. I got up from the bed, breathing hard, and then went into the bathroom to splash water on my face and my hands, which were still trembling. I felt triumphant, but I knew my real work was ahead. All it would take would be one phone call from Peg to the people in System Security, or a check with her own personnel files, to learn that there was no such person as Walt Davis.

I went back to the room.

In another minute I had disconnected the motel room's phone and had connected the phone line from my modem to the wall jack. Using a special software program in my hard disk, I programmed the computer to call a certain number in Virginia, using the second of the two long-distance numbers that I had bought earlier that day. I knew that by using these long-distance phone numbers I was trafficking in stolen property, but I figured it was going to a good cause. Not a very good excuse, I admit, but I was too busy to come up with a better one.

I got the sound of the dial tone, and then I watched the software program as it dialed the number in Virginia. There was a sound of clicks and beeps, and then a high-pitched whine as a computer in the basement of the Pentagon answered. My computer modem seemed to whine back, and then there was a high~pitched beep, and my Apple's screen went blank.

Then a single sentence scrolled across:

Who goes there?

Someone in programming had a sense of humor. I typed in:

Rangers

The screen, instead of displaying the letters, showed this:

*******

Then the screen went blank again. I chewed on a fingernail, and from outside, a man in the parking lot was yelling at his wife for drinking too much, and more words scrolled across:

Welcome to DefNet

Enter data or programming request, or hit "M" for Main Menu

I could have shouted, yelled or tap-danced. I was in. Instead, typed

Go Main Archives

and being a big old dumb computer, that's exactly where it sent me.

There are computer systems and then there are computer systems. The people who put DefNet together were under a challenge: to create a secure system that authorized users could use both in and out of the office and yet was so user-friendly that almost anyone could operate it after a half-day training session. Generals and admirals usually aren't very patient when it comes to working on computers. DefNet tied in big chunks of information from other systems used at the Department of Defense, everything from budgetary to personnel to historical information, and DefNet also had connections to other federal agencies. The Department of Defense being who they are, it was a one-way street. Someone from DefNet could poke into the OMB, but not vice versa. National Security, y'know. But the DefNet system allowed someone --- authorized users, of course --- to roam around at will, looking for whatever data they needed. It reminded me of being in an enormous library with a passkey that let you go into back rooms and hidden stacks of books.

The designers of DefNet were under enormous burdens in creating this system, operating it, and making it as perfect an example of being user-friendly as ever was. But these groups of unnamed programmers and designers had one big advantage: they were under contract to the Department of Defense.

Need I say more?

I had spent some years at the DoD, and was quite familiar with the horror stories of $200 screwdrivers and $650 toilet seats. In fact, I was quite familiar with my own horror story, which bent out those stories for sheer terror by a mile. Which meant that the clowns who had almost killed me and who had sent this country's budget mess into very strange places, also got me the information I was looking for within fifteen minutes.

It was like following a long string, and while I unrolled the information, my Apple’s hard disk sucked it all in and stored the data I was receiving.

When I got into Archives, I asked for Shipping Registry. Once in that system, I typed in a search request for
Petro Star
, and it came up with a two-page listing of its construction, crew make-up, ports of call and cargoes carried. It also confirmed that the ship was owned by Petro Associates, registered and incorporated in the ship's supposed homeport of Monrovia, Liberia, and owed by a corporation consisting of a group of Thai businessmen in Burma.

I tapped the keyboard for a moment without typing, and then typed in Go corporations. The screen flickered for a moment, and then this appeared:

Corporations

1. Domestic

2. Foreign

I slapped down a numeral 2, and then the screen showed:

Foreign Corporations

1. North America

2. South America

3. Europe

4. Asia

5. Africa

6. Oceania

7. Other

Once in the Asian section, it took me another two minutes get to Burma. Another search program --- thank you very much –- for Petro Associates, and by God, there it was:

Petro Associates

1. Ownership

2. History

3. Current Factors

I didn't think my finger trembled when I punched in 1, but know that I took in a deep breath when this showed up:

Petro Associates Ownership: Majority owner: Cameron Briggs, New York, NY

More information available (Y /N)?

"Got you, you son of a bitch," I whispered.

In the next five minutes I bounced around the system, getting, more information about Cameron Briggs, and my heart pounded so hard that I thought the sound would crack my computer screen. After having spent weeks working on this search and having come up with only a few lines of information, it was intoxicating to have pages and pages of data being sucked into my softly humming computer. Seeing all of this information unroll before me was like drinking a bottle of wine in five minutes on an empty stomach.