Capitol Reflections (22 page)
Peter Tippett entered Jan’s office at the CDC with a plastic visitor’s pass dangling from his neck. He was at the Center unofficially, ostensibly visiting a friend he’d met at the PITAC conference and nothing more.
Sitting at her desk, Jan looked up, saw him, and let out a sigh. “Thank God you’re here. Strange things are going on—off-the-chart strange, in fact—and they just got stranger according to an e-mail from an epidemiologist friend up in Rockville.”
Tippett covered his lips with an index finger as if signaling naptime for a room full of kindergartners. “Not here. Let’s go out for a bite to eat.”
“Sounds good to me, Peter. My treat.”
“You’ll get no argument from me.”
They left and headed for a café on the other side of town, in the new chic pedestrian mall.
“If your computer is compromised, then there could also be electronic bugs no bigger than a pinhead in your office if someone wanted to listen to our conversation,” Tippett stated as they drove. “But now that we’re out on the road, tell me what’s up.”
“What I’m about to say to you, I never said. Right?”
“Scout’s honor.”
“Okay, then,” said Jan, merging into traffic on the interstate. “Our new top-level security computer for detecting bioterrorist events—”
“That would be BioNet.”
“You’re not supposed to know that name, Peter.”
“At my clearance level, Jan, I know what the president had for breakfast this morning.”
Jan smiled and proceeded with her reasons for calling the computer supersleuth. “BioNet has picked up seizure activity way above the norm in certain cities during the past year. The spikes last about a month give or take. The statistical probability for such occurrences is so remote that ‘coincidence’ isn’t worth discussing.”
“Sounds downright intriguing, but that’s your department, Jan. What do you need a computer security specialist for?” Tippett was an American citizen but had lived in London from the age of five until he graduated from Cambridge University. He enunciated perfectly, speaking with a slight English accent that Jan found appealing.
“Because BioNet is not functioning correctly to begin with. When I called you a few days ago, it was completely down as far as normal operations were concerned, although it uploaded the seizure files to a re-mailer in Iceland. I’d naturally like to know where the ultimate destination was.”
“What about BioNet’s current activity?”
“Back to normal, but something’s not right. I’m the director, and nothing should have been uploaded without my knowledge and consent. The info we collect is just too sensitive. And for BioNet to simply stop functioning and then start again, with no log entries reflecting temporary downtime—there’s just no way that should have happened.”
“You suspect the project has been compromised from the inside.”
“Has to be. Too many safeguards in place for this to be a breach from the outside. If I call security, then the possibility of tracking down whatever is going on is shot to hell.”
“Agreed.”
“So, feel like snooping around?”
“The larger question is, how can I snoop around without anyone getting too curious?”
“Good point. Any suggestions?”
“I can install a router in your office and have wireless access to the system from outside the premises.”
“You have to be kidding. We have so many microwave towers and wireless communications systems already in place that you’d be detected in a heartbeat.”
“Oh ye of little faith.” Tippett had a childlike grin and a mischievous twinkle in his eye. “Consider the average wireless laptop. You can grab someone else’s signal if you’re close enough—a dream for ID thieves—but I can install thirty-digit passwords for both the router and the program I’ll use. My own equipment will be similarly protected. We’ll be completely invisible. Never underestimate a low-tech approach to gaining access to high-tech systems. It’s a fundamental mistake made by governments and big business.”
“What kind of program can you run?”
“First, I can run a trace to see where Iceland sent the file. After that, we’ll see if we can run BioNet and refine the seizure stats at Level II without anyone else knowing what we’re doing.”
“That’s impossible. I had to shunt my activities to a sub-directory after running the seizure stats. The system is designed to keep careful track of every user and data run. You can hide activity for a while, but all users are recorded one way or another.”
“And yet, as you just pointed out, BioNet’s downtime wasn’t logged. I don’t foresee any problems. Trust me. There’s a simple solution if one knows how to go about it.”
“Which is?”
“I’ll never log in.”
Jan burst into laughter. “You can do that?”
With a decidedly British air of surety, Tippett said, “With your help, I most certainly can. If you provide me with a few passwords, I can bypass certain directories by using what is called a JDM patch.”
“What’s that?”
“JDM stands for ‘Just Dare Me.’ I can literally bypass some of BioNet’s programming protocols. Think of it as putting a patient to sleep for surgery so that he’s unaware of what the surgeon is doing. I’m the anesthetist of the cyber world.”
“Peter, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
“I was rather hoping you’d say that.”
28
To Jack, Lawrence and Jennifer Newman appeared as somber as they had on the day of Marci’s funeral. They were nevertheless cordial, if a little subdued, and welcomed Jack into their home without hesitation. They’d removed Marci’s belongings from her apartment by mid-June, and Jack had correctly assumed that her laptop was now at her parents’ home. He was less than candid about his need to see the PC, however, since Mr. and Mrs. Newman might think it strange that Gwen had looked at Marci’s private files, their long friendship notwithstanding.
“Gwen’s still devastated by Marci’s death,” Jack explained, “and I was thinking the other day that maybe—just maybe—there might be something on Marci’s computer—a journal or a file—that might describe the way she was feeling physically before she went to court that day. I don’t want to intrude on her privacy, and I’ll understand completely if you’d rather I not look. Gwen’s awfully busy these days, and since my specialty is computers, well, I thought I’d stop by since I was in the city on business.” Jack was indeed in New York on business, but it was confined to investigating Marci Newman’s death. He hated telling half-truths to these people who were obviously still in mourning, but he convinced himself that what he was doing might help them in the end as well.
“You’re welcome here anytime,” Jennifer Newman said warmly. “And of course you can look at Marci’s computer. I’m only sorry Gwen couldn’t come with you today.”
“We don’t particularly want to know Marci’s personal affairs,” Lawrence Newman confessed as he ushered Jack inside the foyer, “but if there’s anything in her computer that might shed some light on her death, we’d naturally like to know about it. After the funeral, Gwen said that Marci had a minor heart defect that was probably exacerbated by stress. Does she think there may have been something more?”
Not having been privy to Gwen’s conversation with the Newmans back in May, Jack had painted himself into a corner. “She’s not sure what to think,” he said. “She’s been over the tragedy in her mind many times. I think she’s looking for a little more closure.”
His last statement was much closer to the truth, making Jack feel a bit more at ease in his clandestine effort to uncover the cause of his wife’s erratic behavior.
“In fact, she doesn’t even know I’m here today,” Jack confessed. “I think she feels that if she’d kept in closer touch with Marci, she might have picked up on something that could have, well, maybe changed the course of events.”
Mrs. Newman gently put her hand on Jack’s forearm. “We certainly don’t want Gwen to feel responsible for Marci’s death. Marci was a very busy woman, as is Gwen, and it troubles me that Gwen is having so much difficulty with this.”
Lawrence and Jennifer led Jack to Marci’s old room, where her laptop was sitting on one of the many cardboard boxes the Newmans had obviously not had the courage to unpack. Jack found himself humming the same melody Jennifer had been humming as they walked up the stair, the same melody line from the symphony playing in the background, elsewhere in the house.
“What is that music, anyway?” He turned to Jennifer with a quizzical look, “Haydn. Am I right?”
“Yes, it’s his London symphony. Marci loved to listen to it and I just can’t get it out of my head these days.”
“‘London?”
“Actually, Haydn just numbered it ‘104’ but his patrons immediately named it London.”
As usual, Jack was amazed by his own inability to grasp the obvious. The Newmans left, and Jack moved the laptop to Marci’s desk, which had two pictures on its polished oak surface: a shot of Gwen ten years earlier, and an enlargement of a seagull hovering over waves against a backdrop of wide, open blue sky. Jack felt a deep sense of irony. The likeness of his wife was right there in the room, as if keeping tabs on him. He looked at her picture again. “I’m doing this for both of us, honey. I love you, but there’s something you’re holding back.”
He sat down at Marci’s computer and clicked on the troublesome file one more time. When the password window opened he hurriedly typed “London.”
Incorrect Password
“Piccadilly.”
Incorrect Password
“Thames.”
Incorrect Password
And then, “Bridge.”
Within seconds, Jack found dozens of filenames scrolling across Marci’s screen. He couldn’t keep himself from chuckling quietly.
“Everything okay in there?” came a voice from the living room.
“Just fine.” Jack coughed, loudly this time, to try to mask his momentary amusement.
Jack copied the now-open files to the CD he had brought. Most of the legal files were straightforward, documenting litigation involving dozens of influential clients and companies. A few, however, pertained to tobacco. During the past year, Marci had represented several people in suits against various tobacco companies—Phillip Morris, R. J. Reynolds, and Compson—for wrongful death or severe impairment of health and the inability to work. The individuals had smoked for years, and the suits focused on the manipulation of nicotine levels, making it far more unlikely that the plaintiffs could kick the habit regardless of what gum they chewed or patches they put on their skin.
One of the files alluded to a suit against Compson Tobacco. The suit brought against the tobacco company was by a twenty-seven-year-old CPA named Virginia Rampling, a woman who, like Marci, had smoked for a brief time. The file listed the woman’s name, address, and telephone number.
The next file was even stranger. It contained a series of e-mail exchanges between Marci and Ambassador Jon Cohen at the State Department. Cohen apparently ran the State’s program against trafficking of human beings. Marci was asking for information about human trafficking between Vietnam and other Asian capitals in the 1970s but, so far, Cohen had been of little assistance.
There was no obvious smoking gun here. Haydn104 was just a mixture of Marci’s concern about security on the one hand and humor on the other.
Fifteen minutes later, Jack bid the Newmans farewell and thanked them for their kindness. He told them he hadn’t seen anything unusual and was sure that Gwen’s original explanation was correct; Marci was the unfortunate victim of stress and a minor heart defect. It was easy to sound convincing because Jack believed it completely. That had to be the explanation. Nothing else made sense. Jack hugged Lawrence and Jennifer and got back into his rental car.
Despite his pessimism, all of Jack’s training told him to leave no stone unturned. The suit against the tobacco company intrigued him. Those folks could play rough when they felt threatened. Taking out his cell phone, he punched in the number of the woman named in the one of Marci’s files. The phone rang repeatedly, but no one picked up, nor was there an answering machine or voice mail to handle the call.
“Okay, so now we do the necessary legwork,” Jack said to himself, feeling very much the private eye. He would never admit it to Gwen, but this case had captured his imagination.
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