The Merchant of Secrets (16 page)

“You’re sure that he’s not selling PFG’s equipment to a
foreign buyer?”

“We think he tried to sell it to Iran, communicating
through a website that looked like it was selling farming equipment, but he
hasn’t found a buyer yet. The British Ministry of Defense tells us he tried to
sell PFG’s drones in the U.K. but failed there as well. It appears that the
downloading would have begun about 6 months ago, that’s when the U.K. and the
U.S. both rejected his proposal to buy his drones.”

Bailey started thinking out loud “So that’s the reason
for the money to be wired from Shanghai to Abu Dhabi with Kabul bank being the intermediary
bank to break-up the money trail and make the money difficult to trace?”

“Right,” I replied.

“Caroline, he’ll have to keep PFG afloat forever,” Bailey
said.

‘Why?”

“Because he needs to have a company where he can launder
the money he’s receiving for trading classified information to a foreign buyer.
He’s got to explain on his tax returns how he’s paying for a private jet and
private clubs,” She explained.

“So you’re thinking what I’m thinking. That the real
product isn’t his drones anymore; it’s the sale of classified information…
..,
” I asked.

“Yep,” She replied. “There’s no point wasting time
guessing if he’s
gonna
have a buyer for his drones at
some point in the future, right now the product is classified
information.  And he’s got to sell enough information to generate
sufficient cash flow to keep his entire floundering company operational. 
He’s got to sell a Hell of a lot of information, there Caroline.”

“Bailey, the price of intelligence isn’t always driven by
the quantity of documents it’s also driven by the quality,
”
 I
said. Then a terrifying thought suddenly hit me, “He’s going to
go after the crown jewels. Oh God, Bailey, we’ve got to shut him down. ”

Before my panic could spread further Jose and Hugo were
calling me back to the dining room to help review some of
Irongate’s
new code.

“I
gotta
go, Queen B,” I said.
“ I’ll
keep you posted on your cell phone, okay? It’s going
to be an all-nighter tonight.”

“Caroline, as soon as you get something solid that
a  prosecutor move forward on, I can have all of their bank accounts
frozen. PFG’s,
Qureshi’s
, ……..
”

“Okay. You’ll be the first to know. Bye.”

 Richard Green had gone back to his programmer team
to create an updated version of the software to rush it out the clients and to
pull together a patch that they could apply in the meantime to close the
security lapses before Jones could log- in again and steal any more Top Secret
files.  We reviewed their work as they were writing it, and added our
input to expedite its completion. The new software needed to be delivered to
the defense community fast.  There was an impressive amount of brainpower
working in overdrive to achieve a singular purpose and the energy level was so
inspiring we seemed invincible.

We notified the DOD including Keisha about
Irongate
. Meanwhile
Mulally
notified the Chairman of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, and the
Chairman of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee and told
them that after Jones’ PFG contract was rejected by the DOD, his company was in
limbo so he began to formulate another plan, which included downloading Top
Secret files containing spacecraft designs from competitors and selling them on
the black market to China, we believed.

 As he spoke into the phone his body had gone limp
and was resting against the table. It made me feel sad to see
Mulally
suffering under this
terrible strain, he had shown so many glimpses of brilliance during the day and
shouldn’t have been taking it so hard.   

 We spent a horrifyingly  tense next few hours
waiting for each company that received the trial copy to report back to us
 telling us whether or not they had finished their compatibility 
tests  which would have been the first step taken prior to installation  of
Irongate’s
 software. The test verifies whether
a new
software is compatible with their existing system and
can be installed.  Then, if the software passed the compatibility test
we’d ask if the company had followed- up with installation of the software and
if they had installed it already, we’d help them download the patch.
  

When the calls started coming in from the companies that
had received the software, only one company had actually installed it and put
it to use in operations.  Unfortunately, that one company was a major
aircraft manufacturer that designs most of the airplanes deployed on the
warfront.  Compounding the crisis, over the next few
hours
 the
CEO of the aircraft manufacturing company alarmed everyone by
informing us that flowcharts and operational manuals of a new advanced weapon
system had been downloaded from someone logging in with an
Irongate
password. We asked how the information was downloaded, and he said it was from
one of their computers belonging to an employee who was on vacation.

“So
what’d  Dave
Jones do?”
Jose asked, “Tailgate somebody on foot as they were walking through the
security door to get into the building?”  

“No, the employee reported the laptop as having been
compromised,” The CEO replied. “Before we could revoke the access rights, and
destroy the local files, the files had already been accessed.”

Mulally
jumped in “We’re getting off track now.
We want to keep our
focus on the crucial element which is identifying what was leaked and to whom.
 How Jones picked up
the downloads
is not the
most important thing for us to worry about right now. We’ve already got a way
to stop him from downloading more data; by applying the patch.”

He was absolutely right. But there were other issues.

“Sir?
I have one more thing to
mention, I’m hesitant to add to our current level of stress but I think I have
to bring it up. Once Jones logged into the system with an
Irongate
password, he could have whitelisted email addresses and websites. You know
those sites and the addresses that are blacklisted because they contain viruses
that spy on the whole network? When they’re whitelisted they’re taken off the
blacklist so that the network has no firewall effectively,” I said.

“Yea but if the information is sent electronically we can
trace the vector to the device where it was downloaded,” Hugo said, shrugging
it off.

“Hugo!” I anxiously replied, “That’ll be too late! We
don’t want to learn after the fact that databases have been downloaded to the
Ukraine or North Korea thanks to Jones whitelisting the email address of
foreign cyber-spies.”

Mulally
turned pale with worry as the stress increasingly took its toll on
him.
He thought he had the crisis under control but now he seemed
overwhelmed as he melted into a chair and closed his eyes cupping his hands
over his face. I patted his shoulder and whispered in his
ear
”
the penetration testing will let us know, then they can shut down the
system and install a new firewall which will keep it safe going forward.”

Removing his hands from his face he took a deep breath.
“What’s our real exposure here Caroline?”

“Well, the airplane manufacturer will  install a
second sign-on screen requiring an additional password for the employees
 to access the network, so  than when  Jones tries to log-in
now, he can’t get in because after he inputs the first passcode, another,
second log-in screen will appear  he won’t be able to get past the
 second  sign-on screen. He doesn’t have the codes for it. The
airplane manufacturer will also be running their pen-testing which will identify
Trojans and other malware, and they’ll get rid of them.  Then they’ll
install a new firewall. It’ll happen overnight. Once they do that, as you said,
our worries are contained to the information that has already been downloaded
and leaked. That’s our real exposure at this point.”

It had been a long day and we were getting hungry so Hugo
left to pick up some pizza for all of us.  Our necks and backs were
getting stiff from hovering over laptops all day long. There was a song that
had been stuck in my mind so I put on earplugs clicked into You Tube, and while
the song was playing I moved my shoulders and hips back and forth to the beat
softly enough that I didn’t think anyone would notice. Hugo entered the living
room carrying the pizza
and  when
he saw me, he
couldn’t resist the tease.  “Oh! Everyone look at Caroline
bustin
’ loose with her moves! C’mon baby, let it all out!”

Mulally
and Jose looked up at
me, and with Hugo burst into side-splitting laughter. Bent over and gasping for
air these guys were quite an audience. I got up from my chair and walked
through the kitchen and through the glass sliding door leading onto the back
patio.  Seeking reprieve from the laughter and everything else, I took a
short walk outside to call Colin who was still in the
U.K..
On any other occasion this attention would have been mortifying but on that day
their teasing was clearly a byproduct of the extreme tension of the moment.

“Hi honey, I was just thinking of you,” I said as Colin
answered the phone. “How are your parents?”

“Fine,” he said. “I’ll be back soon.
Gotta
go
..”
Colin replied with an unusual economy of words
before quickly ending the call.
I  was
beginning
 to seriously rethink my relationship with him when the sliding glass door
to the patio opened and
Mulally’s
labrador
bounced outside, tail wagging, followed by his master carrying two beers. “Are
you okay?”  
Mulally
asked in a gentle tone.

“Sure,” I replied. He was an oasis of rational thought in
a business infused with large egos, turf wars and backstabbing.  

“Have a beer?” he offered with a smile.

“Thanks,” I replied, accepting the bottle from his hand.

‘Well it looks like we’re getting this under control,
thanks for your help,” he said, taking a sip.

“No problem sir.”

He laughed, “C’mon Caroline. This isn’t the army. Call me
Mike.”

As he removed his professional armor a three dimensional
person was beginning to emerge with moods and opinions and he was becoming less
and less just my boss. Our communication had a subtle simplicity to it as we
stood in silence and looked at the sky.  

“Where are you living now?” he asked.

“Bailey’s.”

“How’s that going?”

“Well I’m wearing out my welcome, I think. I need to find
my own place.”

“You can stay here if you want,” he suggested carefully, “there’s
plenty of room.”   

Hugo ripped open the door, “Sir!” he shouted. “The
information just arrived on the Iranian guy who picked up the cash in Abu
Dhabi.” Hugo sensed that there was
something  intimate
going on between Mike and me, but wasn’t sure so he ignored it. “That’s it!
The final piece of the puzzle!”

“Thanks Hugo, I’ll be there in a second.”

We looked at each other and smiled at the moment lost.
 Then he turned around and went inside.

Iran desperately wanted to become the dominant power in
the Middle East and as the center of the Shiite Muslim population, it also
wanted to convert Iraq which is a Sunni country, into another Shiite country
like itself. To enhance that effort the Iranians wanted to buy highly
sophisticated weaponry to build itself up to becoming a powerhouse among its
neighbors, but thwarted as they were by strict trade embargoes placed on them
by the U.S. and its allies, they were forced to buy lesser sophisticated
armaments from places like China and India. The Iranians paid their friends in
China and India handsomely for military technology which they funded with oil
money but with U.S. and European trade sanctions in place also hindering their
effort to sell their oil, their cash reserves were running low. The Iranian
involvement with the transfer of funds in an arms deal was predictable.  

At that point we had information from our friends in the
U.K. to indicate that Jones was desperate for cash and trying to sell PFG drone
systems to foreign governments which is a violation of federal export law, but
if we had him arrested at that time we weren’t completely sure we could prove
it beyond a reasonable doubt in court.  Worse, we still didn’t have the
device or network where he stored and transferred the information he was
selling. And we didn’t know what information had been leaked to Beijing.

Beijing clearly wasn’t interested in PFG’s designs; PFG
was a relatively unknown company at that time. Jones needed something else to
sell,
and  he
was coerced by Beijing into
stealing Top Secret files which China  could use in its drive to expand
its military presence in the Pacific theatre. Designs depicting the
construction of advanced weapon systems including instructions on how to load
and launch the weapons from aircraft, was worth a fortune to the Chinese
military. Jones already had the passcodes that
Irongate
had provided six months earlier, all he needed to do was to try out the
passcodes on the major defense companies one-by-one to find which system would
be responsive, and break into their files.