Zero Day: A Novel (30 page)

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His time on Sue’s computer was both tedious and unproductive. If Jeff had thought anything would jump out at him, he’d been mistaken. Shortly before midnight, Jeff and Daryl left the law offices. Daryl suggested they eat but Jeff shook his head. “No. I’m not hungry. I’ll join you if you want, though.”

“I’m not really hungry, either,” Daryl said.

Both of them were resisting feeling defeated, in over their head. “Let’s walk,” Jeff said. Instead of taking a cab, the couple strolled to the Hotel Luxor, which Jeff had picked because it was only a few blocks from where he’d be working. The night was pleasantly cool after the closed space of the IT Center. Servers had this habit of warming every space they occupied, and their constant electrical workings charged air in ways that were unnatural. It was good to be outside again, and Jeff wondered for a moment if he wasn’t throwing his life away working in closed rooms.

At the hotel he held the door for Daryl, then collected his key from the night clerk, who’d been reading the paper. The pair rode the elevator to his room.

Across the street Manfield spotted them at once. It had been a long seven hours to wait. He hated stakeouts but they were, he knew, essential to success. The street had been quiet for more than an hour before he’d noticed this particular man. As Manfield watched the man enter the hotel, he was nearly certain he was the one. The man had done all right for himself, Manfield allowed, as he waited for them to take the elevator. The blonde with him was quite a dish.

When the couple vanished through the closing doors, Manfield rushed across the street, ran toward the elevator, stopped, then muttered to himself. Spotting the night clerk, he behaved as if he’d just had an idea. “Listen,” he said, as he approached the counter, “wasn’t that Jeff Aiken I just saw? We were supposed to meet for drinks, but I was late. He’d mentioned he was staying here, so I tried to catch him.”

The clerk was elderly, with a thick thatch of white hair and pale blue eyes. He’d been a doorman here before his legs gave out. “I couldn’t say, sir. Would you like me to check if your Mr. Aiken is a guest?”

“Would you?” Manfield said with a warm smile. “That would be great.”

The clerk checked the computer. “Yes, he’s a guest.”

“Wonderful! What room and I’ll just pop up?”

“Oh, I can’t give you the room number, sir.”

“But I already told you,” Manfield protested. “We’re old friends and I just missed him for drinks. He’s expecting me.” It had worked in the past and there was no harm trying.

“I’ll be glad to call him if you like. You can speak and make whatever arrangements you want.”

Mansfield turned pensive. “Well, I’d hate to awaken him at this hour if I was wrong. He can be quite a bear.”

“Perhaps you’d like to leave a message then?”

“No, no. I’ll just give him a ring first thing. Perhaps he’ll have time for breakfast. You’ve been most helpful.”

As Manfield left, the clerk stared after him, wondering what that had been all about. Certainly not what the man with the English accent claimed. He considered calling the guest and informing him, but the man was right about one thing. People hated being awakened at this hour. Instead, he turned back to his racing form.

50

UNITED FLIGHT 914

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 2

12:47 A.M.

George Carlton stretched out in his first-class seat and stared at the back of the seat in front of him. It had been a hectic day since his disturbing meeting with Jeff Aiken and Daryl Haugen. First he’d attempted his emergency phone number to Fajer al Dawar. The Saudi had insisted on his accepting it, and Carlton had repeatedly refused before relenting. He’d distrusted having the number at all, feared any direct connection, but had finally settled on memorizing it. Until now, he’d never used the number.

That afternoon he’d paid cash for a prepaid cell phone, then bought long-distance minutes. He’d called Fajer and had after several attempts been forced to leave the cell phone’s number and a message that the man call him at once. Then he’d stayed away from his office, pacing in a shopping-mall parking lot, waiting on the return call.

Their conversation had taken place late that afternoon and had done nothing to resolve Carlton’s concerns—though candidly, he had to admit his reluctance to speak frankly over an open line probably made that impossible. But there just had to be a plausible explanation other than the one he’d concluded. Finally, he’d insisted on a face-to-face meeting, telling the Saudi it was most urgent.

Fajer had replied, “I’m only too glad to meet with you. But you must understand, I am in Paris now on business. I cannot possibly get to the United States for another month at the earliest. I assure you there is no need for concern.”

“Then I’ll come to you,” Carlton had answered. “I’ll call this number when I touch down tomorrow. Be certain you answer it.”

A hectic few hours followed as Carlton instructed his assistant to contact the travel office and arrange his priority departure. The young man had been surprised at the request since from what he could see his boss never did anything on impulse. “What do I say is the reason?” he’d asked.

Carlton had given this only cursory thought. “I must meet with my European counterpart at once. Set up a meeting first thing Monday morning, but I’m leaving tonight. I don’t want to meet suffering from jet lag.”

He’d then spent half an hour poring over reports, searching for some justification for this abrupt trip. He finally located one that might make the case. In any event, he didn’t abuse travel privileges. His boss might not like it, but Carlton figured he could sell it if it came to that.

On the airplane sleep wouldn’t come. He’d had two double Scotches since takeoff but they’d had no effect. Only now, as Carlton turned his head and stared into nothingness, did he realize he’d neglected to tell his wife he was leaving the country.

51

MANHATTAN, NEW YORK

HOTEL LUXOR

EAST THIRTIETH STREET

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 2

12:59 A.M.

There had been a moment when Jeff and Daryl left the law firm, as they’d walked those few blocks to the Hotel Luxor, when Daryl knew she should have taken a taxi to her own hotel. She’d waited for him to say something, to thank her for her help, to arrange to meet the next day, but instead he’d walked to his hotel talking the entire time about what he’d just learned. She’d meant to say good-night, but for the first time since they’d met, she sensed, on some emotional level, he needed her to stay.

“Now we know Sue was ‘Dragon Lady,’” Jeff said as they stepped onto the street relieved at last to have some concrete information. “I traced her back two weeks to her first posting with it. She’d put up more than a dozen since the first, listing an e-mail address for Superphreak to contact her at.”

“What came of it?” Daryl asked.

“Nothing, from what I can see. There were a lot of crackpot replies but only a handful read as if the writer had had dealings with this Superphreak guy.”

“What did they say?” she asked, hoping this was good news.

“He’s supposed to be some kind of hacker legend. A few years ago he found two vulnerabilities in Windows Vista shortly after it was released. He posted the details before Microsoft learned of them, so it was months before they released the patches.”

“That’s not protocol. He was supposed to advise Microsoft.”

Jeff snorted. “Sure, but by publishing earlier he gained credibility with the cracker community as someone who doesn’t go totally by the rules. Since then, though, he’s become pretty reclusive.”

Despite herself, Daryl found herself intrigued by the hacker’s obvious brilliance.
Why can’t people like that use their brains for the common good?
she thought. “What do the hackers say about him?”

“He’s Russian, so we had that right. And he’s a genius in writing certain viruses.”

Daryl grimaced. “That’s no surprise.”

“Lately his specialty has been rootkits.” Since Jeff had first confirmed Sue had made indirect contact with Superphreak, he’d had an idea and decided now was the time to approach Daryl with it. “You know, it’s occurred to me that if we could talk to him and convince him, by hook or by crook, to give us all the rootkits and variants he’s written, we’d be weeks, even months, ahead of this. The vendors could do a rush job on signatures and patches.”

“Then I’ve got good news for you. We’ve got a name.” Daryl was grinning.

“How?”

“My team has been hard at work tracing the usage of the word
Superphreak.
We didn’t have much luck in an open search but got lucky in the NSA’s archives of closed hacker forums and chat rooms. We found a key post from several years ago when a hacker was chatting with Superphreak and called him Vlad. Then we searched for a Vlad and came up with over a dozen, but only one of them with a post related to the same technical data discussed in Superphreak chats. His last name was in the e-mail address in the forum posting: [email protected]. There was only one hacker forum posting using this account, but our search found it, which is why they say that everything you ever did is somewhere on the Net. After that it was simple.”

“I would think he’d have been more careful,” Jeff said.

“This was several years ago. I don’t think he was giving security much thought then. His name appears to be Vladimir Koskov, and I have an address for him in Moscow.”

“Do you think it’s valid?” Jeff wanted to believe this was their first real break, but it seemed too easy, too simple.

“Probably.” Daryl nodded. “Or at least I think it’s where he was living when he registered that first e-mail account.”

Jeff paused a moment. “Someone should pay him a visit.”

“I’ve already made the request, but it will be weeks before I get a response through channels, and even then it might not be a positive one. They have to go through the embassy in Moscow, and I’ll be told they have better things to do.”

“We don’t have weeks!” Jeff exclaimed. “Hasn’t anyone figured that out yet?”

“Sure. You and me. That’s about it. And the people we work with.”

At that moment they reached the Hotel Luxor. They entered the lobby, where Jeff retrieved his key, and she went with him upstairs, all without either of them acknowledging what they were doing.

“Drink?” he said when they entered the room.

“Yes. Bourbon, if you’ve got it.”

Jeff opened the minibar, dug around, then produced a bottle of Jim Beam. “I can get ice, if you’d like.”

“No need. And I’ll drink it from the bottle, so forget about a glass.”

He laughed, handed her the small bottle, then dug out a beer. He popped the top, held it out for a toast. “To getting this asshole.” She smiled wanly and they drank. The beer tasted good going down, and for a second he considered drowning himself in an ocean of pilsner. But he knew that was no answer, having drunk his fair share in the months after Cynthia’s death. And for the first time since this while ordeal began, he had some good news to hang on to, maybe even act on. Suddenly, he was also aware that a beautiful woman, one to whom he was very drawn, was sitting there with him in his hotel room. And he was happy about it. He sat in a chair beside the small breakfast table and looked directly into her serene face.

“I haven’t missed the fact that you’re here in my hotel room,” he said, finally understanding that though Cynthia was still with him, she was now only a memory, albeit a lovely one no one could ever take from him. She’d been perhaps the most practical person he’d ever known, and he knew that she’d approve of where he found himself now.

Daryl sat on a nearby armchair, sipped her drink, and said, “I thought maybe you figured there was a cord connecting me to you, or something.”

“It’s the ‘or something.’” He drank again, his mind back on their immediate problem. “I was thinking about what you said before, about backtracking to find out the identity of Superphreak. I bet that’s how they found Sue Tabor. I traced the e-mail address she used, and it was registered in her name with the law firm address. There’s so much on the Internet now if you know where and how to look.”

“Of course. With that, they could have found a photo, even located some bio information on her.”

Jeff nodded. “‘The Internet: Friend or Foe?’” he intoned. “Sounds like a bad evening-news segment.”

Daryl gave a small smile. “So you really think that whoever is in back of this avalanche of viruses killed her? There are dozens of people working on this.”

“Sure, but her they knew. And all they need to do is just slow things down. There isn’t a lot of time left, remember? They wouldn’t know how important she was to our effort, but if they’re of that mind-set, where’s the harm in killing her? What do they have to lose? And she was the one asking about Superphreak. No one else was.”

Daryl shivered. “It gives me the willies, if you’re right. This means they have assassins available to kill people.”

“If I’m right, it looks like they do. But we can’t know that for sure.”

Daryl took another pull on the bottle. “Okay, killing her
might
make some sense, but why kill her boss? He was just a lawyer, for God’s sake! You start down that path, where does it end?”

Jeff shrugged. “Because they were together.”

“You mean he got caught at the wrong place at the wrong time?”

“Probably.” Jeff thought back to his meetings with Joshua Greene. The man didn’t deserve his fate. “Consider what we’ve discovered up to now. We have dozens of variants, most encrypted and buried within operating systems protected by rootkits. So far nearly all of them are triggered by the date September 11. And look at all the targets, including the ones we know and the possible ones. We’re talking Wall Street, banks, the Fed, Social Security, to name a few. How about the power grid? You know how sensitive it is to tweaking, and it can be down for
weeks,
months even. You mentioned a nuclear power plant crashing. And there has to be a whole lot more I haven’t even thought of. Not to mention that response systems require using the Internet, and systems that route the Internet might be killed off.”