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June 17th, 2001
The dawn light streamed through the blinds and onto my face. I slowly opened my eyes and rolled over, still groggy, and checked on Diane. Her long hair covered her pillow, and she was breathing slowly and lightly. I watched as the beam of light that woke me slowly drifted towards her face while I checked the handheld. After about five minutes, the beam touched her face, and her eyes opened.
"Good morning," I said.
"Umm. What day is it?"
"Saturday."
"Right. Did you check the alarms?" Diane said, yawning,
"Yep."
She looked at me for a long time with those blue eyes, blinking. "Do you still want to do this?"
"Do we have a choice?" I grunted and scratched my chin.
"I guess not."
"Take your shower. I'll start some bacon."
While we were eating breakfast, the radar alarm squawked. I looked at my handheld and saw that it was Manuel pulling into the driveway in his Range Rover, so I opened the gate for him. Soon, Manuel was chowing down bacon, eggs and toast.
"So what's up, boss?" Manuel asked as he gulped down orange juice.
Diane explained how we'd met an astronomer, Will Pattersen, the night before who was from the SETI at Home team at Berkeley. He believed that several Trojan Horses had been planted on one of their main servers. The first one, we assumed was put there by by the Feds, probably the NSA. But a second one was planted to override it and redirect any significant data to the OS vendor. And Pattersen's family had been threatened if he disrupted the software somehow inserted by the OS vendor.
"Pretty big stuff," Manuel said.
"Too big for us, I'm afraid. I'm going to call a friend, Brad McGovern in an hour or so. He's a U.S. Attorney out of San Francisco, but he lives in near here. If he's available, I'm going to invite him over so Diane can brief him. He's one of the good guys by the way. I trust him completely. I need you to head over to Will Pattersen's home in Walnut Creek and keep an eye on him, his wife and daughter. Just in case he was followed last night and someone suspects something."
"Does he know I'm coming?"
"No, and I can't risk a phone call. Chances are, his line is tapped. You'll need to introduce yourself. Have him call me on your cell phone, and I'll vouch for you. Then keep a low profile."
"Got it. Any bacon left?"
"Plenty. But now I'm deducting it from your paycheck."
Manuel grunted as he finished off his orange juice. "Hey, I'm still a growing boy."
Brad McGovern showed up about 10 am. Brad is a tall, slim fellow in his early 40s. His hair is prematurely gray, and he wears really geeky horn rimmed glasses. We watched him park his white Camry in the driveway and went outside to meet him. He was in his usual Saturday attire, jeans and and a San Jose Sharks T-shirt.
We took him to the pool area, and Diane went inside to fetch some lemonade while I filled him in as best I could on Pattersen's story.
"What have you done so far?" Brad asked.
"I sent Manuel over to Pattersen's house this morning to keep an eye on things. Then we called you. That's it."
"Talked to anyone else?"
"Nope."
Brad put his hand behind his neck and rolled his head, stretching and pondering for a long time as he looked upwards. Finally, he looked back at me. "There are some obvious Federal laws here related to breaking into a computer. But that's clearly small potatoes in this case."
"I agree."
Diane returned with three big, frosty glasses of lemonade and some wedges of lemon. She sat down across from us. Brad, who is very aware of Diane's computer skills, turned to her. "What do you think of all this?"
Diane rolled her eyes for a second. "I think the original tap was an effort to subvert the SETI team and make sure any signals from an extraterrestrial race would be, shall we say, handled by the government. If you've seen the movie Contact, you know that things can get out of hand pretty quickly when that kind of news goes public. I think the government wanted to cut itself some slack and manage the events themselves in the event that a signal was a one-timer, buried in the data tapes somewhere."
"What about the second piece of code. In the OS?" Brad asked.
"I think there was a back door in the OS, and the vendor started snooping around. When someone found the first Trojan Horse, they analyzed it, realized the significance, and provided an inline OS update that would divert any significant events to them."
Brad, very engaged now, leaned towards Diane. "What do you think they would do with that information?"
"Companies that write operating systems, "Diane continued, "have a lot of resources. They hire Ph.D.s. They understand encryption. They probably figured, in their arrogance, that they could decipher any ET signal and use it for their own technological advantage in their war against competitors." Diane took a sip from her glass and reflected for a second. "You know, I'll bet there's no law on the books making that illegal."
"I don't know," Brad said. "We can probably come up with something. Meanwhiile, the implications are enormous. Imagine, a single U.S. technology company armed with that kind of information. Geez. Makes my head hurt. Okay. Do you know where the first Trojan Horse was supposed to send its data?"
"We have an IP address," I chimed in." (Diane explained what that was during the drive home the night before.) "I have an Army friend from the Gulf War, a Colonel, in the Pentagon who might be able to track down that IP address and confirm the agency. If, in fact, it's the government. That's just our theory right now.
"Can you make that call right away?"
"Sure. Don't know if he'll be home on a Saturday this time of day."
"Try anyway. And I'll need the full version of the Yahoo e-mail sent to Pattersen. You know, with the header and routing information."
"I can help him with that," Diane said.
Brad took a long sip from his lemonade. He spoke slowly and deliberately. "Here's what I want you to do. After you send me that e-mail? And after your friend in the Pentagon traces that IP address? I want you to keep a low profile on this. Go ahead and watch over doctor Pattersen. If you encounter any players, protect his family but otherwise back off until I can get some official coverage." He paused and looked at each of us in turn. "Then I want you to forget this ever happened."
"Now, Brad," I said.
"I know, I know. You're itching for a fight. But this is way out of your league. Hell, it's way out of my league. It's better if you disengage now before it gets nasty."
Diane and I looked at each other. I could tell she was both simultaneously relieved and disappointed. I felt the same way.
"Send the information when you get it to my private e-mail. Diane, is your e-mail program able to use PGP?"
"You bet," she said.
"Good. Use only that and my cell phone. Nothing else." Brad finished his drink and stood up. There wasn't much else to say. We showed him out to his car and reset the alarms as we came back through the gate. As I walked into the kitchen, my cell phone rang. It was Manuel. He said he was too late.
Will Pattersen's kid had been knifed.
Previous adventures of Max Hadron:
The Case of the Paperless Portfolio (Nov 12, 2000)
The Case of the GoogolPlex Smackdown (June 25, 2000)
The Case of the WWDC Murder (June 13, 2000)
Copyright 2001 by John
Martellaro, All rights reserved. Quantum Threads banner
artwork by Tracy Haynes. This is a work of fiction. All
people, places, entities, and events are the product of the
author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any
resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business
establishments, events or locales is entirely
coincidental.
About the Author
John Martellaro lives in Colorado at 2,800 meters above sea level with a Ph.D. wife and two cats, Nikki and Data. He holds a B.S. in Astrophysics and an M.S. in Physics. His hobbies, include amateur astronomy, downhill skiing, bicycling, and listening to piano solos. His personal Macs are a B&W G3/400 with a flat screen Studio Display and a TiBook.
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