Chiang’s team — or more precisely, their computer software — had broken the encryption the night before. But the messages themselves yielded no useful information about terrorist operations; the bulk were trivial greetings. Of course, those could be code: “All good here” or “Happy Birthday” could easily be meant as a signal to start an attack or lay low. So Chiang and his team were now sifting through those messages and the accounts associated with them, comparing them to different news events and other intelligence that they had gathered to see what information they might tickle out of the cross-references. Thus far, though, none of the patterns they’d noticed seemed significant.
Except one. But it was baffling.
“We’ve looked at some Facebook pages with baseball postings that might be interesting,” said Chiang, explaining that the subject seemed to be an anomaly — onetime entries by posters who otherwise seemed to have no interest in the sport. “We thought maybe they were targets or messages about meeting places, but it looks like a dead end.”
Chiang pulled up one of the pages, then clicked into a window that showed the owner’s “friends.” A number of the accounts were bots, created to increase hits and ratings. The team had ignored them for the most part; Chelsea asked why.
“They’re just kind of noise in the system,” said Chiang.
“Do you mind?” Chelsea asked.
“Please.”
Chelsea sat at the workstation and began looking at the links associated with the bots. The bulk had been traced to outfits in China and Russia and labeled according to expected intent — propaganda was big with the Russian contacts, which, in many cases, used the links to legitimate commenters. The results tended to cluster, with multiple accounts and interlocking links.
So what was interesting?
Not the links, but the lack of them.
“What about this Croatia website?” she asked Chiang about an hour after sitting down. “What’s the story?”
“Tourism,” said Chiang. “The Google translation is pretty good.”
“The pictures are all taken from other sources.”
Chiang smirked. “Welcome to the internet.”
“Can we get a list of who looks at the site?” Chelsea asked.
“Well…”
Chiang leaned over and hot-keyed up a tool to hack into the server.
It was harder than Chelsea thought it would be, way harder than most of the other sites, on par with the work done by the best Chinese sites.
“I think we should look at this one pretty hard,” said Chelsea when they finally reached the folders associated with the site. “That’s a hell of a lot of material for a tourist site.”
“Yeah,” said Chiang, opening a folder and a document at random. It was written in Arabic. “You think they get a lot of tourists from the Middle East?”
28
The fact that Johansen brought a lawyer bothered the hell out of Massina, and his annoyance only grew as the lawyer insisted on opening the meeting with a statement.
“For the record,” he intoned, “you are private citizens, acting entirely out of your own self-interest, sharing in good faith with us information you have developed.”
The only way Massina managed to hold his temper in check long enough to let the idiot finish was to focus on the rearrangement of the gear and furniture. The Box had been reconfigured as more of a conference room than a computing center for the meeting; a large table sat in the middle of the room. All but four of the dozen chairs were empty. Besides Johansen and the legal beagle — Massina had blocked out his name, Bert Backlash or something — Jenkins from the FBI had been invited. Massina had decided to present the data himself.
“So, for the record,” continued the lawyer, “we are all here with no preconceived commitments and no entanglements.”
“No one is making a record of this meeting, as far as I know,” Massina said. He had trouble pushing the words out of his clenched teeth. “There is no need for legal bullshit.”
“I think we all understand each other,” said Johansen, trying to soothe things. “This is simply an exchange of ideas. The source of these ideas is not relevant. That’s all.”
Massina opened his laptop, which was hooked into the large screen at the front of the room to his right.
“This is a restaurant in Palmyra, Syria. It’s supposedly a decent restaurant, or it was. There’s a small computer in the storeroom that’s used as a server. On first glance, the files on the server appear innocuous. They turn out to be sites on the so-called dark web, which I assume you all understand are addresses that, among other things, don’t show up on your standard Google search. I’m not going to take you through the entire process,” Massina added, “and won’t bore you with everything we’ve found. But we were able to trace the funding network for an organization associated with Daesh through this site.”
“This server is linked to the Boston attack?” asked Johansen.
“A credit card associated with one of the bank accounts that this server is regularly used to access, yes. It’s an administrative account; the same credentials were used to set up the file system and a peripheral, so we believe there is a physical presence there.”
“In other words,” said Johansen, “that’s where our bad guy is.”
“That’s where a bad guy is,” said Massina. “Or at least someone directly interested in the Boston attacks and helping fund them. Maybe indirectly,” he allowed.
“It’s an intriguing connection,” admitted Jenkins.
“If it were just that,” continued Massina, “you wouldn’t be here. Another account linked with this server belongs to an alias used by this man.”
“Ghadab min Allah,” said Johansen when the face came up on the screen.
“You have definite proof that he’s tied into the attacks?” asked the lawyer. “Beyond the rumors, which are popular on the web.”
Another screen.
“This card was used to pay for a plane ticket to Canada a year ago. It was also used to rent a car. The mileage on the account shows that it could have come to Boston. The names are here; I assume you can verify in your own data from Immigration if he crossed the border.”
“He wasn’t here when the attacks occurred,” said Jenkins.
“No. He was in Libya.”
Massina brought up the next screen, which showed the alias he believed Ghadab had used there: Durban Rahm. He continued sketching out what they had found, laying out the network as they knew it. Every so often he would glance at Johansen, trying to gauge how much of this he already knew. But the CIA officer’s face remained neutral — until Massina’s presentation shifted from briefing to a plan to deal with what they had found.
“Here’s what I suggest be done,” started Massina. “First—”
“We’ve heard enough,” said Johansen, rising quickly. “And Bert has another meeting.”
“Uh—”
“Thank you for briefing us as a private citizen,” Johansen said.
The others were already heading for the door.
Massina watched them leave. He knew this must be some sort of internal politics, but it bothered the hell out of him.
Johansen was waiting in the hall, alone; the others were near the elevator, just out of earshot.
“Why the lawyer?” asked Massina.
“I know.” Johansen nodded.