“So you’re looking for something that is happening between the digital clicks of a computer’s internal clock?”
“Exactly. And you can’t see that with something that’s ticking the same way, but an analog device, working like the human eye, which is …”
“Accumualtes how much of something, not how many of something.”
“Essentially yes, and also because it’s running at a much slower scan rate.”
“So we can see the interstitial data between the digital blanking rate,” Kronos said.
“What do you have?” Hiccock asked Hansen.
“After a lot of tweaking, we pointed the camera at the screen and ran a copy of Mrs. Krummel’s cookies through their paces.” He pushed the button on the huge two-inch Ampex videotape recorder. The giant reels turned at a very fast speed, almost fast forward. “We essentially visited every page she had and recorded it at high speed. We didn’t see anything while scanning it. But when we played it back …” He hit “Stop,” rewound, and hit “Play.” Now the tape reels were spinning ever so slowly. “… under slow-speed playback, we found this.”
The Conrac TV before them displayed an electronic image of Martha Krummel’s computer monitor screen. It was blinking with black flashes. The web page looked normal but after a few black flashes, a message popped onto the entire screen. After the next black flash, it was gone. “Those flashes are the refresh rate of the computer and happen approximately seventy or so times a second, too fast for the human eye to catch. To see this, we have to play back at a speed one hundred times slower.”
“Persistence of vision,” Hiccock said. “It’s how movies, TVs, and computers show images. It happens so fast that we don’t see the blinking. Unless you do something like this.” Hiccock waved his hand in front of the monitor causing the image to strobe.
“That’s the between the clicks that another computer could never see,” Kronos said.
“Let’s see that one message frame.”
The tech now turned to a computer. “Once your contraption caught the image, it was easy for us to capture it as standard NTSC video and freeze it on the screen.” On the computer screen the now-frozen message appeared.
Hiccock read the screen aloud: “The time has come, Martha. Derail the Train at 8:30 PM.”
“So far we’ve found 200 others. All big type, all one sentence, some diagrams.”
“Diagrams of what?”
“Train track wiring, signal and switch circuits …”
Hiccock felt a surge of adrenaline.
“And then there’s this.”
As the pages flipped, images of a gun in someone’s hand, having been downloaded from a web site, flashed across the screen. Next, a scene from some HBO gore-fest movie came into view, showing an older woman lifting a pistol to her temple and shooting herself in the head. Hiccock read aloud another message on the screen.
“After you have done your task, Martha, place the gun to your temple and fire.”
“Whoa, the shit they put on the net nowadays!” Kronos declared in disgust.
“Absolutely. Behavior and even hypnosis can readily be achieved at interstitial rates of less than one-fortieth of a second.” Tyler said this as if she had written the paper herself. Seated in the FBI cafeteria across from Hiccock, Hansen, and Kronos, she sipped her third coffee of the morning.
“So the president is now fully aware that each homegrown act of terror — including Martha Krummel’s — was predetermined, suggested, and induced by their computers?” Hansen said.
“Yes, I briefed him just before I came here,” Hiccock said. “But that’s not the question. The question is …”
“Who programmed the computer to ‘program’ Martha?” Tyler said, completing his sentence.
“Kronos?” Hiccock turned in time to see him downing half a sugar donut in one bite, a dash of white powder on his nose. It was times like this that renewed his doubts over getting Kronos sprung from prison.
“Well, once we knew what the hell we were looking for it got a little easier. Me and the head geek here ran a few virus scans and interpolated file arrays. We dug up the line of code in the worm that calls for the messages and even the switcher routine to flash them.” Kronos said this while licking the powdered sugar from his fingertips.
“There’s a high-tech ‘but’ coming,” Tyler said.
Hansen provided it. “When Kronos here tried to trace it back to the source, he hit a firewall.”
“Sounds serious.”
“Can’t breach it. Ain’t never seen nothing like it and neither has number one geek here.”
“Hey, c’mon with that,” Hiccock said in protest.
“It’s okay,” Hansen said. “I am the number one geek because I de-tangled his algorithm and nailed his URL to the wall.”
“Is that how they caught you, Kronos?” Janice asked as innocently as she could manage.
“Ahh, so!” Hiccock said, borrowing from a famous stereotype. “Number one geek smarter than you, Mr. Number One Genius Ego.”
“Eat crap and die. I was sleepwalking when I wrote that friggin’ code!” Kronos stuffed the last of the donut into his mouth.
Hiccock turned to Hansen. “You ever see a firewall like this?”
“No. I create them for the bureau and every other gov.net function, but it’s beyond me.”
“Is there anyone else who might know more?”
“Hey, you got the best in the country right here,” Kronos said, then patted Hansen’s shoulder, “and the geek that caught him. Ain’t no one else.”
Hiccock rolled his eyes and then held his finger up. “There might be one other person.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The Waldorf-Astoria has legendary security and means of egress. It has been a favorite of presidents since it opened back in the thirties. FDR’s private armored train car would be shunted under the hotel in the vast underground rail network that comprises New York’s Grand Central Station. Roosevelt’s custom-made Pierce-Arrow was off-loaded onto a specially constructed secret elevator right under the Waldorf and opened onto the street. It was the safest way to enter New York City. Of course, that level of protection was only afforded to heads of state. Tonight, the security of the main ballroom was in the hands of the normal hotel dicks and whatever odd security men came with the participants.
Dennis had reviewed the venue for two days. Three of his men were on detail this evening. He wasn’t pleased with the hotel’s refusal to install metal detectors. They felt the nature of the festivities, tied to the price of a ticket, made it unlikely that anyone in the crowd would pose a problem. Dennis was there as another set of eyes. Cynthia had been taking treatments well. The biggest and most dangerous was scheduled for tomorrow. Having a job to keep him occupied tonight helped him fight off the sense of helplessness a mere man is prone to feel in the face of an act of God. So there he stood, his particular brand of therapy being to scan the crowd for the author of the poison inkjet letter.
His “cop’s sense” bristled — out of a sea of faces in attendance to honor Taggert for the benefit of the Work with Pride Foundation, one man stood out. His appearance was just unkempt enough to tell the ex-detective that $250-a-plate dinners were not this guy’s normal social activity. He also didn’t seem to be with anyone at the table.
Speaker after speaker respectfully stood and awaited their turn at the dais to praise not only the foundation’s efforts to help homeless people attain and maintain good, steady jobs, but also the merits, generosity, and overall good fellowship of Miles Taggert. Miles could run for Pope after this, Dennis thought, as he observed his bearded suspect and a few others. Dennis walked over to Harvey Davis, one of the ex-cops he wrangled to be on Taggert’s detail. Harv was a photographer of sorts, and Dennis had him get a press pass.