Donna was back at her desk, waving Lana inside.
Holmes was on the phone, pacing and uttering a series of “Uh-huh… uh-huh… uh-huh…” that kept perfect rhythm with his steps.
He looked over to Lana and pointed to the screens on the wall, then brought up the sound just enough for her to hear the House Speaker on The Today Show lambasting the President, calling him a “coward.” Certainly no surprise there. Neither was his skill at shoehorning the word into his next four sentences, which he spieled off in less than thirty seconds. He might not have two brain cells to rub together but he had earned a veritable PhD in sound bites.
Lana picked up the remote and switched to Good Morning America, where the Senate Majority Leader was performing a similar routine, using the same words as if he were literally an echo chamber and not merely a man who sounded like one.
The House Whip was working his dark magic over on CNN. And FOX had two members of the House and two senators who sounded like a geek chorus.
Holmes hung up and said, “It’s been like this since they went on the air this morning.”
“Hardly a bulletin.”
“From your message, it must have gone well for you.”
She briefed him about the four-pointed “square” between Russia’s renewable energy sector, its secret police, the Ahearn murders, and the WAIS that she’d uncovered with her link analysis of the metadata last night. As she talked, she brought out her computer, summarized the “hops” through routers, gateways, and other systems, then focused Holmes on the unusually intense packet flows into and out of an apartment building in downtown Moscow.
“Here it is,” she said, using Google Earth to show him the residence.
“I don’t know what to make of that. It looks like a thousand other places around the world. Maybe that’s the point. Keep it anonymous when you’re going anomalous.”
“I think it’s feistier than that. I sent a message to the source of that transmission before signing off a few hours ago.”
“You mean the person you suspect is in that building — if there really is an operative in there?”
“I think it is a person, unless, for some bizarre reason, Russian cyberagents have themselves set up in there as some kind of dodge. But I can’t see why they would. Based on my trace-routing as well as activity trends and some behavioral analytics, I’m reasonably sure we do have an individual inside that building performing all these acrobatics. Not as efficiently as I am, because whoever it is lacks our resources, but they’re doing a pretty decent job.”
“A lone-wolf terrorist?”
“I don’t think so. This is someone who’s been actively trying to figure out who hacked into the Delphin’s communications, so that means it’s not the FSB or whoever might be spearheading this hacker group. They’re not working for us, but given what they’re doing, they might as well be. And in the recent past they were looking for links to the Ahearn murders and AAC. In short, Bob, whoever this is has been doing what I’ve been doing.”
Holmes sat down on the couch, then stood right back up, as if he couldn’t contain his energy. “I don’t think it matters. If they know that much right there in the heart of Moscow, they’re guilty. They’re implicated. I wish we could send in a drone right now.”
“But what if we’re dealing with someone who, for whatever reason, has tapped into material that we don’t have, but is not part of what the Russians are up to? Or even knows their plans?” She paused. “I put out a feeler.”
“Meaning?”
“I let them know someone new was watching them. And I had the encrypted message sent through proxy servers that strip away the sender’s personally identifiable information. Let’s just say I don’t care who they are, they’ll never trace it back.”
“But your subject can respond?”
“Absolutely.”
“Okay, show me what you sent.”
Lana turned the screen toward Holmes. “WHO ARE YOU?” appeared as he watched. “I kept it simple.”
“In those block letters?” he asked.
She nodded. “It felt blunter that way.”
Holmes scratched his head. She knew he was trying to figure out whether she’d been rash. She was ready for that. “Look, the Trident’s missile launch system is very likely compromised, right?”
“Yes.”
“They have control of a nuclear sub and they say they’re moving ahead to send that missile somewhere, and we have no reason not to believe they’ll detonate it right over Antarctica. Today, wouldn’t you say?”
“That’s why everyone with your level of clearance has been notified.”
“So if this person is part of that plot — which I doubt because he or she would be working with the hacker, not trying to crack his codes — it won’t make any difference. That missile is going to fly and we’ll have a whole new world to contend with.”
“And we’ll lose all those scientists at the Amundsen-Scott research station.”
“Oh, no. I thought we were set to get them out of there.”
Holmes shook his head. “You know how bad the weather can be down there. We couldn’t get them out. Go on.”
She paused respectfully for a moment. “Anyway, if this hacker’s connected to those killers, let’s see what kind of reaction we get. Maybe he’ll panic. Maybe it’s a she. If whoever it is tries to figure out that I’m onto them, they’ll never get through our computer security defenses.”
“I wish you had cleared that with me.”
“I’ve done this before. We move when we have to. You’ve always given me that latitude.”
“The stakes are extraordinarily high,” Holmes said.
“I know. We’re talking about the geologic clock speeding up so fast we could see billions die in the days and weeks ahead.”
“And then be left with Russia in control.”
“Of everything,” she added.
Holmes walked over to his desk and sat down before going on: “You don’t think you’re getting played, do you?”
“No, not at all. And you’ll be the first to know, either way. What’s going on at the White House? From the ‘Uh-huhs,’ it sounded like the Oval Office.”
“It was the President’s chief of staff. His boss, our boss, met with the Russian ambassador early this morning. It was deny, deny, deny.”
“We didn’t really expect anything different, did we?”
“No. I’ll tell you something we expected even less. The Chinese ambassador is in the Oval Office right now offering his country’s considerable assistance.”
“What?” That floored Lana. The U.S. wanted to prosecute Chinese military officials for hacking U.S. corporations and government secrets.
“I know, it’s hard to believe,” Holmes replied, “but China has four of the world’s top fifteen cities that would be hit hardest by a sudden rise in sea levels, more than any other country. And the total numbers for China are sobering to the extreme. They’re looking at twenty-two million people directly threatened with just a half-meter rise, and we’re looking at a lot more than that. And about $7.5 trillion in losses. Their economy would be shredded and the internal disruptions would be monumental and pretty much impossible to contain.”
“Those are extraordinary numbers. The brink of disaster for them, too, then.”
“So they have very sound reasons to help. Russia, by the way, doesn’t even make the list. We’re next, after China, with two cities, the New York-Newark region and Miami. The Russians aren’t just targeting us. They’re also targeting another old rival.”