Chapter 19

“That’s interesting,” Amy said as she verified Conner’s information. “Devon McAlester is a board member for all three of these companies?”

Conner nodded, nervous being in the glass-walled conference room of the paper’s editorial floor. It was obvious he did not like the thought of being visible to the entire floor, even though Amy could not see anyone paying them much attention.

She stood and grabbed her coat. “Come on, let’s go for a walk.”

Conner looked relieved as they exited the building and joined the bustle of pedestrians hurrying along the streets. The normal late afternoon foot traffic made them virtually invisible.

“Why are you so nervous?” Amy finally asked.

“I came across rumors of him.”

“Devon McAlester? I don’t recognize the name.”

“In business, he is ruthless. He could buy our paper if he gets wind of you looking at him. He broke up Telephonica last year.”

Amy nodded. Telephonica had been one of the largest mobile operators and included studios and entertainment divisions. Their breakup had been headlining news for months as divisions were shut down and sold off. Some stories hinted at more than business. Two people close to the board and a pair of sitting governors had committed suicide. Conspiracy theorists connected a dotted line from the breakup to bribes to peddling influence via the share price and holdings by a group of politicians. Nobody had proof, of course.

“So, we must be airtight before we run the story. Do we have anything tying him to the bribes or donations?”

Conner shook his head.

“Nothing in the public record, apart from his holding company’s stock transactions. He bought additional shares in all three firms before the bribes, then sold those extra shares after some big contracts were rewarded. He retained his original holdings in each company, but the pattern is there. Likewise, he, or someone in his holding company, knew the price would bounce higher when they made their purchases.”

Amy walked along, thinking.

“Does he buy on any dips for those three?”

“No. Other than the purchases and sales I mentioned, he has maintained his holdings.”

“Let’s look at his other companies. Don’t dig too hard, but I want to put together a picture of what he is doing.”

“I can do that, but I would rather not meet in the office anymore. He holds a minor stake in the paper already. Someone might say something.”

Amy nodded and sighed. Another roadblock to making progress.

“Worst case? I’d say the worst possible case is he has a backdoor in our backdoor,” Alex Rennard said.

Victor paled at the speculation. “How likely is that?” He asked.

Alex shrugged. “I’m the best here, and I couldn’t do it, but Finn was something else. I must assume he hasn’t lost anything since leaving. He could make those chips jump up and dance, and that was after they were in a phone in the wild. Who knows what he might have figured out.”

“So, move the teams into a SIF room?” Victor asked. Tying up a Special Insulation Facility for an ongoing investigation would be a problem. They did not have that many of them.

“I wouldn’t count on that stopping him,” Alex said. “The initial entry point was most likely that damned quantum tunnel he created. If he is using that for transmission, no faraday cage in the world would matter. Hell, even those comms boxes the Russian’s used in the Cold War that killed their own people wouldn’t work against a quantum channel.”

“So, isolate the devices?” Victor asked.

Alex nodded. “It’s a start. You had me check the building hardware, and I didn’t find any of his chips in the gear, so at least that limits the attack vectors, if he’s using technical means.”

“Do you have a policy draft for me?”

Alex handed him a printed page. “Don’t distribute it electronically, or you’ll risk warning him.”

“He’ll see the drop-off in intercepts, if he is actually using the phone network.”

Alex shrugged. “That can’t be avoided. Besides, you want him to react, but you would rather not make it obvious. Hell, sir, you wrote a lot of the book on tactical traffic analysis and counter operations. You know what pieces you want to set in place before he changes tactics.”

Victor nodded.

“And sir,” Alex said as Victor stood to end their meeting. “Don’t let anyone from that building come over here with a phone. We must assume he is piggybacking somehow.”

Victor nodded. His phone was left in his car with his driver. Fort Meade and the NSA headquarters could not be risked with such nefarious infiltration.

“What’s this?” One of her agents asked as they approached the door to the operations room. They all paused to read the sign.

“Do not speak,” it directed in large, bold font. “All personal electronic devices will be stowed in lockers provided in the break room. No personal electronics are allowed inside any operations rooms in this building. Conversations can resume once devices are secured, and personnel are inside the operations room. By order of the Director of Operations.”

Her team muttered and then proceeded to stow their phones, tablets, and smartwatches. Once they were all badged in through the secure door, they burst into conversation.

“Someone fears a compromise,” one agent said.

“Shit, is that how he knew we were coming?” Another asked while looking at Pamela.

“Who knows,” she said. “It could be a precaution. Now, let’s all get online and back to work. If we assume he compromised our phones somehow, what will his next move be?”

“Can he compromise the spy-cams we set up in all the cafes and restaurants around here?”

“Fuck,” Pamela muttered. “We’re overly reliant on electronics,” she shook her head and sent a brief message from her computer to Director Sinclair. Without electronics in the field, her team was effectively shut down.

Finn watched the tourist crowds on the mall and tried to think of his next move. If only he could weave moonbeams like Elara. He would risk the building if he could be assured of his disguise. Elara seemed to sense the tension in him and patted his leg as they sat on the bench. The afternoon sunlight cut the chill and damp from winter’s approach.

“You still have tracking on the boss, right?” Elara asked after minutes of silent thought.

“Yes, but I don’t think he is who we want. Yes, he is powerful, but I don’t know whether he’s the most powerful or who you need.”

She leaned into him. He smiled at her, enjoying the feeling of her closeness. Over the past few days, he had come to look forward to her casual touches and tokens of affection. He had started returning them, even while wanting more.

It was a strange, but comfortable feeling for him. He had not let anyone inside his guard for most of his life. His parents had loved him, and he them, but then his world had been shattered. His aunt was an abomination. School was a time to focus and set himself up for the future. Then the jobs for the Agency had made it difficult for him to have more than a superficial relationship. Leaving government employment had been an opportunity but one he was hesitant to explore. He knew his break up with Colleen had been caused by his resistance to letting her get closer. Elara felt different to him.

“Don’t worry about me,” Elara said in her soft voice. “What do you need to expose them and help Amy?”

Finn sighed. “We know the players from that first data dump. By now, they may have hidden their tracks again. Chasing Sinclair here won’t really help, unless he makes a mistake.”

“What about the others?” Elara asked. “You have a new way to snoop on them now, right?”

Finn considered her words. “Maybe,” he said. “I need more computing power to do it well.” With more power, he could spread his virus via the phone back-door to cover all the congress and more.

“What does that give you? I mean, you’ve mentioned more compute before, but I don’t really understand it.”

Finn moved his arm around her shoulders and hugged her to him. “Compute is short for computing resources and lets me analyze what they are saying and track conversations. I can set up keywords and phrases to alert me when I need to listen more closely. To accomplish that, the computer needs to translate the spoken words into text that can be parsed and searched. It all must be indexed, so when a word or phrase is mentioned, I know when it was said, and by whom. I can then access the conversation to listen more closely. The NSA can do this with their farms of super computers, but I can’t. It’s too much data for my simple machines to manage.”

“And there’s no alternative?” Elara asked.

Finn thought. How to analyze conversations on thousands of devices in near real-time? He thought. Then he thought some more.

“I might have an idea, but I’m not sure if it will work,” he said after a few minutes.

“Tell me about it,” Elara encouraged, as if unwilling for him to get up and rush to work.

“I might be able to have the phones listen in on themselves. If I let them do the parsing of the surrounding conversations, and flag keywords or phrases, the compute processing would be distributed. I need to figure out if I can put a hook into the phone’s operating system, as well as cross load the code to perform the parsing. Modern phones should be able to handle the load. A lot of them are already listening to everything to make their AI assistants work. It might be doable,” he concluded.

“I guess that means you’ll be working hours on end for the next few days,” Elara said with a pout.

Finn shrugged. “It’s not like I can subcontract the work for someone else to complete,” he quipped. “Are you bored at the coffee shop? There’s not much reason for you to keep up that charade if you don’t want to.”

“No, it’s nice to have something to do, even if it’s on the periphery.”

Her words made Finn reconsider. He admitted that he liked having her close by, even when he was working. “I was thinking that we might go back to New York, now that we have the initial surveillance in place. Once I get the eavesdropping code working, we could take a day-trip back down here to spread the virus further.”

Elara looked at him. Her smile said one thing, but her sad eyes hinted at something else. “We have more room here,” she replied.

Finn nodded. “Yes, I guess we do. I just thought you might prefer a change of scenery again. You weren’t really that comfortable going out on your own during your first month here.”

“There’s lots to do. I’ve enjoyed our brief visits to museums here. Since you don’t know how long your work will take, let’s give ourselves a week and then revisit it? I can let the shop know I may be leaving and cut down my hours.”

“Okay, that sounds like a plan,” Finn agreed.

Elara moved effortlessly into her final pose of the morning devotion, stretching her arms high while slowly lifting her foot and stepping deliberately forward on the balls of her feet. Her body was controlled. She held her breath as she had been instructed, then let it out slowly as her weight shifted to her forward foot. Quickly, she brought her hands down before her, then her feet together, then knelt in her resting pose.

Her body was controlled, but her mind was not.

A week had become two. Finn had stayed in the apartment, working while she foraged in the city for food and some sense of progress. She cut her work hours and explored instead. Her appearance varied on each trip out, sometimes looking like she did at work, but more frequently taking up some other form. She prowled about, trying to determine if Finn was her prey or some other would satisfy her geas.