Chapter 15
Susan Fletcher
sat at her computer terminal inside Node 3. Node 3 was the cryptographers’ private, soundproofed chamber just off the main floor. A two-inch
sheet of curved one-way glass gave the cryptographers a panorama
of the Crypto floor while prohibiting anyone else from seeing inside.
At the back of the expansive Node 3 chamber,
twelve terminals
sat in a perfect circle. The annular arrangement was intended
to encourage intellectual exchange between cryptographers, to remind them they were part of a larger team–something like a code-breaker’s Knights of the Round Table. Ironically,
secrets were frowned on inside Node 3.
Nicknamed
the Playpen, Node 3 had none of the sterile
feel of the rest of Crypto.
It was designed
to feel like home–plush carpets, high-tech sound system,
fully stocked fridge, kitchenette, a Nerf basketball hoop. The NSA had a philosophy about Crypto: Don’t drop a couple billion bucks into
a code-breaking computer
without enticing the
best of the best to stick around
and use it.
Susan slipped
out of her Salvatore Ferragamo flats and dug her stockinged
toes into the thick pile carpet.
Well-paid government employees were encouraged to refrain
from lavish displays of personal wealth. It was usually no problem
for Susan–she was perfectly happy
with her modest
duplex, Volvo sedan, and conservative wardrobe. But shoes were another matter. Even when Susan was in college,
she’d budgeted for the
best.
You can’t jump for the stars if your feet hurt, her aunt had once told her. And when you get where you’re going, you darn well
better look great!
Susan allowed herself a luxurious
stretch and then settled down to business. She pulled up her tracer and prepared to configure it.
She glanced at the
E-mail address Strathmore had given her.
The man calling himself North Dakota had an anonymous account, but Susan knew it would not remain anonymous
for long. The tracer would pass through
ARA, get forwarded to North
Dakota, and
then send information back containing the man’s
real Internet address.
If all went well, it would locate North Dakota soon, and Strathmore could confiscate the pass-key.
That would leave only David. When he found Tankado’s copy, both pass-keys
could be destroyed; Tankado’s little time bomb would
be harmless, a deadly
explosive without a detonator.
Susan double-checked the address on the sheet in front of her and entered the information in the correct data field. She chuckled
that Strathmore had encountered difficulty sending the tracer
himself. Apparently he’d sent it twice, both times receiving
Tankado’s address back rather
than North Dakota’s. It was a simple mistake, Susan thought; Strathmore had probably interchanged the data fields, and the tracer had
searched for the wrong account.
Susan finished
configuring her tracer
and queued it for release. Then she hit return. The computer
beeped once.
TRACER
SENT.
Now came the waiting game.
Susan exhaled.
She felt guilty for having been hard on the commander. If there was anyone
qualified to handle this threat single-handed, it was Trevor Strathmore. He had an uncanny way of getting the
best of all those
who challenged him.
Six months ago, when the EFF broke a story that an NSA submarine was snooping
underwater telephone cables,
Strathmore calmly leaked
a conflicting story that the submarine was actually
illegally burying toxic waste. The EFF and the oceanic environmentalists spent so much time bickering over which version was
true, the media eventually tired of the story and
moved on.
Every move Strathmore made was meticulously planned. He depended
heavily on his computer
when devising and revising his plans. Like many NSA employees, Strathmore used NSA-developed software called BrainStorm–a risk-free way to carry out “what-if” scenarios
in the safety of a computer.
BrainStorm was an artificial intelligence experiment described by
its developers as a Cause & Effect Simulator. It originally had been intended for use in political campaigns as a way to create
real-time models of a given “political
environment.” Fed by enormous amounts of data, the program created
a relationary web–a hypothesized model of
interaction between political
variables, including current prominent
figures, their staffs, their personal
ties to each other, hot issues,
individuals’ motivations weighted by variables like sex, ethnicity, money, and power. The user could then enter any hypothetical
event and BrainStorm would predict
the event’s effect on “the environment.”
Commander
Strathmore worked religiously with BrainStorm–not for political purposes, but as a TFM device;
Time-Line, Flowchart, & Mapping software
was a powerful tool for outlining complex
strategies and predicting weaknesses. Susan suspected there were schemes hidden in Strathmore’s
computer that someday would
change the world.
Yes, Susan
thought, I was too hard on him.
Her thoughts were jarred by the hiss of
the Node 3 doors.
Strathmore burst in. “Susan,”
he said. “David
just called.
There’s been a setback.”
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