Strathmore's elevator dropped fast. Inside the carriage, Susan sucked deep breaths of fresh air into her lungs. Dazed, she steadied herself against the wall as the car slowed to a stop. A moment later some gears clicked, and the conveyor began moving again, this time horizontally. Susan felt the carriage accelerate as it began rumbling toward the main NSA complex. Finally it whirred to a stop, and the doors opened.
Coughing, Susan Fletcher stumbled into a darkened cement corridor. She found herself in a tunnel-low-ceilinged and narrow. A double yellow line stretched out before her. The line disappeared into an empty, dark hollow.
The Underground Highway…
She staggered toward the tunnel, holding the wall for guidance. Behind her, the elevator door slid shut. Once again Susan Fletcher was plunged into darkness.
Silence.
Nothing except a faint humming in the walls.
A humming that grew louder.
Suddenly it was as if dawn were breaking. The blackness thinned to a hazy gray. The walls of the tunnel began to take shape. All at once, a small vehicle whipped around the corner, its headlight blinding her. Susan stumbled back against the wall and shielded her eyes. There was a gust of air, and the transport whipped past.
An instant later there was a deafening squeal of rubber on cement. The hum approached once again, this time in reverse. Seconds later the vehicle came to a stop beside her.
"Ms. Fletcher!" an astonished voice exclaimed.
Susan gazed at a vaguely familiar shape in the driver's seat of an electric golf cart.
"Jesus." The man gasped. "Are you okay? We thought you were dead!"
Susan stared blankly.
"Chad Brinkerhoff," he sputtered, studying the shell-shocked cryptographer. "Directorial PA."
Susan could only manage a dazed whimper. "TRANSLTR…"
Brinkerhoff nodded. "Forget it. Get on!"
* * *
The beam of the golf cart's headlights whipped across the cement walls.
"There's a virus in the main databank," Brinkerhoff blurted.
"I know," Susan heard herself whisper.
"We need you to help us."
Susan was fighting back the tears. "Strathmore… he…"
"We know," Brinkerhoff said. "He bypassed Gauntlet."
"Yes… and…" The words got stuck in her throat. He killed David!
Brinkerhoff put a hand on her shoulder. "Almost there, Ms. Fletcher. Just hold on."
* * *
The high-speed Kensington golf cart rounded a corner and skidded to a stop. Beside them, branching off perpendicular to the tunnel, was a hallway, dimly lit by red floor lighting.
"Come on," Brinkerhoff said, helping her out.
He guided her into the corridor. Susan drifted behind him in a fog. The tiled passageway sloped downward at a steep incline. Susan grabbed the handrail and followed Brinkerhoff down. The air began to grow cooler. They continued their descent.
As they dropped deeper into the earth, the tunnel narrowed. From somewhere behind them came the echo of footsteps-a strong, purposeful gait. The footsteps grew louder. Both Brinkerhoff and Susan stopped and turned.
Striding toward them was an enormous black man. Susan had never seen him before. As he approached, he fixed her with a penetrating stare.
"Who's this?" he demanded.
"Susan Fletcher," Brinkerhoff replied.
The enormous man arched his eyebrows. Even sooty and soaked, Susan Fletcher was more striking than he had imagined. "And the commander?" he demanded.
Brinkerhoff shook his head.
The man said nothing. He stared off a moment. Then he turned back to Susan. "Leland Fontaine," he said, offering her his hand. "Glad you're okay."
Susan stared. She'd always known she'd meet the director someday, but this was not the introduction she'd envisioned.
"Come along, Ms. Fletcher," Fontaine said, leading the way. "We'll need all the help we can get."
* * *
Looming in the reddish haze at the bottom of the tunnel, a steel wall blocked their way. Fontaine approached and typed an entry code into a recessed cipher box. He then placed his right hand against a small glass panel. A strobe flashed. A moment later the massive wall thundered left.
There was only one NSA chamber more sacred than Crypto, and Susan Fletcher sensed she was about to enter it.
Chapter 109
The command center for the NSA's main databank looked like a scaled-down NASA mission control. A dozen computer workstations faced the thirty-foot by forty-foot video wall at the far end of the room. On the screen, numbers and diagrams flashed in rapid succession, appearing and disappearing as if someone were channel surfing. A handful of technicians raced wildly from station to station trailing long sheets of printout paper and yelling commands. It was chaos.
Susan stared at the dazzling facility. She vaguely remembered that 250 metric tons of earth had been excavated to create it. The chamber was located 214 feet below ground, where it would be totally impervious to flux bombs and nuclear blasts.
On a raised workstation in the center of the room stood Jabba. He bellowed orders from his platform like a king to his subjects. Illuminated on the screen directly behind him was a message. The message was all too familiar to Susan. The billboard-size text hung ominously over Jabba's head:
ONLY THE TRUTH WILL SAVE YOU NOW
ENTER PASS-KEY ______
As if trapped in some surreal nightmare, Susan followed Fontaine toward the podium. Her world was a slow-motion blur.
Jabba saw them coming and wheeled like an enraged bull. "I built Gauntlet for a reason!"
"Gauntlet's gone," Fontaine replied evenly.
"Old news, Director," Jabba spat. "The shock wave knocked me on my ass! Where's Strathmore?"
"Commander Strathmore is dead."
"Poetic fucking justice."
"Cool it, Jabba," the director ordered. "Bring us up to speed. How bad is this virus?"
Jabba stared at the director a long moment, and then without warning, he burst out laughing. "A virus?" His harsh guffaw resonated through the underground chamber. "Is that what you think this is?"
Fontaine kept his cool. Jabba's insolence was way out of line, but Fontaine knew this was not the time or place to handle it. Down here, Jabba outranked God himself. Computer problems had away of ignoring the normal chain of command.
"It's not a virus?" Brinkerhoff exclaimed hopefully.
Jabba snorted in disgust. "Viruses have replication strings, pretty boy! This doesn't!"
Susan hovered nearby, unable to focus.
"Then what's going on?" Fontaine demanded. "I thought we had a virus."
Jabba sucked in a long breath and lowered his voice. "Viruses…" he said, wiping sweat from his face. "Viruses reproduce. They create clones. They're vain and stupid-binary egomaniacs. They pump out babies faster than rabbits. That's their weakness-you can cross-breed them into oblivion if you know what you're doing. Unfortunately, this program has no ego, no need to reproduce. It's clear-headed and focused. In fact, when it's accomplished its objective here, it will probably commit digital suicide. "Jabba held out his arms reverently to the projected havoc on the enormous screen. "Ladies and gentlemen." He sighed. "Meet the kamikaze of computer invaders… the worm."
"Worm?" Brinkerhoff groaned. It seemed like a mundane term to describe the insidious intruder.
"Worm." Jabba smoldered. "No complex structures, just instinct-eat, shit, crawl. That's it. Simplicity. Deadly simplicity. It does what it's programmed to do and then checks out."
Fontaine eyed Jabba sternly. "And what is this worm programmed to do?"
"No clue," Jabba replied. "Right now, it's spreading out and attaching itself to all our classified data. After that, it could do anything. It might decide to delete all the files, or it might just decide to print smiley faces on certain White House transcripts."
Fontaine's voice remained cool and collected. "Can you stop it?"
Jabba let out a
long sigh and faced the screen. "I have no idea. It all depends on how pissed off the author is." He pointed to the message on the wall. "Anybody want to tell me what the hell that means?"
ONLY THE TRUTH WILL SAVE YOU NOW
ENTER PASS-KEY ______
Jabba waited for a response and got none. "Looks like someone's messing with us, Director. Blackmail. This is a ransom note if I ever saw one."
Susan's voice was a whisper, empty and hollow. "It's… Ensei Tankado."
Jabba turned to her. He stared a moment, wide-eyed. "Tankado?"
Susan nodded weakly. "He wanted our confession… about TRANSLTR… but it cost him his-"
"Confession?" Brinkerhoff interrupted, looking stunned. "Tankado wants us to confess we have TRANSLTR? I'd say it's a bit late for that!"
Susan opened her mouth to speak, but Jabba took over. "Looks like Tankado's got a kill-code," he said, gazing up at the message on the screen.
Everyone turned.
"Kill code?" Brinkerhoff demanded.
Jabba nodded. "Yeah. A pass-key that stops the worm. Simply put, if we admit we have TRANSLTR, Tankado gives us a kill-code. We type it in and save the databank. Welcome to digital extortion."
Fontaine stood like rock, unwavering. "How long have we got?"
"About an hour," Jabba said. "Just time enough to call a press conference and spill our guts.
"Recommendation," Fontaine demanded. "What do you propose we do?"
"A recommendation?" Jabba blurted in disbelief. "You want a recommendation? I'll give you a recommendation! You quit fucking around, that's what you do!"
"Easy," the director warned.
"Director," Jabba sputtered. "Right now, Ensei Tankado owns this databank! Give him whatever he wants. If he wants the world to know about TRANSLTR, call CNN, and drop your shorts. TRANSLTR's a hole in the ground now anyway-what the hell do you care?"
There was a silence. Fontaine seemed to be considering his options. Susan began to speak, but Jabba beat her to it.
"What are you waiting for, Director! Get Tankado on the phone! Tell him you'll play ball! We need that kill-code, or this whole place is going down!"
Nobody moved.
"Are you all insane?" Jabba screamed. "Call Tankado! Tell him we fold! Get me that kill-code! NOW!" Jabba whipped out his cellular phone and switched it on. "Never mind! Get me his number! I'll call the little prick myself!"
"Don't bother," Susan said in a whisper. "Tankado's dead."
After a moment of confused astonishment, the implications hit Jabba like a bullet to the gut. The huge Sys-Sec looked like he was about to crumble. "Dead? But then… that means… we can't…"
"That means we'll need a new plan," Fontaine said matter-of-factly.
Jabba's eyes were still glazed with shock when someone in the back of the room began shouting wildly.
"Jabba! Jabba!"
It was Soshi Kuta, his head techie. She came running toward the podium trailing a long printout. She looked terrified.
"Jabba!" She gasped. "The worm… I just found out what it's programmed to do!" Soshi thrust the paper into Jabba's hands. "I pulled this from the system-activity probe! We isolated the worm's execute commands-have a look at the programming! Look what it's planning to do!"
Dazed, the chief Sys-Sec read the printout. Then he grabbed the handrail for support.
"Oh, Jesus," Jabba gasped. "Tankado… you bastard!"
Chapter 110
Jabba stared blankly at the printout Soshi had just handed him. Pale, he wiped his forehead on his sleeve. "Director, we have no choice. We've got to kill power to the databank."
"Unacceptable," Fontaine replied. "The results would be devastating."
Jabba knew the director was right. There were over three thousand ISDN connections tying into the NSA databank from all over the world. Every day military commanders accessed up-to-the-instant satellite photos of enemy movement. Lockheed engineers downloaded compartmentalized blueprints of new weaponry. Field operatives accessed mission updates. The NSA databank was the backbone of thousands of U.S. government operations. Shutting it down without warning would cause life-and-death intelligence blackouts all over the globe.
"I'm aware of the implications, sir," Jabba said, "but we have no choice."
"Explain yourself," Fontaine ordered. He shot a quick glance at Susan standing beside him on the podium. She seemed miles away.
Jabba took a deep breath and wiped his brow again. From the look on his face, it was clear to the group on the podium that they were not going to like what he had to say.
"This worm," Jabba began. "This worm is not an ordinary degenerative cycle. It's a selective cycle. In other words, it's a worm with taste."
Brinkerhoff opened his mouth to speak, but Fontaine waved him off.
"Most destructive applications wipe a databank clean, "Jabba continued, "but this one is more complex. It deletes only those files that fall within certain parameters."
"You mean it won't attack the whole databank?" Brinkerhoff asked hopefully. "That's good, right?"
"No!" Jabba exploded. "It's bad! It's very fucking bad!"
"Cool it!" Fontaine ordered. "What parameters is this worm looking for? Military? Covert ops?"
Jabba shook his head. He eyed Susan, who was still distant, and then Jabba's eyes rose to meet the director's. "Sir, as you know, anyone who wants to tie into this databank from the outside has to pass a series of security gates before they're admitted."
Fontaine nodded. The databank's access hierarchies were brilliantly conceived; authorized personnel could dial in via the Internet and World Wide Web. Depending on their authorization sequence, they were permitted access to their own compartmentalized zones.
"Because we're tied to the global Internet, "Jabba explained, "hackers, foreign governments, and EFF sharks circle this databank twenty-four hours a day and try to break in."
"Yes," Fontaine said, "and twenty-four hours a day, our security filters keep them out. What's your point?"
Jabba gazed down at the printout. "My point is this. Tankado's worm is not targeting our data." He cleared his throat. "It's targeting our security filters."
Fontaine blanched. Apparently he understood the implications-this worm was targeting the filters that kept the NSA databank confidential. Without filters, all of the information in the databank would become accessible to everyone on the outside.
"We need to shut down," Jabba repeated. "In about an hour, every third grader with a modem is going to have top U.S. security clearance."
Fontaine stood a long moment without saying a word.
Jabba waited impatiently and finally turned to Soshi. "Soshi! VR! NOW!"
Soshi dashed off.
Jabba relied on VR often. In most computer circles, VR meant "virtual reality," but at the NSA it meant vis-rep-visual representation. In a world full of technicians and politicians all having different levels of technical understanding, a graphic representation was often the only way to make a point; a single plummeting graph usually aroused ten times the reaction inspired by volumes of spreadsheets. Jabba knew a VR of the current crisis would make its point instantly.
"VR!" Soshi yelled from a terminal at the back of the room.
A computer-generated diagram flashed to life on the wall before them. Susan gazed up absently, detached from the madness around her. Everyone in the room followed Jabba's gaze to the screen.
The diagram before them resembled a bull's-eye. In the center was a red circle marked data. Around the center were five concentric circles of differing thickness and color. The outermost circle was faded, almost transparent.
"We've got a five-tier level of defense," Jabba explained. "A primary Bastion Host, two sets of packet filters for FTP and X-eleven, a tunnel block, and finally a PEM-based authorization window right off the Truffle project. The outside shield that's disappearing represents the exposed host. It's practically gone. Within the hour, all five shields will follow. After that, the world pours in. Every by
te of NSA data becomes public domain."
Fontaine studied the VR, his eyes smoldering.
Brinkerhoff let out a weak whimper. "This worm can open our databank to the world?"
"Child's play for Tankado," Jabba snapped. "Gauntlet was our fail-safe. Strathmore blew it."
"It's an act of war," Fontaine whispered, an edge in his voice.
Jabba shook his head. "I really doubt Tankado ever meant for it to go this far. I suspect he intended to be around to stop it."
Fontaine gazed up at the screen and watched the first of the five walls disappear entirely.