"I remember you saying you never developed a light touch."
"I was hacking one time, must've been five years ago, and I broke my little finger. I didn't even know it. I kept keying for another couple of hours. Until I saw my hand start to turn black."
"What was your endurance record?" Phate asked him.
Gillette thought back. "Once I keyed for thirty-nine hours straight."
"Mine was thirty-seven," Phate responded. "Would've been longer but I fell asleep. When I woke up I couldn't move my hands for two hours. . . . Man, we did some serious shit, didn't we?"
Gillette said, "Remember that guy--the air force general? We saw him on CNN. He said that their recruiting Web site was tighter than Fort Knox and that no punks would ever hack it."
"And we got inside their VAX in, what, about ten minutes?"
The young hackers had uploaded Kimberly-Clark advertisements onto the site; all the exciting pictures of jet fighters and bombers were replaced by product shots of Kotex boxes.
"That was a good hack," Phate said.
"Oh, and how 'bout when we turned the White House Press Office main line into a pay phone?" Gillette mused.
They fell silent for a moment. Finally Phate said, "Oh, man, you were better than me . . . you just got derailed. You married that Greek girl. What was her name? Ellie Papandolos, right?" He looked Gillette over closely as he mentioned her name. "You got divorced . . . but you're still in love with her, right? I can see it."
Gillette said nothing.
Phate continued, "You're a hacker, man. You've got no business being with a woman. When machines're your life you don't need a lover. They'll only hold you back."
Gillette countered, "What about Shawn?"
A darkness crossed Phate's face. "That's different. Shawn understands exactly who I am. There aren't many people who do."
"Who is he?"
"Shawn's none of your business," Phate said ominously, then a moment later he smiled. "Come on, Wyatt, let's work together. I know you want the scoop on Trapdoor. Wouldn't you give anything to know how it works?"
"I do know how it works. You use a packet-sniffer to divert messages. Then you use stenanography to embed a demon in the packets. The demon self-activates as soon as it's inside the target machine and resets the communications protocols. It hides in a game program and self-destructs when somebody comes looking for it."
Phate laughed. "But that's like saying, 'Oh, that man flaps his arms and flies.' How did I do it? That's what you don't know. That's what nobody knows. . . . Don't you wonder what the source code looks like? Wouldn't you love to see that code, Mr. Curious? It'd be like getting a look at God, Wyatt. You know you want to."
For an instant Gillette's mind scrolled through line after line of software programming--what he himself would write to duplicate Trapdoor. But when he got to a certain point, the screen in his mind's eye went blank. He could see no further and he felt the terrible lust of curiosity consuming him. Oh, yes, he did want to see the source code. So very badly.
But he said, "Just put the cuffs on."
Phate glanced at the clock on the wall. "Remember what I used to say about revenge when we were hacking?"
"'Hacker's revenge is patient revenge.' What about it?"
"I just want to leave you with that thought. Oh, one other thing. . . . You ever read Mark Twain?"
Gillette frowned and didn't answer.
Phate continued, "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. No? Well, it's about this man in the 1800s who's transported back in time to medieval England. There's this totally moby scene where the hero or somebody is in some kind of hot water and the knights're going to kill them, or whatever."
"Jon, put the cuffs on." Gillette extended the gun.
"Only what happens . . . this is pretty good. What happens is he has an almanac with him and he looks up the date in whatever year it is, and he sees that there was a total eclipse of the sun then. So he tells the knights if they don't back off he'll turn day to night. And of course they don't believe him but then the eclipse happens and everybody freaks and the hero's saved."
"So?"
"I was worried I might get into some kind of hot water here."
"What's your point?"
Phate said nothing. But the point became evident a few seconds later when the clock hit exactly twelve-thirty and the virus Phate must have loaded in the electric company's computer shut off the power to the CCU office.
The room was plunged into blackness.
Gillette leapt back, raising Backle's gun and squinting into the dark for a target. Phate's powerful fist slammed into his neck and stunned him. Then he shouldered Gillette hard into the cubicle wall, knocking him to the floor.
He heard a jangling as Phate grabbed his keys and other things on the desk. Gillette reached up, trying for the man's wallet. But Phate already had that and all Gillette could save was the CD player. He felt another stunning pain as the monkey wrench slammed into his shin. Gillette staggered to his knees, lifted Backle's gun toward where he thought Phate was and pulled the trigger.
But nothing happened. Apparently the safety was on. As he started to fiddle with it a foot slammed into his jaw. The gun fell from his hand and he went down onto the floor once again.
V
THE EXPERT LEVEL
There are only two ways to get rid of hackers and phreakers. One is to get rid of computers and telephones. . . . The other way is to give us what we want, which is free access to ALL information. Until one of those two things happen, we are not going anywhere.
--A hacker known as Revelation, quoted in The Ultimate Beginner's Guide to Hacking and Phreaking
CHAPTER 00100011 / THIRTY-FIVE
"Are you all right?" Patricia Nolan asked, looking at the blood on Gillette's face, neck and pants.
"I'm fine," he said.
But she didn't believe him and played nurse anyway, disappearing into the canteen and returning with damp paper towels and liquid soap. She bathed his eyebrow and cheek where he'd been cut in the fight with Phate. He smelled fresh nail conditioner on her strong hands and wondered when, in light of Phate's assault on the hospital and here, she'd found time for cosmetics.
She made him tug his pants cuff up and she cleaned the small gash on his leg, holding his calf firmly. She finished and offered him an intimate smile.
Forget it, Patty, he thought once more. . . . I'm a felon, I'm out of work, I'm in love with another woman. Really, don't bother.
"That doesn't hurt?" she asked, touching the damp cloth to the cut.
It seared like a dozen bee stings. "Just itches a little," he said, hoping to discourage the relentless mothering.
Tony Mott ran back inside CCU, holstering his massive weapon. "No sign of him."
Shelton and Bishop walked inside a moment later. All three men had returned to CCU from the medical center and had spent the last half hour scouring the area, looking for any signs of Phate or witnesses who'd seen him arrive at or flee the CCU. But the homicide partners' faces revealed that they'd had no more luck than Mott.
Bishop sat wearily in an office chair. "So what happened?" he asked the hacker.
Gillette briefed them about Phate's attack on CCU.
"He say anything that's helpful?"
"No. Not a thing. I almost got his wallet but just ended up with that." He nodded at the CD player. A tech from the Crime Scene Identification Unit had printed it and found that the only prints were Phate's and Gillette's.
Then the hacker delivered the news that TripleX was dead.
"Oh, no," Frank Bishop said, looking heartsick that a civilian who'd taken a risk to help them had been killed. Bob Shelton sighed angrily.
Mott walked to the evidence board and wrote the name TripleX next to Andy Anderson, Lara Gibson and Willem Boethe under the heading "Victims."
But Gillette stood--unsteadily thanks to his wounded shin--and hobbled to the board. He erased the name.
"What're you doing?" Bishop asked.
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Gillette took a marker and wrote "Peter Grodsky." He said, "That's his real name. He was a programmer who lived in Sunnyvale." He looked at the team. "I just think we should remember that he was more than a screen name."
Bishop called Huerto Ramirez and Tim Morgan and told them to find Grodsky's address and run the crime scene.
Gillette noticed a pink phone message slip. He said to Bishop, "I took a message for you just before you got back from the hospital. Your wife called." He read the note. "Something about the test results coming back and it's good news. Uhm, I'm not sure I got this right--I thought she said she's got a serious infection. I'm not sure why that's good news."
But the look of immense joy in Bishop's face--a rare, beaming smile--told him that, yes, the message was right.
He was happy for the detective but felt his own personal disappointment that Elana hadn't called him. He wondered where she was right now. Wondered if Ed was with her. Gillette's palms sweated with angry jealousy.
Agent Backle walked into the office from the parking lot. His fastidiously tidy hair was mussed and he walked stiffly. He'd had his own medical treatment--but his had been administered by professionals with the Emergency Medical Services, whose ambulance was outside in the parking lot. He'd suffered a slight concussion when he'd been attacked in the coffee room. He now wore a large white bandage on the side of his head.
"How you feeling?" Gillette asked blithely.
The agent didn't respond. He noticed his gun sitting on a desk near Gillette and snatched up the weapon. He checked it with exaggerated care then slipped it into his belt holster.
"What the hell happened?" he asked.
Bishop said, "Phate broke in, blindsided you and got your weapon."
"And you took it away from him?" the agent asked Gillette skeptically.
"Yep."
"You knew I was in the coffee room," Backle snapped. "The perp didn't."
"But I guess he did know, didn't he?" Gillette responded. "Otherwise how could he blindside you and get your weapon?"
"It seems to me," the agent said slowly, "that you somehow got this idea he was going to come here. You wanted a weapon and helped yourself to mine."
"Well, that's not what happened," Gillette said then glanced at Bishop, who cocked an eyebrow in a way that suggested that the agent might not be completely wrong. The detective, though, said nothing.
"If I find out that it was you--"
Bishop said, "Hey, hey, hey . . . I think you ought to be a little more grateful, sir. There's a good argument to be made that Wyatt here saved your life."
The agent tried to stare down the cop but gave up, walked to a chair and sat down in it gingerly. "I'm still watching you, Gillette."
Bishop took a phone call. He hung up then reported, "That was Huerto again. He said they got a report from Harvard. There were no records of anybody named Shawn who was a student or working at the school around the same time Holloway was. He checked the other places Holloway worked too--Western Electric, Apple and the rest of them. Negative on an employee named Shawn." He glanced at Shelton. "He also said it's getting hot and heavy with the MARINKILL case. The perps were spotted in our backyard. Santa Clara, just off the 101."
Bob Shelton gave an uncharacteristic laugh. "Doesn't matter whether you wanted a piece of that case or not, Frank. Looks like it's dogging you."
Bishop shook his head. "Maybe, but I sure don't want it around here, not for the time being. It's going to pull off resources and we need all the help we can get." He looked at Patricia Nolan. "What'd you find at the hospital?"
She explained how she and Miller had looked through the medical center's network and, while they found signs that Phate had cracked into the system, she couldn't find any indication of where he'd been hacking in from.
"The sysadmin printed these out." She handed Gillette a large stack of printouts. "The log in and log out activity reports for the past week. I thought you might be able to find something."
Gillette began poring over the hundred or so pages.
Then Bishop looked around the dinosaur pen and frowned. "Say, where is Miller?"
Nolan said, "He left the hospital computer center before me. He said he was coming straight back here."
Without looking up from the printouts Gillette said, "I haven't seen him."
"He might've gone over to the computer center at Stanford," Mott said. "He books supercomputer time there a lot. Maybe he was going to check out a lead." He tried the cop's cell phone but there was no answer and he left a message on Miller's voice mail.
Gillette was scanning through the printouts when he came to a particular entry and his heart thudded with alarm. He read it again to make sure. "No . . ."
He'd spoken softly but everyone on the team stopped talking and looked toward him.
The hacker looked up. "Once he seized root at Stanford-Packard, Phate logged into other systems that were connected with the hospital's. But he also jumped from the hospital to an outside computer. It recognized Stanford-Packard as a trusted system so he waltzed right through the firewalls and seized root there too."
"What's the other system?" Bishop asked.
"Northern California University in Sunnyvale." Gillette looked up. "He got files on security procedures and personnel information on every security guard who works for the school." The hacker sighed. "But we're going to have trouble finding the next victim. He downloaded the names and personal files of twenty-eight hundred students."
Someone was following him . . .
Who was it?
Phate looked in his rearview mirror at the cars behind him on the 280 freeway as he fled from CCU headquarters. He was badly shaken that Valleyman had outmaneuvered him again and was desperate to get home.
He was already thinking of his next attack--on Northern California University. It was less challenging than some targets he might've picked but the security at the dorms was high and the school had a computer system that the chancellor of the school had once declared in an interview was hacker-proof. One of the more interesting features of this system was that it controlled the state-of-the-art fire alarm and sprinkler systems throughout the twenty-five dorms that provided the bulk of student housing.
An easy hack, not as challenging as either the Lara Gibson or St. Francis one. But at the moment Phate needed a victory. He was losing this level of the game and that was shaking his confidence.
And fueling his paranoia. . . . Another glance in the rearview mirror.
Yes, someone was there! Two men in the front seat, staring at him.
Eyes back to the road, then he looked again.
But the car he'd seen--or thought he'd seen--was just a shadow or reflection.
No, wait! It was back. . . . But now it was being driven by a woman alone.
When he looked a third time there was no driver at all. My God, it was a creature of some sort!
A ghost.
A demon.
Yes, no . . .
You were right, Valleyman: When computers are the only life that sustains you, when they're the only totems that ward off the deadly curse of boredom, then sooner or later the borderline between the two dimensions vanishes and characters from the Blue Nowhere begin to appear in the Real World.
Sometimes those characters are your friends.
And sometimes not.
Sometimes you see them driving behind you, sometimes you see their shadows in alleyways you're approaching, you see them hiding in your garage, your bedroom, your closet. You see them in a stranger's gaze.
You see them in the reflection of your monitor as you sit in front of your machine at the witching hour.
Sometimes they're just your imagination.
Another glance in the rearview mirror.
But sometimes, of course, they really are there.
Bishop pushed END on his cell phone.
"The dorms on the Northern California U campus have typical university security, which means it's pretty easy to get through."
"I thought he wanted challenges," Mott said.
Gillette said, "I'd guess he's going for an easy kill this time. He's probably pissed off we've gotten so close to him the last few times and wants blood."
Nolan added, "This might also be another diversion."
Gillette agreed that that was a possibility.
Bishop said, "I told the chancellor they should cancel classes and send everybody home. But he won't--the students start finals in two weeks. So we'll have to blanket the campus with troopers and county police. But that'll just mean more strangers on campus--and more of a chance for Phate to social engineer his way into a dorm."
"What do we do?" Mott asked.
Bishop said, "Some more old-fashioned police work." He picked up Phate's CD player. The detective opened it up. Inside was a recording of a play--a performance of Othello. He turned the machine over and jotted down the serial number. "Maybe Phate bought it in the area. I'll call the company and see where this unit was shipped to."
Bishop started making phone calls to the Akisha Electronic Products Company's various sales and distribution centers around the country. He was transferred and put on hold for an interminable period of time and was having trouble getting through to someone who could--or was willing to--help.
As the detective argued with someone on the other end of the line Wyatt Gillette spun around in a swivel chair to a nearby computer terminal and began keyboarding. A moment later he stood and pulled a piece of paper from the printer.
As Bishop's irritated voice was saying into the phone, "We can't wait two days for that information," Gillette handed the sheet to the detective.
AKISHA ELECTRONIC PRODUCTS SHIPPED--FIRST QUARTER
Model: HB Heavy Bass Portable Compact Disc Player
Unit Serial Numbers
Shipping Date
Recipient
HB40032-
1/12
Mountain View Music & Electronics
HB40068
9456 Rio Verde, #4
Mountain View, CA
The phone sagged in the detective's hand and he said into the receiver, "Never mind," and hung up. "How'd you get this?" Bishop asked Gillette. Then held up a hand. "On second thought, I'd rather not know." He chuckled. "Old-fashioned police work, like I said."