Chapter 8
Just a Name or Two
Thursday, 9:49 AM
"I got a name," said Jerome, triumph spread across his face. He had just returned to the records room from his 'interview' with Sir Mark Blackwell. It had taken no small effort to convince Sir Blackwell to cave in with information. At first, Jerome had assumed that Sir Blackwell was in league with the Weber Institute. However, the evidence of his efforts to assist Collum MacKenzie had changed his perspective … and his tactics.
He had tried to squeeze the foreign secretary with MacKenzie's status as a terrorist. Sir Blackwell, though, had remained stalwartly loyal – at least apparently so. It was this appearance of loyalty to MacKenzie which struck Jerome as both odd and significant. It looked genuine, but Jerome was certain that it wasn't. It had forced a change in plans, in approach. He was certain the Sir Mark was playing his own game, and so he had tried to paint it in that light – cooperating was the only way that he could continue having input into the situation. If he didn't give up something, he'd be frozen out and left in political purgatory.
In the end, the argument had worked, albeit grudgingly. The information he had given Jerome, however, was invaluable.
"So do I," replied Jonathan. "Let's hear yours first." The team leader was haggard, and it wasn't from lack of sleep. He had clearly been puzzling over something that he had found, and the fact that the pieces of the puzzle were not coming together was clearly getting on his nerves.
"Anthony Straznikof." Jerome paused and licked his lips as Alicia immediately began typing in the man's name in the computer. "He's one of Mr. Turcey's underlings at the Weber Institute. He's been cooperating with the government for years – ever since Turcey first started approaching the military procurement people. He contacted Blackwell right about the time that Turcey was negotiating with our dearly departed Brigadier General. It seems that the man got a sudden attack of conscience and has been trying to stop this group from achieving its goals – with government support, of course."
"You mean immunity," replied Alicia absently. She scrolled down on her computer screen, speed reading the results that had come back on Mr. Straznikof. She pursed her lips as she read, becoming increasingly distracted from the conversation by what was written there before her.
"It seems that you were right, Jonny boy," Jerome continued. "Sir Blackwell alerted Sir Radcliffe as soon as he figured out what the Weber Institute was really offering. Sir Radcliffe put MacKenzie on the team, whom he knew wouldn't stand for it. MacKenzie put a stop to it, and Sir Blackwell covered it up. In exchange, he's now second only to the PM in the hallowed halls of government. And the whole thing is quite tidily invisible."
"They didn't want the press getting hold of it, eh?" queried Alicia. She was the most cynical of the team despite her relative youth.
"Yeah, but not for the reason's you think. Sir Radcliffe and Sir Blackwell needed to make sure that Sheffield and his team got taken out of play. They covered it up to make sure that there would be no extradition." Jerome nodded for emphasis. "If Sheffield got sent back to British soil, there's a fair bet that he'd get sprung from whatever cell we had him in – or even worse, whitewashed and put on active duty. Better to bury him in a deep, dark American hole and let the Weber institute try to dig him out."
Jonathan's face was the very definition of concentration. He was listening with a small chunk of his brain, automatically flagging the important parts for review, assessing the impacts. "So, they took away one of the Weber Institute's key weapons. Very smart." He quickly did a mental rewind of the conversation. "So, what was it Turcey and Straznikof were trying to peddle to the military?"
"A super weapon. Something called 'the Slayer.'"
"What is that, some kind antipersonnel bomb?" Alicia's face screwed up at the name. "Sounds pretty awful to me. What kind of people think up these things, anyway. You have to wonder about their mums and dads."
"You said 'super-weapon'," Jonathan said, ignoring Alicia's comments. "Explain."
"You're not going to believe it," Jerome replied. "It's a girl."
"What's a girl?" Alicia asked, her brows twitching.
Jerome rubbed his hands together. "The Slayer. It's a girl, a magically created super-soldier. Fast, strong, and ruthless."
"That makes sense," Jonathan said, nodding.
"You've all gone completely daft!" Alicia threw her hands up in frustration.
"Remember, it's not what we think, it's what they think. And they believe it – the Weber Institute, the Brigadier, Sir Blackwell. All of them. And they were willing to go to some pretty extraordinary lengths about it." Jerome's look turned serious. "According to Sir Blackwell, the U.S. Military has got evidence. There is such a girl, and you'll never guess where she lives."
Jonathan replied immediately. "Sunnydale."
"Got it in one, mate." Jerome smiled. "And the girl's mentor and protector there?"
"Rupert Giles." Jonathan rubbed his hands together and thought for a few moments. "So, Mr. Giles goes to Sunnydale to mentor and protect this young girl who's some sort of super hero. Magically created by the Weber institute – which believes all of this stuff – or at least in league with them. Others in the organization decide to sell her out to the RAF. Mr. Giles doesn't like the idea, and neither does a U.S. Congressman, who has somehow put two and two together. So the buyer – in this case our military – send in a team to clean it up. Sir Radcliffe doesn't like the idea, either, so he sends along the good Captain. MacKenzie stops them from getting her, make sure the entire team gets put on ice in an American prison, and then he and Sir Radcliffe move into their own covert war to dismantle the rest of the organization."
"Not all of it," Jerome interrupted. "According to Sir Blackwell, it's only one part that they're after – the part that's been 'corrupted', as he puts it. Turcey is only the public face, there's someone else behind it."
"Okay," replied Jonathan, nodding. He absorbed the correction and moderately adjusted his conclusions. "MacKenzie infiltrates the Weber Institute – or at least their hired mercenaries – just about the time that Mr. Giles comes back to England. They put a tap on him, and MacKenzie decides he needs to blow his cover and get Mr. Giles out. He'd only do that if they were close to getting something from him."
"But what?" Alicia asked.
"The girl," Jonathan replied. He pulled surveillance photos out of his briefcase. "These were taken at Heathrow two months ago. That's Mr. Giles arriving from the United States." The pictures showed him in the company of a young woman. They were clearly together. One photo was a close-up of her face. "That's Willow Rosenberg, resident of Sunnydale, California. I'm willing to bet that she's what they were after."
"But she wasn't with him?" Jerome said. "Ah – he's had her hidden away somewhere, and they were tapping his place trying to figure out where."
"Right, but we know that now, don't we?" Jonathan nodded.
"Gretta Stevenson," Alicia replied. "That's why he called, he told her to take that girl and run."
"Right," said Jonathan. "Run and hide. And wherever they went is where Giles and MacKenzie will go. We find either group and we've effectively found both."
"Assuming that our friends upstairs don't find them first." The gravity of the situation was clear. They were in a race with their own organization.
"So how're we going to find them?" Alicia asked.
"We're not," Jonathan replied. "We'll let Jen's team do it, but we need to make sure that once they're found, we know about it and they don't. Jerome?"
"Got it, Jonny," he replied. He rose with a salute and left. He knew his job.
"What about us?" Alicia asked.
"We find Mr. Straznikof," Jonathan said. "Whatever it is he knows is going to be valuable to us, and I don't think Sir Blackwell is simply going to hand him over. He's appearing to cooperate, but I'll bet he'll contact Straznikof and tell him to lay low. We need to get to him first." Alicia printed a page and handed it to Jonathan. There was a complete profile of Straznikof, from where he lived to what his favorite food was. It also contained instructions on how to contact him securely. "Where'd you find this?" he asked.
"The foreign office files," she replied.
"Right, then," Jonathan said, blowing out a breath. The contact method was as simple as it was secure. The process of stegenography was the encoding of one digital object within another digital object. In this case, and electronic message was dispersed throughout a digital image. Predefined bit locations within the digital image were changed to match the bits of the message. These changes introduced tiny error into the digital image, but the errors were in single pixels scattered throughout the picture. A typical computer image contains nearly three-quarters of a million such dots; a photograph from a decent digital camera has several times as many. By contrast, a fifty word message would on average change only about two-hundred of them – less than three-hundredths of one percent. Since they were single bit changes throughout, they typically represented a change of only a fractional shade of color of each dot – not only completely undetectable to the human eye, but the huge range of natural color variation in any photograph, completely undetectable by computers as well. Only if someone knew exactly where and how to look could they find the hidden message.
In this case, the encoded message was then pushed to a public internet newsgroup, accessible anonymously from anywhere in the world. The nature of internet newsgroups meant that the message was pushed out to thousands of servers worldwide, and the original publisher of that message had no control, nor even any idea, where it had gone. It was the opposite paradigm of web sites. In a web site, all the readers go to the publisher's server; with newsgroups, the publisher sends to every user's server in the world. The result was that there was no way to know or track who had read the message.
In this scenario, Straznikof undoubtedly had a machine somewhere automatically scanning the images in the particular newsgroup. It would take each one as it arrived and attempt to decode a message out of it. If it found a valid message in that image, it would automatically contact him. Without this document, the system was both untraceable and undetectable.
Jonathan pulled out his mobile and dialed Eric. "Where are you?" he queried.
"Two blocks away, just getting a spot of tea on the way in." Eric still sounded tired, but Jonathan didn't care.
"Stay where you are, Alicia is coming to meet you. She has instructions on how to search for a coded message. I need a program to do it automatically and I needed it about an hour ago. I want you to run it from someplace public." The unique thing about this system, Jonathan noted, was that it used a pornographic newsgroup. Hundreds of images were posted to such groups every day, unlike most of the other groups which were primarily text exchanges. Due to sexual harassment issues, access to pornographic internet sites and groups was banned in government offices, which meant that people like MI-5 couldn't just stumble onto it. Jonathan knew that any attempting to get the authorization to access those groups would tip off the other team. He needed this done as secretly as possible, and he preferred not to use Crombey as a resource if he didn't have to. "The message has likely been posted within the last hour. I need to know what it says."
"You got it," Eric replied eagerly.
* * *
Five minutes later, Alicia handed him the paper. He read it through twice, and whistled. "This is brilliant," he said to no one in particular.
"But you can crack it?" she asked.
"Sure. With this information it won't take anything at all. Without it, no one could." Eric smiled broadly. "I'll have it in no time." His self-confidence was grating.
"Well, get on with it then," Alicia snapped. For all her beauty, the classic willowy blonde had the personality of a spinster aunt. Eric made a small face and then turned away, trotting off without comment. She turned the opposite way and headed back to Thames House to continue her research.
* * *
Jonathan wandered through the busy room, watching his friends and associates diligently working at purposes counter to his own. He'd always liked the image of the place as a beehive, but for the first time he didn't see himself as one of the bees. This time, he was there to gather the honey of their hard work before they could use it. He just hoped he didn't manage to get stung in the process.
He walked up to Crombey's office. Jenny Thatcher and Mr. Turcey were conversing animatedly with Crombey. It was clear that Mr. Turcey was unhappy with the lack of progress in the investigation. Jenny was looking worried – this was her big chance, and it was beginning to look like she was failing. Crombey sat still, listening implacably to Mr. Turcey's ranting. He wasn't one to get bullied by anyone – especially not someone he neither liked nor trusted in the first place.
Crombey held up his hand for silence, forcing Turcey to bite off his latest tirade. He then motioned for Jonathan to enter. Jonathan poked his head in the door. "There's been some developments in the Heathrow project. Do you have moment?"
Crombey looked from Turcey to Jen and then back to Turcey. "I take it you have much more to say, Mr. Turcey, but I'm afraid I've got a nation to protect. You'll just have to let me do that for a little while, and then I will be happy to return my undivided attention to your ramblings." The dismissal was harsh – amazingly so. Jonathan saw Jenny wince at the statement. This was all going very badly for her, and he truly felt sorry. But there were more important things at stake here than her feelings.
Jenny got up to leave, but Turcey began again. "I am far from finished," he snapped. He started to say more, but then thought better of it. Instead he stood up and stomped off, colliding deliberately with Jonathan on way out the door. The hit was slight, just one shoulder bumping another, but the contempt in it was clear. For a brief flash, Jonathan considered immobilizing the arrogant pig, but dismissed it instantly. He had other work to do. Instead, he went into the office and closed the door.
"What have you got?" Crombey asked.
* * *
"What have you got?" Jerome asked.
Analyst (2nd Class) Miles Winthrop looked up at the agent leaning over his shoulder. He liked working with Jonathan's team, but being in the analyst pool he simply took what assignments were given to him. His last assignment had been to monitor the phone communications of anyone on the suspect's phone list, which was easily accomplished. There'd been very little activity to hold his attention.
But then he'd gotten an idea. It wasn't much more than a seed at first, not enough to bring to Jenny or one of the other agents. He really wasn't sure what he was looking for. He just had an idea of where to look. And so he'd gone looking, poking around in different places, following delicate strands of connections. It was tedious, typically disappointing work. If asked to explain what he was doing, he had no hope of being able to articulate it.
But then he'd found it.
He'd let out a whoop of triumph, which Jerome had caught. Jenny and Mr. Turcey were in Crombey's office arguing, but as he looked he saw Jonathan approaching. It was just a small cry of joy and a satisfied expression, but Jerome suspected that it really meant a major breakthrough. And in a few seconds Jenny was going to walk out of Crombey's office and Miles would walk up and spill the whole thing to her, which meant that Jerome had to intercept it.
He had jogged over to the workstation and bent over to talk to the analyst, making sure his position would obscure the analyst's face as Jenny and Turcey walked by. He needed to find out if this was a real lead, and if it was he had to get it to Jonathan without the others knowing. He turned his complete attention on the analyst.
"Well, I really wasn't sure of what I was looking for, only I remembered my grand-parents beach house. So, I started poking around property ownership." He looked over at Jerome to make sure the agent was following his explanation. So far, it meant nothing, but Jerome nodded and encouraged him to continue. "So, I pulled a list of everyone who had ever had Gretta Stevenson's address listed as a place of residence in the last twenty years. There were twelve. Three at Gretta's previous address, and nine at the current one. Then I looked at any property they might own, or have access to by way of relations."
"How'd you manage that?" Jerome asked, clearly curious.
"I used a house-holding algorithm. It looks through the property ownership records and matches people who shared a last name and an address anywhere in the postal records. It takes quite a bit of crunching, but I had a pretty small target list to being with, so it wasn't so bad." The explanation was given in an offhand manner, like someone explaining quantum mechanics as an everyday phenomena that any school child should understand. Jerome didn't, not really, but he wanted to get to the good part.
Jenny and Mr. Turcey walked past them, each so caught up in their own emotions that they failed to really take notice of the conversation. Jenny was tense, bordering on desperate. Turcey was livid. Good, thought Jerome, that should keep them occupied for a little bit. "Go on," he said aloud.
"Okay, so here's number five on the list. Veronica Burm, deceased at age eighty-seven. She had two properties that were left to various people. One of which is a farmhouse outside Worcester." He pointed at a property records on the computer screen, clearly showing the chain. "Now, here's where it gets interesting. Here's the power meter readings from that property over the last five days."
The graph he pulled up was self-explanatory. The power consumption levels for the property were at nearly nothing for the first three-and-a-half days. Then, suddenly, they had spiked up to a normal usage pattern.
"That spike occurred three hours and twelve minutes after the suspect's call to Gretta Stevenson." He turned and smiled at Jerome, who nodded. "If they had gone somewhere already occupied, we might not have been able to tell. But the change here is so dramatic that it's clear that someone took up residence. Given the timing and everything else, I think it's a pretty good lead."
Jerome rubbed his face. "It's an excellent lead," he said. "Actually, there's one thing we'll need to double check on. These readings," he indicated the flat ones, "could be due to errors in the metering system. If that's the case, we should a record of the utility incident in the archives room."
Jerome stood up and waved to Darla, who hurried over. "Miles here has something he needs to check out in the archives. Why don't you show him down there and help him find it." He squeezed her shoulder a couple times, a coded warning.
"Right," she said, and gestured for young Miles to lead the way to the lift. He walked by, and Darla risked a quick, whispered clarification. "Keep him there?" she asked as she turned to follow him. Jerome nodded.
He watched them get to the lift, then turned back to the workstation. He clicked on the 'print' command to get the location, snagged the paper and folded it into his pocket. Then he hit the power button on the workstation, erasing the work. Checking to see if anyone noticed, he turned and walked towards Crombey's office.
The advantage to being in a bee-hive was that everyone was too busy to really notice what the others were doing. That worked to his advantage. He felt confident that it would be some time before Miles's absence was commented upon.
Jerome surreptitiously signaled to Jonathan, who promptly left Crombey's office. They walked to the lift and got on together. "We've found them," Jerome said.