Sorry this update has taken so long folks, things have been kind of busy
here. In any case, this story is rapidly winding down to it's conclusion!
Leave me feedback, and I'll love you forever! :)
8:32 a.m.
Coke sprinted the last 20 yards to his car, thumbing the keyless entry button on his key chain and slid into the driver's seat of his vehicle. He stifled a grunt of pain as he banged his ankle on the bottom of the door, before slamming it and turning the key in the ignition. The engine roared to life and he yanked the gear lever into drive, barely taking the time to pull the latch on the parking break before peeling out of his parking space at breakneck speed.
The information session with Sweeny had been productive, but he was now approaching a critical juncture in the mission. Kiviat's trail, although not gone, was rapidly going cold. While this might not have mattered in a normal assignment, the clock was rapidly counting down the time before Kiviat made contact with Mulder and the objective was presumably lost. This would be an unacceptable outcome, both to Coke and the chief, and he knew that failure was rarely tolerated by the upper echelons of his agency. His first guess was that Kiviat might have gotten cold feet and begun the process of leaving the country, but fortunately her absconding with her computer and the sudden appearance of Sweeny at her apartment (coupled with a noticeable lack of signs of packing) suggested that Kiviat had made plans to meet with Mulder, presumably at this coffee shop, but that was not something that could be ascertained for sure. Fortunately, Coke had a few more tricks up his sleeve that would come in handy.
When he stopped at the next intersection, Coke pulled his cell phone out and began dialing the first of what would be many calls in the process of tracking down his target. The ringer buzzed twice before a solid, intent voice on the other line picked up.
"NSA, this is O'Grady, Electronic Communications, section A." O'Grady. The name didn't ring a bell with Coke, but it didn't matter. He had done this enough times to recite the litany by heart.
"This is Agent Coke, requesting an epsilon-level cell phone trace on a subject named Kiviat, Catherine A. Priority is red, my clearance is Department of Energy Intel, 773-8011 Whiskey Foxtrot Bravo." There was a brief pause on the other end of the line accompanied by the sound of some keyboard clicks.
"This is Catherine A. Kiviat, last known residence White Marsh, Maryland?"
"That's affirmative." The light turned to green and Coke eased out into the intersection, remembering to buckle his seatbelt as he did so. Getting pulled over now would not be a good thing. "I'm hoping that a certain Agent Maxey might have already red flagged her for a satellite sniffer."
Another brief pause followed. When O'Grady next spoke, his voice had assumed the satisfied, self-confident tone reserved for mail order clerks who are three steps ahead of their customers. "That's an affirmative, Agent Coke. Kiviat was placed on a trap and trace, top priority sniffer list at about 4:30 this morning. It doesn't say who ordered it though."
Coke felt he had a fairly strong idea of who might have ordered the trace on Kiviat, but he wasn't about to drop any names. He thanked Agent O'Grady for his time, provided the proper clearance number, and pushed the red "end" button on his cell phone. A smile slowly crept across Coke's unshaven face. Contrary to popular belief, Coke had been taught from day one of training that all conversations could be intercepted, be they electronic, oral, or snail mail. Cellular phones, far from being the exception, were the rule. By their very definition, cellular phones had to be mobile in order to be useful, and as such were forced to rely on a fairly insecure method of transmitting voices: right through the air, up into outer space, where they were then caught on satellites, rerouted, and then sent back to earth to reach the telephone of the other party. This by itself provided ample opportunities for any semi-decent operative to intercept a nearby conversation, but the true benefits of cell phone interception technology could not fully be understood until one received a red-level clearance with the NSA.
The NSA, if left to its own devices, would probably be quite capable of intercepting and monitoring fully half of the cellular phone conversations on the North American continent at any one time, but due to manpower restrictions (and once again Coke was amazed at the advances of technology since the days when he was in college), they were forced to drastically reduce that number to a few thousand select cases on any given day. Fortunately, a certain someone had seen fit to add Kiviat's name to the NSA's most recent list of monitored persons. As such, the NSA (and of course, Agent Stephen Coke), now had full access to the NSA's finest cell phone sniffer package tailored specifically to Christine Kiviat, including (but not limited to) recordings of all conversations since 4:30 in the morning when the sniffer had been put into place, the ability to check Kiviat's voicemail at will, and of course, a 30-second pinpoint of her last known position every time she plugged into an internet outlet with her phone. Life was grand.
Coke made a right into the first side street he saw and killed the engine of his car. Within a few short moments, he would know exactly everything that had transpired between her and Agent Mulder. But first, he needed a few minutes to reorganize his thoughts.
Coke took a moment and ran his fingers through his hair. It was thick and somewhat greasy. He absently remembered that he hadn't had a chance to shower this morning, having been called into HQ at an ungodly hour and getting to work right off the bat. Heck, he hadn't even had time to shave. One way or another, he looked like a mess and was starting to lose his focus. If he wanted to grab Kiviat he was going to move fast, but at the same time, Coke also realized that his judgment would start to become impaired the more he focused on the job. What he needed was a quick break and a shave. Glancing up, he noticed a 7-Eleven convenience store just across the street, its garish Orange and Green sign beckoning to him, complete with the promise of the best slurpies in town. It was worth a shot. Coke started the engine, put the car into reverse, and backed out onto the street, before turning into the store's parking lot.
Coke couldn't have spent more than 8 minutes in the store, but it felt as if he had gotten five years of his life back. Once he had made it past the door with its jangling bell and pasted-on cigarette ads, he had gone straight to the toiletry section and had bought himself a disposable razor, a pack of Alka-Seltzer, and a cup of coffee. He had then gone directly to the back, quickly breached the "Employees Only" door, and locked himself in the bathroom where he shaved, washed his face, and swallowed his Alka-Seltzer. All in all, Coke felt like a new man as he stepped out of the back room and onto the main floor of the store. His coffee had now cooled to an acceptable level and he began the final element of his usual morning ritual, gulping down the hot, black drink as he headed back to his car. Damn that felt good! It was time to kick some ass.
Coke fired up his cell phone immediately after hopping back into his Mercury and punched in the clearance code allowing him to gain access to Kiviat's sniffer package. He decided to follow the trail in chronological order beginning at 4:30 and working his way forward. There was very little to go on, but thankfully it was enough. Although the sniffer hadn't been put into place in time to catch Kiviat's initial phone call to Mulder's office, he was able to intercept the call Mulder had made to her cell phone at 6:49 am, just shortly after Mulder had left the message on Kiviat's apartment phone at 6:45. Coke punched "1" on his cell phone and listened to the conversation.
"NSA: call intercepted at 6:49 a.m.," read the vaguely androgynous computer voice that was the spokesperson for all NSA automated conversations. A short beep followed.
"Hello?" began the first voice on the recording. It was female and sounded somewhat off-balance. Coke immediately labeled it as Christine A. Kiviat's.
"Hey, is this Christine?" responded the other voice on the recording. This one was male. Coke immediately recognized it as the same voice left on Kiviat's answering machine in her apartment. It had to be the esteemed agent Mulder's. After a brief pause, Kiviat answered.
"Yeah, this is Christy. Who is this?"
"This is Special Agent Fox Mulder, with the Bureau? You left a message for me early this morning on my office phone."
"Oh. Yeah. That was me. I didn't think you'd be at the office this early."
"Yeah," answered Mulder in a sheepish voice. "They work us long hours." A longer pause. "So... your message was kind of vague: 'There's something I really need to show you, but I don't know if I'm safe, or who I can trust?'" No response on the part of Christine. Mulder continued. "You DID leave that message, right Christy?"
"Yes I did, " answered Kiviat, sounding very tired. "Look, I don't know really what I'm doing. It's kind of complicated, hard to understand."
"Let me try to understand Christy, tell me what's going on. If you're in trouble, we'll try to help you out."
"Well...I don't really know what's going on. Maybe it's nothing. But I just thought I should be safe and tell someone what's going on." She took a deep breath. "I'm going to cut right to the chase. I'm a hacker. Last night I was poking around some top-security government systems, hoping to try to find something interesting, ya know? I wasn't trying to make any trouble or anything, I just figured I'd try to get in just to see if I could. Do you understand?"
"Sure," replied Mulder, his tone soothing. "Please go on."
"Well, I know I broke the law," resumed Kiviat, her voice faltering. "Like I said, I wasn't trying to get anyone in trouble, but...I guess I just wasn't thinking." (You sure as hell weren't, thought Coke to himself.)
"In any case, I got in early this morning and just sort of panicked, ya know? Red flags were going off everywhere, I knew I was about 30 seconds away from being tracked. So, I just grabbed the first couple of files that I found and high-tailed it out of there as fast as I could."
"Okay," replied Mulder. "So far you've admitted to me that you've just committed a felony. Why are you telling me this?"
"Because of what I found in the files," replied Kiviat, her voice quiet, but assured. "I wasn't able to decode them entirely, but I did manage to extract a couple of the pictures in the file. They're really blurry, but..." she trailed off.
"But?" asked Mulder, clearly interested.
"Mr. Mulder, I'm scared of what those pictures show. I don't know if they're real or not or what, but the fact that I found them on a top-secret government computer system really shakes me to the core. I'm scared and I figured I needed to show them to somebody. My ex-boyfriend belongs to several online chat communities that deal with weird stuff like aliens and UFOs and stuff, and while I don't really pay much attention to that, I have heard people make references to you in the past. Your name just stuck in my head I guess, so I felt that you were the first person I'd call, considering the fact that you are a cop and all..."
Coke was stunned. So, the bitch had managed to decode some of the information after all! So much for the chief's assurances of their absolute encryption. When Mulder spoke again, his voice was intense.
"I want to meet with you as soon as possible Christy. It's very important that I see what you found right away. Where can we meet?" Another brief silence followed. Kiviat appeared to be doing some calculations in her head.
"There's a Dunken Doughnuts store off of Route 7 in Sewllesburg, about an hour north of Baltimore. I'm heading there now. Meet me as soon as you can.
"Ok. I'm not going to be able to leave DC until at least 7:30, so I should be able to make it by 9:30, 10:00 at the latest. I'll find you there."
"Ok. Thanks a lot Mr. Mulder, I'll feel a lot better after I get this off of my hands."
"No problem, Christy. See you soon." With that, the conversation ended.
Coke quickly hit the red END button on his cell phone and tossed it onto the driver's side seat. He check his watch. It read 8:56. Damn. That gave him just over a half hour to get Kiviat, get the data, and get out before Mulder showed up.
Adrenaline coursed through Coke's body as the thrill of the chase, as old as mankind itself, took over. He could do this, no doubt about it. But, it was going to be tight. No time for backup, no time for mistakes, no time for contingency plans, or overwatch teams, or snipers, or black helicopter extraction. He was down to the wire: one final bluff before the data was lost forever and the mission was deemed a failure. If there was one thing all the years of Coke's training had ingrained into his brain until it was a fundamental as breathing itself, it was that there was no failure. Fight, die, but the mission was priority number one. He didn't need the threats of any Marlboro Man to assure him of that: it was part of his very nature. And with that final thought, Coke pulled out into traffic.
OK guys, this is only gonna last 1, 2 more parts at the most. I hope you're as excited about this story's imminent conclusion as I am!
8:32 a.m.
Coke sprinted the last 20 yards to his car, thumbing the keyless entry button on his key chain and slid into the driver's seat of his vehicle. He stifled a grunt of pain as he banged his ankle on the bottom of the door, before slamming it and turning the key in the ignition. The engine roared to life and he yanked the gear lever into drive, barely taking the time to pull the latch on the parking break before peeling out of his parking space at breakneck speed.
The information session with Sweeny had been productive, but he was now approaching a critical juncture in the mission. Kiviat's trail, although not gone, was rapidly going cold. While this might not have mattered in a normal assignment, the clock was rapidly counting down the time before Kiviat made contact with Mulder and the objective was presumably lost. This would be an unacceptable outcome, both to Coke and the chief, and he knew that failure was rarely tolerated by the upper echelons of his agency. His first guess was that Kiviat might have gotten cold feet and begun the process of leaving the country, but fortunately her absconding with her computer and the sudden appearance of Sweeny at her apartment (coupled with a noticeable lack of signs of packing) suggested that Kiviat had made plans to meet with Mulder, presumably at this coffee shop, but that was not something that could be ascertained for sure. Fortunately, Coke had a few more tricks up his sleeve that would come in handy.
When he stopped at the next intersection, Coke pulled his cell phone out and began dialing the first of what would be many calls in the process of tracking down his target. The ringer buzzed twice before a solid, intent voice on the other line picked up.
"NSA, this is O'Grady, Electronic Communications, section A." O'Grady. The name didn't ring a bell with Coke, but it didn't matter. He had done this enough times to recite the litany by heart.
"This is Agent Coke, requesting an epsilon-level cell phone trace on a subject named Kiviat, Catherine A. Priority is red, my clearance is Department of Energy Intel, 773-8011 Whiskey Foxtrot Bravo." There was a brief pause on the other end of the line accompanied by the sound of some keyboard clicks.
"This is Catherine A. Kiviat, last known residence White Marsh, Maryland?"
"That's affirmative." The light turned to green and Coke eased out into the intersection, remembering to buckle his seatbelt as he did so. Getting pulled over now would not be a good thing. "I'm hoping that a certain Agent Maxey might have already red flagged her for a satellite sniffer."
Another brief pause followed. When O'Grady next spoke, his voice had assumed the satisfied, self-confident tone reserved for mail order clerks who are three steps ahead of their customers. "That's an affirmative, Agent Coke. Kiviat was placed on a trap and trace, top priority sniffer list at about 4:30 this morning. It doesn't say who ordered it though."
Coke felt he had a fairly strong idea of who might have ordered the trace on Kiviat, but he wasn't about to drop any names. He thanked Agent O'Grady for his time, provided the proper clearance number, and pushed the red "end" button on his cell phone. A smile slowly crept across Coke's unshaven face. Contrary to popular belief, Coke had been taught from day one of training that all conversations could be intercepted, be they electronic, oral, or snail mail. Cellular phones, far from being the exception, were the rule. By their very definition, cellular phones had to be mobile in order to be useful, and as such were forced to rely on a fairly insecure method of transmitting voices: right through the air, up into outer space, where they were then caught on satellites, rerouted, and then sent back to earth to reach the telephone of the other party. This by itself provided ample opportunities for any semi-decent operative to intercept a nearby conversation, but the true benefits of cell phone interception technology could not fully be understood until one received a red-level clearance with the NSA.
The NSA, if left to its own devices, would probably be quite capable of intercepting and monitoring fully half of the cellular phone conversations on the North American continent at any one time, but due to manpower restrictions (and once again Coke was amazed at the advances of technology since the days when he was in college), they were forced to drastically reduce that number to a few thousand select cases on any given day. Fortunately, a certain someone had seen fit to add Kiviat's name to the NSA's most recent list of monitored persons. As such, the NSA (and of course, Agent Stephen Coke), now had full access to the NSA's finest cell phone sniffer package tailored specifically to Christine Kiviat, including (but not limited to) recordings of all conversations since 4:30 in the morning when the sniffer had been put into place, the ability to check Kiviat's voicemail at will, and of course, a 30-second pinpoint of her last known position every time she plugged into an internet outlet with her phone. Life was grand.
Coke made a right into the first side street he saw and killed the engine of his car. Within a few short moments, he would know exactly everything that had transpired between her and Agent Mulder. But first, he needed a few minutes to reorganize his thoughts.
Coke took a moment and ran his fingers through his hair. It was thick and somewhat greasy. He absently remembered that he hadn't had a chance to shower this morning, having been called into HQ at an ungodly hour and getting to work right off the bat. Heck, he hadn't even had time to shave. One way or another, he looked like a mess and was starting to lose his focus. If he wanted to grab Kiviat he was going to move fast, but at the same time, Coke also realized that his judgment would start to become impaired the more he focused on the job. What he needed was a quick break and a shave. Glancing up, he noticed a 7-Eleven convenience store just across the street, its garish Orange and Green sign beckoning to him, complete with the promise of the best slurpies in town. It was worth a shot. Coke started the engine, put the car into reverse, and backed out onto the street, before turning into the store's parking lot.
Coke couldn't have spent more than 8 minutes in the store, but it felt as if he had gotten five years of his life back. Once he had made it past the door with its jangling bell and pasted-on cigarette ads, he had gone straight to the toiletry section and had bought himself a disposable razor, a pack of Alka-Seltzer, and a cup of coffee. He had then gone directly to the back, quickly breached the "Employees Only" door, and locked himself in the bathroom where he shaved, washed his face, and swallowed his Alka-Seltzer. All in all, Coke felt like a new man as he stepped out of the back room and onto the main floor of the store. His coffee had now cooled to an acceptable level and he began the final element of his usual morning ritual, gulping down the hot, black drink as he headed back to his car. Damn that felt good! It was time to kick some ass.
Coke fired up his cell phone immediately after hopping back into his Mercury and punched in the clearance code allowing him to gain access to Kiviat's sniffer package. He decided to follow the trail in chronological order beginning at 4:30 and working his way forward. There was very little to go on, but thankfully it was enough. Although the sniffer hadn't been put into place in time to catch Kiviat's initial phone call to Mulder's office, he was able to intercept the call Mulder had made to her cell phone at 6:49 am, just shortly after Mulder had left the message on Kiviat's apartment phone at 6:45. Coke punched "1" on his cell phone and listened to the conversation.
"NSA: call intercepted at 6:49 a.m.," read the vaguely androgynous computer voice that was the spokesperson for all NSA automated conversations. A short beep followed.
"Hello?" began the first voice on the recording. It was female and sounded somewhat off-balance. Coke immediately labeled it as Christine A. Kiviat's.
"Hey, is this Christine?" responded the other voice on the recording. This one was male. Coke immediately recognized it as the same voice left on Kiviat's answering machine in her apartment. It had to be the esteemed agent Mulder's. After a brief pause, Kiviat answered.
"Yeah, this is Christy. Who is this?"
"This is Special Agent Fox Mulder, with the Bureau? You left a message for me early this morning on my office phone."
"Oh. Yeah. That was me. I didn't think you'd be at the office this early."
"Yeah," answered Mulder in a sheepish voice. "They work us long hours." A longer pause. "So... your message was kind of vague: 'There's something I really need to show you, but I don't know if I'm safe, or who I can trust?'" No response on the part of Christine. Mulder continued. "You DID leave that message, right Christy?"
"Yes I did, " answered Kiviat, sounding very tired. "Look, I don't know really what I'm doing. It's kind of complicated, hard to understand."
"Let me try to understand Christy, tell me what's going on. If you're in trouble, we'll try to help you out."
"Well...I don't really know what's going on. Maybe it's nothing. But I just thought I should be safe and tell someone what's going on." She took a deep breath. "I'm going to cut right to the chase. I'm a hacker. Last night I was poking around some top-security government systems, hoping to try to find something interesting, ya know? I wasn't trying to make any trouble or anything, I just figured I'd try to get in just to see if I could. Do you understand?"
"Sure," replied Mulder, his tone soothing. "Please go on."
"Well, I know I broke the law," resumed Kiviat, her voice faltering. "Like I said, I wasn't trying to get anyone in trouble, but...I guess I just wasn't thinking." (You sure as hell weren't, thought Coke to himself.)
"In any case, I got in early this morning and just sort of panicked, ya know? Red flags were going off everywhere, I knew I was about 30 seconds away from being tracked. So, I just grabbed the first couple of files that I found and high-tailed it out of there as fast as I could."
"Okay," replied Mulder. "So far you've admitted to me that you've just committed a felony. Why are you telling me this?"
"Because of what I found in the files," replied Kiviat, her voice quiet, but assured. "I wasn't able to decode them entirely, but I did manage to extract a couple of the pictures in the file. They're really blurry, but..." she trailed off.
"But?" asked Mulder, clearly interested.
"Mr. Mulder, I'm scared of what those pictures show. I don't know if they're real or not or what, but the fact that I found them on a top-secret government computer system really shakes me to the core. I'm scared and I figured I needed to show them to somebody. My ex-boyfriend belongs to several online chat communities that deal with weird stuff like aliens and UFOs and stuff, and while I don't really pay much attention to that, I have heard people make references to you in the past. Your name just stuck in my head I guess, so I felt that you were the first person I'd call, considering the fact that you are a cop and all..."
Coke was stunned. So, the bitch had managed to decode some of the information after all! So much for the chief's assurances of their absolute encryption. When Mulder spoke again, his voice was intense.
"I want to meet with you as soon as possible Christy. It's very important that I see what you found right away. Where can we meet?" Another brief silence followed. Kiviat appeared to be doing some calculations in her head.
"There's a Dunken Doughnuts store off of Route 7 in Sewllesburg, about an hour north of Baltimore. I'm heading there now. Meet me as soon as you can.
"Ok. I'm not going to be able to leave DC until at least 7:30, so I should be able to make it by 9:30, 10:00 at the latest. I'll find you there."
"Ok. Thanks a lot Mr. Mulder, I'll feel a lot better after I get this off of my hands."
"No problem, Christy. See you soon." With that, the conversation ended.
Coke quickly hit the red END button on his cell phone and tossed it onto the driver's side seat. He check his watch. It read 8:56. Damn. That gave him just over a half hour to get Kiviat, get the data, and get out before Mulder showed up.
Adrenaline coursed through Coke's body as the thrill of the chase, as old as mankind itself, took over. He could do this, no doubt about it. But, it was going to be tight. No time for backup, no time for mistakes, no time for contingency plans, or overwatch teams, or snipers, or black helicopter extraction. He was down to the wire: one final bluff before the data was lost forever and the mission was deemed a failure. If there was one thing all the years of Coke's training had ingrained into his brain until it was a fundamental as breathing itself, it was that there was no failure. Fight, die, but the mission was priority number one. He didn't need the threats of any Marlboro Man to assure him of that: it was part of his very nature. And with that final thought, Coke pulled out into traffic.
OK guys, this is only gonna last 1, 2 more parts at the most. I hope you're as excited about this story's imminent conclusion as I am!