Note: Shaw and Fusco are my go-to people for torment. Just FYI.
Some old modems/routers had master passwords that could be derived from a serial number. With it, you can have a lot of fun. For example, the ancient Alcatel SpeedTouch Home DSL modem could be modded into an Alcatel SpeedTouch Pro DSL modem by logging in with the master password and writing a few choice bytes to NVRAM, unlocking a metric cowton of new features.
Obviously, Alcatel wasn't too thrilled about this...
#####
One Year and Six Months Prior
"...you've got that girl working with you now?" asked Detective Carter. The incredulity in her voice was obvious even over the phone. "John, she was almost a murder victim."
"'Almost' doesn't count, Joss," said John as he rifled through the many drawers of Melissa Lee's massive computer desk. So far, he had found nothing more alarming than a bottle of antacids, though hell if he knew what the various circuit boards and other computer components were for.
"Besides," he added, "Elizabeth was eager to help out."
"Right," Carter said. "'Cause, you know, nobody's got a problem saying no to the guy that saved their life."
"You do a pretty good job at it."
She scoffed. "That's 'cause I'm a cop. I get to use the big words, like no, and no way, and are you crazy?" A static-laden sigh. "Don't answer that. Look, so help me, John, if Elizabeth Ruben gets hurt, I will shoot you—"
"She'll be fine," John said. He glanced up at the computer monitor; the hard drive was nearly done cloning. "She can defend herself pretty well now. Elizabeth has a very good self-defense instructor."
"Uh-huh. Does his name start with J and end with ohn?"
"As a matter of fact...yes. John. John Rooney. You should meet him—I gotta say, Joss, he's very dashing. I think you'd hit off well with him."
John could hear Carter's eyes rolling in their sockets. "Well, you go tell this dashing Rooney the Rogue that he can just—wait a second. Conkin's coming out of her apartment. She's headed for her car. Gotta go. Try not to drop any bodies today, John!"
"I always try, Joss. Stay safe."
"You too. Fusco and I will check in later. Don't you make my day job any harder."
Reese chuckled as the phone disconnected, then returned his attention to Melissa Lee's desktop computer. The drive was encrypted; all Reese could do was to clone it and hope Finch could make sense of the data back at the Library.
He took one last look around Melissa Lee's flat as the computer finished copying the last few gigabytes of data to Reese's external hard drive. There was little out of the ordinary to be found in the ultra precise, meticulously organized apartment. Everything was arranged with laser-guided precision. The kitchen had been clipped out of a home magazine and dropped into place; the living room had been transplanted from IKEA; and the bedroom, with its white carpet and wine-colored quilt set, was so symmetrical it was downright frightening. There wasn't a speck of dust, not anywhere. All of the closet hangers were facing the same direction and the books in the tiny bookcase were organized by author. The containers in the refrigerator were neatly stacked from largest to smallest. The envelopes in the trash can had been sliced open with the kind of care and attention usually reserved by surgeons.
There wasn't a single object out of place in the whole apartment, and that alone set Reese on edge.
When the drive finished cloning, Reese disconnected the external hard drive, yanked the flash drive, and shut down the computer, making sure everything had been left precisely as he found it. He opened the front door a crack to make sure no one was watching too closely. Satisfied, he locked the doorknob, then stepped outside, pulling the door shut behind him.
He waited until he had settled into his new car of the day before calling Samantha Shaw.
"You," she said, calm as could be, as soon as the line connected. The ice in her voice would've made most people have a heart attack on the spot.
But John Reese was not most people.
"Hello, Shaw," Reese said, starting the car and pulling away from the curb. "You sound cheerful this morning."
"Next time, you get the geek's apartment," she snarled. "I am wallowing in filth."
"You wanna have a rematch on the coin flip?"
"You rigged it, didn't you?"
"Shaw, I'm hurt."
"No, you're not—but you will be."
"I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that you didn't find anything exciting. No guns...no C4...no incriminating emails...?"
"Gee. You know what, I think I might've missed something in this dinky breadbox. Lemme go check again under that disgusting rag on the bed. There might be a sniper rifle hidden under there. Or a tank."
"I'm guessing it wasn't a gun-cleaning rag."
"Geeks are horrible people," Shaw said.
"Finch is listening, you know."
"At least he bathes more often than you. This Andrew kid?—I don't think he's showered since last year." A pause, the sound of something rustling. "Oh," Shaw groaned, long and drawn-out. "That is gross..."
"Sounds like you need some backup," Reese said.
"Oh, by all means. Come join me, I really need some target practice."
"I'll send Fusco," Reese said. "He can dance better than me."
"Fine, whatever," she said. "I'm getting out of here in five minutes. I cloned Andrew's hard drive—it's encrypted. Probably a bunch of weird emu scat porn on there. Why's everybody got encrypted hard drives on this case? Are we dealing with Finch's family?"
"No. If it was Finch's family, we'd never find their home addresses."
"Right." Another pause, another sigh of disgust. "You know what? I changed my mind. I'm leaving now. I'll meet you at HQ. After a dozen showers." She raised her voice and said, "Finch? Hey, Finch, you there? I deserve a raise. And a new pair of boots."
The phone clicked as a third voice joined the conversation. Harold Finch said, "Considering your earlier comment regarding individuals with above-average technical proficiency and intelligence, Miss Shaw, I will have to consider your requests most carefully. Hmm. No."
Shaw growled.
"I'm not bringing back doughnuts," she said.
Smiling ever so slightly, Reese shook his head and drove on.
#####
I took my lunch break at about 1PM, wandering downstairs to the lobby in search of a vending machine. After a lot of fruitless looking around, I broke down and asked Daryl, who directed me to the hallway leading towards the bathrooms. Several garish vending machines had been sequestered in a little alcove about halfway down, right next to a crusty chrome drinking fountain.
I considered the selections.
What does Robin drink besides tea? I wondered. What does she eat in public?
"Excuse me, Miss McCartney," said a soft voice in my ear. Startled, I turned. John stood next to me, and yet I hadn't heard him come down the corridor. Before I could open my mouth and blow my cover—I had been about to say, Hey, John!—he pulled out his badge and flashed it. "Detective Stills," he said. "I need to ask you a few questions."
I said, "Oh—um, of course. Detective."
"Good," he whispered. "Keep playing your part." He tilted his head and led me by my arm back towards the lobby. Daryl looked at us with wide eyes, but put his head down when John glanced in his direction.
"Um, is this like, gonna take long?" I asked.
"Shouldn't be more than a few minutes," said John—Detective Stills, I mean. He pushed open the glass entrance doors and led me out into the chilly afternoon. He didn't say another word until we were a few dozen feet away from the entrance to the building.
"Not bad," he said, eyes glinting. "Now. Have you seen anything suspicious today, ma'am?"
"Yeah, actually. There's this rack of equipment towards the back of the server room. Sarim got really jumpy when I went up to it."
"What kind of equipment?" Stills said.
"A managed gigabit switch, a router, and a rack server. The thing that caught my eye was—whoever did all the other racks was all anal about routing the cables nicely. But this server had two network cables connected to the switch and the cables were dangling all loose down the front of the rack. Somebody tried stuffing them in the gaps to keep them out of the way, but they didn't do very well. And when I looked closer? Sarim got all nervous."
That got John's eyebrows raised. "Maybe the equipment isn't supposed to be there."
"Or at least, I'm not supposed to know about. I'm wondering if it's an NSA tap or something. Like on the news—PRISM and the ISP surveillance thing and all that? It's the kind of thing they do. They knock on your door with a national security letter and if you don't give 'em information on the customer they want, they say 'screw you, we're Feds' and install something to snoop on everybody."
"I think they're more subtle than that these days," Stills said. He seemed to be holding back a smile. "How exactly did Sarim react when you went near it?"
"He told me it was delicate and that if I looked at it funny it would break, so don't go near it. Gave me a really lousy excuse."
Stills peered over his shoulder towards the front doors, then gazed up at a metal pole a few feet to my left. There was a security camera mounted near the top, the kind with the rotating gimbals, and I swear, it was watching us. Like, pointed right at Stills and me.
"Did Sarim seem desperate?" Stills said, staring at the camera. He tilted his head. So help me, if he started waving...
"Yeah, kinda. He was sweating, and he wasn't when I walked in there. You got a camera fetish or something?"
He ignored the last remark. "Sounds like Sarim doesn't want you to know the equipment is there."
"Well, you're not supposed to tell anybody about an NSA tap if you get one of those security letters."
"There's a difference between not telling people about something and panicking when someone goes near it. Nothing wrong with saying 'I can't talk about it, don't ask'." Stills gazed down at me. "What do you think, Robin? What do your instincts say?"
I chewed my lip. "I...I think he overreacted—I'm guessing the server isn't an NSA thing, otherwise he would've just told me not to ask. So maybe it's something illegal." I tapped my foot against the sidewalk, deep in thought. "If I could connect my laptop to the switch's management port," I said slowly, "I could tell it to mirror the ports connected to the server and see what sort of network traffic is going to it. But not while Sarim is around."
"Then we'll just have to visit after hours," Stills said.
"You mispronounced 'break in'."
"I'm a detective, Miss McCartney. I would never suggest such a thing." He smiled, reached into his suit jacket, and pulled out a plastic card.
"What's this?" I said, taking it from him. It was about the size and shape of a credit card; plain white plastic, no markings. The edges felt freshly cut.
"Cloned RFID card. It'll get you into the building and server room. All the workers are gone by 7 o'clock but the cleaning staff stays here until 11. Leave something behind in the office to set up an excuse. Something not too critical. Your glasses, maybe. You get home, try to read—they're not on your head, they're not in your pocket—"
"Yeah yeah, I get it."
"Go in at about 9:30PM. I'll be waiting for you at the third floor office. You comfortable with this?"
"Uhm, yeah," I said, wishing I felt as confident as I sounded.
"Good." He patted me on the shoulder. "I think that's all for now, Miss McCartney. You can go back inside now."
#####
Just before clocking out at 5PM, I took off my glasses and set them under my monitor. Glanced around to make sure no one had seen. Logged out of my workstation. I kept my head down and didn't look anyone in the eyes as I left Connetrix, driving back to my apartment to wait.
There were Chinese take-out boxes on my table again when I walked into the apartment. Still warm—John had been here less than thirty minutes ago, I guessed. I ate like a goat and fixed a cup of tea. My nutritional needs satisfied, I focused my attention on my laptop. Practiced setting up the network sniffer. Had it dump the output to a file. I must've practiced a dozen times—I didn't want any surprises in the server room.
Once I was satisfied I could bring up the network sniffing utility in less than thirty seconds, I began looking for other ways to pass the time. There was a small bookshelf tucked away next to the bed, and it looked like there was at least one Frederick Pohl book there. So I set a timer on my cell phone to ring at 9PM, picked up Gateway, laid back on my bed, crossed one leg over the other, and began to read.
Even with the book, the wait was very long. I'd never been very good at waiting. For the first hour or so I kept glancing at my cell phone to see that it had only been five minutes or so since the last time I'd checked. But after awhile, I became engrossed in the story, and I returned to this universe only occasionally to check the time.
I laughed aloud when I got to the line: So we made the time pass, not easily and certainly not fast.
Too damn true.
At 9PM, I snacked on a little more chow-mien, then packed my laptop. I realized that I would need a network cable, but that had been taken care of for me—there was one neatly coiled in the side pouch of the laptop case. I took a deep breath. Grabbed my keys.
The drive to Connetrix felt even longer than the wait at the apartment, and by the time I got to the office, I was shaking. The dark building seemed foreboding and monolithic in the night. There were no other cars in the parking lot, or at least, none on this side of the building.
I pulled out my cell phone and dialed the first entry on speed dial—John's number.
"Good evening, Robin," he said. I closed my eyes. Oh, how I wished he'd been there in the car with me, perhaps squeezing my shoulder ever so slightly in reassurance, but his voice, distorted and diminished by the earpiece, was about as best as I was going to get until I made it to the third floor.
"I'm at Connetrix," I said, doing my damnedest to keep my voice steady.
"And I'm inside," John said. "Keep the line open; I'll be able to hear you. The cleaning staff shouldn't give you any trouble. But if something does go wrong, stick to your story and apologize a lot—it throws people off."
"Okay. Okay." Another deep breath. I made sure the hard plastic card was in my pocket. Double-checked my laptop. Slung the bag over my shoulder, pushed open the car door, and stepped out.
"Don't worry, Robin," said John. "All you gotta do is meet up with me on the third floor."
The walkway was illuminated by streetlights—thank God; I would've fainted if I'd had to walk in the dark. It took a lot of effort not to glance around like a criminal as I made my way to the front doors. All I could hear was the sound of my shoes hitting the concrete walk, the thud of my heart against my ribs, the harsh buzz of the glaring white lights overhead.
"How come we're not going in together?" I whispered.
John said, "Because you have a legitimate excuse to visit the building late—I don't. I can break in; you can't. Besides, this is good practice for you. Doing scary things builds character."
"I'm not scared!" I growled.
"I didn't say you were. But sneaking into a building after hours to do nefarious things can be scary the first few times. Just remember—you're a lot less important than you think. People won't pay much attention to you unless you draw attention to yourself."
When I reached the doors, I pulled out the card and held it to the little black reader mounted to the door frame. For an instant, I worried that the card wasn't going to work—but then the light on the reader flashed green and the doors clicked—and I was in the lobby.
And someone else was there.
The custodian looked up from where he was sweeping into a little dustpan. "Hi," he said, disinterested.
I hoped he couldn't hear my thudding heart.
"I, um, forgot my glasses—I'm just gonna—" I pointed to the lift, but the custodian had already gone back to his sweeping.
Don't run, don't run, I told myself. The lift door slid aside when I tapped the call button and I stepped inside. It was very quiet once the door closed again, at least until the hydraulic pump screeched into life. I'd probably just alerted the whole building that I was here.
Next time, I thought, take the stairs.
The third floor was very quiet and very dark. Only a few of the inordinate florescent lights were lit, and the deeper recesses of the office floor were black. My knees shook and my stomach churned. I was reluctant to step out of the bright lift cab, but I did—one foot, then the other.
"I'm here," I whispered as the door trundled shut behind me.
"So am I," said John. There was movement to my left, and he swam out of the darkness like a goddamn bat. "How did you like your first infiltration, Robin?"
"I really don't wanna talk about it," I said, looking around. The areas of the office furthest away from the windows and lights were so very dark. I had to keep reminding myself that the blackness wasn't going to rush inward and devour me.
John pushed something into my hand; something cold, metal, cylindrical, with a textured grip.
I looked down. It was a flashlight; a real tiny one; the kind that cops liked to carry. I pointed it at the floor and clicked it on. For such a tiny thing, it was spectacularly bright. I smiled, clicked it off, and put it in my pocket. I didn't need it just yet—but its presence was reassuring.
"Are you psychic?" I whispered, trying not to think about all the times I'd been thinking inappropriate thoughts about John.
"No. But I know you don't like the dark." He tilted his head towards the server room door. We made our way towards it, sticking to the more well-lit areas of the cubical maze.
Ten feet from the door, John stopped suddenly.
"Wait a minute," he said, holding up his hand. He tapped his ear. "Yeah, Finch?"
"What do you mean, 'wait a minute'?" I whispered. I heard a faint sound, like the buzz of a particularly fat and ill-tempered mosquito. It took me a second to realize it was John's earpiece. John listened for several seconds, then said, "I'll be there. Tell Carter to hold on."
He looked at me and said, "Robin, there's an emergency—one of our other cases just went south. I have to go handle it. Go back to the apartment; we'll try again tomorrow."
I stared at the server room door. It was right there. Less than a dozen feet away. I pointed at it.
"John, we're that close. I can—I can handle the rest."
"I don't like leaving you here alone."
"I-I'll be fine," I said, while the more logical part of my brain contemplated curling up into a little ball and hiding under one of the desks. "Please, John. I can do it."
He stared at me. I squirmed under the scrutiny.
"All right," John finally said. "I'll only be gone about thirty minutes. Get in, get out as fast as you can. I'll call you when the other case is handled."
"Okay," I said. I watched him walk away until he became one with the dark. And then I was all alone in a creepy unlit office.
You, Robin, are an idiot, I thought to myself. You should listen to him and get out.
But I forced myself to cover the remaining distance to the server room door. Pulled out the card again. Miracle of miracles, the door lock clicked. I pushed open the door and tried not to think about how I was so not ready for this.
Unlike the office, the server room was fully lit, and it was loud as ever. Neither of these did much to make it less creepy. In fact, knowing that I was alone in a building while surrounded by so much noisy equipment made me even more nervous. If I had to scream, nobody would hear me. I felt sick. Now I was wishing I hadn't ate so much, because throwing up was becoming a very real possibility.
This was unreal. I felt like Michael Weston, or maybe James Bond. Like a goddamn spy behind enemy lines.
I glanced up and down the aisles as I passed them until I found the one with the mysterious equipment. I walked down the row and stopped in front of the rack containing the network switch.
Static electricity, my ass, I thought, shrugging off the laptop case. I knelt down, pulled out the laptop and cable. Connected the cable to the management port on the switch and the other end to the laptop. Pulled an adjacent server out partway on its rails, set the laptop on top. Brought up a web browser and connected to the switch's management interface. It asked for a password.
My heart sank, but before I could start typing in random passwords, my cell phone buzzed.
From: (Unknown Caller)
Switch model and serial no. ?
He's handling an emergency and he can still text? How many thumbs does he have?
I found a faded, curling sticker on the front of the switch and laboriously typed the serial number into the phone. A minute later, another text came through:
From: (Unknown Caller)
Override Credentials:
User: IFT_admin
Password: eW91IG11c3QgYmUgYm9yZWQK
I typed in the password and sure enough, I had access to the switch's admin page. It only took a minute or two to configure my port to mirror the data going to and from the server, and soon my laptop was sucking it up like a virtual vacuum cleaner.
"All right," I mumbled. "Lessee what's going on here."
I fired up Wireshark and started analyzing the data. One of the network interface was passing way too much traffic—almost 500Mbps. A close look at the switch's admin page showed why: somebody had configured one of the server's ports to mirror all traffic going through the switch, which meant that the server got a copy of every single bit and byte that passed through this part of the network.
And since the switch was connected to a very large router...
Maybe this is a tap, I thought. I bet that's one of the edge routers. All of the customers' traffic must go through this switch...or at least, a lot of it probably does...so the server gets a copy of everything.
I examined the data going through the other server port. There was much less. It was all destined for one IP address—and the payload was encrypted.
OpenVPN? I thought. Really?
I did a whois search on the IP address. It was registered to a Lachesis Corporation based out of New Jersey. Weird name, I thought. So...who put this server here?
I tried using SSH to access it, but it rebuffed me with another password prompt. I doubted John would be able to find a way around that one. Aside from a hilarious vulnerability in a key generation routine—a bug that had been fixed years ago—SSH tended to be pretty bulletproof.
So, I thought. They're grabbing all the traffic and communicating with a mothership somewhere via a VPN. Maybe they're forwarding interesting sniffed data over the tunnel, but there's not a lot of traffic on that interface, so they're either storing the rest of the sniffed data locally or discarding it. But why is it here? And who set it up?
I wondered what to do next, but as it turns out, the decision was pretty moot.
Something flickered at the periphery of my vision. I turned my head and there was Sarim, standing at the mouth of the aisle about ten feet away. My heart froze, then accelerated from zero to panic in less than a second.
"Robin?" said Sarim. "What in the hell are you doing here?"
#####