Infinite Exposure (14 page)

“The regulation change has just been opened for public comment and will be put to a vote some time next quarter. There is
no keeping it quiet now. Given how far along the off-shoring of the data centers has gotten, there is most likely no way to
pull it back without incurring massive financial loss.”

Margret nodded.

“Then, I need to forward you the email announcing the public comment period. You need to forward it to Kent, then schedule
a meeting for the three of us and Judy, the girl who does notary for us. Just a 15-minute meeting to tell him this is open
for comment and may be something he bumps into. Bring a print out of the email to the meeting. When the meeting is over, we
will have Judy put a notary stamp on it and hand write the meeting time, date, etc, on it, then sign it. Copies will be put
in your hands, my hands, and the legal department's document archival service. When this landslide tumbles down the mountain
it will be Kent who hangs.”

One thing about Carol,
Margret thought,
that lawyer side of her is vicious!
“OK. I'll schedule the meeting later today as soon as I get your email,” responded Margret.

Carol noticed the look on Margret's face. She looked at her and asked “What?”

“When you put in such a generic meeting subject I figured this was you getting clingy and I was wondering how I could shut
it down before anything got out. I wasn't expecting this.”

“No worries on that front. My hubby would divorce me in a second. I have to keep this more hidden than you. That doesn't mean
I'm not going to help you cover your ass though. If this becomes a regulation, the bank is going to have to re-hire some of
the operators they are about to fire and get them to live in India. There will be a limited window for compliance and then
the hammer will fall.”

“We'll have to pay a fine,” Margret said.

“You need to read the email I will forward you. Loss of insurance is the first penalty, fines second and third is a recommendation
of criminal prosecution under the Patriot Act. They are playing hardball with this one. Only the content of the regulation
is up for comment, not the penalties.”

Margret's eyes widened at that. “Send me the email now.”

In less than three minutes Margret had received the email, forwarded it to Kent and scheduled a meeting with him. He really
shouldn't have left a 15-minute opening just prior to 4 PM. All of the ladies met in Kent's office and told him he could bump
into this regulation with his current project once the regulation is voted in. When Kent asked how likely it was, Carol responded
nobody knew which way the vote would go since none of the voting members communicated openly about their intent. The bank
was supposed to have someone communicating with the FDIC on this, but Carol had no idea who. Carol said her only duty in the
matter was to inform both Kent in Margret via both email and in a meeting on the matter. What Kent did with the information
was up to him.

Just like that, the meeting ended. The three women went back to Margret's office, they wrote down the meeting time, attendees,
etc., signed the document and then Judy put the notary seal on it. They thanked Judy for her time and she left.

“Do you think the bastard has any idea he is about to walk over an open manhole?” asked Marget.

“Probably not,” Carol responded. “I simply wanted to get this done within 48 hours of receiving the information so my ass
would be in the clear.”

Carol leaned closer to Marget and whispered, “Then I had to protect your sweet ass.” With a smirk she walked away to find
a functioning copy machine. A few minutes later she returned with a few copies for Margret and herself.

“Another day almost over,” Margret piped up when she returned.

“I can't believe it,” responded Carol. “I thought I was going to have to work late tonight because of the presentation going
on earlier today.”

Their eyes met and broadcast want to each other. “My place,” mouthed Margret. “Half hour,” mouthed Carol. Margret quickly
wrote down her address on a yellow sticky and included her cell phone number. Nothing was said when the sticky exchanged hands.
It even looked business like when Carol stuck it on the front of the pages in her hands. Nobody questioned it or suspected
anything. She returned to her desk, completed filing the copies and put the original in a document mailer for the archive
service. With the yellow sticky tucked into her suit coat pocket she logged out and told everyone she was going home.

***

Hans sat in the man with the suit's office watching the news with him. True to form, once the first story came out, the rest
of the talking heads all sent people over to report on it. Pakistani intelligence had apparently started feeding their contacts
at CNN now. The arrest report they had planted in the files found its way into their hands. They had Nedim's name now. It
was a slow news week, so he was now a celebrity. Too high profile to kill off now. Hopefully al-Qaeda would take care of the
task. In a few days, Pakistani intelligence would announce Nedim had been released due to lack of evidence.

True, there would still be a tap on the phone line Nedim used for his computer. They also had a mailbox copy utility installed
on his known email accounts and they had their own little remote system monitor software installed on his machine. But the
daily reports from his roommates would stop. Both of them had been told not to talk with Nedim again.

Briefly, Hans wondered what would happen when Nedim's shadow quit showing up at the mosque for the Holy Quran discussions.
Even if the news hadn't spilled his information all over the world, that would tell al-Qaeda they had a mole.

In a couple of hours a plane would touch down. Both Hans and the man in the suit would supervise the loading of prisoners
onto the plane. There would be no paperwork, simply a count. Four men and two women. As Hans had feared, the courier train
eventually ditched the bag and they lost the trail in the mountains. Quite a few military units had been sent out to the area
where the trail was lost to see if they could find a cave with al-Qaeda members in it, but Hans had little hope they would
hear back. Given all of the publicity around this guy, there would simply be an air strike against the cave if it was found.
This story was about to be completely tied off.

Both women appeared to be relatively young to Hans. Nikolaus should be able to get the rest of the camp up and running. Personally
he had no opinion on stem-cell research. As long as it made enough money to let the party bribe officials who weren't completely
on board, he was for it. Once enough funding was in place, the larger scale round ups would begin. There was still a cell
operating around Hamburg and a few other cells officials knew about in Germany. The police hadn't managed to get enough evidence
for a conviction, but the party didn't need that much evidence.

Finally, Hans asked a question that had been nagging at him. “Are we going to close up this shop?”

“At least for a while it seems,” replied the man in the suit. “I will keep track of where the team gets dispersed. Who knows
when we will turn up another communications hub to monitor. We hope one of the cells we are currently rounding up will have
used more than one communications hub, but that is just a hope for now.”

Thanks to this operation they had 27 different cells under surveillance. Five of the cells had already been rounded up by
various agencies. Few members went to the interrogation camp. Once the courier mules had been processed through there, the
remaining 22 cells were going to be rounded up one at a time and squeezed for information. They would most likely provide
little in the way of useful information, but their cell phones and computers just might turn up a new communications hub.
It was a gamble. They couldn't round up many of the cells at once because there weren't enough interrogators at the first
camp to handle 20+ people.

Both men knew the Brit would be utterly pissed they weren't rounding up the Lutton cell first. Obviously they were up to something
big. The team on the ground didn't appear to be worth a rat's ass at surveillance. They had to have held some meetings by
now. Still, they only identified the few people sending email and no other members. A round up now would simply cause the
cell to go deeper under cover. Nobody could risk that. The cell had to remain on monitor status until either more of the members
could be located or the explosives turned up.

***

John was at his wit's end. Despite all of his efforts and messages, UNI (Union Network International) was making progress
gathering members. It would not be long now before there was a vote about the union in his own shop.

There were only three data centers left to re-locate here! Didn't they understand there would be more money in their hands
from the electronic transfer than a union could ever give them? No, they couldn't. Only John and three others knew about the
plan here. A few cell leaders who John handled the email for knew, but that was it. Even John's new roommate didn't know.

John's new roommate was a fast learner. He picked up the basics of how the email operation worked in just a couple of days.
When John got home now, the vast majority of messages had already been dealt with. He left links and print outs for his roommate
to read on how to hide your IP address on-line, viruses, virus scanners, and a rash of other things that allowed you to remain
a ghost on-line.

They were going to have to bring in another machine so the roommate could set it up and get his own communications hub running.
The leaders were more than willing to purchase another notebook. In fact, they said they were going to purchase two. The second
one would be for yet another roommate John was to train. At first John was upset about this, but then he realized he would
have at least another quarter (probably three) before the data center migrations were complete and his plan could take effect.

“If only we didn't have this union problem!” he said aloud, slamming his fist down on his desk at work.

“I know what you mean,” responded John's boss.

The sound brought John back to his current reality in less than a heartbeat. It was unlike him to drift off and let things
slip like that. Perhaps this operation was a bit too much for him. He was used to being a ghost who handled communications,
not a covert operative.

“What is being done about it?” asked John.

“Next to nothing can be done at this point,” responded his boss. “They are recruiting people from locations other than here.
We have installed security cameras, hired extra security, and watched. Other than the occasional pamphlet found on someone's
desk, there is no organizing activity going on here. Once they have more than 70% of our people signed up, they will bring
in lawyers and force us to allow a vote.”

John barely heard anything after “more security.” This is exactly what he wanted to stop from happening. He didn't want to
kill his own people just to carry out this attack. He made a mental note to get access to the security tapes and assign one
of his team members to pull all of them on the way out the door. He wasn't certain how they were going to handle the guard
in the security room yet. Perhaps he was already working for al-Qaeda and could simply be added to the team.

***

No matter what culture you come from, what language you speak or what religion you follow; there are some universal truths.
At this particular moment Vladimir experienced one of those truths. He jumped so hard when the phone rang he knocked over
three empty soda cans and a glass of iced tea. Cursing, he answered the phone.

“I'm not used to hearing that as a customary greeting,” said the man in the suit.

“Sorry. The phone gave me a start and I spilled a glass of iced tea. What can I do for you?”

“We need you to modify your Trojan horse to pull in every sent email from every email client it lands on. Need them to all
be sent to the ping server for analysis.”

“It will be difficult since many access email via a browser in a library rather than an email client. What is your objective?”

“Have you seen the news lately?”

“Yes.”

“Our primary asset has been exposed to the world. We need to snag a new communications center while they are still in chaos.”

The Trojan horse had been written very small and simple so it could work across a wide range of computes and operating systems.
When it detected that the user had opened the email via a Web browser, it obtained as much information as it could about the
machine and passed it onto the ping server. Depending on which Webmail back end was being used, the Trojan could also attach
itself to any messages sent during that session. Each time an instance was created and attached to an outgoing message, it
was given a unique ID number based upon the ID number of the parent creating the new instance. The ID number came back in
the packet of information to the ping server.

It was via these IDs and the IP addresses that Vladimir was able to map the groups. Eventually they managed to obtain location
information for each of the IP addresses (those who weren't really good at ghosting anyway) and he plotted them on an interactive
map. Clicking on one of the dots would bring up the date(s) of ping and email messages that had been part of the ping. They
didn't always have the email message, but they had most of them. Sometimes they got the message from only one side, and sometimes
they got it from both.

You could click a button on the Web page and ask the page to show you date and time ordered message routing. This was a really
cool feature. Of course, when they didn't have location information it had to simply pick a location at random and plunk a
different colored dot down, but it allowed you to track the communications flow.

Only a few people on the team knew about this page on their internal Web site. Even fewer were authorized to look at it. As
always, Vladimir analyzed every piece of information he could find in every way he could think of. Information had always
been his friend.