The Intercept (6 page)

“I’m trying.”

“When you get home, I’ll properly debrief you.”

“Ah,” he said, smiling. “Do me one little favor. Say that again in a German accent.”

Chapter 12

F
isk pulled on sanitary garb again and moved through the air lock, returning to the bunker and the forensic search. Pearl and Rosofsky had never left, a quad montage of pornographic movies on the screens in front of them. A dizzying exhibition of the twenty-first-century incarnation of the human reproductive imperative, flickering past them at four frames per second.

“Learning anything, boys?” Fisk asked, watching over Pearl’s shoulder.

Pearl said, “I got numb to this stuff years ago.”

“Do you think you’re about ready to try it with a real human woman?”

“Someday maybe,” joked Pearl, sitting back, arms crossed, his eyes never leaving the skin game before him.

“Patterns, anything?”

“Definitely some random movies in here. A pattern, I don’t know. It would take a psychologist to say with authority what the big Laden got off on, and what was sent his way with messages encrypted. But I’m happy to report that sniffing OBL’s underwear ain’t part of my job description.”

“Just sniffing hard drives.”

“Exactly.” Pearl pointed off to the right. “Hard copies are on Geeseman’s table. The big beard was definitely using steg for moving info.”

“Thought so,” said Fisk.

Steganography means “hidden writing.” An old example from tradecraft would be a message written in lemon juice in between the lines of an innocuous letter; the lemon juice would turn brown when the paper was heated. In the digital age, a computer deconstructs the binary code for an image, translating symbols into complex images. A message may be embedded in such a file by adjusting the color of, say, every one thousandth pixel to correspond to a particular letter in the alphabet, and then transmit it. The alteration of the image is so minuscule as to be invisible to the human eye. If the viewer did not know the message was there, finding it among countless images on a person’s computer was virtually impossible.

Four years after 9/11, a twenty-five-year-old named Devon Pearl, newly hired by the National Security Agency after being caught hacking into their system, read a terrorist training manual recovered from a Taliban safe house in Afghanistan. It contained a section entitled “Covert Communications and Hiding Secrets Inside Images.”

Pearl found that no one at NSA was an expert on digital steganography, and so he became one himself. By late 2006, he developed the first practical search engine for ferreting out digital images that contained code anomalies indicating the presence of embedded steganographic messages. Pearl’s sniffer program—he was now on version seven—could fingerwalk through roughly one thousand still images per minute. For video, depending on the level of complexity, it could process five minutes in one. The program spit out a list of corrupt files with even a single pixel out of place. He then ran another program to weed out normally corrupted files—bad transfers—from the systematically manipulated ones.

It was possible now to encode plain text or mini-programs within images or movies that could crash a hard drive. A potential case of domestic terrorism the year before had turned out to be a rogue church of fundamentalist Christians using steg in gay porn to spike the computers of those the church deemed “sinful.” Members of an Al-Qaeda cell captured earlier that year in Milan were found with the usual array of pornographic downloads on their phones and computers, but also dozens of screen grabs from eBay sites selling diaper bags, used cars, furniture, and Hummel figurines. All part of a complex file-sharing communication network of terrorists who were piggybacking on legitimate Internet sites.

Pearl’s voice followed Fisk over to Geeseman’s lab table. “There’s not much yet, but after we defog the image, some of it is in plain text. No hard intel yet. But it’s clear that they’ve been busy.”

Fisk picked up the thin packet of printouts. He flipped through images of New York—no surprise, more than 50 percent of the traffic analysis at NSA headquarters at Fort Meade was Big Apple. The city had become an international terrorist obsession. By comparison, every other potential target in the United States was small potatoes.

These images were postcard views, though. Commercial photographs. Not handheld surveillance.

Geeseman walked over, perhaps concerned that Fisk was going to move something out of place on his lab table. “Refreshed after your break?” asked Geeseman.

Fisk suppressed an eye roll. Geeseman was a closet cigarette smoker who could not last more than two hours at a time inside the bunker. He and Geeseman had a purely professional relationship. Fisk’s rule-breaking reputation in New York had surely preceded him. “I had a quick hot tub and a rubdown, and now I feel like a million bucks.”

“I see you found the first scans.”

“Looks like the wonder twins are making progress. What about the others?”

“Slow and steady. Bonner, Elliott, and Cadogan are up to their ears with fantastic samples, but not much right-away intel. They’re going to spend the rest of the day cataloging for stateside forensics. We’ve got a C-17 picking it all up tomorrow about this time. Going to Dover for distribution to the task force agencies. Most of it’ll end up with Meade and Langley.”

Fisk shook the New York scans. “And Intel Division.”

“Of course,” said Geeseman.

Geeseman moved on, but Fisk remained with the scans, flipping through the last pages. The images were printed six to a page, not unlike mug shots, and Fisk’s eyes went to the flowers. Three different images of sunflowers. He recognized one image of a vase bouquet from a book on his coffee table back home. The other two were similarly post-impressionist and, if not Van Goghs also, dutiful knockoffs.

But the color copies were somehow duller than the crisp New York cityscapes. As though they were second- or third-generation scans of printed material.

Fisk called back to Geeseman. “Hey, did OBL keep a garden?”

“A what?”

“These pictures of sunflowers here.”

Geeseman walked back to him to take a look. “He or his wives kept a vegetable patch near the animal pen. Thing was immaculate.”

“Just vegetables?”

Geeseman reached for a laptop, quickly shuffling through images of the compound. “See for yourself.”

Fisk zoomed in. “Immaculate” was the right word. But no decorative flowers in sight.

Geeseman was already at Pearl’s side. “Flower pictures?”

“Flower power,” said Pearl, his fingertips clicking over the keyboard, producing on-screen type faster than Fisk could read.

Image windows opened, one after the other.

“Lookie here,” said Pearl.

Rosofsky rose from his chair, peering over the top of the back-to-back monitors. Pulling out his earphones released the tinny noise of human humping.

“Dammit,” said Pearl, his keystrokes now coming in staccato bursts as the printer whirred to life across the bunker. “Distracted by tits and ass, was I. They always hide their steg in the porn. Fucking sunflowers.”

Fisk’s eyes danced to each window popping up on the screen. “What are we seeing here?”

“Okay,” Pearl began, like a lecturer on the first day of Intro to Steganography. “The trick to this thing is that both the sender and the receiver of any kind of code, cipher, or embedded message in an image have to know where to look. They need the combination. Now, OBL and his minions were definitely sending a lot of comm in the porn files, and we may find some seriously good intel there eventually. Or . . .”

Fisk said, “Or maybe they were clogging up the porn with junk messages, static. Hiding the real message within a mosaic of nonsense ones.”

Pearl pointed upward as though Fisk had just won an auction. “When you’ve got something special going, you designate a particular category of image, say tug jobs in the case of porn. Or you just start with something innocuous and new. In this case—pictures of sunflowers.”

Pearl clicked through a stream of images of sunflower fields, potted sunflowers, sunflowers on bonnets, sunflowers in paintings by Van Gogh and Monet. He was also reading his output underneath.

“Okay, these messages are embedded but also enciphered. Now, I’m not a cryppie, but I’m going to make an educated guess that this is a virtually unbreakable one-time-pad system. We’ll know more when they crunch the stuff at Meade, but this is sophisticated, random stuff. No doubt there will be several hundred people working on this tomorrow.”

“No doubt,” said Geeseman, seeing the intel equivalent of dollar signs. “Let’s flash what you have directly to NSA. Right now.”

“Easy enough,” said Fisk. “They’re regular digital files. Can fly right through the wires and airwaves just like anything else, once I offload them onto a clean drive.”

“Gimme,” said Geeseman. “I’ll dispatch on the secure link from the comm station.”

Fisk said, “Hold on, let him finish this. Let’s make sure we give Meade the entire package at once.”

Pearl was nodding, like a jazz musician riding a particularly sweet groove.

Geeseman exclaimed, “We’ve got Al-Qaeda by the fucking beard.”

Fisk focused on the screen. “Anything, any kind of pattern at all. Location, people, methods . . .”

Pearl said, “I really can’t read the code. But I can see this.”

He keyed in a command, and the corner of one of the sunflower images blossomed on the screen to ten times its original size. Its provenance was clear. Fisk had been right. “Metropolitan Museum,” it read.

Pearl said, “The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Don’t think that’s an accident.”

Now it was Fisk’s turn to nod. “Bring it, fuckers. We’re on to you.”

“Wait.”

Fisk looked at the side of Pearl’s head. “What do you mean, wait?”

Pearl continued to work his keyboard. “Oh, lookie here.”

“Look at what?”

Pearl said, “If this really is a one-time pad, somebody over at the NSA owes me a fruit basket.”

Geeseman said, “Pearl, talk English.”

“Those cryptanalysts better put me on their Christmas card list forever.” He stopped typing and turned. “Somebody screwed up and embedded one image in the clear.”

Fisk’s eyes widened. “And with that, they can—”

“Maybe crack the other messages. It’s a way in, at least. Don’t know if this was from or to bin Laden, but . . .”

He clicked his mouse and a message appeared in a window on the screen:

They must be made to believe that we repeat

ourselves out of a desperation to act.

Chapter 13

B
y teardown time, Fisk was properly exhausted. No other finds topped the sunflower code discovery, currently being pored over stateside. The air lock was struck, the movers going in and out with hand trucks, transporting the detritus of the late Osama bin Laden’s possessions to the waiting Globemaster.

The helicopter to Frankfurt was set to lift off in forty-five minutes. Maybe enough time to get a shower, but more likely not. Geeseman was walking around all rooster-chested, thrilled to have such sensitive and potentially lucrative intel going out under his name. He was giving the movers a hard time, following them around like a grandmother making certain her crystal would not be broken.

“Heavy stuff on the bottom,” he said, and Fisk caught one of the airmen rolling his eyes.

Fisk rubbed his. He was stuck between feelings of satisfaction for the discoveries they had made, and frustration for the discoveries they had not. His tired mind was tailing off into a useless spiral, so he forced himself to go get cleaned up at the officers’ quarters. He changed clothes and was ready just in time for the ride out to the chopper pad, taking a seat in the front next to the driver.

It was the same airman whom Fisk had seen rolling his eyes at Geeseman’s officiousness. “It’s Boyle, right?” said Fisk.

“Right, sir.” He twisted his shoulder toward Fisk so that Fisk could confirm this by reading the name tape across his left breast pocket.

“Did you put the heavy stuff on the bottom, Boyle?”

“Yes, sir,” he snapped. Then his gaze flickered to Fisk. He saw Fisk smiling, and then Boyle relaxed. He checked the mirror to make sure Geeseman was not in the vehicle with them. “Just like I learned in grocery-bagging school, sir.”

Fisk nodded, pleased to find a guy with a decent sense of humor. “So what do you do when you’re not hauling around a bunch of nosy civilians?” he asked.

“Mortuary Affairs, sir.”

“What’s that? Undertaker?”

“Kind of, sir,” said Boyle. “All the bodies from both wars come through here on their way home. Not the best assignment, though in a sense it is an honor to be doing it . . .”

“Grim work,” said Fisk.

“That’s the word for it, sir. Just seeing the dead for real . . . it’s something I thought I’d never understand.”

“Does that mean you understand it now?” asked Fisk, the chopper coming into view ahead.

“Not exactly, sir. I understand that the big picture doesn’t mean a damn thing to any of those men and women anymore.”

Fisk nodded. “You’re dealing with the pixels, just like we are. Everyone else gets to stand back and take the wide view.”

“Sir?”

“Nothing, Boyle. I’m practically talking in my sleep here. My mind’s still back in that bunker.”

“Intense work, sir.”

“Eh. Sounds like you’ve put in your share of hard days, Boyle.”

“I have, sir. But it’s okay. I’m good with it. Nothing compared to what you all were doing in there. Not that I know for sure, but I think I have an idea. Of course, we’re at opposite ends of it. But you’ve got a hell of a lot better chance of impacting this fucking thing than I do.” Boyle winced at his curse word. “Sir.”

Fisk thought back to bin Laden’s words, which might turn out to be his final statement, his ghoulish message from the grave.
They must be made to believe that we repeat ourselves out of a desperation to act.

Fisk could not quite decipher it right now. He only knew that it meant one thing.

Something was coming.