Digital Fortress Chapter 10

Ensei Tankado is dead? Susan felt a wave of nausea. You killed him? I theme you said-We didnt touch him, Strathmore assured her. He died of a boldness attack. COMINT phoned early this morning. Their computer flagged Tankados name in a Seville police log through Interpol.Heart attack? Susan looked doubtful. He was thirty years old.Thirty-two, Strathmore corrected. He had a congenital heart defect.Id never heard that.Turned up in his NSA physical. Not something he bragged slightly.Susan was having trouble accepting the serendipity of the timing. A defective heart could kill him-just ilk that? It seemed too convenient.Strathmore shrugged. Weak heart combine it with the heat of Spain. Throw in the stress of blackmailing the NSA.Susan was silent a moment. Even considering the conditions, she felt a pang of loss at the passing of such a brilliant fellow cryptographer. Strathmores gravelly articulate interrupted her thoughts.The only silver lining on this whole fiasco is that Tankado w as traveling alone. Chances are candid his partner doesnt slam yet hes dead. The Spanish authorities said theyd contain the information for as farsighted as possible. We only got the call because COMINT was on the ball. Strathmore eyed Susan closely. Ive got to call up the partner before he finds out Tankados dead. Thats why I called you in. I need your help.Susan was confused. It seemed to her that Ensei Tankados timely demise had solved their entire problem. Commander, she argued, if the authorities are say he died of a heart attack, were off the hook his partner will whap the NSA is not responsible.Not responsible? Strathmores eyes widened in disbelief. Somebody blackmails the NSA and turns up dead a a couple of(prenominal) days later-and were not responsible? Id bet big money Tankados mystery friend wont see it that way. whatever happened, we look guilty as hell. It could easily grant been poison, a rigged autopsy, any number of things. Strathmore paused. What was your firstborn reaction when I told you Tankado was dead?She frowned. I thought the NSA had killed him.Exactly. If the NSA can put five Rhyolite satellites in fixed orbit over the Mideast, I think its safe to assume we convey the resources to pay off a few Spanish policemen. The commander had made his point.Susan exhaled. Ensei Tankado is dead. The NSA will be blamed. Can we find his partner in time?I think so. Weve got a good lead. Tankado made numerous public announcements that he was operative with a partner. I think he hoped it would discourage software firms from doing him any harm or attempt to steal his key. He threatened that if there was any foul play, his partner would publish the key, and all firms would dead find themselves in competition with free software.Clever. Susan nodded.Strathmore went on. A few times, in public, Tankado referred to his partner by name. He called him North Dakota.North Dakota? Obviously an alias of some sort.Yes, yet as a precaution I ran an lucre inquiry development North Dakota as a assay string. I didnt think Id find anything, exclusively I turned up an e-mail study. Strathmore paused. Of course I assumed it wasnt the North Dakota we were flavor for, but I searched the cipher just to be sure. Imagine my shock when I found the account was full of E-mail from Ensei Tankado. Strathmore raised his eyebrows. And the messages were full of references to digital Fortress and Tankados plans to blackmail the NSA.Susan gave Strathmore a skeptical look. She was astonish the commander was letting himself be played with so easily. Commander, she argued, Tankado knows full well the NSA can snoop E-mail from the Internet he would never use E-mail to send secret information. Its a trap. Ensei Tankado gave you North Dakota. He knew youd run a search. Whatever information hes direct, he wanted you to find-its a false trail.Good instinct, Strathmore fired back, except for a couple of things. I couldnt find anything under North Dakota, so I tweaked the search string. The account I found was under a variation-NDAKOTA.Susan shook her head. Running permutations is standard procedure. Tankado knew youd try variations until you extend to something. NDAKOTAs far too easy an alteration.Perhaps, Strathmore said, scribbling words on a beak of paper and handing it to Susan. But look at this.Susan lead the paper. She suddenly understood the Commanders thinking. On the paper was North Dakotas E-mail address.email protected It was the letters ARA in the address that had caught Susans eye. ARA stood for American Remailers Anonymous, a well-known unnamed server.Anonymous servers were popular among Internet users who wanted to keep their identities secret. For a fee, these companies protected an E-mailers privacy by acting as a middleman for electronic mail. It was equivalent having a numbered post office box-a user could send and receive mail without ever telling his true address or name. The corporation received E-mail addressed to aliases and then forwarded it to the clients real account. The remailing company was bound by contract never to reveal the identity or posture of its real users.Its not proof, Strathmore said. But its pretty suspicious.Susan nodded, suddenly more convinced. So youre saying Tankado didnt care if anybody searched for North Dakota because his identity and location are protected by ARA.Exactly.Susan schemed for a moment. ARA services mainly U.S. accounts. You think North Dakota major power be over here somewhere?Strathmore shrugged. Could be. With an American partner, Tankado could keep the two pass-keys separated geographically. Might be a smart move.Susan considered it. She doubted Tankado would conduct shared his pass-key with anyone except a very close friend, and as she recalled, Ensei Tankado didnt have many friends in the States.North Dakota, she mused, her cryptological mind mulling over the possible meanings of the alias. What does his E-mail to Tankado s ound like?No idea. COMINT only caught Tankados outbound. At this point all we have on North Dakota is an anonymous address.Susan thought a minute. Any chance its a decoy?Strathmore raised an eyebrow. How so?Tankado could be sending bogus E-mail to a dead account in hopes wed snoop it. Wed think hes protected, and hed never have to risk sharing his pass-key. He could be working alone.Strathmore chuckled, impressed. Tricky idea, except for one thing. Hes not using any of his usual home or business Internet accounts. Hes been dropping by Doshisha University and logging on to their mainframe. Apparently hes got an account there that hes managed to keep secret. Its a very well-hidden account, and I found it only by chance. Strathmore paused. So if Tankado wanted us to snoop his mail, why would he use a secret account?Susan contemplated the question. Maybe he used a secret account so you wouldnt suspect a contrivance? Maybe Tankado hid the account just deep enough that youd stumble on to it and think you got lucky. It gives his E-mail credibility.Strathmore chuckled. You should have been a field agent. The ideas a good one. Unfortunately, every letter Tankado sends set abouts a response. Tankado writes, his partner responds.Susan frowned. Fair enough. So, youre saying North Dakotas for real.Afraid so. And weve got to find him. And quietly. If he catches wind that were onto him, its all over.Susan now knew exactly why Strathmore had called her in. permit me guess, she said. You want me to snoop ARAs secure database and find North Dakotas real identity?Strathmore gave her a tight smile. Ms. Fletcher, you read my mind.When it came to discreet Internet searches, Susan Fletcher was the woman for the job. A year ago, a senior White House formalised had been receiving E-mail threats from someone with an anonymous E-mail address. The NSA had been asked to locate the individual. Although the NSA had the clout to demand the remailing company reveal the users identity, it opted for a more subtle method-a tracer.Susan had created, in effect, a directional beacon disguised as a piece of E-mail. She could send it to the users phony address, and the remailing company, performing the duty for which it had been contracted, would forward it to the users real address. Once there, the program would record its Internet location and send word back to the NSA. Then the program would disintegrate without a trace. From that day on, as far as the NSA was concerned, anonymous remailers were nothing more than a minor annoyance.Can you find him? Strathmore asked.Sure. why did you wait so long to call me?Actually-he frowned-I hadnt planned on calling you at all. I didnt want anyone else in the loop. I tried to send a copy of your tracer myself, but you wrote the damn thing in one of those new hybrid languages I couldnt get it to work. It kept travel nonsensical data. I finally had to bite the bullet and bring you in.Susan chuckled. Strathmore was a brilliant cryptogra phic programmer, but his repertoire was limited primarily to algorithmic work the nuts and bolts of less lofty secular program often escaped him. What was more, Susan had written her tracer in a new, crossbreed programming language called oblivion it was understandable that Strathmore had encountered problems. Ill take care of it. She smiled, turning to leave. Ill be at my terminal.Any idea on a time frame?Susan paused. Well it depends on how efficiently ARA forwards their mail. If hes here in the States and uses something like AOL or CompuServe, Ill snoop his credit card and get a billing address within the hour. If hes with a university or corporation, itll take a little longer. She smiled uneasily. After that, the rest is up to you.Susan knew that the rest would be an NSA surpass team, cutting power to the guys house and crashing through his windows with stun guns. The team would probably think it was on a drug bust. Strathmore would undoubtedly stride through the rubble himse lf and locate the sixty-four-character pass-key. Then he would destroy it. Digital Fortress would languish forever on the Internet, locked for all eternity.Send the tracer carefully, Strathmore urged. If North Dakota sees were onto him, hell panic, and Ill never get a team there before he disappears with the key.Hit and run, she assured. The moment this thing finds his account, itll dissolve. Hell never know we were there.The commander nodded tiredly. Thanks.Susan gave him a soft smile. She was always amazed how even in the face of disaster Strathmore could surface a quiet calm. She was convinced it was this ability that had defined his career and lifted him to the upper echelons of power.As Susan headed for the door, she took a long look down at TRANSLTR. The existence of an unbreakable algorithm was a concept she was until now struggling to grasp. She prayed theyd find North Dakota in time.Make it quick, Strathmore called, and youll be in the Smoky Mountains by nightfall.Susan f roze in her tracks. She knew she had never mentioned her trip to Strathmore. She wheeled. Is the NSA tapping my phone?Strathmore smiled guiltily. David told me about your trip this morning. He said youd be pretty ticked about postponing it.Susan was lost. You talked to David this morning?Of course. Strathmore seemed puzzled by Susans reaction. I had to brief him.Brief him? she demanded. For what?For his trip. I sent David to Spain.