He took one last glance around. Chappelle was still on the phone, talking intently. The others were hypnotized by the data unspooling on the monitor.
Reaching into his boot, he found the hidden pen drive. He pulled it out and plugged it into the computer’s USB port. He called up the execute file stored inside the drive and launched it.
With a satisfied grin, he unplugged the drive and tucked it back into his boot. Then Lesser faced the others again. The blind idiots hadn’t noticed a thing.
Comedian Willy Diamond finished a hilarious monologue, the highlight of the evening. Special Agent Ron Birchwood hadn’t laughed or even smiled. In fact, he had barely uttered ten words since the Silver Screen Awards had begun.
Sitting in the Presidential Box directly behind the Vice President’s wife, he could see she was getting along well with Marina Katerine Novartov, whose English was better in a private conversation than in a public forum. The First Lady of Russia had discussed many topics with the Second Lady of the United States during the long, boring lags in the awards show.
At Birchwood’s side sat his counterpart, Russian security chief Vladimir Borodin. Like Birchwood, he hadn’t laughed at a single joke since the awards ceremony began — and he’d uttered even fewer words. Language wasn’t the issue. Borodin spoke excellent English. Both men were absorbed in their jobs, watching the crowd, listening to the chatter in their earbuds, all channels open.
On stage, Willy Diamond bowed to thunderous applause. Then the orchestra struck up a reprise of the night’s ubiquitous Silver Screen Awards theme, and the event’s broadcast cut to a commercial.
As the audience buzzed with gossip, stagehands guided the giant camera prop to center stage on a motorized platform — the signal that another award was about to be presented after the commercial break.
Birchwood noticed a well-known movie star step out on stage for a moment to check the prompter’s position before returning to the wings. He couldn’t remember the actor’s name — Chad or Chip? That was it, he thought, Chip Manning. His preteen daughter had a poster of the handsome actor on her bedroom wall, next to a popular boy band group and a half-dozen photographs of rainbows.
She’d been so excited to hear that her dad would be at the famous awards show, taking care of security for the Vice President’s wife. He knew she was watching at home in Maryland, right now, with her mother and baby brother. He could just picture them, trying to spot him in the split-second shots of the awards show crowd. For the first time that evening, Ron Birchwood smiled.
The orchestra struck up again. As the broadcast came back from commercial, one of Birchwood’s detail, standing behind him in the Presidential Box, touched his shoulder. “Channel one, sir.”
An outside line? Birchwood thumbed the transmitter, turned up the volume in his headset.
“Special Agent Birchwood? This is Ryan Chappelle, Regional Director, Counter Terrorist Unit, Los Angeles.”
To prove his identity, Chappelle gave the Secret Service agent his authorization code, which Birchwood confirmed on his PDA.
“What can I do for you, Director?”
“We have a credible threat that an attempt is about to be made on the life of the Vice President, or on the wife of the Russian President. Probably both.”
“How credible?”
“In the last hour, a CTU agent killed a terrorist who was in possession of elaborate blueprints of the auditorium you’re in. We have reason to believe the strike is imminent.”
Birchwood turned to Vladimir Borodin. “Sir, I—”
“Yes, I heard,” the Russian said, frowning. “I suggest we move now.”
Birchwood stood up, addressed the agent behind him. Borodin did the same.
“Get the women out of here now,” Birchwood commanded. “Orderly evacuation. No panic. Quick as you can.”
For nearly an hour, Tony had been investigating the evidence in the room where he’d silenced Ray Dobyns.
He finally managed to crack the security protocol that guarded the system. He couldn’t go very deep into the files — too many of them had secondary security — but a few were not secured and Tony perused them.
He learned Richard Lesser had created the virus he claimed Hasan had given him. He’d done it right here at this console; the set up at the brothel had been a ruse, or a back up system. From some unsecured notebook files Tony found Lesser’s notes. Most of them made no sense, but one file’s title grabbed Tony’s attention: ACTIVE CTU.
Amazingly the file was not locked. Someone had used it recently, and burned this data onto a disk, which was missing — the system was already asking if the user wanted a second disk burned. Tony opened the file and found a comprehensive dossier on Jack Bauer, taken right out of the CIA’s database.
“Son of a bitch.”
Another file, called TROJAN HORSE PART TWO, was also unsecured. Tony scanned the file, and his blood turned to ice.
This was it, the evidence that confirmed Dobyns’s claim was true. He snatched up the cell phone Dobyns had dropped on the carpet, punched in Ryan Chappelle’s number, and got Nina Myers.
“Nina, where’s Ryan?”
“He’s with the Crisis Management Team. I was on my way there when your call was forwarded to me—”
“Richard Lesser is a traitor. I’ve got hard evidence here. He’s only pretending to flip. He’s about to take down CTU’s computers, phones, and electronic communications. Everything. You’ve got to—”
The line went dead. Tony punched redial and got a busy signal. He punched in CTU’s emergency number. It was also busy — which was never supposed to happen.
Tony cursed, realizing his warning had come too late. CTU’s computer system was down. Lesser had unleashed his virus.
15. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 7 P.M. AND 8 P.M. PACIFIC DAYLIGHT TIME
“Cue camera three, pull back camera one. Get ready for a close up, camera five. On three, on two, one…”
From his cushioned chair, director Hal Green watched the main monitor that displayed the feed as it was going out to the network and millions of viewers. He ignored the huge picture windows a few feet in front of him, though they offered a vista of center stage and almost the entire auditorium. He wanted to see what everyone else was seeing on their TV screens.
At the moment, the camera was focused on Chip Manning as he strode into view from stage left and moved toward the main podium. Manning was a popular actor, tall and muscular with dime-a-dozen cover-boy model features capped with hair in a Caesar cut. He’d paired his exquisitely tailored Helmut Lang suit with a white shirt, open at the collar, ostrich-skin cowboy boots and a salon-trimmed five o’clock shadow. The entire look had been carefully calculated by his stylist to accent Manning’s “casually-aloof-yet-elegant tough guy” persona.
“Cue camera five. Two, one…”
The camera focused on Ava Stanton, a long-limbed beauty in a daring fuchsia gown. The eyes of every technician in the control room remained fixed on Ava’s strapless décolleté, riding low on her ample cleavage. As the glammed-up actress teetered on her high heels in a shaky journey from stage right to center stage, the crew braced for a “costume malfunction” with a combination of FCC fear and hopeful anticipation.
“Cue camera one on the podium…”
Hal Green lowered one hand and rested it on the control board. With the other he sipped coffee from a thermal cup. Under bushy gray brows, his alert hazel eyes almost never left the main screen. When they did, it was only to check the view from another camera in one of six secondary monitors.