George of the Bureau was very eager to please, after the Volont encounter. All three of us knew he’d have to tell Volont anything he was asked. We also knew that George was now under a bit of a cloud with his own bureau, and would have to watch his step very carefully. It was never mentioned. We just knew that George could be used only so far before he’d be required to report something. We were all trying to avoid crossing that line. After he had sent his fax to his partner, applying for a wiretap order, he drove to Dyersville and purchased a modem for us. With software and a special offer from a local server. All right. Guilt can be great.
Then we had to find out where Stritch’s server was, in computerese.
‘‘Don’t we need Herman’s computer for this?’’ asked Hester.
I smiled all over myself. ‘‘Nope. Downloaded it all last night.’’
It was easy, once we had the modem hooked up to the PC in the back office. Hooking the modem up was a bit more difficult than I had anticipated. George, frugal to the end, had gotten the least expensive modem. Internal. External modem, we could have done in fifteen seconds. Internal, thirty minutes.
‘‘Jesus H. Christ, George!’’ I said. ‘‘I’m gonna have to tear this whole machine apart…’’
Ah, but he didn’t have to pay for a modem case, though.
‘‘You saved eleven dollars?’’ asked Hester. ‘‘Really?’’
So after I got the cover back on the PC, it was easy, like I said.
Entered the name of Herman’s server (Widetalk), our area code and telephone number, country (United States of America(1)), which set the keyboard commands. We connected using our ModoMak3564, which had hardly cost us a thing, configured the port to Com1, set the Databits to 8, Parity to None, Stop Bits to 1.
Then, it was a simple matter of doing his network protocols: the TCP/IP settings, which were server-assigned with an IP address: Primary DNS 699.555.123.6, with no secondary, no primary or secondary WINS, using IP header compression and the default gateway on remote.
We engaged the ‘‘call forwarding’’ mode, and were done.
As far as the e-mail service knew, we were now, for all intents and purposes, Herman Stritch. We had his default number, which was the modem line into his residence. I wanted to use one for Cedar Rapids, because that’s where they were gonna be, and that’s where Colonel Gabe would know they were.
We hesitated for about ten seconds. Then I called an officer I knew with the Linn County Sheriff’s Department, and asked for a number that would be used by a modem there. By a prisoner. He hesitated, so I let him talk to Hester and George.
That taken care of, we were simply going to call the Linn County jail number, have our call forwarded to the appropriate line, and call Colonel Gabe. Just as soon as Melissa confirmed what we needed to know about who the brains was behind the Stritches’ computer system.
Melissa called within half an hour. Damn me for a sexist. The whole thing was set up by Nola Stritch. In a computer sense, neither Herman nor Billy could find their ass with both hands.
Two minutes later, and George’s partner called. The order had been granted.
‘‘Okay,’’ I sighed. ‘‘Way to go George.’’
‘‘Just what did you say in that application?’’ asked Hester.
‘‘Well, nothing that wasn’t true,’’ said George.
‘‘Great piece of jurisprudence,’’ said Hester.
Thus armed, we sallied forth.
By now it was 1750, and the Stritch family should have been in Cedar Rapids for about an hour. Booked in, and all settled for supper. Good.
In looking for an address for Colonel Gabe, it had become immediately apparent that he was using other people’s e-mail addresses, and seldom the same one for more than an hour. Fascinating. We also noticed that Herman Stritch nearly always contacted Colonel Gabe via our man Borcherding. Mr. Free Press himself.
We decided to be cagey. At George’s suggestion.
‘‘I’m not comfortable with being Herman right at first. This has got to be something that Nola is going to do on the sly.’’
Hard to argue with that. The scenario we came up with was this: Nola would be meeting with her newly appointed attorney for Federal Court. He or she would have a laptop. Nola would place a message on the laptop, hoping the attorney would just send his accumulated messages when he got to his office. Nola is alone with the laptop for a few minutes and sends a hurried message. Most of the scenario came from Hester.
‘‘Wow,’’ said George, ‘‘I can’t believe that. You came up with that in about two minutes.’’
‘‘It’s from some movie I saw,’’ said Hester. ‘‘It worked for them …’’
‘‘We need a sender’s address,’’ I said. ‘‘Just for the first message…’’
We sent a message to George’s brother-in-law in Marion, IA. Right next to Cedar Rapids. He sent the message for us.
Our first message went like this:
FROM: KLINEB@LAWNET. COM
TO: BRAVO6@xii. COMONCOMON. COM
SUBJECT:
DATE: FRIDAY, JULY 26, 1996 6:11 PM
WE’RE IN JAIL IN CEDAR RAPIDS. I HAVE AN ATTORNEY WHO HAS A LAPTOP. I HOPE HE SENDS THIS TODAY. HE DOES NOT KNOW I AM DOING THIS. HAVE GABE CONTACT ME AT THE SAME OLD ADDRESS. THEY MISSED SOMETHING IN THE SEARCH. NOLA
The only thing I wasn’t sure of was whether or not the attorney would have an automatic spelling corrector. George said that he most assuredly would. Even better, since then we didn’t have to fake a hurried message.
The ‘‘they missed something’’ was mine. What we intended to do was have Nola get access to a computer and call her own back at the farm. You see, when you do a warranted search at a residence, like the FBI lab people had participated in at the Stritch farm, you always have to give the owner a receipt for everything seized. So Nola would have a receipt for the computers that were taken. There had been one older one. Great. That’s the one they’d ‘‘left,’’ as nonfunctional. We could probably sneak the one we were using up to the farm yet that night, as there were still forensic people at the scene.
After that, all we had to do was wait.
‘‘We’re going to have to go up there after dark, to put this in place,’’ I said. ‘‘But all we gotta remember is to change the phone number to Herman’s, and we’re set.’’
‘‘Right,’’ said Hester. ‘‘You think we have time for supper?’’
I looked at my watch: 1826. ‘‘Sure,’’ I said. ‘‘Let me just check our mail…’’
We had a response.
It worked. The server thought we were Herman.
The message from Bravo 6, our man Borcherding, was:
WILL LET HIM KNOW. ARE YOU ALL OK? WHAT DID THEY MISS? WHY ARE YOU IN CEDAR RAPIDS? HAS ANYBODY TALKED? DINGER
‘‘Dinger?’’ Hester grinned. ‘‘Dinger…’’
‘‘Short for Borcherding,’’ I said.
‘‘Don’t ruin the moment, Houseman,’’ she said. ‘‘I want to enjoy the romance.’’
‘‘He bit,’’ I said a few seconds later. ‘‘He did, didn’t he? He bit, and so did the server, by God.’’
‘‘You got it,’’ said George.
‘‘You want to come along when we plant this thing?’’ I asked.
‘‘Hadn’t better,’’ he said. ‘‘Can’t tell what you don’t know.’’
The scene was still secured by two of our reserve deputies when we got there at 2130. It was just dark.
I told our guys that we were returning some stuff the FBI had seized and it turned out didn’t work. It was no problem for them. Hester and I lugged the big cardboard box in, containing the computer and monitor. I made a second trip for the printer. It only took a second to hook things up and get the system up and running. I changed the telephone number back to the one the Stritches used for their modem, enabled the call forwarding device, and we were in business. Now all we had to do was have it call us and forward any message. Slick. So far. We had a call in to X1, asking him if we could borrow his laptop. We needed a computer and modem at the office, and we both knew X1 had one. Prying it loose might be a little problem…