Sam said, “The kind of expertise you possess is invaluable. How ’bout you hang it up, operationally speaking, and transition to more of a behind-the-scenes role?”
Clark had thought about this, of course, but in the end he realized that The Campus was set up as efficiently as possible.
“I’m not going to just roam the halls here, Sam.”
“What are you talking about? You keep the same office. You continue to do—”
“Guys, we’ve been in stand-down mode since Istanbul. The entire team is working their computers eight hours a day. It’s a sad fact that my grandson is better with a computer than I am. There is absolutely nothing here for me to do now, and, should the Istanbul Drive get resolved and the operators get the green light to go back into the field, in my diminished capacity, I won’t be taking part.”
Gerry asked, “What does Sandy say about you roaming the halls at home?”
Clark laughed at this. “Yeah, it’s going to be a transition for both of us. I’ve got lots to do around the farm, and God knows why, but she seems to want me around. She may get sick of me, but I owe her the opportunity to find out.”
Gerry understood. He wondered what he would be doing now if his wife and kids were still alive. He’d lost them in a car crash several years ago, and he’d been alone ever since. His work was his life, and he would not wish that life on a man who clearly had someone at home who wanted him there.
Where would Gerry be if his family were still alive? Gerry knew he would not be working sixty to seventy hours a week at Hendley Associates and The Campus. He would damn well find a way to enjoy his family.
He could hardly begrudge John Clark one second of a life that Gerry would give anything to have for himself.
Still, Hendley ran The Campus, and Clark was one hell of an asset. He had to do what he could to keep him. “Are you sure about this, John? Why don’t you take some more time to think it over?”
John shook his head. “I’ve thought about nothing else. I’m sure. I’ll be at my place. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, I’m available for you or anyone on the team. But not in an official capacity.”
“Have you talked to Ding?”
“Yeah. We spent all day yesterday at the farm. He tried to talk me out of it, but he understands.”
Gerry stood from his desk and extended his left hand. “I understand and accept your resignation. But please don’t ever forget. You always have a place here, John.”
Sam echoed the sentiment.
“Thanks, guys.”
While Clark was upstairs in Hendley’s office, Jack Ryan, Jr., and Gavin Biery sat in the locked conference room just off Biery’s second-floor office. In front of them was a small table, upon which the desktop computer sat with the cover removed, exposing all the components, wires, and boards of the device. Additional peripheral components were attached to the system via cables of different thickness, color, and type, and these pieces were strewn across the table haphazardly.
Other than the computer hardware, a telephone, a single coffee mug that had left dozens of small brown rings on the white table, and a yellow legal pad, there was nothing else in sight.
Ryan had spent many hours in this place over the past two months, but that was nothing compared to the time Biery had spent here.
On the monitor in front of Ryan was a screen full of numbers and dashes and other characters.
Gavin said, “First, you’ve got to understand one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“This guy, if Center is a guy, is good. He’s a first-rate black-hat hacker.” Biery shook his head in amazement. “The code obfuscation is like nothing I’ve ever seen.
“He’s using a totally new species of malware, something I couldn’t find without a long, exhaustive manual search of the machine code.”
Jack nodded. He motioned to a string of numbers on the monitor. “So, is this the virus?”
“A portion of it. A virus has two stages to it. The delivery method and the payload. The payload is still hidden on the drive. It’s a RAT, a remote-access tool. It’s some sort of a peer-to-peer protocol, but I haven’t been able to ferret it out yet. It’s that well hidden inside another application. What you are looking at right here is a portion of the delivery method. Center removed most of it after he got in, but he missed this little string.”
“Why was it removed?”
“He’s covering his tracks. A good hacker — like me, for instance — always goes behind himself to clean up. Think about a thief breaking into a house. Once he makes entry through a window, the first thing he does is close the window behind him so no one knows anybody is inside. He did not need the delivery system any longer once he was inside the computer, so he erased it.”
“Except he did not erase it all.”
“Exactly. And that is important.”
“Why?”
“Because this is a digital fingerprint. This could be something in his own malware that he does not know about, doesn’t know he’s leaving behind.”
Jack understood. “You mean he might leave it on other machines, so if you see this again, then you will know that Center is involved.”
“Yes. You would know that this extremely rare malware was involved, and the attacker, just like Center, did not clean this one part off the machine. You can infer, I think, that it could be the same guy.”
“Any idea how he managed to get his virus on Kartal’s computer?”
“For a guy with skills like Center’s, it would have been child’s play. The tough part about installing a virus is the social engineering — that is, getting human beings to do what you want them to do. Click a program, go to a website, give up your password, plug in a USB drive, stuff like that. Center and the Libyan knew one another, they had communication between one another, and, from the e-mails, it’s clear the Libyan did not suspect Center was spying on his machine, operating his webcam, going through back doors in the software to install files and delete the footprints he left. He had Kartal hook, line, and sinker.”
“Very cool,” said Jack. The world of computer hacking was arcane to him, but he recognized that in many respects, espionage was espionage, and many of the principles were similar.
Gavin sighed now. “I’m not finished looking through this drive. It might take another month or more. For now all we really have is an electronic fingerprint that we can tie to Center if we see it again. It’s not much, but it’s something.”
Jack said, “I need to have a meeting with Gerry and the other operators and let them know your findings. Do you want me to do it alone so you can go home and get some sleep?”
Gavin shook his head. “No. I’ll be okay. I want to be there.”
TEN
Todd Wicks had never done anything like this, but, then again, Todd Wicks had never been to Shanghai.
He was here in town for the Shanghai Hi-Tech Expo, and though this wasn’t his first international trade show, this was, without question, the first time he’d met a beautiful girl in the lobby bar of his hotel who made it abundantly clear that she wanted him to come up to her room.
She was a prostitute. Todd wasn’t the worldliest guy around, but he managed to figure this out pretty quickly. Her name was Bao, and this meant, she told him in her heavy but alluring accent, “precious treasure.” She was gorgeous, maybe twenty-three years old, with long, straight black hair the color and luster of Shanxi black granite and a tight red dress that was at once both glamorous and sexy. Her body was long and lean; when he first saw her, he thought she might be a movie star or a dancer, but when he caught her eye, she lifted her glass of chardonnay off the marble bar with delicate fingers and floated over to him with a gentle but confident smile.