The Blue Nowhere

Everyone else had followed, except Gillette, who’d stayed to decode the e-mail they’d received from that guy with the weird name, Triple-X. The hacker had suggested Backle might be more useful at the hospital but the agent had merely offered the inscrutable half smile that he knew infuriated suspects and pulled his chair closer to Gillette’s.
    Backle couldn’t get over the speed with which the hacker’s blunt, callused fingertips danced over the keys.
    Curiously, the agent was someone who could appreciate talented computer keying. For one thing, his employer, the Department of Defense, was the federal agency that’d been involved in the computer world the longest of any (and was—as DoD public affairs was quick to remind—one of the creators of the Internet). Also, as part of his regular training, the agent had attended various computer crimes courses, hosted by the CIA, the Justice Department and his own organization. He’d spent hours watching tapes of hackers at work.
    Gillette brought to mind a recent course in Washington, D.C. Sitting at cheap fiberboard tables in one of the Pentagon’s many conference rooms, the Criminal Investigation Division agents had been under the tutelage of two young men who weren’t your typical army continuing ed instructors. One had shoulder-length hair and wore macramé sandals, shorts and a rumpled T-shirt. The other was dressed more conservatively but did have extensive body piercings and his crew-cut hair was green. The two had been part of a “tiger team”—the term for a group of former bad-boy hackers who’d turned from the Dark Side (generally after realizing how much money there was to be made by protecting companies and government agencies from their former colleagues).
    Skeptical at first about these punks, Backle had nonetheless been won over by their brilliance and their ability to simplify the otherwise incomprehensible subjects of encryption and hacking. The lectures had been the most articulately delivered and understandable of any that he’d attended in his six years with the Criminal Investigation Division of the DoD.
    Backle knew he was no expert but, thanks to the class, he was following in general terms what Gillette’s cracking program was now doing. It didn’t seem to have anything to do with the DoD’s Standard 12 encryption system. But Mr. Green Hair had explained how you could camouflage programs. You could, for instance, put a shell around Standard 12 to make it look like some other kind of program—even a game or word processor. And that was why he was now leaning forward, noisily sharing his irritation.
    Gillette’s shoulders tensed once again and he stopped keying. He looked at the agent. “I really need to concentrate here. And you breathing down my neck’s a little distracting.”
    “What’s that program you’re running again?”
    “There’s no ‘again’ about it. I never told you what it was in the first place.”
    The faint smile again. “Well, tell me, would you? I’m curious.”
    “An encryption/decryption program I downloaded from the HackerMart Web site and modified myself. It’s freeware so I guess I’m notguilty of a copyright violation. Which isn’t your jurisdiction anyway. Hey, you want to know the algorithm it uses?”
    Backle didn’t answer, just stared at the screen, making sure the half smile was annoyingly lodged on his face.
    Gillette said, “Tell you what, Backle, I need to do this. How ’bout if you go get some coffee and a bagel or whatever they have in the canteen up the hall there and let me do my job?” He added cheerfully, “You can look through it when I’m done and then arrest me on some more bullshit charges if you want.”
    “My, we’re a little touchy here, aren’t we?” Backle said, scraping the chair legs loudly. “I’m just doing my job.”
    “And I’m trying to do mine.” The hacker turned back to the computer.
    Backle shrugged. The hacker’s attitude didn’t do a thing to diminish his irritation but he did like the idea of a bagel. He stood up, stretched and walked down the corridor, following the smell of coffee.
    F rank Bishop skidded the Crown Victoria into the parking lot of the Stanford-Packard Medical Center and leapt from the car, forgetting to shut the engine off or close the door.
    Halfway to the front entrance he realized what he’d done and stopped abruptly, turned back. But he heard a woman’s voice call, “Go ahead, boss. I got it.” It was Linda