The Devil's Code

in the northeast, and that’s you getting out of it—you’ll find out that the pictures were taken yesterday, with a Keyhole satellite. That’s what AmMath was doing. They’d written a code sequence—which you approved, by the way—that sat on top of the satellite encryption engine, and allowed them to use the satellites. They’ve been retailing satellite recon photosall over the Middle East and South Asia since the Keyholes went up. From what we’ve figured out, they were supplying recon for both India and Pakistan.”
    “Who have you told about this?” A man’s voice, deep, harsh, angry.
    “Nobody,” I said. “But we’ve got a PR package ready to go to a dozen congressmen and senators, as well as The New York Times, The Washington Post, the L.A. Times, The Dallas Morning News, the Chicago Tribune, and a few other places you wouldn’t want to see it. I mean, maybe we’re going to do that.”
    “Maybe?”
    “If you don’t get off our backs. You fuckin’ fascists are running innocent people all over the place, this so-called Firewall crackdown. AmMath invented Firewall and the IRS attack was just a bunch of punks from Europe. You know it, we know it, and most of the press knows it, but they’re riding along with you for the amusement value. We want you to knock it off, or we’ll ship our PR package, and the NSA becomes a greasy spot on the road. A few of you, I wouldn’t doubt, will be looking at the inside of Leavenworth.”
    “We know who you are: we’re tracking you right now, we’re breaking down the walls,” the male voice said.
    “Bullshit. You’ve only found a couple of serious people so far and you only got them because they got careless,” I said. “The rest of us are going to fuck you up if you don’t back off.”
    “You’re talking to the U.S. Government here, asshole . . .”
    “No, I’m not. I’m talking to a scared bureaucrat. Butnot as scared as you will be when we start sending recon photos to the press.”
    “You’re gone; you no longer have any access to the Keyholes.”
    “Sorry, pal, it doesn’t work that way,” I said. “We own Keyhole. The only access you have is entirely walled off by our software. We built a firewall around your access port. Go ask your guys who are trying to get inside; go ask them . . . They can take pictures—if we let them. They can even retask the satellites, if we let them. But if we get pissed, we’ll eliminate your access and then we’re gonna start taking pictures of nude beaches and the Royal Families and the president’s vacation, and start flogging them off to The Star and People and whoever else wants them . . . With a nice little Keyhole credit line on them.”
    There was a long silence; then Rosalind Welsh said, “Don’t do that.”
    “It’s up to you,” I said. “You’ll be able to tell when we’re pissed, because we’ll cut off your Keyhole access. I mean, you could go ask Congress for another twenty billion to put up another Keyhole system, but I suspect that they’ll be pretty pissed when they find out you lost the one you had.”
    The male voice: “You fucker . . . you fuckin’ traitor.”
    “This is Bill Clinton you’re talking to,” I said. “We don’t want to overthrow anything. We just want you off our backs.”
    “We can’t promise anything in detail . . .” Welsh said tentatively.
    “Look, we’re not bargaining with you,” I said.“Don’t get that idea. This is a straightforward extortion. If you get off our backs, you can run Keyhole like you always have. Nobody’ll ever hear about how AmMath was selling American recon photos to Pakistan, or how AmMath invented Firewall to cover up a couple of murders and that you knew about it, or about how Keyhole now belongs to a bunch of hackers. All you have to do is stop. If you don’t, well, you better grab on to something solid and bend over, because something ugly is about to happen . . .”
    I hung up, got off at the next exit, wiped the cell phone and threw it into a ditch, and headed back to St. Paul.
    A nd they quit.
    The IRS announced that Interpol, in coordination with U.S. authorities, had issued warrants for the arrest of a half-dozen European hackers for their attack on the tax-return site, and said that the IRS site was now fully protected. The FBI declared victory over Firewall, said that we were seeing the fine results of eternal vigilance. Other hacker organizations, the FBI spokesman said, had better