The Genesis Plague (2010)

fella.’
    ‘Yeah, I suppose. Too much back hair and you like ‘em smooth. I get it. Anyway … what can I do you for you this time? Fire some missiles up some Taliban’s asshole? Or do you need a Predator to deliver a care package to a Hezbollah Tupperware party? Name it. I’m yours.’
    Scary thing was, Jason thought, the guy was willing and capable of either act. ‘Nothing that dramatic.’
    ‘Darn.’
    ‘Just wanted to test your IQ on satellite phone communications. Put your NSA skills to the test.’
    As with most of the firm’s intellectual assets, Macgregor Evan Driscoll - MIT Summa Cum Laude graduate and part-time hacker - had been recruited from the Department of Defense’s most obscure branches known only by obscenely long acronyms. In 2002, he’d been instrumental in helping the NSA design a covert listening station inside AT&T’s San Francisco international telecommunications hub. The programme’s focus had been to monitor phone chatter and e-mails originating from Al-Qaeda safe houses in places like Riyadh and Yemen. But a whistleblower outed the programme for spying on domestic communications as well, exposing a myriad constitutional violations. This chapter of the Bush Administration’s unwarranted wiretapping programme promptly folded and its developers, including Mack, became victims of the political fallout. But Mack was quickly scooped up by GSC - a firm that used a much different playbook and embraced the frustrated, cavalier brainiacs who’d been disenfranchised by the tight monetary and operational constraints of government agencies.
    ‘What’ve you got for me?’ Mack asked.
    ‘I’ve got a guy here in Iraq who’s been making lots of calls, with the intent of undermining our mission. If I give you his coordinates, can you see if you can listen in on him?’
    ‘I’ll give it a go.’
    Jason twice repeated the GPS data for Crawford’s current position. Then he heard Mack tapping away on a keyboard. He’d gone through this exercise many times in the past, so he knew Mack was linking in to the commercial satellite network to triangulate the signal.
    ‘Hum. Got the signal …’ More tapping. ‘Oh yeah, that’s gonna be a problem. Your caller’s not using a voice channel … and he’s transmitting in digital, not analogue. And it’s all bouncing through military satellites. Nice if you would just say that you want me to eavesdrop on the marines.’
    ‘Sorry about that,’ Jason said. ‘Can you crack the encryption?’
    ‘Four-thousand-ninety-six-bit RSA secure-key encryption?’ Mack cackled. ‘Don’t think so. That shit was invented because of guys like me. The number of possible key combinations borders on infinity. Would take decades for the world’s fastest supercomputers to crack that kind of encryption.’
    ‘All right,’ Jason said. There had to be another way. ‘So the caller and the person being called each have a key cipher, right?’
    ‘That’s right. Both phones use the same key encryption software to swap permissions.’
    Jason thought it through. Two keys. Two sources. Encoded data packets being fed back and forth between two points with an ultra-tight digital handshake. Maybe he was approaching the problem from the wrong angle. ‘How about this: can you locate the second key?’
    ‘Yeah, sure,’ Mack replied matter-of-factly. ‘May not do you any good if the person on the other end is mobile. ‘Cause once this call’s over, it’s a whole new ball game. New keys, new session—’
    ‘Humour me, Mack.’
    ‘All right.’
    Jason listened to fifteen seconds of click-clacking accompanied by Mack’s heavy breathing.
    ‘Well hell-o-o-o-o …’ Mack sang in pleased revelation. ‘You just got very lucky, Yaeger.’
    ‘How’s that?’
    ‘This call’s being routed through a ground station in San Francisco. Jeez, it’s going through AT&T at Folsom Street. Same place I used to work …That’s fuckin’ rich …’ he said with some resentment. ‘Anyway, the satellite feed is routing through the Backbone network.’
    ‘So whoever he’s talking to is not using a mobile phone?’
    ‘Tell you in a second.’ Mack did some more tracing. ‘Nope. Definitely a landline. Still can’t tell you what they’re talking about. But I can tell you exactly where the other caller’s phone is plugged into a wall jack.’
    ‘That would be great.’
    Now Mack was humming the Jeopardy! theme song to the rhythmic keyboard clicks. ‘And … got it.’ A