Read Online The Ultimatum: A Jeremy Fisk Novel by Dick Wolf - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Dick Wolf
Tags: United States, Literature & Fiction, Contemporary, Thrillers, Mystery, Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, American, Contemporary Fiction, Thrillers & Suspense
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signals from escaping. Even the electrical current was filtered. The six computers were networked to one another, but there was no Internet. Data could exit the lab only on disks or drives. Stealing the key to the New York Times would be a matter of copying a TCP—Transmission Control Protocol—packet onto a flash drive. The problem was that in doing so, Lin’s every action would be recorded. Every keystroke was logged here, and it was a fair assumption that everything else was recorded by concealed security cameras.
While logging in, he had an edgy sense that accessing the Times TCP pack would bring a tactical team crashing into the lab. Could Willoughby have set him up? Getting to this point had almost been too easy. He fought the urge to take a deep breath. A display of nerves might be caught by a camera system running a Behavioral Recog application, in which case a duty officer at the Fort—the NSA in Fort Meade, Maryland—would receive notification and monitor Lin in real time.
Lin operated under the assumption that they were already monitoring him in real time. A little over two hours later, in the course of his regular work on the Department of Commerce project, he opened—purportedly for reference purposes—the Structured Query Language injection tool Willoughby had created for the Times . With the injection tool, Lin could go elsewhere, connect with the paper, and then access the trove of classified documents that Merritt Verlyn had given Chay Maryland.
Of paramount value was what NYPD Intel, the FBI, and the NSA knew about the businesses fronting Lin. The hitch was that the SQLcomprised more code than he could memorize—more than he and the entire population of China, working in concert, could take out of this lab in their heads. Copy it, take a cell-phone photo of it, even write a line down, and he risked setting off alarm bells at the Fort. He had a plan, though.
Sitting back, he rubbed at his temples, as he had done several times already this session, and as he often did when fatigued. This time, he pressed the spring hinge on the left side of his eyeglass frames. This activated a subminiature video camera concealed by the nosepiece. He began scrolling through the SQL.
When he was nearly finished, a bell sounded—like a typical home door chime, though it had the effect on him of an air-raid siren.
Trying to appear merely curious, he punched up the controls for the special SCIF intercom, which transmitted on a push-to-speak basis, like an old-fashioned walkie-talkie. “Who there?”
“Hey, Ji.” It sounded like Hawk was calling from deep space, a function of a specialized local amplifier that prevented the receiver from serving as a microphone.
“Everything okay?” Lin saw that he had the equivalent of two pages remaining to scroll through and record.
“You gotta come out here.”
“Why?”
“Take a couple seconds off, willya, buddy?”
Without the final two pages of the SQL file, the first hundred would be useless. “Hang on,” Lin said. Video the rest of the file first, then deal with Hawk, he told himself.
“Come on, I’m telling you!” Hawk sounded feverish.
“Okay, okay.”
Lin captured the last page, then rose, preparing to take out the guard, who, alerted to malfeasance, would be waiting in the hall with his Beretta drawn.
In his wallet, Lin carried an ultrathin blade made of surgical steel. It unfolded from a polypropylene fake Visa card that servedas knife handle. He’d had ample training in defending himself with the weapon. Hawk would only pose a threat if he were expecting a knife, for which reason Lin didn’t dare reach for it, not now, while the action might be broadcast live.
He pulled the door open and stuck out his head. No sign of anyone in the corridor, or on the floor for that matter, other than Hawk, who held a computer tablet so that the red light cast from the screen turned his wrinkly face into a road map.
Lin did not let himself relax. “What’s
While logging in, he had an edgy sense that accessing the Times TCP pack would bring a tactical team crashing into the lab. Could Willoughby have set him up? Getting to this point had almost been too easy. He fought the urge to take a deep breath. A display of nerves might be caught by a camera system running a Behavioral Recog application, in which case a duty officer at the Fort—the NSA in Fort Meade, Maryland—would receive notification and monitor Lin in real time.
Lin operated under the assumption that they were already monitoring him in real time. A little over two hours later, in the course of his regular work on the Department of Commerce project, he opened—purportedly for reference purposes—the Structured Query Language injection tool Willoughby had created for the Times . With the injection tool, Lin could go elsewhere, connect with the paper, and then access the trove of classified documents that Merritt Verlyn had given Chay Maryland.
Of paramount value was what NYPD Intel, the FBI, and the NSA knew about the businesses fronting Lin. The hitch was that the SQLcomprised more code than he could memorize—more than he and the entire population of China, working in concert, could take out of this lab in their heads. Copy it, take a cell-phone photo of it, even write a line down, and he risked setting off alarm bells at the Fort. He had a plan, though.
Sitting back, he rubbed at his temples, as he had done several times already this session, and as he often did when fatigued. This time, he pressed the spring hinge on the left side of his eyeglass frames. This activated a subminiature video camera concealed by the nosepiece. He began scrolling through the SQL.
When he was nearly finished, a bell sounded—like a typical home door chime, though it had the effect on him of an air-raid siren.
Trying to appear merely curious, he punched up the controls for the special SCIF intercom, which transmitted on a push-to-speak basis, like an old-fashioned walkie-talkie. “Who there?”
“Hey, Ji.” It sounded like Hawk was calling from deep space, a function of a specialized local amplifier that prevented the receiver from serving as a microphone.
“Everything okay?” Lin saw that he had the equivalent of two pages remaining to scroll through and record.
“You gotta come out here.”
“Why?”
“Take a couple seconds off, willya, buddy?”
Without the final two pages of the SQL file, the first hundred would be useless. “Hang on,” Lin said. Video the rest of the file first, then deal with Hawk, he told himself.
“Come on, I’m telling you!” Hawk sounded feverish.
“Okay, okay.”
Lin captured the last page, then rose, preparing to take out the guard, who, alerted to malfeasance, would be waiting in the hall with his Beretta drawn.
In his wallet, Lin carried an ultrathin blade made of surgical steel. It unfolded from a polypropylene fake Visa card that servedas knife handle. He’d had ample training in defending himself with the weapon. Hawk would only pose a threat if he were expecting a knife, for which reason Lin didn’t dare reach for it, not now, while the action might be broadcast live.
He pulled the door open and stuck out his head. No sign of anyone in the corridor, or on the floor for that matter, other than Hawk, who held a computer tablet so that the red light cast from the screen turned his wrinkly face into a road map.
Lin did not let himself relax. “What’s
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