Chapter Forty-nine
Friday, 1710
General Alexander was staying late. He had sent his staff home. “There’s no need for you to stay tonight,” he told them. There were several meek protestations, but he insisted—they deserved some time after the events of the last few days—and so everyone left before he changed his mind.
Finally alone, he went to work on helping the ‘rogue group’, as Sanderson had called them. He knew they had to get to an encryption key, but which, when, and how, was a mystery. He needed to figure out what they planned to do or he would not be able to help.
He returned to the file on Meredith Mackenzie, sent over from the NSA, opened it again, and went back over her record. He read the newest information last. Everything in her record said she was too dedicated to the law.
Alexander tried to put together an understanding of her psychology, to see if he could intuit how she might go about opening the drive. Her record was one of someone methodical, but willing to take risks if she thought she must. “Is that the case now?” he wondered. He decided she really had no choice but to take a risk.
He then moved to the file on Stanley Denton. It was stamped, Classified: Top Secret. He was considered a genius-level analyst and one of the best programers in the world. His career had been very impressive, but the thing that caught Alexander’s attention was the section on assignments. He was the primary architect of the encryption key system. And was the leader of the team responsible for building the prototype at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. This suggested to Alexander that it would most likely be the machine they would attempt to access: Denton was familiar with the facility; he knew the system because he built it, and he would be known to the people in the building, but not so well as to be suspicious of his presence. He decided all those factors made it the most likely location for their attempt. Besides, the security at the other locations was far too stringent to break.
The next thing for Alexander was to decide what he could do to help them. He turned to his computer and accessed the classified materials on the encryption key, and the location and the security in place at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.
At first glance the security was comparatively modest. But according to the report that was intentional. No one knew about the existence of the machine except a very small, closed group of people. That dramatically reduced the chance that anyone would be after the system. In addition, having elaborate security around the encryption key would actually draw attention to it and create curiosity about it and therefore increase its profile, drawing more attention from enemies.
What they did not consider was the possibility of someone who knew about it and who was on the inside trying to access the key, because it was such a small, heavily vetted group. That worked in Mackenzie’s and Denton’s favor.
Alexander now studied the safeguards to see what, if anything, he could do to help them and to figure out how to know when they would make their move. He decided they must make their move soon because of Martial Law being declared. So, they were likely trying to gain access to the encryption key now, so he logged into the encryption network, settled back and waited for a sign.
###
Mackenzie and Denton stood silently against the wall in the corner of the elevator under the security camera, relieved to have made it past lobby security. Denton lifted his chin, eyes closed, and slowly, meditatively, breathed. Mackenzie stared straight ahead, unconsciously holding her breath, then, breathing again, she tried once more to adjust her mind to being on the other side of the law.
“How’re you doing, Stanley?”
“I’m fine,” he replied after opening his eyes and lowering his chin while turning to look at her.
“You did well,” she said, putting her hand on his shoulder.
“Thanks. I was really scared there for a minute.”
“You didn’t show it, and that’s what mattered,” she replied, trying to sound confident.
After a brief pause, and after a slight nod to each other, Mackenzie took out her cellphone, put it on video, held it up a few inches in front of the camera in the corner above them, then pressed record. It recorded the elevator, looking empty, for about ten to twelve seconds and then, after stopping the recording, she brought it back down and set the video to play on a loop, and then held up the screen, as steady as she could, a few inches in front of the camera while Denton went to work on the security control on the elevator’s panel.
While he worked, Mackenzie stood with her eyes switching between the camera and the doors in case someone should call for the elevator or the doors should open. She wanted to be ready to tell whoever was waiting that the elevator was being repaired and to recommend they take another. She wasn’t too concerned about that happening, as most all of the people who worked in the building were gone for the day, but she wanted to be prepared for anything. There was also the possibility of it being a Bureau officer, and if it was they were screwed. However, Denton had told her security primarily used the loading dock elevator because it was bigger and had no ‘annoying tourists’.
Denton quietly opened the well-worn brass clasp of his old, brown-leather bag. He pulled out what looked to her like a volt/ohm meter, but which had a metal top the size of a credit card and a five inch screen that, as soon as he pushed the metal top into the slot for ID cards, began to shoot numbers and characters across in one long single file line. After a few seconds the numbers rotating at the beginning of the line stopped—9. The numbers, letters, and symbols behind it kept rotating through the character line and after a few more seconds the letter C appeared next to the 9. This kept repeating until finally the entire line was complete—just as Mackenzie’s arms were getting tired. Denton then pushed the button for sub-basement 2, a bell dinged, and the elevator descended.
Mackenzie tensed up. She didn’t know what to expect when the doors opened, but she wanted to be ready in case she had to engage someone, or worse, to get physical. She had decided her first play was going to be to just smile and move on to the encryption key room as though she and Denton were supposed to be there. But if it should be security, or someone who was suspicious, her play would be to pull out her badge and tell whoever was there they were on “police business”. But, to her relief, no one was there when the door opened. “Not much security,” she thought out loud.
“There’s not supposed to be. One of the security measures they decided upon was to make it seem like there wasn’t anything here important enough to have heavy security,” Denton commented while working to remove his gear from the panel. He looked over at her as he was finishing, smiled, and added, “Out-smarted themselves this time, huh?”
“Lucky for us,” she returned.
But she was not feeling lucky, or like smiling. She was on high alert. Her eyes darted around, looking first right, then left, and then again to make sure she saw anything that might be a problem. To begin with, there were cameras at each end of the hallway. The hallway was long and the walls were bright white on the right side and clear glass on the left. There was nowhere to hide; they were going to be exposed. She anticipated that. She hoped if they simply and casually walked out of the elevator and down the hallway they might allay suspicion by appearing to belong there. In addition security would assume they had a code card or they couldn’t have made it that far.
Mackenzie had not said anything to Denton, but she was also counting on the officers not paying much attention to the monitors as it was shift change on a Friday.
Then she heard footsteps. It was the sound of the heavy, thick-soled shoes commonly worn by police and security. They were moving slowly. Probably just the routine first patrol, but the slow click-clack of them was unnerving. Denton’s mouth dropped open. Mackenzie quietly backed into the elevator, pushing Denton back with her, and let the doors close. She and Denton stepped back under the camera and held their breath. The sound of the steps moved by, excruciatingly slowly, but after a minute the sound faded down the hallway and silence returned. Mackenzie and Denton both quietly exhaled, looked at each other with an expression of “that was a close one”, and then moved slowly to the front of the elevator and opened the doors again.
After looking out and not seeing or hearing anything, Mackenzie turned to Denton and said, “Okay. Now we’re just going to casually walk out and down the hall like we belong here. Got it?”
Denton was a little rattled by the footsteps, but he nodded absently and said, “Yeah.”
“Now. The encryption key room is the last room on the left, yes?” She asked this more to capture Denton’s attention than to confirm the directions—he had already gone over the route with her several times. Denton nodded.
They stepped out, Mackenzie about a half-step in front of Denton, turned to the right and walked down the hallway. The elevator doors closed behind them. The metal doors quietly touched; there was a finality to the sound of it. They were committed now.
As they walked they turned their heads to the left, as though they were looking in the windowed walls of the offices, in an attempt to hide their faces. They had about fifteen yards to walk and then they would arrive at the key room at the end of the hallway. Mackenzie walked casually, but Denton was walking awkwardly, a little self-consciously, so she slowed down a little to try to get Denton into cadence with her. After a few steps they synced up and made their way.
Denton was counting on the password and retinal scan he had embedded into the lockout when he installed the encryption system still being functional. It might have been erased, but he was somewhat confident it hadn’t. He had done this for every system he had created for the NCSA, just in case he might want access in the future and none of them had been erased while he worked there. NCSA was notorious within the organization for clearing passwords to systems after the programmers finished, and then refusing them access to the very machines they had created. Denton made sure that would not happen to him. But after two years someone could have come across his access and deleted it.
While Denton punched in his access code, Mackenzie stood by patiently waiting and looking and listening. “No alarms so far,” she thought to herself. But at any moment someone in the monitor room would settle into his/her station and see the two of them. They would most likely try to confirm that someone was supposed to be there, which would take a couple of minutes, and upon finding no one signed in to sub-basement 2, they would sound the alarm. However, they might be able to get away with being seen if security saw them enter a code that was accepted and allowed them entry. That would reassure the security officer they were authorized to be there and they might forego checking because the code pad had confirmed it for them. Lazy, but logical, and not unheard of for a weekend security shift.
After punching in his code there was a ding and the retinal scanner lit up. Denton leaned forward, his eye was scanned, the lock clicked, and the glass door moved open slightly. Mackenzie and Denton moved swiftly into the room and closed the door behind them to the sound of the lock clicking back in place.
“So far, so good,” Denton said under his breath as his shoulders relaxed and he scanned the room.
It didn’t look like it had been cleaned in a long while. There was dust on the computers and the table, and the floor needed sweeping. She figured since it was a NCSA secured room housekeeping probably wasn’t allowed in.
“This room hasn’t changed at all. In fact it looks like no one has been there since I left.” Denton said.
It was not a very big room, maybe ten by ten, with the back and side walls the same bright white as the rest of the hall. He reached back for the light switch but Mackenzie grabbed his wrist.
“Maybe we should leave the lights out for now. We don’t want someone getting curious about who’s in the room, don’t you think?”
“Yeah. I knew there was a reason I brought you along.” Denton replied, with a smile. Mackenzie gave him a weak smile in return and nodded toward the machine.
The key machine was obviously a prototype. It was six store-bought computers lined up on a long folding table, connected in series in order to create enough computing power to run the complicated program Denton and his team had written. A large monitor sat at the end of the table on the side facing the white wall, with the keyboard and mouse under it. There were two chairs, one at that end and the other perpendicular to it.
Mackenzie was somewhat surprised by how bare and empty the room was. Just the table, chairs, and the computers. She expected some kind of HAL 9000 type system. The computer set-up was very similar to the one Denton had at his house, but without all the other equipment he had in his home.
“Doesn’t look like this thing’s very popular,” said Mackenzie.
“Yeah, well, once we got it up and running, and proved it would work, the NCSA copied the system, with better tech, at headquarters. They left this one here because they didn’t want anyone to know they had their own private system, and this was supposed to fool them into thinking that,” Denton said. “Besides, it could be used for testing and as a backup if something happened to theirs.”
“And this fooled them?”
“Who knows. The games these agencies play are often complicated, but also sometimes, just silly.”
Mackenzie looked at him incredulously.
Denton smiled and said, “But I’d bet they haven’t monitored this place to make sure it’s even still here.” He turned away from Mackenzie and added, “Like I said, silly.”
Mackenzie shook her head, walked over and stood behind Denton, who had just hit the space bar. Immediately the fan motors of the four computers came on along with the power lights and the monitor.
“Okay, great, it’s on standby. I had a feeling it would be.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s easier than having to start up completely. Programmers like easy,” he said with a smile.
The monitor showed the system booting up. A bunch of code that Mackenzie didn’t understand cascaded down the screen, sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly, but in a few minutes it stopped and a login screen came up.
Denton keyed in his login. A second later the screen opened to a picture of a very fit guy in a speedo.
“Oops!” Denton said.
Mackenzie smiled as she shook her head and said, “Oh, you let teenage boys use this thing?”
Denton flushed. “Uh, no. Sorry, I forgot this would still be here.”
“No problem, Stanley. But can you open the drive?”
“I think so…. It’s accepted my login and that means My NAPPIR program is still installed.”
“You mentioned that at the pool house.”
“Yeah, it’s the program I created that lets me remain logged in, but doesn’t show me as logged in. It’s kind of a sleep mode for programers who don’t want to be locked out of their programs once the higher ups decide they don’t need us anymore.
“Yes, I remember Stanley.”
“I should have total control soon, because it looks like this thing hasn’t been used since I was at the NCSA. In fact, the user log shows one person signed in since I left. Man, they just ignored this thing once they got their’s up and working.”
Once the computers were running Denton pulled the drive out of his pocket and reached around to the back of the computer closest to him and inserted it into a USB port. A window popped up showing the contents of the drive and a question box appeared asking, Decrypt? Yes/No. Denton hit yes. The fan motors of all six computers whirled to life. He then moved the mouse to highlight all the folders and moved copies of it all to the desktop. Then he highlighted them all again and moved the mouse to the toolbar and a drop-down menu fell with several commands listed. He clicked on COPY and then SEND. Another window popped open asking for addresses. They had already worked out who—The NY Times, The Washington Post, ProPublica, CNN, MSNBC, CBS, all the major news outlets. Then he hit the ENTER key.
“Uh-oh,” Denton said as he leaned back in his chair.
“What?!”
Denton sat silently staring at the monitor. He pushed back his chair and looked up at Mackenzie with an expression that was a cross between surprise and confusion.
“Stanley, what’s going on?”
“Apparently there’s a new safety protocol. It must have been installed after I left by the last person to login. The system will let me access the drive, and it will decrypt it, but it won’t let me send anything on it without a passcode.
“Can you work around it?” Mackenzie asked, a little louder than she intended.
“I can try, but it’s a twenty-four character code, and that’s going to take some time.” His voice and his expression showed his fear had now changed to curiosity. He became intrigued by the problem.
“How much time?” Mackenzie said, sounding a little irritated.
“I don’t know, but…”
“Stanley, how long?”
“Any where from minutes to years, maybe more, and that’s if it doesn’t lock out after a certain number of failed attempts, which is protocol.
Mackenzie stepped back and put her hand on her forehead, staring blindly at the opposite wall. They had been lucky so far, but there was no way they would not be caught after that much time. Someone was going to get curious why they were there.
“Well, we’ve got no choice. Do the best you can, but you need to start now. It’s only a matter of time before the patrol comes back around,” she said as she turned to watch the hallway.
Denton turned and looked at the screen, pulled his chair up, and set his fingers over the keyboard, when suddenly he pulled his hands back, raised his head, and said, “Holy Shit!”
Mackenzie walked behind Denton and saw what he was reacting to. The twenty-four boxes in the window were filling with asterisks!
“What’s going on?” she asked, this time not concerned with how loud she was.
“Someone is remotely putting in the upload passcode.”
“Who?”
“I have no idea. There are only a few people who would have the clearance to remotely access this system: the top command at the NCSA, CIA, NSA, DNI, and the DOD.”
As they watched the boxes fill they suddenly heard loud footsteps running down the hall outside the room. Then six Bureau officers stood lining the glass wall outside with their guns aimed at Mackenzie and Denton.
“PUT YOUR HANDS UP!” shouted the officer closest to the door.
Mackenzie and Denton froze, but the computer continued to work after the passcode that was remotely inputed was accepted. A window popped open which said, “SEND?”
“Security must have been alerted when the passcode window opened,” Denton said, too astonished to be afraid, “that was a good idea.”
“Last warning. Hands up or we shoot!”
Denton put his hands up as he stood, blocking Mackenzie from their view. Mackenzie slowly raised her left hand while gracefully reaching down, moving the cursor over the send key, clicking SEND, and then she slowly raised her right hand. There was a swish sound and the fan motors slowed.
“Keep your hands up and walk to the door!”
Slowly the two of them moved toward the door.
###
General Alexander sat silently staring at his monitor. A slight smile worked across his face. He let his arms drop across his armrests and let out a sigh.
“It’s done,” he thought. He suddenly felt very tired. He closed his eyes and let his mind travel back to the little boy with the idealistic view of military service who wanted to be a hero. He was raised in a military family and his father had instilled loyalty and duty in him from the time he was a child. Duty was the guiding principle by which he had lived his adult life. It was in his marrow, his cells.
But he also thought himself an ethical person. He grew up with that as well. In fact his sense of duty was rooted in his ethics. Duty wasn’t important to him just because he was an officer in the Army, it was important because it was ethical. And despite the fact that he had done some unethical things, he had always been able to rationalize them as being in the best interests of his country, or they were orders, and even though his orders sometimes benefitted him personally, he rationalized that that was collateral, so it was acceptable. That kind of rationalization was likely one of the reasons he was recruited into Omilos.
He had idealized his service since he began his career. Those ideals were something he never really thought much about, they were simply his reality. They had now been on his mind almost constantly. He was part of something he initially rationalized as patriotic, but now believed was treason.
He had finally done the right thing. It wasn’t heroic, but it was redemptive. It felt like a penance paid. He also hoped it would bring some forgiveness, at least from his family.
General Alexander opened his eyes and looked at a picture of his family sitting proudly on his desk while he reached into his top drawer, pulled out his weapon, put it under his chin and pulled the trigger.
###
Mackenzie and Denton sat in a small room with metal doors and wired glass windows on two sides. They were handcuffed to a metal bench which was anchored to a concrete floor. It was quiet in the room. Neither of them spoke because Mackenzie had warned Denton after they were left there that they were likely being recorded, “That’s why they put us in together,” she said, quietly.
Mackenzie was occupied with looking through a window outside the cell at a television showing news anchors speaking with animated gestures. She could not hear them, but it was obvious they were excited. Scrolling across the bottom was a chyron about the startling new documents and video they had received about a conspiracy. There was a headline that read, ‘FAKE COUP!’ And, ‘Government in Crisis!’ And in a corner of the screen there was a replay of the video of President Henry in the meeting plotting with his co-conspirators. She wasn’t sure how the stations got on the air, but she guessed they decided to violate the governments order—risking prison for the truth, “Stanford would be proud,” she thought.
Denton sat looking blankly at the grey floor, his left leg bouncing up and down at a rate a hummingbird would envy. He was more scared than he had ever been. He was in trouble, prison trouble. But at the same time he was imagining his future imprisonment he was a little proud of himself; he had fulfilled his promised to Reynolds.
The news show moved from shots of Sanderson, Soleste, Ryan, and the rest being swarmed by the media as they tried to make their way to their cars from their various homes and offices, their heads lowered, their security moving them like a rugby ball toward the goal of a waiting limousine, next to panels debating the authenticity of the documents and the video; the president’s party and supporters were declaring them fakes. President Henry had already released a statement saying all this was a fabricated political hit job by his enemies, “a farce and a sham, sad,” followed by orders for more arrests of journalists.
In the day since the coup attempt had been stopped there had been over six thousand journalists, academics, lawyers, politicians, military officers and enlisted, arrested and jailed under the wide powers given by the declaration of Martial Law President Henry had invoked. It was a massive sweep, and many had complained, some called it long overdue, but most remained mute, confused about what to do. Now settling the dispute had taken on an even more serious tenor—the republic was at stake.
Mackenzie was amazed by the result of their efforts to reveal a critical threat to democracy. Two of them had lost their lives in the effort; not to mention the large number who were sacrificed to perpetrate the tragedy in the first place.
She was amazed and disappointed, but not surprised, at the party faithful who were trying to dismiss the evidence in an effort to save Henry and his cronies. But she and her companions did what they believed to be right. They weren’t responsible for what everyone did about it afterward, whether anyone else rose to the moment.
After the chyron began repeating Mackenzie turned to Denton. She saw that his fear and anxiety was still eating at him. Swinging her hand to his leg, with the chains clanging as she did, she said, “It’s going to be okay, Stanley.”
“Is it!?” he shot back, still staring at the grey abyss at his feet. “We broke into a top secret government installation, used a system we weren’t authorized to use, and distributed classified documents to the public. You’re suspected of murder, and we’re also complicit in a mass shooting that left four people dead, one of them my best friend. So tell me, Mac, how is this going to be okay?!”
Mackenzie looked back silently trying to conjure an answer for him. She couldn’t think of anything; he was right, they were in big trouble, and she had no idea how they were going to get out of it.
“Okay. We might end up in prison, but what else could we do? We knew what Henry and his cronies were doing and we had the evidence. Do you think we should have just ignored it because we could get into trouble?”
Denton sat quietly, his leg slowing to a stop. Mackenzie turned back to look at the TV and saw a group of senators speaking to reporters. They were defending the President and calling the documents and videos ‘fake’. She was disgusted that there was even a discussion about how to handle the revelation of presidential criminality; they had the flash drive, the files, the videos and yet so many refused to act. Then, happily, it switched to outraged Senators demanding an investigation; maybe there was hope.
“You’re right,” Denton said with a tremor in his voice, “I’m scared of what might happen, but I guess there was no other way, and if I have to go to prison, then I’ll pay that price. It was the right thing to do. ‘Good trouble’,” he said with a smile.
“It was the patriotic thing to do too,” Mackenzie replied, “and I’m very proud of you for having the courage to do it, Stanley.”
She reached over, took his hand and smiled. He looked at her, returned her smile, and said, “Call me Stan.”