abilities, not in the one true God.
Katie Brandt, what in heaven’s name are you doing? Maybe it wasn’t in heaven’s name. The question returned. Was she making a mistake with Josh? Possibly endangering someone who wasn’t prepared to die?
“Kate?”
“Huh?”
“You will explain what you’re doing when you start working your magic, won’t you?”
“I’ll tell you everything you need to know.” Including some things you probably don’t want to hear. “Hand me the list of IP addresses, Josh. It’s time to take a trip to Iran.”
8
Josh watched as Kate explored the directories on the Iranian server, a machine run by an organization funding international terrorists. As the tingling sensation ran up his back, the urge to pull the plug on her workstation grew. If he pulled it, he would probably say some things to Kate that he would regret. On the flip side of this platter, her foray also gave him the urge to wrap her up in his arms and protect her from anything their unseen enemy might try to do. Josh wiggled and squirmed until he couldn’t remain silent any longer. “Kate, how long are you going to stay logged in on their server?”
“Not one second longer than I have to. There. The files are coming across now. Another minute and they can have their unpatched server back.”
“Would their server administrators really be that sloppy? This is a terrorist group. If they slip up, bad things could happen.”
“You’d be surprised how many servers go unpatched for years. Somebody goes on vacation, a patch doesn’t get installed, soon, it’s forgotten. Or they just become complacent and lazy until it’s too late. I’ll bet you I can hack our own UNIX server.”
“I know one professor you could really tick off if you did.”
“We’ve got better things to do with our time. The files are all here and I’ve spooled them to the printer. Would you grab the printouts please, Josh, while I back out of my session on the server?”
Josh flipped through the stack of papers he pulled from the printer. “You ripped off at least thirty email messages.”
“All from the suspected collaborators. Now the tedious part begins. Do you ever play those cryptographic games they print in the newspaper?”
“Yeah. When I was a kid. Wasn’t too shabby at it, either.”
“Good. You take these.” She handed him a third of the pages and took the rest.
Obviously Kate realized how much brighter she was than many of the genius-level students in the department. She didn’t try to rub it in, but was clearly aware of it, and sometimes, that rubbed him the wrong way.
He took a long look at Kate’s face and bright blue eyes. Everybody needs a little wrong-way rubbing sometime. “What should we try first?”
“The same thing I saw in the shooter’s email. Word spacing patterns. There’s open source software for embedding messages inside images, audio files, videos. But it appears that these guys prefer to hide in plain sight. Just circle the words in the message that look forced. Then we’ll go back and check for patterns.”
He was on his fifth page, marking words and searching for some pattern that eluded him, when Kate grabbed his arm. “I think I’ve got it. I wondered why these messages were so much longer than the others I’ve seen.”
“OK, genius, what’s the pattern?”
“19—19—19.”
“That’s a lot of separation between words.”
“But it hides messages much better.”
“Why nineteen, Kate?”
“Nineteen is significant in the Quran. You’ll find suras consisting of nineteen ayaats, multiples of nineteen for words and letters. Many other things are multiples of nineteen, too. Let me see what you marked so far.” She scanned his five pages. “That confirms the pattern.”
“Kate, you can’t count that fast—”
“You don’t count them. You just calibrate your vision for nineteen.”
“Yeah, sure. Twist my pupil a quarter turn to the right and it
Katie Brandt, what in heaven’s name are you doing? Maybe it wasn’t in heaven’s name. The question returned. Was she making a mistake with Josh? Possibly endangering someone who wasn’t prepared to die?
“Kate?”
“Huh?”
“You will explain what you’re doing when you start working your magic, won’t you?”
“I’ll tell you everything you need to know.” Including some things you probably don’t want to hear. “Hand me the list of IP addresses, Josh. It’s time to take a trip to Iran.”
8
Josh watched as Kate explored the directories on the Iranian server, a machine run by an organization funding international terrorists. As the tingling sensation ran up his back, the urge to pull the plug on her workstation grew. If he pulled it, he would probably say some things to Kate that he would regret. On the flip side of this platter, her foray also gave him the urge to wrap her up in his arms and protect her from anything their unseen enemy might try to do. Josh wiggled and squirmed until he couldn’t remain silent any longer. “Kate, how long are you going to stay logged in on their server?”
“Not one second longer than I have to. There. The files are coming across now. Another minute and they can have their unpatched server back.”
“Would their server administrators really be that sloppy? This is a terrorist group. If they slip up, bad things could happen.”
“You’d be surprised how many servers go unpatched for years. Somebody goes on vacation, a patch doesn’t get installed, soon, it’s forgotten. Or they just become complacent and lazy until it’s too late. I’ll bet you I can hack our own UNIX server.”
“I know one professor you could really tick off if you did.”
“We’ve got better things to do with our time. The files are all here and I’ve spooled them to the printer. Would you grab the printouts please, Josh, while I back out of my session on the server?”
Josh flipped through the stack of papers he pulled from the printer. “You ripped off at least thirty email messages.”
“All from the suspected collaborators. Now the tedious part begins. Do you ever play those cryptographic games they print in the newspaper?”
“Yeah. When I was a kid. Wasn’t too shabby at it, either.”
“Good. You take these.” She handed him a third of the pages and took the rest.
Obviously Kate realized how much brighter she was than many of the genius-level students in the department. She didn’t try to rub it in, but was clearly aware of it, and sometimes, that rubbed him the wrong way.
He took a long look at Kate’s face and bright blue eyes. Everybody needs a little wrong-way rubbing sometime. “What should we try first?”
“The same thing I saw in the shooter’s email. Word spacing patterns. There’s open source software for embedding messages inside images, audio files, videos. But it appears that these guys prefer to hide in plain sight. Just circle the words in the message that look forced. Then we’ll go back and check for patterns.”
He was on his fifth page, marking words and searching for some pattern that eluded him, when Kate grabbed his arm. “I think I’ve got it. I wondered why these messages were so much longer than the others I’ve seen.”
“OK, genius, what’s the pattern?”
“19—19—19.”
“That’s a lot of separation between words.”
“But it hides messages much better.”
“Why nineteen, Kate?”
“Nineteen is significant in the Quran. You’ll find suras consisting of nineteen ayaats, multiples of nineteen for words and letters. Many other things are multiples of nineteen, too. Let me see what you marked so far.” She scanned his five pages. “That confirms the pattern.”
“Kate, you can’t count that fast—”
“You don’t count them. You just calibrate your vision for nineteen.”
“Yeah, sure. Twist my pupil a quarter turn to the right and it
Similar Books
