The Cassandra Conspiracy Read online

  “The guy at Cornell?”

  “That’s the one. When the FBI and the folks in my department-called CERT for Computer Emergency Response Team-started on his trail, we did a network map, then went after the computer usage records in the host. By following the trail, the authorities were able to zero in on the hacker and effect an arrest.”

  “So all you have to do is follow the message.”

  “Which, of course, is easier said than done. I’ll give it a shot, and we’ll go from there. I know a few of the security folks at UniNet who can help. Give me a call tomorrow late afternoon–better yet, why don’t we have dinner here tomorrow evening. Say about six.”

  Janet was a very attractive woman, and Payton wasn’t foolish enough to turn down her invitation–either to follow up on the encrypted message or the one for dinner.

  “That sounds fine,” Steve said getting up. “See you then.”

  . . . . . .

  The next day Payton's mind often departed from the law books and court filings only to dwell upon the E‑mail message he had received. No matter how hard he tried, Payton couldn’t force himself to put the message and its mysterious origin away in some mental compartment to be opened at a later time. Frequently, he found himself taking furtive glances at his watch, waiting until it was time to leave the office and head over to Janet’s apartment. The message had definitely complicated his life; equally so did Janet, to whom Payton found himself surprisingly attracted. She possessed a pit-bull attitude in her approach to problems rather than the bloodhound one Evanston had attributed to her. He’d make it a point to correct Matt Evanston’s simile.

  Promptly at six o’clock, Payton knocked on the apartment door. As Janet let him in, the aroma of Chinese food reminded Payton that he had forgotten about lunch.

  “Smells great. I’m starving. By the way, I’m also damned impressed. It’s not every woman who can cook Chinese.”

  “Cook? There’s a carry‑out right down the street,” she said with a smile.

  As Janet ladled out the combination vegetables, egg rolls, and pork-fried rice, she brought Payton up to date. “I spent the morning on the phone with my friends at UniNet. Of course, I didn’t give them all the details, just that you had gotten E‑mail across UniNet and I was interested in tracing the source.”

  “What’d they say?”

  “As of yet nothing, but I expect to hear from them soon. Apparently things have changed since I left government service. New anti‑virus safeguards have been put into the system, and tracing a message–even one without an assigned message number–is easier than it was a few years ago. Of course, it’s still no cakewalk. So until we hear from the folks over at UniNet, we’re stuck. Therefore you might as well enjoy dinner.”

  “And the company,” Payton added.

  Janet smiled.

  All of a sudden Payton realized that with all the talk about the e‑mail mystery on hold, that it was incumbent upon him to keep the conversation going. Not that Janet was hard to talk to; she wasn’t. But Payton wasn’t big on baring his soul.

  Since his divorce, Payton had shied away from any relationship no matter how innocuous. Most of his friends were married and had families, so he was often invited over for dinner or to a party. On each occasion, he made it clear that he was not accepting the invitation in order to meet someone new. Although from time to time Payton took out one of the women that he had met, as soon as the relationship grew into anything more than a casual date, Payton was gone. He was content to practice law during the day, and spend quiet evenings at home watching the cable channels.

  Before Payton could open his mouth, Janet asked, “So tell me, have you always lived in Baltimore?”

  “Born and raised here–except for a couple of years in the service.”

  “The service,” Janet repeated carefully. “Vietnam?”

  Payton nodded his head. “By the time I was a year out of high school, the war was going on hot and heavy. So I enlisted–Marines.”

  “How long were you over there?”

  “Too long,” Steve said wistfully. “But then, a day was too long.”

  Janet impulsively laid her hand on Payton's. Quickly, her warmth transcended the emotional barrier Payton had worked so hard to erect. Just as suddenly he decided that he liked it.

  Nonetheless, the look in Steve’s eyes told Janet that she needed to change the subject. “So I guess you got your law degree after you got out of the service?”

  “Law has always been the trunk of the Payton family tree. My old man was a lawyer as was my grandfather, so it seemed only natural that I’d follow in the footsteps of my great forefathers. At least that’s what my father expected.”

  “He must have been proud.”

  “Yes and no. When I got out of the service, I really had nothing on my plate. You know, no commitments, no plans. So it was kind of hard to put up a rational argument why I should become a garbage collector, fireman, or for that matter anything else. I took a four-year liberal arts course at the U of M, and then got accepted to the University of Baltimore’s law curriculum. I couldn’t get enough of the law courses.”

  “Well that certainly should have made your father happy.”

  “Not quite. He wanted me to attend one of the ‘name’ law schools. But admission to one of the premier schools required superior grades, and my undergraduate grades weren’t sufficient. So there had to be a slight compromise there, and my father wasn’t one to compromise, at least not when it came to my sister or me.”

  “Only one sibling?” Janet asked.

  “Yup, just one–Sheryl–and she was the lucky one. She didn’t have the pressures my parents bestowed upon their only son. They seemed to have fewer aspirations for their daughter. They were happy she wanted to go to college, and would have been equally happy had she decided to get a job.”

  “Do you see much of her?”

  “Sheryl lives in Oregon with her husband and two children. Other than an occasional card or phone call, we have little contact.”

  “You finished law school, got admitted to the Maryland bar, and were off and running.”

  “Except I ran a different race than the one my father had cut out for me. After he died, I found out that he was disappointed that I turned down the name law firms in Baltimore and began my own practice.”

  “What’s wrong with having your own firm? Isn’t that how the big guys started?”

  Payton shrugged. “I guess he envisioned me ensconced in an oak-paneled office, on the fortieth floor of some skyscraper. Meanwhile, I was tickled to be able to take on those cases that posed a real challenge without getting the permission of some high and mighty senior partner whose eyes were firmly glued to the number of billable hours.”

  They ate quietly for a few minutes.

  “Enough about me. Tell me about Janet Phillips, computer expert extraordinaire,” Steve said with a tender smile.

  “There’s not much to tell. I’m the product of a small town in eastern Washington state, an only child. My father was a factory foreman for an appliance manufacturer, and he didn’t have enough money to be able to foot the bill for any four‑year college, much less one of the better ones. My grades were good, so I decided to try for a scholarship, and was lucky enough to receive a full one from Caltech.”

  Payton knew that Caltech was one of the premier engineering and science schools in the world. They didn’t admit many of the hundreds of applicants the school got every year. And if Janet not only got in, but also did so with a full scholarship, it warranted his respect.

  “After graduation, I took a job with the government. I figured it was a good place to start, and that I’d pick up enough experience to be a valuable asset to private industry.”

  “That’s when you were working computer security?” Payton asked between mouthfuls of egg roll.

  “Right. Of course in those days, there weren’t the big networks that abound today. Most of the systems were stand‑alone computers with half dozen or
dozen remote terminals. The problem was always one of some hacker dialing into the system a la War Games.”

  Payton remembered the movie where Matthew Broderick played the part of a teenage hacker who somehow penetrates the Pentagon’s missile control computer, nearly starting World War Three.

  “Private industry was dogging our work since they were faced with the same problem. Companies were computerizing their operations left and right, and what good is a computer system if you can’t call in from Timbuktu and use it? After a while the Pentagon decided that our methods were good enough to put out there in the commercial sector, and we started sharing. You can imagine how hard that is for an organization so cloaked in secrecy.”

  Payton nodded.

  “As the years went by, the networks grew–both those in the government as well as those in the private sector. And the security problems went beyond smart modems that wouldn’t give you direct access, but called you back at whatever phone number had been programmed into them. Software problems sprang up like dandelions in spring, and we were off and running again. Another marathon, with all new problems. “Challenges” we were told to call them. Finally, last year, I had enough. I figured that I had learned most of what I needed to be able to offer my services to the private sector, and here I am. Of course, I didn’t count on you, Mr. Payton,” Janet said laughingly.

  Payton was planning his retort when Janet’s phone rang. After a few minutes’ discussion, Janet hung up.

  “There’s good news and not so good news.”

  Payton waited for both shoes to fall.

  “UniNet was able to do an area trace on our little E‑mail message. They’ve pinpointed the general area, but not the source.”

  “Where is it? The general area, I mean. West coast, southern states?” Payton asked.

  “In our backyard, literally. The message originated somewhere near Pine Lakes, Maryland, south of the Pennsylvania border–a scant forty‑five minute drive. Now what?”

  “That’s a damned good question. I’d like to turn this whole mess over to the police, but even with the UniNet info, there’s nothing substantial–no hard, tangible evidence.”

  “If you want to hand this off, we can. God knows we’ve done more than anyone would have expected us to do. No one could fault us for dumping this whole mess into the laps of whatever law enforcement agency is responsible for such crimes.” Janet thought for a minute, and then added, “Of course, that’s one of the hang-ups. There haven’t been any laws broken, no crime committed.”

  “Let’s drop back a second and take a look at what we’ve got. We know the message originated in northern Baltimore County. We also know that if this is for real, someone’s prepared to pay five million dollars to have someone else killed. Five million dollars. My guess is, even allowing for inflation, you could wipe out half of Baltimore for less than that. So who’s worth that kind of money? Then there’s Shangri‑La. That makes no sense at all. Finally the schedule calls for the killing to be done by the first of November.”

  “Certainly not enough to go to the police,” Janet added.

  Payton sensed that Janet had something else in mind. Exactly what, he didn’t know. But he was relatively sure he was about to find out.

  “All right. What do you think?” Payton asked.

  “I think it’s a nice time of the year for a country vacation. I hear Pine Lakes is exceptionally pretty in the fall.”

  Payton locked Janet’s gaze, trying to determine whether she was simply joking or whether she really intended to drop everything and go to Pine Lakes on a mission of mercy. “Are you serious?” he asked.

  “Very.”

  “Why in God’s name would you pack your bags and go to Pine Lakes when we don’t even know if this thing’s for real?”

  “I have a feeling about this.”

  “And you always give in to your feelings?” Payton retorted.

  “When the need arises.” Janet crossed her legs again.

  “All right. Let’s say that I’m willing to follow you to Pine Lakes. Then what? We don’t have a damned thing to go on, and besides, even if we did, we don’t have the foggiest notion what we’re walking into.” Payton felt the adrenaline surge. “If this message’s real, then someone in Pine Lakes is planning a murder, and you don’t see anything wrong with plunging headlong into a tank of sharks?”

  “We won’t take any chances. We’ll spend a few days in Pine Lakes, find out who the likely suspects are, then turn everything over to the police. I’ve got the people over at UniNet watching their system for additional E‑mail coming out of or routed through Pine Lakes. If anything turns up, they’ll download the file into my mailbox. Maybe whoever’s behind this will continue using UniNet and the same encryption scheme he’s used up till now. If so, we’ll be able to read his mail. With any luck at all, we’ll have more to turn over in the way of evidence than we have today. It’s worth a shot.”

  Payton looked intently at Janet. His days of fighting other people’s battles had ended when he left the Marines. Now he was being drawn, like a mouse to the trap, into something sinister, dark, and foreboding. He needed to think, to consider his options. But Janet would have none of that. Like a high-speed computer, she had assessed the possibilities, analyzed the probabilities, and decided on an appropriate course of action–all of which she had mapped out in a few choice sentences. If Janet’s assumptions were correct, then his failure to take action would most likely result in someone’s death.

  Payton doubted he could live with that. On the other hand, if this was all some kind of practical joke gone astray, they’d find out as soon as Janet’s friends at UniNet pinpointed the source. Besides, he could manage a few days away. Payton only hoped that by going to Pine Lakes, they weren’t walking blindly into a minefield.

  “When do you want to leave?” Payton asked. He had recently concluded several of his most active cases. Everything else could wait a few days.

  “Tomorrow morning. I’ll pack tonight and meet you out front. How’s ten o’clock?”

  “That’s fine. I need to go into the office, which I’ll do tonight, to wrap up a few things. But that shouldn’t take long.” Payton rose and reached for his jacket. “See you in the morning.”

  CHAPTER 5

  The next morning, Payton was up by seven‑thirty. After his usual shower and shave, he dressed, slipping on a pair of his better jeans, a casual shirt, and a pair of Docksiders. Finally, he searched the back of his closet for the old duffel bag he used for long weekends at the beach. Payton packed enough casual clothes, along with the toiletries from his medicine cabinet, to last him at least a week. His duffel bag in hand, he did a quick check around the apartment. Everything in the condo looked all right. Payton slipped on his sunglasses and headed out the door.

  He took the elevator from the tenth floor to the garage, where he had parked his one concession to success–a dark blue Jaguar XJS. As he settled in the bucket seat, Payton savored the aroma of the car’s interior, its Connolly leather smelling as rich as when he first picked up the car.

  From the glove compartment he removed his set of maps and shuffled through the stack until he found the one of northern Maryland. With the map folded and resting on the steering wheel, he traced Interstate 83 from Baltimore north to the Pennsylvania line.

  Payton turned the key, and listened to the purr of the engine. As soon as the engine warmed up, the tachometer returned to normal idle. Payton put in a cassette of his favorite singer and songwriter, Harry Chapin, and listened to Chapin’s hit “Taxi” as he backed out of the parking space.

  . . . . . .

  Janet was punctual, walking out the door of her apartment building just as Payton was pulling up to the curb. She wore tan khakis and a white turtleneck sweater. Payton hit the trunk release, then got out to help her with her things.

  “Only two suitcases?”

  “I travel light. Actually, there’s just a few clothes. Everything else is computer equipment–my portable co
mputer and a modem,” Janet said laughing.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Most women going away for a few days with a man don’t usually bring their computer equipment.”

  “This is different,” Payton replied unsure where their conversation was going.

  “I know.”

  After collecting Janet, he headed for the Jones Falls Expressway. Payton took the northbound entrance, picking up speed while mindful that he was “speeding ticket bait”. Traffic was light and they made good time.

  “This is what successful attorneys drive today?” Janet quipped.

  “Not exactly.”

  “Does that mean that you’re not successful, or that successful attorneys don’t drive Jags?”

  “Let’s put it this way. My success, limited though it may be, does not warrant driving an XJS. A local dealer ran into some problems that challenged my professional ability. After all was said and done, I accepted the car in lieu of a check. If it hadn’t been for that, we’d be driving to Pine Lakes in a Toyota station wagon.”

  “So tell me, Steve, has there been a Mrs. Payton?”

  Payton hesitated for a moment. Janet was like a burglar, picking locks in doors he had long ago secured. It was becoming obvious that his emotional safeguards were falling like so many ancient horsemen–unable to ward off the encroaching Mongols.

  “I’m divorced,” Steve said perfunctorily.

  “I see,” Janet said, the hurt evident in her voice. “I’m sorry if I stepped on a taboo topic.”

  “It’s not that. Sometimes it seems my marriage was a long time ago; other times it feels as if all that grief occurred yesterday. Cynthia and I met at law school, and the match seemed perfect. We dated for several months, got engaged, and then married.”

  “What happened?”

  “I wanted a family; she didn’t. I can still remember the shocked look on her face when I first broached the topic. Having children was not in her crystal ball. After the first discussion, every time I brought it up, she kept putting me off. Finally, I got the message–no kids.”