The Bug Hunter: A Novel Read online

  Adnan smiled. “I think so. I’m not sure what to bring.”

  “Just what you can carry. Bashera will take care of us.”

  “When will we leave? Now?”

  “No, my love. Not now. Let’s have dinner and get a good night’s sleep. We’ll leave first thing in the morning. I’ll text Bashera and let him know to put our plans in motion.”

  Adnan suddenly relaxed. “There’s leftover lamb in the refrigerator. We can heat that up.”

  Later that night as Adnan slept, Haniya lay awake, her mind racing. What was she feeling? She didn’t really know. She looked over at her boyfriend, a man she’d professed her love to and agreed to be with forever, and felt nothing. Love? Hardly. Pity? Some. Contempt? Absolutely. He was weak. A man who crumbled under pressure. A man she could never respect.

  Haniya rolled over to Adnan and spooned him in a soft embrace and whispered sweetly in his ear in Arabic. “Our Lord, forgive us our sins and anything we may have done that transgressed our duty. . . .”

  And then, with a practiced stroke, she dragged a blade across Adnan’s throat, pressing deeply into sinew and bone. By the time he could react, she’d cleanly severed his carotid artery; with every beat of his dying heart, he spilled a river of blood onto the sheets. Within a few seconds, his heart became still. Haniya stared at him through the darkness and waited until she was sure he was dead. She then kissed him on the forehead and softly said, “Allahu akbar.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Manassas, Virginia

  Lee Jensen pulled into the BRL parking lot at precisely 8:55 a.m. Gabriel hadn’t slept well the night before, and he was sipping his third Starbucks coffee out of a paper cup. He’d gone over the list of questions he was going to ask Adnan and had practiced the casual way he was going to ask them. This was to be, in Jensen’s words, a “noninterrogation interrogation.” Gabriel looked nervous and clearly didn’t want to blow it. They knew this would be their best chance to get information about what was going on at BRL before the FBI came and dropped a huge hammer on the investigation.

  Jensen looked at Gabriel and gave him a thumbs-up. “You good?”

  “I think so,” Gabriel said, taking a final swig of his coffee. He unhooked his seat belt and opened the passenger door. Before getting out he asked, “Any final thoughts?”

  “May the Force be with you,” Jensen said.

  “Funny,” Gabriel said, smiling.

  He entered the BRL lobby and smiled at the receptionist, the same one whom he’d talked to the previous day. “Good morning,” he said. “Can you ring Dr. Mishner and tell him Gabriel Marx is here for him?”

  “Of course, though I don’t think that he’s in yet. Let me check,” she said, picking up the phone. It rang a dozen times with no answer. “Do you want to have a seat? I’ll let you know as soon as he gets in.” Gabriel knew that employees entered through a separate entrance at the side of the building and that he wouldn’t know when Adnan arrived unless he was told.

  “OK, thanks,” Gabriel took a seat in the lobby area and looked at his watch, an Omega Speedmaster that Claire had given him as a birthday present the previous year. It was 9:05 a.m. From the coffee table in front of him, he picked up the Washington Post, one of the few daily newspapers that still published a hard-copy edition, and read the headlines: “China Blockade of Taiwan Entering Second Week,” “Cooperman to Visit Beijing as Crisis Grows,” “Unemployment Remains Steady at 8%.” He tossed the front page aside and reached for the sports section. The last thing he needed now was to get his mind wrapped up in geopolitics.

  After more than an hour had gone by with no sign of Adnan, Gabriel stepped outside and walked into the parking lot. It was a hot summer day with high humidity, and by the time he got to Jensen’s car, Gabriel was already sweating.

  Jensen, who was sitting in his car with the AC on listening to a podcast of TED Talks, rolled down the window and asked, “What’s up?”

  “He’s a no-show. I wonder if this is a sign.”

  “A sign of what? That he doesn’t like you?”

  “Funny. Yes, and maybe he’s got something to hide.”

  “How long do you want to give it?”

  Gabriel again looked at his watch. It was 10:25. “Can you get his home address?”

  “Is the pope Catholic? I work for Homeland Security. I can get anyone’s address,” Jensen said, punching Adnan’s name into his iPhone. After a few seconds, it came back with an address. “He lives on Dean Park Lane in Manassas. It’s less than ten minutes from here.”

  Gabriel went around to the passenger side of the car and got in. “Let’s roll.”

  As Jensen pulled out onto Wellington Road, Gabriel noticed a sign for the Manassas National Battlefield Park, the site of the First and Second Battles of Bull Run during the Civil War. He wondered how many men had died on the land surrounding the BRL; how ironic, he thought, that they were now chasing a weapon made up of DNA-altered insects on the hallowed ground where men killed by black powder guns and steel swords.

  Adnan’s house sat on a tidy street full of ranch-style homes with picket fences. They pulled up to the curb, and Jensen turned off the ignition. There was a car in the driveway.

  “Let’s run the plate and see if it’s Adnan’s,” Gabriel said.

  “You’re getting the hang of this cop stuff, my friend,” Jensen said. He punched in the car’s Virginia plate number, and it came back instantly. “It’s his,” Jensen announced.

  Gabriel nodded. “Now what?”

  “We knock on the door.”

  They walked up the brick drive and approached the front door. Jensen took out his DHS badge and moved to the left of the door to look through the picture window. The inside was dark, and he couldn’t see much. He stayed to the side of the door and rapped his knuckles hard on the wood.

  “Homeland Security!” he yelled. “Open up!”

  They waited for a few moments, and Jensen repeated the drill. There was no answer. Gabriel then put his hands on the doorknob to see if the door was locked. To his surprise, it gave way. Pushing the door open with his foot, Jensen again yelled, “Homeland Security! Anybody home?”

  When there again was no answer, Jensen stepped into the foyer. He looked at Gabriel. “We’re on thin ice here. We don’t have a warrant and really should back off now and get one. But if you are a friend who is concerned about his welfare, we can call this a welfare check. Are you a friend concerned about his welfare?”

  Gabriel nodded with a slight smile. “Yes I am.”

  Jensen stepped farther into the house and repeatedly called out, “Homeland Security!” They moved through the living room and checked out the kitchen. There were dirty plates on the counter with food still on them. They then moved down the hall to the bedrooms.

  Jensen was in the lead and pushed open the door to the master bedroom. He could immediately see a form in the bed lying on its side. He yelled, “Hello! Homeland Security!” There was no movement. He flipped on the lights and stepped in.

  “Uh oh,” Jensen said. They approached the bed and found Adnan staring blankly toward the ceiling, his head twisted grotesquely in a way that accentuated the gaping wound in his neck. Blood had soaked the sheets and the mattress and had dried a deep shade of purple.

  “Jesus Christ!” Gabriel blurted. He’d seen a lot of dead bodies in Iraq, but this was different. Bile quickly rose up from his stomach.

  Jensen instinctively knew Gabriel might get sick. “If you’re gonna hurl, do it outside and not in the bathroom. I don’t want to be accused of contaminating the crime scene!”

  Gabriel nodded and ran from the room and out the front door. He promptly dropped to his knees and threw up on the front lawn.

  Jensen followed him out and handed him a handkerchief. “Don’t feel bad. Happens to everyone who isn’t used to seeing crime scenes. And that was a particularl
y nasty one.”

  Gabriel wiped his mouth and stood. He started to hand the handkerchief back to Jensen, who quickly said, “It’s a gift.”

  After a moment, Jensen said, “Well, this is going to change things, my friend. We’re going to have to call this in. It’s gonna be a murder investigation. If we’re lucky, we’ll only have to deal with the local cops. But eventually the Fibbies are gonna get involved.”

  “Fibbies?”

  “G-men. Feds. FBI.”

  Gabriel nodded. “Listen, I don’t want to put you in a tough spot here, but before you call this in, I want to go back in there and see what we can find. Maybe he’s left notes, paper work, laptop. If we leave it for the police, we’ll never get a crack at it.”

  Jensen looked around, noticed that the streets were fairly empty. “I like the way you think,” he said. He pulled out a pair of disposable gloves and handed them to Gabriel. “Here, put these on.”

  Within the space of two hours, the house on Dean Park Lane was a hive of police activity. Yellow tape cordoned off the house, and a uniformed Manassas police officer was guarding access to the crime scene. Gabriel and Lee Jensen stood just outside the tape, leaning on their car. They were waiting for the local head of homicide to show up.

  Just then Jensen’s phone buzzed. “Go,” he barked.

  “I just got off the phone with the president,” Jason Witt said. “She’s willing to hold off on the FBI for another day or two.”

  “Got it,” Jensen said. “So we’ve got what? Thirty-six hours?”

  “Tops. You need to get going on this as fast as possible.”

  “I need two things. Can you get us a warrant to search Adnan’s lab without creating a ruckus?”

  Witt sighed. “I’ve got a judge who owes me a favor. I’ll see if he’ll keep it under seal. What’s the second thing?”

  “I need a computer expert assigned to me. Can you get me Lisa Brooks?”

  “OK. I’ll call you back,” Witt said, and hung up.

  Just as Jensen disconnected from Witt, an unmarked sedan pulled up. Three men in suits got out, each with police badges around their necks. The one Jensen assumed to be the in charge was about forty-five years old, with close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair. He gave direction to the detectives with him and immediately zeroed in on Jensen and Gabriel.

  “My name’s Detective Lankford. You the DHS guys who called this in?” he asked.

  “Yep. Special Agent Lee Jensen. This is Gabriel Marx.” They quickly shook hands. Lankford then stood very close to Jensen, a ploy to exert dominance over him.

  “My chief told me that you’d be poking around here,” Lankford said. “I told her that would be a bad idea, but she’s the boss. Just do me a favor, OK? Stay clear of my men. We are professionals at this kind of thing, and I want to clear this case as fast as possible.”

  Jensen had worked with a lot of detectives, and this was about what he’d expected. His strategy was to say yes until he had to say no. “Absolutely. You’re in charge. We are going to focus on our little piece of this.”

  “And what little piece is that?”

  “We’re interested in what Adnan—uh, the deceased has been working on in his lab.”

  Lankford grunted. “OK, but I’m not opening up the deceased’s lab until we’ve cleared this scene. Got it?”

  “Got it, Chief,” Jensen said.

  Lankford smirked, turned on his heels, and walked away.

  “What do you make of him?” Gabriel asked.

  “He’s a close talker,” Jensen said with a laugh.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Washington, DC

  “Go ahead, Brooksy, make my day.”

  Jensen and Lisa Brooks were sitting in a darkened corner of her office while she scanned the contents of Adnan’s tablet. She was looking for anything that matched a list of file extensions and keywords that Gabriel had provided them. She was also scanning the list of IP addresses Adnan had been visiting and comparing them with a database of known terrorist-related sites.

  “He’s been using a Tor browser for some stuff, so not sure we’re going to find much in terms of his web browsing,” she said.

  “That hides the IP addresses he’s connecting to, correct?”

  “Yeah, it uses what we call an onion-routing system. It involves multiple layers of encryption and instruction designed to shield the original IP address from detection. It then randomly bounces them around the world using a peer-to-peer network of relays run by individuals. The result is that it’s virtually impossible to figure out where web searches or messages originate from.”

  “Perfect,” Jensen said.

  “Damn, Lee, don’t tell me you give up that easy,” she replied.

  Even in the macho world of Homeland Security, Lisa Brooks stood out. She looked like an athlete (she’d played hockey at Dartmouth and had a scar on her chin to prove it) and smelled like a guy (she’d started using her dad’s Old Spice deodorant as a teen and never switched). She was Lee Jensen’s kind of agent.

  Brooks certainly hadn’t started her career with the goal of becoming a computer specialist; in fact, she’d resisted becoming a member of DHS’s internal “geek squad” as long as she could. But after she was injured in a training accident on the southern border, she’d been temporarily reassigned from the Houston Field Office to DHS Headquarters. There her bachelor’s degree in computer networking caught the attention of the human-resources department, and she was “encouraged” to accept a lateral transfer to the technology and surveillance group—one of the few times that the huge bureaucracy that is Homeland Security got a personnel move correct. That was seven years ago, and Brooks was in the midst of a very successful career.

  As the scan completed, she said, “It looks like he uploaded two files last night at 7:14 p.m., one to a blockchain and another, much larger one to an Amazon cloud account. That was his last activity.”

  “How do you know that he uploaded to a blockchain?” Jensen asked.

  “He used a special browser called Blockstack to upload a rather small file to something called the SMRA block.”

  “The what?”

  “SMRA as in S-M-R-A.”

  “Does that mean anything to you?”

  “Not really, no.”

  At that moment, Gabriel walked into the office. “Does S-M-R-A mean anything to you?” Jensen asked him. “Some kind of bug acronym maybe?”

  Gabriel thought about it for a moment. “No,” he said. He picked up his iPhone and Googled it. “It’s not a word. Or at least not an English word. Maybe an acronym?” He read from the search results. “Society for Magnetic Resonance Angiography? Social Media Research Association? I’m guessing not.”

  The three were quiet for a moment. Finally, Jensen asked, “So he uploaded a small file to a blockchain and a large file to Amazon. What does that tell us?”

  “We can’t really know for certain until we access them,” Brooks said. “But my guess is that he’s stored an encrypted file at Amazon and he uploaded the key to that file to this S-M-R-A blockchain.”

  “Why would he do that?” Jensen asked.

  “It fits how the blockchain works. The blockchain isn’t really meant to store actual files. It’s a distributed database with an open ledger where all transactions—like digital currency and contracts—are managed and recorded by everyone, making everything transparent.”

  “That sounds like the opposite of secure to me.”

  Brooks laughed. “I guess it depends on the kind of security you are looking for. If you want personal privacy, then it’s not a good solution. But if you want to ensure nobody can cheat the system, then it’s a brilliant solution, because no central authority controls the data. You share it with only those who are in the chain, and everyone knows what’s there.”

  Jensen thought for a moment. “So how does i
t work? And pretend you’re talking to your mother.”

  Brooks sighed. She was used to having to dumb down technology for her coworkers. “Do you remember Napster?”

  “Sure,” Jensen said. She looked at Gabriel, who just shook his head.

  “Well, Napster was one of the original dot-com companies in the late nineties. It used a peer-to-peer network to allow people to share music without having to pay for it. Basically, people connected to other people’s computers to access the music they had available, bypassing the music companies. It ultimately got shut down because the rights owners sued when they couldn’t control the distribution of their content.”

  “OK, but what does that have to do with—”

  “Cool your jets. I’m getting there,” she said, cutting Jensen off. “The blockchain is also a peer-to-peer concept that doesn’t rely on a third party to validate or control the data that is being shared. But unlike Napster, the blockchain is totally secure because you must have a private, cryptographically created key to access only the blocks in the chain you own. In this case, others in the S-M-R-A blockchain have a key to access the block that Adnan added to the chain.”

  “And we think that block contains the encryption key to the Amazon file,” Jensen said.

  “Bingo,” said Gabriel. “But my understanding is that it’s almost impossible to break into, since the blocks are distributed all over the world and there is no central server to hack into. ISIS has been using this for its communication and funding for the past several years for just that reason.”

  Brooks paused of a second. “Yes, it’s super hard to hack into. But that doesn’t mean it’s not still vulnerable. For us to know what’s in that Amazon file, we need the encryption key that’s in the blockchain. And we can get that if we can find another member of the chain. So that’s where we need to focus.”

  “So we start with his known associates and work out from there.” Jensen then turned to Gabriel, who’d been looking at the other material they’d taken from Adnan’s house. “You come up with anything?”