Agent X - Boyd Noah - Страница 75
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Raymond Radkay had existed completely undetected, so why not others? If there were others, their names, addresses, and contact points had to be kept somewhere. Vail started checking the files on the computer. There weren’t many documents stored, but he would have been surprised if Zogas had been that obvious.
Next he checked the Internet history. It looked as though the last Web site that Zogas had visited was something called American Business News. Vail clicked on it. At first glance it appeared to be a generic business site, as uninteresting as its bland graphics.
He clicked on the “About Us” link, and again the description was uninteresting, except for one fact—although it tried to make the reader think otherwise, it wasn’t American. The syntax, possessive pronouns, and vocabulary contained a few small errors that indicated that someone whose first language was not English had written the copy.
There was a freshly posted article that had been cut and pasted from some unattributed publication. It described a new chemical process for supersynthetic motor oil that was being developed by a company in Maryland.
Off to the right side of the home page was the heading “For Our Clients.” Vail couldn’t access it because there were user-ID and password windows that had to be filled in to open it. What was this site? Vail pushed back from the table and stared at the screen, trying to make sense of it. He dug the heels of his hands into his eyes, reminding himself how little sleep he’d had in the last two days. To distract himself he got up and walked around the room, settling onto a recliner in the living room. He turned on the television and started running through the channels, using the rhythm of the changing images to hypnotize himself into a brief period of thoughtlessness.
After five minutes he went back to the computer. Looking at the page again, he suddenly realized its purpose. It was how the Russians and the LCS communicated. Both of them were able to access and upload onto it. The Russians sent their “orders” to it in the innocuous form of business articles, and the LCS could send coded e-mails through its “Contact Us” link. But what was the “For Our Clients” section used for, and why was it protected by a password?
Vail started searching through the house for anything that might have a password written on it. When he didn’t find anything, he returned to the living room. On the wall next to the recliner were three large picture frames. Each contained twelve postcards forming a large rectangle. On all of them were depictions of chessboards with pieces in the final stages of a match. But there were things that weren’t right about them. Of the thirty-six cards, each one had four white pieces and four black pieces remaining. The second thing was that even with Vail’s limited knowledge of chess, he could see that their positions of play were not logical. The only reason someone would go to the expense of turning a postcard into a wall display would be to recall the last position of the pieces before a checkmate. As he scanned the cards, he could see that none of the games were in check.
And why were there so many of them? Taking out his knife, he slit open the back of the frames and then slid his knife between the cards and the backing until they came off. All twelve had been mailed from Washington, D.C. The return address was a post-office box. Why would two people play a game of chess by mail within the same city?
Then he compared the dates. Each was marked on the second of the month, unless it was a Sunday. Of course, he thought, the second day of the month was when the passwords were changed. Zogas had mounted them and put them in plain sight as trophies, proving, as so many sociopaths needed to, that he was smarter than the rest of the world. And shoving it right in everyone’s face was part of the rush. There was no way any of them could hurt him once the passwords had been changed.
Quickly, Vail peeled the other cards from their backings and checked the dates. The last was dated December. That meant that if they contained the code for getting into the Web site, there was a card with this month’s password on it. But where was it? Vail started tearing the house apart but then realized where it was. And that he had actually seen it, in a different form, without realizing what it was.
He drove to the Lithuanian Chess Society, trying not to think about Kate. He could have called and invited her along as an apology, but it would probably have been too little too late. And if he didn’t give her a chance to say no, he could make himself believe there was hope, at least a little longer.
Using Zogas’s keys, he let himself in and headed back to the office. The computer was still on from the night before. Vail checked the Internet history and found that the last entry was the American Business News. He clicked into the user-ID window and then looked over at the chessboard next to the desk that Zogas had claimed was for his mail game. The last postcard could be anywhere, maybe even destroyed since Kate’s and his visit there. But Zogas had probably used the actual board setup as a quick reference to the codes. Once it became apparent that the FBI was starting to focus in on the LCS, he would have been able to kick it over quickly should there be a raid.
On the board there were eight pieces—four white, four black—and, as on the postcards, the degree of their engagement was illogical.
A chessboard has sixty-four squares designated a through h along the top and bottom rows, left to right, and 1 through 8 vertically as you face the board. So the top left corner is a8, the bottom left corner is a1, and the top right is h8. Then the rank of the piece is added in. If the white queen was sitting in its beginning position, it would be designated Qd1. If it was moved straight ahead three spaces, it would be Qd4.
To test his theory, Vail had to decide whether black positions were to be used for the user ID or for the passwords. The site could have been protected by a system by which if one wrong entry were made, access would become permanently denied. He took out the postcards he had taken from Zogas’s house; they all had the black pieces at the top of the boards. Since the user-ID space was over the password window, he decided to use the black pieces as the user ID. Carefully, he typed into the password box the twelve numbers and letters designated by the four black pieces and then did the same with the four white pieces into the password box. He clicked on “Log In.”
A page opened, and a list of seventeen names, addresses, and phone numbers scrolled down. Vail still wasn’t sure what they were until he got toward the bottom. Number eleven was Raymond Dante Radkay. Radkay’s middle name didn’t seem right to Vail. He would have remembered “Dante.” He looked at the other middle names, some of which were Houston, Spain, and Opus. They didn’t seem right either. Most likely they were a quick reference to the moles’ code names.
Sixteen more spies, and no one in the FBI had any idea they existed. Until now.
38
It was the middle of the night, and Kate couldn’t get herself to sleep. It had been a day and a half since she’d jumped out of Vail’s car. She got up and opened a bottle of wine, turning on the television. Scanning through the channels, she found a Spanish soap opera, which she couldn’t understand a word of. It was the perfect distraction, as it took her complete concentration to try to figure out the relationships between the characters by the expressions on the emotive actors’ faces. After an apparent series of arguments over a sisterly affair and the help of half a bottle of wine, she finally dropped off in the chair.
Although she woke up early the next morning, Kate didn’t get to the office until late afternoon. She’d sat around her apartment thinking about Vail and what he’d said. By now he was probably gone. The Calculus case was over, and everyone was accounted for—or would be as soon as they finished the DNA analysis of the bodies from the well. She did some housework, vacuuming carpets that didn’t need it and pulling weeds in her garden.
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