“But how did it get in?”
“It was hidden in a routine personnel update. That’s the kind of file that can be thick or thin, and you wouldn’t think to check on it. Not like a file on, say, agents based in the Mascarene Islands. If that one suddenly came in big as the deficit, you’d notice.”
“So the virus was hidden in that file-”
“Right. And it was triggered to dump a new satellite program into our system exactly when it did. A program that scanned the Library, morphed it with incoming pictures, and created false images-the kind the saboteurs wanted us to see.”
“How did it get to the NRO?”
“The virus attacked our phone line into them. It’s secure from the outside… but not from the inside. We’ll have to do something about that.”
“But I still don’t understand what triggered the virus.”
Stoll’s big smile grew even bigger. “That’s the genius of what they did. Look at this.” He pulled over a laptop and booted the diskette, after carefully, almost reverently popping it from the disk drive. The title screen appeared and Stoll held a hand toward it.
Hood read everything on the screen. “South Korea diskette number seventeen, filed by him, checked by her, okayed by a general, and sent by military courier five weeks ago. What does that tell you?”
“Nothing. Read the very bottom.”
Hood looked. He had to move in a little to read the fine print. “Copyright 1988 by Angiras Software. What’s unusual about that?”
“All government agencies write their own software. It’s not like WordPerfect where there’s something to copyright. But our computers sometimes do get software with copyright notices on them, and I told the system to ignore that.”
Hood began to understand. “This one triggered the virus?”
“No. This one triggered the shutdown that allowed the virus to enter undetected. That date-1988? It’s a date but it’s also a clock. Or rather, a tiny program buried in the date got its hooks into our clock and shut it down. For exactly nineteen point eight-seconds.”
Hood nodded. “Good work, Matty.”
“Shitty work, Paul. We see notices like that on programs and they don’t even register on the brain. They certainly didn’t on mine, and someone in South Korea took advantage of that.”
“Who, though?”
“The date may help us there. I checked our files. One of the highlights of 1988 was when radical students demanding reunification clashed with the police. The government put the movement down, hard. Someone who’s either for or against unification may have picked that date as a symbol. You know-the same way the Riddler always used to leave clues for Batman out of some kind of twisted vanity.”
Hood grinned. “I’d leave the Batman part out of my official report if I were you. But this is the extra push we may need to convince the President the South Koreans are behind this.”
“Exactly.”
“You really came through on this one. Send that title page to my computer and we’ll see what Lawrence has to say now.”
“How do we know it wasn’t a North Korean mole working in the South?” Burkow asked.
“We don’t, Mr. President,” said Hood. He was listening on the secure phone while the President and Steve Burkow studied the document. “But why would the leaders in Pyongyang want to tinker with our satellites, make it look like they were preparing for war. They can move troops in the field, so why go through all this trouble?”
“To make us look like the aggressors,” Burkow said.
“No, Steve. Paul’s absolutely right. This doesn’t smell like the work of the government. The DPRK isn’t this subtle. It’s a faction, and it could well be from either the North or South.”
“Thank you,” Hood said with obvious relief.
His E-mail indicator beeped. Bugs would never interrupt Hood when he was on the phone with the President, so he sent a message crawling across the computer monitor. Since the message was sent to the TV screen directly, not through the computer itself, the President wouldn’t see it.
Hood’s stomach tightened as he read the short memo:
From KCIA Director Yung-Hoon: Kim Hwan stabbed by assassin. In surgery. DPRK spy escaped. Assailant dead. Checking identity now.
Hood put his face in his hand. Some head of the Korean Task Force he was turning out to be. Knowing everything that happened after the fact, knowing that some person or group very desperately wanted a war, and having no idea who the perpetrators were. He suddenly understood from where Orly got his bedside manner. He wasn’t being inconsiderate to the patient: he was frustrated by an enemy that he couldn’t get a handle on.
He memoed Bugs to stay on top of the situation, to pass the message on to Herbert and McCaskey, and to thank Yung-Hoon. He also requested that the KCIA Director let him know the moment they had any information on the assassin or on Hwan’s condition.
“… but, as I told you before, Paul,” the President was saying, “we’ve gone beyond that now. It doesn’t matter who started this phase of the confrontation: the fact is, we’re in the middle of it.”
Hood brought himself back into the conversation.
“There’s no question about that,” Burkow said. “Quite frankly, I’d go to the first strike scenario in the military options paper. Paul, you feel that would work-”
“Hell, yes. Christ, the Defense Secretary’s plan would be a juggernaut! From what we’re hearing, the North is expecting another Desert Storm, with a softening-up period. A half-million troops moving into the North, air strikes against communications centers, missiles dropping on every airstrip and military base in the nation- sure, Steve. It would work. We’d only lose three thousand troops, tops. Why settle this peacefully when we can lose soldiers and overrun a country that’ll be a financial drain on the South for the next forty to sixty years?”
“Enough of that,” the President said. “In light of the new information, I’ll instruct the Ambassador to make inquiries about a diplomatic solution.”
“Inquiries?” Hood’s nonsecure phone rang. He looked at the readout: it was from the hospital. “Mr. President, I have to take this call. Would you excuse me?”
“Yes. Paul, I want the ass of the person who let this software through.”
“Fine, Mr. President. But if you take his, mine comes with it.”
The son of a bitch, Hood thought as he hung up the secure phone. Everything’s got to be a big gesture. You’re in, you’re out, we’re at war, I’ve made peace. He wished Lawrence would take up a hobby. A person lives any job twenty-four hours a day, their sense of proportion is bound to get screwed up.
Hood picked up the open line. “Sharon-how is he?”
“Much better,” she said. “It was like a dam breaking: all of a sudden,’ he took a deep breath and the wheezing stopped. The doctor says his lungs are working twenty percent better now-he’s going to be all right, Paul.”
Sharon’s voice was relaxed, light, for the first time that day. He heard the girl in her, and he was glad to have her back.
Darrell McCaskey and Bob Herbert stopped just outside the door. Hood motioned them in.
“Shar, I love you both-”
“I know. You’ve got to go.”
“I do,” said Hood. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. You did all right today. Have I thanked you for stopping by before?”
“I think so.”
“If I didn’t, thanks,” Sharon said. “I love you.”
“Kisses to Alex.”
Sharon hung up and Hood lay the receiver gently in its cradle. “My son’s okay and my wife’s not mad at me,” he said, looking from one man to the other. “If you’ve got bad news, now’s the time to give it.”
McCaskey stepped forward. ‘ That Recon Officer who was killed, Judy Margolin? Seems one of her last photos was a shot of the oncoming MiGs.”
“Someone leak them to the press?”
“Worse,” said McCaskey. “The computer guys at the Pentagon were able to read the numbers on the plane. They did a search through all the recent reconnaissance photos to find out where it’s based.”
“God, no-”
“Yes,” said Herbert. “The President just authorized the Air Force to go in after it.”
FIFTY-NINE
Wednesday, 3:30 A.M., Sariwon
Sari won, North Korea, was located 150 miles west from the Sea of Japan, fifty miles east of the Yellow Sea, and fifty miles due south from Pyongyang.
The air base in Sariwon was the first line of defense against an air or missile strike from South Korea. It’s one of the oldest bases in the country, having been built in 1952 during the war and being upgraded only as technology from China or the Soviet Union was made available. That wasn’t as often as Pyongyang would have liked: it had always been the fear of North Korea’s allies that eventual reunification with the South would give the West access to up-to-date military hardware and technology, so the North was always kept several steps behind Moscow and Beijing.