The astronomer gave a low whistle. “That’s scary.”
“Oh, we’ve got our methods,” Pashley assured him jauntily, missing the expression on Whipple’s face.
“We can lift information right out of a computer without the user knowing it,” Arnold added. “If we listen for a few days we may get to watch this hacker in action before the bust goes down.”
“When’s she going to do something?” Myron Pashley wondered aloud for roughly the eighth time that evening.
George Arnold squirmed around to get a better view of the readout. “So far she’s still watching television.”
Pashley and Arnold were crammed into the surveillance van along with the regular operator and several racks of equipment. “Cramped” was too generous a word for conditions in the van. “Badly ventilated” didn’t really cover the subject either, especially since Pashley had found a Yemeni restaurant near the hotel and dined on a vegetarian dish that was mostly chickpeas and garlic. So far they had been sitting almost in each other’s laps for almost three hours and even Pashley was getting tired of it.
The directional antenna hidden in the van’s roof rack was pointed at Judith Conally’s apartment less than three hundred feet away. At that distance it could easily pick up electronic emanations from Judith’s apartment.
“Wait a minute,” the technician said. “The television’s just gone off.
Hold it, okay, she’s starting to work on the computer.”
“Here we go!” Pashley crowed. For an awful instant Arnold thought Pashley was going to hug him.
“What’s she doing?”
“Looks like loading a program,” the tech said, keeping his eyes fixed on the displays. “Okay, she’s just put a file up on the screen. I got it now.”
Pashley, Arnold and the technician wriggled around until they could all see the display screen.
# include
template
struct A{A(){A
void main(){A<99>();}
“It’s screwed up,” Arnold complained.
The tech checked the instruments. “No, that’s what’s on her screen all right.”
“What do you make of this stuff?” Arnold asked.
“Code,” Pashley assured him. “This is all in code. When we raid the place we’ll probably find a code book that translates all these code words.”
Neither Pashley nor Arnold knew it, but it was indeed code they were looking at, although not in the sense they meant. Inside her apartment Judith was settling down to work on one of her private programming projects. Since for preference Judith used C and since her C style was both idiosyncratic and highly personal, it was hardly surprising that the FBI agents couldn’t make sense of it. Since the particular program Judith was laboring over was her entry in this year’s Obfuscated C++ Contest it was to be expected. Since one of the utilities Judith had developed to help her was an uglyprinter, which turned even the best-structured C code into an utter muddle, it was inevitable.
Judith Conally was playing relativistic Tetris when the knock came at the door.
“Damn!” she muttered as the distraction made her miss an especially intricate maneuver in the time direction. The rest of her carefully constructed edifice came tumbling down even before she was out of the chair to answer the door.
Judith had never met Myron Pashley, but as soon as she opened the door she knew what he was. For one thing he was wearing that dark-suit-narrow-tie-white-shirt outfit no one wore anymore but government agents and EDS employees. And EDS employees weren’t allowed to wear wrap-around sunglasses.
“Special Agent Pashley, FBI,” the man announced, holding out his identification. “We have a warrant to search these premises.” He thrust a paper into Judith’s hands and pushed her aside. “Stand out of the way, please.”
He was followed into the apartment by six other men and a woman, all dressed in the same style if not the same clothing. Since Judith’s apartment was not large, it was suddenly very crowded. Judith found herself crammed back against a book case.
One of the agents sat down at her computer and started calling up directories. Others fanned out through the apartment.
After a quick run-through of her more recent sins, Judith relaxed. There was nothing in the apartment which was the least bit incriminating. Then she looked at the search warrant and nearly burst out laughing. A national security case? Get real!