Gideon's Corpse

61

After crossing the Texas Panhandle, they stopped near the Oklahoma border so Fordyce could pick up a cigarette-lighter converter for the laptop’s AC adapter. On the long trip across Texas, Gideon had explained to the agent how he’d deduced that Blaine was the one behind the terrorist plot, and in turn Fordyce told him how he’d figured out that Gideon was innocent and the security director, Novak, was involved.

“What I don’t know,” Fordyce said, “is whether Novak was part of the plot from the beginning, or if he was paid for just the frame job.”

“From your description of his house, it seems like he’s had more money than he should for some time now,” Gideon replied. “My bet is that he’s one of the original players.” He paused. “No wonder Blaine was willing to help me, a fugitive on the lam. He probably wasn’t too happy that Alida became involved, but he must have figured that if I stayed on the loose, I’d prove just another distraction for the authorities.”

He paused again. “What I can’t figure out is Blaine himself. Why the hell would he, of all people, want to set off a nuke in Washington? I just don’t see the motivation. He’s a patriot, an ex-spy.”

“You’d be surprised how people can change. Or what their motivations might be.”

“Alida told me Blaine was denied a Nobel Prize because of his past. Perhaps that embittered him.”

“Perhaps. And perhaps we’ll find the answer on this laptop.” Fordyce plugged in the computer and pressed the POWER button.

From the driver’s seat, Gideon looked over as the hard disk trundled, various start-up messages flashed by, then the login screen appeared.

Gideon muttered, “Like I said. Password-protected.”

“O ye of little faith,” Fordyce retorted.

“Can you crack it?”

“That remains to be seen. Look at the splash screen, it’s running the NewBSD variant of UNIX—an odd choice for a novelist.”

“Don’t forget, he’s ex-MI6. Who the hell knows what software they run?”

“True. But I doubt this is Blaine’s working machine.” He pointed at the laptop’s screen. “Check out that version number: NewBSD 2.1.1. This OS is at least six years old.”

“Is that bad?”

“It might be good—the security won’t be as strong. Didn’t you see any other computers in his office?”

“I didn’t hang around casing the joint. I just grabbed the first one I saw.”

Fordyce nodded. Then he pulled his BlackBerry from his pocket and began pressing buttons.

“Who are you calling?” Gideon asked.

“I’m accessing the mainframe at FBI Crypt. I’m going to need a few tools to do this job properly.”

Gideon waited while Fordyce typed a laborious series of commands. Then, with a grunt of satisfaction, the agent attached a flash memory stick to the BlackBerry’s USB port. “I can boot into half a dozen operating systems with this gizmo,” he said, tapping the memory stick. “Thank God this laptop’s got USB.”

“What next?” Gideon asked.

“I’m going to run a dictionary attack on Blaine’s login password.”

“Right.”

“If it isn’t too long or obscure, and if the total exhaust time on the OS password monitor is within reason, maybe we’ll catch a break.”

Gideon glanced over dubiously. “Blaine’s no dummy.”

“True. But that doesn’t mean he’s technically savvy.” Fordyce snugged the flash drive into one of the laptop’s USB ports and rebooted the machine. “This little honey can try two hundred and fifty thousand passwords a second. Let’s see just how paranoid Simon Blaine really is.”

For the next ninety minutes, Gideon drove the Jeep at precisely seventy-nine miles per hour, passing Elk City, then Clinton, then Weatherford. The sun would soon be setting, and a starry sky would fill the night dome of the prairie. As they neared Oklahoma City, without progress, Gideon began to feel increasingly restless. Fordyce, too, was growing impatient, peering at the screen and muttering under his breath. Finally, with a curse, he yanked the flash drive from the laptop’s slot and powered down the machine. “Okay,” he growled. “Score one for Blaine.”

“So we’re screwed?” Gideon asked.

“Not yet we’re not.” When the laptop rebooted and the login prompt appeared, Fordyce rattled off a quick blast of keystrokes:

LOGIN: root

PASSWORD: ****

Immediately a storm of text scrolled up the screen.

“Bingo!” Fordyce said.

Gideon looked at him. “Did you get into his account?”

“No.”

“Then what good is it?”

“I got into the system account. Just type root for both the login name and password and, presto, you’re super-user. You’d be amazed at how many people either don’t know enough or are too lazy to change the default system account passwords on these older UNIX systems.”

“Can you get into his account or his files from there?”

Fordyce shook his head. “No, I can’t. But maybe I don’t need to.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Because as super-user, I can access the standard UNIX password file.” He plugged the flash drive back in, typed a long string of commands, then sat back in his seat, beaming. He pointed at the screen. “Check it out.”

Gideon looked over.

BlaineS:Heqw3EZU5k4Nd:413:adgfirkg

m~:/home/subdir/BlaineS:/bin/bash

“That’s his account name and password, the latter scrambled with DES.”

“Data encryption standard? I thought that couldn’t be cracked.”

Fordyce smiled.

Gideon frowned. “Uh-oh. Let me guess. The government built a back door into the encryption standard.”

“You didn’t hear it from me.”

For about ten minutes, Gideon drove while Fordyce typed, sometimes pausing to peer at the screen, now and then muttering under his breath. Finally, with a withering curse, he punched the back of the seat.

“No joy?” Gideon asked.

Fordyce shook his head. “I can’t break the DES algorithm. Blaine’s a lot more sophisticated than I thought. He or someone used a hardened DES variant. I’m totally stuck. I can’t think of anything else to do.”

The Jeep fell into silence.

“We can’t just give up,” Gideon said.

“You got any ideas?”

“We can try guessing the password.”

Fordyce rolled his eyes. “My dictionary attack just tried over a billion passwords in twelve common languages, including words, combinations of words, names, and place-names, not to mention a compilation of the million most commonly used passwords. It’s the best brute-force attack program in existence. And you think you can do better by guessing?” He shook his head.

“At least we know what not to guess at. Your dictionary attack is just a dumb program. We know a lot more about Simon Blaine than it does. Look, it’s worth a shot. We’ve already got his account name, right?” Gideon thought for a moment. “Maybe he used the name of one of the characters in his books. Get on your BlackBerry, find his website, and grab the names of any characters you find.”

Fordyce grunted approval and got to work.

A few minutes later, Fordyce had compiled a list of a dozen names. “Dirkson Auger,” he said, looking at the first on the list. “Blaine really gets paid for making up names like that?”

“Try it.”

Fordyce lifted the lid of the laptop. “I’ll try Dirkson first.”

Error.

“Auger.”

Error.

“Try them together,” Gideon suggested.

Error.

“Try the names again in turn, only backward this time.”

Error.

“Son of a bitch,” Fordyce muttered.

“Do the same with the rest.”

Before Gideon had driven another fifteen miles, Fordyce threw up his hands. “It’s hopeless,” he said. “I’ve tried them all. Even if it was one of these names, if Blaine had any sense he’d have thrown in a few extra characters to add some noise, or changed letters to numbers, or something. There are just too many variants.”

“The thing about passwords,” Gideon said after a minute or two, “is that, unless you’re using a password manager, you have to remember the damn thing.”

“So?”

“So maybe it isn’t a character in a book. Maybe it’s the name of a real person. He wouldn’t be likely to forget that. And the most obvious person would be Alida.”

“Obvious, all right. Way too obvious.” Fordyce typed in the name anyway, tried a bunch of variations. “Nope.”

“Okay, so do what you suggested a minute ago. Change some of the letters to numbers or symbols.”

“I’ll change the l to a 1.” Fordyce tried this password. “Nada.”

“Try something else. Change the i to a dollar sign.”

More typing. “Strike three,” said Fordyce.

Gideon licked his lips. “I remember reading that most decent passwords are composed of two parts, a root and an appendage. Right? So add something on the end.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Xyz, maybe. Or 00.”

Still more typing. “This is getting old, fast,” Fordyce told him.

“Wait a minute—I just thought of something. Blaine has a pet name for Alida. Miracle Daughter. He sometimes calls her MD. Try that after her name.”

Fordyce typed. “No go. Not in front, in back, or in the middle.”

Gideon sighed. Maybe Fordyce was right. “Just keep trying all the variables.” He concentrated on the road ahead while Fordyce typed quietly beside him, trying one variant after another.

Suddenly the FBI agent gave a whoop of triumph. Gideon glanced over and saw a fresh welter of text scrolling up the screen.

“You got in?” he asked in disbelief.

“Damn right!”

“What was the password?”

“A1$daMdee. Kind of sentimental, don’t you think?” And Fordyce settled in to browse the computer’s files as the skyline of Oklahoma City came into view.