Following the meeting in Washington D.C. it was decided that the money mill could not be permitted to continue. The risks were simply too great. The FBI and ABA had to stop the mill, at any cost. This meant that first and foremost the key translation server had to be shut down. This would stop the current string of thefts immediately. Of course a longer term solution was needed to prevent future attacks of a similar nature. The X9.17 protocol would need to be amended, but that could wait until after a careful review process.
I had briefed Rudy Levinski on the meeting early the next morning. He had left a handwritten note on my pillow while I was out of town. It made me somewhat uneasy to know that he had been in my apartment in my absence. Could I really trust him? What did I really know about him? Didn't he fit the FBI profile rather well? He is a loner. he is a bank employee working in the EFT department. He lives in the United States but is a foreign national, European even. This certainly fit the FBI profile.
Rudy was an enigma. Weather willingly or not, he had helped Lampley tamper with EFT payments on behalf of First chicago. Later he had helped analize the forgeries and had been the first to realize the workings of the mill. Yet he had done this only after Lisa and I had forced his hand. Now, he was helping with the case by providing us with valuable characterizations of illicit EFT traffic. His rules for the BIF program were proving quite valuable. There was reason to believe that his rules might finally break the case. Pretty soon we would be able to pipe the output from BIF into deep-throat and let it crunch on the graph. Lisa was about to install a new patch for BIF that might push us over the hump. This patch had potential. Also, the NSA had very nearly completed their parallel implementation of deep-throat. We just needed a little more time... more time to finish implementing the changes to the programs, and more time to let the computers crunch.
I still had not made up my mind how to deal with Rudy when Lisa and I arrived at Jonny's office the next day. It was early in the afternoon on a dreary day. We had trotted through a drizzle to cover the short distance from her car to the front entrance of the E. M. Dirksen Federal Office Building in Chicago.
Now, as we stood in Jonny's office, I was on the phone with Leon Anderson. Leon is a Federal Reserve Board staffer. He had called Jonny but was now talking to me while Jonny and Lisa held a quiet conversation at Jonny's desk. Leon was explaining to me the bulliten that the Fed had sent to all banks that morning. Ironically the bulliten was distributed over the same data network that is used for EFT's. I had already read a printed copy of the bulliten; Jonny had shown it to Lisa and me the moment we entered his office. It now lay on his desk.
``Everybody,'' came Leon's gravelly voice over the phone. It was in response to my query about which banks had recieved notification of the shutdown. ``The bulliten should have cascaded down through the entire EFT network by now.''
``This is really going to grind the economy to a halt,'' I muttered. I masaged my face with the hand not holding the phone and absently watched Lisa giving Jonny a tutorial on C programming. The two of them sat on the other side of the room hunched over the latest listings for deep-throat. ``The banks must be raising hell,'' I said into the phone. ``Are any of them demanding explanations?''
``The banks are fine until the end of business today,'' he explained. ``In fact some banks should be able to make minor adjustments before then.''
``What do you mean?''
``They have a few hours. The EFT system will remain in operation for the remainder of the day. The service will be stopped first thing tomorrow morning...''
He went on talking but I was no longer listening. I felt a chill start at my head and work its way down my back all the way to me feet. I actually shivered. I felt dizzy. I turned to Lisa. My throat was dry and I had a hard time speaking the words that followed.
``It's not down,'' I choked out. ``The announcement has gone out but it's not down. Everybody knows but it's not down.''
Lisa stared back, not saying anything. She backed up slowly to the desk behind her. She gently bumped into the desk and reached down with one hand to support herself as she sat on the corner of the desk. She understood my fear. Jonny didn't. He looked at me, then at her, and then back to me again.
``It's goin' down tomorrow, ain't it?'' he asked.
``Not good enough!'' Lisa snapped. ``Not if everybody knows about it today.'' She slammed the desk with both hands and was on her feet. She turned to me. ``Now what?''
I didn't know. Was it already too late? How could this have happened? What was Leon thinking? I felt my forehead become moist with cold sweat. What to do? I needed to talk to somebody, but who? Leon? I turned to Jonny.
``That server has to go down now! Who do we call?''
``Leon, I guess.'' He was still unconcerned.
No, I needed to call Daniel. Only he was in a position to take immediate unilateral action. Damn! I didn't know his number.
``Lisa, how do we get Danial Smith's number?''
``I have it,'' she responded. ``You mean the red-headed sys-admin at the Key Center, right?''
She practically flew across the room as she hurried over to her bag. Tearing it open she began emptying the contents in a frenzy, creating a pile of her belongings on the floor in front of her. She finally found what she was looking for and straightened with a red address book in her hands. She set it on the desk and began rapidly flipping through the pages. Meanwhile I still held the phone in my hand with the open connection to Leon. I hurriedly told him I had to hang up, without bothering to explain why. When Lisa found the number, she called it out and I dialed.
One ring. Two rings. Three. Four. It was the middle of the business day; somebody had to answer. Doesn't Daniel have voice mail?
``Chase-Manhattan EFT operations, this is Daniel,'' came the familiar high-pitched voice with the slight lisp.
``Daniel! Carl Raymond here. We met at the Money Mill meeting in Washington. Is the Key Translation Center still up?''
``Oh hi Carl. Yeah it's still up. Word is that it'll be up until the end of today and then that's it.''
``But word has already gone out! Everybody knows we plan to shut it down. Including the millwright! Doesn't anybody realize that once we've tipped off the millwright he might react with an all-out blitz? And we are leaving him with about four hours in which to do it.''
Daniel said nothing immediately, but Jonny was listening to my side of the conversation and he asked, ``How much time would he need?''
Lisa answered before I could. ``If he uses a script or a program he could completely hose the entire banking network in about ten minutes.'' Jonny blanched visibly.
``She's right,'' I agreed.
``Oh no!'' It was Daniel's high-pitched voice on the phone. He couldn't be responding to Lisa because he could not possibly have heard her.
``Carl, you there?'' Daniel asked.
``Yeah.''
``We've got dozens of hits here. All in the last few minutes.''
``What's a `hit'? What are you talking about?''
Danial's voice was strained. ``I... I... I'm looking at a dump of recent activity here for the Key Translation Center. Carl, the number of requests is way up. Way more activity than normal,'' he stammered. ``Way more,'' he repeated. ``It should be less than normal. Most legit banks have stopped using the center already.''
I began shouting questions into the phone. ``Who? Where are the requests coming from? How many? What banks?'' Lisa jumped up and came over to stand next to me and put her ear near the phone. ``It's happening,'' I said for her benefit, although she probably had guessed as much already.
I could feel a wave of panic threatening to sweep over me. I suppressed the feeling and tried to think. How far would the millwright go? What was his motive and how desperate was he? Were we witnessing the first tremors of the utter collapse of the world banking system?
Meanwhile the voice on the other end of the phone was silent. I stood waiting. I could hear the faint clicking of keystrokes on the other end.
``Everywhere, Carl,'' groaned Daniel. ``The requests are coming from everywhere. And the number is up to about 150 now.''
``Are all of the requests for the same ultimate recipient?'' I asked.
It didn't take Daniel long to answer this time. ``Doesn't look like it,'' he responded. ``The requests are still coming in as we speak. It's up to 161 now! We gotta shut this sucker down! I gotta go. D'ya have anything else, Carl?''
``No. Go. Shut it down. Bye.''
``Yeah. Later.''
Maybe Jonny recalled Weld's words. Maybe panic is infectious. Whatever the reason, Jonny was waking up to the seriousness of the situation. He stood up and strode over to the desk. Leaning over he examined the bulletin again.
``We can't wait for Daniel to shut it down,'' I said. ``By the time he gets approval it'll be tomorrow morning anyway. Either he is going to have to pull the plug literally or we are going to have to go straight to the top.''
``Can he do that?'' Lisa asked. ``Is Daniel in a position where he can kill the power to the server? That might be our best bet.''
We didn't have any time to follow bureaucratic procedures. Even a few more seconds might be too late. The millwright already had over 150 keys. I had been hoping that the millwright was only planning to dump massive amounts of money into his account and then withdraw the money and run, but Danial had said that the key requests were for many different banks. If he was collecting keys for every bank in the network, which is what I now suspected, then he still had a long way to go. Still, if I were in his shoes I would mount the attack before I was finished collecting the keys. He could run a cancer program at the same time he collected keys. Even 150 keys, while only a small fraction of the number of banks in the network, was enough to completely scramble account balances world-wide. Each of those keys gave him the power to fabricate and alter all EFT's between a different pair of banks. He could forge payments between hundreds of thousands of accounts. He wouldn't be maintaining constant balances now. The coming attack would not be a money mill --- it would be an all-out cancer. This time he would be moving money all over the place at random and in random denominations. Money would be scattered pell-mell throughout bank accounts nation-wide, perhaps even world-wide.
At last Jonny swung into action. He was trained for crisis management and it now showed. He was calm and efficient as he picked up the phone and began placing calls. First he called Agnes and informed her of the situation --- in about four sentences. That call was over before it even started and he was calling Fisk next. A moment later and he had clearance to contact both Samuelson and Weld. He placed both calls and in very short order had both of them convinced that the system had to come down immediately, even if it meant all banks had to close for the day, and Wall Street too.
Weld told Jonny that he would contact the President and Samuelson would contact the Chairman of the Federal Reserve as well as the Secretary of Treasury. Yet questions of timing still plagued me. Would we get authorization to shut it down fast enough? How long would the bureaucratic procedures take? Admittedly, Jonny had succeeded in five minutes to convince the top authorities in the country of the gravity of the situation. But how long would it take for them to get word down to the operators in the field? I posed these questions to Jonny.
``It'll be a while,'' he admitted. ``No doubt the President will want to discuss it before taking any decisive action. The same goes for the Fed Chairman. Both will be worried about the negative press that will follow from a drastic step like an emergency shutdown of the US banking industry. It is too late to merely shut down the server; the keys are already out. At this point we need to put a stop to all EFT traffic.''
Right. That had not occurred to me. I was so pre-occupied with shutting down the server that I had not realized that the horses were already out of the barn. Shutting down the server now would accomplish very little.
``Do they know that?'' Lisa asked.
``Mr. Weld was the one who pointed it out to me,'' replied Jonny.
I hesitated before asking my next question. I wasn't sure how to approach Jonny on this matter. Still, if the powers that be were really going to take as long as Jonny suggested then we had to do something. A program could forge and transmit hundreds of EFT's per minute. If the millwright was sending EFT's in parallel to collecting keys, then he may very well have sent out several thousand already. By the time that number got up into the millions it would be too late to unravel the mess. The only correction that would be possible at that point would be to turn back the clock and revert all balances to the levels from the day before. Any business carried out after this morning and before the correction, which would be tomorrow or even the day after, would have to be erased. Several days of economic activity would be wiped out.
``Jonny...''
I didn't know how to continue so I stopped. Jonny turned to look at me but said nothing, waiting for me to continue. After a long pause in which I remained silent, his expression softened a bit and he said, ``it ain't going to be fast enough is it? We're in big trouble, huh?''
``Let me put it this way, I'm afraid that there is a chance that if you walked into your bank right now and checked your balance you'd be surprised. Perhaps pleasantly surprised. Perhaps unpleasantly surprised. But surprised nonetheless.
``It's only a slim chance right now --- my guess is that only a very small fraction of the banking system has been infected --- but wait another hour and it might be a very good chance indeed. There is a cancer in our banking infrastructure, and it is growing unchecked.''
``The way I see it we have two choices,'' said Jonny. ``We can let the President and his men deal with this in their way, knowing full well that they don't have a clue how fast this can blow up. Or, we can pull the plug now and deal with the consequences.
``I don't know about you, but I ain't gonna sit by and watch the entire US economy go down the tubes just because some loser with a computer saw us coming. Maybe we are chasing a ghost. Maybe not. I got only one question: what is he collecting those keys for if not to screw up the entire EFT network?''
There was no need to reply.
In the short silence that followed, Jonny once again turned to the phone. He reached Fisk and the two of them began to discuss contingency plans. Meanwhile Lisa turned to me. She reminded me of our optimism over the newest improvements to the filtering rules for BIF. At her urging I interrupted Jonny to say that there was at least a slim chance that BIF could find the millwright before he could do significant damage... if we did not have any bugs and if we could begin executing it on NSA hardware immediately.
Jonny handed the phone to me and told me to talk to Fisk. Before I could say anything, Fisk began speaking.
``Carl? You're a phone phreak; how hard would it be to sabatoge the communications at the world's biggest banks?''
``I really don't know. I only have tangential knowledge of phone hacking.''
``Well, in a few minutes we are going to have to bring the EFT system to a grinding halt, by whatever means. If the President and the Fed don't clear the shutdown fast, then we will have to sabatoge the system. I will take responsibility.''
Had the situation become that desperate? Suddenly I was not so sure. It is one thing to ask the president to temporarily shut down a key service, it is another thing altogether to deliberately sabatage the US banking system.
Exactly what the millwright intended to do with the stolen keys was still unclear. As of yet we still had not seen a single bogus EFT, nevermind millions.
Fisk said that he would take responsibility even if we were over-reacting, but would he? I had been set up to be the scapegoat once; I did not want it to happen again. What would happen if I sabotaged the phone system and then it was determined that the banks were never in real jeopardy? Bringing down the phones will stop the EFT's but it does nothing to help identify and apprehend the millwright.
On the other hand, did I really have a choice? If I waited until the millwrights intentions are clear, it would probably be too late. Once we see one bogus EFT, we will probably see billions.
Fisk was still talking. ``We have no choice Carl. If we wait for each individual bank to respond then it will be a case of too little too late. You, of all people, must realize that we have to make absolutely certain that no banks can exchange EFT's.
``You and Lisa go and do whatever you need to do to run the new program. Fast. If that doesn't work, then I want you to stand by for instructions from me. I'll get our top specialists on wire-tapping and electronic surveillance; together you guys will have to figure out a way to crash the nation's phone system.'' I gulped, deferred, and gave the phone back to Jonny. Without bothering to tell Lisa about Fisk's still half-baked and wreckless ``plan B'' I turned for the door and motioned for Lisa to follow.
Deeming the elevators too slow, I took the stairs, three at a time, down to the ground floor with Lisa clamoring down behind me. I explained to Lisa where we were going between gasps for air as I ran. We needed to get back to my apartment. That was where I had left the data tape with the latest patch for BIF. We ran across the wet pavement to her car. Lisa had automatic door locks and the doors were already unlocked by the time we reached the car. We tore the doors open and threw ourselves into the seats. She had the engine running before I had my door closed. The park brake was situated between the two front seats and she told me to release it as she threw the gearshift into reverse. No sooner had I released the park brake than the car rocketed backward and swung around in a tight arc until it was facing the exit of the parking lot. Lisa didn't stop to look for other cars; into first gear went the gearshift and out of the parking lot went the car, with the wheels squeeling in protest. We sped down the street, heading toward Jackson Blvd. There Lisa careened around the corner, swinging dangerously wide and over the curb as she turned left. After correcting her steering she slammed her foot down on the gas and sped east on Jackson.
Other cars on the street seemed to be stationary relative to the speed of our own vehicle. Lisa bobbed and weaved between cars, never using the brake. She pushed down hard on the accelerator, urging the car to go still faster.
I was glad Lisa was driving. Had I been driving, and driving the way I normally do, we would not have made nearly as much progress. And had I been driving, and driving as she was, then we certainly would have ended up in a ditch or through a store window.
The rain had stopped, and for this I was grateful. It had been a heavy rain, and the streets were still very wet, with standing water in places. Visibility was perfect, however, for the rain had washed away the haze that had been in the air earlier in the day. The sun was even breaking through the clouds in places. Or were the flashes of light blinding my eyes not sunlight but rather visions of the after-life dancing before me as Lisa continued to push the car beyond engineering tolerences? She careened around the corners and flew down the straights. The wheels squealed and the engine whined. I was buffeted in my seat, first against the doors and then against the straining seatbelt across my torso.
When we joined the traffic on Michigan, Lisa was forced to slow down, but only slightly. Traffic became heavier and Lisa was having some difficulty weaving. We should have taken Columbus instead. I looked at my watch. Already ten minutes since we left Jonny's office. The car in front of us was moving slowly and we were penned in by another car on our left. A motorcycle on our right kept pace with our car, leaving no means of escape. The feeling of helplessness was unbearable. Lisa honked, but there was no noticeable affect. Something needed to be done. I swallowed hard, dreading what I was about to suggest.
``Lisa, we've got to pick up the pace,'' I said. ``If there was ever an emergency, this is it. The world economy is in jeopardy. What difference does it make if we commit a few minor traffic infractions?
``Don't stop for any more red lights. Go through the intersections as soon as you can without colliding with anybody. Drive on the sidewalk if you have to.''
She didn't respond immediately, concentrating instead on avoiding the yellow cab on the left and the motorcycle on our right. She veered away from the motorcycle, sent the cab-driver in a panic to his left, and managed to miss both by inches as we screamed into a small gap that had opened between the cab and the car immediately in front of us.
``Right,'' she said. ``Hang on.''
I had never let go. It was then that I noticed that I still held the park brake handle in my left hand. My right hand was clenched to the door handle. My feet were firmly planted on the floor. I was bracing myself in the same position I'd been in since we left the parking lot.
``I'm ready,'' I lied.
She took my suggestion to heart and swerved sharply to the right, cutting across two lanes and darting between two cars parked along the curb. Lisa slowed only slightly as we bounced over the curb and up onto the sidewalk. Pedestrians scrambled to give us a wide margin as Lisa maneuvered to avoid sign-posts on our left and pedestrians on our right. I could see a blur of astonished faces flash by my window as we hurled down the walkway. Everywhere I looked people were pressed up against the fronts of buildings in an effort to give us every inch of sidewalk possible.
In the seat beside me Lisa was pressed up against the steering wheel. Perspiration formed on her furrowed forehead as she concentrated on maneuvering the vehicle down the tight corridor with parked cars on our left and buildings, stoops, and people on our right. She squinted through her eyes with her neck craning forward, as if straining to catch a glimpse of each oncoming obstacle moments sooner than she would have otherwise.
I pressed my eyes tightly shut, not wanting to see any more. I would have covered my ears if only I had been willing to release the strangle-hold both of my hands had on the door handle. I tried to project my thoughts to someplace else... someplace serene. It didn't work. As the car veered to the side, spurted forward, slowed abruptly, and then veered again, I was forced to acknowledge that I was in a car vaulting down a sidewalk with pedestrians scrambling for safety while the world economy was dissolving into nothingness. Fiat money cannot exist without tokens and without accurate records. Electronic transfers reduce the reliance upon tokens and the millwright was in the midst of destroying all accuracy in records. I pressed my eyelids together tighter.
Then, suddenly, the car came to a full stop. I heard the driver's side door open and then shut. Slowly, carefully, I opened my eyes and looked around. Lisa was trotting back toward the car.
``What's the matter?'' she called through the window. Her forehead was furrowed in puzzlement. ``Aren't you coming? Let's go! C'mon!''
``I'm right behind you,'' I muttered in a silly effort to hide my confusion and bewilderment. Together we ran to the building and down the hallway to my apartment. I hurriedly unlocked my door and pushed it open. Lisa went in ahead of me and immediately turned toward my primary machine. I went straight to the phone. I called Lorenzo Thomas at the NSA. We needed to get the latest source code for BIF to Lorenzo so that he could execute it on the NSA computers. Does the NSA really have enough computing power to solve daunting computer problems in minutes? Can they really crack 56-bit DES is real-time? Can they actually solve NP problems? I sincerely hoped all of the rumors were true.
Lorenzo had already been briefed and was waiting for my call. I told him that we would send the files via the Internet as soon as Lisa had them loaded.
``You'll never get it through our firewall,'' said Lorenzo. ``Our packet filter blocks any incoming traffic, including e-mail, except stuff that has been cleared ahead of time. Hmmm... Maybe we can set it up on this end so we can use ftp. Do you have an anonymous ftp server on your machine?''
I groaned. I didn't. My machine was not set up to provide any network services to outsiders. I use it mainly as a client to other Internet servers. There was silence; nobody had any ideas. Now what? Then Lorenzo asked, ``Where are the files? Are they still on the tape?''
``Yeah.''
``OK, gimme your IP address. I'll go in and pull them off myself. Is the tape in the drive?''
Huh?
``You there?'' Lorenzo asked impatiently. ``Just tell me your IP address. Come on, hurry.''
``172.16.104.23''
``OK, leave the tape in the drive,'' he said. ``I should be able to get in and pull the files out directly.''
``Uh... Lorenzo? I have a firewall here too,'' I said.
He chuckled. ``Well, we'll just have to see how good it is won't we?''
He hung up the phone before I had a chance to say anything more. I turned to Lisa. ``He's going to try to break in. I don't know how long that is going to take, or if he can even do it.''
``We don't have much time,'' she said. ``We should start taking down the firewall.''
We immediately went to work. Lisa had already walked into the bedroom to the bastion host and was sitting at the keyboard. I leaned over her shoulder and typed in the root password at the login prompt and we went to work. There was no time for careful flushing of logs and a proper shutdown. The important thing to do was disable all the packet filtering rules. My router is set up so that in the absence of any filters it denies all packets; it would not be easy to configure it to accept everything. Editing filter rules is always a time-consuming and aggravating task, not quite as bad as working with sendmail config files, but almost. Lisa dumped the rules to the screen and the two of us leaned forward, craning our necks, to study the screen. How could we open up the flood-gates with minimal changes? The easiest thing to do was drop all the rules and then add a single rule that explicitly permits all incoming and outgoing packets on all ports. We had to be careful though because presumably Lorenzo would be trying to get in soon; if we deleted all of the rules first and then worked on adding the new rule, the router would not permit any packets during the interem.
I glanced at the clock icon in the upper right corner of the screen; it was 3:12. I grabbed a pen and began to compose the rule we would need. It would have to permit connections on any port and from any Internet host.
Just then the tape drive pulled itself out of power-saver mode. No sooner had the fan reached full power than the tape itself began to rewind.
Whhirrr... klunk, whheee... klunk, whhirrr...
The tape was advancing a short distance, then rewinding, and then repeating.
``Is that you?'' I asked Lisa.
She just stared at it, her mouth drooped open, her hands no longer moving across the keyboard. Neither of us said anything for a moment as we both looked at the small cream-colored box of the tape drive, with the green status light blinking.
``Lorenzo...'' whispered Lisa, in a hushed tone.
Of course! He must have gotten in. So fast? We hadn't even dismantled any of our firewall defenses yet. We both ran back over to my primary machine.
``Do a `ps','' I said. ``Find out which TTY he's using.''
Lisa had already typed in the `what' command before I had said this, and the output was now on the screen. The only user runnning `tar' was `root'. Lisa and I both laughed.
``It's him all right!'' exclaimed Lisa. ``Where is he putting the files? Do you think he has he gotten any of them off the tape yet?''
As she asked this she ran the `ps' command with various command line switches so as to get a full read-out of the `tar' command that Lorenzo was running. The files were being dumped into `/tmp/mmp'. We also saw that Lorenzo was using ftp to move them back to the NSA.
My head began to swim. I didn't have ftp on my machine! Yet there it was, already running. Lorenzo must have down-loaded a version from the NSA and compiled it on my machine. Lisa was checking some of the Internet packets going through the router. She announced that the new BIF files were already being ferried off our machine and were bound for the Internet.
I was flabbergasted. In the space of less than five minutes Lorenzo had managed to break through my firewall, compile and install his own version of an ftp server, pull the files off the tape, and begin sending them to the NSA. It was at that moment that I learned to never underestimate the capabilities of the NSA. These guys operate in a whole different league.
Lisa turned, saw the expression on my face, and burst out laughing. Her laughter became almost hysterical as she put her hands on her stomach and leaned back in her chair. ``That's some firewall you have there Carl,'' she said after she had caught her breath.
Already the tape drive had stopped. Another `ps' revealed that the ftp transfer had stopped as well. Moments later we saw that root had logged out; Lorenzo had what he wanted.
The phone rang. It was Lorenzo.
``I've got somebody installing the patches now,'' he said. ``There has been a change of plans. Fisk wants you back at the FBI offices. He said something about a contingency plan. You two should head back immediately. I'll get in touch with you there.''
We wasted no time in following this suggestion. This time Lisa kept the car on the street, but that seemed to be the only constraint she was operating under in her effort to minimize travel time.
When we reached Jonny's office he was still on the phone. He cupped his hand over the mouthpiece and quickly brought us up to date. The translation service was still running. The President, the Chairman of the Fed, and the Secretary of Treasury, had all been briefed. Danial had prepared the machines for rapid shutdown; all he needed was voice confirmation from the Fed Chairman. FBI agents were on alert in every major city in the US. Friendly foreign intelligence agencies had also been informed to stand by. Meanwhile, the Key Distribution service (as opposed to the Key Translation service) had already been disabled. All banks had been notified not to even attempt to use the distribution center. This meant that the millwright could still collect keys from the translation center but couldn't distribute his keys by impersonating the distribution center. Of course this also meant we had tipped our hand to an even greater extent.
A second phone rang on the other end of Jonny's desk. It was Lorenzo, asking for Lisa. She took the phone as both Tony and I looked on. Other than noticing that her jaw was tightly clenched and that her eyes burned with fierce intensity, I could not read her expression. Was it good news or bad? Had they succeeded in installing the patches? Did the new program run without dumping core?
``You should run it with the -v2 option,'' Lisa said. Good, it sounds like they have it properly installed and are ready to start running it. With the computing power of the NSA it shouldn't take long to execute. I was a little puzzled that Lisa recommended the v2 option though. Wouldn't it be better to run it without the slower rules first? Better to get a rough result quickly than to take the extra cpu-time to try to pinpoint the culprit.
``I wouldn't,'' Lisa replied to some question from the other end of the line. ``Really? Ha!''
This was getting frustrating. I was just about to ask Jonny if there was another extension we could listen in on when Lisa hung up. She turned to us and announced that they had found the millwright! ``And,'' she continued with delight, ``the millwright is a `she' not a `he'.''
``They've already arrested her?'' Jonny asked, taking no time to adjust to the new pronoun.
``Not yet, but the FBI has been instructed to make the arrest. Her name is Susan Ignassi. She works for an Oakland branch of Fourth Nationwide Bank of California. The FBI already has a signed warrant; her arrest is immenent.''