“Have you gone to the authorities about this?” Terry asked.
“No. They warned me against doing that. I told them I needed at least a week to get the money together. That was yesterday.”
“And how are they communicating with you?”
“By email. A Gmail account.”
“And they sent you some sort of sample?”
“Yes. It’s in my computer in my study.”
“Let’s go have a look at it.”
They got up and entered the house. It was big and screamed money.
“What’s your business, Mr Tyson?” Terry asked just to try and put him at ease because he was obviously very upset.
“I build subdivisions. “Tyson Homes. I’m pretty much hands-off these days. I went public a few years ago and have been spending a lot of time here trying to write the great American novel.”
They walked into the study. Lots of books. Lots of dark wood, a real man’s den. Arthur pulled a chair in beside his chair. They both sat down and Arthur opened up a MacBook on his desk. He clicked on his email program and then opened an email from something called Armageddon2.
Terry read the text and then clicked on the attachment. It was a masturbation scene. He could see right away that the head of the model had been created through an AI imaging program using what he assumed was Rebecca Tyson’s likeness. The clip was only about thirty seconds long and to the untrained eye, it would be quite authentic looking.
But Terry’s eye was anything but untrained. He could see the slightest differences in skin tone. He magnified the head and shoulders portion of the video and as he did, he pointed out to Arthur the differences in skin tone and a couple of instances where the blending was less than ideal. As he played it again, he noticed that the voice-to-picture sync was also a little off here and there.
“These people are not high-end professionals. They’re probably students. A lot of what’s wrong with this video are rookie mistakes.”
“Is that a good thing?”
“Well, it gives us something to work on. If you don’t have a problem with it, I’d like to send this to my partner in Plymouth. She can figure out a lot more about the origins of this than I can do here.”
Arthur looked at Terry, then took a deep breath. “This can’t get out into the world, son.”
“And it won’t, sir. But it all comes down to you and me and the trust you need to have.”
“Well, you do come highly recommended.”
Terry moved the laptop over and entered Shawna’s email address and forwarded the email to her. He then called her.
“Hi Shawna. I’ve just emailed you a video. We’re trying to find out where it came from. OK. As few eyes on this as possible. I’ll be back tomorrow.”
“My partner will figure this out. Once we do, I would suggest that you use Senator Roman to contact that local police force or the FBI and have them raided. If it comes from you they might not do anything right away but the Senator has some clout and a lot of credibility with the police.”
“How old are you, son?”
“Twenty-five, sir.”
“Where did you get all this experience?”
“Mostly just logic, sir. Now there’s no guarantee that we can actually trace this, but you only get lucky if you try.”
“Well let’s hope we get lucky.”
“But if we don’t I would advise you to two things. One is to agree to pay them. And two is to call the police and tell them everything. Whatever you do, do not agree to do a wire transfer. Make them come and get it or you deliver it.”
“What happens if they don’t agree to that?”
“I honestly don’t know, sir. But they would have to be crazy to have come this far and then back away. ”
“Well let’s just hope your partner is as good as you think,”
“I’ll get back to you as soon as we have figured something out. By the way, how is your daughter taking all this?”
“She doesn’t know. Neither does her mother. They are both in England visiting relatives.”
The two men shook hands and Terry headed to his car and headed back north.
The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. This is how Shawna’s mind worked. So the first thing she did when she got the email Terry had sent her was to send an email to Armageddon2. She sent it from a dummy email account that one of her newbies, Jason, had created for her, guaranteeing that it would not trace back to The Human League.
The text read. Ariana. Where the hell have you been? I’ve been looking for you for two weeks. Please email me back and let me know you made it back from Paris in one piece. Love, Phillippa.
It sounded innocent enough and the Armageddon2 people would obviously see it as a mistake. The question was, would they be dumb enough to respond?
Shawna didn’t have to wait long for her answer. Half an hour later a message showed up in her inbox.
Phillippa, this is to inform you that you have sent an email to the wrong address.
The email that Shawna sent was embedded with a small virus that she had created back at MIT. What it did was pinpoint the approximate geographic location of the emailer’s computer. But it could only be activated if the recipient responded. She called the virus Boomerang, and this was the first time that she had used it for real.
Once she had the approximate location, she emailed the geographic coordinates to Terry, who was actually sitting in a Dunkin Donuts on East Main Street in Stamford with a large coffee and an orange crueller in front of him when he got the email. He punched in the coordinates on his Google maps and they showed him a layout of the Virginia Tech campus.
He then called Arthur Tyson. “Mr Tyson. We have traced the email to Lynchburg Virginia, the Virginia Tech campus. I’m gonna head down there and see if I can locate them beforehand.”
“OK, that makes sense. Where are you?”
“I’m still in Stamford.”
“Listen, please stop by on your way down there.”
Terry was only a few minutes away. When he pulled up to the house, Arthur was sitting on the steps again. This time he had a small case beside him. Terry got out and joined him on the steps.
“I have no idea how you do what you do,” Arthur said. “But if you’re going down to Lynchburg yourself, I would feel a lot better if you had some protection.”
He picked up the case before him and opened it up. “This is an unregistered 9-millimetre Glock. I used to carry it with me for personal protection when I travelled up and down the coast. I don’t expect you will use it. But it will provide you with a certain amount of persuasiveness if you should find these clowns.” Arthur said.
Terry took the gun out of the box and hefted it. “It’s a lot heavier than it looks.”
“ It’s pretty much all solid steel.” Arthur took the gun from Terry and showed him how to load the magazine and cock the gun. Then he put it back in the case and handed it to Terry. He also picked up a piece of black cloth. “If you do have to use it, wipe it down with this cloth and leave it wherever you had to use it.”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” Terry said.
“It probably won’t. But you never know about these things”
The two men got to their feet and shook hands.
“I’ll keep you posted,” Terry said as he headed for his car and the long ride down to Lynchburg, Virginia.
Terry thought about a lot of stuff while he was driving. He knew he was overstepping his mandate somewhat but he didn’t really have all that much faith in law enforcement, especially when it came to cybercrimes. It wasn’t their fault. There was just no playbook for this sort of thing. Not yet.
On his way, he called Shawna and thanked her for the quick work.
“We just got lucky. These are amateur kids for sure. Pros would never have gotten back. They would have just shut down the email and built a new one.”
“Well, let’s hope I can ferret them out before they do anything we can’t undo.”
“This is where I tell you to call the local police. But I understand why you can’t do that.”
“All we have is an area location. I’ll nose around and see what I can find out. Maybe we can head this off at the pass. I really don’t want this stuff getting used as evidence at any trial. That would be just as bad as if they released it like they’re planning.”
“OK. Just be careful down there.”
“I will.” But deep inside, Terry felt this was, if nothing else, a hell of an adventure.
Terry found a motel in East Orange New Jersey. The next morning he was up early, fuelled up with coffee at a local Starbucks, and back on 95. By the end of the day he had made it all the way to Richmond, which was only an about hour from Lynchburg. He ate a light dinner from a local Tai place, found a nice motel, and crashed out from his marathon drive.
He called Shawna just to say hi. But he was pretty wrecked from all the driving so they didn’t talk for very long. Ten minutes later he was asleep.
