Undercover Crisis

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER TEN

Leona worked quickly. Following the strategy session in Jackson's office, she took photos and documentation on the black box to a group of audio and Internet technicians working in the Mississauga plant of Jackson Phillips Incorporated. Mississauga is a city neighbouring Toronto to the west. JPI employed more than 1,500 technology workers in a sprawling two-storey building there. Security was tighter than at the major bank software centres. Leona gained access after five minutes of checks of her identity and the materials she was carrying.

It took hours for the hastily-assembled team of technicians to go through the photos and text describing the black box. It was one of the most advanced pieces of hardware in use among spy services but it was still behind the advanced systems being devised at JPI. In the end, one of the technicians summed up the conclusions of the team as Leona sat at the end of a long table. The rest of the technicians sat around the table with their laptops open. Most of them were beaming with confidence and pride.

"We are certain this will work, Leona," said Phil Ito, the team spokesperson. He sketched a plan in which the slave unit discovered in the CDSI H.Q. would be activated so that it would query the command unit. Normally, the slave would not do anything until the command unit woke it and sent a command. However, the team had identified the frequency that would be used by the slave and, therefore, its network. A transmitter could be linked to the slave to send a burst signal with the black box's identity to the command unit. That would be enough to prompt the command to return a signal putting the slave into Stand By mode. This signal would be sent to all other slaves connected to the network that were set to the same parameters. The team assumed all would be on the same basic setting so all should be told to 'stand by'. The command signal would be traced and the location of each slave unit would be tracked. In fact, the tracing activity would draw a map of the walls within the CDSI building with a red dot for each slave.

Ito showed Leona a rough drawing of how the computer map would pinpoint all the slaves which could then be removed by any or all of the team. Leona could see a number of the technicians would love to tear the walls apart to extract these black bugs.

One last thought struck Leona. "Thanks to you, Phil and to all of the team. This is great work. But, I wonder if this would work." She looked down the row of men and woman seated around the table. "What if we left the bugs in place and activated the network? Would the people who installed this know the system had activated? And," she added, "Would they know we, or someone, had brought the network on line?"

Phil stared at her, his eyes opened wide. He huddled with the man and woman on either side of him. Then, he looked again at Leona.

"Judging from the photos of the box and the drywall backing, anyone could have installed this. It was easy ... a simple bracket, a couple of screws and putting the mic through the drywall using a hollow needle. That could have been done by a drywaller. The techs behind the devices would be top of the class; they would know the network had been wakened, for sure." Ito paused and looked at the man and, then, the woman with whom he had talked. "We don't think they would know anyone did this. We believe the owners of the system would think the command unit sent out a routine transmission ordering a 'stand-by' for the slaves. This could happen if someone had tested the command unit and had forgotten to shut it down after the test. That could happen even with these guys." He gestured toward his group. A couple of them wore guilty grins. "After all, a stand-by wouldn't activate the trigger function of the slaves."

"Excellent," said Leona with a beaming smile of her own. Before getting into her car in the parking lot of the JPI outbuilding, she called Jackson and told him of the team's findings.

"Excellent," said Jackson. And he smiled broadly as he put his phone down.

It took a week for the technicians in Mississauga to work out the specifics of their plan to put the secret network on stand-by so its components could be traced. Several of them collected the black box from JPI's H.Q. in Toronto to replace it in the wall at the CDSI construction site. They handled the drywalling so well, no one could find where the patch had been placed after the compound had dried and been sanded and painted with primer.