The Garden of Betrayal - Lee Vance [77]
Again, I only partly followed, but I caught the gist.
“Which is how you know the server is in the Cayman Islands.”
“Right.”
“And you can just find programs on the Internet that let you do stuff like that?”
“Pretty much. I needed some help to make it work with my configuration. I got started talking to a Hungarian guy named Gabor in one of the hacker forums, and I was able to persuade him to walk me through it.”
“Able to persuade him how?”
“I sent him a picture of Vanessa Hudgens that I grabbed from a fan site and told him it was me,” she said, looking a little embarassed. “We have a date this Sunday afternoon in Budapest. Lunch at his mother’s house.”
I didn’t know what to say. She cleared her throat and carried on.
“Once the repeater made the connection, I was able to cut it out of the loop and communicate with the server directly. The fact that the server was in the Caymans shook me up—I’d assumed it would be in your office. My plan was to erase the files you’d copied and leave you a message telling you what I’d done, but I poked around some instead, and I found a folder filled with media files. I clicked on a few and played them.” Her voice dropped. “They were all voice recordings of you, talking to different people.”
I was confused again.
“This repeater thing was hooked up to our phone also?”
“No. The recordings were made in lots of different places, not just in our apartment. A bunch of them sound like you’re talking to people at restaurants, or in the street.”
“How’s that possible?”
“I asked Gabor. He thinks someone reprogrammed your cell phone.”
“You can do that?” I asked, stunned.
“A cell phone is just a simple computer and some memory attached to a radio. The computer has an operating system, like every other computer. All someone has to do is physically get hold of your phone and make changes to the operating system. Then the phone becomes a bug, like the repeater, recording everything you say and transmitting it to the server. You said you lost the phone last Friday, right? And that it was returned on Monday? That’s more than enough time for it to have been reprogrammed.”
Son of a bitch. I should have known better than to believe in cell phone–returning Good Samaritans in New York City.
“Have you noticed that your phone hasn’t been holding a charge well recently?” Kate asked.
“I replaced the battery Wednesday morning, because it died overnight.”
“The recording function can be programmed to be voice-activated, so it will capture everything you say, instead of just your calls. Gabor said hacking a phone like that makes it consume a ton of battery.” She shook her head. “I’m going to have to send him some cookies or something. He was really helpful, and he’s going to be upset when I don’t show this weekend.”
“Bottom line, our network’s bugged, and my phone’s bugged.”
She nodded.
“And I’m guessing that we’re out here on the fire stairs because you think our apartment might be bugged as well.”
“It’s possible. And I didn’t want you to bring your pants or anything else, because we can’t be sure that it’s only your phone. Lots of small things can be microphones—a button, or your belt buckle, or something in your shoes. But the phone’s the best, because you charge it up every night, and it can transmit over greater distances, and—”
“Because I carry it around with me everywhere,” I said, finishing her sentence.
“So, what’s going on?” she asked quietly.
“I wish I knew. You said you had some idea when the bugging started?”
“The oldest files on the server were from Sunday night, which means at least since then. It could be longer, if someone’s been erasing stuff, but I don’t think too much longer, or I would have noticed.”
Sunday night. Before I generated the scoop on Nord Stream, before I met with Theresa Roxas, and before I had my falling-out with Walter. It didn’t make sense. There wasn’t any