Josh turned to the last message, hoping it would provide a clue. Decoded, it read:
Roswell, weather balloon matches Gibraltar technology, we must meet
Together, all three messages were:
Gibraltar, British found bones near site, Please advise
Antarctica, U-boat not found, advise if further search authorized
Roswell, weather balloon matches Gibraltar technology, we must meet
What did it mean? A site in Gibraltar, a U-boat in Antarctica, and the last one — a weather balloon in Roswell that matched technology in Gibraltar?
There was a larger question: why? Why reveal these messages? They were 65 years old. How could it be connected to what’s happening now — to the battle for Clocktower and an imminent terrorist attack?
Josh paced; he had to think. If I was a mole inside a terrorist organization, trying to call for help, what would I do? Trying to call for help… the source would have left a way to contact him. Another code? No, maybe he was revealing the method — how to contact him — the obituaries. But that would be inefficient, newspaper obituaries would take at least a day to appear — even online. Online. What would be the modern equivalent? Where would you post?
Josh ran through several ideas. The obituaries had been easy: there were only a few papers to check. The message could be anywhere online. There had to be another clue.
What did the three messages have in common? A location. What was different about them? There were no people in Antarctica, no classifieds, no… what? What was different about Roswell and Gibraltar? Both had newspapers. What could you do in one and not the other? To post something… The source was pointing him to a posting system as ubiquitous today as The New York Times was in 1947.
Craigslist. It had to be. Josh checked. No Craigslist in Gibraltar, but yes — there was a Craigslist board for Roswell / Carlsbad, New Mexico. Josh opened it and began reading through the messages. There were thousands of them in dozens of categories: for sale, housing, community, jobs, resumes. There would be hundreds of new postings each day.
How could he find the source’s message — if it was even there? He could use a web aggregation technology to gather the site’s content — a Clocktower server would “crawl” the site, similar to the way Google and Bing indexed web sites, extracting content and making it searchable. Then he could run the cipher program, see if any of the postings translated. It would only take a few hours. He didn’t have a few hours.
He needed a place to start. Obituaries was the logical choice, but Craigslist didn’t have obituaries. What would be the closest category? Maybe… Personals? He scanned the headings:
strictly platonic
women seeking women
women seeking men
men seeking women
men seeking men
misc romance
casual encounters
missed connections
rants and raves
He knew a few of these. ‘casual encounters’ was notorious as a way for prostitutes to find clients and promiscuous people from every walk of life to find each other. He’d read articles. It usually involved a few anonymous emails, followed by an exchange of photos, and then, if both sides continued to email, a meeting, usually at a cheap hotel.
Where to start? Was he on a wild goose chase? He didn’t have time to waste. Maybe a few more minutes, one more group of messages.
‘Missed connections’ was an interesting category. The idea was if you saw someone you were interested in, but didn’t get a chance to “make a connection” — ask them out, you posted here. It was popular with guys who, in the moment, couldn’t find the courage to ask a cute waitress out. Josh had actually posted to it several times. If the person saw the message and replied, then there you were, no pressure. If not… it wasn’t meant to be.
He opened it and read a few entries.
Subject> Green Dress at CVS
Message: My god you were stunning! You’re perfect and I was totally speechless. Would love to talk to you. Email me.
Subject> Hampton Hotel
Message: We were getting water together at the desk and then got on the elevator together. Didn’t know if you wanted to get together for a little extra exercise. Tell what floor I got off on. I saw your wedding ring. We can be discreet too.
He read a few more. The message would be longer — if it followed the same pattern: a message within a message, decoded by the name length as a cipher. Craigslist was anonymous. The name would be the email address.
On the next page, the first entry was:
Subject> Saw you in the old Tower Records building talking about the new Clock Opera single
Promising… Clock and Tower in the subject line. Josh clicked the posting and read it quickly. It was much longer than the others. The email address was [email protected]. Josh scribbled down every fourth word then every fifth word from the posting. The decoded posting produced:
Situation changed. Clock tower will fall. Reply if still alive. Trust no one.
Josh froze. Reply if still alive. He had to reply. David had to reply.
Josh picked up the satellite phone and dialed David, but it wouldn’t connect. He had called him earlier. It wasn’t the room or the phone. What could—
He saw it. The video feed from the door outside. It wasn’t changing. He watched closely. The lights on the servers were always on. But it never happened that way — they always blinked occasionally as the hard drives were accessed, as network cards sent and received packets. It wasn’t a video feed, it was a picture — a picture put there by whoever was trying to get into the room.
CHAPTER 21
Main Situation Room
Clocktower Station HQ
Jakarta, Indonesia
The situation room was busy. Operations technicians typed at keyboards, analysts filtered in and out with reports, and Vincent Tarea paced back and forth, watching the wall of screens. “Are we sure Vale is getting a false location map?”
“Yes sir,” one of the techs said.
“Tell the safe houses to move out.”
Tarea watched the safe house video feeds as the soldiers marched to the doors and pulled them open.
The sound of the explosions turned every head in the large situation room to the monitors, which now showed fuzzy black and white static.
One of the techs punched a keyboard. “Switching to outside video. Sir, we have a massive detonation at—”
“I know! Safe houses, hold your positions,” Tarea yelled.
No sound came over the speakers. The location map was completely black where the red dots had paced around the safe houses. The only dots left were David’s convoy and the small group left at HQ.