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Dumond’s comment got more of a reaction from Rapp, who finally looked over the top of his magazine. “Loved the Star Wars video, asshole.”
The young man froze. “You know about that?”
Rapp scowled and went back to his article. “Are we going to do this anytime this year?”
Nash leaned into Dumond and spoke reassuringly in his ear. The hacker gave a few jerky nods and continued.
“Rickman needed someone to send his files to the Russians or the Iranians, or whoever, right? He’d have to find someone good enough to cover their tracks, and since they’d have to decrypt the data first, they’d also have to be kind of lunatic fringe. Crooked enough not to care that the stuff they’re handling could get people killed and nuts enough to not care about pissing off the CIA.”
“Your point?” Rapp said.
“It’s a pretty short list—people smart enough to have a chance of keeping me off them and big enough jerks to get involved.”
“Do we have that list?” Kennedy asked.
He slipped a piece of paper from his back pocket and carefully unfolded it. Kennedy took the damp page and scanned down it. “There must be fifty names here. And probably thirty nationalities.”
“Yeah. But it’s better than seven billion names, which is what we’ve got now.”
“So let’s say our guy is on that list,” Rapp said, putting down his magazine. “How do we narrow it down?”
“I send out a phishing email.”
Rapp’s suspicion of technology had made him somewhat ignorant of it. In his mind, it was better to just stay away from things that evolved on an hourly schedule and could be grasped only by teenagers.
“Like the ones you get pretending to be your bank and asking for your password?”
“Exactly. We’d send a file from that Italian law firm’s server to -everyone on the list. The guy we’re looking for would
try to decrypt it, but I’d make it so it comes up corrupted. Whoever responds and asks for us to resend it is the person we’re looking for.”
“And you’d be able to trace that email?”
“If I’m ready for it and you were serious about giving me access to a whole lot of the NSA’s bandwidth, yeah. I can trace it.”
Kennedy was the first to raise an objection. “Fifty seems like a lot, Marcus. You hackers communicate, don’t you? In private chat rooms and forums? Isn’t it likely that someone will mention getting this email? And that other people will say they did, too? Won’t that raise suspicions?”
“It’s definitely a risk. But it’s the best thing I can come up with.”
“Why can’t we narrow it down?” Rapp said.
Everyone looked over at him. “How?” Nash asked.
“Rick would pick the best one.”
“I agree,” Kennedy said. “But that’s a subjective concept. What’s ‘best’?”
Rapp stood and took the list from her, spreading it out on the Ping-Pong table before motioning Dumond over. “Rick never made a move without knowing all the angles. He researched everything to death and had more contacts in more places than anyone in the Agency.”
“I don’t understand what you’re getting at,” Dumond said.
“How many of these people are you friends with or have you collaborated with in the past? Rick would know we’d give you the lead on this, so it seems pretty unlikely that he’d hand the job to someone you’re close to. Mark off all your friends.”
“Hey, Mitch . . . like I told you, the people on this list are pretty bent. I wouldn’t hang out with guys who’d do something like this.”
Rapp turned toward Dumond and the hacker again let his eyes drift to the floor.
“Look at me, Marcus.”
