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I nod to convey my prior knowledge of that fact. Also, my understanding and assent to his requirement of total confidentiality. And all the while, my heart is skipping a beat at the romantic analogy he’s made. Henn and I haven’t talked about that thing I said to him in Maui before our big fight last week—namely, that I was finally ready for Henn to propose to me back in LA. But I’m assuming, based on the comment he just now made about marital privilege, he feels confident we’re back on track with that. To be honest, I’m not feeling in any rush to get married, or even engaged. Like Henn said, I’m suddenly realizing I already think of him as my husband, anyway.
Henn takes a moment to gather his thoughts, before patting his chest. “Snuggle up again,” he says. “It’s kind of a long story.”
I lie back down and cuddle against his bare chest, and Henn launches into his tale. He says he met Deputy Director Leach in DC in connection with the Vegas job. Apparently, she was so impressed with the work he did in that context, she sang his praises to her boss—the bigwig, top-dog Director of the FBI—who then mentioned Henn to some heavy hitters in other federal departments, including people in the intelligence community, who then, in turn, told some of their international counterparts. Hence, Henn’s eventual meeting in Munich, where members of the international intelligence community were converging for a summit about several critical matters of grave importance, including a global threat of terrorism that was becoming increasingly urgent. A staff of hackers had already been working on the problem for some time in DC, as paid employees of the US government. But to no avail. And so, when it was determined that the threat level had recently elevated sharply, the group recruited several freelance hackers, including Henn, and offered them the chance to win a huge reward if any of them could get the job done.
“Are you still awake down there, Milly Vanilli?” Henn asks softly.
“Wide awake.”
“You’re so quiet.”
“I’m riveted. What was the terrorist threat you eventually thwarted?”
“A cyberattack on power grids. On a whole bunch of ’em, all at once. Experts have long postulated that’s going to be our country’s next Pearl Harbor—a cataclysmic attack on power grids. When they recruited me and the others, they had reliable intel that a foreign power—one that would be happy to blow the US and all its allies right off the map—was in the final stages of developing a new technology that, if successful, would allow them to hack into numerous power grids, all at once—as many as a hundred at a time—”
“Jesus.”
“—and destroy their internal technology.”
I gasp. “You mean, shut them all down, all at once?”
“Exactly. There’d be no power for millions and millions of people—and none in sight. Not just in the US, but in other countries, too. We all use the same power grid technology, as well as the same smart encryption technology to protect them from hacking. This technology that was reportedly in the final stages of development—it was an encryption buster, basically—was unlike anything seen before. Nobody on their staff was having any luck breaking into it and dismantling it, so they brought in people like me from around the hacking world to try our luck.”
“What’s an encryption buster? Is that like cracking a code?”
“Yeah, in one fell swoop. You know how hotels have a universal key that unlocks every room? That’s what this program was designed to be—a universal key to unlock the encryptions protecting every power grid using the same kind of technology. When I got to DC to start my work, every day felt like a race against time to hack into their ‘key’ and dismantle it before they could perfect it and use it to pull off the biggest and most calamitous cyberattack the world has ever seen.”
“Oh my god, Henn,” I whisper. “You’re a genius. A hero. You literally saved the world.”
“By the skin of my teeth and a whole lot of luck.”
“No. When I get lucky, my phone screen doesn’t crack when it hits the ground. Luck doesn’t cause you to crack a code to keep the world safe from a hundred power grids being destroyed, all at once.”
“Well, however we got here, we’re safe now. For the time being, anyway. Who knows what will happen when they come up with their next thing.”
“I have a stupid question. Even if you destroyed their key for now, wouldn’t the bad guys have made a copy of it?”
“That’s not a stupid question. But that’s now how it works. Their key wasn’t a physical thing. It was a program—a bunch of code that was designed to not only hack into power grids, but also to be inherently unhackable, in and of itself. Once I cracked into the program, the second part of its function was rendered obsolete. Which means, no matter how many times they might try to use that same key, we’ll be able to get in and disable it again and again in record speed. Do you understand?”
