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The man’s head dipped.
Rhyme said, “I kept wondering about Gilligan’s death. Why would you kill him? And was there anything odd about the murder? One thing stood out. His computer—well, a computeryoubought and wrote his name on. We wanted to get inside it, and who should appear to help us but Al Levine, NYPD ComputerCrimes investigator. As if we, or somebody on the team, contacted him. But nobody did. He initiated it. That is to say,youdid.
“We found silicone—a main ingredient in plastic surgery wound healing—and a hair, one of yours, that had been plucked out. You made yourself older and balder. So Amelia wouldn’t recognize you at Emery Digital. You needed her because you could masquerade as a cop all you wanted, but only a real officer could get a warrant to get inside Emery.
“And what was the purpose of the whole thing? To get inside the company and geotag the set of servers you were interested in. Then, this afternoon, you dressed up like a repairman.” Rhyme nodded to the overalls. “Went underground and planted the device directly underneath them.”
Rhyme now frowned. “But that’s as far as I got. What I couldn’t figure out—and still can’t—is why. What was this all about, Charles?”
Endgame …
The Watchmaker gave a mournful smile. “Very simple, Lincoln. I was going to travel into the future.”
69.
RHYME SAID,“I know that Emery does security for lots of government facilities, including the National Institute of Standards and Technology. You mean you were going to change the atomic clock?”
Hale tilted his head at what was apparently a curious comment. “There’s no single atomic clock. There are nineteen of them around the world. If one were hacked, the others would override any deviation instantly.”
The man’s eyes took in the evidence boards. He nodded to them. “When I make a timepiece, I do the same thing. Plot it out on a board. At the end of the designing, when I’m ready to start, it’s completely covered—notes, diagrams, flowcharts.” He fell silent. Then he whispered, “The future …” He turned back to Rhyme. “My profession isn’t as lucrative as you might think, Lincoln. Big fees, but big costs. I have retirement planned in a distant location … Where it’s expensive to maintain anonymity.”
Bribing officials can add up, Rhyme supposed.
“Do you know what NTP is?”
“No.”
“Network Time Protocol. It sends the atomic time to networks that adjust clocks in computers, phones, GPS systems, scientific instruments, avionics … Anything that depends on accurate time. When your computer, your phone, your tablet, your car, the TV all show that it’s 11:34 a.m., you have NTP to thank.
“Now, let’s say you want to log on to a secure website—a bank, your brokerage account, an election committee, the U.S. Army, a porn site. You click on the uniform resource locator—the URL. Your browser needs to check the security certificate of the website to make sure it’s legitimate. I won’t bore you with HTTP versus HTTPS and secure sockets layers. All you need to know is that if the certificate’s valid, you can log on and send and receive all the sensitive information you want—banking account information, passwords, socials, naughty pix, anything—and be sure it’s safe.
“But certificates have an expiration date. After that, the data that users send are there for the taking, unencrypted. Emery handles NTP traffic security for hundreds of networks around the world.”
“So your virus infects the networks and moves the time forward, past the security certificate’s expiration date.”
“Exactly. I log on, steal what I want, reset the clock and back out. It’s weeks or months before anybody notices. If ever.”
Rhyme found himself viewing what Hale had done with a grudging admiration.
“It’s imperfect, but I figured that I could get into maybe fifty of every thousand networks I attacked. I’d be going after hedge funds and investment banks. Million-dollar transfers to my off-shore accounts … Or that’s what would have happened … Except for you.”
“You didn’t upload it?”
“No. I scheduled that for later, when the networks’d be clogged with traffic about President Boyd.”
“So that’s why the fake assassination.”
“It tied up communications and police, and pulled the NYPD and FBI guards off Emery. An assassination is all hands on board.”
Rhyme was looking at photos of the device that Hale had hoisted to the ceiling under the cybersecurity company. “But how would it work? Aren’t the servers at Emery Digital shielded or something?”
“From cellular and radio intrusion, yes. But not from induction.”
“Electromagnetic force.” Rhyme knew about this from a prior case in which someone used the New York power grid as a weapon. “Nikola Tesla designed a system to transmit power over the grid wirelessly. Never got into widespread use, but we charge our phones on those pads.”
A nod. “Well, power’s electricity. So isdata. That’s what the device does. Electromagnetic transmission of the viruses to infect the time protocols.”
Silence between the men now.
