Because of Pam’s success at finding the culprit behind the blackmail video, and my failure to unearth anything interesting with the UN bombing, I was immediately struck with an urge to take over Pam’s share of the workload.
‘Find anything new in your search?’ she asked, as if reading my mind.
‘Nothing. I have no reason to believe anyone other than Fischer blew up the UN five years ago. I have messages left at the AG’s office in New York and with a reporter who covered the attack and subsequent trial, but that’s all I’ve got. Unreturned messages and nothing anyone couldn’t find with a quick internet search.’
My assistant stared at me.
‘What, Pam?’
‘Based on my calculations, there is an eighty-eight per cent chance that Paul Fischer was innocent.’
‘Eighty-eight per cent?’
‘I rounded to the nearest whole number, sir.’
‘Why don’t you think he did it?’
‘That is a complicated question.’
‘Enlighten me.’ I rocked back in my chair, highball glass in my hand, prepared to listen to the insights of an android.
‘Paul Fischer lacked the means and the motive to carry out an event such as the UN bombing.’
‘He hated immigrants,’ I reminded her. ‘He spent his entire professional career trying to kick them out of the US.’
‘He had no history of violence, sir. No arrest records. No known association with violent xenophobic organisations. Nothing to suggest he was capable of, or willing to use, violence. His modioperandi involved lobbying for legislative changes and supporting candidates who shared his ideology.’
‘First time for everything. Not to mention they had video evidence of him walking into the place with a backpack.’
‘And now we move to means. Based on everything I have read about the case and Mr Fischer, he did not possess the technical skills to build a small nuclear device capable of avoiding detection by UN security officials. Naturally, he could have hired someone to build it for him, but that does not change the fact that law enforcement officials did not find any evidence of contact with radioactive materials. He passed through a security check without issue.’
‘None of this exonerates him.’
‘Even if one concedes he took a bomb into the UN compound, how did he survive the blast? His movements prior to his entrance are well documented, and show too much indifference to surveillance cameras to be suspicious. However, not one camera caught him exiting. Did he sneak out and set it off remotely?’
‘Perhaps he used this to his advantage. You know, let everyone think you are there to throw off suspicion and then sneak out undetected,’ I interjected.
‘If that were the case, why did he stay in Manhattan and increase his chances of being caught? Why would he even place himself at the blast zone, clearly in harm’s way, only to appear somewhere else? As I said before, it’s sloppy on his part if he had designs on not being caught. Logic would dictate that he either disguised his appearance so that he could flee the scene undetected, or he died in the blast. I contend he did not know he was being implicated.’
‘And from this, you’ve arrived at only a twelve per cent probability of his guilt?’
‘That is correct, sir.’
‘Who do you think did it? Mara Kitterman?’
Pam furrowed her brow in thought. ‘Yes, and no. The responsible party was more likely Nolan Kitterman than Mara—’
‘Nolan… What?’ I cut her off. Pam hates to be cut off. Her expression gave clear indication of that. I continued. ‘He’d been dead for, like, five years when the attack happened. How could you even possibly think it was him?’
‘Because the attack bears a remarkable resemblance to a series of bombings on Earth, which happened twenty years ago, for which I have a theory Nolan Kitterman was responsible.’
I nearly choked on my gin. ‘You have a theory?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘This should be good. Let’s hear it.’
‘With respect to these earlier attacks, unlike Mr Fischer, Nolan Kitterman possessed the technical knowledge, the financial means and the irrational hatred of immigrants required to accomplish the feat.’
The ‘feat’ was a series of dirty bombings targeted at power plants and bridges in nine different countries about two decades ago. Another racist group, using similar language to the Galton Manifesto, claimed responsibility and vowed to strike again if the West did not revise their attitude towards allowing members of less prosperous countries inside their borders.
‘Explain, please.’
‘When Nolan Kitterman’s wife died, he demonstrated a notable change in his behaviour.’
Albanian gangsters had gunned down Beatrice Kitterman in the middle of the street during a shoot-out with London Metro Police. In the aftermath, he went apeshit and started calling for the forcible removal of all non-British people from the island. When his ranting fell on deaf ears, he took four-year-old Mara and disappeared behind the thick walls of a Northern Ireland estate, never to be seen again until his funeral.
‘Anger does not a killer make,’ I offered in the guise of witty retort.
‘You cannot argue that he acted like a rational human being in the aftermath of Mrs Kitterman’s death.’
‘I concede your point.’
‘Good. Couple his anger with his frustration over elected officials ignoring his pleas for mass expulsion, the knowledge he possessed as a nuclear physicist and his substantial wealth, I argue he was behind the original bombings.’
‘Again, why not Fischer? He would have been in his twenties and more than capable of doing the deed.’
‘Fischer was a graduate economics student accumulating a substantial amount of loan debt to pay for his tuition at a private university in Chicago. He had neither the financial means nor the intellectual capacity to orchestrate destruction on that scale.’
‘Surely others were equally capable?’
‘Naturally, which is why I believe Nolan Kitterman escaped justice. He had positioned himself perfectly so as not to raise suspicion, given the parameters of the event. Not once did his name come up as a potential suspect. Others were questioned. The authorities even arrested one person, but did not have enough evidence to formally charge him. By the way, his name was not Paul Fischer. Skip ahead to five years ago, a similar bombing occurs, using similar materials and a similar manifesto is sent out in the aftermath. Based on these points, and disregarding the state of Nolan Kitterman’s mortality, he is the likely candidate for the attack.’
‘But we can’t ignore the fact that he is dead. Dead men don’t tell tales, but they also don’t blow up buildings and send out manifestos. So, does that mean you believe Rennick’s claim that another Kitterman is behind the UN bombing? Is that the “yes” part of your yes and no answer?’
Pam nodded. ‘Pathological evidence suggests it is possible. In any event, I was merely answering your original question of whether or not Fischer “did it”. Your investigation into Mara Kitterman should prove the validity of Ms Rennick’s assertions.’
‘Pathological evidence?’
Pam nodded. ‘I have read several studies that indicate an above-average correlation between character defects in parents and the appropriation of those flaws by their offspring.’
‘We have a saying for that, Pam: “like father, like son.”’
‘Or daughter, in this case.’
I smiled. ‘True.’
‘It is unfortunate we cannot interview Paul Fischer and learn his side of the story.’
‘He’s dead, right?’
‘Stabbed in prison thirty-two days after his incarceration.’
‘How convenient. Set the guy up, and then silence him forever once he’s inside.’
Rennick’s claim someone other than Paul Fischer blew up the UN sounded about 88 per cent less crazy.
In the interest of time, we shelved our discussion of the Kittermans, and the Rennick case, and returned our attentions to the blackmailers. Pam resumed her position in front of her keyboard and sent the infected file to my computer. Telefon Tel Aviv’s Fahrenheit Fair Enough played in the background and I set to work.
The code inside the virus programme possessed a certain elegance. During my time in the Cyber Division of the Martian Forces, I had seen better but not by much. While I took my time scanning through the file, I thought it best we keep an eye on Porter’s assistant.
‘Pam,’ I said aloud, ‘I need you to access Ms Voss’s phone and clone it into your communication system.’
Most androids came with built-in hardware and firmware that made them as functional as an overpriced smart phone. They could replicate every application and display a particular phone’s layout on the back of their optical sensors. Anything the user did with his phone, the android would be able to duplicate. Hopefully, Voss hadn’t gone to any great lengths to encrypt her device.
Meanwhile, I had a solid breakthrough in the case. Hidden as comments within a couple of lines of code, I found the architect of the virus: N00B 4554551N. Why these bozos felt the urge to sign their handiwork like some Renaissance master never made any sense to me. Now I had a name to work with and that was usually enough.
‘Noob Assassin,’ I said aloud, trying it on for size. ‘What a terrible handle.’
‘Any luck?’ I hollered through my open door.
Pam telecommed back to my office. ‘I have cloned Ms Voss’s phone.’
I yelled while she used the phone. As dysfunctional as any office relationship.
‘Was it difficult?’
‘Not terribly. It only possessed a basic level of encryption installed by the service provider.’
Low-level encryption and she plans to sting her boss with blackmail? Maybe a not-so-clever girl.
‘Dump her message log onto my terminal and then I have another task for you.’
The information from Porter’s assistant immediately began to stream onto my display.
‘What is it that you would like me to do, sir?’
‘A name search: Noob Assassin. Try it both as N double-O B space A double-S A double-S I N and also capital N double-zero capital B space four double-five four double-five one capital N.’
‘Anything else?’ Pam asked, as if she already knew there was more.
‘Focus your search on the forums for game sites. I’d start with the big competitive games.’
‘Yes, sir.’
While Pam got to work finding more about Noob Assassin, I sifted through the detritus of Lyric Voss’s chat logs. The woman seemed to message as much as she did anything else. One day in the texting life of Ms Voss represented a month’s worth for an average person, or me at any rate.
The prospect of so much reading made me hungry. I checked my watch – nearly 6pm. We had been at it for a while. Time for some dinner.
I ordered a pulled chicken sandwich and fries from a joint in the district. While I waited, I refilled my glass and focused on the mountain of texts.
Ten minutes later, Pam announced dinner had arrived. I paid the man and collected my chow. All the while Pam scowled.
‘A man’s gotta eat,’ I said as I made a hasty retreat to my office.
Pam did not dignify that with a response and went back to typing away on her keyboard at a furious pace.
With food in front of me and the remnants of my gin and tonic beside me, I scrolled through Voss’s messages to the time Porter let me in on his company’s dirty little secret. I figured if she was the twitchy type, she might notify Noob Assassin and let him, or her, know Porter had arranged an unscheduled meeting.
Sure enough, I struck gold with a string of texts all sent to a third-party message service. The name attached to the recipient was ‘Chipmunk’.
Fortified by a couple of vicious attacks on my sandwich, I snuck into the servers of the messenger company Voss used. Eventually, I found an IP address for Chipmunk and traced it to a name: Alvin Cooper.
Alvin. Chipmunk. Cute.
Right around the same time I discovered the name of Lyric’s presumed boyfriend, Pam chimed in over the intercom.
‘Sir, I have discovered the identity of the Noob Assassin.’
‘Where did you find it?’
‘He is an Adamantium level player in a MOBA called League of Legendary Heroes and the leader of a guild called the Lords of Pain. Noob Assassin is a regular contributor to the game’s official forum site.’
I knew the game but never played it, so his level didn’t mean much to me. However, it was one of the most popular player versus player games in the galaxy. Every year a tournament bogged down the communication lines between solar systems and pitted each system’s champion against the others’ to determine a galaxy winner. It was like the Super Bowl for nerds.
‘How do you spell the name of the guild?’
‘L-O-R-D-Z O-F P-4-1-N,’ Pam answered.
‘Another terrible name,’ I replied. ‘This guy seems like an ass to me. Who would want to date him?’
‘I am not certain that I am qualified to answer that. Would you like me to send you some of his forum posts? From what I can discern, he seems to be a troll who enjoys flaming people on the site.’
‘Where did you learn how to speak like that?’ I asked, laughing.
‘I do a lot of research,’ she answered, as her voice trailed off.
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you. I was surprised is all. No need to send me his forum drivel, just give me his name.’
‘According to Noob Assassin’s account information, his real name is Alvin Cooper.’
Bingo! We have a match.
‘Does he have a billing address on his account?’
‘Yes, sir. 314D Berkshire Street, Residential District 3.’
‘Did you confirm it with the city directory?’
‘Naturally. It is a match.’
Little did Alvin know, this witch-doctor made house calls.