Chasing the Monkey King by D. C. Alexander

Author:D. C. Alexander [Alexander, D. C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Thriller, Mystery
ISBN: 9781540568328
Google: yxVFMQAACAAJ
Goodreads: 33394955
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
Published: 2016-12-12T00:00:00+00:00

*****

They spent the rest of the day taking cabs all over Arlington and Fairfax counties, on a wild goose chase of a search for the bug-finding SDR kit Severin insisted they get hold of. They tried calling various stores first. But the minimum wage clerks who answered the phones never seemed to understand what Severin was asking for. So they had to resort to going to each store and digging around in their shelves of equipment. The quest took them from Alexandria to Annandale to McLean before they finally found what they were looking for at a tiny electronics shop in Dunn Loring.

Upon their return to the hotel, they went straight to Zhang’s room, where Severin fired up Zhang’s laptop, installed the SDR kit—which looked just like a USB flash drive—and clicked the “run” button on the scanner software’s control screen. The software churned out several columns of alphanumeric data under headers labeled access point MAC address, associated station MAC address, signal level, channel, and so forth. Then he and Zhang went back out into the hallway.

“What does all that mean?” Zhang asked.

“It means there are a lot of wireless signals beaming through your room. The hotel’s WiFi. Personal WiFi hotspots on guests’ phones or laptops. Nothing that looks like it could be from hidden micro-cameras or microphones. Nothing suspicious. Still, if your computer had a GPS receiver, we could pinpoint exactly where each of the signals are coming from and—”

“I get it,” Zhang said. “So, we’re in the clear?”

“Probably. No guarantees.”

“You going to scan your room too?”

“Later.”

“Where’d you learn how to do all that?”

“Here and there.”

“Here and there?”

“YouTube.”

“YouTube, my ass.” Zhang waited for Severin to offer more of an explanation. He didn’t. “But really Lars, you probably miscounted the lines in your little notebook hair trick. You watch too many movies. Seriously, who would give a crap that a couple of irrelevant blockheads like us are chatting with people about Kristin Powell?”

“What about the guy in the parking garage?”

“Lars, if I listen hard enough when I’m at home in bed in the middle of the night, I can usually convince myself that I hear someone outside my parents’ house trying to break in. Probably a serial killer. Of course, it always turns out to be the heating ducts flexing and pinging, or the breeze-blown branches of their plum tree tapping against the vinyl siding.”

“Look, Wallace, just … .”

“Just what? What am I missing? We’re talking about a rank and file employee of a U.S. government department that every Republican on Capitol Hill wants to dissolve, who worked in a sub-agency that nobody has ever heard of, and on a case that nobody cares about anymore. Am I on target?”

Severin was half tempted to reveal a few of the many espionage related secrets of his Customs career—half tempted to enlighten Zhang as to the intelligence community’s love for pressing straight government employees into using the cover of their legitimate positions to facilitate spying. Half tempted to explain that this might have happened to Bill or Kristin.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.