The Reykjavik Assignment (Yael Azoulay #3)(61)
She strode ahead into the building. Impatient to get to her office, she walked quickly to the escalators and did not notice a female security guard pick up the phone and speak in an urgent whisper as she passed.
Al-Jazeera and other major news organizations had their offices on the first floor. Najwa stepped off the escalator, her heels clicking on the polished black granite. She should have been feeling triumphant, but instead she felt uneasy, even claustrophobic. There were no outside windows in this part of the building, except in the journalists’ individual offices, and the white ceiling of the hallway and its square neon lights now seemed to bear down on her, the pale cream walls shrinking inward.
The door to the office next to the Al-Jazeera bureau was open, Najwa noticed with surprise. The room had been empty for several months and she knew that numerous news organizations had applied to use it, although none had been successful. She pushed it gently and it swung inward, so she poked her head around the door. It was a much smaller space than her office. A young woman was standing at the large window that looked out over the East River and the Queens shoreline, with her back to the door. Her bob of brown hair looked familiar.
Najwa asked, “Hello, anyone at home?”
The woman turned around. “Hi,” said Collette Moreau, smiling brightly.
Najwa started in surprise. “Hi … what brings you here?”
Collette smiled as she stepped forward. “We are thinking of further expanding the bureau. The building manager said this room had been free for ages. He gave me the key.”
Najwa shrugged. “OK. Good luck. Hey, don’t think me rude, but I’m in a rush. Keep me posted if we are going to be neighbors.”
“Sure. I hope we soon will be,” said Collette, as she closed the door gently but firmly.
Once inside her office, Najwa pulled down the blinds on all the windows. She locked the door, then pulled the handle to check that it was properly closed. Her encounter with Collette did not really make sense. The Times had just moved to a new office with plenty of space. Why would they need another room? No newspaper editorial budget nowadays could justify three reporters to cover the UN.
However, she had more urgent matters to take care of. Braithwaite had shared some information about Salim Massoud. Najwa knew he knew much more than he was telling, but it was a start. Massoud, he explained, was the number two figure in the Revolutionary Guard, an extremely dangerous man who had evaded surveillance on several occasions. He also had powerful allies in the United States, and was somehow connected to a secret government agency known as the DoD, the Department of Deniable. Massoud’s current location was not known, but he was believed to be out of the United States.
Najwa opened her purse and took out two phones, an obsolete Nokia candy-bar model and her iPhone. She removed the SIM card from her iPhone and put it on her desk. The phone’s screen showed eleven Wi-Fi networks. The strongest, Fatima79, had five solid bars. Najwa reached around her desk, unplugged the Wi-Fi router and the modem, then checked her phone again. Fatima79 showed an empty triangle. By now, most savvy mobile phone users knew that their conversations were not secure. Not only could a mobile phone be tapped, it could also be used remotely as a microphone, to bug a room or record a conversation, even when switched off.
But Najwa also knew from a recent reporting trip to Israel that a cell phone could now also be used to hack a nearby computer. Invented by Israeli researchers, “air-gap network hacking” allowed a cell phone, fitted with the requisite software, to connect to a computer from a range of up to six yards, get inside it, and transmit the computer’s data. The software could be remotely installed on a cell phone without the owner’s knowledge, and there was no need for a USB, or even a Bluetooth, connection between the phone and the computer. Air-gapped computers, ones not connected to the Internet via Wi-Fi or a modem, or to any other devices, were thought to be secure. But even when a computer was air-gapped, the keyboard, monitor, hard drive, and memory chips still poured out a stream of microsignals and electronic vibrations. Every stroke on a keyboard, for example, transmitted an electronic signal on a particular frequency. The hacked cell phones covertly scanned for electromagnetic waves, and if a hacker had access to those emanations, he could gain access to usernames and passwords. Many of those working on the hacking software had previously served with Unit 5200, the highly secretive cyber unit of the Israeli military.
Najwa switched off the Wi-Fi on her iPhone and placed it inside the secure bag that she had showed to Sami at McLaughlin’s. She then removed the SIM card from the Nokia, cut it in half and dropped the pieces in the trash can. She opened up the Nokia’s message folder. There was one message:
All Akerman’s UNMO files missing.
She took the battery out of the Nokia as well, and then put the phone in her purse. The news did not surprise her. All sorts of files, it seemed, had a habit of disappearing from the UN archives. Access to many records of the DPKO’s involvement in both Rwanda and Srebrenica was highly restricted, and each archive kept records of anyone even requesting sight of the reports. But there were rumors that several files, detailing Fareed Hussein’s involvement in both catastrophes, had not been seen since the mid-1990s.
Najwa unlocked a drawer in her desk and took out a Toshiba laptop. It was thick, heavy, and at least fifteen years out of date. With no built-in Wi-Fi, it could only connect to the Internet through a dial-up modem, but it did have a USB port. She powered it up and plugged a memory stick into the port. A window opened on the screen, playing a file of fifteen minutes of CCTV footage from the corner of East Fifty-Second Street and First Avenue. The clip was date-and time-stamped Thursday April 17, 8:00 a.m.—two weeks earlier.