Terminal Compromise

"I gotta make one phone call, for a confirmation. And, if it's a yes, then I got, I mean we got one f.u.c.kuva story."

"No, it's yours man, yours. Just let me keep the blood and guts.

Besides, I don't even know what you're talking about, you ain't said s.h.i.+t. Keep it. Just keep your promise on the drinks. Ok?"

Scott arrived at Grand Central as the huge clock oppose the giant Kodak photograph struck four o'clock. He proceeded to track twenty two where the four-thirteen to Scarsdale and White Plains was waiting. He walked down to the third car and took a seat that would only hold two. He was saving it for Ty.

Tyrone Duncan hopped on the crowded train seconds before it left the station. He dashed down the aisle of the crowded car. There was only one empty seat. Next to Scott Mason. Scott's rushed call gave Ty an excuse to leave work early. It had been one of those days. Ty collapsed in a sweat on the seat next to Scott.

"Didn't your mother tell you it's not polite to keep people waiting?" Scott made fun of Tyrone.

"Didn't your mama tell you not to irritate crazy overworked black dudes who carry a gun?"

Scott took the hint. It was safest to ignore Ty's diatribe completely. "I think I got it figured out. Thought you might be interested." Scott teased Duncan.

Tyrone turned his head away from Scott. "If you do, I'll kiss your bare a.s.s on Broadway. We don't have s.h.i.+t." He sounded disgusted with the performance of his bureau.

Scott puffed up a bit before answering. The pride did not go unnoticed by Duncan. "I figured out how these guys, these black- mailers, whoever they are, get their information." Scott paused for effect which was not lost on Duncan.

"I don't care anymore. I've been pulled from the case," Tyrone said sounding exhausted.

"Well," Scott smirked. "I think you just might care, anyway."

Tyrone felt himself Scott putting him into a trap. "What have you got?"

Scott relished the moment. The answer was so simple. He saw the antic.i.p.ation in Tyrone's face, but they had become friends and didn't feel right about prolonging the tension. "Van Eck."

Duncan was expecting more than a two word answer that was abso- lutely meaningless to him. "What? What is Van Eck? The ex- pressway?" He said referring to the New York Expressway that had been a 14 mile line traffic jam since it opened some 40 years ago.

"Not Van Wyck, Van Eck. Van Eck Radiation. That's how they get the information."

Duncan was no engineer, and he knew that Scott was proficient in the discipline. He was sure he had an education coming. "For us feeble minded simpletons, would you mind explaining? I know about Van Allen radiation belts, nuclear radiation...but ok, I give. What's this Van Eck?"

Scott had not meant to humble Tyrone that much. "Sorry. It's a pretty arcane branch of engineering, even for techy types. How much do you know about computers? Electronics?"

"Enough to get into trouble. I can wire a stereo and I know how to use the computers at the Bureau, but that's about it. Never bothered to get inside those monsters. Consider me an idiot."

"Never, just a novice. It's lecture time. Computers, I mean PC's, the kind on your desk and at home are electronic devices, that's no great revelation. As you may know, radio waves are caused by the motion of electrons, current, down a wire. Ever heard or seen interference

"Sure. We've been down this road before, with your EMP-T bombs."

Tyrone cringed at the lecture he had received on secret defense projects.

"Exactly. Interference is caused by other electrical devices that are running near the radio or TV. Essentially, everything that runs on electricity emanates a field of energy, an electro- magnetic field. Well, in TV and radio, an antenna is stuck up in the air to pick up or 'hear' the radio waves. You simply tune it in to the frequency you want to listen to."

"I know, like on my car radio. Those are preset, though."

"Doesn't matter. They still pick the frequency you want to listen to. Can you just hold that thought and accept it at face value?" Scott followed his old teaching techniques. He wanted to make sure that each and every step of his explanation was clearly understood before going on to the next. Tyrone acknowl- edged that while he wasn't an electronic engineer, he wasn't stupid either.

"Good. Well computers are the same. They radiate an electromag- netic field when they're in use. If the power is off then there's no radiation. Inside the computer there are so many radiated fields that it looks like garbage, pure noise to an antenna. Filtering out the information is a b.i.t.c.h. But, you can easily tune into a monitor."

"Monitors. You mean computer screens?" Tyrone wanted to clarify his understanding.

"Monitors, CRT's, screens, cathode ray tubes, whatever you want to call them. The inside of most monitors is just like televi- sion sets. There is an electron beam that writes to the surface of the screen, the phosphor coated one. That's what makes the picture."

"That's how a TV works? I always wondered." Duncan was only half kidding.

"So, the phosphor coating gets..h.i.t with a strong electron beam, full of high voltage energy, and the phosphor glows, just for a few milliseconds. Then, the beam comes around again and either turns it on or leaves it off, depending upon what the picture is supposed to show. Make sense?"

"That's why you can go frame to frame on a VCR, isn't it? Every second there are actually lots of still pictures that change so quickly that the eye is fooled into thinking it's watching mo- tion. Really, it's a whole set of photographed being flipped through quickly." Duncan picked up the essentials on the first pa.s.s. Scott was visibly impressed.

"Bingo! So this beam is directed around the surface of the screen about 60 times every second."

"What moves the beam?" Duncan was following closely.

"You are one perceptive pain in the b.u.t.t, aren't you? You nailed it right on the head." Scott enjoyed working with bright stu- dents. Duncan's smile made his pudgy face appear larger than it was. "Inside the monitor are what is called deflection coils.

Deflection coils are magnets that tell the beam where to strike the screen's surface. One magnet moves the beam horizontally across the screen from left to right, and the other magnet, the vertical one, moves the beam from the top to the bottom. Same way as in a TV." Scott paused for a moment. He had given simi- lar descriptions before, and he found it useful to let is audi- ence have time to create a mental image.

"Sure, that makes sense. So what about this radiation?" Duncan impatiently asked. He wanted to understand the full picture.

"Well, magnets concentrate lots of electrical energy in a small place, so they create more intense, or stronger magnetic fields.

Electromagnetic radiation if you will. In this case, the radia- tion from a computer monitor is called Van Eck radiation, named after the Dutch electrical engineer who described the phenomena."

Scott sounded pleased with his Radiation 101 course brief.

Tyrone wasn't satisfied though. "So how does that explain the blackmail and the infamous papers you have? And why do I care? I don't get it." The confused look on Tyrone's face told Scott he hadn't successfully tutored his FBI friend.

"It's just like a radio station. A computer monitor puts out a distinctive pattern of radio waves from the coils and pixel radiations from the screen itself, at a comparatively high power.

So, with a little radio tuner, you can pick up the signals on the computer screen and read them for yourself. It's the equivalent of eavesdropping on a computer."

The stunned grimace on Duncan's face was all Scott needed to see to realize that he now had communicated the gist of the technolo- gy to him.

"Are you telling me," Tyrone searched for the words and spoke slowly, "that a computer broadcasts what's going on inside it?

That anyone can read anyone else's computer?"

"In a sense yes."

Tyrone looked out the window as they pa.s.sed through Yonkers, New York. He whistled quietly to himself.

"How did you find out? Where did you...?" The questions spewed forth.

"There was a wreak, midtown, and there was a bunch of equipment in it. Then I checked it out with a couple of...engineer friends who are more up on this than I am. They confirmed it."

"This stuff was in a van? How far away does this stuff work?"

Duncan gave away his concern.

"According to my sources, with the proper gear, two or three miles is not unreasonable. In New York, maybe only a half a mile. Interference and steel buildings and all. Manhattan is a magnetic sewer, as they say."

"s.h.i.+t, this could explain a lot." The confident persona of the FBI professional returned. "The marks all claim that there was no way for the information to get out, yet it did. Scott, is it possible that...how could one person get all this stuff? From so many companies?" The pointed question was one of devil's advocacy.

"That's the scary part, if I'm right. But this is where I need your help." Scott had given his part, now to complete the tale he needed the cooperation of his friend. The story was improv- ing.