The Z Contingency

Chapter 49

Simon had just gotten out of the Ford Explorer after pulling into the parking lot at the state park when the phone rang. Tyler headed toward a nearby path and called over his shoulder, “I’m going to take a leak.”

“Have you located him yet?” Simon answered the phone as soon as he saw that it was Agent Sanchez calling. The impatience was clear in his voice.

“No sir, but I have another idea.” She paused, waiting for Simon to acknowledge her. After a short pause, she realized that Agent Zaine was only getting more impatient, so she quickly added, “while we continue to search for his location, we can try to entice him to come to us.”

“And how do you propose to contact him? Shall we just call him on his cell phone? Ask him nicely to turn himself in, after exposing thousands of people to a deadly virus?”

Agent Sanchez ignored the sarcasm, and continued. “We’ve discovered that Norman Harris filed for a patent on a system for communicating through encrypted messages over the television airwaves. The Patent Office flagged his invention as a national security concern and forwarded it to the Department of Defense for review. They shut it down under the Invention Secrecy Act.”

“They’re not even going to examine his patent application?”

“I believe they will still examine it, but he will not be able to get a patent on it until the secrecy order expires or he gets a waiver.”

“So Norman’s not going to get a patent. He’s not going to be happy about that. It’ll be one more thing he has against the government.”

“Yes sir. He was trying to shop his invention to the NSA. Based on this profile, I believe that he’s going to think that they are trying to cheat him out of money. He’s going to be monitoring the television broadcasts to try catching them using his invention.”

“Wait a minute. Are we talking about the same Norman Harris? Our guy is a lab technician at the CDC. He has a background in biomedical engineering. The guy on this patent application sounds more like a computer scientist or electrical engineer or something.”

“Yes sir. I wondered that myself, so I looked into his background some more. Apparently computers are his hobby. He has been active in some homebrew clubs for many years, and his school records show advanced studies in mathematics.”

“So does this invention have anything to do with how we’re going to contact Mr. Harris?”

“Yes sir. His invention is actually quite ingenious,” Sanchez said with admiration. “He uses steganography to....”

“Steganography?” Simon interrupted.

“It basically means hidden writing. Messages are hidden in plain sight, and only the sender and receiver know they're there. His invention hides the messages by encrypting them into a video signal. An accompanying audio signal provides the decryption key. He provides extra security against detection by constantly changing the key based on the frequency of a carrier wave for the audio signal. We can use his invention to send him a message.”

“Excellent!” It was Simon’s turn to be impressed. “Get Goldberg to put together what you’ll need to send the message out. Get back to me after you draft a message. See what you can find in his profile that will sway him.”

Agent Sanchez ended the call very pleased with herself. This was the first time Agent Zaine reacted so positively to one of her suggestions. To be fair, he had always been very supportive of her, but he had never done so with much exuberance. She had always chalked that up to his being brought up in England. So staid and proper.