Free Final Epidemic by Earl Merkel Page B

advisory to the technician on duty. He swiveled to the proper monitor and studied the lines that scrolled across the display. His fingers tapped on the keyboard; satisfied the call was being digitally recorded on the hard disk, the technician settled back to listen in real time.
    The answering machine had no recorded salutation, instead greeting callers with a loud beep after the requisite four rings.
    “Is she there?”
    The voice was unmistakably that of a woman, and was unequivocally furious. The tech grinned in sympathy; the computer had already identified the caller’s telephone number and location, cross-referencing that information against the known profile and calling pattern of the recipient.
    “Poor guy,” the tech muttered. “First he gets himself on a Priority Alpha watch status. Now he’s got his ex all over his case, too.”
    He leaned back in his chair and popped a stick of gum in his mouth, idly wondering if this was a drug case orsomething to do with the latest terrorist threat. No matter. Surveillance like this was child’s play, provided you had the right toys.
    Here at the National Security Agency’s Maryland headquarters, they did, if most of them were kept in specially constructed rooms with electronically baffled walls.
    A number of these super-secret systems exist, some known and some only rumored. One of the former—Echelon, a spy system of satellites and listening posts that can intercept millions of telephone, fax and e-mail messages—had long been a source of concern to European governments, who believed at least part of its electronic product was turned over to U.S. corporations for competitive advantage. Overall, Echelon and its lesser-known sister systems constituted a technology that allowed the NSA to pluck virtually every signal from every subdivision of the world’s communications spectrum.
    It did not do this, of course; the staggering volume of signals traffic generated by today’s world would have made this an impossible task, even had the NSA wanted to do so. But if a NSA client—say, the FBI, the CIA, or even the President’s national security advisor—knew what to ask for, the NSA could quickly narrow its focus to envelop the target in an all-encompassing electronic bull’s-eye.
    The system had proven adept in counterespionage and the incidental guns-for-cocaine operation, and in the current crisis was now proving its capabilities in domestic surveillance. It would have all been quite illegal, had it ever come to the attention of a federal judge.
    The voice—now logged by the computer as that of Deborah Stepanovich, intercept number 351-29, cross-referenced to a dozen other strings of databank entries—had paused, presumably to see if anyone would pick up in the apartment. Now it resumed, with no loss of its initial heat.
    “I am going to assume that this was not your idea, Beck—that you had nothing to do with this little deception. If thethree of them are in Chicago with you, please know they did not have permission to leave this state. Katherine lied to me, Beck, and I am very angry. I want her to call me immediately.”
    The phone slammed down with a bang in Arlington, Virginia—ironically, only a few miles from the monitoring center where the technician cross-checked the standing orders for this particular “account.” He then punched in the number of Andi Wheelwright’s pager, followed by a series of letters and numbers that would be meaningless to anybody without the key.
    Then, as he had done with the two previous calls that had gone to the apartment in Chicago, he tapped in the code that erased the message from Beck Casey’s answering machine.
    “Sorry ’bout that,” he quietly apologized to the erstwhile recipient, “but orders is orders.”
     
    In Arlington, Virginia, Deborah Stepanovich slammed down the receiver with enough force to rattle the tasteful side table on which it sat. Her hand trembled, she was so angry.
    I should have guessed, she