Postby Dileep » 03 Oct 2006 04:38
Spy Story: The Final Bow
Sanjeev Gupta pulled out of the drive thru window of the Carl's Jr restaurant. The nice smell of french fries and flame broiled burgers filled inside the car. He was wary of his surroundings. The secured e-mail he got from 'the Ascetic' had an unusual dark tone. "Be wary of your shadow" was the cryptic message from the elusive mentor. You don't need great IQ to figure out that he and his team did mess with the CIA and FBI. What he did not know was how much advanced they are in figuring out his role.
Sanjeev was a direct recruit from his college. He was born to wealthy parents from Delhi. By the time he was 20, he had achieved enough notereity, that the parents had to pack him off to Bangalore in the guise of doing MBA. His exploits included drug abuse, sex scandals, cyber crimes and street violence. The final straw came when he messed with the son of a very influential politician, where both men competed for the affection of the same girl. Having lost the girl, he took vengence by obtaining a video of them in a very intimate situation and publishing it on the internet. He did such a good job, that the nascent cybercrime cell of Delhi police could not find any evidence linking him to the crime.
He continued the same lifestyle even at Bangalore. In fact, being away from the known circle of Delhi gave him more opportunities of mischief. But everything turned upside down one day, when terrorists decided to attack his college. The burst from the AK-47 instantly killed his girlfriend and tore the flesh away from his elbow. A moment of romantic chat was instantly turned into the most horrific tragedy he ever faced. After all the women he had in his life, he really loved Suman Bopanna, the smart, fair girl from Madikeri. MAbe he was not destined to have fruitful relationships. Maybe fate had other designs for him. Anyway, that incident had profound impact on his life.
Barely discharged from the hospital, and enraged by the loss of two more students and a professor apart from his girlfriend, he went on what he knew he could. He started his own tracking down of the terrorists. The Bangalore police was absolutely no help, but Sanjeev was not a person to take no for an answer.
What got eventualy published in the media all over the country was how the IB gave the police critical leads resulting in arrest of the terrorists from a safe house in BTM Layout and also of a bunch of facilitators from around the city. Sanjeev's name or his role in tracking them down was never officially acknowledged. But he did get a visit from a grey haired gentleman from RHS Technologies Pvt. Ltd. a week later. Four months later, Sanjeev finished the last of his exams and took a flight to Hyderabad to join the company.
His father was the happiest man on earth that day. He was glad that his wayward son is not enthusiastically joining a software company.
But he never knew it was a much nobler cause his son has dedicated his life for.
After hardly a year at the Hyderabad facility, he was hired by a small bodyshop outfit as marketing executive at their Singapore office. After an year, he was transferred to the Bay Area office. Shortly, he took the job of being the eyes and ears of the country at one of the very important areas in USA. He setup home in an apartment in Richmond district and settled down. The job was pretty dull by his standards. There are some Paki businesses who financed the terror operations, and there were some drug running. Also there were some people trying to continue the Khalistan movement, but their activities didn't go much beyond demonstrations at the Indian events conducted around the Bay Area. He used to get a lot of time at hand to enjoy what San Francisco offered to men like him.
Then fate again intervened in the form of General Pervez Musharraf. He has decided to live his exiled life at Napa Valley, which falls under his jurisdiction.
Life was not the same for Sanjeev Gupta after that.
He reached home, parked the car and started walking back to his apartment.
<=======>
Agent Jeff Boger sat on the uncomfortable plastic chair, watching the re run of a San Francisco Giants. He was an ardent fan of the team once, but after Barry Bonds left the scene, the team was not the same. He still gets creeps watching the game when he hit the legendary XXXth home run. Jeff had missed that game, being on urgent work. He had tickets for the game ready for his then girlfriend and himself. He turned and looked at the dark figure slouched in front of the monitors. He kind of liked Agnes Hayes. She was very good at what she did, and very chic to boot. They had worked together on a couple of other stakeouts before, and poor Jeff couldn't even get her to share a drink with him. The faint light from the bunch of monitors projected a siluette of her curves, and Jeff sat there, taking it all in.
"He is in". The sound of her voice startled Jeff. He rose slowly and walked over to the work centre. There were a few monitors clustered around and a console of switches and keys in front. The monitors showed various views of the apartment they are staking out. The big 21 inch monitor in the middle was showing a view through the bedroom window. It was dark, and the IR enhanced image clearly shown the cold window pane against the warmer wall around it. Also, he could see the computer at the work table, which is plugged in and warm. Agnes turned on the laser beam on the window pane, and the loud speaker came alive with white noise first and then clicks and taps heard when someone moved around the house.
They heard footsteps and suddenly the monitor lit up to blank white. It took a few seconds to settle and the image clearly shown the floor lamp being switched on. The shape of a man was visible, walking around the room. "He is going to close the blinds", said Agnes. But as they watched, the man sat down and started eating something that looked like a burger. They waited more than tn minutes before he finished eating, cleaned up the place and then walked up and closed the blinds.
"Mr. Vyas is in business", said Agnes. "I think we can use his real name now Agnes." Jeff said rather dryly. Man, he even hated the words Sanjeev Gupta. He couldn't come to terms to the fact that this guy, maybe young enough to be his son, had him garndly. Even after he knew that he is going to get him down to the slammer tonight.
The loud speaker started to give out the clickety clack of someone typing on the keyboard. Then it was shaded by a loud hum. "He turned on the breaker". Let's go", said Jeff. "It's showtime".
Both of them, and the man who was silently watching the game stood up, passed their hands over the sidearm and radio, tapped the earset, nodded to each other and walked out of the room.
It was payback time for FBI.
<============>
The stakeout was the culmination of many sleepless nights for Jeff boger and his colleagues. He didn't care too much about the stuff belonged to the General, but his own hard disk, from his own goshdarn cubicle! Now that is one hit too much. He know who did it, but despite serious efforts by his colleagues and even SFPD, no evidence could be drawn. All they had was a picture of the perp who actually hit the FBI building and the truck. He did the obvious thing, that is circulating the picture all around the country.
The breakthru happened when Raphael Garcia was arrested in the suburbs of San Diego. He was apprehended by the border patrol, trying to sneak to Mexico. Faced with the photographic evidence and a plea bargain, he readily admitted working with Mahendra vyas, and specifically, pointed out the fast food joint in Santa Rosa where they met. From there, they could get the image of Sanjeev Gupta from the security tapes. It took only a day to trace Sanjeev, and set up a stakeout at his apartment. While they watched every move of him, another team collected and analysed evidence on his activities, piling up a case.
The final piece of the puzzle was, however, in Sanjeev's computer. The cyber security experts had warned that it would have a very sophisticated security protection, so it must be apprehended while in operation, and a cryptoanalyst team must immediately take over the equipment. It took a couple of days to assemble them, and they are ready to roll now.
Two more men joined Jeff's group silently. They lugged what looked like large briefcases, and walked a few feet behind. They walked over the pavement, crossed the grass patch and assembled in front of the front door. Jeff tok a step forward and rang the tiny door bell.
<========>
Sanjeev Gupta was working at his laptop. The little CardBus adapter snug in the slot did the magic of encrypting every byte of data that got transferred in the machine. It linked with the company network over a public DSL connection, but the logical link was encrypted to the highest level. Even the hard disk, including the swap file was encrypted. The laptop, made by Ansol Systems Pvt. Ltd at Noida also contained several counter intelligence options even he didn't understand.
He was startled when the door bell rang. That WAS unusual. He hit the F11 hotkey to secure the screen before moving out to see who it was.
Looking through the viewhole, he missed a heartbeat, and cold seat started tickling his brow. The 6-11 frame of agent Boger almost covered the view, with one equal sized guy and a smaller woman in the rear. All of them had their right hand behind their back.
"Open the door PLEASE". It sounded like a tiger's growl. Sanjeev had no other option than to comply.
Sanjeev opened the door. Boger gave out a smile that was almost mixed with a snicker. "FBI. You are under arrest". Boger said in a tone as neutral as he possibly could make. "Don't move, and keep your hands where I can see them". One of the other officers moved in swiftly and clicked the handcuffs.
Two more walked in with an unusual certainity and moved into his second bedroom that is being used as an office room. With methodical precision, they unplugged the power supply of the laptop and plugged it into a portable unit. Then they unplugged the network cable from the jack. Taking care not to touch any of the keys or fold the display, they proceeded to move the laptop into a padded carton box. That took almost a minute.
During that period, at some moment of time, a tiny capacitor discharged into a new of nichrome wires and burned up several square millimetres of silicon chip. Moments before, a small routine embedded in the BIOS started a loop clearing the DRAM and the HDD.
What the analysts at Langley got the next day was a burned up security processor and a cleaned out HDD.
<======>
the ordeal Sanjeev had to go through in service of the motherland was one chapter better reserved for a later time on a later media. It suffice to say that the americans, despite all the human rights activists, laws and courts, can be very cruel when they want to, even within the US.
He will have to suffer several weeks, till one day, as suddenly as he was incarcerated, he was released without any explanation, other than an advice to take the next flight home and to never come back to the USA. As of now, we do not know his whereabouts.
The golden bowl was opened, but the truth was not allowed to be seen. There will always be forces beyond the comprehension of simple mortals at play. The ultimate truth maybe that "The people can't handle the truth". At least that is what the soft spoken Prime Minister told his trusted National Security Advisor.
The End