Tear Down That Wall,
Mr. Crypto – Flash Fiction
Three anti-personnel bombs exploded in Brussels, killing 31
people and injuring hundreds of others. The cheerleading factions in several countries
went to work explaining the slaughter.
Some neighborhoods cheered the attacks while the vast majority
deplored it. In general, people worldwide were vehement in their condemnation.
They blamed the abstractions of government just as the terrorists had planned.
When law enforcement authorities pieced together the origins
of the attacks, they raided several apartments in an ethnic neighborhood of
Paris and found plans to set off simultaneous dirty bombs in several major
cities across the world. The cities weren’t identified but some of the planners
were identified by various means, including communications surveillance from “Stinger”
aircraft.
Sixteen terrorist operatives and functionaries were
arrested. Along with the arrest of these
individuals, law enforcement authorities seized a treasure trove of computers,
smartphones, weapons, and purloined radioactive material sold to them by former
Soviet scientists in Kazakhstan.
Among those arrested was a senior member of a foreign terrorist
operation sent to Europe to direct the ‘death of Europe.’ Hamza Al-Youssef was
a sneering, resentful, alcohol-besotted, irreligious hater of western
civilization who tried to spit on his interrogators and refused to say anything.
More than one American intelligence operative had suggested waterboarding. The manner
of witness interrogation became the focus of national debates in several
countries for just one day before it was displaced in the news cycle by news of
the planned dirty bomb attacks.
The operatives who had suggested waterboarding for Hamza
Al-Youssef were rebuked and censured by their own government. The censure of the
aggressive ‘rogue’ intelligence agents was applauded in some quarters and
condemned in others.
Frightened though she was, Hamza Al-Youssef’s number three American
citizen wife bravely came forward to say that her husband communicated with
ISIS leadership in Libya by a telephone he had left in her possession. She told
FBI agents she was not to reveal her possession of the phone under pain of
death. She entered the FBI witness
protection program and was ensconced with her five children in a nice
neighborhood in Minot, North Dakota.
The smart-phone Hamza’s wife turned over to authorities was
encrypted by an American Silicon Valley company of high worldwide repute. The sales
success of the Crypto Corporation phones made the company a stock market leader
that enriched thousands of early investors in the technology.
The sleek Crypto phones were popular with anyone with the
need for privacy: government, drug
cartels, organized crime networks, unfaithful marital partners, child
pornographers, hackers, and idealistic high school students who were angry at
having their rooms searched by concerned parents.
The FBI urgently needed to unlock Hamza’s Crypto phone to
determine the cities where the dirty bomb devices would be exploded. Government
sources estimated that 40,000 people would be murdered within the week and that
another 400,000 could suffer the effects of long term radiation poisoning
. .
The CEO of Crypto Corporation refused to cooperate with the
FBI and became an instant cult hero. The FBI could not convince the Crypto
Corporation CEO of the urgency of opening the phone. The FBI Director sought
the aid of the President of the United States who made several subtle public statements
insuring that corporate secrets would be assiduously protected to no avail.
The popular media championed the cause of Crypto
Corporation. Why should a juggernaut of the American economy be forced by an
overbearing government to shoot itself in the foot by subjecting its millions
of customers to FBI and intelligence agency snooping? The meme was taken up by
many ambitious politicians who found in the crisis an opportunity to appeal to
their financial supporters in their constituent regions.
It was quite surprise when a top Mafia figure, under indictment
through wire-tap surveillance himself, broke from the herd and proclaimed: “What are youse nuts? Open the goddam phone,
you mutts! If youse don’t, there won’t be nobody making money around here!”
This amused the public and occupied the news cycle for
almost one whole day. But on the following day, radioactive explosive devices exploded
in six major cities across the world.
It turned out that damage and death
estimates had been severely underestimated. The world media got right to work
lamenting the ‘tragic consequences’ of the intelligence failures and impugning
their governments for underestimating the catastrophic nature of the ‘dirty
bomb’ threat.
