The Blacklist

Chapter 422: The Purpose of the Fugitive Brian
At two o'clock in the afternoon, Carrie and Gina arrived in New York, but they neither greeted the local state bureau nor told Tom. They went to a safe house prepared in advance in a low-key manner, changed a car, and went around Manhattan.

He was not trying to help catch the fugitives, but was looking for a new office address - he had an idea. Currently, SLR and SER were located in Washington, and he felt more and more inconvenient when handling cases, so he wanted to move the office here! Of course, this was just a preliminary idea, and he hadn't told anyone except Gina.

In addition, he will also pay attention to the progress on Halcyon's side, preparing to intervene before the case is finally solved to get what he wants.
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Tom, Matt, Nez and Kumon arrived at an apartment on 30th Street where the caller lived before the police, rescued the owner whose hands and feet were tied, and captured the three fugitives. When the police arrived later, Tom and Matt took out their CTU credentials and announced that the three arrested people were the criminals and that the NYPD did not need to take action.

Three of the five escaped prisoners have been caught, and progress must be accelerated because Manhattan's lockdown has attracted media attention, which is pressuring the government to disclose the specific reasons for the lockdown.

After interrogation, it was found that the three fugitives had simply taken advantage of the chaos to escape and did not know the inside story of the prison break. If they wanted to know who was the mastermind behind the prison break, they had to catch the remaining two fugitives.
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When Tom called Susan to report the situation, Carrey in Manhattan monitored the conversation between him and Susan using the secure cell phone Tom used - of course, this was done without Tom's knowledge.

Knowing that Tom had already captured three common fugitives, Carrie was not in a hurry. He was looking for Brian Mayhew, the key man in this case.
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It was almost three o'clock when Tom just returned to the company and he received a text message from Howard asking for a meeting. He could only find an excuse to rush to the park where they met last time.

Tom told Howard that Susan was about to find out his identity, but Howard didn't care and just kept asking him if he had heard Susan mention "Whitehall"?
Tom really didn't know what Whitehall was. Thinking of what Carrie had said, he stopped asking for his opinion and casually told him about the fugitive he was trying to catch. Unexpectedly, Howard told him directly that the mastermind behind the jailbreak was Brian Mayhew, a local hacker who was one of the fugitives, and then left.

After returning to the company, Tom told everyone that he had just met with a CTU informant and got the information that Brian planned the prison break. Dumont immediately conducted a targeted investigation and found that Brian had sent a sum of money to the truck driver through the Internet, which indirectly confirmed the information Tom had obtained.

However, Susan became suspicious of the source of the intelligence. Based on her understanding, if the CTU informant had such intelligence, even if it was related to the CIA's black prison, Deputy Director Kerry would have directly arrested the person and dealt with him. The situation would never have come to this point - more than half a day had passed since the incident, and there were still two fugitives at risk!

Because of this suspicion, Susan secretly arranged for Nez to investigate Tom's whereabouts, trying to find out if he was hiding something from her?
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Carrie and Gina looked at several buildings, but were not satisfied with any of them. It is not difficult to find an office building with a large enough usable area on Manhattan Island now, but the difficulty lies in using it independently and renovating and decorating it according to their requirements. Under such restrictions, it is best to directly purchase a 12 to 15-story building, which is difficult!

This is not about money, but the existing buildings, except for those owned by super large companies, are divided and sold or rented out, so it is not easy to take ownership of the entire building!
In addition, there is a real problem with money. Purchasing such a building on Manhattan Island requires hundreds of millions of dollars. It is difficult for CTU or IRS to approve the funds. He personally has money, but he is reluctant to use it to buy an office building. On the other hand, it is not appropriate, or it will cause trouble for himself!

He felt that this matter needed to be seriously considered, and it would be best if there was a way that didn't cost money...
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Halcyon's technical director Dumont thought of a possibility. Brian once organized a hacker alliance and was well-known in the hacker world. His younger brother Flynn was a radical hacker who had joined the alliance. He should know Brian. Then, when he escaped from prison in Manhattan, he would most likely seek help from members of the hacker alliance!
So Dumont asked Tom and Nez to drive him to find Flynn and ask him if he knew Brian's whereabouts, but the two had always been at odds, so this time they ended up arguing. When Dumont returned to the car, Nez, who was driving, was very curious about his purpose, but he took out a special instrument and turned it on. Soon it showed that Flynn's phone was making an outgoing call, and the number he dialed was clearly displayed on the screen!
According to the location of the mobile phone number tracked by Dumont, Nez drove and took him and Tom to the destination immediately...

When they rushed into the apartment, they found that there was no one inside except for a few computers. However, the computer screens showed the internal surveillance footage of the Warwick Hotel on 39th Street!

After a quick check of the computer, Dumont determined that Brian was monitoring the resident in room 1521 of the hotel. Tom called the hotel front desk to inquire about the situation, only to hear that the resident, named Adler, had just been rushed to Bellevue Hospital due to a heart attack.

Tom and others rushed to the hospital and learned from Mrs. Adler that Max Adler came to New York this time to participate in the key ceremony of the Seven - seven network security personnel randomly selected by ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), each holding seven network root keys, gather four times a year to generate new root keys and allocate new domain names.

Tom and Nez were a little confused about what the key was for, but Dumont was shocked and explained: The root key is the basic encryption protocol of the entire network, responsible for allocating all domain names and IPs... In simple terms, mastering the key is equivalent to mastering the entire network, and you can do whatever you want in the network!

According to ICANN regulations, Adler's sudden illness would result in him being replaced by a backup network security officer. Dumont found out through friends in the circle that the successor was a man named Jamie Wallace, who had already gone to the meeting place because the key ceremony was about to begin.

Tom believes that this Wallace should be related to the fugitive Brian, and this also explains why Brian escaped from prison at this time, because he did not want to miss the key ceremony.

Time is urgent, Tom and Nez rush to the location of the key ceremony...

(End of this chapter)