Breakpoint (18 page)

“Will, I'm so sorry,” Susan offered. “And then, with her gone, you threw yourself into this work?”

“Yeah, basically. I was approached by some venture capitalists from Sand Hill Road. They were raising a new fund to invest exclusively in nanotech, human-machine interfaces, life extending pharma, all that. That's when I really looked closely into these fields, and came away shocked that we were so close—so close to fundamentally and irrevocably altering humanity.”

For the first time, Susan saw the man sitting next to her by the fire not as a part of her investigation but as a warm, honorable, principled human being. Older than her, but still strong and fit and caring. He had built a big company on the basis of his technical brilliance, retired to be with his wife and make wine, and then lost her. Instead of any of the grief-driven things others would have done, he had put his money to use trying to educate the public and the government on a threat that only someone with his background and expertise could have seen holistically.

Susan reached out her hand and took his. She said, “I think I can help you.”

1920 EST
Cleveland Park Neighborhood
Washington, D.C.

“Drop me off opposite the fire station,” Sol Rubenstein told the cabbie. The blue and white taxi pulled in at the corner of Connecticut Avenue and Porter Street. The Director of National Intelligence had not been in a taxi for several years and fumbled about trying to determine how much of a tip was appropriate to program into his RFID credit card. Wearing a Washington Nationals baseball hat and a windbreaker, he assumed that the likelihood of his being identified was small. His picture had seldom been in the media and he made no television appearances.

The light changed to stop the end-of-rush-hour traffic still moving north on Connecticut Avenue toward Maryland. In a small group of pedestrians, Rubenstein crossed the street toward the firehouse. His fellow travelers looked to be mainly twentysomethings on their way to the new laser holograph movie at the Uptown Cinema.

Rubenstein broke off from the group shortly after crossing Connecticut and moved quickly into the Yin Ching Palace restaurant. Personally, he preferred dim sum from one of the more authentic Chinese establishments in Washington's miniature Chinatown near the convention center. The chief of the Chinese intelligence service's Washington station had been fairly insistent that they meet at the old Woodley Park restaurant. Perhaps there were too many Taiwan sympathizers in the Cantonese establishments downtown. Maybe the Chinese intelligence service, the Guoanbu, owned the Yin Ching, though that seemed unlikely.

As requested, Rubenstein moved quickly to the last of the bright orange booths, on the right-hand side in the corner. There, pouring a Sam Adams beer, was a young Chinese professional who could have been in his late thirties or perhaps early forties, Shen Ruikai. He wore a gray polo shirt that bore the red letters MIT. On the seat next to him was a faded blue Red Sox hat. “Sol, thanks for putting up with all the cloak and dagger. Not my idea. How you been?”

“I thought you ran everything for the Guoanbu in D.C.—hell, throughout the U.S.—Shen. What's the matter, you been demoted?” Rubenstein joked. He had known Shen Ruikai for three years. They had exchanged lunches and dinners. Both Rubenstein and Ruikai were loyal to their governments, but they also both knew the value of informal channels and officially off-the-record discussions. It was Rubenstein who had initiated the discussions, but Ruikai had warmed to them once he understood that he was not the target of a heavy-handed recruitment. Rubenstein also knew that Ruikai told the Guoanbu about the meetings, lest anyone think he had become a U.S. double agent.

“Sol, you know I don't bullshit. I got this instruction from Director of Second Bureau in a personal message,” Ruikai explained with some chagrin.

“How is Wu Zhan?” Rubenstein asked. Wu had been the Washington station chief before Ruikai and now ran the Foreign Intelligence Division of the Ministry of State Security, the Guoanbu's formal name. Rubenstein had gotten to know him during the interagency effort Sol had run to uncover the scope of Chinese intelligence activity on American companies. Although his team had found massive economic espionage, including widespread electronic spying through computer-network penetration and implants in products assembled in China, the American government had kept the results of the investigation quiet, plugged some of the holes, deported several Chinese graduate students, and demarched the Chinese government. Rubenstein had also put a 24×7 tail, rather overtly, on the Chinese station chief. As a result, Wu Zhan had been withdrawn back to Beijing. Rubenstein later learned that his friendly adversary had been promoted to run all of Chinese intelligence's foreign operations.

“He misses Washington,” Ruikai joked. “Misses you.”

“Doesn't trust his successor is doing as good a job of stealing from us?” Sol shot back, only half in jest.

Shen Ruikai hesitated and Sol sensed that his joking remark had hit home. “Apparently, he does not trust me for something, Sol. I was directed to give you this message in writing. As you will see, I am not instructed to give you a substantive message. Instead, he invites you to visit him as soon as possible.”

Rubenstein took the text, which had been translated into English. Ruikai continued, “The backstory, Sol, which I got on the secure phone, is that Taiwan shooting down our fighter aircraft has really embarrassed the big generals of the People's Liberation Army. They want to do something. And this comes at a time when some in the Pentagon think that maybe China is responsible for the terrorist attacks in the U.S. The Guoanbu in Beijing thinks the tensions between us are too high. Dangerously high.”

“That must be because that is what Guoanbu's Washington station is reporting to Beijing,” Sol observed. “Is that what you are telling them?”

The Peking duck arrived and both men halted the conversation until the waiter distributed the pancakes, spring onions, skin, sauce, and duck meat. Even when the waiter departed, Ruikai did not answer. He carefully stuffed a pancake and then looked up at Rubenstein. “Without revealing my sources and methods, Sol, I might have reported that many senior officials of your government have the belief that China is somehow involved in the bombings this week. They are, of course, wrong. Perhaps I have told Beijing that the Pentagon has been tasked to develop retaliation options. And that POTUS will ask the television networks for time on Monday night.”

Now it was Rubenstein who took his time carefully assembling his duck package. Then he smiled across the table. “Without commenting on the accuracy of what you might have reported, tell me why Wu thinks that in the middle of all of this, I should spend a week dragging my raggedy ass to Beijing?”

Ruikai sat back in the booth and took a large gulp of the Sam Adams. “Here is where I can only speculate. You know that Wu is very close personally to our President. He may or may not be speaking for him. There may be a deal, which Wu cannot put in writing yet. Our President may not want to seek approval for a plan only to have your side reject it. But, Sol, I am guessing. All I do know is that my instructions were, first, to tell you that you could leave tomorrow and be back on Sunday on the nonstop to Hong Kong. Wu will meet you there. You will be the only one in the first-class cabin on the flight out of Dulles. Second, I was to meet you here, at the Yin Ching Palace. I don't know why this place—it's not very trendy.”

Sol Rubenstein did not reply. Ruikai saw Sol's eyes focus in the middle distance. Then he said slowly, “I don't think Wu has a flair for the melodramatic, Shen, do you?” Shen Ruikai shook his head.

Rubenstein signaled for a waiter. “Menu, please.” Ruikai looked puzzled. Sol accepted the menu, turned it over, and handed it to Ruikai, his finger pointing to a box on the back cover. It read:

Rubenstein stood up to leave and placed his Nationals cap back on. “Tell Wu I will see him in Hong Kong on Saturday. Call my assistant with the travel details, but I must be back Sunday.”

0822 PST
Marine Base Hospital
Twentynine Palms, California

He was aware of a humming and then of that feeling in his left arm that meant he had an intravenous feed. He tried to open his eyes and succeeded only in raising his left eyelid. The light coming in through the window was too bright, forcing him to quickly shut the lid.

“You've always been a very good patient, Jimmy, and there you are waking on cue from the stimulant.”

He recognized the deep tones of Dr. Mark Rathstein. Without again attempting to open his eyes, Foley tried to talk. His mouth and throat were bone dry. He whispered, “Update me, Doc. What happened?” He felt a plastic straw on his lips and sucked in some water from the bottle Rathstein was holding. “Thanks.”

“It's been a long night. We got you in here about twelve hours ago. Slight concussion, cuts, but your Mark II personal optic had been shattered by a piece of the metal roof, like a little dagger. Thank the gods it stopped at the back of the optic orb and didn't keep going into the brain.” Rathstein spoke slowly, calmly. “I replaced the optic with a Mark V. It's much more capable, but you will have to get used to it once the swelling goes down and you take the dressing off in a few days.”

Foley struggled to speak, coughing and clearing his throat. “Guess if I was goin' to be stabbed in my superman eye, this was the best place in the world for that to happen. Thank you for…” He coughed again. He remembered now how much he hated the struggle to get rid of anesthesia in his body. It took days last time.

“This time we will have to tell your civilian employer about the eye. There is little chance now that they will seek to disqualify you from your job. The enhanced personal optics have an established track record and you now have the state-of-the-art model. Would have cost you a bundle in the civilian world. I'm writing it off as research here. You're the first case of an upgrade from the mark two to the mark five.” Rathstein was keeping the discussion to the implant. “You will notice that it has greater telescopic range and clarity, better low-light vision and infrared. The interaction with the brain is the same, through the optic nerve. You can also link directly to a helmet and a visor to do split screen, including from the camera on the back of the helmet, so you literally have eyes in the back of your head. And you can feed what you see through the visor to the Net so that you can let other guys in your squad or back at headquarters see what you see.”

“No X-ray vision yet, Doc?” Jimmy asked, half joking, as he slowly opened his left eye, his human eye, again. “No way to use stem cells to grow me a new eye?”

“Not yet, but we will use stem cells to grow you back a tooth for the one you lost. No X-ray vision yet, either. Haven't been able to deal with the power problems, although there is a millimeter wave experiment that is interesting,” Rathstein said, offering the water bottle again. “The primary power source for the Mark V is solar. There are nano-photovoltaic cells on the surface of the unit. A secondary power pack for low light conditions is in the same place as the old one, behind your collarbone.”

Foley raised his right hand and felt the bandaging below his neck. “How often does it need to be changed?”

“It doesn't,” Rathenstein said. “The biomotors program finally produced the results we were looking for. It runs off of ATP, a nucleotide produced naturally by your body for intracellular energy transfer. Welcome to the molecular future.”

“Better living through chemistry, I guess,” Jimmy said with a weak smile. “Jess?”

“I spoke with your wife. She took it all quite well, considering. I told her you would call her around noon and then we would be getting you on your own personal VLJ home,” Rathstein continued.

“I shouldn't put her through…” Foley could not finish the sentence and began to cough again. He thought of what time it must have been in New York when Rathstein had called. His job kept interfering with hers. As an investment banker, she made more than ten times his police salary. “I need to call her. And Susan, see what trouble she's up to.”

“By the way, Jimmy, speaking of your family, I think I may have some possibly good news about your dad. I called his doctor on Long Island after you sent the doctor the e-mail authorizing me to consult.” Foley had almost forgotten their conversation about his father's Alzheimer's. Rathstein was sounding almost excited, which was unusual for the normally cautious doctor. “They have tried all the drugs and they've cleared some of the plaque, but they have not tried the continuous deep electrical stimulation or, of course, the experimental nano. So I persuaded my colleague at Cornell Medical Center to take him on as part of their test program. It may not work, but it's definitely worth a try.”

“Mark, I can't begin to thank…I mean…” Foley struggled for words. He held up his arm, reaching toward the doctor. Rathstein moved closer and let Foley grab his arm. Jimmy's grip was still strong.

Rathstein noticed Foley swallow hard. “The others, Doc,” Jimmy rasped. “What happened at the raid?”

“You will have to talk to the naval investigators. They want to see you, but I told them you were being medevaced to your civilian medical system in New York. A buddy of mine at the Hospital for Special Surgery in Manhattan is taking you. He has worked with the new optic.”

Foley grabbed the bedsheet tightly with his right hand. “What happened?”

“The buildings were booby-trapped. Somehow the Bombot sweeps didn't catch them. They all went up. We had about ten guys in emergency. Lot of surgery last night. I did two other eyes. Altogether, we installed an enhanced leg and two arms, three eyes.”

He paused. Jimmy opened his left eye and stared at him. Then Rathstein admitted, “We lost two Marines. They were not in the exoskeletons.”

To the doctor it looked like the news had put his patient in physical pain, clutching harder at the bedsheets.

“If they had been in the suits, none of them would have expired. I have to get the suits recertified for use. Maybe now that you have found the guys that were hacking into our net…” The doctor grimaced and looked out the window at morning sun, now beaming directly into the hospital room. “How can we do Netcentric warfare if…”

“We didn't get them,” Foley whispered. “But I will, Doc. I will. I will find out who the fuck they are. And we will get those superman suits back on our Marines. You guys gotta be able to secure the link. No more wards filled with gyrenes without limbs. Not again. Not next time.”

1005 PST
The Café at The Hotel, Mandalay Bay
Las Vegas, Nevada

Susan heard Soxster behind her. “Jimmy's offline, flying back to New York, and you jet off to Vegas with Gaudium. Is the threat from China over and you didn't tell me?” She was sitting in the upscale snack bar of the hip hotel in the Mandalay Bay complex. Unlike the theme-park hotels on the strip, The Hotel had no ubiquitous slot machines or other gambling paraphernalia. It could have been in Tribeca or on the Sunset Strip: quiet and elegantly
cool.
“How is The Breakfast and The Coffee?”

Susan smiled at Soxster's lack of opening small talk as he appeared from behind her. Then she smiled at his red T-shirt, which read “Infocon Alpha 2012” and “I am not a Fed.” Below the words was a drawing of a cartoon figure in a trench coat, wearing a stethoscope and listening to a box connected to several telephones.

“You like it? All the federal law-enforcement and spy agencies come to Infocon to learn our latest techniques. I thought of getting you a Not Fed T-shirt, too, but…don't you just hate people who lie with their T-shirts?” He rustled in a plastic bag and produced a folded blue T-shirt, which he passed across the table. “Instead, I got you this one.”

Susan unfolded the shirt. It read “I am not a terrorist” and had a drawing of Osama bin Laden with a red
X
across it.

“Good morning to you, too. And thanks, I guess, for the T-shirt.” Susan leaned across the small table. “Jimmy is doing fine. I just talked with him and he'll be back to duty next week. Although my bosses want me to crack this case by Sunday for some reason. Fat chance.

“And, yes, we still have a real problem with the Chinese. I'm trying to find out what's driving them crazy and get to their next targets
before
they do, instead of at the exact same time, like at SCAIF. It's just possible that the hidden technology Gaudium knows about is that target.” She paused. “I can see what he's talking about, you know. If we move ahead with Living Software, with Enhanced people, we'll leave much of the world in the dust. We could also leave humanity in the dust.”

“Whoa, humanity in the dust?” Soxster mimicked. “Did Gaudium get you to drink some of his Kool-Aid? Talk about sleeping with the enemy.”

“Will is not the enemy,” Susan shot back, and then regretted it. “Fuck you. Look, mind your own business.”

“Wow, just a figure of speech,” Soxster said, backing away. “And what makes you think the Chinese aren't doing this technology stuff, too?”

“They aren't. I checked. The Chinese are good at large-scale implementation, but not big on innovation. And because the rate of technology acceleration is itself constantly increasing, once you get ahead, you stay there. Unless someone goes around blowing your shit up.” She had said all of that very quickly and then took a deep breath and slowed down. “No Kool-Aid, either. I just think that some of the issues Will raises are important. But for now, I'm just trying to get him to tell me where some of this technology is. Besides,
you
told me to go to Infocon.”

“Yeah, it's a good place to learn what's going on. Every cracker and hacker is here somewhere. Remember the difference?”

Susan sighed. “Yes, Sox, hackers are people who can take systems apart to learn how they work and break. Crackers are criminals who do the same thing with illegal intent. Do I get a star? More to the point, do you get one? Have you learned anything so far?”

Soxster put his right hand up to cover his mouth and spoke softly. “TTeeLer was hired by whoever was looking for hackers last year, around the same time as seven other top skill guys. They were all given tickets to L.A. Then they disappeared. Aside from TTeeLer, none of them has surfaced on the Net or in the so-called real world since…”

“Since what? Come on,” Susan insisted.

“Easy, easy,” Soxster countered. “Okay, so one of the other guys in the group with TTeeLer was Packetman. He'd been saying what a great hack it would be to take control of all the stupid robot canines just to show how bad their security is and how ridiculous an idea it is to have a dog as an automated personal assistant. He'd been working on the code.”

Susan saw from Soxster's smile that there was more. “And…?”

Soxster rubbed his hands together gleefully and got that evil smile on his face again. “So I thought I would just look for Packetman, the way I found TTeeLer. I know his PGP key, so I thought I would put out some Netbots to see if I could find it anywhere and, eureka! He was in a secure chat room, but I got in, never mind how. And he's talking about he got a big reward for penetrating the Man-O-War project. What's that, some super-secret plan for a stealth destroyer or something? Apparently, they're going to do something to stop it.”

“Got me. It means nothing to me.” She could see how disappointed Soxster was that his research had not been useful. “But I suppose what you found out does maybe tell us that the attack of the killer robot dogs was designed as a message about how bad our security is—how they can get through it, listen in to our offices, mess with our systems. It doesn't make sense as anything else. But it doesn't sound like a shot across the bow by China….”

“Maybe it does,” Soxster replied. “The robot dogs were all assembled in Guangzho, probably with a little extra programming in their firmware so they could be accessed and controlled later on. You guys ought to look at the pieces. Guess what else is assembled in places like Guangzho? Sytho routers and firewalls.”

“Sox, everything is made in China.”

“Yeah, but when that specific everything can connect to the internet, it gets worth their while to slip in a little extra on the motherboard, some little circuit we didn't ask for that acts like software, opens up a hole in any firewall, responds to coded packets by opening up the control plane in a way that only they can issue it instructions.” Soxster sketched a circuit design on the back on a napkin. “Next thing, they can copy any packet moving on our systems, or replace them, or black-hole them.”

Susan frowned in confusion. “So you're saying that the Chinese may have placed back doors in some electronics sold by some American companies?”

Soxster shook his head. “No. Not some. Most, if not all, the computer systems running our internet, our phones, our power grid, our trains and planes. Remember, Sooz, ‘everything is made in China.'”

“Touché,” she conceded.

“Infocon Alpha is starting up 'bout now. Let's go hear your new buddy. Will? Was that what you called him?”

“Piss off,” Susan said, smiling.

Amid the crowd of T-shirt-and jeans-clad guys in the Mandalay convention center, Susan stood out because of her sex and her business suit. Soxster stood out because he was with her. They passed booths and tables set up by people who ten or twenty years earlier had been showing off their science fair projects in high school. Now they had freeware, shareware, and some special programs available for a price. The vendors and the attendees were the strangest set of conventioneers she had ever seen or could imagine. She suddenly had a sense of déjà vu. Sam Benjamin loved the old
Star Wars
movies and had made her watch them with him too many times. This was the cantina scene on Tatooine come to life!