Breakpoint (8 page)

Margaret Myers was silent for a minute. Susan knew that Professor Myers was digesting the idea and spinning it out into half a dozen alternative hypotheses. Finally, she replied, “Yes, a possibility. China would try to steal the information and bring the technologies back to their scientists, who might fail to be able to replicate them. Did I ever tell you the story of the first Chinese jetliner? Exact copy of the Boeing 707. Looked just like it, but they got the center of gravity wrong and the damn thing could not fly. Long time ago, of course, but they still have problems with creativity, project integration, and management.”

Susan was pleased at the response. “So you think it's possible that…”

“Yes, Susan, yes. If the Chinese had discovered a U.S. technology edge, instead of choosing the path of Marshal Ogarkov and Mikhail Gorbachev and giving up, the Chinese might decide instead to eliminate some of the U.S. labs until their own scientists could catch up, which eventually they probably would.”

“That's motive. We're making progress on who the Chinese might have used to actually do the attacks on Sunday. Jimmy's got proof of Russian organized-crime involvement from Soxster. Soxster also thinks the attacks might be from our own NSA.” Susan shook her head. “Other than that, Soxster's good, by the way. You were right about him. Jimmy and he have already bonded in some bizarre way and are up in Lynn busting Russians.”

“Russians in Lynn?” Myers sat still, thinking. “The concept of layered deniability. You find who did it and you think it's Russia who is attacking us, but that's only the first layer.”

“That's what we think. China hires Russian organized crime to do their dirty work in the U.S. If they get caught, our first suspicion is that it's the Moscow government that's doing the attacks,” Susan agreed. “Layered deniability, that's a good term for it. Mind if I steal it for my report?”

Professor Myers smiled permission. “What else have you developed so far? What are the facts? Facts before hypotheses, remember?”

Susan was thinking again that Margaret seemed overly pedantic. She was glad that she had decided not to be an academic herself. Thank heaven for that recruiter. “We've told FBI and CIA about the message traffic from Dilan University in China that may have led to the CAIN building blowing up. Now we have this Russian crime group that got the trucks and explosives to blow up the beachheads. Soxster says someone was hiring hackers last year and one of them, named TTeeLer, told him he was going to a place in the California desert, Twentynine Palms,” Susan rattled off. “And Jimmy, amazingly, knows somebody who is working there on some high-tech project.”

“It's the Twentynine Palms Marine Corps base, dear. I know about it, too, because there is a major DARPA project there on exoskeleton suits and performance drugs. Meant to create the super-warrior, strength of ten men, can't be killed, and each man plugged into the Pentagon grid,” Myers recited from an article she had read. “If the wrong people hack into that technology…”

“Or try to blow it up to prevent it…,” Susan added. “You see a pattern yet? Where might they strike next, whoever they are? We have to stop showing up after shit blows up.”

Myers chuckled softly. “Always the easy questions from you. Just like in the seminar.” The professor closed her eyes and, after a moment, spoke. “With CAIN a pile of rubble, the people who will take over the work on Globegrid are in Silicon Valley. The joint Carnegie-Stanford computing center at the Googleplex, the old Ames NASA site at Moffet Naval Air Station. Maybe you should tell them they might be a target, too, if this keeps happening. But I would warn the DARPA people, too, at the Marine base. Lots of nasty things out in that desert.”

Susan looked down at her vibrating BlackBerry. “Margaret, I'm sorry. Freda and the other two directors. They all died instantly.”

1502 EST
On Guard Alarm Company
Moonachie Avenue
Teterboro, New Jersey

“Of course, I dropped everything and came to meet you, General. You say you have another job that will pay like the last one, I come right away,” Dimitri Yellin said, gesturing with his hands as he talked.

“Don't call me General. I am Mr. Cunningham,” the man replied.

“You look like a general I once knew in the Spetsnaz. You know what this means, Spetsnaz, I think, Mr. Cunningham?” Yellin picked up the cup of tea. “But I don't understand why we must meet in person always with you.”

“I am not Russian, nor Spetsnaz. And I don't trust some things to the phone, or the internet, or to subordinates,” the man replied. He placed his own cup of coffee back down on the conference room table.

“I know you don't trust the internet. You hate it, you had me blow it up, some of it! And we did, flawlessly, no? But now I can't get through to Kiev on the free phone…,” Yellin lamented. “But for that price—and in gold no less, deposited in Kiev—I can put up with such inconveniences. So, what is the new job? You want me to run this alarm company for you? I already own three others. They make money like nobody's business. You just sit and wait for an alarm to go off. Then you call the cops. Seventy-five dollars a month, automatic to their credit cards.”

“It's just a front, Dimitri, not a real alarm company,” the man calling himself Mr. Cunningham replied. “But I don't hate the internet. I get some very useful information from it.” There was a noise outside the conference room, and Yellin glanced at the door. “Like the FBI's message system, which they think is encrypted, too. Never good at computers, the FBI.”

“Then maybe you can tell me, Mr. Cunningham, does the FBI or do you know what happened to the Atlantic Star?” Dimitri Yellin took a brown cigarette out of a silver case. “My people have not heard from the ship since Sunday night. It has some of the people I used on this operation for you, it was bringing some of my cash back to Ukraine.”

“FBI would not know where it is, Mr. Yellin, but I can have my people look into the Coast Guard's records. It's very rough in the North Atlantic this time of year, you know.”

Another noise made Yellin look concerned. “What is going on out there?”

“Don't worry. Our men are out there,” the man who was not Spetsnaz replied. “Freedom Garage in Lynn, Massachusetts. You know of it, Dimitri?” the man asked.

“Yes, my cousin's. We got the trucks there. We made sure that they all had the same identification numbers. I told you they would be untraceable,” Yellin insisted, “totally untraceable.”

“Then why, Dimitri, why do the FBI computers say that the Bureau raided the Freedom Garage today and why do they have your cousin in custody in connection with the beachhead bombings?”

Yellin began to stand up but grabbed at his chest and fell against the table, gasping. His skin suddenly had a bluish tint. He crumpled, hitting his head on the table and then on the floor.

“Cunningham,” on the other side of the conference table, finished his coffee and then spoke into a microphone inside the arm of his jacket. “Please join me.” Two men entered the conference room. Both wore blue sport coats and green ties. Both stood over six feet and looked like college football players. “No problems out front, I trust?” the Cunningham man asked.

“No, sir. There were only six of them. Just his Caddy and an old Suburban, sir.”

“The bodies all go in the cargo hold on the 737. I'll fly out of here first in the Gulfstream. And you know to leave their cars in the long-term lot at Newark Liberty?” Cunningham asked as he stepped over the body.

“Yes, sir.”

“And make sure this place is wiped clean. No prints, no blood, no hairs…. Untraceable, totally untraceable,” the man said as he left the room.

“Yes, sir, General, sir.”

1600 EST
The Forum
Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
Cambridge, Massachusetts

“…organizer of the million plus rally in Washington last October, coming off a great performance in the New Hampshire primary, and now considered among the three front-runners as the race goes forward, Senator Alexander George,” the Dean intoned.

The students, faculty, and neighborhood regulars gave polite applause from the floor and from the seats rising up three stories in tiers on the sides of the Forum. Margaret, Soxster, and Susan were in a box seat near the top tier by the television klieg lights. “Here we go,” Myers said from behind her hand.

“Thank you, Dean. And thank you for the invitation. Bein' from Dixie, I never really expected to be invited to anything in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but here I am…

“I know you, like me are deeply concerned about the bombings yesterday. And you may have heard the speculation today that the Chinese may be behind it. I think we all, as one people, should tell China that if it was involved, it will pay a price. And I demand that the President tell the Congress and the American people what he plans to do about it.”

There was no reaction from the audience. The senator continued, “I see the campus newspaper today said I was against the pursuit of knowledge. Nothing could be further from the truth. The truth,
veritas,
the motto of your school. The truth is that I, like most Americans, value the pursuit of knowledge, but as a means, not an end. As a means to understanding this marvelous world that God created for us.

“When I oppose the teaching of the Darwin theory, I do so because I want our children to have more knowledge, not less, to know that there are other explanations. When I oppose stem-cell research, it is because it is misplaced research, attempting to make scientists into godlike creatures without any limits. Disease prevention and repair, yes, but not enhancement, not supermen. Yes, I am opposed to the pursuit of knowledge when the end is breaking God's codes so that man can pretend to be God.

“And now, with the advent of expensive designer drugs to enhance human capabilities, with the manipulation of genetic codes not to kill disease, but to improve performance…I say we are crossing a line that should not be crossed.” There was a smattering of applause from the few supporters who had accompanied the senator.

Soxster audibly sighed.

“As citizens of this republic, we are allowed to not believe in God, but we all should believe in democracy. When we set out to make the rich smarter and stronger than the poor by offering to the wealthy these expensive drugs and genetic alterations, we undermine democracy. I have always thought that the size of a person's income did not tell me about his IQ, but that will soon no longer be the case…”

“Good argument,” Professor Myers said softly. “Gets away from the purely religious justification.”

“Do we want to throw out an egalitarian democracy for a Platonic republic with a caste system of gold men, silver men, and bronze? Because, make no mistake about it, even if we spent the entire GDP on these human enhancements, we could not afford it for all of our citizens. Who will decide who gets them? The almighty dollar will, just as it decides today who will get a facelift. But a facelift and a brain lift are two different things….”

“And guess which one he's had,” Soxster said too loudly. There were chuckles from others in the third-floor seats.

The Senator was unfazed, or did not notice. “So I propose a moratorium on certain research and certain products until we have a plan for how we as a society can preserve our democracy and how we can together decide what it means to be human….”

The applause was only slightly stronger than it had been earlier. “Have to hand it to the man, coming to a university to propose a moratorium on research,” Susan said as they stood up to leave, not waiting for the question period. “Like how he went to Congress to oppose lobbying…”

“Gaudium said the same thing last year here at the Forum,” Margaret Myers noted. “Only in more technospeak.”

“Who?” Susan asked as they walked back into the classroom area.

“Will Gaudium, creator of Jupiter Systems back in the early nineties. Serious cyberguru,” Soxster explained. “Now he's scared of the Singularity or nano-ooze or a mutant gene. Wants to freeze research, just like Senator Foghorn down there.”

“Nano-ooze? You mean like in the novel where nano-bots replicate themselves and can't stop, and they eat up everything, converting it into more nano-bots? Gray goo? That's nuts,” Susan said, and laughed.

“Not to Gaudium,” Myers replied. “He's spending some of his considerable billions to do public education on these issues.”

“You ought to go hear him at Infocon Alpha in Vegas,” Soxster suggested. “He's the keynote speaker this year at the hacker convention. Oughta be a blast. I'm going. And we may be able to learn more there about the hackers who have been hired by the big-money guys, China, or whoever they told them they were. From what I can tell so far, they been probing some really important networks, infrastructure stuff that makes the country run. They've also been running scams to pay for some of their big salaries.”

“What kind of scams, Sox?” the professor asked as they walked together.

“Phishing to get bank account passwords and credit cards, then taking small amounts from thousands of accounts and transferring them to banks in Antigua, Vanuatu, places like that.”