Keystone (46 page)

Seth Mallus went over the final
lines of the programming script on his computer display and inserted a missing
semi-colon. It was horribly manual work, no high-level software had ever been
written to do what he was about to do. The thousands of lines of code had been
tested and re-tested several dozen times on his simulator; now, with this final
adjustment, it would run perfectly.

He hit a key
and the code executed, running through the simulation one last time. It really
took him back, seeing the scripts run, right back to the early days of the
nanotech boom, when he would still get involved in the programming; before the
money, the empire, the power. It was an old-fashioned and usually unnecessary
way of doing things. The only reason he had used the arcane method was that it
was only in this way, by communicating directly with the machine, that all of
the ghosts introduced by decades of amended programming sitting between the
user and the processors could be eradicated. The last thing he wanted was some
obscure security protocol getting in the way at the last minute and ruining so
much hard work.

It was the
language that the DEFCOMM Satellite Defence Network, or SDN, talked, and its
beauty was that almost no human being alive was able to interpret it. Above
ground level, outside the hermetically-sealed bunker in which he was now
placed, the team of primary coders lay dead, gassed in their labs by the new
air-conditioning system. It would be at least an hour before they were
discovered, but by that time it would already be too late to stop him.

He finished
running the simulation and checked the logs: no errors and the output was
perfect. The paranoia of the world in trying to defend itself from an enemy
that didn’t exist would now be exploited to the maximum by a simple computer
program.

The code was
packaged, uploaded to the SDN mainframe, and executed.

The United
States of America was about to come under attack.

Twelve hundred
miles away in New York, Frank Bartolini kicked open the side-door to the
Lafayette Grill kitchen and strode out, a leaking garbage bag held at arm’s
length and a disgusted look on his face.

“Jesus, Harry,
how many times have I told you not to throw drinks in the waste?” he shouted
over his shoulder.

He’d just
thrown the bag into the dumpster and was wiping his hand on his apron when the
white utility vehicle caught his attention. It was worthy of his attention
because it was parked in the chief’s spot, and the chief was due to arrive any
minute now.

He went back
in, cursing. “Anyone know what idiot’s parked here?” he shouted through the
swing doors and into the bar area; the restaurant was emptying after the
lunchtime rush, but the bar was always held up by a handful of regulars.

A quick roll
call established that nobody within was responsible, and Frank cursed some more
as he dialled the tow company. It was free parking by law, but in practice, it
was the chief’s spot, and even the tow company knew that, the owner being the
chief’s brother.

Better still,
he’d go out and make sure that on top of the tow fine, it would never occur to
the utility vehicle’s owner to park there again. Armed with a rolling pin, he
quickly checked that nobody was passing by before attacking the van’s
headlamps. He then broke the tail lights, and took a final swing at the rear
window. After two hits, the glass shattered, leaving a gaping hole in one half
of the split rear doors.

He was about
to leave it at that when curiosity overcame him. The van had blacked out
windows, so maybe there was something inside worth hiding. He peered in.

A tarpaulin
covered something about the size and shape of a fridge lying on its back. On
one corner the tarpaulin had slipped off, and he bent his head round through
the broken window to get a better look.

Whatever the
object was, it was smooth and painted glossy white.

It looked just
like his fridge at home.

He pulled his
head out, no longer interested in the contents of the van, and was about to go
back to the kitchen when he heard a click behind him.

“Stop!” the
female voice cried. “Stop right there, or I fire!” He stopped. “Now, turn around,
slowly, and drop the weapon on the floor!”

  
He obeyed, the rolling-pin bouncing on the
pavement and into the gutter, and he found himself facing a female cop, a good
foot shorter than him, holding her Taser up with both hands and pointed
directly at his chest.

“One of my researchers is convinced,”
Larue breathed in deeply, he couldn’t believe he was actually going to say it,
“that DEFCOMM is planning to start World War III this afternoon by simulating
an attack on the United States of America.”

There was
silence at the other end of the line. Larue decided it was best not to
interrupt it.

“DEFCOMM?” the
reply came, incredulous. “The guys who design and make our defence satellites?”

 
“And are also responsible for the video feeds
from the Mars missions.” The story was still wafer thin.

More silence,
but somehow this time more pensive. “How?”

Larue didn’t
know; neither had Martín, nor his source. All they had was speculation. They
could speculate that they could somehow override the USA’s missile launch codes
and start the war automatically, but that was incredibly unlikely – if anything
could be less likely! – given the safeguards in place. The best theory was that
the attack would be a ghost, fabricated by the network of sensors placed in orbit
and around the country, in the hope that the USA would respond in kind.

“But we will
know it’s a fake,” the reply came, “it’s happened before, both here and in
Russia! Once a visual confirmation cannot be made, the assumption is that there
is a bug somewhere. That’s why we retain human control.”

A reply he’d
been expecting.

“Remember that
DEFCOMM don’t only make defence satellites,” he said. “But also a large part of
your next generation nuclear weapon deployment systems,”

A short pause.
“But, why would they want to do such a thing?”

To this
question, Larue didn’t know what to say. If it were all true, if it was all
about to begin and they had so little time left, then finding a motive could
wait.

He’d made the
call thinking he would be laughed at, and had only picked up the courage to do
so because of Martín’s insistence. That, and a niggle in the back of his mind
that there might actually be something to the crazy story.

But by the
time he’d put the phone back on the hook he hadn’t been laughed at. They hadn’t
hung up on him, and they had even thanked him,
sincerely
, for his information. This meant that there were people
on the other side of the Atlantic who at least half-believed him.

And he found
that deeply unsettling. Because the odds of Martín being right had just
dramatically shortened.

Martín looked sideways at
Jacqueline, who forced a smile. The lights of the city flickered across her
face as the TGV picked up speed on its way out of Paris. He was awestruck by
her beauty, which almost made him forget why they had run to get the train.

And yet his
mind did stray back to that rush, and also to the young family they had bumped
into in the
Gare de
Montparnasse
. The couple, with two small
children aged no more than one and three, were just off the train from northern
Spain and had been looking at their Metro guide. They had stopped Martín in his
tracks, asking for directions in broken French.

He had greeted
them in Spanish, and they had laughed enthusiastically; the eldest of the two
children was tired but excited on this adventure to a foreign country, while
her young brother slept in a sling on the father’s chest. The mother had turned
to share her map with him, pointing to where they intended to go.

Martín had
looked across at Jacqueline in despair; what could he tell them that would
possibly help? If someone had stopped him in the street a week ago with the
same information he had now, how would he have reacted? If he told them to flee
Paris, they would think he was mad, and yet if he told them how to get to their
hotel, he may live to regret it for the rest of his life. He’d sent messages to
any family member or friend he could think of: simple and short, it had advised
them to get away from any large cities. To people you knew that was an easy
thing to do. It was something else entirely to stop random people on the
streets and spread panic.

He remembered
looking down at the little girl, twisting on her heels and humming a tune to
herself as she gazed around the brightly-lit train station, her eyes wide with
anticipation.

And so he had
told them to flee.

Maybe it was
the look of earnest in his eyes, the tone in his voice, possibly even having
Jacqueline with him; after all, madmen rarely had accomplices, did they? In any
case their ESA identity cards had definitely helped. And it was as he had
explained to them: if he was wrong, they could get off at St Jean de Luz, and
return the following day.
He
would
pay their hotel, and even phone ahead to book a room just in case. Just as long
as they passed Bordeaux; that was all he had asked.

Back on the
train, he looked along the aisle to the other end of the carriage, where he
could see the young girl was now jumping on her father’s lap. Their eyes met
and they nodded at each other solemnly.

In the end it
was a simple matter of planting that seed of doubt in a parent’s mind. And then
their instinct to protect, combined with Martín’s powers of persuasion, meant
that they only had one real option, and that was to get back on the train and
leave Paris.

If Martín was
wrong, then it was a ten hour round trip with two hyperactive children. On the
other hand, that was a small price to pay if he was right.

They all hoped
that wouldn’t be the case; and if he
was
wrong,
he was due some holiday, anyway. Despite it being early days for their
relationship, he thought it was an ideal opportunity for Jacqueline to meet his
family.

The TGV would
take them direct to San Sebastián, where they would hop on a relatively slow
train to the family home in Asturias, sandwiched on a cliff-top between the
snow-capped
Picos de Europa
and the
rolling waves of the Bay of Biscay.

And so Martín
closed his eyes and thought of home, his family and of Jacqueline as the last
remnants of Parisian
banlieue
disappeared
into the darkness.

Mallus looked at the computer
display: the warnings told him they were coming for him. Sooner than he had
expected; but nonetheless, it
had
been expected.

Warnings were
flashing all over the place, showing breaches on all sides
and
on the roof of DEFCOMM headquarters. Of course, he couldn’t
see
the soldiers enter the building –
their light-bending body armour saw to that – but he knew the sensors never
lied.

He had
well-armed ex-military security personnel in the building – it wasn’t all
sensors and alarms – but he decided not to send them in; it really didn’t
matter anymore, because nothing could stop his code from executing in the SDN.
He looked at his watch; only seconds to go.

He heard the
footsteps before he saw the tell-tale warping of air in front of him. In case
either of those details passed him by, the computer’s soft female voice told
him someone else was in the room. It was interrupted by a gritty, military
voice.

“Sir, you are
under arrest. Step away from the keyboard and do not attempt any sudden
movements.” The voice attached itself to a fully-suited soldier as the cloaking
device was disabled halfway through the statement.

Mallus got to
his feet slowly and took a step back, his hands in the air. The soldier was
joined by two more who de-cloaked near the door. He was sure there were many more
in the underground bunker. They would certainly find his stores and living
compartments, the staff and guards who he had allowed into his circle of trust,
and all the rest of the evidence needed to justify his arrest.

But that
didn’t matter. With billions of taxpayer’s dollars invested in DEFCOMM over the
years, many millions had been diverted into personal projects.

These included
automated security systems: as the soldiers had walked round the building
looking for him, they had already ingested hundreds, if not thousands, of
microscopic capsules, which now circulated their bloodstream, waiting for the
ultrasonic command that would unleash their deadly poison, targeting the victims’
central nervous systems. The capsules were contained in controlled bursts of vapour,
fired from tiny concealed turrets along the main entrances and corridors of the
building into the path of any intruders, which the system automatically
identified as anyone without a valid ID chip in their forearm; you would need a
spacesuit to get through unaffected, and he noted with satisfaction that these
soldiers, while fully kitted-up, were not wearing full self-contained breathing
apparatus. Instead, they wore the more comfortable and practical full-face
respirators.

The
respirator’s particulate filter was designed to remove any particles from air
larger than a third of a micron. This represented over three hundred times
smaller than the width of the average human hair, and was just sufficient to
get rid of spores and bacteria such as anthrax. The capsules transmitted in the
spray were little more than a quarter of a micron wide, and he knew from
testing that his defence solution would have sailed straight through the
filters, as if they hadn’t even been there.

The
respirator’s second line of defence was, he knew, an activated charcoal filter;
it would absorb impurities in the air, which would bind to the carbon, letting
the treated air pass through. Nevertheless, even chemically treated charcoal,
capable of extracting Sarin and any number of other known nerve agents, would
let the silicone-based capsules through unhindered.

There was, he
knew, no defence. Which was why to-date the experimental capsules had still not
been certified for active use: if you couldn’t defend your own forces against
it, you couldn’t use it in the field.

So, with one
carefully selected voice-command from him to his computer, an ultrasonic wave
would run through the building, killing all of the soldiers almost instantly.

He smiled as
he looked the soldier in the eyes.

Seth Mallus,
Aniquilus
, would lead the New World that
would rise from the ashes of the old. The loss of life was a shame, and the
fallout would take time to disperse, but he would be there to see it through.
His would be a different world, a more
just
world, safe from the out-of-control population explosions, energy crises, food
shortages and petty wars and conflicts.

Sometimes, you
had to start afresh, and only Aniquilus could make that happen. The ends
would
justify the means, he was sure of
that. He looked down at his screen and saw the SDN’s display fill with missile
trajectories as the war to end all wars finally began.

Looking into
the soldier’s eyes coldly, he cocked his head slightly. He showed no fear, but
saw only opportunity. This man, with his advanced training and high-tech
weaponry, would be useful in the dark years to come.

“You’re too
late,” he said simply. And as he explained the situation to the soldier, he
made his proposition, taking great care not to mention that he was entirely
responsible for the global devastation that was unfolding on the screen before
them.

The phantom
missiles crossed the Arctic Ocean and passed over the vastness of Canada. Their
trajectories parted, and they homed in on their targets. Somewhere deep in the
Satellite Defence Network, the sub-routine sent its alerts and confirmation
codes.

Shock and
confusion reigned as the blips took form. Screens filled with satellite images,
trajectories, possible targets, probable origins, and weapon descriptions.

Calls were
made, procedures followed.

The President
was eventually interrupted in the middle of an interview.