Palm Sunday (33 page)

In his mind he could almost hear the whir as bits and bytes coalesced into patterns of hexadecimal representations. The binary ballet was like a soothing tonic, as he leaned back and shut his eyes, allowing himself just for a moment the luxury of drifting off. He knew he had several minutes before his attention was required, and his internal clock would alert him well before that time.

“Norbert!”

His chair flew forward as Mason’s sharp voice interrupted his brief escape. His feet landed hard on the floor, and he whirled around to face his boss.

“Yes, Mr. Mason?”

“Norbert, I’m shocked. Were you sleeping?”

“No. I was just resting my eyes. I knew that the program would be running for several more minutes, and I just wanted to…”

“Forget it. Everything buttoned up here?” Mason gestured with his head towards the console.

“Yeah. I told Snelling to get ready.”

“Good,” said Mason. “I’ve already dispatched a team to investigate the faulty generator.”

“That’s regenerator.”

“What?”

Norbert explained. “A generator produces electricity. A regenerator is used for boosting an optical signal over a fiber connection. Two very different things.”

“I’m not a technician,” said Mason. “Anyway, I expect they’ll get it fixed soon.” Embarrassed at his technical faux pas, he beat a hasty retreat.

Norbert smiled to himself, pondering the irony that while people belittled so-called geeks, those same folks thought it was really cool to know about computers and other technical stuff. Further, any lack of knowledge on their part was perceived as a true shortcoming. He wished they’d make up their minds. 

“Agent Sharon!” yelled Justin.

Sharon excused himself from a conversation with another employee and hurried to Justin’s console. “What is it?”

“Something just lit up like a Christmas tree near a Philadelphia substation.”

“Anything unusual about it?”

Justin nodded. “It has our signature all over it.”

“Ours?”

“No, not ours. Ours. The event we’ve been watching for. Whoever has been breaking into the Internet infrastructure was at it again, but they momentarily lost containment.”

“What do you mean?” asked Sharon.

“Their data stream suddenly started emitting packets. Uncontrollably, like they were oozing into the same stream used by everyone else.” Justin could barely contain himself. “They were duplicate packets–exact copies of legitimate traffic. Somehow they’ve come up with a way to navigate through the same digital pipe.”

Sharon whistled. This was a breakthrough. “That would probably mean some kind of physical device, attached to the fiber itself.”

“That’s what I’m so excited about,” said Justin. “I know where the leak is. Or was.”

“It stopped?”

Justin nodded. “It only lasted a few seconds, at least from the time I first picked it up. They must have either shut it down, or whatever caused the problem resolved itself. I’m inclined to believe it was the former.”

“We’ll get a team out there right away. You said a substation–an underground facility?”

“Yes. It’s probably accessible through a manhole. I’ll punch up the location.”

While Justin printed out the location of the substation, Sharon called his supervisor. Unfortunately, he was told, Roberts was out for the rest of the day, so Sharon was to direct any inquiries to Robert’s boss. He quickly put in a call and explained that some equipment had been damaged, and requested permission to send someone out to look at it. It was a sensible enough request, and permission was granted. It would be pretty flimsy cover later on, but at least he now had verbal authorization.

He knew exactly who to call in the Philadelphia office. An old friend of his, John Halsey, owed him a favor. Sharon looked up his number and called. He was put right through.

“John, how are you doing?”

“Jim Sharon? Is that you? It’s been a while.”

“Yeah, I haven’t seen you since that fiasco in New York.”

“You saved my butt then, Jim.”

“Maybe you can return the favor.”

“Name it.”

Sharon went on to explain as best he could what they were up against. When asked what to look for, he had to be vague. “I’m not really sure. There has to be some kind of device in that substation. Just check for anything that looks like it doesn’t belong there.”

“Specific to the fiber lines?” asked John.

“It would have to be,” said Sharon, then thought of another concern. “This expedition is sort of off the record. How’s your new partner?”

“He’s good, Jim. Knows when to speak up, and when not to.”

Sharon was relieved. “That’s the ticket. I need you to get this done soon.”

“We’ll leave within the hour.”

They chatted briefly after that, and then hung up. Sharon quietly tapped a pencil against his desk, knowing that all he could do now was wait. 

In the dank subterranean passageway, two agency technicians stood hunched over the same device they had installed a week earlier. Once again the outer cover was removed and the internal workings of the optical regenerator revealed. The system was quite ingenious.

The device allowed normal Internet traffic to flow through unhindered, but it used a series of prisms and miniature electromechanical switches to generate a virtual copy of the data stream, which was directed into a collector. The copy was retransmitted over another fiber line that led to the agency, where it was uploaded into their repositories. The process, when activated, caused no delay or break in the original transmission–unless, of course, something went wrong.

“I think I see the problem.”

“What is it?”

“Moisture.”

“Moisture? How’s that possible?”

“I don’t know. Something wasn’t sealed right, and one of these wafer thin mirrors has warped. See, the backing has a tiny dot of wetness on it.” He shined his powerful flashlight into the narrow space.

“I can’t see it.”

“Trust me; it’s there.”

“Can we fix it here?” The first man scratched his chin.

“We might be able to, but Pampas made it pretty clear that this was a get in, get out job. If we can’t do it quick, we bypass our stuff and just let the signal pass.”

“So bypass it?”

“Yeah. Hand me the needle-nosed pliers.” 

“This is the place.”

Sharon’s friend from the Philadelphia bureau looked at the traffic on Arch Street. It was fairly light. His partner pointed to a manhole cover across the street.

“That must be it.” They waited for a lone car to pass, and walked to the steel cover.

“I wish we had something to rope off the area,” said John. “I don’t want to get clobbered when we come back up.”

“It shouldn’t take long. Besides, there’s no parking here.”

“That’ll stop ‘em.”

They removed the cover and looked down the darkened hole. A metal ladder was built into the wall, leading to a passageway below.

“After you, sir.”

“Age before beauty,” said John.

“But you’re older.”

“Let’s go.”

John waited while the other agent climbed into the tunnel, and then followed, pulling the cover into place above him. They clicked on their flashlights. John’s partner carried a pouch of tools, and he struggled as he tried to grip the ladder with one hand. Finally he reached the bottom.

“Man, I didn’t know it would be so far down.”

“Must be one of the earlier ones,” said John. “Probably followed existing tunnel work.”

They shone their lights down the damp walkway, where an occasional rat scampered through the beams.

“You better be real good friends with this Sharon.”

“I’ll tell you about it when we get back. Look, there’s the branch.”

The tunnel system divided. Twenty yards down the left passageway was where the object of their search should be. They instinctively became more alert, unconsciously putting their hands on their weapons.

“Turn your light off!” said John.

The tunnel went dark, but not completely black, as a faint glow emanated from somewhere ahead. They carefully made their way towards the light, and were surprised to come upon two workers.

“What are you doing here?” demanded John.

The agency technicians were instantly on their guard.

“There’s been a disruption–fiber’s down. We were sent here to repair it.”

“Repair what, exactly?”

“You probably wouldn’t understand. By the way, who are you, and what are you doing here?”

“FBI,” replied John. “Let’s see some ID.”

The technician backed down. “Sorry, man. We didn’t know who you were.”

The technician who was farthest away seemed to be groping for his wallet. Instead, he pulled out a pistol, quickly squeezing off two shots. John was hit, and started to fall, while his partner returned fire, fatally wounding the shooter. The second technician produced his own weapon, firing several shots at John’s partner. He spun back and into the wall, his chest a bloody mess. His eyes glazed over as he slowly slumped to the ground. The exchange took less than ten seconds.

With everyone else down, the unwounded agency technician grabbed a portable hacksaw from his toolkit and quickly cut through the cables that ran into the regenerator. He carefully removed the device. Several components were still loose from when they had been working on it, so he was careful to hold the unit with its access panel facing up.

He walked towards the exit, past the FBI agents lying on the ground. He had to step around John, whose body half blocked the walkway, and as he did, a hand reached out and grabbed his ankle, tripping him and sending the regenerator plunging to the ground. The technician struggled to free himself from the hand that gripped him, and with a desperate kick at John’s shoulder, he gained his freedom and jumped to his feet. He quickly snatched the regenerator from where it had fallen, and hurried down the tunnel.

John moaned once, as his world faded into darkness.

Agent Sharon was worried; his friend should have called from Philadelphia an hour ago. John was a stickler for being on time, and Sharon knew that only something serious would cause such a delay. He looked at his watch, decided to give it another fifteen minutes, and turned back to his reading, the latest bulletin concerning the travel industry shutdown.

Sharon was disgusted that someone could so easily bring the system to its knees, but was also frustrated at the inadequacy of the Bureau to deal with the problem in a more organized fashion. The reports he now scanned epitomized the problem; there were bits and pieces of information from all over the place, each regional office collecting a few snippets of the overall picture. But some pieces were duplications of data collected elsewhere, others were incomplete, and some were just irrelevant. He threw the page he was reading back on top of the stack.

He wished John would call. 

Boyd sat motionless before his monitor, a fixed stare on his face. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. The test data, the data provided by the backers of the project, the data that he was responsible for programming into the simulation module, was flawed. He had been comparing the input specifications provided to him with what was now in the system–just hours before the actual test–and they didn’t match. It was close, maybe even close enough. But the more he looked at it, the clearer it became that it was his fault.

Klugman appeared in his doorway. “Is the data set to go?” he asked.

Boyd considered telling the truth. “Yeah, I think I’m just about there.” It was a version of the truth. “I’d like to give it a final once-over, so I might have to back out the catalog for a short time.” He referred to the catalog of functions that helped feed the raw data into the interface.

Klugman was taken aback. “Are you crazy? What if the catalog got corrupted in the process? We’d be screwed.” He shook his head. “Don’t mess with it.”

“Yeah, okay,” Boyd said sullenly.

Klugman didn’t like what he was hearing. “Is there something you aren’t telling me?”

Boyd hesitated. Concealing his discovery now would be no more damaging to him than if the test actually failed. And the test might go just fine. “No,” he said. “Everything is looking good. You know me–always looking for problems that aren’t there.”

Klugman was satisfied. “All right, then, let’s wrap things up. I don’t want you guys working right up until the last second.” He looked at his watch. “Take a break. Make sure you’re fresh for the demo.”

When Klugman left, Boyd took a final look at his screen, and shook his head. “No time, no time,” he muttered to himself. He logged off the Alpha and went to have a smoke. 

The agency’s societal profile was completed successfully. Tom Snelling presented the results to the senior staff, and reported a positive finding concerning the travel industry situation. In fact, the quotient was quite high, well into the mid-nineties, indicating maximum confidence.

Mason was pleased. “Excellent. We’ve demonstrated that not only can we create a societal profile, but we can effect a positive alteration of it.”

Norbert questioned the characterization. “I thought the shutdown was a negative event.”

“I’m not speaking in a moral context,” said Mason, “ but from the perspective that we were able to induce any change at all. In this case, you are correct–we used a negative event to test that capability.

“In this case?” said Norbert.

Mason smiled. “Future actions will be dictated by the character of the movement we’re trying to discourage.” His attempt to clarify his position was met with blank stares. “But maybe I’m getting ahead of myself.” He leaned forward, hands folded on the table in front of him. He panned the room as he delivered his lecture. “Our mission has been to create a societal profile. We have now perfected that. But what happens when we identify a dangerous trend? Who can we trust with this information? To whom do we entrust our very survival? There’s no one with the will to act. It is we who must be the arbiters of redemption.”

Snelling was confused. “What does that mean? Are you saying we should try to control what direction the country is heading?”