Predator One (27 page)

There was a moment when nothing happened.

Then thunder shook the hall as everyone
leaped to their feet and applauded. The crowd shouted. They yelled. The flashes pulsed.

Every reporter began screaming questions.

The president of the United States stood there and glared, his face as hard and unforgiving as stone.

And then the tone of the audience changed. There was a moment when every reporter froze, most of them touched earbuds or pressed cell phones to their heads as they
listened to something. Many of them stared into the glow of their smartphones or tablets. Eyes bugged wide, mouths dropped open.

Silence held the room in its fist for just over seventy-one seconds.

The president leaned toward his chief of staff. “Alice, what’s going on?”

She touched her own earbud, and her face went dead pale.

That’s when the reporters began raising their heads. They were
like a pack of jackals who suddenly smelled blood in the air. Their eyes raised toward him, and the look the president saw on each face was filled with anger, hurt, outrage. And hate.

They all began shouting at once.

They actually rushed forward in a pack, and for a moment the president had the bizarre feeling that the crowd was going to fall on him, to drag him down and tear him to pieces.
Everyone was screaming. Alice Houston was yelling at the Secret Service to get the president out of the room. Agents were closing in to body-block the president from the pack of reporters.

Through it all, two words kept slashing through the din. And as the president heard them, he understood.

And he realized that the world was going to catch fire.

Right now.

His world.

The whole world.

The two words were
bin Laden
.

Chapter Fifty-four

Thomas Jefferson University Hospital

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

March 30, 5:13
P.M.

“If the Kings have Davidovich,” said Bug, looking genuinely scared, “then we also have to bear in mind that he’s had four years and an unlimited budget to develop his programs. Remember, Joe, he’s the Einstein of the computer world. And he knows his hardware, too. If he’s actually out
there and he’s somehow working for the Kings? Jeez … Just knowing what I know about what he had on his to-do list scares the crap out of me.”

“You mean Regis?” I asked.

“No, I mean what he said he was planning to do after Regis was done.”

“I know I don’t want you to answer this, but … what was he going to do?”

“In his lectures and articles, he said that he was going to try and crack the science
of building a quantum computer.”

I said, “I know I keep asking this, but … what is that?”

“I sent you a report on this three years ago.”

“Which, clearly, I didn’t read. Just bring me up to speed.”

“Okay, okay. Digital computers have memories made up of bits, right? Each bit represents either a one or a zero.”

“Yeah, I get that much.”

“No, let me finish. A quantum computer has quantum bits.
These are made out of quantum particles that can be zero, one, or some kind of state in between. In other words, they can be both values at the same time. A quantum computer maintains a sequence of qubits. A single qubit can represent a one, a zero, or any quantum superposition of these two qubit states. A pair of qubits can be in any desired quantum superposition of—”

“Stop. I’m not following
any of that. I have a head injury, son. Have a little mercy.”

Bug gave me the kind of pitying look highly intelligent people tend to give to the mentally challenged. Not mean, just exasperated. “Okay. Look, Moore’s law states that the number of transistors on a microprocessor continues to double every eighteen months, so within a decade or so circuits will need to be on a microprocessor measured
on an atomic scale. So, the logical next step will be to create quantum computers, which would harness the power of atoms and molecules to perform memory and processing tasks. Quantum computers have the potential to perform certain calculations significantly faster than any silicon-based computer. Like insanely fast.”

“Sure, but how does that make for a more dangerous computer?”

“Because a normal
computer has to go through all the different possibilities of zeros and ones for a particular calculation. But because a quantum computer can be in all the states at the same time, you just do one calculation, and that tests a vast number of possibilities simultaneously. That speed not only gets you a faster answer, it gets one based on better statistical probability of being the right one for
your needs. Remember, we’re talking AI. You match the need for autonomous decision making in the field with a computer that can perform faster and with more creativity than your opponents and, well … you get the picture.”

“Okay, now you’re scaring me.”

“It gets worse. The biggest and most important potential use for a quantum computer would be its ability to factorize a very large number into
two prime numbers. The reason that’s really important is because that’s what almost all encryption for Internet computing is based on. A quantum computer should be able to do the same kind of superintrusion stuff that MindReader does. And it would do it a whole lot faster.”

“Could it attack MindReader?” I asked.

Bug didn’t answer.

Church said, “Yes.”

I said, “Shit.”

“It could do worse than
attack it,” Church explained. “It could hide from MindReader.”

The room seemed to be getting colder, and I don’t think it had anything to do with the thermostat. “Doesn’t that open the door to the possibility that the reason we haven’t been able to find anything about this is because a quantum computer is blocking our play?”

“That’s always been a potential danger,” said Church.

“Yeah,” said
Bug. “But I don’t think we really have to worry about it yet. Some labs have already built basic quantum computers that can perform certain calculations; but the common thinking around the computer geekverse is that a genuinely practical quantum computer is still years away. Decades.”

“Even if Davidovich is working on it with unlimited funds and a gun to his head?” I asked.

Bug chose not to
answer that question.

“The drones at the ballpark,” I said. “How much of one of them would we have to recover in order to determine if it’s using a quantum computer?”

“A whole one. Undamaged.”

“Oh,” I said. “Crap.”

“Thanks, Bug,” said Church, and ended the conference. Before I could ask him any questions, his phone rang. He held up a finger to me as he took the call. He said very little, listened,
and closed with, “Send it to Doctor Hu and let Bug know it’s coming. This is very encouraging. Good work and—”

He stopped abruptly, the other party clearly having hung up on him midsentence.

“Let me guess,” I said. “Jerry Spencer”

“Yes.”

“He hang up on you again?”

“He did.”

“He have anything?”

“It seems that he does, and we may have caught our first significant break. I know Bug will be
happy.”

“What did he find?”

“A complete pigeon drone with its CPU intact. Someone apparently knocked it out of the air with a baseball bat, and that canceled out the detonation codes. Jerry said that the onboard computer looks like nothing he’s ever seen.”

“Are we talking a quantum computer?”

“Bug will tell us. It’s already on its way to him.”

“Maybe God doesn’t actually hate us,” I said.

Chapter Fifty-five

UC San Diego Medical Center

200 West Arbor Drive

San Diego, California

March 30, 5:19
P.M.

Rudy Sanchez haunted the cafeteria for a while, aware that Cowpers was loitering nearby. Never at the same table. Never actually next to him, even on an elevator. Rudy drank six cups of incredibly bad coffee and ate yellow lumpy mounds of hot mush that were supposed to be eggs.
Then he went into the bathroom and threw most of it up.

He wasn’t sick, but his imagination was conspiring with his medical knowledge to conjure terrifying scenarios to explain what was happening to Circe. When he came out of the toilet stall, Cowpers was there, leaning against the closed bathroom door, blocking anyone else from coming in.

“You need me to do anything?” he asked. It was almost
the only thing he’d said since meeting Rudy at the airport.

“N-no,” gasped Rudy. He lumbered to the sink and splashed handfuls of water on his face.

“You sure? I can get someone.”

“I’m fine.”

Cowpers nodded, folded his arms, and said nothing else.

Rudy leaned on the sink and for a full minute did nothing more complicated than breathe. When he raised his head and studied his face in the mirror,
he saw a man who looked old and unfamiliar. His hair was tousled, droplets of water glistened in his mustache, and his eye patch was slightly askew.

Ay Dios m
í
o,
he thought.
If I saw that face on the street, I’d cross to the other side.

He tried to smile at the joke, but the effect was ghastly.

Rudy straightened; took a long, deep, steadying breath; then spent a few minutes washing his hands
and face, combing his hair, and straightening his clothes. It was odd to do all this with someone watching him, but he pointedly ignored the agent.

Then he stepped back from the image in the mirror as if he was backing out of a suit of clothes that didn’t fit. He turned and headed for the door, paused to allow Cowpers to open it for him. He did not look back to see if the man followed. Of course
he did.

Rudy asked the first nurse he saw where the chapel was, and was given directions. It was only when he reached the small room that he stopped and faced Cowpers.

“I would prefer to go in there alone.”

“Not going to happen.”

“Make it happen,” said Rudy.

Cowpers studied him for a moment, though his face showed nothing of his thought process. Then he nodded, pushed past Rudy, and walked
the length of the chapel, poked into the small confessional, and finally came out.

“It’s clear,” he said. “I’ll be right here. Call if you need anything.”

Rudy shook his head and went inside.

At first the chapel appeared to be empty. Then he noticed that a man sat to one side. He was small and dressed in black. As Rudy approached, he saw that the man wore a Roman collar.

A priest.

“Father?”
asked Rudy quietly.

The priest looked up. He was a white man with a Mediterranean complexion, dark hair, and green eyes that were older than his face. Worldly eyes.

“Hello,” he said, smiling and rising. “May I be of some assistance?”

“I hope so,” said Rudy. “I could use someone to talk to.”

The priest gestured for him to have a seat. “This seems like a good place for a conversation. Please,
make yourself comfortable and tell me what’s troubling you.”

“It shows?” Rudy said as he sat down.

“It shows.”

Rudy looked at the altar. There were items representing Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, and some generic protestant iconography. A generic all-purpose hospital chapel.

“Are you a multifaith chaplain?” asked Rudy.

“I’m a priest. Several of us share this place.”

“I see.”

“Would you
prefer to speak with someone else?”

“No, no, that’s fine. I’m Catholic.”

“Did you want to make a confession…?”

“No. Just to talk.”

The priest nodded encouragingly. “I’m a good listener.”

Without naming names or mentioning any connections to the DMS or the bombings in Philadelphia, he talked about the high level of stress in the work he and Circe were engaged in. He referred to her job as
a consultant, which was true enough in its way. She consulted on the politics and theology of terrorism, with related observations on symbology and anthropology. Circe was a complex woman. Brilliant, multifaceted, and insightful. Rudy found it challenging to skirt around specifics, though. The priest listened patiently, nodding occasionally. He seemed too savvy to ask probing questions when clearly
Rudy did not want to open certain doors. That kind of attitude made it increasingly comfortable to talk with him. Then Rudy circled around to Circe’s pregnancy and her collapse.

When he was finished, they sat in silence for a moment, both of them considering what Rudy had said and how he’d phrased it. In his own review, Rudy knew that he was being very careful in his word choices, building Circe’s
collapse and coma into a temporary thing that would prove to be nothing of note and that had no dire implications for the baby or mother. He knew that if he’d heard a patient say this to him during a session, it would not come off as optimism but rather bald desperation, as a declaration made to try and convince the speaker by trying to convince the audience.

The priest clearly had the same thought.
“And how do you really feel about what’s happened to your wife?”

Rudy almost blurted out more of the rationalization. Instead, he made himself take a moment. “I—don’t know what I feel.”

“Is that the truth?”

Rudy sighed and shook his head. “No … no, Father, it is not.”

The priest reached out and gave Rudy’s hand a squeeze. His hand was surprisingly strong, and his skin was oddly hot.

“No,”
he said, nodding. “You’re afraid she’s going to die.”

Rudy almost jerked his hand away. “No,” he said quickly. “No, I don’t think that.”

“Don’t you?”

“No.”

“Aren’t you afraid that she and the baby are going to die.” The priest continued to squeeze his hand. His skin was so hot that it burned. The contact was painful.

“Father … please, you’re hurting my hand.” He tried to take his hand back,
but the priest’s grip was like hot iron.

The priest smiled at him. He had very white, very wet teeth. “You not only think they’ll both die,” he said, “you think they deserve to die.”