Morgan disagreed. He had first taken notice of the Mustangs because of the 1968s. For his money, it was the best-looking of the Mustang fastbacks, but it was really the introduction of big block power to the Mustang line that appealed to Morgan. 390 cubic inches and 335 horsepower.
“It is a beautiful restoration though,” Bloch said, turning her attention to Lincoln Shepard, who was staring at Bloch with his mouth open.
“It’s okay, Shep,” Morgan said.
“I presume it’s for Alex’s upcoming birthday?” Bloch asked.
“Yes,” Jenny replied. “Dan is very excited for her.”
“It is much nicer than my first car—an old Toyota. And also more valuable. At least it would be if it actually existed,” Bloch said with a grin.
That was certainly true. This was one of two cars used in the 1968 film Bullitt. However, the one in front of him wasn’t supposed to exist. This was the ‘stunt’ car that had done all of the real work in the chase sequence of the film—doing up to 110 miles an hour through the streets and hills of San Francisco.
The car used for close-ups was worth millions and currently resided in a private collection, whereas the “stunt” car was presumed destroyed after filming. And it would have been lost forever—and eventually actually destroyed by time—if Shep hadn’t found it in a junkyard in the middle of nowhere in Mexico.
Now, it might as well as just rolled off the set of the film. It was the same rich hunter green. It also had the same stripped-down styling of the car in the film. Except this car appeared brand new, its paint gleaming in the shop bay’s lights.
No, not brand new. Walking around the car, Morgan saw that Shep had kept the small dent on the driver’s side door—a dent that Steve McQueen’s car had gotten in the chase.
Morgan approved. This car was a veteran, not a show pony.
“I’ll leave you to it,” Bloch said. “See you soon, Jenny.”
As Bloch left, Morgan and Shepard circled the car.
“Paint is a factory color match. Engine is original, of course, but with a little more power. It will now do zero to sixty in five seconds.”
Morgan grinned his approval. That was quite a bit better than the car’s factory specs of 7.8.
“And we did the suspension and handling upgrades you wanted.” Then he turned to Jenny. “It also has all of the safety features we add to our field vehicles. Front and side airbags as well as collision avoidance sensors.”
But what Morgan knew and Shep didn’t want to say to Jenny was that those features included a reinforced frame, with armor in the door and body panels. And the glass would be bulletproof for anything less than high caliber, armor piercing rounds.
Shep leaned in to Morgan and said, “Of course, it has a full tactical package, with a few…new features.”
Morgan knew that. This car would be Alex’s daily driver, at least when she wasn’t on her motorcycle. Alex was an agent and Morgan wanted her to have every advantage in the field.
“It is beautiful,” Jenny said.
Morgan realized that it was, as he laid a hand on the right front fender.
“You know,” Jenny continued. “Her birthday isn’t for weeks. It might be a good idea to get it out on the road before that. What do you call it? A shake-down trip?”
“Better than sitting here for weeks,” Shepard said.
Morgan couldn’t deny that he would love to drive the car. Still, he’d intended it for Alex…
“That settles it. We’ll bring it up and transfer the suitcases,” Jenny said.
He didn’t argue the point.
A few minutes later, they were on the road. Everything about the car seemed new, better than new in fact. The steering, the shifting, the raw power. He had no doubt that he was driving the highest performance ‘68 GT in the world.
The interior also seemed new. Fresh leather on the seats, new carpet, and even the familiar instrument panel seemed new. Looking closely, Dan could see which parts of the dash had movable panels, which would give Alex access to the tactical and defensive tech that Dan knew was now embedded in the car.
Morgan didn’t explore those controls now, not with Jenny with him. His wife had taken her relatively new knowledge of his work fairly well. But this was their daughter’s car, and highlighting the special equipment would only highlight the danger Alex would be in while she was working for Zeta.
And there was no reason for either of them to worry right now. Alex was still in training. And it was a beautiful day, the highway was pretty well open, and the car was a dream to drive.
Morgan checked the clock on the dash. At this rate, they would make Martha’s Vineyard and their lunch reservation on time. He nudged the accelerator, and then nudged it again.
They might even be a little early…
Chapter 6
Alex walked into Diana Bloch’s office confidently—at least as confidently as she could muster.
Her father had often said, “If you don’t feel brave, or sure of yourself, fake it. Most people can’t tell the difference.”
Though Alex had been to Bloch’s office many times—for discussions about training or her general future with Zeta—this was the first time Alex had gone in there to ask Bloch for something specific.
Alex wanted a mission, her own mission as an undercover agent. True, she was younger than any of the other Zeta agents by several years, but she had already made significant contributions to the agency and its mission. She was confident about the progress of her training, particularly now with the new hand-to-hand combat skills she’d been developing with Alicia Schmitt.
Now she wanted something for herself. It was something she knew she was ready for, and something that would put her in a better position to contribute to Zeta’s larger mission.
It all made perfect sense to Alex, but then why was she nervous now?
Stepping inside, Alex was surprised to see Karen O’Neal, Zeta’s numbers analyst and computer expert, sitting in one of the two chairs facing Bloch’s desk. Alex knew that before her time at Zeta, O’Neal had been a pretty high-level financial analyst, some sort of number cruncher. In many ways, she still was, but with a different mission now.
“Hello Alex, please sit down,” Bloch said, indicating the empty seat next to O’Neal, who acknowledged her with an awkward nod.
“I know that you’ve been anxious to get assigned your first mission as a primary and I think we have something for you,” Bloch continued.
That was easy, Alex thought, fighting to keep the surprise from her face. If she wasn’t so pleased she would be more freaked out by Bloch’s nearly supernatural ability to know what Alex had been thinking but had not discussed with anyone—not even her father.
“Karen has been working on new threat assessment software and it raised a red flag,” Bloch went on.
O’Neal laughed quietly at that and Bloch shot her a quizzical look.
“Actually, the software doesn’t use flags,” O’Neal said simply.
Alex suppressed a grin. Alex knew she was smart, but normal smart. O’Neal smart was something else altogether. For someone who thought in high-level abstractions and could turn five conceptual corners before most people could count change, O’Neal could be oddly literal.
Alex didn’t know for sure how old O’Neal was. Maybe late twenties? Maybe early thirties? The half-Vietnamese, half-Irish O’Neal was pretty, though in her jeans and collection of button-up blouses she looked like what she was, a brain who was more comfortable in front of a computer monitor than in a room full of people her own age.
And yet Alex knew that O’Neal was in a relationship with Lincoln Shepard, Zeta’s other hacker and damned good general purpose engineer.
“The software identified a possible threat. How much do you know about what brought Karen to us?” Bloch said.
“I know she was a financial analyst on Wall
Street. I know she got into some trouble over hacking and ended up here,” Alex said.
“That’s partly true. Karen developed a financial analysis scheme—”
“Algorithm,” O’Neal corrected.
“An algorithm that was very effective but crossed certain legal lines,” Bloch said.
“Actually, it was perfectly legal,” O’Neal said.
“The SEC disagreed. Rather forcefully, as I recall,” Bloch said. Then the director turned her attention to Alex. “At any rate, Karen has been working with Shepard to adapt her algorithm to identify security threats. Karen can explain it better than I.”
“Yes I can,” O’Neal said brightly.
Bloch said patiently, “Please do so.”
Karen warmed to her subject. “My algorithm supplements traditional data analysis with the addition of metadata analysis.”
Alex knew the term, at least as it applied to music. “That’s the information attached to a song file. Artist, year, things like that,” she said.
“Yes, but it applies to any digital file. It is data that provides information about other data. Most systems look for specific data points: large financial transactions, visits to extremist websites, or key words in telephone calls or emails. The current system is very good, but misses most of the terrorist activity it was designed to spot. The problem is that it only looks for the data and patterns it is programmed to find. It gets smarter all the time, but it is always behind.
“Our system is several orders of magnitude more complex because it combines traditional security data points with online shopping patterns, song choices, and a dozen other seemingly unrelated factors.”
“How does that help?” Alex asked.
“We have no idea, but we don’t need to know. The system looks at past patterns of metadata for, say, a public bombing. It examines every kind of data available from all of the parties involved.”
“This system already helped us prevent the New York City subway bombing last month,” Bloch said.
“But there wasn’t a bombing last month,” Alex replied.
“Exactly,” Bloch said.
“We don’t need to know why certain data and metadata patterns are there, just that they are.”
“The tradeoff is that the system will sometime come up with a threat or a threat cluster that is…non-specific, especially if the threat is something we have never seen before. With bombs, there are certain ingredients that tip us off but with unorthodox threats it is more difficult. We may know something is coming but have no idea what it is. And that takes us to Berkeley.”
“The college in California?” Alex asked.
Bloch tapped a remote on her desk. A large screen on the wall came to life with the image of a thirtysomething man in front of a lectern. It was a YouTube video whose title was “Dr. Apocalypse Addresses The Class.”
“The Earth is an immensely complex organism and, unfortunately it has a disease—a very serious one that we call humanity,” the man said. There was nervous laughter from the room, which Alex realized was a lecture hall.
“Pollution, global warming, nuclear waste, war…these are the symptoms of the disease. In that respect, humans are like a virus, a parasite that—if left untreated—will damage and then kill the host.”
Proud of himself, the professor paused to let that sink in. “However, in this case the body—or the Earth—is not without defenses. It has bacteria and viruses that act as antibodies. And nature is getting better and better at defending itself. In the fourteenth century the Black Death wiped out about half of Europe and perhaps a third of the worlds’ population. And that was with a disease that had a mortality rate of thirty to seventy five percent. Think about it, the world was almost rid of us once and for all. Imagine what a paradise it would be if the plague had succeeded?
“In 1918, Spanish influenza wiped out twenty-five million people in one year. On the one hand, it was very efficient in its transmission—it was in every state in the Union within a week. However, the relatively low mortality rate destined that particular antibody to failure.
“Now Ebola has a better than ninety percent mortality rate and is airborne. Yet the rate of transmission is still too low, and because of world health measures it’s been limited to Africa. It’s nearly the perfect disease, but it’s not quite there…yet. But give nature time and the Earth will find itself a cure for us.”
As he finished, Alex realized that her mouth was hanging open. And then the final surprise came. There was thunderous applause and the camera panned around the room, showing students in the lecture hall standing up.
“So, he’s a crackpot and the standing ovation is creepy, but is this somehow a threat?” Alex asked.
“Not as far as we can tell, even though he’s a biochemistry professor who has regular meetings with like-minded students in which they discuss their dream of creating a super virus.”
“If there is no real threat, what are we talking about?” Alex asked.
“There is no threat that we can see,” O’Neal added.
“The system says something’s there, and we’re going to investigate,” Bloch said.
“Can’t the police just arrest him and anyone in his little club?” Alex asked.
“Advocating for the death of every person on Earth is not really a crime. Now, even if they tried to create something in the university labs there is very little chance they would succeed, but at least then they could be charged under anti-terrorism law. I’d like you to go in and find out what is going on.”
Alex kept her face as impassive as possible. She had wanted her own assignment as a mission primary. But this? This was investigating a nutty college professor and some student groupies—not exactly a lives-on-the-line situation. At best, they would be able to have a few of the idiots thrown in jail.
“I’ve chosen you because of your age and because the student group meeting with the professor is an offshoot of Americans for a Peaceful Society.”
That got Alex’s attention. She’d been a member of that group when she was still in high school, railing against what she thought was a corrupt, militaristic system. Back when she’d thought peace could be had if everyone just talked to one another. Back before she understood that bad guys were real, and surrendering to them might give you peace, but not a life worth living.
Back before she had grown up.
Alex could keep her face expressionless but she couldn’t control the blood rushing to her cheeks, turning her complexion a bright red.
“Don’t be embarrassed,” Bloch said. “We all did stupid things when we were young. However, in your case, your youthful indulgences can help our cause. The real challenge for you will be to get back into that mindset, before you received your real education.”
“That I can do. I’ll just shut off most of my brain,” Alex said.
Chapter 7
“Honey, that was amazing, how did you get the reservation? They are booking six weeks in advance,” Jenny said as they drove away from the restaurant.
“I told you I’ve been planning this,” Morgan said casually. That was true. He had been planning to take Jenny on this long overdue getaway. It was the actual details that gave him trouble. Planning lunch six weeks ahead was insane, even if the seafood was pretty good.
Fortunately, he had a guy.
Apparently, after hacking the Chinese missile defense system, adding a reservation to an overpriced seafood shack was easy.
And it turned out most of the local restaurants were on the same system, so Morgan and Shepard were able to plot out the week during Morgan’s plane ride back from India. As it turned out, working the hotel system was even easier.
Morgan was firm about the hotel. In the past, they had rented various beach houses and set up for extended periods. And every time, Jenny would make a great effort to make the new place like home. But on t
his trip Morgan was determined that there would be no grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning, or organizing. For the first time since their honeymoon, they were going to have a real vacation.
So he and Shepard had found a hotel that also had little cottages on the beach, so they could have some privacy without the work.
“Dan, you know there’s a place I wanted to visit. It’s on the way,” Jenny said.
“Check-in is at—”
Then he stopped himself. He was still on mission time. After an assignment, he always had a brief adjustment period where he had to remind himself that schedules were not make-or-break—or life-and-death.
The relaxed work atmosphere was one of the reasons that he chose classic cars as his professional “cover.” Though the stakes were sometimes high—at least in terms of the dollar value of the cars—there wasn’t a great deal of pressure in the day-to-day aspects of the business.
He’d gotten plenty of that from years at the CIA and now at Zeta. And he always credited Jenny and Alex for helping him develop the ability to turn off that part of himself and become a husband and a father—to rejoin the ‘real’ world.
At least, it had worked for him. And he believed it helped him stay sharp in the field, even after almost twenty years as an operative. He had known men and women who had lived the mission, even when they weren’t on one. They tended to have short careers. Either because they burned out, or because they got sloppy in the field and paid the price.
“Sure honey,” Morgan said. “Where are we going?”
“I’ll direct you,” she said casually, reading from her phone.
Probably an antique store, he guessed. At heart, Morgan knew his wife was part treasure hunter, and it was close enough to his own interest in classic cars that he understood.
Of course, pride almost made him ask the name of the place. Besides the hotel and the restaurants, he’d plotted out a few antique stores, flea markets, and crafty gift shops. If the place was any good, he’d probably planned to hit it already.
Yet as they got close, Morgan didn’t recognize the area as being near anything he had found online. “Turn right up ahead,” Jenny said.
Threat Level Alpha Page 6