Undetected

by Dee Henderson

  Mark set up a TV tray in front of her with the plate, silverware, napkin and glass, then took the puppy. “Enjoy.”

  She ate with an appetite he was pleased to see. “I’m sorry that Jeff, Daniel, and I were all unavailable when you printed the photo, Gina. That you had to make this discovery and realize its scope on your own.”

  “God heard about it,” she said, and he heard sadness in her words. “I knew . . . early on I knew what was coming. Each pass through the data, every sparkle that resolved back to its originating point—I knew what it meant. Made me pretty sick the first 48 hours. But I’ve grown resigned to the reality. My life is forever going to be like this, Mark. Finding out stuff I don’t want to know, that I don’t want others to know. But I’m going to get wiser about what to do once it happens.” She looked over at him. “I want to burn that photo,” she said with conviction.

  Mark thought it might be necessary. “You said no one else could create this particular photo. That the data no longer exists.”

  “I’ve checked a number of the satellite archives. My cleaned-up file was retained, not the original file with the sparkles. These are very large data files. You don’t keep extra copies of them around without a reason.

  “I corrupted my own copies of the instrument data. I ran an algorithm across the videos, intentionally removed some of the sparkles that were there, introduced new ones. The data will look normal to someone playing back the video image, but it can’t be used to generate a photo.”

  She reached for the napkin. “The algorithms I used to build the photo have been isolated onto one of my data servers upstairs, and I physically pulled that card and have it stored in the safe. I can clear it with a powerful magnet and wipe it forever.”

  “Good to know. Those are crucial security steps.”

  Gina nodded. “I was thinking it might be possible to do a preemptive safeguard against someone else discovering this. If I can get my algorithm installed as part of the satellite receiver’s software, the sparkles could automatically be removed from the video. Most of these satellites use a common down-leg protocol. Call it a transmission-error cleanup algorithm. Solar flares are going to keep happening in the future. The key point to intercept and mitigate this is at the receivers.”

  “I like the idea. It’s a solid way to play defense.” Mark reached for his notebook and jotted down the information. “I’ve got a short list of critical questions to ask, Gina. Let me ask them, then we’ll come back to this.”

  “Sure.”

  “After a solar flare,” he said, looking at the first page in his notes, “every submarine in the ocean is vulnerable to being seen from space for how long? Starting 60 hours after the flare and continuing for four days?”

  “The peak visibility is early in that window, at about 72 hours. You might be able to start finding useful information 40 hours after a solar flare in the narrowest bandwidths. The reflections taper off with time into the longer radio wavelengths and have dissipated after four days.”

  “How often do solar flares happen?”

  “The sun has active cycles and dormant periods, lasting about 15 years. The sun is active right now. Solar flares in the upper right quadrant of the sun are those that affect the earth. High-energy bursts are hitting the earth once or twice a month right now.”

  He glanced again at his notes. “Have you read any scientific paper, heard anyone at a conference, or come across any reference in the literature that suggests anyone else has wondered correctly about even small pieces of this science?”

  “Satellite technicians trying to get data sent and received cleanly have made numerous references to the problem of glitches in the data stream, and it’s become accepted wisdom that the sparkles are transmission errors caused by a solar flare or other sun eruption. There are technical discussions on how sensitive to tune the receiver—you don’t want to be requesting constant retransmissions when it’s actually a data problem. I’ve seen nothing else that overlaps any other part of this.”

  “You’re still an outlier right now.”

  “Yes.” She leaned her head back against the cushion of the couch. “You can’t convince me someone else is going to stumble on to this, Mark, simply on the predicate that other people are smart too. For me it was pure chance, essentially an accident. You have to have access to multiple satellite data transmissions across a wide variety of instrument types and have collected data in the days after a significant solar flare. You have to guess that the transmission sparkles are actually reflections, then have the skill to reconstruct original shapes from motion video in data that gives you an occasional point or two to work with. The odds of this sequence of events coming together again . . . well, it would be easier to be hit by lightning twice.”

  Mark thought the odds were even longer than that, but he was looking at the exception, looking at someone who had actually figured it out. “Do you think there’s a more streamlined way to get this image, now that you know it’s possible to see into the oceans using solar flare reflections?”

  “I’ve been thinking about it. The solar flare is a necessary requirement. Beyond that—” she paused a moment—“it’s only guesswork, but the multiple instrument types are likely a necessary condition. You need to see across the energy spectrum to gather enough reflections. Sparkle data from 5 satellites wasn’t effective, nor was 10. I needed 17 data sets to get the first glimmers that an actual object was there, 23 to see a shape, and all 32 to get the resolution necessary to distinguish one submarine type from another. Not to mention I had on average four days’ worth of video from each instrument to work with. Some combination of that data volume is going to be a necessary factor—the number of satellites and the hours of video.

  “The strength of the solar flare is also likely a key variable. The stronger the solar flare, the better the photo. This was the strongest one on record since observation satellites have been aloft. A single reflection off a submarine isn’t useful data. I need a bunch of reflections off a hull in order to see a shape, compute its depth. There are tens of millions of high-energy particles thrown out during one of these solar flare bursts, but they still have to hit a very precise spot on earth and then have a satellite in the right location to record the reflection. Creating an image . . . again, it’s long odds.”

  Hearing her lay out how many variables had to come together for her to make this discovery got his attention. That reality made their considerations about what to do even more layered.

  “Hold on a minute.” He got up and took her plate back to the kitchen, giving himself some time to reflect on an idea that had been slowly taking shape over the last hour. He returned and handed her the ice cream carton and a spoon. “Pass it over to me when you’re done.”

  He sat down, made several more notes, put his idea aside to come back to at a later time, then resumed his original questions. “A photo of where the world’s subs were positioned two weeks ago is interesting history, but a photo of where subs were at two hours ago is actionable. How fast can the satellite data be turned into a photo?”

  “Throw several powerful computing clusters at this data, it could be fast. Maybe an hour or two?”

  “Real time?”

  “No. There’s a threshold number of sparkles that have to be captured. The photo resolution goes from a faint smudge, to fuzzy, to solid mass, to detailed enough to tell if it’s our sub or someone else’s. The software could be optimized to focus on only one part of the ocean, then look for the early clues, that it’s an object big enough to be a sub. A massive amount of computing power, a maximum number of satellite data sources landing on that key window of time about 72 hours after a solar flare—you might be able to get a fuzzy photo of subs in the northern half of the Pacific that is an hour old. That’s probably best-case: a photo about an hour old.”

  An hour was actionable intelligence. And military history had taught him how important accurate, current information was to a situation. “Gina, I’ve got some thoughts beg
inning to jell. They range from destroying the photo to giving it to the Navy now, to a more finessed option of saying nothing about this capability until a situation warrants the risk—such as tensions rising, a war threatening to break out—and we judge the timing of revealing this capability against the risk that an enemy learns it can be done. I’ll be back in the morning with more detailed thoughts. Leave everything as it is for now, Gina. Don’t destroy the photo or the code. Give me that much as a promise.”

  She finally nodded. “I do want to burn it, Mark.”

  “That’s factored into my thinking, and it’s why I’m asking you not to do anything just yet.”

  “I’ll leave things be for the night.” She passed over the carton of ice cream. “Are you staying at a hotel?”

  “My brother wouldn’t hear of it. I’m staying with Bryce and Charlotte for the night. I’ll give you their phone number in case for some reason you can’t reach my cell.” He spooned a corner of the ice cream carton, glanced at her. “Why did you decide to tell me about this discovery?”

  “I wanted to burn the photo and not tell you, not tell anyone. Then I thought about you getting back from patrol and knew you would come to have a conversation—” she paused and let out a long breath—“and I’d look guilty, and you’d ask what was wrong, and I’d have to lie and try to convince you nothing was wrong. It just seemed easier in the end to simply show you the photo.”

  He smiled. “I appreciate that. Marry me, Gina. You need me. I want you as my wife. There are worse reasons to get married.”

  “There are better.” She bit her lip. “I don’t love you, Mark.”

  “Yet,” he qualified. “You don’t love me yet.” He considered her, then dipped the spoon back in the carton. For her sake he was working hard not to show how much it hurt to hear her say that. But he also heard the underlying tone, and he understood more than she might like him to. He’d go hug the woman, but she wouldn’t understand the emotional spectrum playing out inside him tonight.

  “I’m going to guess you don’t know what you feel right now,” he finally said, “besides a layer of fear, a tangle of ‘why is he interested in me?’ and a wish you wouldn’t have to make another important decision right now.” He didn’t wait for a response but headed to the kitchen to put away the ice cream. When he reentered the living room, he leaned over the sofa and kissed her. “Come say good-night, lock up behind me. I’ll be back at nine a.m. sharp with some possibilities.”

  “You weren’t kidding when you said you had some work to do.”

  Mark looked up to see Charlotte leaning against her kitchen doorway. He’d appropriated the table to work on a decision tree, factoring through different crisis situations and what a photo of the sea would do, both pro and con. The months at sea had beaten him up physically, but he could still drum up focused concentration when it was necessary. He glanced at the clock. It was three a.m. “I’m making progress,” he said.

  He tossed a couple of kitchen towels across the pages that were classified as Charlotte came into the room, wearing jeans, a sweatshirt, and a pair of faded blue socks. She made herself a cup of tea. “I find it fascinating that you went to the sea, your brother Jim went to space, and Bryce is content to stay on terra firma and be a businessman.”

  “He’s got a good head for it,” Mark replied with a smile as he took a long stretch. “And unlike Jim and me, he doesn’t need a rush of adrenaline with his job.”

  She brought over the pan of brownies she’d baked earlier that day and took a seat at the table, sliced off a sliver for herself, passed him the pan and the knife.

  “Couldn’t sleep?” he asked.

  “Sometimes it bothers me waking up to a guy in the room,” she admitted softly, “even when it’s my husband. You have questions about me. It’s nice of you not to have asked them.”

  “My brother adores you, and you love him back. I figure the details matter, but not that much.”

  “I’m Ruth Bazoni.”

  He managed to stop the shock from showing on his face, but she smiled slightly, and he registered he had let the brownie drop.

  “I’m sleeping with your brother, literally, or trying to, but I’m not very good at making it through the entire night yet. He’s a patient man. We’ve managed to get to a very nice good-night kiss. Another five years, maybe we’ll have progressed to second base.”

  “I’m sorry, Charlotte.”

  “So am I. It’s three o’clock, so tonight was actually a good night. I keep a private bedroom suite upstairs with double locks inside the door as a security blanket, but I consider it a step backward when I need to retreat there. When the memories of the past mean I can’t stay with Bryce, I tend to head to the studio to get some work done.” She gave him a smile. “My career has been thriving lately. Anything you need before I go there tonight?”

  “I’m good.”

  She got up from the table. “You’re worried about your Gina.”

  “Yes.”

  “Patience is a good answer most of the time.”

  “For her own good, I’m going to have to rush her. She needs a buffer, some protection. That can’t be done well without the leverage of being her husband.”

  Charlotte nodded. “Being a bit of a white knight runs in your family, I’ve discovered. I’ll leave you to your work, Mark.” She walked through the kitchen to the studio at the back of the house. Soft music soon drifted into the kitchen.

  Ruth Bazoni. Twenty years ago, she’d been at the center of the most famous kidnapping case in Chicago history. Three ransoms, four years, before cops found her two abductors, shot them, and rescued her. And she’d married his brother Bryce. Mark considered that fact and slowly nodded. Bryce was the right man for her. None of the Bishop brothers ever did simple or easy. He smiled. If Gina found the courage to say yes, she’d find she fit in well with his family.

  Gina offered to fix waffles for breakfast, and Mark wisely said yes to give her something to do, also mildly interested that she could cook. He sat at the center counter and watched her work. She stacked two waffles on a plate for him along with butter and syrup. She ate hers with melted butter and powdered sugar, cleaned up the kitchen, and finally stopped and leaned against the far counter. “Okay. I’ve eaten. Had my second cup of coffee. Give me the bad news.”

  He smiled, appreciating her matter-of-fact attitude, though he was sure it was not easy for her to maintain. “It’s not all bad news, Gina.” He picked up his coffee, needing the caffeine after a night with barely three hours of sleep. “As I see it, you have three good options, and a few other decent ones.” He nodded to the stool beside him. “You might want to sit down for this.”

  She took the seat beside him as he cut into the last bites of his waffle. “Bottom line, the Navy needs the photo, Gina. You can’t burn it,” he said simply. “That wasn’t my initial reaction, but that’s where the possible outcomes have led me. For the foreseeable future, during the years the U.S. is the only one with this capability, it comes close to guaranteeing there will be peace on the high seas. We will know where everyone is—at least after sizable sun flares.

  “In the longer term, the implications are that submarine warfare becomes similar to chess. Every piece on the board is seen, and how you move your pieces determines the victor. It would no longer be a battle fought in the dark. Seeing exactly where the other’s boats are at—and the U.S. dominates with the number of assets we can deploy—it’s poker where you can see the other guy’s cards. That’s a better game to play, a safer one, than information we’re working with now. How long till somebody else figures this capability out is unknown, but I don’t think it happens anytime soon. We’re probably talking years if not decades before anyone else has the capability. The Navy needs the photo.”

  She listened without offering a comment. He slid back his plate and gave her a reassuring smile. “How that might happen is where you have options.” He thought about the order to present those options.

  “First
option is, you do a video, write a paper, package your software algorithms—as you’ve done for your other discoveries—and hand it off without ever coming to Bangor. Stay in Chicago and continue with your JPL work. Step back from this. Let me deliver it for you. I’ll make sure no questions or comments come your way, that is, if you want to take a hard break from all this.”

  He waited a moment, but she only nodded.

  “Second option, you guide someone else into discovering the same thing you did, have someone else produce a photo. How we guide that person to figure it out—that might be more fantasy than reality, but we can work through it. This has advantages for you, chief among them being your peace of mind, as someone else will be credited with the discovery.”

  She nodded again, but didn’t comment.

  “Third option, return to Bangor with me,” he continued, “show the Navy the photo, accept what you found, don’t run from it, and let me help you. There’s more for you to do. Getting the photo created in the shortest amount of time, working out the minimum solar flare strength and number of satellite data sources necessary to create the photo. And you’re able to do that faster than someone else who would have to come up to speed on the details. Operationally it’s also safer—limiting this capability and the details of how it’s done to just you for now. I prefer this third option, as I think you need to stay involved—up to the point that everything’s refined and ready to be passed on—but I’ll understand if you prefer one of the other options.”

  “You really think a photo of every sub deployed around the globe makes U.S. submarines safer?” she asked.

  “I do.” He reached over for one of the oranges in the fruit bowl and peeled it with his knife, then looked at her. “There’s warning time, Gina. When a solar flare happens, the U.S. will still have a couple of days to position its submarine fleet where it wants them to be before the lights turn on. Cross-sonar clears out safe zones for the boomers to move into. Fast-attacks move into precautionary positions. When the photo shows where our submarines are, where any enemy ships are, there will be no weak spots. We’ll be ready. And as others move, we can move to counter them. Tactically a photo makes the U.S. fleet safer. And with the capability to know for certain where others are, we could begin to deploy and operate the fleet very differently than we do now.”