MindField

by D S Kane

  Stanford University Student Union cafeteria,

  Palo Alto, CA

  September 15, 1:32 p.m.

  Ann found a seat at a table that was emptying. She sat and looked at her wristwatch. Glen will be here in less than five, she thought. She closed her eyes, thinking of what she could say that might keep him safe and out of the mess that this mission might bring. When I see him, what do I tell Glen?

  She sat motionless, eyes closed, trying to conjure something witty, like, Hey, sweetie, how would you like to volunteer for a deadly assignment? Oh, wait, your venture capitalist may have already volunteered you! Oops! No. This was going to be a nightmare. She could smell danger, and even though it was her imagination, she felt a chill and smelled something coppery, like the stench of blood.

  She felt the breeze of the cafeteria door opening and shutting, then the noise of the chair next to hers scraping back. She opened her eyes and smiled. Ann struggled to keep her hands from shaking, or worse, from glowing with heat from her special “talent.”

  “Hi, Ann. I got your text. What did you want to talk to me about?” He seemed friendly, not annoyed at her violation of the two-day rule for new couples. It was a “thing” back in the days when she and Charles were dating, before he started college at Harvard and discarded her like a rotten piece of fruit. She wondered if there still was a two-day rule.

  Ann let her eyes drift away, unfocused, so she could imagine some additional distance between them. She took a deep breath. “I kept some things about me from you. If I tell you my secrets, will you promise not to reveal them to anyone else?”

  “Uh, sure. What’s so serious I have to promise something?”

  “Can we find some place more private?”

  “Uh. Sure.” He rose from his seat. “How about the quad? There are some seats no one ever seems to use there.”

  Ann followed him. They walked nearly half a mile. As Glen promised, there was no one visible close by from the vantage point of four metal benches grouped on the quad. She nodded as they sat. “Glen, I want to know if I can tell you things I’ve sworn never to reveal. See, I’m not who I appear to be.”

  Glen remained silent, his mouth opening just a bit more than usual, as if he was unsure of how to respond.

  Ann took another breath. “I’ve been modified. I’ve—”

  “You’ve what?”

  Ann sighed. “I was modified with nanodevices about a year ago.”

  Glen sat back into the bench, then leaned forward. But he made no attempt to get up. “So, let’s see if I understand. You were experimented on by… by who?”

  “I’m a hacker. My mom used to work in an intelligence service. My dad also worked in the same service. It’s how they met each other. The service closed, then was replaced by a private mercenary corporation, and that’s where they work now. One of their projects was human testing of a nanodevice, and I received one of the devices.” This last statement, Ann knew, was a lie. She’d actually volunteered to test the device. Her next lie was to omit that the CypherGhost had administered a thousand more of the nanodevices to her without telling her. But Glen would never know about the CypherGhost. And then she omitted that as the nanodevices began to fail, one-by-one, she learned to replicate their functions with her own brain. By the time the last one had failed, she was capable of striking someone with flames emanating from her fingertips. No, that would be too much. She couldn’t ask him to believe that.

  “Why are you telling me this today?” She could see disbelief in his expression. Maybe I’ve already gone too far?

  It was now or never. “Because my mom’s firm is investigating how a team of their operatives died while in the field. Their team was sent in to act as entrepreneurs after some military weapons secrets were stolen and showed up with a Silicon Valley startup. The startup’s team disappeared after they completed development of their product. When the fake startup’s cofounders were murdered, the product then ended up the sole property of the venture capital firm that funded them. Got this so far?”

  Glen obviously did, and she could see his discomfort. “MindField’s first product. It’s our own. Our own design. Not hacked from some intelligence agency.”

  “Yes. I know. But what I fear is that your venture guy, Frank Lucessi, may not be what you think he is. And that his venture capital firm may not be acting in MindField’s best interests, or, for that matter, your own.” Ann sat back in her chair, not sure how Glen would react.

  Glen sat, speechless, for nearly a minute, his eyes darting around like a cornered animal. “No venture capital firm has the cofounders’ interest at heart. They’re in it for the money.” He was silent, thinking. “Okay. What do you want?”

  Ann nodded. “That’s what we need to talk about. Here. Now. Okay?”

  Glen nodded back.

  Ann said, “There’s this guy I know who works with my parents. His name is Jon Sommers. He used to work for the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service. Now he works for General Avram Shimmel, the director general of the United Nations Paramilitary Force. Both of these guys are friends of my parents, and my parents work for Avram. Jon needs people he can run as independent contractors to the United Nations for this investigation. They will be in danger for the duration of the investigation. If they survive, they’ll be offered venture funding from an Israeli venture firm as a reward for their service. Please, please, please, do not do this. I just found out that you are on their recruitment list. Jon will tell you a bit but not all of what I just told you. He’ll lie and embellish his story. Don’t believe him, and don’t offer your services. You might not survive the op.”

  Glen’s eyes focused to the grass around the benches. “So, you’re not just a hacker. You’re also a spy. Right?”

  Ann shook her head. “Not now. We can talk about this later. Just please, if Jon calls you, remember that he’s dangerous. If I were you, I’d turn down any offer he makes. My guess is he’ll call you within a day, if he can’t find someone else. Okay?”

  But she could see that Glen was no longer paying attention. His eyes were drifting with thought.

  * * *

  The three spies sat in living-room section of Jon’s hotel room.

  Cassie focused on the screen of her notebook computer. Her fingers moved across the keyboard, driven by her need to find the ten best prospects for Jon’s list of pretenders. The list now included four names, but she thought the one she was reviewing right now would make a decent fifth choice. So far, she had reviewed the credentials of over eight hundred of the one thousand names.

  There were a total of nearly three thousand names Jon had arrived with. Jon himself was reviewing a thousand of the total.

  Next to Cassie, Lee was also reviewing names. He’d found two out of the seventy-eight on his the list of over seven hundred.

  Cassie looked at the screen of Jon’s notebook, a few feet away. At this rate, it might take as long as two complete weeks to finish the list. She sighed to herself. This kind of work was frequently part of the front end of any mission. First research, then march, and then fight.

  Jon got up and walked to the coffee pot. He poured a cup for himself then interrupted the others. “Anybody?” He pointed to the cup. Lee and Cassie both nodded back. Jon poured and delivered coffee. “Time for a status report. I found three names. How about you guys?”

  “Two,” said Lee.

  “Five,” said Cassie.

  Jon shrugged. “Okay, take a breather. Five minutes, then back at the list.”

  Lee and Cassie rose and refilled their coffee cups.

  * * *

  It was all Daniel Strumler could do to contain his rage. “Please repeat the question.”

  Nikolai Puchenko smiled, but the expression seemed to reveal a nasty intention. “I asked if your campaign might be able to use some help.”

  “If I accept, you’ll own me.”

  “If you don’t accept, let me remind you that we already have enough just in photos and videos to end your
campaign. We also have signed contracts between your businesses and our oil companies. Not to mention—”

  “Yeah, not to mention what we were just talking about. But, all of that is just gossip. If I agree to your ‘help,’ then you really own me.”

  “But if you do, your odds of winning go from slight to nearly a sure thing. Remember, we only back winners.”

  Strumler sat in silence for a few seconds. He wished he had the patience to see all the angles, every bad thing that could go wrong. But his mind simply wandered.

  “Well? Mr. Strumler, do you wish to become president?”

  Strumler could no longer control his rage. “You fuckin’ piece of shit. Of course I do. But what you’re asking me to do is treason!”

  “It’s survival of the fittest in regards to all political dealings. Do you have what it takes to be your country’s leader?”

  Strumler took a deep breath. His hands were shaking and he’d hidden them behind his back. He looked into Puchenko’s calm face. The Russian’s eyes were staring back at him, their focus bright and steadfast. Strumler knew he was cornered. He lowered his gaze. “What the fuck do you want from me now?”

  * * *

  As the afternoon drew into evening, Lee looked up from his notebook’s screen. “That’s the last one on my segment. I found a total of five out of seven hundred eighty-two that meet the requirements.” He looked across at Cassie and Jon, seated in front of their own notebooks. “Well?”

  Jon smiled. “I’ve found seven in my segment. Finished three minutes ago.”

  Cassie frowned. “I found eleven. That makes a total of twenty-three potential pretenders. Before we break for dinner, we should sequence the names according to their potential effectiveness. Okay?”

  Jon nodded. “Yes. I’ve already sequenced my pretenders. Let’s see where both of your lists fit with mine.”

  They completed the task of combining their three lists into a single one in priority sequence. Cassie read the list aloud, then said, “Let’s decide how to proceed with the list.”

  “Simple,” Jon said. “We start with the top name and proceed downward. First, let’s compile a more thorough record for the twenty-three candidates.”

  That took quite a while. It was nearly 7:30 when they finished.

  Jon said, “Let’s take the files for the short list with us. He looked at Cassie. “You went to school here, so why don’t you choose the restaurant?”

  Cassie nodded.

  Jon smiled. “Let’s eat somewhere special. Cassie, you lead the way.”

  Chapter 14

  Chef Chu’s,

  1067 N San Antonio Road, Los Altos, CA

  September 15, 7:52 p.m.

  The small restaurant was situated at the busy intersection of El Camino Real and San Antonio Road, next door to Armadillo Willy’s BBQ restaurant. Jon sniffed the smoke and pointed. “That sure smells good. Sure you want Asian, Cassie?”

  Cassie frowned at Jon. “This place is the one we want to go to. Chinese food that tastes like heaven. We can do smoky ribs next time.”

  Jon, Cassie, and Lee entered the more elegant place and found the formally attired maître d’.

  Jon asked for a quiet table. He opened the menu. “This is the kind of place William Wing would adore. There are dishes on this menu that read like taste adventures.”

  Cassie looked up from her menu. “I’d prefer if I could relive some of my favorites from college. Okay?” Both men nodded. “Good, good. Let’s order the hot and sour soup, one of the very best I’ve ever had, the minced crystal prawns in lettuce cups, and the “vegetarian” goose, for starters. Then, uh,” she gazed back at the menus and when her head bobbed up, she said, “for mains, how about the boneless tea-smoked duck, which I think is as good as their Beijing duck but tastes different, smoky. And, the classic dry-braised prawns, which I had at an amazing, famous restaurant the last time I was in Hong Kong. And then, either yu shang pork or mapo tofu?”

  It took the others nearly two minutes just to catch up and read the descriptions. Jon voted for the tofu, and Lee wanted the pork, so they ordered both, along with everything Cassie recommended.

  While they waited for the onslaught of food, Jon distributed the printed folders he had brought. The folders held complete records of each of the twenty-three in the short list. Each candidate had about four pages of notes, including everything found in public records for that person. By the time the food had come, they had narrowed the list to eight names.

  While they ate, they caught up on social gossip.

  Jon grinned. “Avram’s wife Shula is fighting for her command at the bank’s top position. She was running wire transfer and foreign exchange, but a consultant hired by the bank’s CEO did a study and discovered that over half the bank’s profit is from foreign exchange. It’s a battle she neither sought nor wanted. Avram’s furious. Thinks it might draw attention to her role as guardian of Israel’s interests in counterterrorism.”

  “So Shula wants to remain hands-on?” Lee was obviously unconvinced, but Jon simply nodded.

  Cassie asked, “What about your social life, Jon? Are you and Lily Lee on or off at present?”

  Jon shrugged. After almost two years, I’m still confused about Lily. Sometimes I think she wants me, other times it looks like she just wants the comfort I offer her through her green card. I’m not at all sure about how I feel. So, when I’m at home in Manhattan, we fight a lot. When I’m away, she doesn’t call much. I do most of the outward reach.”

  Cassie and Lee exchanged glances. “Doesn’t sound promising to me,” she said to Jon. She changed the subject by asking Jon about William Wing and Betsy Brown, the two directors of Avram’s cybersecurity department within the UN Paramilitary Force.

  “They are currently on assignment in Eastern Europe” Jon said. “I expect they’ll be returning in a few months.”

  After dinner, they went back to the folders and cut the eight names down to three. The plan was to approach them in sequence, one at a time, until they received two acceptances. Jon would then send them out as cofounding teams.

  Jon argued for those with the best tech, Lee for those who spoke fluent English. In the end, the sequence they arrived at was:

  Kosh Vindar

  Chin Wang

  Glen Sarkov

  Jon saved the file containing the names. He closed his notebook computer. “That’s enough for today. Tomorrow we finalize the plan and begin taking steps. He smiled briefly.

  Jon paid the bill and they rose as one from the table. They were soon gone from the restaurant.

  Chapter 15

  Stanford Park Hotel, Palo Alto, CA

  September 16, 8:26 a.m.

  Cassie opened the door and let Jon in. He held a tray containing three cups of coffee. “Where can I put these down? They’re very hot.”

  Lee pointed to the desk. “On the corner.” Then he darted from the living section of his room to the bedroom and dragged a whiteboard from the clothes closet. “I bought this at a box store.” He pulled three different-colored dry-erase markers from the container attached to the side of the board. “Not as filled with memories as the one Ben-Levy bequeathed you, Jon, but it’ll do in a pinch. Let’s use this for drafts of the plan.”

  The three spent the morning brainstorming, with scant results. The whiteboard had three lines on it:

  Meet with all three candidates and assess their usefulness.

  Select numbers one and two and give them each a backstopped legend.

  Send them out to the suspect venture capital companies and wait to see what happens.

  “If that’s all we can come up with in an hour, Jon, your mission is doomed. It’ll be next summer before we have a complete plan scoped out.” Cassie frowned and sipped from her coffee cup.

  Lee nodded. “Well, maybe you’re right, but getting appointments with these three shouldn’t take long. Maybe we should just do that, meet all three and see how they stack up against one another.”

  J
on scanned the three folders in front of him. “Why don’t I just call the first one. Kosh Vindar.”

  Both Lee and Cassie shrugged.

  Jon picked up his cell, turned on speakerphone, and punched in a number. It rang three times then rolled into voicemail.

  “You have reached Kosh Vindar, CEO of Vindar Computing. I cannot talk with you now, but please be assured that your call is important to me and Vindar Consulting…” The message continued on, with a thick Indian accent.

  Jon left a very brief message.

  The three all bore amused looks. But when it happened again with the second name on the list, their expressions became borderline desperate.

  Cassie said, “We’re down to our last possibility, unless one of the first two returns your call. I guess we can always dip into the more complete list if Sarkov isn’t available either.”

  Jon nodded. Then he put the phone on speaker again, dialed the cell, and waited.

  “Sarkov.”

  Shocked at hearing a real person, none of the three spoke for a few seconds.

  Then Jon finally recovered. “Mr. Sarkov, my name is Jon Sommers. I’d like to talk with you about an exciting opportunity for you and MindField. Do you have a few minutes?”

  “I know who you are. Ann Sashakovich spoke to me about you. She warned me about working with you.”

  Jon’s jaw dropped. “You… you know Ann? She warned you? How?”

  “It really doesn’t matter. I already have an offer of seed funding from InTelQ. But thanks anyway.” He terminated the call.

  Jon seemed to be shocked by this turn.

  Lee used his hand to cover his earsplitting grin. “Ann just outed you!”

  Cassie picked up her cell and was dialing Ann’s cell. “That little stinker,” she said, her voice just a whisper. This call also went into voicemail. “Ann, it’s your mother. We just spoke with Glen Sarkov. You’ve been meddling in our op. Call me back as soon as possible.” She ended her call.

  Jon shook his head. “Too late, Cassie. Glen now knows too much.”

  Lee asked, “And what does that mean?”