by D S Kane
As he finished his note and started the engine, his thoughts drifted to Randall. Frank wondered if the man was a CIA case officer. If so, didn’t that mean InTelQ was a CIA front? What he wasn’t sure of was what the CIA wanted from the companies. Did they want perpetual sole ownership of the companies he’d met with? What other reason could they have had for buying the startups’ stock? What other reason would Randall have for ensuring that InTelQ was the sole investor?
Frank thought once more of Laura. He’d called the staff at his Paraguay compound and asked them what she was doing. They thought she was flighty and had kept out of her way. He asked Pedro to have Laura call him.
Pedro had said, “Okay, señor.” Now Frank would wait to see if Laura called him.
* * *
Laura woke that morning from another nightmare. She dreamed that her mother was still alive and had traveled to Paraguay to kill her. As she washed herself at the sink, she was sure someone was watching her. In the mirror, she thought she saw someone in the shower, and, alarmed, she ran to the shower, but it was empty. She finished washing and then dressed for the day. As she returned to the bedroom to dress, she admired the blue vase she had bought in the art gallery a few days ago. It looked like one her mother bought many years ago for her family’s home. While she sipped a cup of coffee in the kitchen, she was sure there was someone watching her. But she scoured the room, searching for a place where someone could hide from her, but she found nothing.
She told Pedro to drive her to town. There, she strolled down the sidewalk alleyway into the gallery where she had bought the vase. There was nothing else there that she wanted to purchase. She decided to shop the rest of the stores on the street, but as she left, she once again thought someone was following her.
She ran to the limo and ordered the driver to take her home.
Once again in the house, she was sure that someone was watching her.
She felt sure she was no longer safe.
* * *
Ann finished moving the last box from her apartment into Glen’s, at 137 Homer, south of downtown Palo Alto. There along his living-room wall were twenty large cartons, waiting for her to unpack them. She still had doubts regarding the wisdom of this decision. All her “relationship” decisions in the past had been bad judgments. From Charles in high school to Charlette last year. No, not merely errors. All her relationships before Glen were disasters. She was drawn to him, but something felt wrong. But she decided to give it a try.
She set about unpacking the first box: towels, pillowcases, and sheets. Glen was gone from his apartment, setting up the new offices of MindField with his cofounders.
After she had unpacked seven of the boxes, she felt winded and her back hurt. She sat on his couch and looked around, trying to see if there were any bachelor amenities she would need to change into something more feminine. Atop his desk in the living room she saw a folder labelled “investors.” She touched the folder, then without consciously intending it, she felt her fingers lifting its cover. Inside, she saw his notes on the meetings he’d had with possible investors.
She stared at the folder for a while, to convince herself not to intrude on his privacy. But, she didn’t move away. After nearly a minute her hand seemed to have a mind of its own and she inched the open folder she held closer to her eyes. She hadn’t intended reading his notes. But she did. They were stored in chronological sequence, each set corresponding to one meeting. She read the oldest first and then traveled on to the present. The oldest ones were short meetings with negative outcomes as he learned how to present MindField with more enthusiasm and could anticipate the questions that an investor might ask. By the time Frank Lucessi of InTelQ appeared in the file, Glen seemed to know what he was doing as a negotiator.
As she finished reading the last note and rescanned the agreements he and his team had signed, something nasty occurred in her thought process. While Glen was masterful in his negotiating, he had ignored hints Frank made about the things Frank was not telling him.
From Glen’s notes, Ann was sure that there was a hole in Frank’s knowledge of his own business. It was almost as if Frank was the go-between for someone who was handling him. Ann scratched her chin. She rose from the couch and paced the living room, considering what kind of person might behave this way. The most probable answer was that Frank was brought in to do the work of an organization that wanted to remain in the shadows. Who was he a cutout for? She pulled her notebook computer from her backpack and began searching for evidence of what InTelQ really was and who owned them.
After she reviewed the scant facts she had discovered online about Frank Lucessi, she became convinced that InTelQ was a front for an intelligence agency. It made sense to her now. She pulled her cellphone from her pocket and called Jon.
* * *
Glen and his cofounders had almost completed setting up MindField’s new offices. Their South Amphlett Drive office in San Mateo was what Glen thought of as a convoluted warren, although their landlord called it a corporate startup incubator. There were as many as twenty startup offices on each floor of the old four-story building, and there were twelve buildings in the complex. The office they had taken was on the third floor of building number eight, next door to eleven other startups on just that floor. Within the office there were six separate rooms, the largest of which had been used by its last occupant as a conference room, and another that was nearly as large as the kitchen. The other four rooms were smaller and each cofounder has his or her own.
Glen had proposed that at 8 a.m. each morning, the group would gather for a short meeting in the conference room to discuss their progress and their obstacles. Today’s meeting was about to start.
Glen sat at the head of the large conference table with Samantha, Harvey, and Ford. They were all pleased, and showing it.
Harvey flashed a gleam of smile. “I’m pleased to report that the prototype works. Well, sort of works.”
Everyone leaned closer across the table.
“What does ‘sort of’ mean, Harvey?” Glen’s expression showed his concern. “Even with the investment that InTelQ made in us, we haven’t much money.”
“Yeah. Well, remember that the original intent was to produce a physical hackproof nano-firewall that can be programmed to let only telecomm signals set up as ‘desired’ to pass between its users and their ‘friends’?”
Everyone nodded.
“Well, the original plan was to have the physical device protect its wearer from hostile comm signals. But, using a shear thickening fluid to paint the device on human skin failed.”
Glen muttered a single word. “Shit!”
“Yup. That’s what I thought.” Harvey smiled. “But, I found that the nanodevice would work if it was swallowed.”
“Did you test this on someone?” Glen seemed surprised. The others pulled away from the table as if they smelled something foul.
Harvey nodded. “Me. I tested it on me.”
“You tested this on yourself? Crap, Harvey. What were you thinking?” Glen’s eyes were wide.
“Who the fuck else could I test it on?”
Glen shook his head. “Are you crazy?”
Harvey took a deep breath. “I am proof of concept. The device acts as a firewall to keep hackers from my insulin pump.”
The others knew Harvey was a Type 1 diabetic.
Glen immediately saw the value in the breakthrough. “So then you think it will work on pacemakers and other medical devices?”
Harvey nodded. “Absolutely. We’ve achieved our first major milestone.”
Glen’s smile bubbled through his face so much he could feel it. I can’t wait until I tell Ann.
Chapter 25
Glen Sarkov’s apartment,
137 Homer, Palo Alto, CA
September 28, 3:24 a.m.
Ann woke up gasping for breath. The recurring nightmare she had occasionally had since she was a teenager had visited her once again. It was accurate in every detail to her me
mory of the real-life event that triggered it. She shivered in the bed next to Glen.
Glen rolled to face her. “What happened?”
She huddled against him. “Glen, when I was twelve, my birth mother died from a drug overdose as my younger brother and I watched. I thought Joshua and I might be separated by child services and to keep that from happening, we found what we thought was a safe place.”
Glen pushed away and stared at her face. “So?’
Ann shivered. “There are tunnels under Grand Central Station. Old tracks no longer used by the railroad. Homeless people used to live there, and we joined them. It turns out, it wasn’t safe at all. A man raped me, and when Joshua tried to stop him, the man snapped his neck. That was the night Cassie found me. Without her, I’d surely be dead now. The nightmare I just had is a carbon copy of my rape and Joshua’s murder.” She began to whimper.
Glen hugged her. “You’re safe here with me.”
“Yeah, well duh.” But that dream returns whenever I sense that something isn’t right. Something bad is brewing.”
Glen said, “When I grew up in Russia, we lived at the edge of danger, too. It’s why we left. My father was a journalist. He set up our travel and sent us away in the dead of night. He was supposed to follow right after he posted the story he was working on. But he never made it out of Russia. To keep the story from getting into the press, he was murdered. I was twelve. Not nearly as bad as what happened to you.” He hugged her closer. “How long were you living in those tunnels?”
“It was nearly a year. Cassie left after a few weeks. I didn’t know then, but when she returned to get me, I found out that she had worked for one of America’s intelligence services. She was outed by a mole in her own agency. The mole sold her identity to terrorists who thought she was just a financial consultant, and they had started to hunt her down. She needed to find a way to recover her life. The odds for her were long, but she succeeded. Then she returned, found me, and adopted me.”
He pulled away and studied her face. “Any other secrets?”
“Actually, there are a few. Well, maybe more than just a few.”
“Tell me.”
Ann smiled. “Not tonight. But I will, someday. One secret is enough for a single night.”
Glen was silent for a few seconds. “Well, I can lighten the mood. I’ve got great news.”
Ann smiled. “And what would this ‘great news’ be?”
“We’ve completed the prototype. Our original design was flawed. The STF didn’t work to paint the nanodevice onto human skin. But Harvey discovered the device could be swallowed. And that worked well.”
Ann paled. She began to shake.
“What’s wrong, sweetie?”
Ann tried to calm herself, but to no avail. Through tears, she spoke while shivering. “I have another secret that you need to know now. One which very few people know. You must promise never to tell anyone! Never! Do you agree?”
He moved farther from her, startled by her. “Well, okay.”
“Remember how I told you that I was modified using a nanodevice?” She sobbed. “The whole story is that a hacker fed me a thousand of them—Bug-Loks—to see if they would kill me or modify my repertoire of skills.”
Glen said nothing. His jaw remained open, working his mouth open and closed.
“If I survived, the devices were supposed to give me the ability to access the internet using my brain. One of them might have been enough. But, they latch into the brainstem and, after about six weeks, they detach and are eliminated. But each one scars my brain. And, a thousand of them? That many had an unintended consequence. I was able to shoot fire from my fingertips. For decades, the CIA and KGB tried psychokinetic experiments to make things like that happen. That’s why you can never tell anyone. Understand?”
Glen nodded, but she stared at the confusion in his face.
“I’m no longer human in the usual sense of the word. Six weeks passed, the Bug-Lok devices are gone from me but I can still do that nasty trick.”
Glen’s eyes remained agog.
He said nothing, but Ann could easily read his expression. He must be thinking, my girlfriend, the freak.
* * *
“Do we have enough of these?” Jon pointed to the bag of Bug-Loks, each encased in a liquid-filled, very tiny slide-lock bag.
“Yes,” Cassie said. She handed the bag to Jon. “I’ll talk with each pretender while you get us coffee. Make sure you empty the bag’s contents into the coffee and hand the pretender the one containing the Bug-Lok.”
Jon nodded. Cassie and Jon left the hotel room and headed toward the elevator.
The two spies met to discuss the progress of the eight startup CEOs over coffee and doughnuts in the Stanford University Cafeteria. The CEOs each left their meeting with the Mossad’s version of the Bug-Lok nanodevice floating though their bloodstreams on its way to their brainstems.
When Jon and Cassie returned to Jon’s room, they tested communications between the devices each CEO had swallowed and Jon’s notebook computer. All of them worked to spec. Cassie said, “We did it. Let’s tell Avram.”
Jon nodded and plucked his cellphone from his pocket. Phase two of Jon’s plan was now complete.
* * *
Robert Randall looked at his reflection in the mirror and sighed without making a sound. His fifth meeting with Daniel Strumler would begin whenever the candidate let him into the hotel room where he lived prior to the election. Randall had been pacing in the outside hallway for nearly an hour. He had considered the obvious reasons why their other meetings had been nearly disastrous. Perhaps it had simply been a mutual dislike. Perhaps Strumler was as arrogant and stupid as he appeared. Perhaps Randall had simply not been prepared. Maybe Strumler had sensed Randall’s dislike for him and felt obliged to respond in kind. It could be any of these, or maybe all.
To keep from wearing his dislike for Strumler, Randall focused on the issues he would present in his daily intelligence threats report. The list was short. He spent the time while he waited rehearsing his statement.
The door opened and Strumler’s choice for vice president left the room, shaking his head. The man stage-whispered, “You’re next. He’s not happy today.”
Randall forced himself to smile and entered the room.
Strumler’s face was red with anger. “Why are you so happy?”
Randall gulped. “Not happy, sir. But, I’ve been looking forward to meeting with you again.”
“Yeah, well, fuck you very much. Take a load off and tell me what’s happening today that threatens to kick our collective asses as a country.”
At that moment, Randall wished he were anywhere else. Even a shootout with a gang of foreign terrorists would have been sweeter.
Chapter 26
CIA headquarters, Langley, VA
October 30, 1:15 p.m.
When his daily meeting with Strumler ended, Robert Randall felt chest pains from his frustration. He was beginning to hate “the candidate who had no chance,” as the news had often described him. He parked the car in the CIA headquarters lot and walked through the lobby to the security gate.
He took the elevator up from the lobby, but before it even settled to a stop, his cellphone was buzzing.
“Randall.”
“It’s William Smythe.” Randall remembered that the man had recently become the assistant director over him. “Where are you?”
“I’m in the building. If you want, I can be in your office in under a minute.”
“No, that’s not necessary,” responded the ass dire. “But, tell me: How’d the meeting with Strumler go?”
“Sir, it went badly. To think that this dolt has even as much as a rat’s chance of being president makes my head spin. I’ve never met anyone this frustrating or ignorant.”
“Relax, Robert. The election is less than a month away. No way anyone will vote for him. Once the election is over, you can go back to your other projects, and the agency will always be grateful
you did this for us.”
“Yes. I’m sure it will.”
“Just hang in there.” The ass dire terminated the call.
Randall walked to his own office. He plunked himself into a chair and sat, waiting for his mind to clear. His only thought, reverberating continuously through his brain was, What happens to me if Strumler actually wins? What happens to my country?
* * *
The sky in New York City was a dark gray, but the forecasted rain had yet to start. Frank Lucessi sat in the back of a taxi and watched the brownstones fly by as his driver turned a corner.
“We’re here, boss.”
Frank passed the driver two twenties. “Keep the change.”
He exited the car and scanned the street, looking for the number of the house this startup used for offices. He found the startup incubator in what used to be a very nasty section of Brooklyn.
Frank climbed the stairs and rang the bell. A short man with a beard smiled and opened the door. “Mr. Lucessi! Welcome to GrayStem. Please, follow me.” The man led him through what smelled like a chem lab, down a long hallway, and past a smallish kitchen to what was once a bedroom and now was set up to serve as a startup’s conference room.
Frank entered and examined the room. Near the entrance was a presentation screen, and in the center of the room was a conference room table big enough to seat eight people. Frank sat on one of the long sides of the table, across from the entrance. He flipped open his attaché case and pulled a file folder and his notebook computer from within.
He smiled at the thought that this board meeting was the final one he had scheduled, and that by early evening he’d be headed home. Home to Laura. He missed her. And he was troubled by the fact that his phone calls to her—every one of them—had rolled into voicemail. His housekeeper had called to tell him that Pedro watched over Laura and she was safe but moody. He remained troubled by the feeling that something must be terribly wrong. Well, just a few hours more and I can see her. I just hope she’s at my home, waiting for me.