by D S Kane
The half-hour drive home seemed like an entire day to Frank. He jumped out of the limo before it even came to a full stop. Entering the front door, he trotted up the staircase to the bedroom level and went first to his bedroom. The bed was made and there was nothing out of order, so Laura must have slept in one of the other bedrooms. He found the second-largest bedroom and entered. All the window shades were closed tight, so he turned on the electric lights. The room was in disorder, and he could smell his own fear. And he could also smell Laura’s fear. Laura must have been truly frightened for her aroma to be so easily detected. It was an odor unlike anything he had experienced before, and Frank wouldn’t have described himself as having an exaggerated or even merely accurate sense of smell. What could have caused her this much fear?
He paced around the room, looking for anything that might give him a better sense of what she had been thinking. He saw a beautiful blue vase on the nightstand. He picked it up and examined it. It was heavy. The label on the bottom stated it was sold by an art dealer in Asunción. Not a dealer he’d ever visited. He carefully placed it back on the nightstand and left the room. Frank searched the entire compound, room by room. There were fifteen-some-odd wine bottles missing from the wine cellar, so Laura must have downed at least one bottle every other day. There had never been any missing wine before and he knew his staff didn’t drink. No weapons were missing from the small armory adjacent to the wine cellar. Laura was nowhere on the grounds.
Frank ran to the guard’s room and mustered a search party. There were five guards available on the premises. He took three with him. They provisioned backpacks and weapons, and left the compound as the sun reached its zenith. “We’ll search sixty square miles around the compound.” He pointed and said to two of them. “You search from the swamp seven miles northwest to the dry desert plain fifteen miles southeast. Then report back to me by radio.” Then he motioned to the last of the three. “We’ll head toward San Pedro’s boundaries due north.”
Frank feared that it would be a long and difficult search. He opened the gun safe and handed rifles to each of the three men and took one for himself. Then he picked boxes of ammunition from the safe and distributed those as well, in case they encountered wild animals in the swamp or the desert. He thought, there are worse dangers than death from dehydration. I hope we’re not too late.
* * *
What a blowout of a party! Glen and his startup team’s celebration had been getting less organized as they consumed more and more alcohol. Glen smiled at his three cofounders. He sipped his fifth shot of Islay single malt scotch and staggered to the center of the private party room at Chef Chu’s on San Antonio Road and Camino Real. He tried to grab the microphone but missed and fell to the floor. Harvey tried to get him back on his feet, but Harvey was as drunk as Glen, and the result was two grown men rolling on the floor.
When Glen’s consciousness returned, he found himself walking back to his apartment. Someone had taken his car keys but he couldn’t remember whose idea it was. He was certainly far too drunk to drive himself home. It was a moonless night, and the intersections were both dark and quiet. He reminded himself that he needed to be careful, given his state of mind. Where the fuck am I? He stopped at a street corner and examined the street sign. I’m on Homer. Head north three more blocks and I’ll be at my apartment. He crossed the street and continued, heading north until he saw the row houses that had been converted to apartments. He took the stairs up a flight and searched for his house keys. Rats! Whoever took my car keys now also has my apartment keys. Ann must be home. She can let me in. He tried reading the time from his wristwatch. It was just past 3 a.m.
Glen knocked on the door. No answer. He repeated the process, only louder and for a longer time.
Ann opened the door, wearing a bathrobe. She sniffed the air. “God, you stink of booze.”
“Am slightly tips. Trispy. Tispy.” He could feel himself falling to the floor. Looking up, he smiled at Ann. And at least two shots of single malt spewed from his mouth.
Ann’s head seemed to get very close to his. “Glen! Glen, open your eyes.”
When he became conscious again, he found himself on a cot in Stanford Hospital’s emergency room.
Ann stood at his bedside, a look of concern combined with a quiet sense of rage like nothing Glen had ever seen before. She still wore her bathrobe.
“How long?”
“You’ve been here for…”—she looked around the room and stared at the clock—“twenty minutes. If you hadn’t awakened in ten more, the ER team would have dropped by this room for more work on you. They pumped your stomach. What they found disturbed them. Seems like the fluid in you was a combination of straight scotch and something they had to run through a spectrometer to determine its composition. They weren’t familiar with the stuff, but I told them we’re married and they sent me a copy. I’m familiar with this. It’s the type of liquid used to store nanodevices. Glen, I think you’ve been infected with a Bug-Lok.”
Glen’s head felt like a spinning top. He tried to rise off the bed, but nothing happened. “Whazza Bug-Lok?”
Ann shook her head. “Look, I’ll be back. But they have a rather strict policy of cellphones remaining off in the ER. I’ve got to get out into the open to call Cassie and Jon. I’ll be gone for just a few.” Without waiting for him to respond, she turned on her heel and disappeared.
Just before sunrise, Ann left long voicemail messages for Jon and Cassie and then headed back toward the ER.
* * *
Cassie, Jon, and Lee conference-called Avram. Cassie told Avram about the small pouches of liquid she found the mystery man administering to the startup CEOs, Avram took this new twist on their assignment as “worth relaying up the food chain.”
Avram conferenced Michael Drapoff into the conference call with Cassie, Jon, and Lee. After Cassie had explained what she had seen, Drapoff spent nearly a minute in silence, then another minute talking with his hand muffling the receiver before relaying back his analysis of what was in the pouches: “It’s an early version of the Bug-Lok, probably about six or seven years old. Early model, no kill capsule and no internet-based person-to-person communication. Just see, hear, and transmit over the nearest wireless communication to a static endpoint, and the endpoint would be the lone handler. I’m sure it’s the Chinese version.”
Cassie sat deep in thought for several minutes. She said to Jon, “I wonder if Ann’s boyfriend Glen has been infected? If he has, it means Ann’s name is on the transcripts Skorkin’s handler now has.”
She walked out of Jon’s hotel room into the hallway and used her cellphone to call Ann.
But Cassie’s call immediately rolled into Ann’s voicemail. Cassie left Ann a text message asking her daughter if there was any way she could get Glen to a hospital. Her text mentioned that he might have a Bug-Lok lodged in his brainstem. Then she checked her own voicemail and found Ann’s message. She ran back to tell Jon, Lee, and Avram.
Chapter 30
Swamp, 6 miles northeast of Lucessi compound
in Areguá, Paraguay
November 12, 2:38 a.m.
Laura had no idea where she was. It was the middle of the night and there was no moonlight to make the landscape visible. She felt tired, hungry and thirsty.
It had been days since she had slept in Frank’s large house.
She had heard her mother moaning in pain and rose. She walked into the hallway outside her bedroom. Her mother stood in the hallway facing her. There was a long gash across her neck. Laura realized that she held a jagged piece of glass covered with blood—her mother’s blood—and at that moment she screamed. She fled down the stairs and fumbled with the front door’s handle.
Once outside, she ran from the compound as fast as she could, not looking back. When she was exhausted, she stopped running. She looked around her. The night sky was pitch black. She had no idea where she was or how she could find her way back.
Since then, she had continued to w
alk, hoping she was headed back toward Frank’s compound. But when she felt the ground go from hard-packed soil to lush soft bog, she realized she was hopelessly lost. She walked on and the swamp became not just damp but hot and wet. She stumbled and fell. She was now covered in mud.
As she backed out of the swamp’s edge, she could hear animals and insects. They owned this place and she had no business here. She tried to quell the panic that built to a frenzy inside her. Where? How?
* * *
During the two days that had passed since Frank landed back in Paraguay, his search team had found no trace of Laura. As the third day dawned, a team manning his helicopter returned to their campsite, the pilot shaking his head as it landed. The pilot exited the chopper as the engines slowed and stopped. He told Frank, “Señor, no sighting so far.”
Frank scratched another grid off the search map. The security cameras showed she had headed toward the swamp and that’s where his team was now. But he was starting to lose faith that they would find her before she either starved or was eaten.
* * *
After the conference call, Avram Shimmel sat in his office on the twenty-ninth floor of the United Nations Secretariat Building in east midtown Manhattan. He stared into the void pondering what he had learned and deciding his next move. After a few minutes, he picked up the landline receiver and dialed Samuel Meyer, the director general of the Mossad. They exchanged pleasantries, designed to authenticate their identities to each other.
Avram said, “The mission is currently in progress. We have determined that it is possible that the CIA owns InTelQ and that they are using Bug-Lok nanodevices to infect startup CEOs from whom they can obtain current status on the readiness of their products for use in defense or as weapons. Then it appears InTelQ sends out a cleaner to terminate the team and bury all evidence of the cofounders’ lives. We have identified their cleaner’s identity. Michael Drapoff has determined where the Bug-Loks were manufactured. But one thing doesn’t ring true. Why would the CIA murder startup crews by job lots? I’m wondering if this is a false flag, or even worse, an off-the-books op.”
Meyer said, “Try to get something hard on who is behind this. I worry that time is running out. I’ve received evidence that points to other intelligence services having noticed the weapons development strategy InTelQ is using. If they copy it, there’ll be tons of competition for those startups whose products can be weaponized.”
* * *
Michael Drapoff sat in his small office in the subbasement of an unnamed and anonymous building in Herzliya, Israel, and searched for active and unknown global Bug-Lok signals. He’d been at this task for several hours and had let several cellphone calls from Samuel Meyer go to voicemail. He knew the task was urgent, but the range of Bug-Lok transmissions was unknown, and he had to search sector by sector, with the planet divided into six hundred sectors. He was now searching sector 22, in and around Washington DC.
“Crap on a cracker!” He smiled. Several hundred endpoints bloomed on his screen.
He coordinated the identities of the signals and was able to identify that they were all manufactured as part of the same batch, with Lev Robinson’s signature in their data. He reread the case. Robinson was a Ness Ziona employee, convicted of treason. He had died in an Israeli prison two years ago. Michael read more of the case and discovered a listing of over two thousand Bug-Lok serial numbers. One hundred sixty of them matched those in his assigned case.
One last question: Who were the devices sent to? Just a bit more reading and he found the answer. The batch was delivered to Gilbert Greenfield’s unnamed intelligence service six years ago.
Michael pulled his phone from his pocket. It was 3 a.m. in California, so he sent his findings via an email to Avram, Jon, Cassie, and Lee, with a separate copy for Samuel Meyer.
Chapter 31
51st Floor, Strumler Tower Capital Hotel,
Washington, DC
November 12, 8:03 a.m.
Robert Randall completed another of what he was now privately referring to as “torture sessions” with President-Elect Strumler. From the questions the idiot asked, Randall estimated the man’s intelligence as “grossly inadequate for the job.”
He cursed himself for his fate. After all, he was cursed, by his own ass dire. And he cursed his charge, the president-elect. Call a pig a pig.
Randall already had enough evidence for a charge of treason against the man. The growing accumulation of Bug-Lok transcripts proved beyond doubt that Strumler was controlled by Moscow. The problem was that the transcripts were illegally obtained. There had been no search warrant. Bug-Lok was designed to be a covert tool. It had no standing with law enforcement and his evidence was limited to what the Bug-Loks had yielded him. In their face-to-face meetings, Strumler never said anything that indicated he was treasonous. Strumler said very little.
Since his plan had been to accumulate enough evidence to gain an indictment, the missing piece was for the attorney general to demand a search warrant. But there still was a disconnect: no way to get the AG to ask for evidence, especially from the CIA. In fact, Randall’s off-the-books operations violated many of the CIA’s operating rules. No domestic missions were permitted under law. Assassination of US citizens without legal process was not legal. The list of his violations was unending. His plan was flawed.
Standing in the lobby of the president-elect’s hotel, he called Ass Dire Smythe on his cellphone to report his status. “Hello sir. It’s Randall. The president-elect and I had another threat assessment meeting. It was a total disaster. He couldn’t remember half the names of the countries in the Middle East. He thought our Israeli embassy was in Jerusalem. He didn’t know Jordan was an ally. Iran and Iraq are one and the same for him. My God, the list of his inadequacies goes on forever.”
The ass dire was silent for a few seconds, and Randall could hear the sound of keystrokes in the background noise. “This is your assignment. I can’t replace you without firing you.”
Randall took a deep breath. “Okay. Okay. I’ll get back to work and bite the bullet for the agency.”
He heard Smythe end the call. He thought, I could just wipe all the startup teams away. They’re loose ends. But he knew this would draw attention to his enterprise.
Randall stiffened. He knew the trail of evidence would lead back to himself. But an order was an order.
Then he had another idea. One that might work. But he hadn’t any excuse for initiating this tactic. He’d have to figure out how to make this work.
He had work to do.
* * *
Husro Mansuri sat with seven others around the conference-room table in a relatively new skyscraper on the outskirts of Tehran. The view from the window showed rounded mountain tops with very little in the way of residential or business construction.
Mansuri listened to a comment from one of the agents. He thought about it before replying. “You are sure of this?”
“Yes, sir. They have a process that cheaply produces weaponized products.”
Mansuri nodded. “And they have actually murdered their developers when the weapons are ready for production?”
“Yes.”
Mansuri scratched his nose. “I seem to remember many civilizations have killed the builders of secret products after they finished their work. It is an ancient mode of development, predating the Egyptian civilization by nearly five thousand years. How difficult would it be for us to copy this?”
“We’re ready now. The only question is whether to do this here or abroad. Abroad would be more dangerous for us, but it would offer us the entire range of Silicon Valley technology.”
Mansuri needed to be careful. His charter didn’t permit murdering his own country’s citizens unless they had committed crimes. “Let’s start with Silicon Valley. If we can manage to develop a high-tech community in Iran, we can then expand the program here.”
The others nodded and rose from the table.
Mansuri walked to the window. It would be
decades before Iran had a viable high-tech community. Silicon Valley on the other hand was a ripe fruit, waiting to be plucked. He had already heard that the Germans, the Brits, and the Chinese were working to weaponize Silicon Valley startups. The Israelis had done it for over fifty years with their Ness Ziona. And the United States had organized DARPA to do this. But neither of the last two had ever terminated the lives of their startup executives.
Mansuri wondered why the Russians had no such program. After all, they were truly ruthless. But he was sure they would soon join the fray.
The race was on to develop a fully functional venture capital group for weapons development, and the supply of viable startup targets would not last forever.
* * *
Robert Randall walked through the security gate and took the elevator to the third floor, where his office was located. He had realized that he needed to terminate the evidence trail for everything InTelQ had been involved with. Everything that led back to him. All the startup teams had to be wiped off the earth.
He walked dark carpeted hallways lined with gray-painted walls to the one with his name on the door. He entered and closed the door. He crafted a list of the names and home addresses of every cofounder of every startup in which InTelQ had invested.
Randall sent a text message to Skorkin with the new “kill list” attached. Skorkin would have several months of work to complete, but he had never failed. Randall now considered the implications of InTelQ a “dead deal.”
Chapter 32
Stanford University Student Union,
Palo Alto, CA
November 12, 11:02 a.m.
Ann saw the text message on her cell when she checked the cell between classes. It was from Avram Shimmel:
Call me as soon as you see this.
Your help urgently needed.
Ann thought, should I respond? She walked to the hall where her next class was about to start and grabbed a seat. But while the professor lectured, she had difficulty keeping her mind on what he said.