by Tom Clancy
“You sure about this?”
“I’m sure.”
The smile got bigger. “My arm is a lot better now. Yeah. Let’s go throw.”
As he walked along next to her, Tyrone felt his own smile begin. Something his dad had told him. When you do the right thing, it almost always feels better than when you don’t.
Score another one for the old man.
35
Thursday, April 14th
Upper Cretaceous
What will be Western France
“Looks as if it can swim,” Saji said.
Jay pulled the Humvee to a halt and shut the engine off. The monster’s tracks led to the edge of a sea and disappeared into the water. Small, silky waves with pristine whitecaps rolled machinelike tubes onto the shore. “Looks like,” he said.
“What now?”
“We change vehicles. Boat or helicopter. I’m favoring the copter.”
“I can understand that. Better to be a few hundred feet above it than sailing along and having it come up under us like Moby-Dick.”
Jay nodded. “The disadvantage is that we can arm the boat better than we can the helicopter. We’re limited to weapons we can physically carry, so if we see it from the air, one of us has to lean out and shoot at it. You don’t want a rocket launcher going off inside a copter. The exhaust gases would cook us as dead as if we got hit by the rocket itself.”
“There’s a pleasant image. Why the limits on weaponry?”
“Well. Even in sim, you have to think about what the real situation is like. This thing is bigger and stronger and faster than we are, and we can’t just lob a nuke at it, ’cause we don’t have one vis a vis the hardware and software we are up against.” He stepped out of the car and looked at the shore. He pulled a GPS handheld from his jacket and consulted it. “This is a cheat in this scenario,” he said. “I should be looking at a paper map, since there are no global positioning satellites in this time. But we can get away with this. Not with a Seawolf-class sub, though. Too bad. And I’m not really sure this body of water would be here, either. My knowledge of geological history is not that great.”
Saji climbed out of the car, stretched, and said, “Where is here?”
“Coast of France. What will be Great Britain is over the horizon thataway.”
“So in RW, that’s where the trail leads?”
“That’s what it looks like, yeah.”
“Is that any help to your theory?”
Jay nodded. “Yeah. Maybe.”
“Are we going after it?”
“Oh, yeah. I want to drop out of VR for a while to check some stuff and give the boss a call, first. I think it would be a good idea to run my theory past him. Just in case.”
Thursday, April 14th
MI-6, London, England
In the MI-6 conference room, Michaels sat waiting for Jay’s visual to appear on the call-waiting holoproj that floated bluely over the table. With him were Toni, Howard, Fernandez, and Angela Cooper.
Michaels said, “I wanted you all to hear this, so I had them route Jay’s com in here. We’ll get to him in a minute. Any other business in the meanwhile?”
Howard said, “We’ve got an appointment to see the retired major out at his employer’s estate in . . .” he looked down at his flatscreen. “. . . in Sussex this afternoon.”
“A lovely drive,” Angela said. “Beautiful country, if somewhat narrow roads.”
“No more attacks on major webs or military systems to note,” Toni said. “Looks as if our hacker has backed off, at least for the time being.”
“I’ll take any good news I can get,” Michaels said. “Let’s get Jay off hold.”
The holoproj flickered, and Jay Gridley’s face appeared in the air. “Hey, boss.” His voice sounded almost normal, just a trace of a slur. He was recovering fast.
“Jay. This is Angela Cooper, of MI-6. You know everybody else.”
Jay murmured greetings.
“Okay, tell us what you’ve got.”
Jay sighed. “Well, it’s not much. We—I have been on the program’s track, and it looks as if it’s leading in your direction. Could be passing through, could be it lives there, I dunno. I’ll get back after it as soon as we discom.
“I’ve been thinking about the problem. No working computers we know about could brute force prime number encoding the way this thing has, even working in multiple-series-parallel, so it’s got to be something else. The first thing that comes to mind when you ask yourself what kind of computer could do it is, of course, a QC—a quantum computer. We talked about that before. The thing is, none of those are past the small experimental stages, so none of them would have the power needed to pull off what has happened.”
“I’m dense,” Fernandez said. “What is a quantum computer?”
Jay gave them a short lecture, explaining about Qubits and multiple quantum states. Michaels was familiar with the concept, but, as Jay had pointed out, nobody had come up with a full-size working QC, so it wasn’t something they had seriously considered.
“But what if somebody had one?” Jay continued. “A fully operational model? Something with a hundred or two hundred Qubits? It would blow through primenumber encryptions like a tornado through a straw house.”
“Big if,” Toni said.
“Yeah, but I’ve done a little poking around. None of the various militaries and corps who have gone to the new AMPD standard—that’s abstract multidimensional point-distance encryption-were bothered by these attacks. Could be coincidence, but a QC wouldn’t be able to crack those. It wouldn’t matter how fast it could crunch numbers, AMPD standard would be immune. Of course, only a handful of people have shifted to the new method.”
“All right,” Michaels said. “But if somebody had created such a thing, wouldn’t we know about it?”
“Eventually. You couldn’t keep it hidden forever, but maybe you could for a while. The technology and gear necessary wouldn’t be something you could cook up in a high school computer lab or in the corner of your Uncle Albert’s electronics hobby shop. We’re talking a multimillion-dollar operation, custom-made hardware, lots of bells and whistles, a support staff, programmers, all like that. Sooner or later, somebody will stumble into this from outside; it’s not something you can hide with a piece of camo net. But even if you knew where it was, as long as it was the only one out there, it’d sure be a big damned wolf among the sheep.”
“A QC seems kind of slim,” Toni said. “Any corroborative information?”
“Nothing I can lay on a table and prove,” Jay said. “Then again, if such a thing existed, it would perfectly fit the parameters.”
“And in your expert opinion, this is what you think it is?” That from Howard.
“Yes, sir. Nothing else comes close. I’ve searched the web and found everybody serious who’s ever published anything in the field. On the list are a couple of guys in the U.K. One of whom—a man named Peter Bascomb-Coombs—did some flat-out brilliant theoretical work a couple of years back. He’s head and shoulders above most, and I can’t begin to stay with him. I don’t even know anybody who can stay with him. He used to be in London, but he’s dropped out of sight.”
Howard said, “Are we looking at him as somebody to help us out? Or as a suspect?”
“Either way, I’d talk to him if I was there. I can’t find a public e-address for him. It seems odd a guy that sharp would just disappear. He was too young to retire, and if he’d croaked, there would have been something about it in the news.”
“Give us what you have on him, and we’ll check it out locally,” Michaels said.
“Already uploaded,” Jay said. There was a short pause, then he said, “I’ve got to get back to the hunt. I think I’m gonna be able to run this beast down. I’m close.”
“Be careful, Jay,” Toni said. There was no need to remind him why. If anybody knew, he did.
“Yeah. Thanks. I’ll keep you posted.”
Angela had been tapping comman
ds into her flatscreen, and she looked up as Jay discommed. “Got the information about Mr. Bascomb-Coombs. I’m running a search. . . hello?”
“What?” Michaels said.
“Here’s our man,” she said. “Employed by ComCo U.K. They are a privately held computer company that produces, among other things, high-end workstation motherboards.”
“He’s a computer geek working for a computer company,” Fernandez said. “Is this a big surprise?”
“Not in itself, no,” she said. “But ComCo U.K. is owned by Lord Geoffrey Goswell.”
Where had he heard that name before? Michaels wondered. Then he remembered.
Howard beat him to saying it. “Is that the same guy whose security chief is the one in the store with our assassin and the dead guy?”
“Yes,” Angela said.
“Well, well.” Howard said. “Small world.”
“Probably doesn’t mean anything,” Angela continued.
“Goswell owns several companies and has thousands of employees scattered all over the country. Anywhere you go in England, Scotland, Wales, or Ireland, you are apt to run into somebody who works for him or who knows somebody who works for him.”
Michaels shook his head. He didn’t like coincidences. Stranger things had surely happened, but this had a fishy smell all of a sudden. “Tell you what, put off that interview with Peel for now. Pretend it was nothing, tell him you’ve gotten things resolved, you’ll call him back later if you need to see him. I think we need to know a little more about his boss before we go blundering into his den.”
Howard nodded, as did Fernandez and Toni. Angela gave him a small smile, and he felt his heart stumble and bang into the wall of his chest. He did not look at Toni. He couldn’t take the risk.
Thursday, April 14th
London, England
As he drove away along Old Kent Road, passing the gasworks, Peel was royally pissed. Bascomb-Coombs had taken the day off yesterday, and when he’d gone to find the man, he’d missed him. According to his operatives, Bascomb-Coombs was not in evidence at his flat nor did he have his automobile, which was parked at his garage where it had been all day. He was not answering his phone, either.
Another pass by the office suite was also a waste of time.
Where the devil was he?
It was his own fault, Peel knew. He had pulled his men off because he wanted to deal with Bascomb-Coombs himself. He did not want them around when he did it, and so when the bastard went missing, he had no one to blame save himself. Where had the bugger gone? And why?
His phone chimed at him.
“Hello, Peel here.”
“Major Peel? Angela Cooper here.”
The woman from Intelligence. Another brick on his already overloaded lorry. They called him from time to time about all that Irish business. Whenever some flaming shanty potato-eater blew something up, they always called, as if Peel were somehow responsible for those lunatics. “Ms. Cooper. I haven’t forgotten our appointment this afternoon.”
“As it happens, sir, we won’t be needing to speak to you after all. The, ah, matter at hand has resolved itself. Sorry to have bothered you.”
Thank God for tiny favors. At least he wouldn’t have to deal with these bloody idiots again. “Quite all right.”
“I’ll ring off now. Thank you for your cooperation.”
After the disconnect, Peel looked in his rearview mirror to make certain he had not lost Ruzhyó. He had not.
Well, where to now, Peel, old man? Our rogue scientist seems to have flown the coop. He’s not at his digs or usual haunts, and surely that only confirms it. He’s lied to you, tried to have you offed, and cheated you out of a million EUs as well. Best you find him and take care of the problem before it gets worse.
Easier said, however, than done.
It was a warm and sunny day, and Howard, in civilian clothes, strolled along the sidewalks a few blocks from MI-6’s HQ, enjoying the weather and city. London was quite a cosmopolitan place. People walked past in strange outfits, speaking foreign languages, looking very much at home in the English city.
Next to him, also dressed in civvies, Julio smiled at a pair of teenage girls wearing microskirts and platform shoes with soles as thick as a Washington, D.C., phone book. The girls smiled back at Julio and gave Howard a long and appraising look. Christ, both men were old enough to be their fathers. And if they fell off those monster shoes, they’d surely break an ankle or worse. Howard raised an eyebrow at his sergeant.
“Hey, you know what they say, a thing of beauty is a joy forever.”
“And jailbait is jailbait no matter where you go. Aren’t you getting a son and a wife soon?”
“You need to loosen up, John. Looking isn’t the same as doing.”
“You’ve been a bachelor for a long time, Julio. You sure you are going to be able to make the transition?”
“To be absolutely honest, I don’t know. I think so. I’m gonna give it my best shot. But you know as well as I do that no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy.”
“You looking at marriage like a war, Sergeant?”
“Not exactly a war, but certainly unfamiliar territory. I mean, I love Jo, I want to wake up next to her every morning, and she’s gonna be the mother of my child, but I’m not some eighteen-year-old recruit fresh off the farm and never been to town.”
“That’s for sure.” He let that sit for a while, then said, “So what do you think about this business?”
He shrugged. “This Goswell guy being part of the old boy network and above reproach and all that doesn’t sound all that different from home. Maybe he doesn’t have anything to do with anything. But every rich and famous businessman or politician I ever heard of who got a bright light shined into his closet showed some skeletons hanging in the back. And it seems real odd to me that our ice man Ruzhyó is hooked up with this major who works for Mr. High and Mighty.”
“That’s how I see it, too.”
A gorgeous, cafe-au-lait woman in a black and red silk dress strode along the sidewalk toward them. With the heels she was wearing, she was a couple of inches over six feet, easy. A model, maybe. She went past them in a subtle cloud of expensive perfume. Julio turned to watch her, and Howard glanced over his shoulder, trying to be unobtrusive about it.
“Looks good from the back,” Julio said. “Wouldn’t you say, Colonel?”
He’d noticed Howard’s quick glance.
He smiled, caught. “I have to admit she does.” “Married as you are and all?”
Howard just grinned.
“So, what now, John?”
“We let British Intelligence gather everything they think we ought to know, and then we see what’s what. Then we take care of it and go home. All these women make me miss my wife.”
Fernandez laughed. “I hear that.”
36
Thursday, April 14th
MI-6, London, England
When Toni came back from the loo into the conference room, Alex and Cooper stood at the end of the conference table, talking. They almost literally had their heads together, close enough to be breathing each other’s air.
Toni felt a pang of jealousy. They looked up, saw her, but didn’t move. That was good. If they had jumped apart when they saw her, that would have been something to worry about. Still, she didn’t have any reason to be uneasy. She knew Alex.
“Anything new?” she asked.
“We’ve got the intel on Goswell and Peel,” Alex said. “And some interesting developments. Colonel Howard and Sergeant Fernandez are on their way here.”
Even as he said it, the two men arrived.
“Angela, if you would?”
Cooper stood as the others took their seats. She touched her flatscreen and a projection lit over the conference table.
“Lord Geoffrey Goswell’s estate in Sussex,” she began. “It’s called The Yews. He spends most of his time there. The place sits on several hundred acres that include the main house, smalle
r cottages, and various outbuildings.”
More images flashed into view.
“Except for staff, his lordship—he’s a widower—lives there alone. He has places in London, Brighton, Manchester, a villa in the south of France, and various houses or condominiums in Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, India, and the United States. Here is a list of the companies he owns all or part of. His personal fortune is estimated at just under two billion.”
“Must be hard,” Fernandez allowed.
Cooper continued: “Peel, whom we’ve discussed at some length before, heads Goswell’s personal security. He’s got anywhere from half a dozen to ten men, all exmilitary, all heavily armed, patrolling the estate at any given time.”
“I thought guns were more or less illegal here,” Howard said.
Cooper said, “For ordinary citizens, yes. No handguns, and all rifles and shotguns must be locked up except when actually in use for target shooting or hunting. No military-style assault weapons allowed in any case.”
Fernandez said, “Let me guess: When you have a couple billion in the old piggy bank, the rules are different, right?”
Cooper gave him a tight smile. “Just so.”
“Please continue,” Alex said. “Let’s keep the editorial comments down, shall we?”
“We’ve put a couple of teams on the roads leading to the estate, and less than an hour ago, a rental car arrived there. A check of the car agency records indicate it was rented yesterday in Southampton by Peter Bascomb-Coombs. Our operatives managed to get a blurry picture of the driver, and it appears to be the computer scientist.”
That got a nice reaction.
“Major Peel, also under surveillance, is currently en route to Sussex on his way from London. It will take him another hour or so to get there.”
“No sign of Ruzhyó?” Howard asked.
“No.”
“Could he be at the estate?”
“It is possible,” Cooper allowed. “We won’t have any spysats in position to footprint the area for another ninety minutes. Even so, and even if he is strolling on the grounds, we would be hard-pressed to identify him from that alone. We have, under the aegis of national security, tapped the landlines into the estate, as well as having scanners recording wireless activity.”