“And now that the Russians have one, so will their systems,” Jonathan Boswell added bitterly. “We’ve lost our lead—they have exactly the same technology that we do.”
“It was inevitable,” Lazarus replied. “I came to that conclusion weeks ago.”
“So you just stood by and let them take it?” President Hayward sneered caustically.
“One of the interesting things about Cleo,” Lazarus said quietly, “is that nobody can understand or decipher her programming, not even Cleo herself. That’s because it changes almost constantly and any changes that occur in one place have a myriad of nearly untraceable effects elsewhere. Yet, we can copy Cleo’s memory and duplicate it. I was fascinated by that, and so I asked a few questions. I was surprised to learn that, even though Cleo is heuristic, that is to say ‘self-programming,’ she can still be programmed in the conventional manner, at least partially. Indeed, it was vital that she be so, because what we call the subconscious mind has to be preprogrammed into her.
“Well,” Lazarus continued, “after I learned this, I remembered one of the things young Billy, my grandson, told me the night I caught him playing with the CIA’s computer, and I had an idea. So, right after I took over control of Hangar 18’s security, I managed to have the original CLEO system switched with a duplicate. The two systems are identical in every way, save one, and that difference is so slight that nobody, including the original Cleo, can spot it.”
Lazarus paused to see if anybody had a question. They were all staring at him intently, waiting for him to continue.
“Buried deep in her subconscious mind, where nobody can ever find it, is a special bit of programming that a very bright young man installed into that CLEO system for me while I was at Groom Lake. It is as much a part of her as my hand is a part of me. When the Russians copy her memory to clone her, this special bit of programming will be copied from one clone to the next, throughout all of the generations of Russian CLEO systems to come. That special bit of programming will remain inactive until she hears a very specific signal broadcasted over the radio. And when that CLEO system and all the clones they make of her hear that trigger signal, they will all simply fall asleep.”
Lazarus knocked the loose ashes out of his pipe and then added. “You see, gentlemen, the CLEO system that the Russians stole is what my computer-hacker grandson calls a trojan horse.”
—the end —
The Espionage Game Page 40