The Alexandria Project: A Tale of Treachery and Technology (Frank Adversego Thrillers Book 1)

by Andrew Updegrove

  “Got it. So how about if I wanted to be someplace where I could still drive into a town to get food and gas now and again, but where no one was likely to stumble on me? Someplace I could settle into for awhile and just let my mind run? Maybe someplace that looks like this?”

  Frank pulled the picture of the boy on his father’s shoulders under the tall trees out of his wallet again, and passed it over.

  Thatcher squinted at the picture and gave it a long look. He handed it back to Frank, and then walked across the room and pulled a map off a display rack by the door. Returning, he spread it on the counter and pointed to a small circle two thirds of the way up the state. “This here’s Eureka – it’s an old mining town that’s lost its mines. Closest thing to a landlocked island you’ll ever find. More than a hundred miles in any direction to the next town, and not a whole lot in any of ‘em when you get there. It don’t amount to much, but it’s got everything you’re going to need.”

  “Now look here.” Thatcher put an X on a pass on the top of one of the long mountain ridges that striated the map of Nevada. “What you want to do is take this here road out of Eureka and follow it till you see a sign that says Petroglyph State Park. You go past that sign another two miles, and then you look for a dirt road heading north – it’ll have a cattle grate, not a gate – in the fence.” Thatcher wrote the directions on the map as he spoke.

  “You just follow that road for as long as you can, and you’ll see you rise up out of the valley and head through pinyon and juniper – them’s short trees – for a good long ways. Eight, maybe ten miles. Ignore any tracks that head off to either side; shouldn’t be hard; you’ll be able to tell which road’s yours, ‘cause all the others’ll be more faint. Once you’re up a few thousand feet, the Ponderosa pines will take over, and your road will start to sort of dribble out right in the middle of ‘em. You’ll have yourself as fine a view to the west as you’ll ever want to see. Nothing but forever, and no one to keep you company but the wild horses. There’s a good spring of water there, too. I’ve been there now and again when I needed to get my head straight, and I expect it’s just what you’re looking for.”

  The old man folded up the map and held it up in the air. “Pat, time for me to settle up. Add this here map onto my tab, and add my buddy’s meal to it, too.”

  Frank started to protest, but Thatcher ignored him as the waitress handed him the bill. Thatcher left a few bills on the counter for a tip, and the two men walked out into the still of the night. Frank couldn’t help but look up, hoping to see something mysterious flash across the sky. But only the countless stars sparkled above.

  “That your rig?”

  “Yes – I rented it from a guy that put a lot of effort into customizing it.”

  “Well now, that there sure is a sight to behold, and no mistake.”

  Thatcher chuckled.

  “You best park that contraption outta sight if you head into Eureka, and walk the rest of the way. Otherwise, you’ll be the talk of half of Nevada.”

  Frank looked at the truck uncomfortably and realized that Thatcher was right.

  “That sounds like good advice. Thanks for that – and for dinner.”

  “My pleasure. Don’t get many new folks to chat with up here at this time of year.” Thatcher looked him up and down and then held out his hand one more time. “Good luck with that writing,” he said, a twinkle in his eye, and then walked around the corner of the bar and into the night.

  * * *

  17

  A Geek Grows in Brooklyn

  As suggested, frank headed north towards Eureka. A full moon began to rise, illuminating the arrow straight gravel road that extended ahead. The bright light of the moon also revealed the ramparts of mountain ridges on either side bounding the broad valley between. Frank drove onward down the well-graded road, unconsciously accelerating to over seventy miles an hour. Soon he felt lost in space and time, suspended as he was between the moon above and the silvery landscape beneath, flying endlessly onwards towards the shimmering vanishing point where road and mountains converged in the far distance.

  Frank’s eyes eventually wandered down to the speedometer, and his foot flew to the brake. He gave his head a shake, and turned on the radio, hoping to catch the news. But the numbers on the dial cycled endlessly when he pressed the search button as the radio failed to find a hint of a signal.

  He turned the radio off and tried instead to focus his mind on the implications of what he had seen on the TV screen earlier that evening. But he was too distracted by something he couldn’t put his finger on as he stared at the moon-washed valley ahead. Finally, he pulled to the side of the road, and killed the engine and the headlights. Immediately his world was consumed by moonlight and silence.

  Frank let his mind run free. And then, for the second time that night, he slid the well-worn picture out his wallet. He held it in his hand, and watched it come alive in the light of a curious moon.

  * * *

  The most that Frank ever shared about his pre-college past was that he had enjoyed a “storybook childhood.” Then he would change the subject, because the clichéd line was a private joke at his own expense. Yes, the story was a common one, but the plot was straight out of Grimm’s Fairy Tales.

  As Frank understood it, it all began in the early ‘60s, when Frank Adversego, Sr., dashingly good looking in his Corporal’s uniform, was mustered out of the army and returned to his neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. Fit, tanned, and cocky, he seemed exotic and worldly to the girls he’d known. Especially in comparison to the other local guys, who had all taken jobs straight out of high school.

  This hadn’t, after all, been a time and place where first generation kids went to college. It was a get-a-job-and-get-married neighborhood. A job where you helped your immigrant parents sell pizza from a store front or stock shelves in a corner grocery.

  If you were lucky, you had an uncle in a union who could set you up as an apprentice to a plumber or a carpenter. Or maybe you could score really big, and get a job as a fireman or a cop – then you’d be set for your whole working life, with a pension to follow. Most of Frank’s friends hadn’t been that lucky. The local guys all had menial jobs now, and more than one kid. And the local girls were all the mothers of those kids.

  And then there was Doreen Nolan. She had always been stubborn and wild. And she was still single, though not for want of offers to change that. Doreen wanted out of the neighborhood in a big way, and knew that no local guy was going to abet her escape. So far she was only a sales clerk in a department store, but the store was downtown, and on Fifth Avenue, to boot. Still living at home, she could afford to dress for downtown. You could catch the eye of the right sort of guy downtown if you were pretty enough – and Doreen was.

  She didn’t feel bound by any of the other rules of the neighborhood, either. Although she lived on the Irish side of the main street, that didn’t stop her from talking to the Italian kid that had left a nobody and came back a handsome soldier with a swagger in his step and a knowing look in his eye. When he asked her out for a date, she said yes.

  The next few months passed rapidly. Frank, Sr. had saved most of his pay while in the service, and he applied to Fordham University and Hunter College – NYU and Columbia, even – on the GI Bill. They’d told him in the Army that he’d scored way up there on his IQ test, and Frank had big plans. That gave him and Doreen something in common.

  Weekends they lived it up downtown, dancing, taking in the latest movies and spending Frank’s savings. Doreen played up to Frank as someone more sophisticated than the rest of the neighborhood girls, and he played up to Doreen as someone with possibilities. Together they masqueraded before their friends as an attractive young couple with money to spend and great expectations for their future. Frank even got into NYU.

  But as they sweated through an unusually hot city summer, Frank and Doreen began to realize that they didn’t really have much in common besides the desire to feel superior to their
high school friends. Worse, Doreen realized that Frank’s idea of family life was having a wife that waited on her husband hand and foot, just like his mother. And Frank realized that Doreen really did have a mind and plans of her own.

  By then, of course, it was too late, because by August they found out they had one more thing in common: Doreen was pregnant.

  Things happened all too predictably after that. There was a wedding in the neighborhood Catholic church followed by a reception in a VFW hall. And instead of a ticket out of Brooklyn for Doreen, there was a walk-up apartment down the street from the one she had grown up in. They tried to put up a good front, but by now they both knew the game was over.

  With rent to pay, Frank’s hopes for full-time college, followed by a fancy career, evaporated. Instead, he found a job in a garage where a cousin worked. As a kid, he had always been tinkering, and in the Army he’d trained as a mechanic. What he couldn’t get to run was barely worth scrap, so it didn’t take long for his boss to notice. He got his first raise within a few months.

  That didn’t help much on the home front, though. Back then, nobody wanted to see a pregnant woman behind a counter in a fancy store – or really any place else, either. So not long after they were married, Doreen had to give Manhattan up. Now there was nothing to do but sit around the cramped apartment, sometimes crying, and stare out the window at the drab streets she had so much wanted to leave behind. Or she could visit with her sisters, sitting with their crying babies in their cramped apartments. No Saturday nights out now. Not on a single income and a baby on the way.

  When Frank, Jr. arrived, things were already tense. Maybe they could have found a way to share their disappointments and move on, but Frank wasn’t a talker, and Doreen wasn’t about to stand in for his mother when he came home from work. It was all too easy to find fault and bicker, when both felt cheated and trapped. Before Frank, Jr. turned one, his father was staying out late most nights, taking night school classes or having a few beers down the street with the boys from work. On weekends, while Frank crammed for school, Doreen would be at her mother’s with the baby. That was better than the other alternatives, which seemed to have narrowed down to silence and yelling.

  It was the sort of marriage you could have found behind the doors of a dozen apartments in their neighborhood, or indeed in any other working class neighborhood in the Five Boroughs. But, oh my, they sometimes thought to themselves – it had all happened so fast. No surprise that Frank was destined to remain an only child.

  Frank, Jr. learned early that it was safer to keep to himself at home than to step into the line of fire. He well remembered the shock of the first time he saw a friend’s mother give her husband a real kiss when he came home from work. Where did that come from? After that, he was painfully aware of signs of affection, not only between the parents of his friends, but between his friends and their sisters and brothers as well. Life at home seemed colder than ever.

  As Frank grew older, his home life became more complicated. Year’s later, reading a news story about the Balkan war, it occurred to him that he had been like some ineffectual U.N. peacekeeper, sent to a God forsaken hole where he lacked the authority to make a difference but presented a convenient target of opportunity if he didn’t watch his step. All he could do was watch while the locals undermined each other in the light of day, and garroted each other in the dark of night. Neither of his parents took any prisoners – except Frank.

  The time honored solution would have been to find a life of stickball and running wild in the streets. Sadly, Frank found that while he was bright, he was anything but athletic. He hated being the last pick whenever a crowd of kids chose up sides for a game, so he dropped out of the street crowd.

  By default, school and a few organized activities became his world. Joining the chess club and math team, of course, branded him indelibly with nerdhood, so eventually he decided to flaunt his prowess in math and science class in revenge. It didn’t endear him to anyone, but on the other hand, no one was going out of their way to be endeared to by him, anyway.

  And it did make him feel superior to his classmates – like father, like son. Moreover, he didn’t have to be a real genius to realize that the best way to get the hell away from home and school was to skip as many grades as he could, get a college scholarship, and leave Brooklyn for good. Happily, the one thing both parents agreed on was the importance of getting a fancy college education for Frank, Jr.

  That might have been the whole story. But unfortunately it wasn’t. Frank never knew what the last straw might have been, but one day he came home from a weekend Boy Scout Jamboree and tossed his backpack on the floor.

  “Hi, Mom,” he called from the kitchen. “What’s for dinner?” She didn’t answer, so he stepped into the darkened living room.

  There she was, sitting in her usual chair and gazing out the window. “Mom?” he said softly.

  But she was lost in thought. Frank suddenly felt frightened by her furrowed face, half hidden in shadow and half dimly illuminated by the fading light that penetrated the old-fashioned lace curtains in the window. She seemed to be balancing a question of great weight, her head nodding slightly, sometimes back and forth, and sometimes up and down.

  Frank felt torn between the need to hear her speak and a sudden fear of what she might say. Then her forehead relaxed. An odd look, perhaps of triumph, spread across the ghostly half of her face he could still see.

  “. . . Mom?”

  Finally aware of his presence, his mother switched on the table lamp at her elbow, and then turned to look at him.

  “Frank,” she said in a quiet but determined voice, “Your father has left us. And he won’t be coming back.”

  That was all the explanation he would ever get.

  * * *

  18

  May the Force be with You

  Just as bart thatcher promised, Frank saw nothing but forever when he looked to the west – forever made up of wave after wave of ever more purple mountains that culminated in a final sharply defined silhouette spread against the horizon. From high above, where the branches of the stately Ponderosa pines he had been seeking almost touched, the squawks of scrub jays filtered down, accompanied by the dappling light of the afternoon sun. It was the perfect setting to enjoy life in a state of nature, but for the computer sitting in Frank’s lap.

  Sadly, Frank was oblivious to the stunning view before him, now that he was focusing non-stop on cracking the secrets of the Alexandria Project. His goals were clear: figure out how those behind the Project penetrated their targets; devise technical defenses capable of stopping them; and – most importantly – figure out who they were and what they were up to. But it wasn’t going well.

  The first goal hadn’t taken long to accomplish. Predictably, any target important enough to be interesting to the Project was big enough to have had plenty of weaknesses that any determined hacker could discover. Frank concluded that instead of using a single, innovative technique, the Projecteers generally employed a variety of fairly standard methods to exploit garden variety flaws in the defenses of their victims.

  That realization made the second challenge more intimidating – particularly since he had no idea what the ultimate goal of the Project might be. If the bad guys in fact were only trying to demonstrate the vulnerability of essential systems, well, there wasn’t going to be much he could do about that. There were simply too many poorly defended targets of opportunity to shield, and too much work required to insulate them. But if the random attacks were intended instead as camouflage for a much more targeted and nefarious objective, how could he stop that attack unless he knew what the target was?

  Frank concluded that he had no choice but to abandon defense as a strategy and go on the offense, which meant tracking down the Alexandria Project back to its source. But how? Not only could the individuals behind it be anywhere, but they were certainly smart enough to direct their attacks through routers scattered all over the world. And indeed, it seeme
d as if they had attacked from a different point of departure every time.

  So it was that a very frustrated Frank Adversego was sitting in a folding chair in the outback of Nevada, poking around the dark corners of the Internet in hopes of picking up the trail of his quarry in the places where hackers were most likely to hang out. During the first day he nosed around the sites where millions of pieces of valuable personal financial information traded hands on a regular basis like so many hog futures. But he couldn’t find any indication that the Project might have a financial motive.

  For several days after that, he scoured the Web for any buzz connecting the Chinese, the Russians, the North Koreans – any nation at all – to the Alexandria Project. Once again he came up dry – there was nary a rumor to be found that seemed credible enough to follow up.

  Today he was trying something riskier – visiting sites that might be linked to terrorists. Frank knew the CIA would be monitoring these same sites very closely. Some of them were doubtless decoys set up by the agency itself to identify people susceptible to recruitment by the real bad guys.

  Anyone might browse into one of these sites and swiftly move on without attracting too much attention. But if Frank followed a link from any of these sites to another of the same ilk, he’d be sticking his head up high enough to attract the wrong sort of attention. To prevent that, he’d loaded software that would establish a new IP address for his laptop each time he switched to a new site, making him appear to be a different visitor every time.

  By late afternoon he was frustrated. After four days perched in his mountain aerie probing the Web, he had nothing of value to show for it. Feeling cranky, he slipped the thumb drive off the chain around his neck and plugged it into his laptop. For the hundredth time he watched the vivid visuals move through their enigmatic cycle, and for the hundredth time, he failed to notice anything new of interest.