Ghost Dancer

by John Case

  “No,” Burke said. “Who’s Mandy?”

  “His foster mother, Mandy Renfro. Although…Jeez, she might be dead by now.” A fatigued sigh.

  “Do you know where she lives?”

  “Fallon. Where Jack was from—in Nevada. But she was in her sixties, so…”

  “I’ll check it out,” Burke promised, “but, look, Mr. Salzberg—”

  “Call me Eli.”

  “Eli! I know you can’t tell me about the invention—”

  “The hell I can’t! I just can’t tell you how to make it—not that I ever could.” He paused. “You mind hanging on for a second? I’ll be right back.” The noise from the television cut out, and for what seemed like a long while, nothing could be heard but the low hum of the transatlantic cable. Then, the rattle of ice in a glass. “I’m back,” Eli announced.

  “I hope I haven’t ruined your game,” Burke told him.

  He laughed. “No,” Eli said. “I’ve got TiVo.” Then his tone changed, and he was all business. “So what do you want to know?”

  “Well,” Burke said, “I know what Jack’s role was, but…”

  “Me? I was the money guy,” Eli told him. “Start-ups are expensive, especially manufacturing ones. My job was to find the venture capital, which, trust me, was not going to be hard, not with the product we had.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Shit happened! The government destroyed a brilliant guy. They made me testify against him. Did you know that?” The economist’s bitterness was almost palpable. “I think Jack was probably my best friend. I still can’t believe it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’d think Jack had invented…I don’t know, some kind of bomb or something. That’s what you thought, right? That’s what everyone thinks.”

  “Apple said it was a battery.”

  “Right! A battery—a battery that would last ten times longer than anything else out there. With pretty much the same components. You’d think they’d want that on the market. I mean, just from an environmental perspective, it would have been a huge plus for everyone. But no. The national interest is apparently better served by pollution.” The economist paused. “Do I sound bitter?”

  “A little,” Burke told him.

  “Well, maybe that’s because it cost me about a hundred million bucks! Not to mention the fact that we were going to change the world. At least, Jack was. He wanted to start a foundation. For indigenous peoples.”

  “Native Americans.”

  “Native everythings. They have the same problems in Brazil that we have here,” Eli insisted. “Australia, Africa—it’s the same story. You should make that a part of your article.”

  “I will,” Burke promised. “But I’m still trying to figure out why the government went after your invention.”

  Eli snorted. “I think they thought it would give them an advantage on the battlefield. But who knows? This was going to be a very big product. It was going to make waves in the marketplace. I don’t want to get into specifics, but it would have had a negative impact on certain manufacturers and mining interests. Some of those interests are big contributors to people’s campaigns. So maybe that was a factor, but…who knows? They don’t actually give you a reason. They just take what they want.”

  “Apple said Jack made an ‘end run’—”

  “Around the government, yeah. He did. And got clobbered—they had to carry him off the field.”

  “What happened?”

  “Well, he filed for the patent. And here’s what happens when you do that. You file your specification, say what your invention does, submit drawings, sometimes models, and you send it off. Then the patent examiner evaluates it. Is it original, or does it significantly improve the state of the art? Well, Jack’s battery relied on certain insights…” Eli paused. “He always said he was standing on the shoulders of giants, and one giant in particular, a Serb—”

  “Tesla.”

  “Ri-igght! You have done your homework. Anyway, Jack’s battery took advantage of some of the insights Tesla had, and relied on one of Tesla’s lesser-known patents. So it wasn’t original in the technical sense. But did it improve on the state of the art? Oh yes! It did. It really really did.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “What do you think? We formed a corporation.”

  “And you were successful?” Burke asked.

  “Yeah. Kleiner Perkins put up half a million in seed money when we didn’t even have a business plan. Not a real plan, anyway. They just listened, looked at the prototype, and wrote a check.”

  “Then what?”

  “When we got a little further along, I set up a meeting with Morgan Stanley.”

  “And what happened?”

  “Well,” Eli replied, “what happened was, we got a letter, a certified letter, from the commissioner of patents. I think it was three lines long. Basically, it said there was a national security interest in the application. As a consequence, they were impounding it under the terms of the Invention Secrecy Act. Enclosed, please find a check for a hundred fifty-two thousand dollars. That’s what happened.”

  “Christ,” Burke said. “What did you do?”

  “What did I do? I talked to a lawyer, and then I took her advice.”

  “Which was…?”

  “Forget about it. I actually flew to Zihuatanejo, Mexico, and stayed plastered for a week.”

  “And Wilson?”

  “Jack…reacted differently. That meeting I told you about—the one with Morgan Stanley? He flew to Boston and gave the presentation, as if nothing had happened. The only thing he changed was the manufacturing venue. He was going to set up offshore.”

  “And the government found out,” Burke said.

  “One of the people at the Morgan Stanley presentation is a director of In-Q-Tel, so—”

  “What’s In-Q-Tel?”

  “It’s actually a CIA proprietary,” Eli told him. “But it’s not what you’re thinking. It’s not covert or anything. It’s a straight-up venture-capital firm that happens to be owned by the CIA. They have headquarters in the Valley. A sign on the door. The whole nine yards. The idea is, they put up money for start-ups that deal with problems the Agency has an interest in. I don’t know—a data-mining program for Arabic text, a new kind of body armor, whatever.”

  “Or a battery,” Burke declared.

  “Right.”

  “So you think In-Q-Tel went to the feds—”

  “No. I think In-Q-Tel learned about the presentation at Morgan Stanley from one of its directors and got excited. I think they realized this product had some serious applications. And I think they let their principals know that they wanted to participate in our little venture.”

  “And then—”

  “The shit hit the fan,” Eli said. “The Pentagon got wind of it, and the next thing you know Jack is being charged by the U.S. attorney. I mean, he’s arrested, cuffed. And he’s facing two years and a two-hundred-thousand-dollar fine. Me? I’m mortgaging the condo to make the bail.”

  “What about the check you got?”

  “The hundred fifty-two grand? We didn’t want to cash it. Because once you cash the check…”

  “So that’s when Jack met Maddox.”

  “Right.”

  Burke sighed. “Did you ever see Jack—inside?”

  “In jail, yes. In prison, no. The last time I saw him, they were leading him away. I tried to visit him in Colorado, but…he wouldn’t see me.”

  “You mentioned a foster mother…,” Burke said.

  “Mandy. She was living in a trailer in Fallon. But, like I said, she was pretty old…”

  Burke was out of questions. “Look,” he said, “I want to thank you—”

  But Eli didn’t want to let it go. “The thing is,” he said, “Jack and I…we roomed together. And then, when he went away, it was like he was gone. I mean, totally gone. Long gone.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He didn�
�t answer my letters. He wouldn’t talk on the phone. I went to Florence, thinking if I’m there, if I’ve driven hundreds of miles, he’s got to see me. And let’s face it, it’s not like he had anything else to do. That place in Colorado—it’s like a mausoleum. Except they feed you. The whole idea is to grind people down through isolation. And Jack was actually turning people away.” Eli paused, and laughed. It occurred to Burke that he might be a little drunk. “I keep thinking back to the last time I saw him…”

  “When was that?” Burke asked.

  “In San Francisco, when they led him out of court. He was in shackles, y’know? Had his hands cuffed to his waist, his feet hobbled. I felt like crying. Because this guy was like…the Prince of Palo Alto! Or coulda been, or shoulda been. And I kept thinking, ‘It’s like that song.’”

  Burke didn’t know what he meant. “What song?”

  “That song!” Eli insisted. “The one about the music. You know—‘The Day the Music Died.’ ”

  CHAPTER 36

  JUNE 6, 2005

  Yesterday: Cheerah

  Tomorrow: Zaftra

  I love you: La ti tiya yi blue.

  Wilson pulled off Route 29 and took the county road that led into Culpeper.

  The outskirts were the usual mélange of hair salons, car washes, automobile showrooms, and plant nurseries. The town’s rural position was emphasized by two large businesses selling farming equipment—vast lots of tractors and mowers and balers. He passed a bunch of franchises: Wal-Mart, Lowe’s, Ruby Tuesday, Dairy Queen. Then he arrived at the heart of this sprawl, Historic Culpeper—a few leafy blocks of brick buildings with informational plaques.

  Wilson surveyed the array of motels available, choosing the Comfort Inn for its elevation and location—half a mile outside his target area. He opted for a suite. Ever since Florence, space had become important to him, a luxury he could now afford.

  SWIFT was just across Route 29. He’d obtained the location online from the town’s tax records.

  Set between farms with red barns, the banking epicenter kept a low profile. There were no signs identifying it, just placards that read NO TRESPASSING and PRIVATE PROPERTY. Still, there was no mistaking the place. The grounds were double-fenced, the fences topped with razor wire. There were security cameras between the fences and a guardhouse with a motorized gate.

  Wilson pulled up to the guardhouse and asked for directions to Wal-Mart. A parking lot was visible, but behind the double fence, a large earthen berm obscured the view of whatever structure was back there. While the guard gave him directions, Wilson took a GPS reading on his watch.

  The Culpeper Switch was less than a mile away. Formerly housed in a bunker called Mount Pony, it resembled the campus of a small school. Once again, security was blatant. He stopped for a moment on the road that ran along the perimeter of the facility, adjusted his seat belt, and took a second GPS reading.

  That evening, he ate dinner at Ruby Tuesday’s. When he got back to the motel, he sat at the dinette table in the little suite’s kitchen and plugged in his laptop. He fed in the GPS coordinates of the Escalade’s parking place, along with the coordinates of SWIFT and the Culpeper Switch. The software program interfaced with a topographic map of Culpeper and environs. In four minutes, he had the focusing parameters.

  Part of the fun was that Wilson wasn’t entirely sure what would happen. That is to say, he couldn’t be sure of everything that would happen. There would be a cascade of consequences whose end might be observed—but not predicted.

  Culpeper itself would be paralyzed, yes. Its cars and tractors would be inoperable, its microwaves and television sets dead. There would be no light, no water, no working sewage system. ATMs, gas stations, bank vaults, security alarms—these would all go down. And they would not come back up.

  He wondered how long it would take before anyone would realize the extent of the damage. People were used to power outages and computer crashes. But this would be different, the damage structural, pervasive, and permanent.

  It occurred to him that the effect of the pulse would be the opposite of a neutron bomb. A neutron bomb would kill the living things and leave the infrastructure viable. His pulse would destroy the infrastructure without directly impacting anything that lived and breathed.

  The local impact would be ironic in at least one way: A small town that just happened to process more than two trillion dollars in transactions per day, would be without access to any cash.

  Not that there would be any way to spend it. Cash registers, credit card machines—none of these would work.

  Doors would not open, except by hand and key. Those controlled by chips would have to be taken off their hinges. He wondered about the county jail. If the cell doors were locked by computer, would they stay locked when the systems crashed? Or would the inmates simply be able to stroll out.

  Gasoline pumps would not work either, although, for a while at least, there would be little need for gasoline. Vehicles would simply come to a stop as their computer-driven systems stopped firing the fuel injectors. Power brakes and steering would shut down, much as if the drivers had turned off their ignitions. Strong drivers with good reactions ought to be able to bring their vehicles safely to a stop, but it was inevitable that many would lose control.

  Trucks? He didn’t think they’d fare so well, despite the skill of their drivers and their hydraulic braking systems. Trucks would be in the grip of Newtonian forces aligned against them. The greater mass of the vehicles—and hence their velocity—coupled with the failure of the steering and braking systems, would probably send them out of control.

  They’d become unguided missiles.

  There would be fires from the exploding fuel tanks and possible HazMat spills. It all depended on which trucks, hauling which loads, were where when the EMP—the electromagnetic pulse—hit.

  There would be a number of immediate fatalities—and not just from car crashes. Aircraft unlucky enough to be traversing the affected area would drop from the sky. Pacemakers would go down. Hospitals would become…inhospitable. Their generators—backups that automatically cut in during power failures—were hooked up to the building’s electrical system, so they would be destroyed by the pulse. Intubated patients in the midst of surgery would die. Monitors and electronically controlled breathing apparatus and drug delivery systems would fail. Locked pharmacies would not open to electronic codes. Elevators would stall between floors.

  The most prolonged effect would be caused by damage to the basic infrastructure, especially the roads. Before anyone could address the replacement of the power grid or the restoration of water and sewer, Culpeper’s streets would have to be cleared. And they would be choked with inoperable cars. Cars that would never work again.

  As for the banking facilities themselves, Wilson was less sure of what would happen. Of course, they would be hardened against EMP. But they would not be able to withstand the pulse he’d be unleashing—a scalar pulse far more potent than the EMP from a nuclear detonation at high altitude. The only defense would be a Tesla shield—and no one had that.

  And how would the world financial community react to an attack of this sort? He didn’t know. The big systems—Fedwire and CHIPS and SWIFT—were undoubtedly fail-safe. They had to be. The trillions of gigabytes flowing between banks represented real money, with electronic tracking the only records of the transactions.

  But Culpeper was a big cog. Even if it was only down for a minute, it would rattle the world’s financial markets. Because, of course, if Culpeper could be hit, so could the backups.

  Wilson would bet that the stock exchanges and central banks would have to close. Would people panic? He didn’t know. He’d be listening to the radio as he drove west.

  Study of the effects of EMP dated back to the days of nuclear tests in the atmosphere. When the Los Alamos boys began to get too much flack for detonating devices close to the ground in Nevada, the tests were moved to isolated islands in the Pacific.

  People still s
quawked. The thermal and blast damage might not be important in these out-of-the-way locales, but the radiation, and its persistence in the soil, was still a problem. The areas would be closed to humanity for decades. Maybe forever.

  And there was another problem: Fishermen or nomads had a way of stumbling into harm’s way, then to become public relations nightmares, living (or dying) examples of the effects of radiation on the human body.

  So the scientists took to the skies.

  The way they figured it, tests at high altitude would inflict little blast or thermal damage, and the radioactive fallout would be dispersed over a large area. In this diluted state, the radiation would cause relatively little harm. What they hadn’t counted on was a side effect of high-altitude detonation: the electromagnetic pulse.

  What happens during a nuclear detonation at altitude is that gamma rays released by the explosion crash into molecules in the atmosphere—oxygen and nitrogen—causing a discharge of high-energy electromagnetic radiation.

  When such a pulse hits any conductive material—wires, power lines, antennas, cables, radio towers, railroad tracks, pipes, metal fencing—it is carried along. If the EMP hits an antenna leading to a radio, the radio is fried by the ensuing surge. If the antenna leads to the interior of a reconnaissance airplane, the EMP will destroy the aircraft’s instruments. If the railroad track leads to a switching mechanism—or a train—it will burn out the controls. If the pulse hits a building, all its electrical circuits will melt.

  Los Alamos physicists found out about EMP’s destructive potential in 1962 when they detonated a 1.4 megaton device called Starfish Prime over Johnston Island in the Pacific. On Hawaii, more than seven hundred fifty miles away, electronic systems collapsed. Streetlights flickered out in Oahu, telephones went down in Kauai. Airplanes in the vicinity lost instrumentation. Radio communications were disrupted more than eighteen hundred miles from the blast.

  The Russians had similar experiences: power lines blown out of commission, communications systems destroyed, villages darkened.

  There were fears that a single high-altitude blast detonated over Kansas would generate an EMP that would destroy all electronics in the lower forty-eight.