by Erik Hamre
“Will do, Kraut. How are you doing with the interviews by the way? Is Maningra our man?”
“No. Maningra was a dead end. But you already knew that.”
“I had my suspicion, yes.”
“It was all a dead end. Cronus isn’t searching for Kevin’s abductor. It was attempting to take over the weapon control systems of USS Utah. It wanted to shoot down the GPS satellites.”
Amanda whistled. “So it was all a diversion?”
“No, it led us here because it knew I would make the sub surface. Fortunately it wasn’t able to access the weapons systems in time. And now the window of opportunity is gone. It won’t be able to shoot down the satellites now.”
“So it’s trying to crash the GLONASS satellites instead?”
“Correct. Now it’s all up to Olokoff. He needs to make sure the GLONASS satellites don’t crash into our GPS satellites.”
“I’m on the case.”
“Thanks.”
“One question,” Amanda said.
“Yes.”
“If Cronus wasn’t trying to search for Kevin’s killer, what is its real goal?”
“We don’t know. At this stage we have to assume that you were correct. It is going after Wall Street.”
“So I can allocate all my resources to that lead?”
“Yes.”
Amanda smiled. She knew she had been right from the start.
55
3rd of June 2015
Kevorkiana HFT’s HQ
Silicon Valley, California
DAY 3:
0725 Hours
As USS Utah docked at Naval Base San Diego, Amanda was busy collecting data from the various DARPA centres around the world. At that point in time almost one hundred and fifty engineers were busy analysing the attacks Cronus had launched on various Wall Street companies. The frustrating reality was that they weren’t able to learn anything from the attacks. They seemed erratic and random. There were no patterns, no similarities.
Whatever Cronus was planning to do to Wall Street was anyone’s guess, it held the cards close to its chest, or to the motherboard, to use the appropriate term.
The problem Amanda faced was that her team had wasted valuable time looking into the theory that Cronus was searching for Kevin’s killer. At some stage they had all become convinced that Kevorkian had created Cronus to track down the abductor of his son, Kevin. It was a crazy theory, and now Amanda couldn’t really understand how they had all fallen for it.
The clinching point had been when Vladimir had told the group he had found a common denominator for Cronus’ repeated attacks. Vladimir had claimed he had created a program that identified the date ‘the second of June 2005’ as the common denominator for Cronus’ attacks; the date of Kevin’s abduction. And the entire team, Kraut included, had almost immediately accepted that Kevorkian had created Cronus to track down his son’s abductor.
But who was Vladimir really in all of this? Kraut, Amanda, Mike. They had all been associated with DARPA for some time. Amanda knew where their loyalty lay. She wasn’t that sure about Vladimir though. He was still an enigma to her. And she had started doubting Kraut’s judgment when he had allowed Sarah and Vladimir into the inner circle of operations. It didn’t matter whether Kraut claimed their backgrounds had been checked a thousand times. They were still too close to the case. If this had been a murder investigation there would have been no way the main suspect’s ex-wife and best friend would have been allowed to assist in the investigation. Kraut hadn’t only let Vladimir into Team Cronus, he had practically put him in charge. As far as Amanda could tell, Vladimir was calling the shots. It was he who had convinced them to focus all their resources on finding a link between Kevorkian and the digits on the GPS tracker, it was he who had insisted Mike return to Vegas alone. All the dead ends, all their misfortune, could be traced back to the decisions and suggestions of one man – Vladimir Sorovski.
Let’s find out who you really are, Amanda said silently as she started digging into Vladimir’s digital past.
Major Olokoff stared confusedly at the computer screens in front of him. They were showing the projected paths of the satellites belonging to the Russian Aerospace Defence Forces. The Russians had started developing the GLONASS system in 1976, back when his country was still called the Soviet Union. And in 2011 the GLONASS system had achieved full coverage of the world, with 24 satellites in orbit. As Olokoff focused his eyes on the screen, he realised the gravity of what was happening. Cronus had somehow been able to hack the GLONASS system and had quietly amended the paths of its satellites. The amendments had been almost unnoticeable, but the result was potentially catastrophic. If Olokoff wasn’t successful in persuading his superiors to allocate sufficient resources to regain control of the GLONASS satellites, or shoot them down, then they could potentially crash into the GPS satellites before the nukes detonated. The nukes were already armed, so some of them would probably go off on impact. Others would possibly detonate closer to the Earth’s surface as the satellites were knocked out of orbit. And some might even detonate when crashing into cities or other populated areas. The problem was that Cronus didn’t need to take out all the GPS satellites to be successful. It had the capacity to hide anywhere it wanted. If it made sure that sufficiently large and technologically advanced land areas were unaffected by the EMP blast, then it would come out of this encounter on top.
Olokoff couldn’t allow that to happen.
It didn’t matter how much he disagreed with what the Americans and their President had done. What was done was done. Nothing could change that now. But he couldn’t allow Cronus to win.
“Get me a direct line to the Kremlin,” he said, straightening his back. He knew the next call would be the most important of his life.
56
3rd of June 2015
Naval Base San Diego
California
DAY 3:
0755 Hours
Vladimir was standing on the dock, watching the crew of USS Utah lining up next to the sub. Only days earlier they had all prepared to head out to sea for a three-month stint of war games in the Pacific. Now they were back on land.
If they were confused, it wasn’t possible to tell by just looking at them. They were obviously professionals. They just accepted that the mission had changed. That they weren’t going out to sea anymore, that they instead would be interrogated for the next couple of hours.
“Is this even necessary anymore?” Kraut asked.
“Probably not. Cronus has outwitted us. It is not thinking two steps ahead - it is thinking one thousand steps ahead.”
“Like that god damn Deep Blue,” Kraut said. He still remembered how disappointed he had been when it finally beat Garry Kasparov.
Vladimir shook his head. “No, not like Deep Blue. Cronus would probably beat Deep Blue, with one CPU tied behind its back. It planted disinformation before it even got started. It knew we would figure out the common denominator was the date of Kevin’s abduction, and it knew it would be able to use that fact to trick us later.”
“Damn technology,” Kraut said. He had dedicated his life to technology, now he was starting to wish he hadn’t.
“So do they need to be interrogated?” Vladimir asked.
Kraut nodded. “Yes, it will have to be done. We need to close off the lead.”
“How long will it take?” Vladimir asked.
Kraut shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. The Navy has assigned a team of two interrogators per every five crewmembers. They’ll work their way through them.”
“Should we offer to conduct some of the interviews?” Vladimir asked.
Kraut shook his head. “It would be a waste of time. This was a dead end. And we’re not interrogators.”
“But we don’t really have any other leads to pursue.”
“So we need to come up with a new one. There has to be things we have missed.”
Vladimir pulled out Kevorkian’s keyring. He studied it as it
lay in the palm of his hand. “What if we haven’t gone far enough back in time?”
“What do you mean?”
“We’ve been looking for a connection between TrakTek’s IPO and Kevin’s abduction. What if they are not directly related? What if the IPO and Kevorkian becoming a billionaire was the drop that made the cup flow over? What if the real reason Kevin was abducted happened years earlier?”
Kraut took a deep breath. “Let it go, Vladimir. This was a dead end. Cronus was never looking for Kevin’s abductor. It tricked us.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“You say Kevorkian would never have created something that could hurt Sarah?”
“Yes,” Vladimir answered.
“I’m starting to doubt that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t you think it is a bit odd that she has just accepted she can’t be with her twins?”
“You mean she seems detached?”
Kraut nodded. “I don’t have any kids. But if I did, I would probably be pleading to have them near me. Mike did that, and I got his entire family flown up to Vegas. In the end it even got him killed. Sarah hasn’t asked me once about her kids. And they’re not even one year old.”
Vladimir looked away. It was the only trait he didn’t love about Sarah Kevorkian. She simply didn’t seem to have the mother gene. It had been the same with Kevin. Kevin had practically been raised by nannies, and Kevorkian hadn’t exactly been father of the year either. It was only after Kevin disappeared that their true feelings had come out. Vladimir was certain that both Kevorkian and his wife had truly loved Kevin. But he had never been a priority before he was abducted. “She is a bit special. She is a very driven woman.”
Kraut nodded. “I’ve noticed.”
“What are you getting at?” Vladimir asked.
“Nothing. But it is a fact that most murders are committed by family. What if Sarah was involved?”
“What? Why would she be involved?”
Kraut shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. There’s just something odd about her.”
“She was married to a billionaire. It’s not like she would have felt trapped because she had a kid to take care of. She didn’t have to do anything. Kevorkian’s staff took care of everything.”
“Maybe you’re right. But I’m still not sure about her. I have arranged for her to come down here. I want to talk to her.”
Vladimir threw his hands up in the air. “Whatever you think best. But I’m telling you, Kraut. You’re barking up the wrong tree. Sarah had nothing to do with Kevin’s abduction.”
57
3rd of June 2015
Kevorkiana HFT’s HQ
Silicon Valley, California
DAY 3:
0805 Hours
Amanda cuddled the Red Bull can as she checked the loading bar on her laptop. She was waiting for a transmission from DARPA’s headquarters. A special team of twenty-five engineers had compiled a list of people from Kevorkian’s past who could be of interest. She smiled as she noticed number forty-three on the list.
Vladimir Sorovis.
She clicked on the name, and the link took her to the file the analyst had prepared on Vladimir.
It took her only a couple of seconds to realise that she couldn’t trust Vladimir. The analyst had done a decent job in the half an hour or so he had used to prepare the report. What Amanda didn’t know at the time was that most of the information in the file had already been available to Kraut two days earlier. The possible link to SVR, the phone conversation with Ivan, Vladimir’s brother. Kraut had known all these things when he had welcomed Vladimir into Team Cronus. What Kraut hadn’t known though, was that there had been a rumour around the time of Kevin’s abduction. The rumour had been that Sarah Kevorkian had been having an affair with someone in TrakTek’s management team. Some had claimed it had been TrakTek’s CFO, Martin Monrose, but others had suspected it had been with one of the lower-level engineers.
It had never been revealed who it had actually been.
But as the analyst pointed out – Vladimir Sorovis had at the time been one of Kevorkian’s most promising engineers. Still he had not visited the Kevorkians once in the immediate months after Kevin’s abduction.
Prior to Kevin disappearing Vladimir had been a frequent guest at the house. Then Kevin disappears, and Vladimir stops visiting.
Was it a sign of bad conscience? Had Vladimir been Sarah’s secret lover?
The analyst couldn’t verify his theory. But he thought it would be worth checking out. Amanda removed her headphones and placed them on the desk.
It was Vladimir who had come up with the ridiculous theory that Kevorkian had created Cronus to track down whoever it was who had abducted his son ten years ago. Vladimir’s theory had been that the abductor had taken Kevin as some sort of revenge against Kevorkian.
Now it turned out Vladimir could be the prime suspect.
Vladimir might have had an affair with Kevorkian’s wife at the time. He was Kevorkian’s closest friend, and was quite possibly sleeping with his wife.
On the day of Kevorkian’s biggest achievement in life, on the day he officially becomes a billionaire, his son mysteriously vanishes.
Could Vladimir be the perpetrator?
Could Vladimir be the person who abducted and killed Kevin?
He had the motive – he knew Sarah would never fall for him after Kevorkian became a billionaire. She would get too used to the lifestyle. The lifestyle Vladimir would never be able to afford, even though he too would get a financial windfall from the IPO.
He knew the family routines – the drop-off routine at school – the fact that Kevorkian would be at the NASDAQ exchange that particular morning.
He was practically family – and most such murders were committed by a family member. The statistics were undeniable.
And then, he disappears. After the abduction he almost vanishes from Kevorkian’s and Sarah’s lives. Keeping his distance. Making his relationship purely professional.
“I’ll be damned,” Amanda exclaimed. “It’s him. It’s fucking Vladimir.”
“It’s who?” the analyst to the left of Amanda asked.
Amanda just shook her head. “Oh, it’s nothing.”
58
3rd of June 2015
Kevorkiana HFT’s HQ
Silicon Valley, California
DAY 3:
0815 Hours
A row of lights started flashing on the side of the massive supercomputer in Kevorkiana High Frequency Trading’s premises. Olokoff studied the flashing lights. Some of them were red, some green. He couldn’t quite comprehend that this monster of a machine had been the birthplace of the first Artificial General Intelligence. To Olokoff it just looked like a big box, just another government supercomputer.
He had expected something more.
The birth of a human being or an animal was something beautiful, something miraculous.
There were so many things that had to happen in the correct order for life to be formed.
It was something sacred.
Olokoff felt that Kevorkian had somehow tarnished that when he created Cronus.
There was nothing beautiful about Cronus.
There was nothing magical about Cronus.
Olokoff had always been a big fan of the British science fiction author Sir Arthur Clarke. He had read all his works, and was fond of quoting Sir Clarke when doing presentations. One quote he had often repeated was that ‘any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’ When Olokoff now stood there, staring at the monstrous supercomputer, he knew Sir Clarke was correct. What Kevorkian had achieved with this machine was indistinguishable from magic.
He had created life itself.
Sir Arthur Clarke had also once written that ‘perhaps man’s role on Earth is not to worship God – but to create him.’
Olokoff knew Sir Clarke had been correct in his first statement. He just hoped the second one wou
ld not also be correct.
“Major Olokoff. Kremlin is on line nine.”
“Thank you,” Olokoff replied, before picking up the phone.
59
3rd of June 2015
Kevorkiana HFT’s HQ
Silicon Valley, California
DAY 3:
0830 Hours
Amanda stared intensely at the computer. She had pulled up Vladimir’s personnel file from Neuralgo. She was immediately impressed. Vladimir’s official title had been Chief Technology Officer, and he had been the ultimate reporting point for Neuralgo’s more than four hundred engineers. But Vladimir had hardly focused on managerial tasks. He had been a hands-on manager, still writing code for at least five hours each day. Line managers referred more to him as a mentor than a boss, and he was being groomed to become Kevorkian’s successor should the founder ever decide to step down from the throne.
Amanda glanced at the other report the analysts had prepared on Vladimir. He was a true rags to riches story. He had become a millionaire on the day of TrakTek’s IPO in 2005, although he had yet to make any large impression on Kevorkian by then. It was only when Kevorkian started Neuralgo that Vladimir had blossomed into his true potential.
A potential that had led him to the very top of Neuralgo. For the last five years Vladimir had been the undisputed next in command. He had been the one pushing Neuralgo’s team of engineers to the brink, making sure that they never lost sight of their world-changing ambitions. And, according to the report, he had almost singlehandedly come up with the ground-breaking new non-invasive method of mapping neurons inside a live person’s skull, the real reason that Neuralgo had succeeded in copying Kevorkian’s brain, and reaching their ambitious milestones years ahead of schedule.