The Labyrinth Key

by Howard V. Hendrix

  The extent of the crisis became evident, however, when a haggard Director Rollwagen called him into her office that afternoon. Pausing in the midst of a videoconference call, she silently gestured for him to sit down, then resumed her conversation. As he sat waiting, Brescoll thought again how uninviting he always found the Scandinavian decor of the director’s office—all blond woods and metallic accents. Today it seemed even colder and more spartan than usual.

  Janis Rollwagen leaned forward so that he caught the slightest hint of décolletage in the red silk top she wore beneath a charcoal gray jacket. With it he also caught a whiff of her perfume. The scent made Jim think of dusty flowers and evening shadows after a hot summer day, long-ago and faraway from this overcast and wintry afternoon.

  “Well, Jim,” she began, “this little project with Kwok and Cho has succeeded in generating a full-scale alphabet-soup interagency clusterfuck.”

  Brescoll was doubly taken aback—by her informality with him, and even more so at hearing a woman who was somebody’s grandmother using such forthright language.

  “If Ben Cho has been taken hostage by political terrorists or tong cryptocriminals,” he responded, clearing his throat, “then yes, we have a problem.”

  “That, Mr. Brescoll, is a classic understatement. His abduction is only the tip of a very large iceberg.”

  There was a beep. She glanced at her phone, and seemed to make a decision.

  “I’ve got someone on the line I think you should talk to,” she continued. “Detective Marilyn Lu, with the Special Administrative Region police in Kowloon. A Mister Wong Jun in the SAR office of the Ministry of State Security has arranged highest clearance for this link. He and his friends in Guoanbu are undoubtedly listening in.”

  Rollwagen reached over and switched on a monitor. There appeared a real-time image of a woman Brescoll knew only from still photos and grainy videos. The small camera on top of the monitor scanned Brescoll in turn. He knew it had centered him in its field of view, though all he saw on screen was a split image, Director Rollwagen on the right and Detective Lu on the left.

  “Thank you for waiting, Ms. Lu,” Director Rollwagen said. “Sorry to ask you to repeat yourself, but my deputy director has just come in. Marilyn Lu, this is James Brescoll. I’d like him to get a sense of what we were just discussing. Now, you contacted Agent Adjoumani about Mister Cho, not long before he was abducted?”

  “That’s right,” said Lu. “I knew she was serving as a bodyguard of sorts, and I was concerned for his safety.”

  “Why was that?” Jim asked.

  “Because of what I’d learned when I exposed Jaron Kwok’s ‘remains’ to samples of Ben Cho’s blood. You already know Kwok’s ashes are, in fact, nanometer-scale biotechnical mechanisms?”

  Brescoll glanced at Rollwagen, who nodded.

  “Binotech,” Brescoll said. “Yes. Go on.”

  “When, some time ago, I accidentally exposed a sample of the Kwok binotech to my own blood,” Lu continued, clearly choosing her words carefully, “I found that, when it comes into contact with a blood substrate, the binotech begins to replicate and communicate, in a rudimentary fashion, among its own numbers. Exposed to Mister Cho’s blood, however, it became much more active.”

  “How so?” Brescoll asked, remembering Adjoumani’s pinhole record of Lu drawing Cho’s blood.

  “On a substrate made from a sample of Cho’s blood,” Lu said, “the Kwok binotech not only replicated its own basic units, but also began to interact with its environment in a new way. It began to manipulate constituents found in the blood. It altered those constituents, inducing pleomorphisms, even building entirely new structures. The sophistication of its communication and manipulation increased radically.”

  “But if your first treatment of the Kwok ash was an accident,” Jim asked, “what made you decide to expose the binotech ash to a sample of Cho’s blood?”

  Lu gave an odd little nod and the glimmer of a sad smile so ephemeral Jim wondered if he’d really seen it. At that moment Lu and Cho’s discussion—of identical twins and fingerprints—and the way Baldwin Beech had reacted to that discussion, flashed into his head. Something, too, about twins and Tetragrammaton hovered at the back of his mind, but he couldn’t quite pin it down.

  “A hunch,” Lu said. “My specialty is forensics. In the course of investigating the Kwok incident, I’ve seen Jaron Kwok’s fingerprints many times. Early on, I sent a private message cylinder, with details of my investigation, to Mr. Cho. The cylinder was dermatoglyphically secured. When I got back a delivery receipt with a scan of Cho’s thumbprints, I noticed how very closely they resembled Jaron Kwok’s own prints. The resemblance was so close I suspected Ben Cho and Jaron Kwok were identical twins.”

  “Even though identical twins don’t display identical prints?” Jim asked, lifting an eyebrow.

  “Yes,” Lu said. She nodded, but looked at him oddly for a moment. “And despite the obvious differences in their ethnic signifiers.”

  “As far as we can determine,” Janis Rollwagen put in, “neither Kwok nor Cho had any real idea they might be related, much less genetically identical twins.”

  “I believe Cho knows, now,” Lu said. “I told him about my suspicions. And I believe Kwok learned somehow, too. Maybe as late as the time of his final holographic broadcast.”

  “What makes you think that?” Brescoll asked, wondering where Lu had gotten access to Kwok’s holo-cast.

  “From the binotech ash he left behind. It seems as if that binotech can only be fully activated by, or operated by—or exhibit its full potential inside of—someone with essentially the same genetic map as Kwok himself.”

  “That’s sounds more like a ‘wild surmise’ than a ‘hunch,’ Detective,” Rollwagen said. “At this point, however, I’ll think twice before doubting your instincts.”

  “Considered in light of Cho’s biological relationship to Kwok,” Lu said, looking down, “it seemed a reasonable possibility.”

  “Why did you say essentially the same genetic map, Ms. Lu?” Brescoll asked, puzzled by the condition she had put on the phrase. “I thought identical twins were absolutely identical, in the genetic sense.”

  “They’re as identical as you’ll find in nature,” Lu agreed. “Even identicals may not be absolutely identical, however. Variation can occur in a tiny percentage of their genetic coding so that—although they’re far more similar to each other than to anyone else—even genetically they might not be perfect duplicates.”

  Brescoll pondered that a moment, before gazing at her again.

  “So you’re saying that, mathematically—in terms of significant figures—what we’re really talking about in genetically identical twins is a statistical identity?”

  “That’s right,” Lu said. “Some fairly high-level mathematics and computing may be involved, but I think it’s to that statistical identity the Kwok binotech has responded. I can’t say with certainty. When I called DeSondra Adjoumani, that wasn’t what was uppermost in my mind. I was more concerned about the biology of Kwok’s remains than the mathematics.”

  “What about the biology concerned you?” Rollwagen asked.

  Lu glanced offscreen before looking back to them.

  “How much do we really know about the binotech legacy Kwok left us? Do we know with any confidence that the legacy is benign? Fully activated, Kwok’s ‘ashes’ might prove to be some sort of bioweapon. If so, Ben Cho himself may be a weapon, and a danger to everyone around him. Or they might be a danger to Ben Cho. Especially those who figure out Cho’s special relationship to Kwok’s ashes. That’s why I called Agent Adjoumani.”

  “But hadn’t you already ‘activated’ a sample of the ash by treating it with Cho’s blood?” Brescoll asked. “What happened to that activated sample?”

  Lu frowned.

  “I had it sealed in a containment box. I had the box with me in my car when I went to find Ben Cho. In the course of trying to prevent Cho’s abduction, I left the cont
ainment box unattended. When I returned to my car, the box was gone. It appears to have been stolen.”

  “By whom?” Brescoll asked.

  “We’re not sure, but the lab tech I worked closest with, Patsy Hon, has also disappeared. I am told by the Ministry of State Security that she was a spy employed by your CIA—”

  “And we have information that she was also a double agent employed by your Ministry of State Security,” Director Rollwagen said, the sharpness of her tone brooking no argument. No response was forthcoming from Detective Lu, who seemed caught off guard by the revelation.

  “And Patsy Hon turns out to have had a third dimension no one suspected,” Rollwagen continued. “She has apparently betrayed both CIA and Guoanbu. This episode with Kwok and Cho has revealed a breakdown in intelligence in both our countries, and in several other nations, as well. Let’s work on the fingerprinting—and hold back on the fingerpointing—until we mend that break in global security.”

  “I agree,” Lu said. “We do best to continue working together on this.”

  Rollwagen smiled slightly, and her tone softened.

  “I want to thank you particularly, Detective Lu, for working with us in this matter. We appreciate your insights. We also thank Mister Wong of your Ministry of State Security for approving this channel. We hope SAR law enforcement agencies and Guoanbu will continue to closely coordinate with us regarding the search for Ben Cho. You will be hearing from us soon.”

  “Thank you, detective,” Brescoll said. “Good-bye for now.”

  Once the line had been cleared, Rollwagen shut down the monitors. Brescoll watched the flat screens descend into their desktop recesses, then glanced at the director. She was rubbing her face with her hands as if massaging a headache.

  “So,” he began, as much to fill the silence as anything else, “Patsy Hon played all of us for patsies?”

  “Yes,” Rollwagen said, putting her hands flat on the desk and nodding, “but that’s the least of our worries.”

  She looked piercingly at her deputy before continuing.

  “We know that her Guoanbu handler has disappeared, as well, which is probably why the Chinese were so willing to speak with us. Hon’s medtech and SCI background concerns me, especially if the goal of taking both Cho and the Kwok ashes is to further expose the latter to the blood of the former.”

  Rollwagen stood up and walked to a tall window. Standing in profile, she looked out over the sprawling campus of Crypto City amid the snow-covered Maryland countryside.

  “I’m not fond of cozying up to Guoanbu. They’re almost certainly aware, however, that Hon’s handlers on our side, both here and in China, have made themselves scarce.”

  “Was one of those handlers Baldwin Beech?” Brescoll asked, a piece of the puzzle suddenly falling into place. He was reluctant to venture the guess, but saying nothing would make him appear more stupid than he already felt.

  “Yes—one of your people on this project. The CIA claims he’s involved in a ‘deep-cover extraction’ of Cho in China. I wouldn’t put much faith in that little story, if I were you.”

  Brescoll whistled softly.

  “This wouldn’t have anything to do with the CIA’s Tetragrammaton affiliations, would it?” he asked.

  “How did you ever guess?”

  “The twin stuff.”

  “Yes—this does fit Tetra’s long-standing interest in twin studies,” Rollwagen said with a nod. “Kwok and Cho are their creatures, in more ways than they could ever know. The CIA, too, has long been fond of better living through chemistry. Or biochemistry. Or genetics.”

  “But why would they want to risk contact with a biological superkiller,” Brescoll asked, “if that’s what Kwok left behind?”

  “I don’t think they intended for such a development at all.”

  “I didn’t think so,” Brescoll said with a nod. “That just doesn’t match what I know about Tetragrammaton.”

  “Really?” Rollwagen asked, turning back from the window to look at him. “What do you know about Tetragrammaton?”

  “The standard stuff,” he replied with a shrug. “Long-term depth-survival studies involving humanity as a species. Begun in-house by intelligence agencies during the Cold War. All over the world. Nuclear war survival scenarios, environmental collapse contingency planning. Even how to muddle through superplagues and big rocks from space.”

  “Ah, but the standard story isn’t the whole story. What do you know about the Instrumentality?”

  Jim cocked an eyebrow in surprise. He had read a lot of science fiction in high school and college, but only after seeing the references to it in the Forrest documents did he remember coming across the Instrumentality.

  “In the short stories Felix Forrest wrote under his pen name,” he said, “the Instrumentality is an elite class of long-term planners.”

  “Yes,” Rollwagen replied, returning to her desk and commanding her desktop computer on. “Very long-term, and very elite. Highly dedicated people with unusual training, who think in terms of thousands of years.”

  “An interesting fiction, no doubt about that.”

  “Yes—and no,” Janis Rollwagen said. The flat screens rose from their recesses again, and she continued, reading from hers. His remained blank. “The word ‘instrumentality’ can be defined as ‘the subsidiary branch of an entity such as a government, by means of which functions or policies are carried out.’ Since Felix Forrest worked for just such a ‘subsidiary branch,’ some literary critics have seen the Instrumentality as the intelligence community writ large. A ten thousand-year CIA, as it were.”

  “But Felix Forrest died in 1966, if I remember right,” Brescoll said.

  “That’s correct, but the idea of an elite Instrumentality didn’t die with him. A number of his biggest fans happened to be highly placed futurists and intelligence operatives. Soon after Forrest’s death they set about creating an actual, international Instrumentality based on his fictional one.”

  “So it actually exists?”

  Rollwagen nodded curtly.

  “Real as you or me. All in good fun, at first. Mainly a secret honor society with a strong interest in cryptology. Like the Freemasons, a few centuries back. Or Phi Beta Kappa in the eighteenth century. Or the secret political society of the Carbonari in the early nineteenth century.”

  Brescoll nodded. It was hard to work at NSA for any length of time and not pick up at least some familiarity with the role of crypto in history. To him, the most haunting cryptovillains were the Knights of the Golden Circle in the postbellum South—a fancier sort of Ku Klux Klan.

  “But the Instrumentality differs from those predecessors in some very important ways,” Rollwagen said, looking up from the screen. “Together, the ‘lords and ladies’ inducted into the Instrumentality’s ranks knew—and know—cryptology at least as well as any government agency or think tank on this planet. Some of the lords and ladies have an almost sectlike devotion to fossil code systems—Kabbalah, Hermetica, and the like. The Instrumentality’s reach backward, through the long history of cryptology, is matched only by its planning forward, for the long-term survival of the human species.”

  “But how do biological superweapons fit in with that?”

  “This isn’t about biological superweapons,” Rollwagen said, grimacing and gesturing dismissively. “For all we know, the activated Kwok binotech could be anything. Nanospooks, even—hyperminiaturized surveillance devices, spying for God only knows who. For all her surprising success with ‘hunches,’ I think Detective Lu is barking up the wrong tree with that bioweapon idea—so wrong I wonder if she’s purposely dragging a red herring across our trail. No. Informational superweapons maybe, but not biological ones.”

  “The quantum DNA computer, you mean?”

  “Technically, the universe-bandwidth quantum Turing machine. Based on the interaction of binotech and DNA, and capable of handling unprecedented densities of information. There’s been some talk that building that might result in
something even more apocalyptic than Lu’s hypothetical bioweapon.”

  “The ‘cryptologic catastrophe,’” Brescoll said, a wry expression on his face. “Mass disruption turned mass destruction. Wang and Lingenfelter have sent me reports on that work, but the physics is sort of, well, out there.”

  “Depends on whether or not you think information is the ultimate reality,” Rollwagen said, shrugging. “Or even that our universe is a simulation.”

  “The idea that the universe is an enormous computer,” Brescoll said, unable to hide the hint of skepticism in his voice, “is certainly a popular notion around here.”

  “Naturally. More information scientists and mathematicians are alive today than have lived ever before in the history of the world. And we employ more of them here than anywhere else on earth. At least so we hope. The Chinese may have caught up, throughout their whole chain of SCIs, at least in terms of actual numbers. Still, no one can seem to agree about what exactly the cryptologic catastrophe is—or even whether it would be a catastrophe.”

  “One report I read said it would only destroy the QC mechanism, at most, causing it to disappear from our universe and appear somewhere else.”

  “Yes,” Rollwagen remarked, returning to her window and its view into the slowly thawing Maryland countryside. “Quantum entanglement and quantum teleportation between nearby parallel universes. There are other variants, too. Some of our people say that if the universe is at base a computational process, then you cannot accurately predict any of its future states without running the entire process.”

  “You have to go through all the intervening steps to find out what the end will be like,” Brescoll said, “so there’s no way to know the future except to watch it unfold.”