by Wesley Cross
“Thanks. Do you mind if I download the data? I’d like to tinker with it later.”
“Of course.”
She left Schlager to clean up and, after going through the decontamination chamber, got dressed and took a car back to the city. The sun was already dipping below the horizon when Chen entered her apartment, but she didn’t turn on the lights and proceeded straight to her office. She sat at her desk and brought her thumb to the fingerprint reader, but then stopped before the skin touched the sensor. It hovered above the reader for a moment, and then she pulled her hand back and placed it on top of the desk, her nails drumming on the glossy surface. Then, she brought the finger back, this time pressing it firmly into the small device.
“Hello, Helen,” the voice said after the green light came on. “It’s good to see you again. How did the test go?”
“You can see for yourself.” She took a small drive from her pocket and connected it to a port on top of the desk.
“It looks like a success,” the voice said a few seconds later. “Even better than you expected. Almost flawless.”
Chen remained silent, watching the swirling gray on her monitor. The boiling clouds always looked different, but JC’s mood seemed to affect the way they manifested themselves on the screen. When the machine was calm, they were almost imperceptibly lighter and slower. Now they were darker and the swirls at the edge of the screen were turning fast. It could be, of course, a trick the program tried to play on its human interlocutor.
“I’m not sure why you don’t want to ask how to solve your problem.”
“Who said I have a problem?” Chen shot back.
“You rarely talk to me unless it involves some dilemma. Statistically, there was about a ninety-seven percent chance you wanted me to solve something even before you showed me the data. The data, of course, shows that while your test was successful, you don’t have nearly enough computing power for a full-scale revival of Rachel Hunt. Is that the right assessment?”
“Sure,” Chen said, her expression neutral.
“I also think that you know exactly how to fix that problem. The problem itself isn’t the problem. It’s how you feel about the solution to the problem. Am I still on track?”
“Yes.”
“All right.” The swirling clouds took on lighter hues again and the eddies at the edge of the screen slowed down and then disappeared altogether. “I’ve learned that sometimes to make a decision, humans need to say things out loud, or hear others say what they are about to do. I’m not sure how that plays into their decision process, but I’ve seen it too many times to ignore the evidence. Let me play that role for you, Helen, and say out loud what you’re struggling with. Would that be okay?”
The nails went back to drumming on the surface of the desk again. “Go ahead.”
“Okay. There are two problems. The amount of data that will need to be processed is far greater than your computers can handle. Judging from the data I have seen, no conventional computer will be able to solve this. To address the raw processing power issue, you will need a quantum computer. That’s your problem number one—the technical one. Your problem number two is software related, but it’s not technical. Quants don’t run on standard software. And for this application, you need a software not only powerful enough to run a quant, but agile enough to adapt its immense power to the task at hand. You’d either have to create it from scratch, which might take years, or use something that’s available right now. And as far as I know, there’s only one software in the world currently capable of doing it. Me. Since you have the software, it is safe to assume that this problem is not technical. It’s philosophical. You’re not asking yourself if I can handle the task. You’re asking yourself if you can trust me to do it.”
The nail staccato stopped and Chen looked at the screen for a few moments. The clouds were so still, she could barely see any movement at all.
“So, can I?” she finally said. “Can I trust you, JC?”
9
As the car pulled up to the curb, Jill Cooper couldn’t shake a sense of deja vu. She pulled on the handle, opened the door, and stuck the umbrella out into the torrential downpour. A few cold drops immediately dodged the stretched fabric, hitting her exposed neck and running down her spine, making her shiver. It’d been many years since she had seen the statue in front of Guardian’s building for the first time. It intimidated her then. It still intimidated her every time she saw it.
A lightning bolt split the dark sky overhead, momentarily illuminating the imposing thirty-foot bronze angel working a forge. A mighty crack of thunder followed a second later, reverberating through the city. In the flickering light, the wingtips of the statue looked sharp as barbs, and the water pouring down the angel’s face distorted its features, making the creature look demonic rather than angelic.
She hunched her shoulders and hurried across the square dominated by the sculpture. It was pouring so hard the umbrella hardly made any difference, and by the time she reached the door, Cooper was soaking wet. She entered the building and headed straight for the elevator, nodding to the security guard. He waved back, flashing a quick smile, and then turned his attention back to the monitor. Her name was on a short list of people who could enter the building unquestioned.
The office was dark, the only lights coming from the emergency exit signs and the near-constant lightning outside. The rumbling thunder was beating the glass windows like a drum with increasing tempo—the storm was reaching a crescendo. As she walked past the empty cubicles to the corner office, Cooper rubbed her palms on the sides of her pants—she was sweating despite the cold.
“Good evening.” Engel stood up from his massive desk as she entered the office. “Take a seat. I’d say you look like you could use a drink, but I know you’re going to turn it down.”
“Actually,” Cooper said as she settled on a couch by the wall, “I wouldn’t mind some Scotch.”
“Hmm.” Engel raised an eyebrow in surprise. “Scotch it is, then.”
The man poured two glasses, handed Cooper one, and then sat at the other end of the sofa.
“So?” she said. “What’s the job?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever employed anyone who talked so little about anything else besides business. What do you do in your free time, Jill?”
“I don’t have much free time.” She shrugged. “I work for you.”
He smiled, but she could see a flash of annoyance in his eyes. She liked it.
“All right.” He waved his hand, as if surrendering. “It’s going to be a tough one, no doubt.”
She said nothing as she watched the man in front of her. He stared back for a few moments, but then returned his attention to the drink.
“So,” she repeated. “What’s the job?”
“Durham Riley.”
“As in Secretary of Defense Durham Riley?”
“Correct.”
“That’s going to take a lot of prep. Weeks. Possibly months. He’d be harder to get to than the president.”
“Normally,” Engel downed the rest of his drink and stood up, “I’d agree with you.”
“Normally?”
“He’ll be traveling in the next few days. He almost never does. But he’s flying to New Jersey tomorrow to meet with the governor, where he’ll stay for a day. Then he has a stop in his native Staten Island and after that in Brooklyn. That’s when it needs to happen.”
“A few days?”
“Two, to be exact.”
“It can’t be done,” she said, sitting straight. “There’s no way.”
“He’ll be a lot more vulnerable here than in DC.”
“It doesn’t matter.” She stood up, holding her tumbler, and walked across the room to the window. The rain was falling in thick sheets outside of the glass. The hotel across the street had all but disappeared. “There’s simply not enough time to create a plausible narrative in such a short period. Not for a man in his position. Like I said—it would take a lot of prep.”
&
nbsp; “There’s something that would make your job easier.”
“Oh?”
“It doesn’t have to look like an accident,” Engel said. “Not this time. Quite the opposite. This needs to be a statement. A warning. The morning after, I want every newspaper in the country to run a story about a brazen attack on the US SecDef. It will not be immediately clear to the public why that happened, but people who understand how things work, they will know.”
“I see.” Cooper put the glass down on the table and turned to face Engel. She let her eyes aimlessly wander around the room until she saw the grill of a ventilation shaft in the far corner of the office. “Why me then? Why not use somebody else? I’m not the only one on your payroll who could do this for you.”
“Now you’re fishing for compliments,” Engel smiled, “but I don’t mind. I need to be certain this works the way I want it to work and you’re the best in the business.”
“I would need access to some serious hardware.”
“Consider it done. Just make a list.”
“And as much information on the travel detail as possible.”
“Of course.” Engel walked back to his desk, opened a drawer, and produced a memory stick. “Everything you need is on here. You can open the files only once. It will self-delete data after. Open them when you’re not going to be distracted.”
“Thanks.” She took the stick and pocketed it. “There’s something else. I want to see Elizabeth.”
“That’s fine. I’ll arrange for the video call—”
“No.” She cut him off. “Not a bullshit once-a-month video call. I want to see her.”
“You know this is impossible. For your sake.” Engel crossed the distance between them and looked her in the eye. “For her sake. What do you think will happen if one of my competitors finds out who she is? Are you prepared to take that risk?”
“I don’t even know where she is.”
“That’s because you can’t divulge information you do not possess. You know that. Like I said—this is for your own good. She’s taken care of and happy. She has anything she wants. That’s all you need to know. And you can talk to her once a month. I know you’ve developed a pretty good relationship over the years. It’s more than you had before.”
“It’s not what you had promised when I first walked into this office—”
“When you first walked into my office, Elizabeth didn’t even know your name. Now she talks to you all the time. You’re part of her life. You can’t possibly think I haven’t delivered on my promise.”
“I’ll send you a list of items that I need,” Cooper said and turned on her heels. “Have them delivered as usual.”
As she entered the elevator, she leaned on the wall in the way that obscured her hands from the camera. Then she pulled a patch of transparent film off the palm of her right hand and carefully placed it into a small, rectangular plastic container. Before she went outside into the rain, the container migrated into an inside jacket pocket, where it would be protected from the elements.
The car was still parked at the curb, its emergency lights blinking like a lighthouse through the sheet of rain. Cooper hurried across the square without looking up at the winged angel and dived into the warm vehicle.
“Back to your place, Ms. Cooper?”
“Yes, please.”
Her fingers traced the outline of the container inside of her jacket as the lights of the Guardian building swam back and disappeared from sight. Something big was coming, she knew. There had been a fundamental change in Engel’s plan and Guardian’s tactics in the last few months, and she no longer could pretend that it was business as usual. Cooper had no illusions about who she was and what she did for a living. Sometimes, when the recurring dream returned and she would see herself walking on the soft sand of Sa Calobra beach, she would indulge in a fantasy that everything could be fixed, that she could rebuild it all from scratch. But it was just that—a fantasy. There was no redemption for her, that much was certain.
The car left the streets and merged onto the FDR, heading south. The rain finally started to ease and as they zoomed under the massive bulk of the Brooklyn Bridge, heading for the tunnel under the East River, Cooper glimpsed the moon through the break in the clouds.
“Are you okay, Ms. Cooper?” the driver asked, his eyes studying her for a second in the rearview mirror. “You look a little pale.”
“I’m good.” She smiled. “Just haven’t warmed yet. Nothing a hot cup of tea wouldn’t fix.”
Cooper looked away from the driver, ending the conversation. She needed a way out, she thought. Whatever was coming, Cooper had no interest in being a part of it, but before she could try to break ties with Guardian, she needed to find Elizabeth. That information must be buried somewhere on Engel’s computer. Getting his fingerprint was a good beginning to try to get access to it, but it was the easy part and it would not be enough. She’d seen him unlock his computer a few times. First, he’d place his thumb on a biometric scanner built into his desk. Then, he’d look into a sleek camera of a retina scanner. To open Engel’s computer, Cooper was going to need an image of Engel’s eye.
10
The flag with three stars shining on a dark-blue background was flapping so hard, it looked like it was about to fly off the mast at any moment. The observation deck of Orion Tower was dark, illuminated only by the dotted line of blue spot lights running at the foot of the wraparound window. In the distance, about a mile away to the south, the ghostly silhouette of One World Trade Center, commonly referred to as Freedom Tower, seemed to float in a sea of clouds.
“If I didn’t know any better, you could tell me we were on a ship and I would believe you,” Jason Hunt said, watching the clouds roll.
“Want a drink?” Max Schlager walked over to the bar and took out two tumblers.
“Club soda on the rocks, please. Throw a slice of lime in there if you can find any.”
Schlager sliced the lime, poured two drinks, and then brought them to the small table in between a pair of chairs facing the window.
“I still can’t believe how close he came to winning the race,” Hunt said, taking the drink in his right hand. The blue spot lights reflected on its gunmetal-gray surface.
“Engel might be a lot of things, but he’s not a quitter. He still didn’t concede.”
“Yeah. You have to give it to him—the guy is ambitious. One day he’s hiding from the authorities, the next he’s mounting a long-shot presidential bid that comes this close to winning the whole thing.”
“Thirty-two thousand votes. That’s as close as it gets. And here in New York, of all places. A few cycles back, this would be unfathomable. And my guess is he’ll run again next time.”
“You know,” Hunt put his half-finished drink on the table and flexed the fingers of the bionic arm, “I have to say I didn’t see it coming. Most politicians are not as clean as they would like you to believe, but at least there’s an attempt to look the part. The picture-perfect family. Some effort to show they have some kind of faith in a higher power. Engel is the opposite of all these things. A serial womanizer. An atheist who mocks religion any chance he gets.”
“All true. And yet the campaign itself was a boon for him regardless of the result.”
“How so?”
“It legitimized him in the eyes of many, if not most. Until the campaign, he was just a rich guy from New York. Some knew who he was, some didn’t. Now the entire country knows him. I’m sure folks in DC took notice, too, and might want to curry favors with him in case he runs in the future. Which I think he will.”
“You think he might get some contracts that he otherwise wouldn’t?”
“I do.”
“That may be true,” Hunt said. “But we are not wet around the ears anymore. Our market cap is half of Guardian and growing. He can’t squeeze us like he tried when we pried Asclepius from him. And the tech is finally starting to get adopted around the globe.”
“Yeah,” Schlage
r said and sunk deeper into his chair.
“You sound troubled.”
“I am.”
Hunt turned to look his friend in the eye. “You think he’s a bigger threat than I realize?”
“Yes. But there’s something else. What worries me the most is that it almost happened.”
“He’s got resources. He hired a lot of people who knew how to run a campaign. And given the overall decline, it’s not that surprising that some people saw a successful businessman as a viable candidate, regardless of his personality traits.”
“You hit the nail on its head,” Schlager said. “Engel is not a disease. He’s a symptom. I forgot who said that people get a king they deserve and the fact that we came so close to having him at the wheel tells me everything I need to know of our current state of affairs.”
“But we didn’t,” Hunt said. “And I actually like Price. He’s a politician, no doubt, but he’s honorable. I think given enough time—”
An intercom buzzed, interrupting him mid-sentence. As Hunt accepted the incoming call, Mike Connelly’s face appeared on the large TV screen above the bar.
“Everything all right, Mike?”
“You should turn on the news,” the man said. “Engel is challenging the results. Claims massive voter fraud and says he was robbed of the presidency.”
After Connelly’s face disappeared, Hunt stood up and turned on the TV. A live shot of a female reporter in front of the White House appeared on the screen. The chyron running at the bottom read ENGEL CLAIMS VOTING FRAUD. CHALLENGES RESULTS.
The sound of the reporter’s voice filled the room as Hunt turned up the volume.
… a few minutes ago. Mr. Engel filed an official complaint to challenge the results of the vote before the deadline. In the complaint submitted by his legal team, Mr. Engel claims massive voter fraud and says, I quote, the American people have been robbed of their choice.
“What the hell.”
“Hang on, I want to hear this.”
The screen split in two and a handsome face of Price filled the frame. His ebony skin looked paler than usual and deep wrinkles creased the skin around his eyes, but his demeanor seemed relaxed and he spoke in his usual measured tone of a college professor.