The Nano-Thief: A Lenny D. Novel (Lenny. D. Novels Book 1)

by Michael Lieberman

  The Nano-Thief

  A Lenny D. Novel

  Michael Lieberman

  Table of Contents

  Begin Reading The Nano-Thief

  Books by Michael Lieberman

  Copyright Page

  About the Author and This Book

  Dedication

  Part I

  Part II

  Epilogue

  A Second Lenny D. Novel:

  My Name is Lenny D.

  Books by Michael Lieberman

  FICTION

  Never Surrender—Never Retreat

  The Lobsterman's Daughter

  The Women of Harvard Square

  The Nano-Thief

  POETRY

  Praising with My Body

  A History of the Sweetness of the World

  Sojourn at Elmhurst

  Remnant

  Far-From-Equilibrium Conditions

  Bonfire of the Verities

  The Houstiliad, An Iliad for Houston

  Some Dark Fire, New and Selected Poems (1992-2016)

  Copyright © 2017 by Michael W. Lieberman

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission, nor be otherwise circulated or used with the exception of brief excerpts for reviews.

  This novel is a work of fiction. All characters, events, names, places, institutions, and similar entities are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual events, names, places, institutions, and similar entities is coincidental and unintended.

  Thanks to Elizabeth Evans for her wonderful editorial support; to Kelly Blakley for the cover design and artwork; to my wife Susan A. Lieberman for her ever-present support; and to many friends, whose reactions to my failed attempt at a serial thriller, Isis in the Hood, helped get me back on the rails. I have mentioned the contributions of others in About the Author and This Book: again, thank you.

  I would love to hear from you: poet@lieberman.net

  About the Author and The Nano-Thief

  I am a Houston-based poet and fiction writer and former research physician. I was raised in Pittsburgh, but after almost thirty years here, Houston has become the landscape of my imagination—especially in science and technology, which underpin the action of this novel. It did not occur to me to set The Nano-Thief elsewhere. But another aspect of the book surprised me. As I looked back to understand what I had written, I found my father's presence everywhere. For some years before he died my dad made a modest living as a stockbroker, and like Lenny D., who is the book's hero and a retired securities trader, he had a restless yearning for adventure. In recognition, I have dedicated this book to his memory.

  To be upfront, this is not my first attempt at a thriller. In fact, The Nano-Thief is a phoenix-from-the-ashes story. Several years ago, I tried unsuccessfully to write a serialized thriller. I set as my task to write Isis in the Hood much the way Dickens wrote his tales. I imagined turning out a chapter a month and serializing the book—as eBook chapters or perhaps a blog. What I hadn't anticipated was the rebellion of my characters. Their actions quickly outstripped my planning. They turned my book on its head as they envisioned new opportunities and became entangled in unplanned disasters. I soon realized I had left my characters with insufficient resources and my readers unprepared. The project failed. There are no second acts when one backs the hero into a corner early in the story and provides no escape hatch.

  I hope with The Nano-Thief and Lenny D., I have learned my lesson and written a book that readers will enjoy. This time around, when my characters struck out on their own, I went back and tinkered with the story to accommodate them. After all, it really is their story. Many days, I felt they were writing the tale and I was taking dictation. Because The Nano-Thief is a thriller, I'll tell you no more. I hate spoilers.

  The next thing to say is that writing a modern, twenty-first century thriller presents technical challenges that did exist in an earlier era, and much of the fun of writing the book has been to navigate this landscape. Men in trench coats, notes left in telephone booths on foggy nights, and breathy blonds in sequined dresses have their places, but they must be used sparingly. In an era of smart phones, Internet searches, social media, electronic surveillance, hacking, ubiquitous video cameras, tracking devices, retinal scans, rapid DNA sequencing, enhanced electronic security, and databases of every conceivable type, stealth takes a different form.

  For both good guys and bad guys the game has changed. The world as exemplified by the revelations of Edward Snowden and Julian Assange is one no hero or villain of a previous era could have imagined. Well, you see the problem. I have needed help on multiple fronts to structure this novel. Friends and colleagues have coached me on many technical issues. I could not have written this story without them. Because of the subject matter I thank them here anonymously. If I have misunderstood their suggestions or, worse, butchered them, I apologize. Mistakes I have made and the license I have sometimes taken for the sake of the story are my responsibility, not theirs.

  Dedication

  In memory of Ernest Lieberman (1917-1977)

  For many years a stockbroker.

  Perhaps this is your adventure, Dad.

  A Knight ther was, and that a worthy man,

  That fro the time that he first bigan

  To riden out, he loved chivalrye,

  Trouthe and houour, freedom and curteisye.

  *****

  With him ther was his sone, a yong Squier,

  A lovere and a lusty bacheler.

  —Chaucer

  Story is honorable and trustworthy; plot

  is shifty and best kept under house arrest.

  —Stephen King

  Part I

  2014

  1.

  "Lenny, here's something interesting," Portia says as she looks up from her laptop. She's getting a late start this morning. Her first sales call isn't until 10:30. "This is an article from the online Houston Ledger American. FDU is getting fifteen million bucks of government defense research funds. Here's the gist. I'm going to pick and choose":

  Nanotechnology Coming to a Cell in You

  Government officials and Farro-Drake University jointly announced the renewal of a collaboration exploring the use of nanoparticles to target diseased cells in the human body. The $15 million, three-year project involves using tiny particles, some not much larger than an atom, to deliver potentially life-saving chemicals to specific cells in the body….

  University spokesperson William Mercado said, "This grant will allow FDU to continue our ground breaking research. Our armed forces are interested in this program because it has military objectives that will eventually find civilian applications. One example is that it may help us fight infections on the battlefield and meningitis in recruits.

  Lenny breaks in. "Right, this is another atoms for peace deal. With their research we will all live to a hundred and twenty. I'm holding my breath." Lenny knows bullshit when he hears it. He's a numbers guy, and for years he was a take-no-prisoners securities trader.

  "Hold on. Let me finish":

  Professor Michael Bessnager, the project leader, explained, "The idea is very simple. We will design tiny particles that are engineered to seek out specific cell types in the body, for example, white blood cells or kidney cells. We will attach toxins or helpful chemicals to these particles. That will allow us to deliver them to cells involved in disease."

  "So," Portia continues, "there's an open house this coming Tuesday from 5 to
7 p.m. in the foyer of the biomedical engineering building.

  "Lenny, I'd like to go. Normally, I hate these things, but this sounds exciting. You know, cutting edge technology, something we should know about. Come with me?"

  Lenny has zero interest, but he loves Portia: "Sure, why not, and then maybe afterwards we'll drive out to Ferndale's for dinner."

  Emma Meripol reads a similar account online at Hacker News and immediately detects the heavy hand of NAFRA (The National Armed Forces Research Agency). She decides not to post a comment. She uses T218—the latest, encrypted secure texting app—to contact her friend Ephraim Zorante, who works for Farro-Drake in web security: hey fwb I read in HN about FDU want to meet up and check it out i smell opportunity.

  Meripol's day job is also web security at a software company in town. Her passion is hacking, and she is the Yo-Yo Ma of breaking and entering.

  Lenny and Portia are much more than friends with benefits. They've lived together for a year, and Ferndale's, where they first met, is one of their favorites. He figures he'll indulge her, listen to muddle-headed science types try to explain their stuff, and then head for dinner. Besides, now that he's retired, he's got more time—sometimes too much time—so why not?

  Tuesday afternoon is less than the Ledger American promised—it is a tiny affair in a giant foyer. There's a table with cheese and crackers and a fruit tray, wine in plastic tumblers laid out at the far end. A silent film loop with subtitles portrays young men and women in white coats working meticulously with cells in Petri dishes. Another segment shows the fabrication of the nanoparticles themselves. Academia is as drab as he remembers, Lenny thinks.

  Professor Bessnager is near the door greeting the public and trying to summon their interest. It is tough going. Nanomedicine is not your average dinner party topic. He's a tight-lipped sixty-year-old who is working hard to smile. He looks like an old cadet miscast as the leading man in a high school musical, and when Lenny and Portia meet him, their encounter seems like a military briefing, the object of which is to convey as little information as possible while pretending full disclosure.

  Emma and Zorante arrive and steer clear of the Professor. Zoo, as everybody calls him, is Bessnager's cyber-minder. He's the guy charged with keeping his team's work safe from hackers and prying eyes. Zoo's got no reason to visit: he has already congratulated Bessnager, and by now he's picked up all of the lingo and most of the concepts. Emma has made a calculated decision for her sojourn in academia: before leaving work, she has taken out her diamond studs and slipped them into her cavernous purse. She doesn't feel the need to talk to the professor either. She's happy to take in the ambiance. Zoo can fill her in later.

  The graduate students are huddled in exile at the far end of the foyer. Effectively they are in rural Kazakhstan. Portia and Lenny glance over and decide not to make the pilgrimage.

  The students have set up brightly colored posters, explaining their work. Now three of them are standing around looking bored: a small, curly-haired guy, who looks Middle Eastern, a hip Asian sporting a black shirt with pearl buttons, and a young woman in an Aggie T-shirt.

  "Come on and meet these guys," Zoo says to Emma. As they walk over, they see the curly-haired guy head for the elevators. "I'm guessing he's doing some timed experiment, maybe with cells in Petri dishes, like the guys in the film clip."

  The Asian student is eager to talk about his work. Emma doesn't follow the details, but he's trying to use nanoparticles to target neurons selectively in tissue culture with a toxin. Basically, to kill them while leaving the other cells unharmed.

  "Impressive, don't you think?" Zoo says to Emma in front of the student. He beams. Kudos are few and far between for graduate students, and especially this afternoon in rural Kazakhstan.

  "Yeah, neat."

  She meets Laura Smetana, the one in the Aggie T-shirt, and looks at her poster. Emma is polite.

  As they walk away, she says to Zoo, "That was so lame. Fifteen million dollars for that? No way. Defense—NAFRA is my guess—is not giving them money for her. So the interesting question is the Asian guy's stuff. Why would Defense want to kill healthy nerve cells? How does that help the military boost the immune system or fight infections?"

  "Beats me."

  "Bullshit." She looks directly at Zoo, trying to ensure he will not evade her question. "Where's the firewall and what's behind it?"

  A half smile crosses his face. "I can't even tell you if there is a firewall."

  "Come on, what gives?"

  "You remember the old joke, if I tell you, I'll have to kill you?"

  "Stop, Zoo, there's a possibility…"

  "No, there's a probability. A one hundred percent probability that the old joke is not an old joke. If I tell you, I really will have to kill you."

  Every neuron in Emma's brainy head is firing. What, what, what is going on? She's got her teeth into this and wants to run with it. The problem is she doesn't know what she has her teeth into. "Spill it, Zoo, we're buds, what going on?"

  "Give it a rest."

  Unlike Emma, Portia and Lenny are skeptical but oblivious. They are complete naïfs in the shadow world of NAFRA. Lenny's cunning is of the sell-short variety. As a trader, he used to be alert to the possibility of black swans, but he could not imagine someone ringing the creature's neck or garroting it. So later, as they sat on the high stools at Ferndale's chatting with Snorri, the Icelandic bartender, they never brought up their afternoon at FDU or the professor with his shifting eyes and military bearing. Most of the talk was about Snorri. He has an upcoming trip to Iceland planned, and he waxes ecstatic about the beauty of the almost treeless country.

  "Yeah, right," Lenny says, "I'm trying to imagine, let's say, a bald Beyoncé out there singing. That's about as beautiful as Iceland gets."

  2015

  2.

  Lenny sat in a leatherette chair nursing a coffee and watching the barista. The guy, he figured, had been at this Starbucks only a month or two. He didn't recall seeing the slim, curly-haired young man when he returned after Labor Day. He moved with the practiced grace of someone who could do his job in his sleep. Not new to the trade, for sure. Mostly his back was to Lenny as he filled the drive-through orders, but when things got slow, he'd turn, and they would exchange a few words, nothing more than pleasantries, really.

  He couldn't decide about the barista. Something was maybe a little off with Sammy, but Lenny's reference points were weak. He was in his twenties, from—where had he said?—Egypt, maybe, an FDU engineering student. So how could he really tell? What did he know about kids that age? Still, he was uneasy.

  This morning, Sammy was alone behind the counter—in a Santa hat. Christmas morning at six was not exactly Broadway and 42nd at Starbucks. The barista wondered about someone from Egypt wishing people Merry Christmas, but he went ahead anyway. Couldn't hurt, he reasoned.

  In came a woman Lenny thought he remembered, a forty something year old in tights and a fleece. She had pulled her frizzy brown hair—complete with blond highlights—back into a disorderly ponytail. She ordered a complicated drink. Lenny wasn't sure. Sammy worked this lever and that, added extra foam from a stainless steel cup, and looked at her. She nodded and he reached into a front pocket. Lenny pretended to read from his iPhone. He watched over the top as Sammy emptied a small packet into the drink. The white plastic top went on. "Have a nice day, Mrs. Babcock."

  "I'm sure I will. Merry Christmas, Sammy," and she reached into her purse, took out a Benjamin, and slipped it to him. "Again, Sammy, Merry Christmas."

  Lenny kept his nose buried in his phone. Best not to disclose what he had seen. So Sammy was into delivery systems. How did he manage during the week when drivers were backed up waiting for their mocha javas and the old men were sitting inside with their phones and The New York Times? How did the payment system work? Lenny thought at some point he would test the system.

  He sat for a while, half watching, half daydreaming. A trio—grandmother, daughter and gra
nddaughter—came in. As the barista engaged them, making small talk and taking their orders, Lenny prezoomed his iPhone, raised it, and took a few surreptitious shots. One was a decent image of a dark complexioned young man with heavy eyebrows and prominent features, his curly hair bushing out from the under the Santa cap. When the place emptied out, he took a last swig of coffee and smiled at the barista. As he left, he handed him a twenty. "Merry Christmas, Sammy." The barista's face was total bewilderment. What was this? What had he missed? He sent Lenny a tentative look as if trying to remember whether he actually owed him money. Had he misremembered?

  When he got home, Portia was in the kitchen with a cup of tea.

  "Something's not right at Starbucks…," he said.

  "Are those mean little elves filching the scones again?" Portia deployed her wicked sense of humor at strategic moments. You could count on her to defuse a crisis or simply lighten the mood. He should not have been surprised. Her sassiness and wit were there from the first—from that wild weekend of storytelling a few years back, beginning at Ferndale's and then at Bar Antofagasta.

  "No, no elves, something more interesting." And he told her what he had seen.

  "Walk away, that's my advice." He was not an investigative journalist or an undercover narco. "Leave it alone, Lenny. You have enough on your plate just now."

  What he had on his plate was nothing and everything. Yes, if finding his way forward was what she meant. And the world was not cooperating. In fact it was downright stingy in providing opportunities. He could no more volunteer at a nonprofit or take up pasta making than fly to the moon. But she was right. He didn't think busting an Egyptian selling drugs at the local Starbucks was the way to go. Not that he had a particular direction in mind.