Daniel looked down through the clouds and allowed his thoughts to drift. At the lake, hadn’t he been thinking that he should approach the problem from a different perspective? He was in the air now, looking through a heaping pile of cumulus clouds, and the earth below had vanished. Yet he knew it was there, just as he had known an answer to his problem existed—somewhere.
Different perspectives . . . his mother had a favorite story about perspectives. It was a riddle, really, a cute little word trick he had used to stump his fellow students at MIT—especially the rich guys in designer sweaters. How he had enjoyed outsmarting them! They couldn’t believe that a kid from the Canadian wilderness could ascend to their lofty heights and teach them a thing or two.
Different perspectives. Trading places. The prince and the pauper.
Suddenly, he sat bolt upright, as wide awake as if he’d just been given an intravenous dose of pure caffeine. He felt a tremor run down his throat and heard the gulp as he swallowed his excitement. “I’ve got it.”
Brad leaned forward and examined Daniel’s face with considerable absorption. “What did you say?”
“I know how to do it.” Daniel felt a sudden wetness behind his eyes. Only twice before in his life had a brilliant insight struck him with such force; the power of it was breathtaking.
“Tell me.”
Daniel shook his head. “No. You’ve got to discover it.”
“Okay.” Brad pulled himself up and assumed his vulture pose over the aisle again. “Help me.”
Daniel lifted a finger. “Once there lived an eccentric old king with two sons. He could only give his throne to one of them, so he arranged that they would have a horse race. The winner would get the laurels and win the race, but the loser would win the kingdom.”
Brad looked at him in patient amusement but didn’t interrupt.
“The two brothers, of course, were both afraid that the other would cheat by not pushing his horse to run as fast as the animal could. So they went to the court jester, who gave them a two-word answer that satisfied them.” He grinned at Brad. “What answer did he give?”
Lines of concentration deepened along Brad’s brows and under his eyes. “I . . . don’t know.”
“Think, man!”
Brad lowered his head, ran his hand through his hair, then at last looked up. “Don’t cheat?”
“No.”
“Kill the king?”
“Spoken like a true SEALS commando. But no, and that’s three words.” Brad clenched his fist in frustration. “I don’t know.”
Daniel grinned and crossed his arms. “When you find the answer,” he said, sinking back into the cushions of his seat, “you have found your answer. You’ll see.”
NINE
10:00 P.M., Tuesday, November 10, 1998
TUCKED DEEP INSIDE AN OPULENT CHAMBER WITHIN ADRIAN ROMULUS’S PARIS chateau, Kord Herrick paced over Oriental rugs and tried to keep his expression under control. The European Union’s Council of Ministers would convene in less than eight weeks, and Kord was no closer to solving their perplexing problem than he had been two years before.
“Relax,” Romulus had told him over dinner last night. “The Americans will solve the crisis. Like cats, they always manage to land on their feet. We will follow their example.”
Still, Kord was not assured. According to the American papers, the overconfident, arrogant Yankee lords of creation had found no shortcuts to solve the Y2K problem. Yet time, like death itself, was bearing down on them with a slow and stately deliberation.
The council ministers had laughed last year when Kord voiced his concerns. “Why should we worry about dates on a computer?” they cried. Even though a few had heard horror stories about possible difficulties, their banks, treasury departments, and markets were scrambling to convert their computer systems to handle the euro, the common currency that would officially link the European Union on January 1, 1999. Few people had taken the time and energy to think about Y2K, but the clock was ticking, the computers were faulty, and Kord Herrick did not want to rely on the Americans for a solution to the problem.
Kord spun around as the wide white doors, accented with gold leaf, opened to the soft sounds of Mozart’s The Magic Flute. Romulus had a gentleman’s tastes.
“General Herrick, thank you for joining me.” Romulus stood in the doorway now, wearing a fine suit and an attitude of self-command. His powerful body moved toward Kord with an easy grace, and his hand, long-fingered and smooth, gestured toward a decanter on the mantle.
“Can I get you something to drink, General?”
“Nein, but thank you.”
Romulus stopped and smiled, his smooth olive skin stretching over high, angular cheekbones. “Then let us not waste another moment. It is time for you to go to Washington. They are ready for you now.”
How do you know? Kord thrust his hands behind his back and gripped them, hesitating to voice his thoughts. For all he knew Romulus had a spy in the White House or the CIA; the man always seemed to know things before anyone else did. But it did not seem proper that Romulus’s own head of security would not know if a spy operated among the Americans.
“Can you tell me anything?” Kord’s words came out hoarse, forced through a tight throat. “Have you heard from one of our operatives?”
A twinkle of candlelight caught Romulus’s eyes as he glanced at Kord. “General, surely you don’t think I would keep such information from you? I have no operatives in Washington, . . . but I do have a friend.”
“And he has talked to you?”
Romulus’s smile softened his angular features. “You worked for Hitler, General. You know he was fascinated by the occult.”
Kord nodded, even as he felt fear blow down the back of his neck. The Führer had dabbled in everything from seances to collecting occult relics, but the dark forces had, in the end, overtaken him.
“But I am not a madman like Hitler. Supernatural forces do not control me; I have learned to control them.” Romulus moved toward the window, and with one hand pulled back one of the lace curtains. “They have brought in a civilian,” he said softly. “A man who will give us our answer . . . and much more.”
“Do I know of this man?”
Romulus smiled, a quick curve of thin, dry lips. “All you need to know is that he yearns to make a mark on the world. Ambition is his guiding principle; success his personal mantra. We will offer him what he wants, and he will be ours.”
Romulus let the curtain fall and folded his hands. “Go to Washington immediately, and contact General Archer. He will see that you are properly introduced to Daniel Prentice.”
“Archer?” Kord lifted a brow. This, then, had to be the friend to whom Romulus had referred. “The American general who contacted us in Paris?”
“The same.” Romulus’s voice was dry. “Apparently he has grown tired of waving the red, white, and blue. Archer is willing to do his utmost to bring Samuel Stedman around to our way of thinking.”
“Very well.” Kord picked up the briefcase he had brought into the room, then lifted his head to say farewell to his employer. But Romulus was staring out the window again, apparently lost in his own thoughts.
Kord slipped out though the gilded doorway and left his master alone.
TEN
1:00 P.M., Wednesday, November 11, 1998
LAUREN’S FIRST THOUGHT AFTER MEETING DANIEL PRENTICE WAS THAT EIGHT years had only improved the man’s appearance. He wore a navy blue blazer over tan slacks, a vast improvement over the flight suit, and his brown hair now curled over the edge of his collar. His features seemed as clean and transparent as they had in the dossier photo, but his brown eyes were far more powerful in the flesh than in a black-and-white glossy.
Upon learning that Daniel Prentice was en route to Washington, the president had asked Lauren to call an emergency meeting of his cabinet and the National Security Council. The various secretaries who had been present at the regular cabinet meeting were joined on Wednesday after
noon by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, the U.S. representative to the United Nations, the assistant to the president for national security affairs, and the assistant to the president for economic policy. Lauren again took a seat by the door, flanked by the press secretary and Brad Hunter, who attended the meeting more as Daniel Prentice’s friend than in any official capacity as a representative of the NSA.
Lauren frowned as she caught sight of an unfamiliar face in the room. A short, balding man sat behind General Archer. He wore some sort of uniform, though Lauren couldn’t place it. A visiting dignitary, perhaps?
Like all White House gatherings, the meeting began with a round of hand-shaking, insincere fawning, and a flurry of photographs. General Archer had escorted Daniel Prentice and Brad Hunter into the room and directed them to prime seats near the president, upsetting several self-important Washington insiders. When the president called the meeting to order, several of the secretaries offered excruciatingly boring descriptions of the Y2K Crisis—information Lauren could now recite in her sleep.
Finally the president took control of the meeting and turned to the expert they’d worked so hard to enlist. “I assume, Mr. Prentice, that you are completely familiar with the scope of this problem.”
Lauren wanted to snap, “Of course he is!” but she bit her lip as Daniel Prentice smiled and looked around the table.
“Certainly, sir. The Year 2000 Crisis, or Millennium Bug, concerns anyone with more than a working knowledge of our computer systems.” A short silence followed, and his words seem to hang over the long table as if for inspection.
General Archer broke the stillness. “Well, sir, have you given much thought to how our government can solve the problem before January 1, 2000? We hear that you have undertaken a colossal challenge with First Manhattan—and yet I believe you will rise to the occasion.”
“Thank you for the vote of confidence.” Daniel gave the general a humorless smile. “But what will work for First Manhattan will not work for the United States government. You should have listened to the experts who began to speak out in the early years of this decade. You didn’t, and now you will pay the price.”
“The price?” The vice president’s brows lifted. “Are you, sir, intending to hold this nation hostage?”
“Now, John.” The president put out a soothing hand. “We certainly intend to pay Mr. Prentice for his time and expertise.”
“Frankly, I don’t think the government can afford what I would charge for the kind of overhaul you need.” Daniel Prentice glanced around the table, and Lauren felt herself flush when his gaze caught and held hers. He smiled, acknowledging her, then directed his attention toward the president. “When I say you will pay the price, I mean you will pay in terms of energy and thought. This country will have to learn how to conduct business in an entirely different manner.”
“What are you talking about?” The secretary of the treasury leaned forward and spread his hands on the table. “Please, Mr. Prentice, be specific.”
Daniel Prentice smiled and leaned back in his chair. “Your challenge, Mr. Secretary, has three distinct faces. First, you have the problem posed by Y2K and noncompliant computers. Fortunately,my company can repair the mainframe computer systems. We have developed a new program, the Millennium Code, which will find even hidden date codes and replace them.”
“I’d like to hear more,” Dr. Hall interrupted. “Beginning with an explanation of how the program works.” Leaning back, she draped one arm over her chair in an almost masculine pose. “In laymen’s terms, of course.”
Prentice rested his elbow on the conference table and lifted one shoulder in a self-assured shrug. “I’d be happy to explain. Our program looks for short dates within executable, data, and library files. It recognizes forty thousand different date structures and replaces all of them with long date formats. It will work at the binary or machine level, so it is platform-independent and works on all systems from the family PC to mainframes. As long as a file is not encrypted or compressed, the Millennium Code can repair the date bugs. We’ll be marketing the program in a matter of weeks, so you no longer have any reason to worry about your computers.”
The warm, deep sound of the president’s laughter filled the room with relief. As the others murmured in surprise, Daniel Prentice held up his hand. “Don’t rejoice too quickly. We can solve the first problem. Two others remain.”
The president’s face froze in an expression of incredulity. “I thought the problem was all those blasted dates.”
Prentice shook his head, then rested his elbows on the table and folded his hands. “We can’t just run a utility program on a single computer and pronounce it cured. The problem, sir, is consistency. Vast networks link computers. The mainframes at the IRS receive information from thousands of banks; the banks are tied to mainframes at the Treasury Department; the Treasury Department computers are linked to hundreds of brokerage firms. Virtually any computer in the world can be connected to any other computer via modem.”
“It’s the crashing train scenario, isn’t it?”Anna Hall said, her eyes shifting from Daniel to the president. “If one computer is not year-2000 compliant, it can crash any other computer with which it attempts to interact.”
Daniel shrugged. “That’s essentially correct. So you’re not only dealing with faulty codes on your own computers, but you must make certain that every computer in the country—even the world—is compliant as well. Now, we have no authority over the world, but we can implement roadblocks that will keep foreign users off our systems unless their computers meet our Y2K-compliant specifications. As for our own country—” he shifted slightly in his chair and flashed a smile around the table—“I’m well aware that what I’m about to suggest may violate all sorts of antitrust legislation, but the only way to be certain that all computers are repaired to the same exact standard is to use my company’s Millennium Code program. You’ll have to pass a law, no doubt, to make the fix required. Of course,” he deepened his smile, “Prentice Technologies will keep its profits at a respectable minimum. We are not out to fleece the American people.”
“We can’t require people to use your product!” The vice president’s eyes narrowed with fury. “We’ve just finished going after Bill Gates and Microsoft with antitrust legislation.”
“But we have established other precedents,” David Whitlow, secretary of the Department of State, interrupted. “There is presently a law on the books requiring all taxpayers to file electronically in the year 2000. How can we expect them to file on computers that won’t work?”
“Good grief, think of the headache.” Hank Leber, secretary of commerce, held his head. “All those computers transmitting into our mainframes—” He glanced up at the president. “Mr. Prentice is right. If you have to sign an emergency executive order, Mr. President, I suggest you do it. If Prentice Technologies was the first to devise the Y2K fix, let them reap the benefits. Just tell the public what they’ll have to do, and make it easy for them to comply with the legislation.”
Lauren glanced around at the sea of somber faces. Several were nodding in support of Leber’s suggestion, but the vice president and a handful of others seemed reluctant to agree.
“If we make this a national . . . order,” the president stumbled over the word, “and we require every American computer to run this program, how can we enforce it?”
Prentice leaned forward, an expression of satisfaction glowing in his eyes. “It’s very simple, sir. We can combine it with something more useful— a virus checker, for instance—and design the program to be memory-resident. If some sweet lady in Idaho never takes her computer online and doesn’t run the Millennium Code, well, she won’t upset anyone else’s system. But we can patch the program into a computer’s modem-dialer so that it activates a handshaking protocol as soon as a computer goes online. Any computer—national or international—not running the Millennium Code in resident memory will be bumped
off the system.” Settling back in his chair, Prentice grinned. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”
Lauren smothered a smile as the president lifted his brows and glanced at the vice president. “Did you get all that?”
John Miller nodded silently.
“You said there were other problems, and I can think of at least one.” Dr. Hall, of the Department of Energy, rested her hand beneath her chin as she stared at Prentice. “What about the embedded chips at the bottom of the sea? And those that were launched in satellites? We can’t replace them, Mr. Prentice. What’s done is done.”
“You’re right.” A frown flitted across Prentice’s features. “I said we could fix the mainframes, and we can. But only time and the second law of thermodynamics will solve our problem with the embedded chips.”
“The second law of what?” The vice president gave Prentice a cold, hard-eyed smile. “Mr. Prentice, we’re not all scientists. I’m afraid you’ll have to explain yourself.”
“Essentially, Mr. Prentice is saying that you will have to wait until the embedded chips wear out.” The unfamiliar voice caught Lauren by surprise, and it took her a moment to realize that the stranger sitting by General Archer had spoken. The older gentleman stood, then bowed stiffly to the room.
General Archer, his face brightening, straightened in his chair and gestured toward his guest. “With the president’s permission, of course, let me present General Kord Herrick, special assistant to Adrian Romulus, commission president of the European Union’s Council of Ministers. General Herrick has expressed interest in the Y2K situation, and the president has graciously allowed him to join our meeting.”
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