Zimmerman's Algorithm

by S. Andrew Swann Неизвестный Автор

  "Quiet." Gideon whispered harsh and sharp, and went so far as to place his fingers on Ruth's lips.

  There was a dim sound from downstairs. Running feet. Unmistakable confusion. Whatever was happening, it wasn't just for the prisoner's benefit.

  " I think," Gideon whispered, "we better get out of here."

  He felt Ruth edge up behind him. "What's happening?"

  "I'd like to believe it's just a blackout—but I'm not a strong believer in coincidence." He edged into the darkened hall holding up a hand for Ruth until he was sure the way was clear. The hallway was long, narrow, and almost pitch-black. One end faced stairs down, the other faced stairs to the attic. Cautiously, he waved Ruth after him.

  From somewhere came the sound of breaking glass, then a dull thud.

  There was something visceral in the sound that made Gideon back up from the downward staircase.

  "Wh—"

  Ruth didn't manage to voice the complete syllable before an explosion tore through the first floor and the concussion knocked Gideon backward on top of her. Suddenly the air was hot and thick with smoke and the hallway was illuminated by a dim ocher glow that reflected from the walls of the staircase.

  Then the gunfire started.

  "Oh, God . . ." Gideon could feel Ruth shaking beneath him.

  Gideon rolled onto his knees and shook Ruth's shoulder. "Are you all right?"

  "I think s—"

  "Then move toward the attic before we're trapped in here." Gideon half-dragged Ruth away from the downward stairwell. Despite his words, he was feeling all too trapped already. This second, his main

  concern was moving away from the flames, and the too-familiar dull thudding of silenced gunfire.

  Up the stairs was more of the sodium glow from the streetlights outside. The light came in three directions through glassless windows. Light also leaked in through the unfinished rafters where old fire damage had eaten holes through the roof. Gideon ducked instinctively as he rounded the top of the stairs. There was a nasty feeling of exposure up here that sank home when he saw the floor near the front side of the house.

  Sprawled beneath the street-facing window was a body. Ruth must have seen it about the same time he did, he heard her gasp behind him. The corpse's head was a misshapen shadow, and on the ground nearby lay a broken pair of expensive binoculars.

  "Stay down," Gideon whispered. "That guy must have been keeping an eye on the street for them." Must have been the first one to be taken out.

  Gideon crawled out into the attic. The floor was rough, unfinished plywood that hadn't even been nailed down. As he inched from the stairwell, he saw two video surveillance cameras looking out the other two attic windows. Cables snaked around to a card table where a trio of dead monitors faced the front of the building, and where the dead guard had been sitting.

  Gideon crawled up to the side of the dead man. Ruth whispered at him, "What are you doing?"

  From below came the sounds of staccato thumping, more gunfire, punctuated by the sound of another explosion. The smell of smoke was drifting up from the stairwell.

  "Getting a weapon—I hope." Gideon looked at the corpse and grimaced. The man had taken a round—probably from a rifle—in the right eye. The shot had gone through the lenses of his binoculars, and obscure pieces of shrapnel were sticking out of what was left of the man's face. He had been wearing a throat mike, but he hadn't lived to get a warning off to his fellows.

  Gideon patted him down and found a shoulder holster. He pulled out what appeared to be an automatic pistol with a silencer. In hunting for the safety, he discovered that he was handling a Micro-Uzi that wasn't any larger than his own gun.

  "Gideon! There're people coming."

  Gideon turned toward Ruth and had the ominous realization that the gunfire below had ceased.

  He switched the safety off of the Micro-Uzi. "Get over here, and keep down."

  Ruth started moving uncertainly toward him. She had barely made it a quarter of the way to him when a shadowy form turned the corner of the stairwell. Gideon fired one burst from the Uzi that at his awkward angle missed, but the shadow froze. "Don't shoot!"

  Gideon recognized the voice of their anonymous driver.

  "What's happening down there?"

  "IUF," he said. "They've covered all the exits, killed Sal, Nev . . ."

  "Where are they?" Gideon asked.

  "Outside, surrounding the building. Trying to burn us out."

  "Great," Gideon said through clenched teeth. "Any of your friends left down there?"

  "I don't know."

  "The old guy?" Gideon asked.

  The driver coughed a few times. "He left to make a briefing." There was a hint of irony in his voice. "About getting you two to a more secure location."

  Gideon noticed the coughing and looked up. The roof above them had become hazy with smoke. At most they had a few moments to get out of here.

  The driver started up the stairs, and Gideon leveled the Uzi at him. "Where are you going?"

  "This place is on fire—the first floor's a death trap already."

  Ruth looked back and forth between them. "How're we getting out of here?"

  Gideon started sliding back toward the center of the floor, keeping his gun trained in the driver's direction. "Where were you planning to go from here?"

  He pointed off to Gideon's left, where fire had damaged the roof enough to let outside light in. Gideon scrambled over to that wall. The plywood floor ended short of his destination, and he put his foot through a section of dry-rotted lathe. He cursed, but kept moving along the framing. He got as close as he could, and from where he was, it was obvious that there was little wood left on this corner of the roof. What separated him from the outside was little more than a layer of chaotically peeling asphalt shingles.

  The smoke was getting worse, and Gideon could feel the temperature rising.

  Gideon looked back at the driver. The driver said, "They'll be watching the windows, but they might miss that."

  Great, but where to from there? Gideon turned around carefully and kicked some of the shingles out

  of the way. Smoke began blowing in from outside. Even if the attackers had this portion of the roof covered, the thick smoke roiling up from the lower floors reduced visibility down to a few feet.

  Gideon looked back at the others. The stairwell was flickering orange and the smoke in here was nearly as bad as the smoke outside. He heard sirens in the distance. He hoped that they were headed here, the arrival of the fire department might cause the IUF to scatter before they shot them.

  "Come on," Gideon waved at the other two.

  Ruth hesitated—but she could hear cracking wood and breaking glass coming from downstairs as well as Gideon did. The sound of fire tearing through the building below them. She went first, pushing through the remains of the shingles. Gideon followed, letting the driver take up the rear.

  Outside, the air was too warm. The heat radiated from below, through the choking smoke. Every few seconds the wind would tear away some of the smoke cover and Gideon could see a neighboring house with a second-floor porch to their left. He could also see two Dodge Ram pickup trucks on the lawn. With them he saw a hint of movement.

  The three of them were hugging the side of the roof, a forty-degree slope into a gutter that was half-peeled off the building.

  "The porch next door," said the driver.

  It was the only route left open to them, but it wasn't something Gideon wanted to hear. His leg was already throbbing in anticipation.

  Ruth looked over at the two of them, then across the driveway, through the smoke, at where the neighboring porch should be. Her eyes glistened—it might have been fear, or it might have been the biting smoke. She shook her head and got to her feet, unsteadily balanced on the edge of the roof.

  "Let me go—" Gideon began to say. But Ruth had already taken the leap. It was as if she silently vanished into the smoke. "—first," he said into the choking wind. His heart throbbed
in his neck as he pulled himself toward the front of the building, where he could make the jump himself.

  Behind him the building groaned, and he could feel it shake beneath him. Something below gave way, and black smoke belched around him and the driver. He pushed himself upright, his half-working leg vibrating with the effort, and he strained to see something of Ruth through the smoke.

  "Come on," he whispered.

  "There's no time! Jump." The house made creaking noises behind him.

  Gideon turned toward the driver, "What's your name?"

  "Alexander—Now go!"

  Gideon couldn't even see where the neighboring roof was, he couldn't even see if Ruth had made it. Fifteen feet across, ten feet down. Simple . . .

  Simple if his leg still worked, or if he could see where he was going.

  Gideon crouched and launched himself into the roiling blackness. He kept his eyes closed, and held his breath against the choking smoke. It burned against his skin as if he were falling through the fire itself. It felt as if he were suspended in the air there for an hour or two—

  Then his shoulder plowed into asphalt shingles with enough force to ignite a starburst rainbow across the inside of his eyelids. He felt his legs roll off the edge of the porch. For a terrifying, disorienting moment his lower body was suspended in midair—then a hand grabbed his belt and dragged him up over the edge.

  He opened his eyes in time to see a shingle explode near his right hand. He looked up at Ruth, who was still pulling him toward the wall of the neighboring house. "Take cover," he yelled at her. He pushed her toward the windows facing them and another bullet hole sprouted in the roof between them.

  Ruth headed for the darkened window, but she didn't let him go. That was probably a good thing, because the impact had stunned him, and all Gideon could manage was a wild scramble, his bad leg doing little more than kicking weakly at the edge of the roof.

  Just at the time that Gideon thought the sniper had enough time to aim a shot right into one of their heads, something else slammed into the roof. Gideon turned to see Alexander, and another shot go wild into the roof between them.

  Glass shattered, and Gideon found himself half-led, half-pulled through a window into a darkened bedroom. He turned around, from where he had fallen on the floor, to see Alexander diving for the window.

  He didn't make it.

  A shot tore into his neck. He spun half away from them, falling out of sight beyond the window.

  "What the fuck?" A man sprang out of the darkness, yelling at them. He was swinging something threateningly. Somehow, Gideon had managed to keep hold of the Uzi, and he swung it at the man.

  "Shit, I'm cool—" The object, ax handle or baseball bat, dropped. It took a moment for Gideon to realize-that the man was completely naked.

  He scrambled away from the window with Ruth, keeping the Uzi leveled at the bedroom's occupant. The man backed away from them as they reached the doorway. Outside, the sounds of sirens became louder and Gideon could hear the screech of the trucks pulling away from the house.

  It took a few moments to get to his feet, even with Ruth helping him up. "I can't believe this is happening," Ruth said.

  "You ain't the only one," said the naked man. He stood on a pile of blankets that had spilled from his bed. Behind him, Gideon could see someone else, probably his wife, cowering away from the two of them.

  "Let's get out of here," Gideon said.

  By the time they made it outside, the fire department had arrived, the IUF had gone, and the Israeli safe house was a blackened shell holding an inferno inside itself.

  2.06 Thur. Mar. 19

  C OLONEL Gregory Mecham stood at a podium in a small, secure meeting room at Fort Meade. The room was designed to hold about two hundred people; at the moment it held ten. In a meeting about Zimmerman, ten was a quorum. It consisted of the National Security Council and a few select people from the various intelligence agencies.

  In particular, Mecham noticed a new face from the DISA who sat next to General Adrian Harris, Chairman of the JCS.

  "This is what we have," Mecham said, switching on a remote that operated the screen behind him. Surveillance photographs crossed the screen. "We've received these pictures from the team observing Gideon Malcolm. The team on Malcolm was carefully chosen and isolated, our communication has been through uncompromised channels." Mecham manipulated a mouse pointer across the screen behind him, highlighting the pictures in turn. "While the hope was that Malcolm might uncover new intelligence by his investigation, he has—up until yesterday—been researching already well-covered ground.

  He's visited Dr. Zimmerman's home and members of her family. . ."

  Mecham clicked a button, and the pictures changed to street scenes in Greenwich Village. "The second hope, that allowing Malcolm to roam unhindered would draw out other forces interested in Dr. Zimmerman, has borne fruit." Mecham clicked the mouse on one picture of a man dressed in a jogging suit. The picture blew up and filled the whole screen with a grainy, but recognizable photo of one of the gunmen who had attacked Malcolm and Zimmerman's sister. "This man is named Lyaksandro Volynskji, born Ukrainian, but he's been a resident of various Islamic states, mostly parts of the old Soviet Union. He is a recognized assassin, he's worked in Bosnia, Palestine, and inside Russia. He's associated with the International Unification Front, a loose confederation of extra-national paramilitary groups that operate out of the Middle East. After some backtracking, we've pinpointed his entry into this country as December 3, last year. He came into Miami on a Cuban passport."

  Mecham slid the mouse around and clicked on another photograph. This time another man's picture expanded to fill the screen. "Hashim Abu Bakr, Syrian. We suspect that he's been involved in organizing various terrorist training camps in Syria and Libya, part of the same IUF. He entered the country on a Palestinian passport on December 2, last year."

  Mecham clicked the last picture and a young man with dark hair and intense black eyes filled the screen. "The third man hasn't been identified yet. However, it seems clear the IUF is responsible for killing at least three people involved with Zimmerman. Consulting with the CIA, we've positively identified Volynskji as the shooter in the assassination of Morris Kendal."

  Mecham shut off the display and leaned forward on the podium. "I'll hand the floor over to the CIA's expert."

  One of the ten people stood up and walked over to the podium. He was a short black man named Williams who was one of the CIA's resident experts on Middle East terrorist organizations. "Gentlemen, we

  are dealing with a very dangerous situation here. While, over the past decade, the IUF has been shifting its focus to economic and technological espionage, they are still terrorists. While I understand the grave threat Dr. Zimmerman poses to our SIGINT capabilities, I think the presence of the IUF suggests a threat that's much graver than the exposure of our cryptographic resources."

  What little noise there was in the room silenced. Mecham looked up at Williams. He knew what Williams meant. Ever since Zimmerman's disappearance, the fear had been that her mathematical work for the NSA might be exposed. For a few years before Dr. Zimmerman came to work for them, the NSA's mission had been hampered, especially with digital communication, by the presence of strong cryptographic methods. After Zimmerman came, there was no such thing as strong encryption.

  But that wasn't the only thing that Zimmerman was working on.

  "If crypto was all the IUF was interested in, Zimmerman would never had had to disappear. Zimmerman's work could be passed on a single CD. They didn't need her work, they needed her. And from all appearances, Zimmerman went willingly. They've since been trying to get access to a Daedalus supercomputer. That doesn't make any sense unless they were interested in Zimmerman's work in information warfare. The fact that they're still operating in the country means they haven't smuggled Zimmerman out. That implies that they have a definite plan, and they need a Daedalus to carry it out.

  We've had a number of alerts recen
tly, where it appeared that there were hostile forces attacking domestic information systems. The virus that instigated the Wall Street crash has only been the most public. Since Zimmerman's disappearance, we've had computer-related power failures at seven major facilities, lost two major air traffic control systems for over three hours, and—for five minutes—lost the entire long distance phone network between the Rockies and the Mississippi. These may all be related, and may only be tests." Williams paused for emphasis, then said, "If they get access to a Daedalus, I would consider it as much a threat to the United States as if they had access to a weapon of mass destruction in every major city in the country."

  Colonel Mecham was back in his office before eight in the morning, and around eight-fifteen, Emmit D'Arcy was knocking on his door.

  "Come in, sir," Mecham said, standing up to meet D'Arcy.

  D'Arcy shut the door behind him and took off his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose. "I wanted to talk to you, Greg. I wanted your take on Williams' analysis."

  "I respect his expertise."

  "That's an evasion."

  "I know," Mecham waved to a chair in front of his desk. "Why don't you have a seat. You look tired."

  "Four hours' sleep in the last three days, half unintentional." D'Arcy moved over to the chair and sighed. "You know he's right on the money about the IUF. They're probably the worst people that could have Zimmerman."

  Mecham sat down himself. "Yes, I know. I don't dispute that."

  "You have a reservation about something."

  Mecham nodded. "I have reservations about Zimmerman. She wasn't taken. She left with an almost obsessive amount of premeditation and planning—"

  "As Williams said, if the IUF has her, she went willingly."

  "But why? Have you read her psychological profile?"

  "Five times."

  "Then you know what's bothering me. She's not an ideologue, barely a political bone in her body. Her personal life is practically antiseptic. No debts, and she cares little for money. Her strongest beliefs are about mathematics. How can someone like that be recruited by the IUF, of all people? She had the best hardware, the most sophisticated forum possible for doing her work, which is all she really cares about. You couldn't bribe her away from that. She doesn't have anything you can blackmail her with—even her family, she hasn't communicated with any of them in a couple of years."