Scorpion

by Christian Cantrell

THE STATIC

  HENRIETTA HAS NEVER had a contact before. She’s had colleagues and peers. Superiors and subordinates. Teachers, students, and advisors. She even had an intern once who referred to himself as her apprentice, as though she were the Sith Lord of Theoretical Physics. But Jean-Baptiste Allard is Henrietta’s very first contact.

  Allard apparently holds a position of tremendous influence at the Direction générale de la sécurité intérieure, or DGSI—a sort of French CIA/FBI mashup in charge of defending the homeland against foreign and domestic threats. Moretti instructed Henrietta to contact Allard if there was anything she needed while she was in Paris. So contact Allard, Henrietta has.

  He is set up in a trailer about a block from Ground Zero. Henrietta used Semaphore to find him, then, after she name-dropped Alessandro Moretti, Allard shared his location. All foreign agents are supposed to be chaperoned everywhere they go inside the tightly controlled zone de silence, but nobody stopped her as she followed the animated arrows and way-finding dots virtually rendered by her metaspecs.

  She can see that the door of the VW Jetstream trailer is going to open toward her, so after ringing the bell, she descends one step to ensure that she is safely out of range. It seems Allard has knocked enough visitors flat on their asses to know to greet them with caution, since the door opens guardedly. Once he is confident that contact is not imminent, the gesture is completed with gusto.

  “Good morning, Ms. Yi,” he says, squinting against the outside light. He does not offer his hand, nor does Henrietta offer hers. Even though nobody has so much as whispered the word “bioterrorism,” at times like these, certain protocols are instinctively observed.

  “Bonjour, Monsieur Allard,” Henrietta replies. “Merci de me voir.”

  “Of course. Please. Come in.”

  As Henrietta follows Allard into the gloom of the trailer, she realizes that they have gotten into the common multicultural pattern of each speaking the other’s language. One might think such things happen out of a profusion of mutual respect, but it’s usually more complicated than that. Americans like to try to impress with a few well-rehearsed phrases, while their multilingual counterparts try to spare their conversational partners from inevitable humiliation. The question becomes: which one will eventually succumb?

  “Your accent is very good,” Allard says. In his wake, Henrietta can smell sweet, aromatic tobacco—the kind you imagine being hand-rolled in walnut-brown paper, zipped across the tip of a tongue, and sparked up by an artist or a poet. “I assume it is from your time in Geneva, when you led backlog research at the LHC.”

  (English it is; the winner is typically he who lands an inquiry early enough to make responding in the opposite language feel sufficiently awkward.)

  Henrietta is learning that intelligence-community posturing dictates that you not-so-subtly insinuate knowing everything of interest about your interagency counterparts.

  “That’s right,” Henrietta says. “All the Americans wanted to practice their French, and all the French researchers wanted to practice their English.”

  “No, they didn’t,” Allard counters. “They just wanted to stop you from speaking French.”

  He turns in order to show Henrietta that he is joking—not by smiling, exactly, but by arching an eyebrow such that it seems to tug ever so slightly at the corner of his mouth. There is something about the subtlety of the expression that reminds her of her father, and Henrietta cannot help but smile.

  In times of heightened alert, most of the world’s intelligence agencies revert to paper-based sharing to reduce the risk of leaks, so every horizontal surface in the trailer is buried beneath precarious stacks of spiral-bound dispatches. The only exception is a long twill couch that—given the tasseled throw and shape and position of the pillow—Henrietta can tell has been adapted for napping. From a chair on the guest side of his desk, Allard lifts a stack of booklets stamped “TRÈS SECRET” in a bold red font, then transfers them to the couch, where they promptly tip and sprawl themselves out across the cushions like a blackjack dealer’s flourish.

  “I apologize for the mess,” Allard says. “It is the maid’s day off.”

  “I understand,” Henrietta reassures him.

  She smooths her dress as she sits, then finds herself looking up at Allard when he does not join her. Instead, he turns, squats, and pulls open a deep metal filing drawer that has been repurposed as a diverse and tightly packed minibar.

  “Drink?” he suggests.

  Henrietta suspects he is not offering her a cold can of La Croix or a dainty bottle of Orangina.

  “No, thank you.”

  One tumbler it is. And a bulbous bottle of brandy. Henrietta is no expert on mid-morning drinking, but the pour that follows the squeak and pop of the top sounds desperately generous.

  “So, you work under Alessandro Moretti,” Allard says. The bottle is recorked with a bump from his palm and slotted back into place. Allard slides the drawer noisily home with the toe of a woven-leather loafer.

  “I do,” Henrietta confirms.

  “Do you know a man named Simon Baptiste?”

  Allard has still not turned around. His head is down, and his fingertips are tented against the tops of stacks of classified dispatches.

  Henrietta was not expecting to be the one answering questions. And she is not entirely certain what she is at liberty to reveal. There is obviously an established connection between Moretti and Allard, but how much information is allowed to flow over that line, she does not know.

  So she decides to play it safe.

  “I believe I’ve heard the name.”

  “What can you tell me about him?” Allard asks without hesitation.

  “Excuse me?”

  “What can you tell me about Simon Baptiste? What does he work on? Where does he live? Does he have a family?”

  In some ways, Henrietta is relieved by Allard’s audacity. There is now no question whatsoever that they have ventured into highly confidential territory.

  “I’m sorry,” Henrietta says. “I don’t understand. Do you know Simon?”

  Henrietta can hear Allard breathe deeply into his glass as he tips it back and swallows. He waits for the cognac to settle, then turns and steps back behind his desk. After planting the tumbler on an amber-ringed dispatch, he drops himself into his padded leather chair with a somber and tired sigh.

  “Simon Baptiste,” Allard says, “is my son.”

  Henrietta uses the ensuing silence to try to see it. Allard is indeed tall and lean, but his misty eyes are much brighter than Simon’s. His thick, product-tamed hair is mostly silver, so no match there, but the shape of the face is nearly the same. Allard’s copper and white beard, full as it is, does not entirely conceal the slant of his jaw nor the hollow of his cheeks.

  But Henrietta is not yet ready to concede.

  “I think we might be thinking of different people,” she says.

  “Why?” Allard asks. “Because Simon is dark-skinned? His mother is Sudanese. Stunning woman. As brilliant as she is beautiful. She was a model when I met her. Runs her own agency now.”

  “No, not because he’s dark-skinned,” Henrietta says hesitantly.

  “Then why?”

  “Because Simon’s parents are dead.”

  She does not say it with indignation or suspicion, but genuine consternation.

  “Or so you’ve been told.”

  Henrietta smiles uneasily. “I don’t know what that means.”

  “It means,” Allard says, “the CIA prefers people without pasts—especially when they’re foreign nationals. It means when Moretti arranged Simon’s citizenship, there were…conditions.”

  “What kind of conditions?”

  “A new identity. French Canadian. Born and raised in Quebec. No siblings—that part is true—and, of course, both parents deceased.�
� Allard sips, grimaces, forces the cognac down. Shrugs. “At least we died peacefully. Natural causes.”

  “But why?”

  “Because whatever Simon is working on is so sensitive that the CIA can’t take any chances.”

  “Chances of what?”

  “Blackmail. Coercion. Ransom. His mother and I travel all over the world, so it wouldn’t be difficult to get to either one of us. As I’m sure you must have learned by now, Ms. Yi, the CIA does not like what it cannot control.”

  It is impossible for Henrietta not to reexamine her own past based on what she is being told. Although she knows for a fact that her own parents were killed in Seoul, she wonders how much more Moretti might have asked her to sacrifice to the seemingly insatiable cause of Kilonova.

  “I’m so sorry,” she says. “I had no idea. I don’t know what to say.”

  “You can say whether or not Simon is OK. Whether he needs anything. If he’s married. If he’s happy. You can tell me if this fucking project Moretti has him working on is worth me losing my only son.”

  Henrietta looks down at the little hands clenched and pressed together in her lap. “Mr. Allard, I’m very sorry,” she begins. “I just don’t think…”

  When she looks back up, she sees him watching her. Waiting. Squinting and gnawing his lip. She knows Allard is trying to gauge what it will take to make her break.

  “It’s OK,” he finally says. He tosses back the last of his brandy. “You’re a good officer, Ms. Yi. I apologize for putting you in such a difficult position. I hope you understand that I had to ask.”

  “Of course,” Henrietta says. “Maybe I could talk to Mr. Moretti. Maybe—”

  Allard interrupts her by standing. Henrietta thinks she is about to be shown out, but instead, her contact is back at the minibar, fixing himself another drink.

  “Are you sure I can’t get you anything?” he asks over his shoulder.

  “Actually,” Henrietta says, “do you have any wine?”

  Allard turns. “Even though we are in a trailer a block away from one of the most devastating terrorist attacks the world has ever seen, this is still Paris, Ms. Yi. Of course I have wine.”

  This time, a proper smile.

  As Allard goes to work deftly uncorking, Henrietta looks around. There are no windows, and she cannot tell from the faux-wood panels if the trailer is genuinely old or tastefully retro. There is enough plasma glass along the ceiling and walls that the space could be used as a mobile situation room, but, probably in accordance with foreign interagency protocol, all the screens are in full-transparency mode.

  Before Allard sits back down, he passes Henrietta a delicate, voluminous, half-full stemmed glass.

  “To a fresh start,” her host says, offering his recharged tumbler.

  “À votre santé.”

  “À votre santé.”

  Their glasses connect over the disheveled desk. Henrietta sips while Allard swigs. The wine is warm and fruity—not at all what she’s looking for from a hydration perspective, but the drink is not for her. She needs information, and Henrietta has calculated that a man this acquainted with midday liquor is more likely to trust a fellow drinker.

  “So, how can I help you, Ms. Yi?”

  “The message,” Henrietta begins.

  “Ah,” Allard says as though he should have known. “La statique.”

  “Pardon?”

  “The Static. That’s what we call it. A code name, if you like.”

  “I see,” Henrietta says. “What can you tell me about…The Static?”

  “What do you already know?”

  “I know it was an encrypted message discovered by a Japanese astronomer named Masaki Kumamoto. And I know he found it by training a neural network to look for unusual patterns in the backlogs of data collected by solar probes.”

  “Inspired by your work at the LHC, no doubt.”

  Henrietta is unsure whether the interjection was meant as a compliment or an accusation. Very likely the skillful entanglement of the two. She decides to acknowledge the comment with a neutral nod and move on. “I also know it contained schematics for a machine that could supposedly produce superluminal particles, but that something went terribly wrong.”

  “Or,” Allard counters, “something went exactly right.”

  “What do you mean?” Henrietta asks. “You believe it was terrorism?”

  “The DGSI isn’t ruling anything out.”

  “What about Kumamoto? Have you been able to link him to any form of extremism?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Wouldn’t that suggest an accident?”

  “Or that Kumamoto didn’t know what the device was really for,” Allard says. “After all, the best way to make something look like an accident is to ensure that it really is.”

  “But why would a terrorist want to make something look like an accident?” Henrietta asks. “Isn’t the whole point of terrorism to make sure the world knows who did it, and why?”

  “Terrorism isn’t the only alternative. The objective could have been the destruction of intellectual property. Or a test run for a much bigger attack. Perhaps even an elaborate assassination.”

  “Assassination of whom? Was anyone prominent killed?”

  “We’re still compiling a list of casualties.”

  It occurs to Henrietta that an effective way to suppress the death of a single individual is to kill thousands more in the process.

  “What about the encryption?” she asks.

  “What about it?”

  “How was Kumamoto able to break it?”

  “Whoever encrypted it used a relatively simple algorithm.”

  “What algorithm?”

  “One-way linear encryption, I believe.”

  Henrietta’s eyebrows arch high above her metaspecs. “One-way linear encryption? That seems strange, doesn’t it?”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because whoever sent it obviously had access to incredibly sophisticated technology. Why would they use simple one-way linear encryption?”

  “You tell me, Ms. Yi.”

  She is about to, but stops. She is about to tell him that the encryption must be part of the message. The envelope every bit as important as the letter sealed inside. But just as she is opening her mouth to spell it all out, she sees it.

  One-way linear encryption.

  Also known as OWL.

  “What is it, Ms. Yi?”

  “I need to see it.”

  “See what?”

  “The Static.”

  “I’m afraid that’s impossible.”

  Henrietta frowns. “I have the highest level of clearance.”

  “In the United States,” Allard reminds her. “Not in France.”

  “Mr. Allard, if that message came from the future, whoever sent it might be alive today. If I’m going to help you find them, I need to see the contents.”

  Allard smiles amusedly. He leans back in his chair, crosses his legs. Swirls his brandy but does not sip it.

  “I’m afraid not everyone believes in transmission du temps, Ms. Yi.” He looks up at the ceiling and wags the fingers of his free hand as though manifesting something supernatural. “This fantasy of time transmission.”

  “Fine,” Henrietta says. “Forget about where—or when—The Static came from. How am I supposed to help you stop future attacks if I don’t know what I’m trying to stop?”

  “The only way to stop future attacks,” Allard tells Henrietta, “is to conceal The Static.”

  “There’s a term for that,” Henrietta says. “It’s called ‘security by obscurity,’ Mr. Allard. And you and I both know it doesn’t work.”

  Allard leans forward and cradles his glass in both hands.

  “Ms. Yi,” he begins, “I’m not sure you ap
preciate the gravity of what occurred here. A man with no experience in bomb making, munitions, or explosives of any kind was able to build a device out of off-the-shelf components, transport it from Tokyo to Paris—on a commercial flight—and detonate it right under the noses of the CIA and the DGSI. Whether he knew what he was doing, whether he was manipulated, or whether it was simply an accident is irrelevant. Sixteen city blocks and over three thousand lives…” He lifts a hand into the space between them and snaps his fingers so crisply that Henrietta blinks. “Gone. Just like that. We have absolutely no idea how to defend against a threat such as this. The only chance we have is containment.”

  “The only chance we have,” Henrietta counters, “is to understand how it was done so we can get those components off the shelf. You can’t just assume no one will figure out how to do it again. And again, and again, and again. In fact, exactly the opposite. For better or for worse, the most powerful tool we have is our imaginations. Now that the world knows this kind of destruction is possible, someone will reverse engineer it.”

  “But the world does not know, Ms. Yi. As far as the world is concerned, this was nuclear terrorism. And I intend to do everything in my power to keep it that way.”

  “What about the lack of radiation?”

  “Easily faked.”

  “What about video taken by civilian drones that are hacked to ignore geofences?”

  “We begin construction on a radiation containment dome in two days. In the meantime, we shoot down anything that originates from outside the zone de silence.”

  “What about Russian and Chinese reconnaissance satellites? I’m sure they already have thousands of images. You may be able to contain this for a few more days—maybe weeks—but there’s no way you’re going to contain this forever. You have to know that.”

  “Perhaps,” Allard admits. “But if the truth leaks, it will not be the fault of French intelligence.”

  “Of course,” Henrietta says. She leans back in her chair and smiles defeatedly. “I should have known. This has nothing to do with actually keeping people safe. This is about covering your asses. This is about politics.”

  The smile Allard returns is clearly meant to suppress something else. He throws back the last of his cognac and raps the thick glass against his desk.