Bandwidth

  Braun turned his attention back again to the movie. Judah had won the chariot race, Pontius Pilate had commended him for “a great victory,” Messala had waved off the doctor’s amputation knives and hissed his last words. Now Esther was trying to temper Judah’s sustained rage against Roman tyranny.

  “It was Judah Ben-Hur I loved,” Esther said. “What has become of him? You seem to be now the very thing you set out to destroy, giving evil for evil. Hatred is turning you to stone. It’s as though you had become Messala! I’ve lost you Judah.”

  “No you haven’t,” Braun said out loud, reaching for a bowl of baby carrots that he had put out for himself. “Judah is still hot for you, don’t you worry.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  In 1626, Dutchman Peter Minuit was rumored to have bought Manhattan from its Native American inhabitants for twentyfour dollars worth of beads and trinkets. If that story is true, however, the ultimate con or deal, depending on how you choose to look at it, came 41 years later when, under the Treaty of Breda, Holland traded Manhattan to the English, in part, for a

  small nutmeg producing island in the East Indies called Pulau Run. The Dutch also got Surinam out of the deal.

  At that time, nutmeg wasn’t just a mace-colored seed cut out of a fleshy fruit resembling a peach; it was the world’s most valuable commodity after silver and gold, which at least partially explained the Dutch decision to give up New York.

  I could use a deal like the one the British got, Zlotnikov thought to himself as he sipped a Coke in a Moscow café. It was the sweet taste of nutmeg in the Coke that had gotten him thinking about the exchange between the Dutch and the English. He had read somewhere that Coca Cola was the biggest consumer of nutmeg in the world. Maybe nutmeg was the secret ingredient in Coke. Go figure.

  Zlotnikov waited for a call on his cell phone from one of the drivers for a big Russian tuna named General Volskov. Volskov was the man that Riga-Tech and Jagmetti had worked with to secure the communications satellite for Cheyenne.

  Zlotnikov’s cell phone went off. He had programmed his Nokia to play the Scandinavian drinking song “Helan gar” when it rang. The song reminded him of some very drunken times in Helsinki when he was in his late 20s.

  It was Volskov’s people. The car would be there in a few minutes. Zlotnikov finished his Coke and thought about coffee-colored women on warm islands where nutmeg was sprinkled on everything.

  ***

  Hayden sat alone in Benbow’s beat up, borrowed office in Brooklyn reading confidential files under a solitary light. He was pouring through background on Jagmetti, as well as General Volskov.

  Jagmetti couldn’t have been more different from his parents. He won scholarships to Switzerland’s best schools, as well as to the London School of Economics. He didn’t travel much. His clients seemed to come to him. He apparently excelled at cross country skiing. Otto didn’t appear to have close friends in his life, nor did he have a woman.

  General Volskov was a renowned tough guy. He had a background similar to the siloviki – the group of former and corrupt KGB officials that Putin had surrounded himself with at the Kremlin. That said, Volskov hadn’t been fully accepted by them. He also had a weakness for swarthy young women from across the former Soviet Union. Volskov enjoyed entertaining such women in his dacha outside of Moscow.

  Volskov had been entrusted with overseeing Russia’s spent nuclear fuel. The Northern Fleet’s main storage facility for nuclear waste on the Kola Peninsula was known to be leaking radioactivity, so spent fuel was being sent to Andreeva Bay on the western shore of the Litsa Fjord about 45 kilometers from the Norwegian border. Problem was, it was being stored in open concrete tanks, which were full. Spent fuel types TK-11 and TK-18 were therefore being placed on the ground in containers near the overfilled tanks. The unsecured storage of the fuel violated any number of Russian and international regulations. The fear was that if something wasn’t done before the upcoming winter, the containers could develop cracks from ice and snow, and radioactive material could leak into the Fjord.

  Putin inherited the whole situation from Yeltsin, who had ignored it. Yeltsin had denied access to the area to experts from Norway and the U.S. It was not a headache Putin needed, so he put the thumb screws to Volskov to clean it up with the help of the Russian civilian nuclear inspection organization, Gosatomnadzor. Volskov had been pushing back, claiming he needed more funds, but Putin had made it clear that he would need to make do with what he had. And what galled Volskov most about the whole situation was that it was taking valuable time away from his private money-making endeavors, like using his position to help secure satellites for Western companies such as Cheyenne.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Volskov’s office was a shrine to former Soviet might. There were medals and sashes and photos of him standing proudly alongside Gorbachev, Chernenko, and Gromyko. He had a menushka doll of Ronald Reagan that got more diminutive with each layer, and a pair of Texas longhorns mounted on his wall — a gift from an American businessman who had decided to ingratiate himself to the Russians by sending over a small herd of cattle via a Federal Express jet.

  Volskov was an imposing figure at six feet, three inches tall. Slim and polished with silvery hair, he had a booming voice.

  “Sadityes, pozhalusta,” Volskov said, offering Zlotnikov a chair. “Moscow can be hot during the summer, no?” He wiped his brow with a handkerchief.

  “Too hot, General. I’ve come to talk about the satellite. When do you think we can get it up? The American wants it up.”

  “Next week,” Volskov said. “This American — Cannondale. What is his situation?”

  “We usually communicate with him through his people. He tends to keep his distance.”

  “A good businessman, no?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t worry about a thing. How are things at Riga-Tech?”

  “Not bad. The officers of the company applaud the government’s recent decision to increase satellite launches.”

  “Yes, I bet they do,” Volskov said, slightly annoyed by Zlotnikov’s sycophantic air. “Are we done, here?”

  “We are. I wish you a good weekend, sir. How do you plan to spend it?”

  The way Zlotnikov said it made Volskov shoot him a glare that was perhaps too revealing. Then again, maybe it was just an honest question.

  “With my family, of course, in the country.”

  “Ah, it’s a good time of year to be in the country.”

  “Indeed, it is. Good luck to you. You will keep me informed, no?”

  Zlotnikov showed himself out. It was a Friday. Volskov would indeed keep his promise to meet his family in the country for the weekend, but not before a little dalliance with a 17-year-old Uzbek girl who had recently been introduced to the good general.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Roughly 8,000 man-made objects larger than a softball circle the globe at any given moment. From deep inside of central Kazakhstan, one of the most remote places on the planet, number 8,001 was about to be introduced. The Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan was built in 1955 on a barren steppe at the Tyuratum junction on the right bank of the Syr Darya River where herds of wild horses and desert camels roam. Tyuratum was originally a water pump station on the railroad linking Moscow and Tashkent, an unlikely birthplace for the space race.

  Steeped in secrecy, the Russians had given the facility multiple names over the years to throw off the Americans — Zarya, Leninsky, Leninsk, Zvezdograd. Yelstin was the first to call it “Baikonur.” In an odd bit of post-Cold War irony, the Kazakhs now claimed rights to the facility and charged the Russians $115 million a year in rent.

  Baikonur, the oldest space launch facility in the world, was beginning to show its age. Paint chipped off buildings. Above all, the staff lacked the kind of camaraderie and fire that they’d had during the Space Race. Ideological verve had given way to commerce. Sputnik 1 — the first satellite — was launched from Baikonur. The rocket that carried Yuri Gaga
rin lifted off here. The founding components of the International Space Station left from this plot of land, and yet on this particular day, the minions who worked inside the facility saw it was merely a site where a communications satellite called “Cody” was getting primed for some rich American guy with a company in the Netherlands. General Volskov had come through with the satellite, just as he had promised.

  Like all elliptical satellites, Cody would make enlarged, ovalshaped orbits around the earth.

  The sky had become a crowded place at the dawn of the 21st century. LEOs or “low earth orbit” satellites circled East to West along the axis of the equator. Because they were only 200 to 500 miles up, they delivered spectacular shots of the globe. To fight the gravitational pull of the earth they moved fast — 17,000 miles per hour – circling the world in 90 minutes. When LEOs broke down or died natural deaths, their remains added to the space graveyard of rockets, frozen sewage and bits of metal that regularly hovers above the earth like cosmic headcheese.

  Within the LEO class there were Polar Satellites that circled the earth from north to south, peeling the planet like an orange in order to provide information such as highly accurate weather predictions.

  Further out were GEOs, or “geosynchronous equatorial orbit” satellites, which did not circle the earth. They floated in one place over the equator, 22,300 miles up — satellite and earth moving together in unison like a couple dancing. At certain points in the sky, GEOs and elliptical satellites get relatively close to one another.

  Since Earth takes 24 hours to circle on its axis, GEOs take a full 24 hours to circle the planet. Because they are so far out in space, GEOs have a broad view of earth. That’s why the Murdochs and Turners of the world use GEOs to send TV signals. But it wasn’t a businessman who first dreamed up GEOs. The reclusive Arthur C. Clarke talked about them in 1945, twenty-five years before the first one went up.

  Dotted through various other parts of the sky are spy satellites, mainly Russian and American, which have been circling the earth for more than 35 years. There are also GPS satellites.

  The launch team at Baikonor had just finished a breakfast of eggs, peppers, and stewed meat. Cody would go up the following day. They had been busily refurbishing it for more than three months now. All that was left were some last-minute downloads and tests. Once the bird was up, Cheyenne would finally be able to fill in the gaps in its network. The launch team would spend the day at their consoles making one last check that the satellite was correctly affixed and ready to go. It was a tedious but necessary act that would ensure that the satellite settled into its orbit, faced the right direction, and remained secure.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  It was now noon in Baikonor. Sergei Gudak, a twenty-six-yearold from Novosibirsk who had escaped the monotony of his timber-hauling hometown, was mindlessly entering software scripts into his computer in the air-conditioned room. He hated this part, close to the end of a satellite launch, the stage where any monkey could tap on keys just as easily as he could.

  What he really wished he was doing, though, was working on the international space station in the building just across the compound. That’s where his school friend, Leo, worked. That’s where all the leather jackets worked. He and Leo had come to Baikonor together, but Leo had better skills. Sergei knew he would get on the space station project eventually, but until then he would have to earn his stripes with satellite gigs. Still, as lonely as it sometimes got, it beat hanging around the bars and knocking up girls back home. He ate well, he was paid well, and he was learning a skill. Occasionally, something interesting happened.

  “Ok, step thirty-two,” he said, turning to his partner, Vasily, next to him. “Ready?”

  “Da.”

  Step thirty-two was a particularly tricky set of script, unlike thirty-three and thirty-four, which were a bit like breathing. Pressing a wrong key at thirty-two was more than a temporary setback. Screw it up and you ended up having to rewrite several hundred lines of code. That wasn’t something Sergei relished.

  Sergei and Vasily typed deliberately, methodically, mumbling instructions to one another. They scanned the code and log files for error messages. There was a sort of rhythm to the way they inserted the scripts, like riffs on a guitar. An hour later, it was done. Sergei rubbed his eyes, which seemed to have absolutely no water in them.

  “I’m going to need glasses soon,” he said.

  “No shit. Me, too. Want to move on to thirty-three?” Vasily asked.

  “Da. Let’s finish.”

  Sergei called out instructions from the manual as Vasily tapped the commands.

  “I know what to do,” Vasily said curtly.

  In that split second, somewhere beyond the computer screen, two young men in Yemen – Nabil and Hassan – young men about the same age as Sergei and Vasily, but a universe apart — waited for just the right moment.

  “Ready?” Nabil said to Hassan.

  “Yes.”

  “Now!”

  Nabil hurriedly entered the software patch as Hassan masked it

  with code that wouldn’t raise suspicion at the other end.

  Just then, an error message appeared on Sergei’s screen in Baikonor.

  “What’s that?” he said.

  “What?” asked Vasily.

  “I just got an error message.”

  “Probably a power surge or something.”

  “Maybe. I hope it didn’t affect the script,” Sergei said, pissed off at the prospect. He scanned the lines on the screen with his index finger. “Fine ... fine ... good,” he said, scrolling down. Okay. Good ... hey.”

  “What now?” Vasily sighed.

  “That’s funny?”

  “What’s funny?”

  “Nothing. I just hadn’t seen that before.”

  “It’s fine, Sergei. Don’t worry about it. I’m getting hungry again.”

  “Me, too. And we just ate. What’s the problem with this place?”

  “I don’t know. I’m always hungry.”

  Nabil and Hassan stared at their screens in Yemen in silence, anxiously waiting for some sign of success, but no immediate sign would come. It was impossible to know if the first patch had taken. It would be impossible to know if the second patch had taken. They wouldn’t know if anything had worked until the satellite was actually in its orbit.

  “Patience,” the old man cautioned them. “Do as we discussed. Allah will be with you.”

  Patience. It was the prime lesson that Nabil and Hassan had been taught in the training camps. Learning how to kill or hijack or manipulate through fear — all were secondary to patience. It was the ultimate weapon. It was their atom bomb to be dropped on the infidels at a time of their choosing – infidels too busy accumulating material things to notice. These infidels had the attention span of fish. They were like children with beards.

  Nabil and Hassan had seen it for themselves when they lived in the States — people flicking through endless television channels, unfinished books discarded on bedside tables, a general anxiety about attaining exactly what they wanted. It was sad to watch such weakness. It would be a joyous experience witnessing its destruction.

  Nabil had studied his software programming at Stanford. He also spent six months on an internship at NASA’s Ames Research Center. Wherever he was, he excelled. His classmates expected him to do what everyone else was doing at the time— buy some black clothing and join a dot.com with other like-minded Valley Bolsheviks in hopes of doing an IPO and moving to Maui six months later. His American friends had absolutely no suspicion that he was part of a very different revolution.

  It was particularly hard for Nabil in America. He would go for as long as six months without hearing from his contacts. He often wondered if his talents would ever be called into action. He didn’t want to be like the old men back home, losing themselves in the perpetual haze of nostalgia, reminiscing about the one great journey they had made in their lives. He wanted action. And in those moments of despair,
he contemplated going to the side of the infidels. Despite their greed, their lust, and their arrogance, he actually liked them.

  Yes, patience was difficult. The longer Nabil was away from the ways of Islam, the more assimilated he became to the ways of the West. He liked going to Hollywood movies. He liked Cool Ranch Doritos and Chinese takeout. He liked the women with their white skin and big smiles. In America, most girls were willing to spread their legs for little more than a couple of beers and a sentimental song on a jukebox. Still, Nabil’s soul remained still. He knew he was a soldier in a new jihad, and he looked forward to serving.

  The old man understood the frustration of boys like Nabil and Hassan. Patience was always harder for the youth, which was why the boys had been plucked back. These boys were his thoroughbreds; he was their trainer. Too much had been invested. Mr. Bush’s war against Islam would end in his own defeat and humiliation. The old man would be damned if he was going to let all the hard work evaporate. They would all be damned if they failed.

  It was now two o’clock in the afternoon, Yemen time. The two Russians, Sergei and Vasily, had been away from their computers for lunch.

  “They’re back. Prepare for the second patch,” Nabil said.

  “Where are we?” Sergei asked Vasily.

  “Just completing forty-two.”

  “Good. Let me know when you’re ready to move to forty-three.” Sergei picked at a piece of shredded beef that had tied itself around one of his molars. He had reported the error message on his screen to one of his superiors over lunch, who told him it was probably nothing.

  “One moment,” Vasily said. Tap, tap, tap .... “okay” ... tap, tap , tap .... “there.”

  Sergei straightened in his chair, cracked his fingers, and jumped back into the river of software script. The air was becoming stale in the room. He hated this point - the point where it all became so mindless that he sometimes forgot where he was or what he was doing. He shook his head to wake himself up and slapped his left cheek.