Straits of Power

by Joe Buff

  Jeffrey took the orders back from Bell, entered the code to rearm the incendiary, and gingerly put the pouch in his safe. “XO, have a messenger get our guests in here. They’re right next door but I want to stand on ceremony. . . . For now, you’re command duty officer. Stay in the control room and keep an eye on things. We’re by no means out of the woods.”

  “Understood.”

  “This could take me a while. Our defector seems in a mad rush about something not yet specified, and he hasn’t exactly hit it off with our CIA friend.”

  “Trouble, Skipper?”

  “When have we had a mission that wasn’t trouble?”

  Felix, Parker, and Mohr stood around Jeffrey’s tiny fold-down desk. They all tried talking at once.

  “Quiet,” Jeffrey snapped. “One at a time. Klaus, you put yourself in harm’s way to help us. We did the same for you. So we’re even. Calm down, prioritize, tell me what I need to know.”

  “Plan Pandora’s purpose is to collapse the Israeli command, control, and communications net.”

  “We suspected that already,” Parker said.

  “Don’t interrupt. Continue, Zeno.”

  “The method of attack is based on a new type of quantum computer. . . . Let me brief you the way I briefed officials in Berlin.”

  “Finally,” Parker said under his breath.

  Mohr ignored him. “What I do uses quantum entanglement to achieve something called quantum teleportation, to infiltrate enemy firewalls and virus filters.”

  “What’s quantum entanglement?” Jeffrey asked.

  “Two entangled photons act as if they’re directly connected regardless of how far apart they become. That was one of Einstein’s discoveries, a basic property of nature, part of the way the universe works.”

  “I don’t see where this is leading.”

  “You will, Captain, soon, and getting this from me is necessary. In quantum computing in general, information is carried by the photons’ spin, their polarization, instead of the zeros and ones in conventional electronic binary computers.”

  “How does this help you attack anybody?”

  “I control swarms of entangled photons moving in a sequence that makes them look like random strays, the ultimate in seemingly harmless noise. I send one photon from each entangled pair into the targeted networks. That’s step one. Then, at my end, I slow their partners to a walking pace for a microsecond, long enough to be able to alter their spins to become specific bits in a computer worm’s program-code string. That’s step two.”

  “I still don’t see what this has to do with cyberwar.”

  “The distant photons automatically acquire the same new spin because they’re entangled with the ones at my end. So they too suddenly form into the worm, already past every firewall. It’s as if I reach across into someone else’s systems through another dimension. That’s why scientists call it teleportation.”

  “It happens instantly, this spin change at the far end?”

  “As I said, that’s what quantum entanglement means. There’s much more to it, to be able to harness that instant action-at-a-distance without violating the light-speed restriction on any transfer of measurable information. Solving that was one of my most significant insights. Unlike all the other countries working on practical teleportation, I looked for and found a way to accomplish it where I didn’t need someone cooperating with me at the far end, performing the things required to keep Einstein’s speed limit satisfied. The lack of that need for friendly assistance is what starts to make the quantum computer a weapon instead of a calculator. . . . There’s the lesser issue of decoherence, which is the term for the entanglement gradually falling apart as the photons interact more and more with their environment. I invented a method to hold back decoherence for much longer than anyone else has been able to do.”

  “And then what?”

  “The other crucial thing was that I realized the Israelis and everyone else were viewing quantum computing in a very different way. They wanted it to replace much slower classical computers. I worked toward hacking normal computers, servers, and routers using quantum computer entanglement teleportation. That’s my second breakthrough. It completes the weaponization concept. And I and my team, in secret, we got there first.”

  Parker snorted. “It sounds like a bunch of science fiction gobbledygook to me.”

  “How much do you know about nuclear physics?” Jeffrey asked.

  “Nothing, frankly.”

  “Well, I know a little something. Proceed, please, Herr Mohr, but try to wrap it up.”

  “To summarize, a flood of seemingly random photons are made to collate themselves into countless copies of the worm, too late to be stopped. The quantum worm then propagates further once inside each infected processor. There’s no need to dupe any users into opening attachments. The worm paralyzes operating systems and launches a massive denial-of-service attack at everything from military headquarters to fighter-jet avionics to cell-phone switching centers to battle-tank fire-control computers, and power plants and even digitized data-link radios carried by infantry. The multiplier effect, the negative synergy, of so many nodes and facilities crashing at once is catastrophic.” Mohr was breathless by the time he was done.

  Jeffrey glanced at Felix. “Lieutenant? How much on-scene vetting could you do before the final extraction?”

  “Klaus gave references to unclassified work on the theory, and some lab experiments that showed the principles did work. Tunable laser diodes, narrow band-pass wavelength filters, beam-splitter crystals, semireflecting mirrors, and a bunch of other, weirder stuff. We checked them on-line at a pay terminal. Some of the papers were even written in Israel. Tel Aviv University, and the Technion in Haifa.”

  “Well,” Jeffrey told Mohr, “there’s plenty of time to sort this all out when we get you to America.”

  “You don’t understand. Plan Pandora has been moved up. Berlin must have suspected something, either a leak or a spoiling attack by the Allies against the Afrika Korps. Their worst fears will be confirmed when they find the dead Kampfschwimmer and no sign of my corpse.”

  “What’s their launch date for the offensive?”

  “Six A.M. Tuesday, Berlin time.”

  Jeffrey was shocked. “That’s way earlier than we thought. Way, way earlier.”

  “We have to stop the computer attack soon, or all is lost.”

  “You want us to go after the attack team?”

  “There are too many of them.”

  “Explain.”

  “There are eleven separate teams, to make sure that at least one succeeds. Every gear set in existence has been thrown into this. Different approach routes and methods of attack. Some are going by U-boat, after covert pickup on the Turkish coast. Others will ride on merchant ships. At least one will go with help from local anti-Israel extremists into southern Lebanon.”

  “Details? Routes? Specific targets?”

  “I was insulated from that part, for security. But there are two methods of inserting the entangled photons for the worm. One is by directly tapping a fiber-optic land line.”

  “So the teams need to get into Israel?”

  “And survive long enough to hook up the equipment to the lines, which takes less effort than you might think.”

  “What’s the other method?”

  “It’s heavier, less mobile, but it can work from outside Israel’s borders.”

  Jeffrey didn’t like the sound of this at all.

  “It involves more hardware to protect against quantum decoherence through the open air, and a special transmitter.”

  “Transmitter?”

  “Some military radars work at frequencies ideal for my purposes. Radar, like all radios, and in fact all electromagnetic radiation, uses photons too, just as light does.”

  “Yup.”

  “The transmitter is what’s called a maser, the equivalent of a laser for the proper sort of radar beam. . . . There’s a big radar installation on Mount Hermo
n in northern-most Israel. Their antennas are one portal for picking up a maser beam of entangled radar-frequency photons. Others are any patrolling radar-surveillance planes. Even a fighter aircraft can have its radars infiltrated, and a maintenance or intell avionics download would then inject the photons into the wider networks. Entangled photons imprint on photons of different energy, and even on electrons, so they pass right through all the modems, amplifiers, and connectors involved.”

  “How perfect, pervasive, would this assault really be?”

  “There’ll be isolated pockets that escape contamination, but most such people won’t be able to find each other amid the chaos. Nothing wireless will work because the central-station software won’t be functioning. Remember, Israelis for years have been heavily dependent on cell phones instead of land lines. Cell phones can only talk through central stations via towers, they can’t talk one to one, on their own. The same applies to modern data-link army radio sets. They aren’t walkie-talkies.”

  “So what are you suggesting?”

  “We have to get to Israel before any of the attack teams. I have a patch that counteracts the worm, but only if it’s injected before the first worm arrives.”

  “It’s like a vaccine, not a cure?”

  “Exactly. I can get it into Israel’s networks, the same way the German teams plan to attack.”

  “So you want me to take Challenger toward Israel, raise an antenna mast, and beam in this patch?”

  “If only it were that simple, Captain. To be absolutely sure of success, it has to go in through a fiber-optic line. That version of my equipment is the only type I could possibly bring out with me. The other type is nowhere near man packable.”

  “Say that again. Slowly, in simpler words.”

  “You need to sneak me into Israel, now, so I can tap into a fiber-optic trunk somewhere.”

  Chapter 39

  Mohr’s statement hung in the air pregnantly. Parker exploded. “This is absurd! This man is asking us to do his dirty work for him! He’s using us to deliver the virus!”

  Mohr was deeply offended. “I am not a saboteur. I gave up everything to help you.”

  “Quiet,” Jeffrey said, “everybody. . . . I have one big question for you, Klaus. Why didn’t you warn Israel directly?”

  “Warning alone would do no good. You can’t stop the worm simply by knowing it’s coming. No normal computer-security methods have any effect against quantum teleportation. If Israel shuts down all their radars and signals-intercept equipment to avoid penetration that way, they’ll leave themselves blind before an imminent Axis blitzkreig, and they’d still be wide open to the worm via fiber optic.”

  “Couldn’t you slip them the patch conventionally, on a disk, like with regular virus protection?”

  “The patch’s being distributed by regular means to all the users in Israel who need it would be spotted at once by German agents. I’d have been dangling from a noose within hours, and Berlin would work to replicate the unique expertise I intentionally hoarded. It might take them a year, but eventually they’d be able to recalibrate each of the handmade gear sets with a different worm, while also making more gear sets.”

  Jeffrey nodded. “And you wouldn’t be there to help Israel the next time, because you’d be dead.”

  “The only reason I’m valuable to you, Captain, now that the consulate knows I disappeared, is that the Axis is under such immense strategic pressure to keep up their war momentum after their recent setbacks. The Afrika Korps juggernaut is primed to jump off from their starting positions soon. To cancel things and wait a year to try again would be militarily unacceptable. They need to use the worm I already programmed for them, the one for which I have a patch. That’s why we must hurry. Berlin’s best choice is to push their quantum-attack teams forward urgently. Think of what that means, Captain. . . . Israel is in tremendous danger.”

  “Or at least, so you say. Don’t try to stampede me. I want to understand why you didn’t offer your full assistance to Israel weeks ago, quantum-computer equipment and everything.”

  “I did. I contacted them, indirectly, before I reached you more elaborately. The Israelis traced me back to my group. That’s when my staff at the consulate started dying, and then they took a shot at me. The Mossad must have thought the simplest way to stop Pandora would be to kill me right away, in Istanbul. And they’re viciously untrusting people, Captain. With the atom bombs they planted in Germany several years ago, sometimes I think they’re outright fanatics.”

  “Mr. Parker?”

  “That last part in and of itself makes sense. It’s consistent with things we know independently, including the report of the hit attempt by our agent in the brothel. But as you and I discussed with others at the Pentagon, Israel wanting to murder Mohr doesn’t somehow make him more reliable for us.”

  “You seem to have done a flip-flop since that meeting.”

  “That meeting was before I had to sit in your control room and hear Ohio being destroyed, Captain.”

  Jeffrey winced. Mohr looked dismayed at hearing this news.

  Jeffrey grew angry that Parker carped on the subject of Ohio, undermining Jeffrey in front of other people. He pointedly changed the subject, and became more distant and formal.

  “Lieutenant Estabo, report your assessment of what the first contact with Herr Mohr and your assault on the safe house indicate. Mr. Parker here did not sit in on any of that.”

  Felix took a deep breath. Reading Jeffrey, his manner became more crisp. “Our on-site validation was based on unclassified reference sources only. It looked good enough to continue with the extraction, but, objectively speaking, proves nothing about Herr Mohr’s claims. . . . And while from the German perspective the outcome of the safe-house battle would have been uncertain, it is conceivable that the supposed need to assault the Kampfschwimmer was in actuality a design to drag us into a double bluff.”

  “Lieutenant?” Jeffrey didn’t follow Felix.

  “Sir, the requirement for a firefight with casualties on our side might have had an undercurrent of psychological warfare. People value most those things that are scarce and hard to get. It’s human nature.”

  “Granted. How does that apply here? I still don’t see it.”

  “The need to prepare and execute combat against a fortified place, suffering potential KIAs and WIAs, as indeed we did, could be mental sleight of hand to get us to believe that the thing we fought for and won was a valuable treasure . . . when in fact the thing we obtained was, is, an infernal device we’ve carried into our own fortress, Challenger, I mean, and maybe Israel.”

  “So the computer modules are like a Trojan horse? The Germans let you win at the safe house on purpose?”

  “That scenario can’t be eliminated, sir. It’s possible the Kampfschwimmer were sacrificed intentionally by the Axis High Command. It’s even possible they were volunteer suicide troops.”

  “They let you kill them?” Jeffrey asked in disbelief.

  “They might not have let us, sir, knowingly, themselves, but Herr Mohr did provide us with tactical information and the element of surprise, which German planners ought to have been aware made it likely that our attack on the Kampfschwimmer team would succeed.”

  Mohr began to back into a corner, literally. “How can you all be so paranoid? There is no time for such bickering!”

  Jeffrey didn’t respond. He considered everything Felix had said.

  “Lieutenant, sweat the details of your hypothesis. Was there anything during the safe-house assault that raises doubts about what really went on?”

  “I hadn’t considered it that way, Captain.”

  “Do so.”

  “Well . . . Our initial entry might have been a little too easy. The way they opened the door to Gamal Salih without him having to make more of a scene.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Hmmm . . . The way one German lay over the quantum equipment, as if protecting it with his body.”

  “He
wore a flak vest?”

  “Yes. And not all of them did as we went in.”

  “So one Kampfschwimmer shielded the gear instead of helping repulse your team?”

  “Maybe,” Felix said. “And you’d think that when it was evident they were being overrun, he’d have destroyed the computer stuff to keep it out of our hands, not sacrificed his life to keep the gadgets intact.”

  “Where was Herr Mohr while all this went on?”

  “Well out of the line of fire, in an armored limo.”

  “And what did you mean when you said that they might’ve been suicide troops? Suicide fighters kill themselves to kill other people, not help them.”

  “Not necessarily, sir, if you think about it. They could try to be fall guys without us realizing it, as part of the psychological gambit. That’s what I meant about it all being mental sleight of hand. Plus, they didn’t help us. They pretended to help us. That’s how they got the Trojan horse through the gates.”

  “Oh boy,” Jeffrey said. “Talk about wheels within wheels.”

  “But the quantum gear works,” Mohr insisted. “I saw the results of the field tests in Turkey. We shut whole areas down until the worm’s built-in time limit expired.”

  “That’s consistent with things we do know,” Parker said. “Turkey has suffered some inexplicable system outages lately.”

  “Why wasn’t I told that before?” Jeffrey demanded.

  “It didn’t come up. And you didn’t need to know. And it only strengthens the case against Mohr. If it’s cause and effect between his equipment and those outages, which I remind you all is unproven, that would merely indicate that the malevolent hardware Mohr has with him does work. It demonstrates nothing whatsoever about him having a patch that would save Israel from some bizarre teleportation virus.”

  “Herr Mohr,” Jeffrey said, looking directly at the man, hard. “You’re asking us, in effect, to invade an ally, Israel, with which American relations are already strained. You’re asking us to not tell them we’re coming, go in covertly ourselves, and jigger with their command and control, supposedly for their own good.”