The Sword of Cyrus: A Thriller (A Rossler Foundation Mystery Book 4)

by JC Ryan

  The next morning, Daniel and Luke arrived in Raj’s office where he’d set up several extra computers so that they could watch more than one feed at a time. It was nearly nine a.m. when they got their first hit. Raj had to check another screen to bring up the right computer, and when he did, Daniel and Luke knew immediately that they had a problem – a big one. The computer belonged to someone on the nanotech translation team. What was on the screen wasn’t particularly sensitive by itself, thanks to Luke’s insistence that the blocks of information be broken up among the translators. But, if it were put together with what probably surrounded it, it could be. Daniel instructed Luke and Raj to continue to gather data for the next few days, so they could determine exactly what the spies were after. It would take some time to make a final determination, but they had to let it continue to see just where their problem would come to roost.

  One thing they needed to be careful about was accusing the Middle Easterners alone. Who knew how many of the employees were involved in this?

  It was important to let it run for a while so they could determine with more precision who was taking pictures, and what part of the nanotech program they were targeting. Furthermore, what were they doing with it? Would it be possible for someone from the outside to put it together and get a full picture of the sensitive information? If so, who would that be? Discovering the plot was a lucky accident. Getting to the bottom of it would be arduous and painstaking. Luke wasn’t looking forward to the next few days.

  After a week it was manifest that the translators were working blind. The timestamps on the Spyfly video and the synched screen data showed information, incomplete as it was, about nanotechnology in medicine, construction, physics and electronics, along with a bit here and there on other unrelated disciplines. The scope was bewildering, and the only thing Luke could think to suggest to interpret it was to let Roy in on the discovery and ask him to suggest ways in which the data could be used for nefarious purposes. The trouble was, now that everyone was a suspect it had to be considered that Roy could be in on it himself.

  Luke solved that problem by suggesting hacking into Roy’s computers and phone, and deploying one of the Spyflies in Roy’s own lab. Daniel didn’t like it; even Raj, as paranoid as he was, didn’t like it. It didn’t feel right to spy on a friend, but Luke insisted that since he was responsible for security, it should be his decision and until proven otherwise everyone except the three of them and a few of the other founders was under suspicion. He was upset over the gaps that had allowed so many undercover agents into their inner circles, and adamant that they check Roy out before letting him know that they knew what they knew. They couldn’t risk that leak if they wanted to discover what was really important; who was behind this and why.

  Much to everyone’s relief, they didn’t discover anything to be suspicious about while watching Roy. Other than some embarrassing footage of him looking in the mirror and telling himself not to be such an idiot around women, he wasn’t doing anything secretive. It was time to bring him in on the problem and find out what could happen if the bits and pieces of information were somehow put together like a jigsaw puzzle. There was also some discussion of bringing Karsten into the loop, but he had less expertise with nanotechnology per se than Roy did. He was a brilliant researcher in his field and a superlative administrator; nevertheless, nanotech wasn’t his bailiwick.

  It looked certain that it had something to do with the Middle East, since they hadn’t found any of the other translators taking pictures of it. What baffled them was what was happening to the information once a written record of it was in the hands of unauthorized personnel. None of the translators had the background to take advantage of what they did find, and it was still too fragmented to do any good anyway. Roy opined that it would take a powerful computer to try to put it together in context. If anyone did, though, it could do significant damage.

  The medical fragments had to do with delivery of foreign substances through the blood/brain barrier. Engineered properly, that technology could facilitate mass poisoning or contagion just by scattering it into the air over a city, or even contaminating the water supply with it. Every other discipline represented in the stolen data had equally terrifying uses. It was critical to determine where the information was going.

  Raj wanted to report to Daniel and Luke what Roy had determined, and he didn’t think it could wait. He made a call and asked Daniel to carve out some private time with them. Even though Roy hadn’t been very specific, he had a bad feeling about it. Maybe it was just industrial espionage; that would be bad enough. But his instincts were that it was worse. That bad feeling turned out to be justified as he listened to Roy giving details in his report to Daniel.

  Daniel had cut straight to the chase.

  “Is there anything in these fragments of information that could lead to use of the information for military purposes?” Raj had been through a lot with Daniel, but he’d never before heard such hardness in Daniel’s voice.

  “Oh, sure,” was Roy’s casual answer. The others waited for him to elaborate.

  “Look, they have information that could, if they had the full picture, let them build nanobots, nanoreplicators, nanoviruses and poisons, even DNA-specific nanopoisons. They’d have to have the full picture, though. And what we’ve discovered seems to point to them only having pieces of it.” None of the nervousness or indications of Roy’s shy nature were present in this statement. He was in his element, and nothing could shake him except perhaps Alica or one of the other girls walking in at that moment. Fortunately, he was spared that.

  “Help me out with some of this, Roy. Tell me what you can do with a nanopoison or virus. Just to be sure I’m following you,” Daniel added.

  “Well, one thing is delivery of foreign substances through the blood-brain barrier. Engineered properly, that technology could facilitate mass poisoning or contagion just by scattering it into the air over a city, or even contaminating the water supply with it.” Roy was so matter-of-fact that Daniel was certain he didn’t even recognize the human toll that would take.

  “Holy crap!” exclaimed Luke, his eyes wide.

  “Yeah, you could say that. With a DNA-specific nanopoison, you could put it in, say, the water at a diplomatic dinner. Everyone would drink it, but only the person it was intended to target would get sick, or die. You could even engineer it to make it look like food poisoning, so a bunch of people would get sick, but only the target would die. No one would ever be able to figure out that it was a murder,” Roy said, not without a certain satisfaction. It wasn’t that he was cold. To him, it was like a videogame. Exciting, but not real.

  “I think I’m already sick. Why is the word déjà vu coming up in my head? Or should I say déjà poo – I have heard this shit before?” Daniel muttered.

  “All of this was filtered out before it went to the researchers by the security committee,” remarked Luke. “So no one has the full picture. And you say they’d need that to make this stuff?” His only hope was that the information was too incomplete to use.

  “Yeah. Of course, if they had a powerful enough computer, they might be able to piece some of it together,” answered Roy, unwittingly dashing Luke’s hope.

  “Or they could get it from someone on the security committee,” injected Raj, who could always be trusted to have the most suspicious mind of all of them.

  The four looked at each other uneasily. All of them were on that committee. But surely everyone on that committee was above suspicion? It had to be someone outside that was getting the information. Looking at the list of names of those who had been caught taking photos of their computer screens, it was obvious that every one of them had been sponsored for employment by Iran. Was someone in Iran just doing a bit of industrial espionage to get a jump on the competition? Or did they have another, more serious problem on their hands? They needed more information, preferably some idea about the communications these people were transmitting, and they needed it fast.

 
Examining the individuals’ company email was a no-brainer, but Raj could find nothing of alarm in any of the messages he intercepted. Even running it through some software that would detect most common coding algorithms failed to find a single message that was anything but professional, between the translators, or a couple of private messages. It was frowned upon to use company resources to keep in touch with friends and family, but everyone did it and as long as it didn’t interfere with work no one made an issue of it.

  Still, any personal messages found on company computers were about daily life in the US, how nice things were in Boulder and in their company-provided living quarters, and how much they missed everyone at home. Completely innocuous. Luke even tapped some contacts in the federal security agencies to help with hacking into the suspects’ social media accounts, phone records and private email accounts of the suspects. Still nothing.

  Nanonukes

  Late February, Esfahan

  Despite Roy’s belief, Dalir Jahandar’s scientists were indeed able to make use of much of the material being translated at the Rossler Foundation. Even before the translators were discovered taking photos of their computer screens, the lab in Iran was already in possession of some important and useful information for Dalir’s cause, thanks to Alica’s efforts. Research had been completed to plan the weapons of mass destruction that Dalir had ordered.

  The first incoming information that lent itself to such a purpose was the notion of nanopoisons. At first, they didn’t see anything useful having to do with DNA-specific poisons, and in any case it would have been both difficult and risky to obtain DNA from some of the most sought-after targets. Instead, they began to develop nano-dust applications that mimicked outbreaks of disease common to the presumed target countries. Realizing that the method of delivery would have to be tested, the first to be developed was a nasty little artificial virus that mimicked Ebola so perfectly that even the doctors on staff couldn’t tell the difference.

  While the infectious-disease specialists were working with nanotech scientists to develop that, epidemiologists were working with others to develop a deployment method. The most efficient of course would have been something like a crop-duster to spread the nano-dust in a precise pattern. However, that had some very obvious disadvantages. While a low-flying plane could more accurately deliver the payload, there were bound to be some survivors who noticed it and remembered later. It could be traceable. Something more subtle would be required.

  Stealth bombers were suggested, but Iran had no such item, and China, which did, wasn’t likely to lend them for testing. Cruise and other types of missiles, gravity bombs, all had the same disadvantage. They would be detected.

  Eventually, it was settled that small drones deployed from the edge of the effective range to targets hundreds of miles away would be the best method of delivery. As early as the first year of the century, such drones had been deployed against Middle Eastern targets that the US deemed terrorists; why not give them a taste of their own medicine? However, since Ebola was not a common disease in America, the first test took place over Africa. Naturally, Dalir had no desire to harm Muslims, so it was determined that a ship would carry the drone with its deadly payload around the Horn of Africa to near the coast of Kenya, where it would find the shortest direct flight to Arua, Uganda. There, many Christians would succumb to the artificial virus, or nano-dust as the scientists preferred to call it, assuming that it worked.

  ~~~

  The first strike in Dalir’s war was spectacularly successful, though the cloud of deadly dust spread somewhat further than anticipated due to winds aloft when the drone’s tanks were opened. Not only Arua, with its primarily Catholic population, but also parts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo were affected. The latter were tiny villages in the deep jungle, and didn’t cause much stir worldwide. However, forty percent of the fifty-thousand or so souls in Arua sickened and died, in a pattern that didn’t follow the normal spread of Ebola at all. Instead of an index case, all patients became ill at about the same time. Doctors responding to the emergency were puzzled. Ebola spreads from human to human, though contact with infected fluids, or from contact on surfaces where the infected fluids have been. This illness appeared to have been airborne. Nor did infected patients infect their families, as happened with the normal progression of the disease. In addition, although there were effective treatments developed during the 2014 outbreak in West African countries, the remoteness, uneducated population as well as the poor medical facilities and lack of treatment caused more than 24,000 deaths in just a few weeks. Even those who were fortunate enough to receive the treatment died, leading doctors to wonder if they were dealing with a new strain.

  In America, Dr. Hannah Price saw the memo and had a moment’s curiosity. Her current project was at a critical point, so she thought no more about it, other than to forward the memo to Rebecca Rossler, a fellow researcher whom she’d met during the 9th Cycle virus pandemic. Rebecca read it, shuddered at the reminder of a deadly virus with a mysterious beginning, and thought no more about it for several days.

  In Esfahan, a feast was prepared for the scientists whose project had given such spectacular results. Despite the fact that they hadn’t refined the nano-dust to spare most Muslims, and that a few were killed in the attack on Arua, no one questioned that it had been a success. They now knew how to poison thousands of people at a time in a stealthy manner, and pass it off as a naturally-occurring disease long enough to escape detection. No survivor in Arua noticed or remembered a mysterious flying object that had rained death from the sky.

  The next step was to determine what diseases the nano-poisons for the target countries should mimic. For that, they needed some direction, including decisions on where the weapon would be used when the real war began.

  While this victory was being planned and implemented, another team of scientists was eagerly working on the hints they’d seen in the 10th Cycle translations about a nano-nuclear weapon. Fragments of the translation were painstakingly compared, pieced together and the missing information interpolated. Their research was behind the bioweapon research, but not by far and since Alica started sending them information they were making rapid progress. Another huge leap in progress came with the fragment that mentioned a deuterium-tritium mixture. Now they were getting somewhere! However, before they could test the theory, a supply of each of the rare materials would be required. While some nuclear scientists discussed and researched where or how to obtain them, others considered how to get the resulting bombs, tiny as they were to be, into the target countries.

  ~~~

  March, Esfahan

  Before any conclusion about where to get rare and expensive tritium had been reached, a fragment of 10th Cycle information came through that made the discussions moot. Fortuitously, the ongoing recruitment efforts also brought in a new scientist who was knowledgeable in the chemistry of heavy water.

  “You all know of course that deuterium can be collected from seawater, where it occurs naturally. The process to collect it is simple, whether you choose to use distillation or electrolysis. I presume that you would prefer to collect it ourselves, rather than purchasing the quantities we will need for hundreds of these small bombs?” Those who’d been working tirelessly for weeks resented the new man’s arrogant demeanor, but they couldn’t fault his knowledge.

  “Indeed. There is no need to alert any attention to our project here,” someone answered.

  “The real question, then, is tritium. In the past, this substance has been collected during a fusion process. Need I ask if you have built a fusion reactor?” At that moment, the new scientist was seconds from bodily harm from some of the veterans, but the leader forestalled any violence with his answer.

  “You may ask. The answer of course, is no.” Spoken with a sarcastic twist, it sounded more like a slap in the face than an admission of failure.

  “Of course. However, I have read the fragment of information that has come to us from the 10th Cyc
le library, regarding bombardment of lithium with Continuous Laser Energy Compression, or CLEC, for which we also have to thank the 10th Cycle. You have built such a laser device, yes?” Fortunately, the new man had finally picked up the subtext, and was tempering his words with a more conciliatory tone of voice.

  “Yes. We thought it may become useful in our research,” the lead scientist answered, curious now as to where this was going.

  “Indeed. Have you attempted this bombardment?” the new man persisted.

  “We have, however it has not produced tritium that we can detect.” That should put the newcomer in his place, the lead scientist added mentally.

  But, the new man surprised him with some truly relevant information. “Because we are missing some information, and I believe I know what it is. We must immerse the lithium in seawater before bombardment. Lithium alone does not have the required free neutrons to capture in the chemical reaction.” A note of triumph crept back into his voice.

  “Are you certain it is so simple?” asked the lead scientist, now understanding that the new man was indeed superior in knowledge.

  He knew it, too. Now the arrogance was back. “Do you question my expertise?”

  “No, no, of course not.” The lead scientist backed down altogether, and thereby lost his position to the new man, an insufferable egotist. A few of the others began to plot the man’s destruction, as soon as they’d obtained all the knowledge he had to contribute. It didn’t pay to walk into an established pecking order and try to be the alpha rooster.

  And so, miraculously, the problem of fueling the nanoweapons was solved. Massive effort went into producing the first fuels and continued after the scientists took away minute amounts for testing. By the time the date for the attack was set, they were ready to test the power of the reaction.

  In a normal fusion reaction, the energy is confined and used to heat water to steam, which in turn drives turbines to produce electricity. Because the relatively small radioactive output is captured to breed more tritium, the only byproduct is helium, a harmless gas. What Dalir’s scientists were trying to do would instead release the energy. Readily available information online revealed that approximately 250 kilos of fuel, half deuterium, half tritium, would release perhaps 1,000 megawatts of energy in a matter of an instant, equivalent at least to a fifty megaton nuclear reaction; more than four times the power of the Hiroshima bomb. Translating this to the power released by a nanoweapon was merely theory. They would have to test it to determine the amount of fuel needed in their bombs.