The Pandora Deception--A Novel

by David Bruns

  But there was nothing to be done. The director had approved the plan on the spot and ordered Don to “make it happen.” To add insult to injury, it seemed to Dre that Mattias was pretty okay with seeing Don Riley squirm on the end of a bureaucratic hook.

  “We haven’t gotten any useful leads out of the financial-transaction data, sir,” Michael said in an even voice.

  Don let his sour expression speak for itself.

  “What about the encryption on the website?” Don asked.

  “No new progress since last report, sir,” Michael said.

  Don’s complexion reddened further. “I’m disappointed, Mr. Goodwin. You and I both know there is no such thing as unbreakable code. If someone wrote that code, you have to find a way to get us inside. That’s why you’re here, Michael.”

  Dre could feel the rest of the room getting restless, undoubtedly experiencing the same discomfort she was feeling at seeing her colleague getting chewed out by the boss. Janet started to speak, but Michael put his hand on her knee to stop her.

  “I understand, sir,” he said.

  Don seemed to realize his criticism had overstepped and he quickly moved on to the next case file.

  Michael stayed silent. As soon as the meeting ended, he stood and immediately left the room. When they got back to the Cave, he was already at his desk, all three of his monitors loaded with scrolling code. Michael, hands folded in his lap, stared at the monitors.

  Dre and Janet exchanged glances. They had seen this look on Michael before. He was hunting for something, a pattern in the code, the way the coder had arranged the program, something that would give him the clue he needed to get inside.

  He might not even know what it was, but it was in there—somewhere—and only he could find it. They knew better than to disturb him.

  The morning crawled by as she and Janet researched financial transactions. At lunchtime, Dre stood behind Michael and cleared her throat.

  “It’s lunchtime, Michael.”

  “Not hungry. Thanks.”

  She watched lines of code slowly scroll in tandem down the screen. Michael’s breathing was even as his eyes flicked across the monitors.

  When they got back from lunch, Michael still had not moved. Dre placed a roast beef sandwich by his keyboard, but it remained untouched for the rest of the afternoon. She and Janet slogged through another round of financial leads to no avail.

  It was nearly seven o’clock in the evening when Michael sat up straight in his chair and punched a button on his computer to stop the scrolling text.

  “There” was all he said.

  Janet and Dre gathered around Michael’s computer. He highlighted a single line of code on each screen.

  “What do you see?” he asked.

  “I see three lines of code, Michael,” Janet said. “What am I looking for?”

  Michael broke into a grin. “All these lines of code serve the same function in the same program, but they’re all different, why?”

  Dre looked more closely at the three screens. She recognized the source code for the Mahdi website, but he was looking at three different versions.

  “I’ll bite, Michael,” she said. “Tell me why you’ve got three different versions of the same source code.”

  He pointed at the screen on the right. “This is live from the website. These other two are copies we took after the last two Mahdi broadcasts,” he said. “After each event, we took a copy of the source code so we could analyze it offline.”

  “So why are they different?” Janet asked. Her tone suggested she was getting a little frustrated.

  “That’s just it,” Michael said. “They shouldn’t be different, but they are.”

  Dre studied all three lines, all places where they had tried to gain entry into the website. “I don’t get it. They updated their code, so what?”

  Michael shook his head. “That’s not what’s happening. When we copied the website, it responded by changing the code. That’s why every time we tried something new it failed.”

  “Now I’m really confused, Michael,” Janet said. “How about you explain to me like I’m a five-year-old, because that’s what I feel like right now.”

  Michael’s tone, normally calm, was tense with excitement. “Our intervention forced the code to change. What does that mean?”

  Janet shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  But Dre knew now. “It’s metamorphic encryption,” she said. “If you copy the data, you change the state.”

  Michael clapped. “Exactly, Dre!”

  “I understand what you’re saying, but I don’t understand what it means,” Janet said, looking from Michael to Dre.

  “I wrote a paper last year on the future of dynamic encryption, so I know a little bit about it.” He turned back to the screens. “But this website is something I’ve only read about and even that was in a top-secret document. There’s only one place in the world even close to implementing this kind of tech.”

  “Well?” Janet demanded.

  “Israel,” Michael said. “I think the Israelis built this website.”

  CHAPTER 20

  Project Deliverance, undisclosed location in Sudan

  It turned out that if you removed all the financial and personal distractions from a group of scientists at the top of their intellectual game, they turned into children.

  Not a single person in the Project Deliverance common room had to apply for a grant for next year or worry about their next review from the university board. No one had to deal with a significant other having a bad day or worry about the latest political crisis in their home country.

  All they had to do was work—and they loved it.

  There was no such thing as small talk in this group. Everything was shop talk. Over community meals, they swapped stories of horrific symptoms, gruesome patient deaths, and side notes of arcane genetic humor that often caused the entire group to break into uproarious laughter.

  On his rare site visits, JP smiled along with them in these moments. Although he enjoyed the camaraderie, he was intellectually so far out of his depth with this group that he didn’t even bother trying to keep up. On the other hand, Talia seemed perfectly at ease with the little community of scientists they had brought together in the desert of Sudan.

  At the end of each workday, the team gathered in the common room for a drink before dinner. In their underground bunker, the assignment of night and day was artificial, but this lack of sensory detail only seemed to add to the cocoon-like quality of the sequestered team.

  It was all a game to them, a challenge of their intellect against the Blue Team. In this game of genetic chess, they produced weapons that could wipe out the human race, and the Blue Team figured out how to stop them.

  All the intellectual freedom of creation and none of the responsibility. The lack of ethical curiosity both stunned and fascinated JP.

  Talia circulated among the group, topping off glasses from an open bottle of wine. As she and JP had planned, Talia carefully cultivated a personal relationship with each scientist. She clinked her wineglass with Faraj’s fruit juice. Their lone practicing Muslim remained steadfast in his faith even as he produced viruses that could slaughter every human on the planet.

  Tonight’s meeting was a celebration of sorts. The end of their first new disease minted by the combined efforts of the Deliverance Red Team. JP’s eyes strayed to the whiteboard shoved up against the wall.

  Faraj’s constant sobriety meant he normally served as the group scribe, and the board was covered with his neat block handwriting. During the end-of-day sessions, each scientist provided an update on the team effort to amplify the Ebola virus so it could spread more easily. It had been Talia’s idea to try to control the incubation period of the virus so the patient showed no symptoms while still being able to infect those around him. Katie McDonough, the CRISPR expert from Australia, had managed to figure out a way to achieve the time delay by splicing in genetics material from a slow-growing fungus.
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br />   The Deliverance team decided to name their first two test subjects Fat Man and Little Boy, a macabre nod to the first two nuclear weapons developed by the Americans as part of the Manhattan Project.

  The two rhesus macaques, who were neither fat nor little, were brothers. They were microchipped for positive identification, but JP could tell them apart by sight. Little Boy had a stripe of lighter-colored hair down the center of his forehead, while his brother’s crest was darker.

  JP had never thought of himself as an animal lover, but he felt for the two monkeys. On the other hand, the scientists seemed to be able to compartmentalize their feelings with startling ease.

  Three days ago, Fat Man had been dosed with the new Ebola virus. After a twenty-four-hour period, the monkeys were placed in separate cages.

  JP’s eyes strayed over to the always-on, closed-circuit TV monitor that showed the two brothers. They lived in adjacent cages in the level-four section of the underground lab. Prior to being separated for the test, the monkeys spent their days playing and grooming each other’s tawny fur. To JP’s eye, their humanlike faces and pointed ears showed personality and intelligence.

  The team was testing both the lethality of the new amplified Ebola virus and their ability to control the timing of the incubation.

  Greta Berger, well into her third glass of wine, gushed about the paleoviruses she harvested from the tissue samples JP had supplied. The Swedish scientist had quizzed him closely about where he had obtained the specimen and the conditions of the body, such as burial depth, but had shown little interest in how he had managed to secure the samples. No one was asking her to fill out a grant application and that seemed to be enough for her.

  They’re like children, JP thought. When it concerned their work, they were all id, no ego.

  “Guys, I think something is happening.” Lakshmi was standing next to the monitor, her face close to the screen as she studied the images of the rhesus macaques.

  Fat Man was lying on his side, facing away from the camera. Little Boy paced at the glass partition between the cages, calling to his brother.

  Talia connected her laptop to the large TV screen in the sitting area. With a few keystrokes, she brought up a suite of full-color security cameras that covered every angle within the monkeys’ cages. She selected one at floor level showing the face and body of Fat Man and clicked on it. The image enlarged to fill the whole screen.

  Fat Man’s eyes were closed, his lips parted as he panted. A thin line of blood ran from his nose. Visible in the background, Little Boy let out a scream of frustration.

  “Can you zoom in on his face?” Faraj asked. “I’d like to see if we can detect any hemorrhaging yet.”

  Talia complied. The full-color image showed every detail of Fat Man’s face, down to the nap of his hair. Blood welled out from under the monkey’s closed eyelids. As JP looked away, the rest of the group crowded closer.

  The evening meal was forgotten. For the next three hours, the group sat riveted as they observed the rapid deterioration of Fat Man’s physical appearance. The Ebola virus had done its work. The rhesus macaque was clearly dying a swift and very painful death.

  Little Boy cried and yowled at the cameras, but he did not look sick yet.

  “How much longer until Little Boy starts showing symptoms?” Lu asked.

  Talia worked the cameras so they had a good view of the active monkey. “He’s in the window now,” Talia said. JP could sense the tension in her tone. Controlling the incubation period was a major project milestone.

  “There,” said Lakshmi in a breathless whisper. She pointed at the screen.

  A thin line of bloody drool slipped from Little Boy’s lips. The creature wiped it away, then rubbed his fingers together in what JP saw as an eerily human gesture. Slowly, the monkey lay down and curled up.

  “We did it!” Talia leaped to her feet and raised both fists in celebration. All around her, the scientists cheered and high-fived each other.

  It took another six hours for Fat Man to die, and it was a horrible passing. His features seemed to melt as the hemorrhagic fever took a toll on his body. The talk of the group had already moved to the autopsy phase and everyone agreed they would find massive internal bleeding. JP had long ago set aside his wine and his stomach roiled with acid. He took a seat on the sofa, away from the group.

  Talia engaged Greta Berger in her discussion with Lu about paleoviruses, speaking loud enough that JP could overhear snippets of the conversation.

  “If we were able to splice in elements of the paleovirus components into the existing platform, we could increase the Ebola efficacy, right?” Talia was saying.

  Greta pinched her lip. “You’re talking about making a chimeric,” she said. “I’ve written papers about it and I’ve designed experiments, but until now, I’ve never had access to paleogenetic material.” Her voice went soft as she considered the concept.

  “It will take some time to isolate the new genetic sequence from the samples and develop the right combination, but it’s feasible. The testing protocol would be a little more difficult to develop…”

  They moved toward the kitchen, out of earshot. Talia saw JP watching them and winked.

  JP started as Dr. Lu sat down next to him. The short Chinese man picked at the cuticles of his stubby fingers, a habit JP noticed he often did when deep in thought.

  “The other aspect of the project you asked me to look into,” Lu said finally. “I have an idea.”

  Lu loosened a cuticle on his thumbnail and stripped it away, leaving a bloody trail.

  “It might be possible to introduce a genetic marker into the virus,” he said.

  “That would allow the virus to target a specific subgroup of people?” JP asked.

  “It’s possible. Genetic-specific diseases exist already. Dubin-Johnson syndrome and congenital myasthenia gravis, for example, show up in Persian Jewish populations, but this specificity would be very difficult to replicate on a larger basis.”

  “But it is possible?”

  Lu sighed. “Possible, yes. Probable, no. And if you factor in intermarriage and dilution of the genetic basis, this idea has less applicability, I think. And then there’s the biggest question of all.”

  He peered at JP through his square glasses. “How do you propose to test it?”

  JP looked back to the TV. Fat Man’s dead body lay still and grotesque. Little Boy’s rib cage rose and fell with rapid breaths. He would be dead by morning.

  In the kitchen, JP heard the pop of a wine cork and Talia’s laughter filtered toward him.

  “We’ll let the Blue Team handle that problem, Doctor.”

  CHAPTER 21

  Al-Qahtamni Enterprises, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

  Nasir al-Qahtamni stared at the bank balances on his computer screen.

  Ethiopian Coffee—$3,000,000.00.

  Khartoum Security Services—$9,768.00.

  He was going to miss his date with Rania over this bullshit.

  Nasir wished he could wave a magic wand and reverse the bank totals. The coffee company had drawn down exactly five hundred dollars in the last month, while this stupid security company had burned through all their extra cash to pay for new hires.

  Nasir cursed under his breath at this Mahdi fellow who was behind all the bombings along the upper Nile. Blasted Egyptians. Always stirring up trouble for the rest of the Arab world. Sometimes they were no better than the damned Iranians.

  He sighed as he opened a new tab on his computer screen. Uncle Alyan was very strict about money transfers. He couldn’t just take money from one company and move it to the other. These were shell companies, he had explained. Companies used to obscure the ownership of local assets and funding sources. His uncle had a very strict protocol for moving money into one of their shell companies—

  Nasir’s phone buzzed.

  Where are you? Rania texted him. She followed up with a pouty-face emoji.

  Rania. He had been seeing her now for nearly a month
and she was unlike any girl he’d ever known. In a land where arranged marriages were the norm, she might be the best of all possible worlds: an eligible girl that he was legitimately interested in.

  More than interested.

  Rania had gone to school in France for three years and she was anxious to show her independence in ways that he hadn’t fully explored yet.

  His phone buzzed again. A selfie of Rania next to a car with an open driver’s-side door. She was dressed in tight jeans and an open-necked blouse. She made sure to include the curve of her ass in the photo.

  If you don’t come get me right now, I’m outta here, the text read.

  As he was pondering that last pic, she sent him a new photo with her winking from a high angle. He could almost see the lace of her bra.

  Hurry, lover, she texted.

  That did it. It was Friday afternoon and the rest of the office was away at a conference in Europe. Uncle Alyan was very strict about who he trusted to make wire transfers, so Nasir couldn’t just fob off the responsibility on one of the secretaries.

  He sighed as he turned back to his computer screen. Uncle Alyan’s procedure called for taking the funds from the real-estate holdings in Dubai and routing them through three different banking systems in varying amounts before depositing the funds in one of the shell companies. He would need to wait for the funds to arrive at the new destination before initiating a new routing to the next stop.

  It could take hours. He might not even complete the task before the close of business, and then where would the Khartoum Security Services be?

  Unless …

  He looked at the bank balance of the Ethiopian Coffee Company. Would anyone really notice if he took a small sum—say, fifty thousand dollars—from the coffee-company account and sent it to the security company?

  His gaze strayed to his phone. Beautiful Rania, whose mind was filled with all that lustful Western television, was waiting.

  Fifty thousand dollars would tide the security company over for the weekend. On Monday, he could do a proper transfer.

  Nasir licked his lips. Uncle Alyan wouldn’t be back until next Wednesday. Nasir would have the whole transaction cleared up by then—