The African Diamond Trilogy Box Set

by Christopher Lowery

  ‘You’re talking about the ACRE project, aren’t you? How’s it coming along?’

  ‘We’re making good progress; Han and I were reviewing the latest test results this afternoon. I think we’re still a year or two from perfecting it, but you know how long it takes to transform a concept into a working solution.’

  She wagged a finger fondly at him. ‘You’d better deliver it soon or you’ll be embarrassed in front of the world. Remember? I told you not to authorise those press releases last year. “Announcing ACRE, The Ultimate Level of Encrypted Transmission from Lee-Win Micro-Technology”. You could be prosecuted under the Trade Descriptions Act.’

  Her husband laughed and kissed her cheek. ‘Nonsense. It was a smart move, it brought us lots of publicity and new customers. They’re all waiting for ACRE and we’ll get there in the end. It’s just a matter of time and money and the breakthrough will come, you’ll see.’

  ‘Yes, it certainly is. According to the cost summary I saw on your desk, we’ve invested over $40 million since you came up with the concept two years ago. And you were sixty years old last month, are you going to follow that dream into retirement?’

  ‘It’s not just a dream, Xiu. ACRE is much more than that. Do you remember how we pioneered the change in the concept of CPUs and microprocessors back in the eighties? Now we’re going to do the same thing for encrypted transmission. I forecast that five years from now, Automatic Constant Recurring Encryption will be the de facto system of protecting and transmitting data all over the world.’

  ‘If you say so, darling. You can keep up the project, just don’t stress about it constantly, or it will be the death of you.’

  Thursday, 26 July 2012

  It was six-thirty on a dark, rainy morning when Chongkun climbed into his white 2009 Volkswagen Golf. Although he had a chauffeur and several other cars, including a 1999 Rolls Royce Silver Spirit Mark IV, he preferred to weave through the traffic in the little saloon and drop it in the employees’ parking lot behind the Lee-Win building in Pudong, leaving the luxury travel for his wife. The sky was black with heavy rainclouds, and he strained to see through the windscreen wipers as he drove slowly along the street lit up by the headlights of the passing cars. Their colonial-style town house in the Jing’an area was about fifteen kilometres from the office, on the other side of the Huangpu River. Chongkun would meet their two sons, Junjie and Jiang, for a coffee before work and chat over the day’s programme. Both were married and worked with him in the microprocessor business, as heads of finance and marketing respectively. Although the family owned several other companies involved in manufacturing and commerce, he loved the challenge of the continual innovations in the world of the Internet, often led by Lee-Win under his stewardship.

  Chongkun always took the same route to work. Experience had taught him it involved the fewest hold-ups, and the trip took less than thirty minutes at that time in the morning. He made his way to the Fuxing East Road to cross the river by the tunnel and then come down Century Avenue to the business park. At the roundabout near the Xiao Taoyuan Qingzhensi Mosque, the cars were bunched up, nervous drivers waiting for a gap to enter the traffic. As Chongkun inched his car forward, a massive black Hummer pulled alongside him on the right and a green Ford saloon came up on his left side, moving to the inside lane of the roundabout. The Hummer also moved ahead and he drove slowly out with it, protected by the saloon on his left. Suddenly he felt a soft impact from behind and the Golf was pushed several metres forward, onto the roundabout. He jammed his foot on the brake and looked in the rear-view mirror. An old red Land Rover had run into the back of his car. The Ford on his left had stopped, and he looked past it to see a Tsingtao Beer truck bearing directly down on him. The Hummer had also stopped on his right, and he pushed the throttle flat to the floor to try to get past it and over the roundabout.

  The fully loaded lorry smashed into the Golf, pushing it into the Hummer. The little car was crushed to half its size, with Chongkun inside. It took the firemen three hours to extricate his dead body from the wreckage. The Land Rover had disappeared from the scene. In the dark, pouring rain no one was sure what had happened and why he had driven into the path of the truck.

  The verdict of the inquest was accidental death, but his heartbroken widow didn’t believe it. In October, she sold Lee-Win Micro-Technology to the syndicate for twenty per cent less than their original offer, and the Lee-Win family left Shanghai and settled in Macau.

  Xiu Lee-Win’s prophesy had proved to be accurate, but not for the reasons she supposed.

  ONE

  Dubai, United Arab Emirates

  March 2017

  ‘Decider! Two clear points. My serve.’

  ‘Hang on. I need a minute.’ ‘Scotty’ Fitzgerald opened the door of the squash court and grabbed his bottle of water. He took a swig and wiped his face with his towel. ‘Shit! It must be a hundred degrees in here.’ It was seven in the evening, but the court was like an oven.

  ‘It’s hot. Even I’m feeling it.’ His colleague, Sharif Kayani, took a swallow from his bottle and poured the rest over his shaved head, drying off with his T-shirt. They went back onto the court and he took up his serving position. ‘Right. Time to show you who’s in charge.’

  Sharif served from the right box; a sliced forehand, coming off the left side of the front wall so the ball spun down towards the floor of the left quarter. Scotty took it on the volley with a swipe towards the right wall, ricocheting off the front and coming back to the left, behind him. The other man stepped quickly across and smashed it against the back wall, so it rebounded directly onto the service area. Scotty sliced it softly back against the front wall and it died onto the floor before Sharif could retrieve it.

  ‘Who did you say was in charge?’ Scotty gave a condescending smile as he took up his serving position on the left. ‘Winning point coming up.’

  Fifteen minutes later, the men were towelling off in the shower room of the enormous underground sports facility below the XPlus Circuits building in the Dubai Investments Park. The Park was home to many high-tech businesses with a presence in the fast-growing industrial centre of the Emirates, and the facilities available to employees were legendary. Each floor of the four-storey edifice had an area of 1,000 square metres, with two basement levels housing not only the computer network centre and test labs, but squash and badminton courts, snooker, swimming pool, a cycling track and a fabulously well-equipped gymnasium.

  Scotty was actually a Welshman, born in Cardiff, previously a software development manager for a US telecoms company. His parents had moved to the US when he was a child, and after obtaining his degree in Computer Sciences at Princeton he’d joined Verizon’s IoT, Internet of Things, development team in Silicon Valley. He was an acknowledged leader in encryption technology and was headhunted by Lee-Win Micro-Technology, one of China’s largest manufacturers of microprocessors, routers and microchips, when they allocated a billion dollars to create a new design centre to support their Shanghai manufacturing unit.

  The new centre was set up in a separate entity, XPC, in Dubai. The owners of Lee-Win were smart enough to know they could attract the very best industry talent to Dubai more easily than to Shanghai. XPC had opened two and a half years previously, having been built in just eighteen months while an intensive recruitment programme was initiated to poach these experienced professionals from around the world. Not only in traditional fixed machine technology, where Lee-Win had several billions of products installed throughout the world, but also in the booming mobile IoT sector, where they enjoyed a fast-growing share. Sharif had been brought from Lahore, Pakistan, with his entire team of programmers and Daniel Oberhart, Senior VP of Operations and Support, was bribed from Zurich, Switzerland, where he had been Director of Operations for MicroCentral SA, a fast-growing competitor in the global processor industry.

  Scotty and Sharif were both VPs of Product Software Development in the corporate hierarchy, although the Welshman wasn’t impressed by the ti
tle. He disliked the American habit of calling just about everyone a vice president, making middle-range jobs sound more important than they were. His team developed new and improved firmware, the software which was embedded in all Lee-Win processors, and Sharif’s Asian colleagues designed the physical hardware itself, the tiny silicon cards that contained the printed circuits. Lee-Win had been in the processor business for forty years and had earned an international reputation for their products, specifically designed for huge industrial conglomerates, government departments and essential service providers.

  At the moment, Scotty and Sharif were both under pressure to deliver their upgrades for Lee-Win’s Mark VII line of products by the end of July, to meet the 1 September launch date in Shanghai; less than six months from now. The launch would feature a new version of ACRE, an innovation that had first been incorporated in the Mark VI models the previous year. The invention had been conceived in Shanghai and developed by a separate team at XPC, managed by Scotty.

  The full name of ACRE was Automatic Constant Random Encryption, a revolutionary technology whereby data was automatically and continuously encrypted in a random fashion, while it was stored in computer files, in databases or on smart cards and, vitally, while it was being transmitted, since the programme also took over the data transmission management through the network. ACRE made data hacking valueless unless the culprits had access to the algorithms produced during the encryption process. Even if they succeeded in capturing data, it would be meaningless and impossible to reconfigure into coherent information, because unlike conventional systems, there was no key available to de-encrypt it.

  After many years of increasingly addictive and pervasive social media, Internet commerce, online banking, mobile apps and all their apparent advantages, the true cost of sending personal information across the ether was becoming more and more apparent. Hardly a day went by without another high-profile hacking or data theft occurrence making headlines. Global deployment of ACRE would revolutionise the way data was stored and transmitted, creating the security needed by Internet users around the globe and making the world a safer and more secure place. And the financial rewards to Lee-Win would be beyond measure.

  Although the software that Scotty’s team had written to control the encryption algorithms was not yet in its perfected stage, many Lee-Win customers had agreed to live-test the new technology when the Mark VI devices were released, and the reception had been overwhelmingly positive. The uproar in the marketplace was such that sales of Mark VI products had exploded, and especially to the large private and public service institutions where Lee-Win’s processor units handled billions of pieces of ultra-confidential information every minute of every day. Governments, banks, energy companies, institutions of every kind, were finding, once and for all, the protection they had long sought against invasions of their valuable data.

  Now the market was waiting impatiently to see if they could keep it up with Mark VII, and the pressure to meet their deadline was weighing heavily on the two men. The stakes Lee-Win was playing for were enormous, and Scotty and Sharif were key players in this poker game. With the responsibility of delivering the next level of ACRE technology, Scotty especially knew his head was on the block.

  The Welshman pulled on his light cotton slacks and combed his tangled hair. ‘Winner’s choice. Let’s go to the Crystal Lagoon for a Thai salad, it’s too hot for anything else.’

  ‘Cool. The meal’s on me and the beer’s on you.’ Sharif sat on the bench to tie up his canvas shoes and his sports bag fell to the floor. A small object clattered from the bag as it landed upside down.

  ‘What’s that?’ Scotty picked up the tube-like device. ‘It’s a memory stick.’ He gave the Pakistani a look. ‘You know we’re not allowed to take them off the premises,’ he said, exercising his seniority over the other man.

  ‘Oh, that. It’s not really mine. Just some family photos and music my brother sent me from Lahore the other day. We can’t get music like that here. Come round to my place sometime and I’ll play it for you, you’ll love it. Thanks.’ He went to take the device from Scotty’s hand, ignoring his querulous look.

  He held on to the stick. ‘I’m not comfortable with this, Sharif. Nothing personal, but we’re doing billion-dollar development work, we’ve got rules and we all have to obey them. I think I’d better look after this until Tom or Shen get back. If they’re OK with it, I’ll give it back and we’ll forget the whole thing. I won’t look at it, so if it’s family stuff, no harm done. OK?’

  ‘No problem, Scotty, we’ll talk to Shen next week. Right, let’s take my car and I’ll run you back later to get yours. Come on.’

  Driving over to the restaurant, Scotty was turning the matter over in his mind. Why would Sharif have a memory stick containing family material in his sports bag? They had come down to the squash courts directly from the office, there would be no reason to have that stick at work. He said it was sent to him ‘the other day’, so why would he have it with him at all? Their boss, Shen Fu Liáng, who had been parachuted in from Shanghai as Executive VP of Operations, was in San Francisco for an industry trade show all week. Scotty could have called him, but he had little respect for the Chinaman. He habitually sided with Sharif on matters which were in the Welshman’s domain, ignoring his knowledge and experience, sometimes with costly consequences. There was also no point in talking to Daniel Oberhart, since he was involved in operations and not the development group.

  He decided to let the matter drop for the moment, their working relationship was too important to be jeopardised by what was probably a trivial event. He would wait to talk with Tom Connor, the company CEO, when he returned from holiday that weekend, and leave him to sort it out with Liáng and Sharif. Tom habitually left the development division pretty much alone, concentrating on his commercial responsibilities in marketing, operations and finance. It was a compliment to the standard of his and Sharif’s work, but now he figured he needed to talk to the big boss on Sunday. He had to keep reminding himself that in the Middle East, the weekend consisted of Friday and Saturday, although many of the staff worked on Saturday. In the meantime, he tried to put it out of his mind; it wasn’t his area of concern after all.

  TWO

  Dubai, United Arab Emirates

  March 2017

  ‘Hi, guys. You’re in early.’ Daniel Oberhart and Sharif were on their second coffee when the Welshman joined them in the canteen at seven the next morning. They were deep in conversation, talking quietly with their heads close together.

  Sharif looked up with a start, ‘Oh, hi, Scotty. We’ve got a full programme of tests today, just making sure Daniel can fit it all in.’ He shifted nervously on his chair and checked the time on his mobile. ‘I’d better get up there and make sure everything’s ready. I’ll catch you later. Don’t forget our revenge match tonight.’ He walked quickly past him and out the door.

  The Swiss man said, ‘I was up at five o’clock, it’s too hot to sleep. In Zurich in March, you still need a duvet. That’s what I call normal.’

  Scotty wasn’t very keen on Oberhart. He seemed to find something to complain about in everything concerning Dubai and XPC. ‘You won’t be bitching when you go to the beach at the weekend. Sitting on the sand and swimming in the warm sea in March, you can’t do that in Zurich.’

  ‘I never go to public beaches,’ he replied. ‘See you later.’ He got up and left Scotty sitting alone with his coffee.

  What the hell was that all about? he asked himself. Are the Swiss Germans really so hard to get along with?

  Sharif won their game that evening hands down. Scotty was still a little preoccupied by the incident with the flash drive, but was waiting until his CEO returned on Sunday.

  ‘What’s on the menu tonight?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s a lot cooler and I need my curry. We’re going to the Karachi House. OK?’

  It was just after eleven when Scotty got back to his apartment near Jumeirah Beach. XPC had rented several u
pmarket residences for their senior people and, although a single man, he was fortunate enough to have one of them. He’d had several beers during and after dinner and was ready to crash out. Throwing his clothes onto the sofa, he fell into bed and was out to the world five minutes later.

  At two a.m. he awoke with a headache and stomach cramps. Sitting up, he felt nauseous, dizzy and had difficulty focusing his eyes. Too many beers, he said to himself. He switched on the bedside lamp and unsteadily got out of bed to go to the toilet, where he threw up violently. Shit. I’ve caught something. He stirred an Alka Seltzer and an aspirin into a glass of water, swigged it back, then staggered to bed and fell into a deep sleep.

  At five-thirty, Scotty awoke again feeling terrible. He was aching in his shoulders and back, as if he’d been carrying a huge weight, and his muscles were sore and tired. The lamp was still on, but he had to force his eyes open, then could hardly see across the room. His vision was blurred and when he tried to concentrate he saw double. He still felt nauseous and wanted to get up again to go to the toilet, but his body wouldn’t respond. His mouth and throat were dry and his head was throbbing. He tried to swallow but for some reason his throat wouldn’t work, and he realised he couldn’t move his lips. Just trying to raise his right hand to his mouth he was unable to lift his arm up from the bed.

  Scotty had a vision of himself lying helpless on the bed, as if he was looking down on the scene from above. With a rising sense of panic, he attempted to move every part of his body; his arms, his head, his shoulders, his legs, but nothing would work. His left arm was lying across his chest with his hand in front of his face and he tried to move the fingers. Nothing. His mind filled with terror when he realised that he couldn’t even feel the hand, it could have belonged to someone else, so detached from him did it seem. Now he noticed his breath was coming in short gasps. His brain was still trying to process his condition; he knew he had to breathe to stay alive. He tried to force it to tell his body to take a deep breath, but his lungs wouldn’t respond. His breathing became shallower and shallower until he felt he would asphyxiate. Now he knew he would die if he didn’t get help. He made a desperate last attempt to open his mouth to scream for help, but all that came out was a mumbled gurgle. Scotty was in an almost complete state of paralysis.