by A. G. Riddle
What did it mean? A site in Gibraltar, a U-boat in Antarctica, and the last one — a weather balloon in Roswell that matched technology in Gibraltar?
There was a larger question: why? Why reveal these messages? They were 65 years old. How could it be connected to what’s happening now — to the battle for Clocktower and an imminent terrorist attack?
Josh paced; he had to think. If I was a mole inside a terrorist organization, trying to call for help, what would I do? Trying to call for help… the source would have left a way to contact him. Another code? No, maybe he was revealing the method — how to contact him — the obituaries. But that would be inefficient, newspaper obituaries would take at least a day to appear — even online. Online. What would be the modern equivalent? Where would you post?
Josh ran through several ideas. The obituaries had been easy: there were only a few papers to check. The message could be anywhere online. There had to be another clue.
What did the three messages have in common? A location. What was different about them? There were no people in Antarctica, no classifieds, no… what? What was different about Roswell and Gibraltar? Both had newspapers. What could you do in one and not the other? To post something… The source was pointing him to a posting system as ubiquitous today as The New York Times was in 1947.
Craigslist. It had to be. Josh checked. No Craigslist in Gibraltar, but yes — there was a Craigslist board for Roswell / Carlsbad, New Mexico. Josh opened it and began reading through the messages. There were thousands of them in dozens of categories: for sale, housing, community, jobs, resumes. There would be hundreds of new postings each day.
How could he find the source’s message — if it was even there? He could use a web aggregation technology to gather the site’s content — a Clocktower server would “crawl” the site, similar to the way Google and Bing indexed web sites, extracting content and making it searchable. Then he could run the cipher program, see if any of the postings translated. It would only take a few hours. He didn’t have a few hours.
He needed a place to start. Obituaries was the logical choice, but Craigslist didn’t have obituaries. What would be the closest category? Maybe… Personals? He scanned the headings:
strictly platonic
women seeking women
women seeking men
men seeking women
men seeking men
misc romance
casual encounters
missed connections
rants and raves
He knew a few of these. ‘casual encounters’ was notorious as a way for prostitutes to find clients and promiscuous people from every walk of life to find each other. He’d read articles. It usually involved a few anonymous emails, followed by an exchange of photos, and then, if both sides continued to email, a meeting, usually at a cheap hotel.
Where to start? Was he on a wild goose chase? He didn’t have time to waste. Maybe a few more minutes, one more group of messages.
‘Missed connections’ was an interesting category. The idea was if you saw someone you were interested in, but didn’t get a chance to “make a connection” — ask them out, you posted here. It was popular with guys who, in the moment, couldn’t find the courage to ask a cute waitress out. Josh had actually posted to it several times. If the person saw the message and replied, then there you were, no pressure. If not… it wasn’t meant to be.
He opened it and read a few entries.
Subject> Green Dress at CVS
Message: My god you were stunning! You’re perfect and I was totally speechless. Would love to talk to you. Email me.
Subject> Hampton Hotel
Message: We were getting water together at the desk and then got on the elevator together. Didn’t know if you wanted to get together for a little extra exercise. Tell what floor I got off on. I saw your wedding ring. We can be discreet too.
He read a few more. The message would be longer — if it followed the same pattern: a message within a message, decoded by the name length as a cipher. Craigslist was anonymous. The name would be the email address.
On the next page, the first entry was:
Subject> Saw you in the old Tower Records building talking about the new Clock Opera single
Promising… Clock and Tower in the subject line. Josh clicked the posting and read it quickly. It was much longer than the others. The email address was [email protected]. Josh scribbled down every fourth word then every fifth word from the posting. The decoded posting produced:
Situation changed. Clock tower will fall. Reply if still alive. Trust no one.
Josh froze. Reply if still alive. He had to reply. David had to reply.
Josh picked up the satellite phone and dialed David, but it wouldn’t connect. He had called him earlier. It wasn’t the room or the phone. What could—
He saw it. The video feed from the door outside. It wasn’t changing. He watched closely. The lights on the servers were always on. But it never happened that way — they always blinked occasionally as the hard drives were accessed, as network cards sent and received packets. It wasn’t a video feed, it was a picture — a picture put there by whoever was trying to get into the room.
CHAPTER 21
Main Situation Room
Clocktower Station HQ
Jakarta, Indonesia
The situation room was busy. Operations technicians typed at keyboards, analysts filtered in and out with reports, and Vincent Tarea paced back and forth, watching the wall of screens. “Are we sure Vale is getting a false location map?”
“Yes sir,” one of the techs said.
“Tell the safe houses to move out.”
Tarea watched the safe house video feeds as the soldiers marched to the doors and pulled them open.
The sound of the explosions turned every head in the large situation room to the monitors, which now showed fuzzy black and white static.
One of the techs punched a keyboard. “Switching to outside video. Sir, we have a massive detonation at—”
“I know! Safe houses, hold your positions,” Tarea yelled.
No sound came over the speakers. The location map was completely black where the red dots had paced around the safe houses. The only dots left were David’s convoy and the small group left at HQ.
The tech swiveled around. “He must have rigged the safe houses to blow.”
Tarea rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Thank you, Captain Obvious. Are we in that quiet room yet? Did they find Josh?”
“No, they’re about to start.”
Tarea walked out of the situation room, into his private office, and picked up the phone. He dialed his counterpart at Immari Security. “We have a problem. He took out my men here.”
He listened a moment.
“No, look, I convinced them, but he, it doesn’t matter, they’re all dead. That’s the bottom line.”
Another pause.
“No, well, if I were you, I would make damn sure you kill him with the first strike, no matter how many men you’ve got. He’ll be incredibly hard to contain in the field.”
He started to set the phone down, but jerked it back impatiently at the last minute.
“What? No, we’re looking. We think he’s here. I’ll keep you posted. What? Fine, I’ll come, but I only have two men I can bring, and we’re staying in the rear in case it goes south.”
CHAPTER 22
Clocktower Mobile Operations Center
Jakarta, Indonesia
Kate followed the solider into the large black truck. Inside, it looked nothing like the delivery truck it appeared to be. It was part locker room, with weapons and gear she didn’t recognize, part office with screens and computers, and part bus, with rows of sunken seats along each side.
There were three large screens. One showed dots on a map she assumed was Jakarta. The other showed a video feed of the front, rear, and both sides of the truck. On the top right picture, the black SUV led the truck through Jakarta’s crowded streets. The final screen w
as blank except for one word: Connecting…
“I’m David Vale.”
“I want to know where you’re taking me,” Kate said.
“A safe house.” David was fiddling with a tablet computer of some sort. It seemed to manipulate one of the screens on the wall. He glanced up at it, as if waiting for something to appear. When it didn’t, he hit a few more buttons.
“So you’re with the American government?” Kate said, trying to get his attention.
“Not exactly.” He looked down, still working the tablet.
“But you are an American?”
“Sort of.”
“Can you focus and talk to me?”
“I’m trying to conference in a colleague.” The man looked worried now. He glanced around, as if thinking.
“Is there a problem?”
“Yeah. Maybe.” He put the tablet aside. “I need to ask you some questions about the kidnapping.”
“Are you looking for the children?”
“We’re still trying to figure out what’s going on.”
“Who’s we?”
“No one you’ve heard of.”
Kate ran a hand through her hair. “Look, I’ve had a very bad day. I actually don’t care who you are or where you’re from. Someone took two children from my clinic today, and so far no one seems to want to find them. Including you.”
“I never said I wouldn’t help you.”
“You never said you would either.”
“That’s true,” David said, “but right now, I’ve got problems of my own, big ones. Problems that could result in a lot of innocent people getting killed. A lot already have, and I think your research is somehow connected to it. I’m not quite sure how. Listen, if you answer some questions for me, I promise you I’ll do what I can to help you.”
“Alright, that’s fair.” Kate leaned forward in the chair.
“How much do you know about Immari Jakarta?”
“Nothing really. They fund some of my research. My adoptive father, Martin Grey, is the Head of Immari Research. They invest in a broad range of science and technology research.”
“Are you building a biological weapon for them?”
The question hit Kate like a slap in the face. She reeled back in her chair. “What? God no. Are you out of your mind? I’m trying to cure autism.”
“Why were those two children taken?”
“I have no idea.”
“I don’t believe you. What’s different about those two? There were over a hundred kids in clinic. If the kidnappers were human traffickers, they would have taken them all. They took those two children for a reason. And they risked a lot of exposure to do it. So, I’ll ask you again, why those two?”
Kate looked at the ground and thought. She said the first question that popped into her head, “Immari Research took my children?”
The question seemed to throw him. “Uh, no, Immari Security did. They’re another division, but same general team of bad guys.”
“That’s impossible.”
“See for yourself.” He handed her a folder and she flipped through several pictures, including satellite photos of the van at the clinic, the two black-clad assailants hauling kids into the van, and the van’s registration records that traced back to Immari International, Hong Kong Security Division.
Kate considered the man’s evidence. Why would Immari take the children? They could have asked her. Something else had been bothering her. “Why do you think I’m building a biological weapon?”
“It’s the only thing that makes sense, based on the evidence.”
“What evidence?”
“Have you ever heard of The Toba Protocol?”
“No.”
He handed her another file. “This is about all we have on it. It’s not much, but the bottom line is that Immari International is working on a plan to drastically reduce the human population.”
She read through the file. “Like the Toba Catastrophe.”
“What? I’m not familiar.”
She closed the file. “Not surprising. It’s not widely accepted, but it’s a popular theory among evolutionary biologists.”
“Popular theory for what?”
“The Great Leap Forward.” Kate recognized David’s confusion and continued before he could speak. “The Great Leap Forward is probably one of the most hotly contested aspects of evolutionary genetics. It’s a mystery, really. We know that around 50-60,000 years ago, there was a sort of ‘Big Bang’ in human intelligence. We got a lot smarter, very quickly. We just don’t know exactly how. We believe it was some kind of change in brain wiring. For the first time, humans began using complex language, creating art, making more advanced tools, solving problems—”
David stared at the wall. “I don’t see—”
Kate brushed her hair back. “Ok, let me start over. The human race is about 200,000 years old, but we have only been so called behaviorally modern humans, the really, really smart-type that took over the globe, for around 50,000 years. So 50,000 years ago, we know there were at least three other hominids — Neanderthals, Homo Floresiensis—”
“Homo flor—”
“They’re not widely known. We only recently found them. They were smaller, sort of hobbit-like humans. We’ll just say Hobbits, it’s easier. So 50,000 years ago, there’s us, the Neanderthals, Hobbits, and Denisovans. Actually there were probably a couple more hominids, but the point is there were say five or six sub-species of humans and that our branch of the human tree explodes while the others die out. We go from a few thousand to seven billion people in the span of 50,000 years and the other human subspecies go extinct. We conquer the globe while they die in caves. It’s the greatest mystery of all time, and scientists have been working on it since time began. Religion too. At the heart of the question is how we survived. What gave us such a huge evolutionary advantage? We call this transformation the Great Leap Forward, and the Toba Catastrophe Theory proposes how this great leap forward could have happened — how we became so smart while our cousins, other hominids — Neanderthals, Hobbits, etc — they all remained basically cavemen. About 70,000 years ago, a super-volcano erupted at Mount Toba, here in Indonesia. The eruption and ash as well as the resulting climate change, reduced the total human population drastically, maybe to as low as 10,000 or even less.”
“Wait, the human race was down to 10,000 people?”
“We think so. Well, the estimates aren’t exact, but we know there was a huge population reduction, and that it was marked in our subspecies. We think Neanderthals and some other hominids alive at the time might have fared better. The Hobbits were down-wind of Toba and the Neanderthals were concentrated in Europe. Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia took the brunt of the effects of the Toba eruption and that’s where we were concentrated at the time. Neanderthals were also stronger than we were and they had bigger brains; that could have given them an additional survival advantage, but we’re still sorting that out. We do know that humans got hit hard by the Toba Super Volcano. We were on the brink of extinction. That caused what population geneticists call a population bottleneck. Some researchers believe that this bottleneck caused a small group of humans to evolve, to mutate to survive. These mutations could have led to humanity’s exponential explosion in intelligence. There’s genetic evidence for it. We know that every human being on the planet is directly descended from one man who lived in Africa around 60,000 years ago — a person we geneticists call Y-Chromosomal Adam. In fact, everyone outside of Africa is descended from a small band of humans, maybe as few as 100, that left Africa about 50,000 years ago. Essentially, we’re all members of a small tribe that walked out of Africa after Toba and took over the planet. That tribe was significantly more intelligent than any other hominids in history. That’s what happened, but we don’t know how it happened. The truth is we don’t actually know how our subspecies survived Toba or how they became so much more intelligent than the other human subspecies alive at the time. It had to be some sor
t of change in brain wiring, but no one knows how this great leap forward occurred. It could have been due to a change in diet or a spontaneous mutation. Or it could have happened gradually. The Toba Catastrophe Theory and the population bottleneck is just one possibility, but it’s gaining followers.”
He looked down, seeming to consider this.
“I’m surprised this didn’t come up in your research.” When he said nothing, she added “So… what do you think Toba stands for? I mean, I could be wrong here—”
“No, you’re right. I know it. But it’s just a reference to the effect of the Toba Catastrophe in the past — how it changed humanity. That’s their goal, to create another population bottleneck and force a Second Great Leap Forward. They want to bring about the next stage of human evolution. It tells me the why, which we didn’t know before. We thought Toba was a reference to where the operation would start. Southeast Asia, especially Indonesia makes sense. It’s one of the reasons I established operations in Jakarta, 60 miles from Mount Toba.”
“Right. Well, history can be pretty handy. And so can books. Maybe even as much as guns.”
“For the record, I read a lot. And I like history. But you’re talking about 70,000 years ago, that’s not history, it’s prehistoric. And by the way, guns have their place; the world isn’t as civilized as it looks.”
She held up her hands and sat back in the seat. “Hey, just trying to help here. Speaking of, you said you would help me find those kids.”
“And you said you would answer my questions.”
“I have.”
“You haven’t. You know why those two kids were taken, or you at least have a theory. Tell me.”
Kate thought for a moment. Could she trust him?
“I need some assurances.” She waited, but the man just stared at the other screen, the one with all the dots on it. “Hey, are you listening to me?” He looked concerned now, glancing about. “What’s wrong?”
“The dots aren’t moving.”
“Should they be?”
“Yeah. We’re definitely moving.” The soldier pointed to the seat belts beside her. “Strap yourself in.”
The way he said it scared her, but not like the man before, who had taken the children. He reminded her of a parent who had just realized their child was in danger. He was hyper-focused. His eyes didn’t blink as he moved quickly, securing loose articles around the truck, then grabbing a radio.
“Mobile One, Clocktower Commander. Alter course, new destination is Clocktower HQ, do you copy?”
“Copy Clocktower Commander, Mobile One altering course.”
Kate felt the truck turning.
The man lowered the radio to his side.
She saw the flash on the screen a second before she heard — and felt — the blast.