Biowar

7

Rubens made it down to the Art Room just in time to see Lia board the helicopter, a “sterile” civilian Sikorsky S80 leased by the NSA for domestic travel. The helicopter had a cam in the passenger compartment, which Rockman was feeding onto the large screen at the front of the situation room. The camera was mounted low enough to provide a tantalizing glimpse halfway up Lia’s skirt.

“Still keeping a prurient eye on our people, Mr. Rockman?” said Rubens as he walked toward the row of desks at the front of the room. The room had two levels; at the back were three rows of computer consoles and other communications gear used to tie into various systems during complicated operations. The front section of the room, arranged stadium-style, had three rows of desks with machines devoted directly to the agents in the field, although they, too, could be tied into the backup and support systems. It was possible to obtain real-time intelligence on nearly any spot on the globe here. Some came from in-place sensors; the Art Room could tap directly into the NSA’s exhaustive resources, looking or listening to raw radio transmissions, for example, or piping them through automated (and not always completely accurate) computer translators. It had real-time access to satellite data from the military reconnaissance office known as DEF-SMAC (for the Defense Special Missile and Astronautics Center) and the Air Force Space Command, as well as a system of Navy satellites used to track ships on the ocean. More important, Desk Three could launch its own “temporary” sensors from in-place satellites or drone aircraft stationed around the globe. These were controlled via a satellite system in a suite across the hall, eliminating the logistics problems the CIA had encountered in its earlier Predator program.

For Rubens, improving what the CIA did was absolutely critical; he considered the agency his primary rival, a bigger enemy on any given day than terrorists or a foreign government. Desk Three had been carved out of traditional CIA real estate, and the agency constantly looked for ways to reclaim it.

“Do we have Kegan’s files yet?” Rubens asked Telach.

“Working on it,” Telach answered. “May take a bit of time to see what, if anything, is significant.”

“Mmmm,” said Rubens. He was due for a meeting in Washington, D.C., in an hour.

“Tommy Karr is on his way to Kegan’s house,” Rubens told Telach. “He should arrive at Stewart Airport in Newburgh in a few hours. He’s already contacted the state police who are handling the case.”

“I still think the FBI should have gone with him,” said Telach. “This is more their field.”

Rubens frowned at her but said nothing.

“My bet is a lovers’ quarrel,” said Rockman from his desk at the left-hand comer of the front row.

“A twenty-two in the back of the head isn’t a spur-of-the-moment thing,” said Telach. “Besides, if they knew each other, we’d know who the victim is. Which we don’t.”

The Art Room supervisor continued, updating Rubens on what at the moment was a baffling and open-ended operation. Immigration records as well as missing persons reports were being checked, but Rubens didn’t think that the dead man would be identified anytime soon. At the moment, finding Kegan remained the best bet for finding out what was going on. The NSA, with some help from the FBI, and vice versa, was scouring financial records and checking on Kegan’s various associates and assistants. One man appeared to be missing — a D. T. Pound, who at twenty-two held not one but two Ph.D.’s. A multidisciplinary team of researchers headed by an eccentric mathematician — John “Johnny Bib” Bibleria — was hard at work scouring intercepts, reading papers, and thumbing through databases in an effort to track him down.

“Very good,” said Rubens finally, convinced that Telach was doing her customarily thorough job. “If you find any information, as opposed to theories, that will be useful for Tommy, let him know. I have a meeting in Washington.”

Roughly two hours later, Rubens stepped from his nondescript Malibu and headed toward the side entrance of a building on K Street in the shadow of Capitol Hill. Looking slightly dowdy in the row of fancier accommodations devoted to lobbyists, the building bore no outward sign of its importance, though a true insider would realize instantly that its very ordinariness was a dead giveaway. A pair of men in rumpled brown suits watched Rubens enter and, though they knew him by sight, nonetheless directed him to the large desk at the center of the lobby, where he was asked to look into a retina scan and speak his name. A light on the desk shielded from his view blinked green, and Rubens was allowed to proceed to the row of elevators at the side. Rubens pressed the middle button next to the middle door, holding his thumb there long enough for the scanning device inside to get a good read of his thumbprint. It matched it against the retina and voice information recorded and checked earlier and then delivered the car to his level.

The K building — it had no other name — had been taken over by the Office of Homeland Security some months before. It was used primarily for high-level meetings of the type Rubens was now late for, though there were also a number of offices upstairs belonging to different departments in the country’s newest bureaucracy.

Rubens did not particularly care for Homeland Security. While the lower rungs of the department were generally effective, he found the upper echelons amateurish and lacking in clout. In short, they were no threat to the NSA or Desk Three. He intended to do everything he could to keep it that way.

The elevator doors opened on the basement conference level. A security guard shanghaied from the Coast Guard stood at ramrod attention across from the door, not even acknowledging Rubens as he passed down the hall to a maze-like entrance to the main conference room. The baffle was but one of the myriad protections against bugging installed in the room; it was a low-tech precaution against laser or other direct beam communications. Copper shielded the entire level; there were a variety of passive detectors to find clandestine transmissions as well as active disruptors or jammers in place to defeat them. Even Rubens’ encrypted phone connection with the Desk Three network would not work here.

Not that Desk Three couldn’t have bugged the place if Rubens ordered it to.

“Mr. Rubens. We’ve been waiting you.” Sandra Marshall was the Deputy Director of Homeland Security and generally rated as the heir apparent to Greg Johnson, who was spending less and less time in Washington as he tested the waters for a run at the Texas governorship.

“But that’s not a problem,” Marshall added. “We told your secretary the meeting was a half hour earlier than it really was, knowing you’d be late.”

This was a joke, and Rubens deeply resented it. But he smiled and sat down, pretending for the others that he was both good-natured and a regular guy. He feigned interest in the chitchat nearby, then watched Marshall as she called the working group on Internet security recommendations to order and began the meeting.

Marshall had made a small fortune in Silicon Valley before joining the President’s campaign as a consultant on high-tech industry. She had parlayed that role into a post at the Pentagon, hopping from there to State and on to Homeland Security in a matter of weeks. For a woman of thirty-three (she gave her age as twenty-eight, a modest and passable fib as such things went) her body remained well toned. She was not conventionally beautiful or even pretty, but of special interest to Rubens were her eyes; in his experience, every woman in Washington, even the young ones, had thick, puffy eyes from overwork and lack of sleep — or from partying, depending on the woman in question. Sandra Marshall’s eyes were smooth and clear.

“I had breakfast with the President last Thursday,” said Marshall, “and he mentioned how very interested he is in our project, and he specifically endorsed something to apply to all computers at all times. Something radical, and something that will provide the highest level of security to all people. To individuals, not just to the people downstream, the servers and companies.”

“The initiative should end identity theft as we know it,” said Griffin Bolso, who was representing FBI Director Robert Freeman.

“Exactly.”

Rubens had heard various proposals to improve Internet security for individual users over the years. With a few notable exceptions, most were either unworkable or futile. A few were both. His mind drifted; he began thinking of the Kegan operation until the words “portable biometric identification is the future” fluttered across the room.

“There are many applications,” Marshall continued. “And just as many ways of selling it to the public. I hope we can move ahead then with the report. Obviously, we’ll need a full-blown technical study. That’s the next step. Perhaps my staff can pull together a report and present it to the working group next week?”

Until this moment, Rubens had seen his involvement on the committee as necessary — his boss had assigned him to attend — and potentially beneficial, inasmuch as it allowed him to hear what other elements of the government were up to. But this was something else again.

“What you’re suggesting is a scheme that would eliminate on-line privacy completely,” he said.

“Scheme? That’s such a difficult word,” said Marshall.

“I don’t think it would do that,” said Bolso. “Do we even have complete privacy now? Of course not. Server addresses are routinely recorded. E-mails can be identified.”

“That’s not the same thing as knowing a user’s precise identity every time he signs onto the Net,” said Rubens. “The American public won’t go for it.”

Marshall’s eyes met his.

“There will be arguments, yes. But nodes on the Net are tagged now, and it is possible to identify who is doing what at any given moment,” said Marshall. “Your agency does so routinely.”

“Not without proper authorization,” said Rubens.

“A voluntary program to aid in authentication would greatly increase confidence in transactions, and that would be the place to start.”

“There would be many ways around it,” said Rubens.

“Not with the proper devices.”

“Then it would not be voluntary.”

Bolso took up the argument. Rubens — somewhat appalled that an official who ran a secret spying agency had to argue for personal privacy rights — considered pointing out the uproar that had ensued when it was rumored that the FBI asked libraries for lists of books that patrons took out. But then he reconsidered.

Why not let Marshall and the others push the idea further along before squashing it? People were always suspicious of the NSA, calling it Big Brother and whatnot. How better to counter that image by opposing this sort of plan as obtrusive?

A public relations coup.

Not that the NSA was interested in public relations. But if an opportunity like this presented itself, could it be ignored?

Let this dumb idea move along a bit, then start discreetly leaking information about it, along with the all-important tidbit that the NSA had found it necessary to oppose the initiative?

Yes.

Ultimately, such a proposal was unlikely to get beyond the study stage. But that only argued in favor of letting it proceed for now.

“So, we’ll give it to my staff,” said Marshall, with a note of finality. “All agreed?”

A vote. Or a quasi-vote. In any event, it would be a record of his position.

Rubens snapped up straight.

“I have to go on record as recusing myself, and the agency,” he said, leaning over the table as he smiled at the secretary who was presiding over an automated transcription machine at the far end of the room. “Any involvement would be inappropriate, given the executive order governing our formation.”

It was a rather shabby demurral, and Rubens half-expected that the others would point that out — or follow his lead and propose their own excuses. But no one else spoke up.

“Very good then,” said Marshall, as cheerfully as if he hadn’t spoken at all. “We’re unanimous. Until next week.”

Marshall managed to slip up next to him in the hallway.

“I hadn’t expected you to oppose the initiative,” she said. “After all, it’s just a study.”

“I don’t know that we have any opinion, really. We’ve just taken ourselves out of the debate.”

He expected her to argue, but instead she reached out and gently squeezed his arm. “We should discuss it further.”

“I don’t know if that would be useful,” he said.

“Useful?” She tilted her head back ever so slightly. “Pleasurable at least.”

Is she trying to seduce me? wondered Rubens.

“Perhaps over lunch?” she added.

“My lunches are generally not my own.”

“Well, neither are mine,” she said. “But are you going to the benefit for the Kennedy Center Thursday?”

She was trying to seduce him.

Hardly. Her purposes were surely political.

On the other hand…

“As a matter of fact, I am going to the benefit,” said Rubens, knowing he could call on one of his many relatives for a ticket. “Yourself?”

“Yes. Perhaps we can talk then.”

“I’ll see you there.”

“Maybe something to eat afterward?”

“Perhaps.”

“I’ll look forward to it,” she said.