Breakpoint

3 Tuesday, March 10

“Ten-minute delay on the Orange Line due to a security sweep at Rossyln…” the public address system was repeating as Dr. Freda Canas stepped onto the up escalator at the Ballston station. “Be sure to report any suspicious activity. If you see it, say it.” Freda hated to be late to anything, and she almost never was, but the Washington Metro was getting fairly unpredictable. She was especially concerned about being late today, the second Tuesday of the month. She knew that Dr. Harry Shapiro and Professor Ahmad Mustafa would already be there. She also knew they would not start talking about the research until she arrived, but it was embarrassing to be the last one arriving when your office was the closest.

Two years earlier, they had chosen the Pancake Factory as their meeting place because it was two blocks from her office at the National Science Foundation on Wilson Boulevard and four blocks from DARPA on Fairfax Drive, where Shapiro worked. Dr. Mustafa’s National Institutes of Health office was fifteen miles away in Bethesda, but his town-house home was only a five-minute walk from the big blue-roofed restaurant. Freda had dubbed the informal coordination sessions “Science and Syrup,” but she joked that the name hadn’t been sticky enough. It had become known to their staffs as “The Billion-Dollar Breakfast.” Today’s was more important than most, because they were going to talk about the Work-Around Plan, how to go ahead with Globegrid despite the internet connectivity problems. As Dr. Freda Canas, director of the National Science Foundation, left the Ballston Metro station, a surveillance camera scanned her face. She hurried to the restaurant.

“Adding an extra pair of chromosomes to the embryo will allow us to modify the genetic makeup of children without upsetting the delicate balance developed over eons in the other chromosomes. They’re like genetic scaffolding, you can add any number of characteristics with little risk,” Dr. Mustafa was saying as Freda arrived at their usual spot, the large corner booth. “Ah, Dr. Canas, we have already taken the liberty of ordering your usual, with the blueberry sauce.” Freda Canas placed her laptop on the table and began unbundling her scarf and parka. “So much for globe warming, huh, Freda? It must be twenty Fahrenheit out there this morning,” Mustafa chided as the door opened and a student with a large backpack walked in.

“Ahmed, I’ve told you it’s no longer a theory. We know. The National Science Foundation runs Antarctica for the U.S. My stations there can’t keep up with the glacial movement. Big shifts that used to take generations,” Freda asserted.

“The Navy has asked us to do a model that will show where the coastlines will be ten, twenty, and fifty years from now,” Dr. Shapiro joined in. “It ain’t pretty. Under the worst-case scenario, fifty years from now, half of Florida is under water.”

“Maybe the future humans will evolve their gills back, Harry, or maybe we will have to add them back to the human genetic code,” Mustafa joked. “Changing topics, Harry, tell me — whoever hacked the commercial communications satellites over the Pacific, why didn’t they hack the DOD birds, too?”

“Thank you for asking. Our birds now use an unbreakable encryption for station-keeping updates, quantum cyphers shot up to space by laser,” Harry Shapiro said, scribbling a depiction on a napkin. “And who came up with that, you ask? Why, DARPA, of course. Ahmad, you can be my straight man anytime.”

Mustafa chuckled and said, “Just call me Ed McMahon.” His smile faded as he saw the look on the face of the man heading toward the corner booth, young and clean-shaven, but a wildness in his bulging eyes. Ahmad Mustafa thought somehow the man might be Pakistani. He noticed how the man was struggling under the weight of the backpack. Suddenly and too late, Dr. Mustafa knew.

To the Arlington Police video-surveillance camera atop the traffic light across the street, the flash was yellow, then orange. The flash jumped out through the picture windows of the Pancake Factory, across the parking lot, and into Fairfax Drive, as large chunks of blue roof tile shot up and out. The camera could not hear the noise, but windows shattered in the tall buildings within two blocks, and plate glass rained on the sidewalks.

What the camera saw, its intelligent surveillance software converted to digits, was ones and zeroes. It moved them to a WiFi transmitter sitting above on the traffic pole. From there, the digits moved through the air on a radio frequency, 802.11, to another WiFi box on a light two blocks away. They flowed down the pole on fiber-optic cable that ran into a router under the street. From there they shot up Fairfax Drive on fiber to Clarendon Boulevard and east to Arlington Police Headquarters. In the headquarters, the digits were routed to an intelligent surveillance server. The server processed the digits and ran the image they created against the way the pancake house normally appeared. It ran the image against other known images and recognized that what it saw now was not normal; indeed, it was not good. Then the analytical software sent a signal to the large flat screen in the center of the police operations center. The image on the screen quickly changed from the normal scan of traffic on the Key Bridge into Georgetown. Now the screen showed a single word in large orange font: ALERT. Less than one second had elapsed since the flames shot through the windows of the restaurant.

A computerized voice spoke the word “Alert” twice over speakers in the room. Then the large screen dissolved to a feed from the camera across from the blast. The camera showed a dust cloud billowing out of all the windows of the pancake factory. There were fires inside and fires in cars in the parking lot. A man was staggering out of the doorway, coughing, choking, bleeding. One corner of the restaurant was missing, the wall having been blown out by the force of the blast near the big corner booth.

Then a chunk of blue roof tile that had shot up from the building came down on the camera. The video feed from the blast site died. In the operations center, the image of Key Bridge traffic reappeared on the screen.

“I’d better call Connor,” Jimmy said, touching his earpiece. “I told her I’d meet her and the professor for breakfast at eight. Obviously not going to make that.” Tommy McDonough nodded and climbed out of the undercover State Police step van to check on the parking lot. Soxster took the opportunity of both cops being busy to grab the last chocolate-glazed in the Dunkin’ Donuts box. His hand was shaking.

“Susan, listen, I’m up the coast a little way in Lynn. Soxster and I pulled an all-nighter over at the Dugout — it’s like this secret geek clubhouse he and his gang have over in Watertown…Anyway, look, what we found was a lead to who may have provided the pickup trucks used in the beachhead bombings. The computer address of whoever hacked the Nissan truck factory comes back to a garage in Lynn, so I got Tommy to get a warrant and we’re goin’ in.”

“So you’re saying that while I slept, you figured out who the Chinese hired in America?” Susan did not sound entirely happy about it.

“Maybe. There are some Russian mob guys up here running a chop shop, but they have this young Russian hacker who looks like he figured out how to get into the VIN system and create a bunch of trucks all with the same numbers on the frames. Then they have the trucks delivered to them with paperwork that says they all have different VINs. Soxster got into the kid’s computer last night…. Anyway, no need to go into the details of that part. We’re saying we had a confidential informant on the warrants we’re going to get—”

“Have you checked Soxster out before making him part of our team?” Susan asked testily.

“Yeah, of course, ran an interagency name check. Turns out he consults for the National Security Agency. He’s clean.” As he spoke, Jimmy looked out of the small window in the van and zoomed in on a white Ford pickup near the side door of the garage. Then he blinked and looked up at the digital clock just over his head, above the bank of television monitors in the van. “Gotta go, but I’ll catch up with you. Okay?”

As he disconnected from Susan, Jimmy switched to the police tactical radio band. “In three, two…Go, go, go!” On the monitor, he saw what looked like dark-blue-suited football players or ninjas burst from the back of the Ford van across the street. On another screen, a second wave of State Police SWAT officers were leaping from a trailer truck in the front yard of the Freedom Garage.

Brrrttt…brrttt. The muffled sound of automatic-weapons fire could be heard even across the street and inside the command truck. “Stay here. I mean it,” Jimmy yelled at Soxster as he jumped down off the stool and exited out the back of the truck. “You’re still a civilian.” Jimmy sprinted across the street to the garage, unholstering his side arm as he ran. He was wearing a raid jacket windbreaker that had four large letters on the back: NYPD.

As he entered the garage, he saw the dead man, his blood sprayed across the wall, his AK-74 on the floor nearby. There was always one dummy, Jimmy thought. As the SWAT officers began to handcuff the men they had pushed to the floor, Foley joined his cousin, Tommy McDonough, in the office at the rear of the four-bay garage. McDonough and three other detectives were grabbing up mobile phones, computer flash drives, and laptops as two men on the floor babbled in Russian at the SWAT officers above them. “Treasure trove, Jimmy,” McDonough smiled, “although it’s probably all Cyrillic.”

Jimmy knelt over the larger of the two men on the floor. He spoke in Russian to the prone suspect: “Who are you working for? Who got you to buy the seven white vans last month? Who took them off you? Tell us that now.”

“They will kill me,” the man grunted in Russian as a SWAT officer’s boot ground into his back.

“Either way, we’re going to tell the TV news guys out there that you cooperated,” Jimmy said in English. “If you don’t cooperate, it’s Immigration. If you do, it’s Witness Protection. Decide now or it’s straight into that Immigration truck outside. Now!”

The man on the floor hesitated briefly. “Yellin, Dimitri Yellin,” the Russian spat out. “But it must be Nevada I go to. Not Nebraska, Nevada.”

Foley and McDonough walked out of the office into the clerestory work area, filled with welding tools and grease. “Whaddya get, Jimmy?” the state policeman asked. “Didn’t follow the Russian jabber too well there.”

“He gave up the head of one of the big Brighton Beach operations. New York Ukrainian mob. Means they probably sourced the trucks up here, filled them in Jersey, had their grunts drive them to the beachheads and then escaped in a backup car or on a bike.”

“I don’t get it,” McDonough complained. “The Russians, the Ukrainians make a killin’ on internet fraud. Why they want to go and blow it up? Doesn’t add up.”

“Yeah, but maybe Yellin doesn’t make money in cyberspace,” Jimmy thought out loud. “Or maybe he got paid a boatload to blow up seven little buildings without any people in them and that’s better than credit-card fraud. Anyway, tell the FBI what you found. Let them ask this Russian. I’ll warn NYPD it links back to the City.”

Two SWAT officers carried the Russian out of the office. “Nevada, remember you promised Nevada.”

“You say Novosibirsk?” Jimmy asked as the man was dragged away. “I knew those two years out in Brooklyn polishing my Russian wouldn’t just be useful for the borscht and blini recipes.”

“Just got off the phone with my boss,” Susan said, sitting down for breakfast with Professor Myers at Henrietta’s Table. “There’s a possible terrorist incident just outside of D.C., but at a pancake house. Weird.”

“Did you know the nine-eleven terrorists stayed at this very hotel eleven years ago?” Margaret Myers observed, then her face turned ashen. “Did you say pancake house?

“Yes.”

“This is the second Tuesday in the month, isn’t it, Susan?”

“Yeah, so?”

Myers bit her lip. “It’s the Billion-Dollar Breakfast. The heads of the DARPA, the National Science Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health get together every month, second Tuesday, for an informal research-coordination session. They do it at a Ballston pancake place…Oh, Freda.” She lowered her head.

“More crown jewels,” Susan said to no one in particular. “I’ll find out if your friends survived.” She typed in a message on her BlackBerry.

Myers looked up. “You’ve got to stop these people. They’re moving fast.”

“Megs, I was thinking about what you said yesterday. Here’s a theory that came to me while I was running along the river this morning. You taught a class once on why the Soviet Union gave up the arms race. Remember?”

“Of course. The Americans and the Soviets had been in a high-tech arms race for years. Then, by spending like crazy, the Americans pulled way ahead. Some Soviet military leaders, Marshal Ogarkov initially, realized that the gap had gotten so wide that the Soviets could not afford to catch up. So they gave up and Ronald Reagan got credit for winning the Cold War.” Myers paused. “That is, of course, the overly simplified, one-minute version of a three-part lecture.”

“Right. So, Megs, what if Chinese intelligence on U.S. high tech is so good that they uncovered a lot of the breakthroughs that are about to happen, some of it the work in genomics and brain-computer interface that has gone underground because of the right-wing politics? Things the national-security policy types in D.C. don’t understand or even know about.”

Margaret Myers was silent for a minute. Susan knew that Professor Myers was digesting the idea and spinning it out into half a dozen alternative hypotheses. Finally, she replied, “Yes, a possibility. China would try to steal the information and bring the technologies back to their scientists, who might fail to be able to replicate them. Did I ever tell you the story of the first Chinese jetliner? Exact copy of the Boeing 707. Looked just like it, but they got the center of gravity wrong and the damn thing could not fly. Long time ago, of course, but they still have problems with creativity, project integration, and management.”

Susan was pleased at the response. “So you think it’s possible that…”

“Yes, Susan, yes. If the Chinese had discovered a U.S. technology edge, instead of choosing the path of Marshal Ogarkov and Mikhail Gorbachev and giving up, the Chinese might decide instead to eliminate some of the U.S. labs until their own scientists could catch up, which eventually they probably would.”

“That’s motive. We’re making progress on who the Chinese might have used to actually do the attacks on Sunday. Jimmy’s got proof of Russian organized-crime involvement from Soxster. Soxster also thinks the attacks might be from our own NSA.” Susan shook her head. “Other than that, Soxster’s good, by the way. You were right about him. Jimmy and he have already bonded in some bizarre way and are up in Lynn busting Russians.”

“Russians in Lynn?” Myers sat still, thinking. “The concept of layered deniability. You find who did it and you think it’s Russia who is attacking us, but that’s only the first layer.”

“That’s what we think. China hires Russian organized crime to do their dirty work in the U.S. If they get caught, our first suspicion is that it’s the Moscow government that’s doing the attacks,” Susan agreed. “Layered deniability, that’s a good term for it. Mind if I steal it for my report?”

Professor Myers smiled permission. “What else have you developed so far? What are the facts? Facts before hypotheses, remember?”

Susan was thinking again that Margaret seemed overly pedantic. She was glad that she had decided not to be an academic herself. Thank heaven for that recruiter. “We’ve told FBI and CIA about the message traffic from Dilan University in China that may have led to the CAIN building blowing up. Now we have this Russian crime group that got the trucks and explosives to blow up the beachheads. Soxster says someone was hiring hackers last year and one of them, named TTeeLer, told him he was going to a place in the California desert, Twentynine Palms,” Susan rattled off. “And Jimmy, amazingly, knows somebody who is working there on some high-tech project.”

“It’s the Twentynine Palms Marine Corps base, dear. I know about it, too, because there is a major DARPA project there on exoskeleton suits and performance drugs. Meant to create the super-warrior, strength of ten men, can’t be killed, and each man plugged into the Pentagon grid,” Myers recited from an article she had read. “If the wrong people hack into that technology…”

“Or try to blow it up to prevent it…,” Susan added. “You see a pattern yet? Where might they strike next, whoever they are? We have to stop showing up after shit blows up.”

Myers chuckled softly. “Always the easy questions from you. Just like in the seminar.” The professor closed her eyes and, after a moment, spoke. “With CAIN a pile of rubble, the people who will take over the work on Globegrid are in Silicon Valley. The joint Carnegie-Stanford computing center at the Googleplex, the old Ames NASA site at Moffet Naval Air Station. Maybe you should tell them they might be a target, too, if this keeps happening. But I would warn the DARPA people, too, at the Marine base. Lots of nasty things out in that desert.”

Susan looked down at her vibrating BlackBerry. “Margaret, I’m sorry. Freda and the other two directors. They all died instantly.”

“Of course, I dropped everything and came to meet you, General. You say you have another job that will pay like the last one, I come right away,” Dimitri Yellin said, gesturing with his hands as he talked.

“Don’t call me General. I am Mr. Cunningham,” the man replied.

“You look like a general I once knew in the Spetsnaz. You know what this means, Spetsnaz, I think, Mr. Cunningham?” Yellin picked up the cup of tea. “But I don’t understand why we must meet in person always with you.”

“I am not Russian, nor Spetsnaz. And I don’t trust some things to the phone, or the internet, or to subordinates,” the man replied. He placed his own cup of coffee back down on the conference room table.

“I know you don’t trust the internet. You hate it, you had me blow it up, some of it! And we did, flawlessly, no? But now I can’t get through to Kiev on the free phone…,” Yellin lamented. “But for that price — and in gold no less, deposited in Kiev — I can put up with such inconveniences. So, what is the new job? You want me to run this alarm company for you? I already own three others. They make money like nobody’s business. You just sit and wait for an alarm to go off. Then you call the cops. Seventy-five dollars a month, automatic to their credit cards.”

“It’s just a front, Dimitri, not a real alarm company,” the man calling himself Mr. Cunningham replied. “But I don’t hate the internet. I get some very useful information from it.” There was a noise outside the conference room, and Yellin glanced at the door. “Like the FBI’s message system, which they think is encrypted, too. Never good at computers, the FBI.”

“Then maybe you can tell me, Mr. Cunningham, does the FBI or do you know what happened to the Atlantic Star?” Dimitri Yellin took a brown cigarette out of a silver case. “My people have not heard from the ship since Sunday night. It has some of the people I used on this operation for you, it was bringing some of my cash back to Ukraine.”

“FBI would not know where it is, Mr. Yellin, but I can have my people look into the Coast Guard’s records. It’s very rough in the North Atlantic this time of year, you know.”

Another noise made Yellin look concerned. “What is going on out there?”

“Don’t worry. Our men are out there,” the man who was not Spetsnaz replied. “Freedom Garage in Lynn, Massachusetts. You know of it, Dimitri?” the man asked.

“Yes, my cousin’s. We got the trucks there. We made sure that they all had the same identification numbers. I told you they would be untraceable,” Yellin insisted, “totally untraceable.”

“Then why, Dimitri, why do the FBI computers say that the Bureau raided the Freedom Garage today and why do they have your cousin in custody in connection with the beachhead bombings?”

Yellin began to stand up but grabbed at his chest and fell against the table, gasping. His skin suddenly had a bluish tint. He crumpled, hitting his head on the table and then on the floor.

“Cunningham,” on the other side of the conference table, finished his coffee and then spoke into a microphone inside the arm of his jacket. “Please join me.” Two men entered the conference room. Both wore blue sport coats and green ties. Both stood over six feet and looked like college football players. “No problems out front, I trust?” the Cunningham man asked.

“No, sir. There were only six of them. Just his Caddy and an old Suburban, sir.”

“The bodies all go in the cargo hold on the 737. I’ll fly out of here first in the Gulfstream. And you know to leave their cars in the long-term lot at Newark Liberty?” Cunningham asked as he stepped over the body.

“Yes, sir.”

“And make sure this place is wiped clean. No prints, no blood, no hairs…. Untraceable, totally untraceable,” the man said as he left the room.

“Yes, sir, General, sir.”

“…organizer of the million plus rally in Washington last October, coming off a great performance in the New Hampshire primary, and now considered among the three front-runners as the race goes forward, Senator Alexander George,” the Dean intoned.

The students, faculty, and neighborhood regulars gave polite applause from the floor and from the seats rising up three stories in tiers on the sides of the Forum. Margaret, Soxster, and Susan were in a box seat near the top tier by the television klieg lights. “Here we go,” Myers said from behind her hand.

“Thank you, Dean. And thank you for the invitation. Bein’ from Dixie, I never really expected to be invited to anything in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but here I am…

“I know you, like me are deeply concerned about the bombings yesterday. And you may have heard the speculation today that the Chinese may be behind it. I think we all, as one people, should tell China that if it was involved, it will pay a price. And I demand that the President tell the Congress and the American people what he plans to do about it.”

There was no reaction from the audience. The senator continued, “I see the campus newspaper today said I was against the pursuit of knowledge. Nothing could be further from the truth. The truth, veritas, the motto of your school. The truth is that I, like most Americans, value the pursuit of knowledge, but as a means, not an end. As a means to understanding this marvelous world that God created for us.

“When I oppose the teaching of the Darwin theory, I do so because I want our children to have more knowledge, not less, to know that there are other explanations. When I oppose stem-cell research, it is because it is misplaced research, attempting to make scientists into godlike creatures without any limits. Disease prevention and repair, yes, but not enhancement, not supermen. Yes, I am opposed to the pursuit of knowledge when the end is breaking God’s codes so that man can pretend to be God.

“And now, with the advent of expensive designer drugs to enhance human capabilities, with the manipulation of genetic codes not to kill disease, but to improve performance…I say we are crossing a line that should not be crossed.” There was a smattering of applause from the few supporters who had accompanied the senator.

Soxster audibly sighed.

“As citizens of this republic, we are allowed to not believe in God, but we all should believe in democracy. When we set out to make the rich smarter and stronger than the poor by offering to the wealthy these expensive drugs and genetic alterations, we undermine democracy. I have always thought that the size of a person’s income did not tell me about his IQ, but that will soon no longer be the case…”

“Good argument,” Professor Myers said softly. “Gets away from the purely religious justification.”

“Do we want to throw out an egalitarian democracy for a Platonic republic with a caste system of gold men, silver men, and bronze? Because, make no mistake about it, even if we spent the entire GDP on these human enhancements, we could not afford it for all of our citizens. Who will decide who gets them? The almighty dollar will, just as it decides today who will get a facelift. But a facelift and a brain lift are two different things….”

“And guess which one he’s had,” Soxster said too loudly. There were chuckles from others in the third-floor seats.

The Senator was unfazed, or did not notice. “So I propose a moratorium on certain research and certain products until we have a plan for how we as a society can preserve our democracy and how we can together decide what it means to be human….”

The applause was only slightly stronger than it had been earlier. “Have to hand it to the man, coming to a university to propose a moratorium on research,” Susan said as they stood up to leave, not waiting for the question period. “Like how he went to Congress to oppose lobbying…”

“Gaudium said the same thing last year here at the Forum,” Margaret Myers noted. “Only in more technospeak.”

“Who?” Susan asked as they walked back into the classroom area.

“Will Gaudium, creator of Jupiter Systems back in the early nineties. Serious cyberguru,” Soxster explained. “Now he’s scared of the Singularity or nano-ooze or a mutant gene. Wants to freeze research, just like Senator Foghorn down there.”

“Nano-ooze? You mean like in the novel where nano-bots replicate themselves and can’t stop, and they eat up everything, converting it into more nano-bots? Gray goo? That’s nuts,” Susan said, and laughed.

“Not to Gaudium,” Myers replied. “He’s spending some of his considerable billions to do public education on these issues.”

“You ought to go hear him at Infocon Alpha in Vegas,” Soxster suggested. “He’s the keynote speaker this year at the hacker convention. Oughta be a blast. I’m going. And we may be able to learn more there about the hackers who have been hired by the big-money guys, China, or whoever they told them they were. From what I can tell so far, they been probing some really important networks, infrastructure stuff that makes the country run. They’ve also been running scams to pay for some of their big salaries.”

“What kind of scams, Sox?” the professor asked as they walked together.

“Phishing to get bank account passwords and credit cards, then taking small amounts from thousands of accounts and transferring them to banks in Antigua, Vanuatu, places like that.”

“Phishing, Googleplex, Infocon Alpha.” Susan shook her head. “I feel like I fell down a rabbit hole.”

Margaret Myers stopped and looked at Susan and Soxster. “Maybe we have. Maybe we all have. Curiouser and curiouser.”

Susan Connor and James Foley had rooms on the same floor of the Charles Hotel, looking out toward the courtyard and the river beyond. In between their two rooms was a third, staffed by two Air Force communications specialists assigned to the Intelligence Analysis Center. The two sergeants had converted the hotel room into a field communications and support site for the two IAC officers. The sergeants had been receiving and sorting intelligence reports from IAC headquarters back in Foggy Bottom. A small satellite dish sat on an end table, pointing up into the southern sky.

“His office said he would come on the secure vid at 1930 hours, miss, which is in about two minutes,” the senior sergeant told Susan.

“Thanks, Walid,” Susan replied, putting on her headset and sitting down in front of the twenty-eight-inch computer screen. Jimmy followed, sitting next to her. The sergeant flipped on a white-noise machine that created a sonic field projecting at the window and the entry door. If anyone was attempting to listen, they would hear only jumbled sounds of Susan and Jimmy. The voice coming from IAC headquarters would be heard only on the headsets, which decrypted the incoming signal and encrypted what was said on this end before it was transmitted to Washington.

Rusty MacIntyre appeared on the screen, somewhat blurred as he moved quickly into the room. He wore no headset. His office on Navy Hill was in a secure building above the Kennedy Center and the Potomac. The image sharpened as MacIntyre sat in front of his screen. Susan could tell from the puffiness under his eyes that her boss had not been getting much sleep. “Good to see you guys, Susan, Jimmy. I just got back from the daily coordination meeting on the investigations. We look good, thanks to you. Really nice work so far. What you found out about the Chinese using the internet to open the gas valve at the MIT computer science center was great. NSA is still trying to figure out exactly what terminal they used at Dilan University, but we may have to put a CIA asset on the ground to find out. For now, NSA’s thinking is that the university computer is just a relay anyway to the real origination point, probably in the People’s Liberation Army’s Information Warfare Brigade at Wuhan. That’s their best cyberwarrior group.”

Susan didn’t respond, and there was a moment of silence on the line. “Sir, what about the other high-tech facilities that were hit before the MIT center? Should we go to them, too, and see if there is a connection?” Jimmy asked.

“No, Jim, no need. I convinced the FBI that we found a pattern that they had missed. They now have hundreds of special agents going to those other sites to see if they are connected to this Cybomb case.” Rusty was clearly enthusiastic. “They even had to admit that the Russian mob guys you found in Lynn were connected to Cybomb. It’s pretty clear now that they were involved, at least with the trucks that were used to blow up the East Coast beachheads.”

“We came to the same conclusion,” Susan interjected. “The Russian mob’s involvement does not mean that it’s Russia. These guys are just guns for hire.”

“Thinking is here, Susan, that the Chinese may have hired the mob, maybe using a false-flag operation, a front, to do the dirty work and cover their own tracks.” MacIntyre continued, “Anyway, the Bureau has a BOLO out on the guy who your man in Lynn coughed up, Dimitri Yellin. He’s the boss of the Ukrainian mob in the New York — New Jersey area, but he has been pretty scarce this afternoon since the Bureau started looking for him. Maybe tipped off by local cops who saw the bulletin.”

“If he was tipped off, sir, it was by somebody in the FBI, not local cops, not NYPD,” Jimmy shot back.

“No offense intended, Jimmy,” Rusty laughed. “Just a matter of time ’til he shows up. And then we get to ask him who hired him to blow up the beachheads.”

Susan, her fingers twisting her lower lip, looked up at the screen. “Anything more on the pancake house bombing? Has everyone accepted that it was targeted to kill the heads of DARPA, NIH, and NSF?”

“Yeah, pretty much. Seems like half the world knew about these monthly Billion-Dollar Breakfasts,” Rusty said, flipping through his notes. “But Defense Intelligence now says that the Hunan Kitchen restaurant a block away is probably a Chinese intelligence front. They’ve asked the Bureau to see if there is a connection.

“The bomber was vaporized. Video-surveillance cameras in the area worked well. They’re running images of people seen in the Metro station and on the sidewalk above just before the blast. One possible lead is a guy with a backpack who looks a lot like an Iraqi Revenge Movement terrorist,” Rusty said, and leaned back in his chair. “I hope we’re not going to get another round of them attacking in the U.S.”

“Okay, well, we have some ideas about how to follow up what we have learned up here. I think now that whoever is doing this knows more about the state of our technology research than we do. A lot of science is speeding ahead at a breakneck pace, but much of it is hidden to avoid political problems with the radical right,” Susan offered. “So we’re going to go looking for it before it gets attacked. Might mean going to the West Coast first, to a computer center that might be a target. Should take about three days.”

On the screen Rusty looked tired and, unusually for him, he didn’t seem to be listening closely. “Whatever you guys think. So far you’re the only ones producing any solid leads and I can tell you from Sol Rubenstein that the President has been seized with this, he’s doing nothing else. If it is China, we are going to have to respond, and God knows how they’ll react to our response. Could get into a tit-for-tat cycle that keeps escalating. Ugly. And destroys the economy worse than this current flap with the international stock markets being disconnected. The real fear at the White House is not only that this shit’ll keep happening, but that it’ll make us look like fools because we can’t stop it and can’t even prove who’s doing it. Sol’s got a meeting with the Principals coming up tonight.”

“Rusty, has the media connected the pancake house explosion with the beachhead bombings and the satellites’ disappearing?” Susan asked.

“Not yet, not really, but they will pretty soon. So far the media is saying that the Cybomb case, even including the three missing satellites over the Pacific, hasn’t involved many fatalities, which is true as far as we know,” MacIntyre noted. “And that’s why some people think it’s a pretty low-risk way for China to send us a message.”

“But eight people died at the pancake house, including three of our leading scientists, and another fourteen died in connection with all the lab fires Jimmy found,” Susan countered.

“If they’re all connected,” Rusty said, again looking at his notes from the interagency-coordination meeting. “One other thing that came up, and keep this close hold. Without those three commercial satellites over the Pacific, the Commander-in-Chief Pacific says he would be, quote, unable to perform key warfighting missions adequately, unquote. One assumes the Chinese know that about us too. Anyway…I have to go meet Sol after his session in the bunker. Keep me posted.” The image faded on the screen, replaced by the Intelligence Analysis Center logo, spinning on a blue background.

Jimmy quickly shot Susan a look. “We’re going to the West Coast?”

“Silicon Valley,” Susan said. “Near the Googleplex. One of the Globegrid supercomputers that has not yet been blown up.”

Jimmy stood up. “Sunny California sounds like a good idea about now.” He looked across the brick courtyard toward the cold river. “But tonight, let’s go downstairs, there’s something I want to show you. I got some tickets that weren’t easy to land.”

“What? I’ve got reading to do that Margaret gave me,” Susan protested. “And you keep trying to butter me up by cooking for me and now buying me tickets to…to what?”

“McCoy Tyner is playing downstairs at the Regatta Club tonight,” Foley said, flashing two tickets to the jazz club. “I’ve always wanted to see him. And I don’t want to go alone.”

“Who?”

“McCoy Tyner. He’s almost seventy-five, but he’s the greatest living jazz pianist. He did all the original work with Coltrane. Jesus, Susan, isn’t jazz the Afro-American classical music?”

Susan stared at him. “If we are all supposed to be stereotypes, why aren’t you going to hear some bagpiper?”

“Touché. You’ll like it, though, and we both need to relax a little. You never think of the answer when you’re trying too hard. We need perspective — and a Balvenie?” Jimmy smiled.

“You’ll do fine alone at a bar,” Susan said, her resolve weakening. “Somehow I bet you never had a problem with that.”

Foley shook his head in disagreement, “It’s not like that. I’m married and, yes, happily. But when I’m alone at bars, traveling on work and whatnot, well, sometimes I do fall into old habits, and then I have to stop when I realize what’s about to happen. It confuses the woman and it leaves me, well, wishing I hadn’t started.”

“So you want me there so you don’t get tempted? Gee, thanks for the compliment.”

Jimmy ran his hand through his hair. “No, no, it’s not like that. It’s just you said you had a guy, and I thought since neither one of us is on the market, we could just relax and talk about something other than work, listen to some great American music, have a drink, and unwind.” The irresistible little-boy smile appeared.

Susan sighed in resignation. “Well, since you already bought the tickets…”

“I liked it better when your office was aboveground, Wallace,” Sol Rubenstein complained to the National Security Advisor. “This feels like some post-Armageddon redoubt where the survivors wait for the nuclear winter to end before they can reemerge onto the surface of the earth.” Two Navy stewards carried in pizza and colas. “Strangelovian.”

“You watch too many movies, Sol.” Wallace Reynolds chuckled, “I’m not so sure the Director of National Intelligence should have so much time on his hands that he can see as many movies as you do.” Reynolds passed the peppers to Secretary of State Brenda Neyers. “Besides, it’s more important that the National Security Advisor survive any attack on the White House than that I get to see the sun.”

It was the National Security Advisor’s turn to host the weekly after-work dinner with the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, and the Director of National Intelligence. They met in his office in the new National Security Council (NSC) staff center, fifty feet below the West Wing and the Eisenhower Office Building, inside the White House compound. There the Situation Room staff monitored world developments, interagency working groups met in person and on secure video conferences, and the NSC staff prepared presidential decisions and monitored their implementation.

“Movies are my escape from you three,” Rubenstein admitted as he lifted anchovies off his slice. “And they give me insight into what people are thinking. You should try it, Brenda, sneak into the back of a cinema after the lights go down. Try the multiplex in Georgetown. It’s showing a Schwarzenegger festival this week. Your protective detail will love it.”

“Just my kind of stuff, Solly, the Guvenator as a robot. I saw enough of that in reality as a congresswoman from California,” Secretary Neyers replied, and poured her Coke.

“Let’s get started. Bill, what’s the latest on the Chinese military alert?” Reynolds asked, turning to Secretary of Defense William Chesterfield.

“Seems like it might just be a drill, an exercise, now, but Pacific Command got pretty worked up during the day today. Most of the Chinese fleet put to sea and their strategic missile forces were communicating a lot, but we think now it was just a test to see how quickly they could respond to an alert message.”

Chesterfield flipped through briefing notes that his staff at the Pentagon had prepared for him. “Probably long planned and not connected with the disappearance of our satellites and the internet beachhead attacks. By the way, it turns out the economic effect of the satellite losses is less than we thought because there was excess capacity, some of it Chinese. But, your question, the Chinese exercise coming right now could be a coincidence.”

“Coincidence, Bill? I don’t trust coincidences in this business.” The National Security Advisor squinted as he looked across the table at the Secretary of Defense. “What do your guys say, Sol?”

“Coincidences happen, and we do have to be careful not to shape all the events we see through the prism of what is on our agenda. Nonetheless, the coincidence here could be that the Chinese had plans for a no-notice alert to their military and decided to run the test now to signal us,” Rubenstein replied. “Or it’s not about us. It’s just more of the saber rattling against Taiwan in the lead-up to their new parliament coming into session.”

“Signal us what? The signal doesn’t work if we don’t get it. I may just be a dumb former congresswoman, but I, for one, don’t get it,” Brenda Neyers shot back.

“To signal Taiwan’s new leader not to make good on his Independence platform. To tell us that they know we may think they are behind the attacks on our cyber infrastructure and we should not try any response because it could quickly escalate?” the National Security Advisor asked. “Is that what you’re thinking, Bill?”

“Could be both. If it’s about Taiwan, there are over sixty years of U.S. pledges to defend Taiwan from China, including the Taiwan Relations Act passed by Congress. If they go after Taiwan, we have no choice. Bill Clinton sent two carrier battle groups there the last time things were heating up.” Defense Secretary Chesterfield looked over at the Secretary of State and then continued, “But if it’s about us, and after all, it’s always about us…look, they know that we are trying to figure out who blew up the beachheads, hacked the Pacific commercial satellites and sent them hurtling toward Pluto. They know they must be a suspect. Therefore, they shake the cobwebs out of their military and at the same time their maneuvers remind us that they have modernized their forces. If we try anything against them, it won’t be a walk in the park. That’s what they’re signaling,” Secretary Chesterfield said, sounding like he was still teaching at Princeton. “Or they could have learned about our own big Pacific exercise upcoming and want to get in place first.”

“We know that they know that we know what they might have done. Good god,” Neyers said. “And people wonder how nations fall into unintended wars. What big Pacific exercise of our own do we have coming up?”

“No one’s talking about a war here, Brenda, just a big show of force by Pacific Command beginning next week,” the National Security Advisor admonished. “Sol, what do you have on the investigations? Is there a Chinese hand or not? The President wants options from us if it is China. He’s meeting with his economic advisors again in the morning. The stock market’s down twenty percent since the opening Monday, worse on the NASDAQ. And the media is beginning to turn on us for not knowing what’s going on.” The two Navy stewards reappeared to clear the pizza plates and bring in the apple pie à la mode. Conversation halted until they departed. Rubenstein then went over his report.

“As my friends at the FBI would say, Wallace, the investigation is ongoing. But, not being them, I will actually tell you what’s going on. I have four points in today’s intel summary. First, on the internet cable beachhead attacks Sunday, it now appears that a Russian organized-crime figure was involved. He was last seen on video monitors on the George Washington Bridge going into New Jersey on Tuesday. His car was later found at Newark Liberty Airport. NSA discovered that this fellow Yellin had a very large amount of money deposited recently into an account he controls in the Ukraine. Now he’s gone to ground.

“Second, on the Pacific communications satellites, we assume they were hacked by phony signals. They would have to have originated from somewhere in the western U.S.; we don’t know where. The attack was smart, sending the satellites out of orbit and toward Uranus, Neptune, Alpha Centuri, your choice.

Number three, on the suicide bomber, it came back as a positive match with a known Iraqi terrorist. Can’t explain that,” Rubenstein said, ticking through the bottom lines of in depth reports in his briefing book.

Defense Secretary Chesterfield looked exasperated. “I have to testify before Senate Armed Services tomorrow in closed session. I wish I understood all this cyber stuff better. I thought it was just for nerds. Who knew how important it was? Don’t you guys know anything more about what happened?”

“We may know more, but it’s speculation. China may not just be trying to get us to back off from helping Taiwan. They may be after our technological lead over them. My officers also identified a pattern of fires and accidents at major computer facilities and bio labs over the last few months,” Rubenstein responded. “If you add these all up, strip out some attacks or accidents at bio facilities, it looks like a Chinese attempt to take apart our cyber networks and to prevent us from implementing some of the fixes the President approved after the Cyber Crash of 2009. Those fixes might prevent Chinese industrial espionage on us, among other things. FBI is investigating a gas-leak explosion at one major computer lab that may have been a result of hacking into the gas line’s computer controls, someone hacking in from China. CIA is sending someone in to see if we can trace who in China.”

“Russian mobsters, computers that we all know can be spoofed. All of that does not yet sound like you could go to the UN and prove the Beijing government had attacked us,” Neyers observed.

“Doesn’t mean it didn’t either, Brenda,” Secretary Chesterfield shot back.

“They’re being careful,” Rubenstein interjected.

“Careful of what, Sol?” Reynolds asked.

Rubenstein closed his briefing book, signaling that what he was about to say was his own personal analysis and not what his staff had given him. “Careful not to kill. Only about ten people or so have been killed in all of this thus far, and two of them were suicide bombers, which by the way is not a traditional Chinese practice, suicide bombing. They probably hired the Russian organized-crime gangs and the Iraqi suicide bombers to operate in this country, but I can’t prove that to the UN or even to us yet. In any event, there has been little killing. Maybe they do just want to signal and not really piss us off. Careful also to cover their tracks to keep deniability.”

The National Security Advisor looked around the table to see if anyone had anything more to add. Then he said his piece: “The President wants to give a prime-time speech on Monday, six days from now, to try to explain what has been happening and what we’re going to do about it,” Reynolds said, looking straight at Rubenstein. “I hope we have something for him to say by then about who is doing this and how we know.” The National Security Advisor then looked at the Secretary of Defense. “And Bill, you will have options for him.” The SecDef nodded. “Good,” Reynolds continued, “then we will meet Sunday to go over what we will all say to him at Monday morning’s National Security Council session. Anything else?”

Brenda Neyers pushed back from the table. “Having nothing else go wrong this week would be good.”

The four leaders of America’s national security apparatus looked quietly at one another and the remnants of their meal. Wallace Reynolds looked up from his half-eaten slice of pepperoni pizza. “Or they could just go on destroying our technological edge bit by bit while we try to prove who they are and try to stop them. If they keep going, all we would have left going for us would be our amber waves of grain. That would really piss me off. To say nothing of my boss, upstairs, who will not let that happen.”

“Sorry to be late. They kept you waiting in the lobby? You really ought to be a member yourself, you know,” Sol Rubenstein prodded his protégé, as the two men sat down in a secluded corner of the second-floor drawing room. “Founded one hundred fifty years ago next year.”

“Are you kidding? Initiation fees, monthly dues. I don’t make that kind of money anymore, Sol, I’m in the government. You joined when the club was almost new,” Rusty MacIntryre protested. “Besides, its stuffy and aristocratic, and I’m working class and democratic.”

“Well, it is just a block from my downtown office in the White House complex, and the meals aren’t too bad here now. New chef.” Rubenstein settled into a commodious armchair. “And at the White House, all is not well. They were worried about the reelection anyway after Senator George flooded the mall with a million plus people last October protesting stem-cell research, evolution, and genetic engineering. Now, with the internet attacks Sunday and then the terrorist bombing in Arlington…Senator George is going to be able to play the security card. Scare people into voting for him the way Bush did in 2004.”

“Maybe there will be a nice, big crisis to unite the country behind the President. I keep expecting clear signs that China intends to move against Taiwan after the Independence Party got elected,” Rusty said, passing their drink order on a little card to the waiter.

“That was four months ago. So far, no retaliation. Maybe they think their economy would suffer too much from a showdown with Taiwan and us,” Rubenstein suggested.

“You’re the China expert, Sol, but I doubt it.”

“No, you’re probably right. They like to get all the pieces in place first. And we are one of the pieces. If they are going to do something militarily, scare Taiwan or even invade it, they will want us out of the picture first.” Rubenstein stopped as the waiter returned with his Armagnac and Rusty’s Balvenie. “And that’s not likely to happen. The President wants options from the Pentagon and is planning a speech Monday night.”

Rusty sniffed and inhaled the single-malt. “Atritting our comms in the Pacific by sending the commercial satellites off to Uranus fits the pattern of China trying to get us to back off, as does preoccupying us with terrorism against our technological base here at home. Its a form of deniable escalation dominance. It says we know how to get at things that you really value and we can do more unless you stay out of our way.”

Sol Rubenstein, Director of National Intelligence, swirled the brandy. “Armagnac is two centuries older than Cognac. Did you know that? China is two thousand years older than us as a national security bureaucracy. Did I ever tell you about my investigation into their industrial espionage here?”

“There is still a lot you haven’t told me.” Rusty smiled and readied himself to hear another story that he knew could not be found in writing anywhere. It was priceless having Sol as a mentor.

“About seven years ago, I headed up an Intelligence Community team: NSA, FBI, DOD, Homeland — to quietly look into allegations from industry that China was engaged in massive economic espionage, stealing formulas, proprietary information, from U.S. companies. Of course, they were. But how they were doing it was what was most disturbing.” Rubenstein stopped and sighed as he recalled the case. “They had placed Chinese nationals in many of the companies. Smart guys who had graduate degrees from MIT, Stanford. They had also created U.S. companies that supplied parts for sensitive projects and learned all about the projects. Not so unusual. But then there were companies that they had penetrated where there were no Chinese nationals or front companies in the supply chain.”

“I never heard about this effort,” Rusty admitted. “So how had they gotten into the other companies’ sanctum sanctorum?”

“Well, you weren’t supposed to know about it. Sometimes — not often, but sometimes — we keep secrets. The Chinese had gotten into the other companies through the products that they were using in their computer networks. Things like computer firewalls, intrusion-detection systems, all sorts of gizmos I don’t understand. But I understood this much: They all had parts made in China, sometimes the whole things were even assembled in China. And these gizmos had back doors, Trojan horses, put in their computer code and in the hardware. The U.S. manufacturers never even knew. In one case, they got into software being written in the U.S. by hacking into the U.S. company’s research lab in Shanghai and then tunneling through the company’s own network back into the U.S. headquarters.” Rubenstein gave MacIntyre a bemused look.

Rusty MacIntyre took another sip of the Balvenie and waited for the conclusion to his bedtime story.

“I figured out that it was their station chief here in Washington that was running most of the program, so I had him tailed, harassed by the FBI. The Chinese got the point and recalled him. FBI and DOD went around to the Defense contractors and cleaned things up as best they could. Checked on the supply-chain companies, the Chinese nationals with access to the plants, and the like.

“But we never uncovered the full extent of the back doors. There are probably a lot of back doors still out there in the big telcoms’ switches and internet routers. They were also in the big electrical components and video-surveillance systems. The decision was made that we couldn’t find them all, replace everything. Couldn’t prevent them from reinstalling the Trojans. Big economic cost. Maybe some panic. So there may be a little of it still out there. There may be a lot.” Rubenstein’s eyes were looking at the carved molding along the edge of the high ceiling.

“If I understood what you just said, Sol, Beijing could pull the plug on us anytime they want to?” Rusty asked, sitting up in his chair.

“Possibly.”

“Then why, if they are so deep into our networks, why don’t they just let them keep running and then continue to steal our intellectual property and copy it? Why blow it up instead? I don’t get it,” Rusty asked.

Rubenstein’s eyes met Rusty’s. “Maybe because some things are hard to copy and maybe they think we’re getting too far out ahead of them again technologically. They can do knockoff jeans with a J, not knockoff genes with a G. Or because they are planning to finally solve their Taiwan problem and they want us down for the count while they do. Or because they are not a unitary actor any more than we are. Or because I am wrong. Never exclude that possibility, Mister Director of Analysis.”

Rusty laughed. “I never do, but it’s such a low probability.” He polished off the Balvenie. “If I were the President, thinking about my options with China, I would want to have heard your bedtime story.”

Sol Rubenstein signaled for the waiter to bring another round. “That’s why I was late.”

At seventy-four, Tyner’s fingers glided across the ivory like the fast, cool waters of a rushing brook. The crowd in the packed club seemed to be extensions of his piano, nodding and moving in time with his music. In the dim red light, Jimmy showed Susan to a table stuffed in a corner. Tyner finished a bar and passed off to the drummer, as the crowd applauded. The percussionist began a riff. Susan leaned across the small table and whispered, “Thanks for doing this — we did need a break.”

“Well, I never really got to tell you that I was sorry that Rusty stuck you with me, the one-year-tour guy with no federal experience, unless you count the Marines,” Jimmy Foley replied. “But I can’t say I’m unhappy; I’m learning a lot already. But tell me one thing: Why do you do it? You could be making a bundle in investment banking, like my wife is, or law, or consulting.”

“That’s easy. I like to sleep late,” she admitted. “If I were just working for money, I’d sleep in all the time. This stuff gets me out of bed real early, because it matters. It matters more than just about me and my bank account.”

Jimmy did his little-boy-smile thing. “Yeah, I can see that. Me? I’m just in it for the pension. Get my twenty in, move to Florida, get a young bride, and fish, play golf.”

“You already have a bride!”

“Yeah, she’s my first wife, but she won’t be young by then,” Jimmy said, and chortled.

Susan mouthed a word back at him: “Asshole.” Then his infectious smile caused her to laugh. “Listen, I’m actually glad to have you on this case. I usually do analysis of things overseas, and this is shaping up to be more domestic, at least partially. And I’m really not too good at raiding Russian mob dens.”

“That’s easy. Just let the SWAT guys go first; they love it. They were all linebackers in high school.” Jimmy looked around for the waiter. “But tell me where you see this case going. The way the news guys are talking on TV, if we prove this is China, there could be war. I’ve been to war, and I’m not sure we need another, especially when they got us outnumbered four to one.”

“I didn’t look closely at your file,” Susan admitted. “Iraq?”

“Twice, although I found a way of shortening my second tour by being in a Humvee that hadn’t been fitted with armor yet. Not that I’m at all bitter about civilians sending us off on some wild-goose chase without proper equipment, but don’t get me started,” Foley replied, letting down the always happy guy facade.

“Sounds like we agree about Iraq,” Susan said. “My little brother, who is about five inches taller than me, went there, too. Army doctor. He gets so mad talking about the things he saw in that hospital. You two must be about the same age, thirty-three?”

“I will be in July,” Jimmy admitted. “So you get why I’m not so happy with this assignment of proving China did it, if the result is more guys having to go off to war. I was listening to the news before I came down. Senators and representatives all demanding we do something.”

Susan put her business face on again. “We prove what the evidence tells us, not what the TV and the Pentagon and Congress all assume. We can’t go to war on an assumption, like we did with the WMD. You know, Rusty damn near single-handedly stopped us from going to war with Islamyah. Now they’re one of our biggest allies, cochair with us of the new International Alternative Energy Agency. Even if we prove the Chinese attacked us, there doesn’t have to be war. You can bet back in D.C. Sol and Rusty are plotting how to defuse things.”

“Could be a tall order,” Jimmy Foley replied, “like getting a drink in this place.”

Another round of applause spread across the room as Tyner played his standard, “Just in Time.” Two Balvenies suddenly appeared on the table. As Tyner concluded the set, the room filled with applause and cheers. “Well, that’s an appropriate song title,” Soxster said, pulling a third chair up to the table.

Startled, Jimmy looked across at his new friend. “What the hell? How did you get here?”

The lights in the jazz club came back up. “You call yourself a detective. I’m wearing a waiter’s outfit and carrying two Balvenies and you ask me how I got in? It’s sold out, man, but they never stop someone who is serving drinks. Old trick. Anyway, I think we may be closing in on this thing Just in Time, like the song…” Soxster was talking fast.

Susan was shaking from laughter, more at Jimmy’s reaction and the incongruous circumstances than at Soxster. Finally, she got out, “What’s up, Sox?”

“What’s up Jimmy’s socks is an ankle holster, Walther P99C. Think I didn’t notice, Jim? Anyway…,” the hacker sped ahead, “I’ve been trying to make contact again with any of the guys who got hired off the Net last year, like you asked me, and I found one of them, TTeeLer. He’s got a new handle, but I knew it was him in the secure chat room by an exploit he suggested and the way he explained it to this guy. So I asked him to join me in a private chat and he used TTeeLer’s PGP key, which I already had—”

Foley, who was still recovering from the mood change, interrupted. “So what, man? Get to the bottom line.”

Soxster screwed his face up at Foley. “Dude. Chill. TTeeLer got out because he thinks they’re going to do something, kill a lot of people in March. He’s hiding out, says they’re trying to track him down because he left without permission.”

“Who are ‘they’ Soxster?” Susan asked slowly.

“He wouldn’t say.”

“Okay, where are they?” Jimmy pressed.

“He wouldn’t tell me anything else. Got offline fast once he knew I had figured out he was TTeeLer,” Soxster said, taking Jimmy’s drink.

“Great. Somebody who hired a lot of hackers last year is going to do something sometime this month that will kill a lot of people somewhere. That’s actionable intelligence,” Jimmy grumbled.

“Wait a minute.” Susan waved her hands downward, trying to get the two men to slow down. “Isn’t this the guy you said got hired to keep an eye on the two-niner project in the desert?”

“Yeah, that was TTeeLer,” Soxster replied, and then, slowly, a smile spread across his face. “Yeah. Good memory, Susan, wow! Those PEPs must really work.” Then he polished off Foley’s Scotch. “I put these drinks on your room tab, Jimmy, okay?”

Before he could respond, Susan jumped in, “That does it, Jimmy. While I go to Silicon Valley in the morning, you go to the desert and try to find where this hacker was and what he was up to. They’re going to kill a lot of people,” Susan repeated, “whoever they are.”

“In March,” Jimmy added, looking into his now-empty glass. “And this is already March.”