Chrysalis

19

For a moment, as the people around the table absorbed the message, there was profound silence. Then a sharp intake of breath, followed by a muttered curse. And then — quite suddenly — an eruption of noise: protests, questions, disbelief.

“Quiet!” The commanding voice came from John Christie. Logan was shocked such a tone could issue from such a frail-looking frame. There was an immediate silence.

“Quiet, please,” Christie said again, more softly. Then he glanced at Asperton. “The rending of garments will have to wait. Claire, please go around the table and introduce everyone to Jeremy. Then I want people’s thoughts.”

In short order, Asperton named everyone in the room. Wilson Pettigrew, in charge of day-to-day business; Flavia Rhinehart, lead for technical integration; Orris Peyton and Peyton’s deputy, Daniel Kramer, security at the ARC. Logan nodded at each in turn, committing their faces and titles to memory. A few raised their eyebrows in recognition; others, who had apparently been present during the vote to bring Logan in, looked on impassively.

“Wilson, would you like to start?” Asperton asked.

The president, a very tall, bald Black man with a penetrating gaze, cleared his throat. “The obvious question is: Could this be a bluff of one type or another?”

“What kind of bluff, exactly?” Christie asked.

“The most obvious would be industrial sabotage. A mole, or moles, inside the Complex that want to gum up the launch of Voyager.”

“ ‘Gum up’ the launch?” echoed Peyton.

“That seems clear enough,” Pettigrew went on. “We’re seventy hours from the Omega II rollout. It’s all hands on deck.”

“How do you even know this is related to Voyager?” Peyton asked.

“It’s right there in front of us.” Asperton gestured at the white letters on the black screen. “It says we can’t stop the rollout, we can’t disable any of the devices that we’ve already sent out and are coming online. In other words, the note is referring to the initial hundred thousand end users we’ll have out there at nine a.m. Monday.”

“Those units have gone out in staggered shipments,” Rhinehart — dark haired and rail thin — confirmed. “We’ve gotten close to sixty percent confirmation from the recipients already, and many have already finished the handshaking process.” She turned to Pettigrew. “Say we go along with this. What would the impact be?”

“You mean, of stripping a billion dollars from our operating capital? It would mean a serious, serious shortfall. Not mortal, but pretty damned close in the short term. And trying to bury it as a loss would be a nightmare.”

“Companies have paid larger fines than that and survived,” Rhinehart told him.

“Not by much. Besides, this isn’t a fine — it’s ransom.” This was Kramer, head of Security and — apparently — Peyton’s pit bull. It was the first time he’d spoken, and his voice was deep and harsh, like a rasp grater on pig iron. Logan wondered, idly, if he cultivated it that way.

“Nevertheless,” Rhinehart pressed Pettigrew, “we could conceivably pay — without interrupting the rollout. If anything interferes with Voyager, it’s possible the entire Omega product line might never recover.”

“Right,” Asperton said. “Especially if a thousand users die while wearing — using — our device.”

Pettigrew shifted in his chair. “What Flavia says is true. We have so many divisions invested in this rollout…” He paused. “If the product imploded, suddenly and publicly, it would have repercussions throughout Chrysalis.”

“But this is still only guesswork,” Kramer, the security exec, broke in. “We don’t know if there’s any truth to this at all.”

“Three members of the board are dead,” Asperton told him.

It was interesting, Logan thought, that not Kramer, nor Peyton, nor even Asperton, made reference to the operation that had captured Mossby less than three hours before. Perhaps there was a strategy behind this silence; he hoped there was.

“We haven’t heard anything from our guest, here.”

It took Logan, still musing about Mossby, a moment to realize this was addressed to him. He glanced up to see it was Peyton who’d spoken.

“That’s right,” growled Kramer, as if to emphasize his master’s voice. “A billion for your thoughts?”

Logan didn’t answer right away. Instead, he glanced around the table. Everyone, including John Christie, was looking back at him.

If nobody else had mentioned Mossby, the rogue employee, Logan didn’t think he’d better be the first.

“As you say, I’m a guest,” Logan replied, looking at Peyton rather than Kramer. “But I’m happy to offer a few observations. Preliminary, at least.”

“Go ahead,” Asperton said, as if to parry the hostile front from the security team.

“Some of you are probably betting this is a bluff, but it’s unlikely. Rather, I think some sophisticated game theory is being employed here — and, as Mr. Pettigrew said, from the inside. Ms. Asperton received this message on her personal Omega device, encrypted with a Chrysalis private key. The earlier communications were similarly privileged. This would make carrying out their threats much easier. Also, they’re not afraid to back up their threat with the offer of, to put it crudely, a free demonstration.”

“And the bottom line?” Asperton asked.

“It would seem you’re neatly boxed in. You’ve said any delay of the Voyager rollout would begin a crippling cascade. On the other hand, a billion dollars might not cripple you — but it would undercut your development capital and hurt for a long, long time. So you don’t have much of a hand to play.”

“You’re saying our only option is to play along?” asked Kramer.

“This bad actor — since we don’t know how many or the true agenda, let’s just use the term ‘opponent’ — has set the rules. There’s no opportunity to stall for time. You can’t ask for proof: he’s already offered some, of a most unpleasant kind. You can’t negotiate, because he’s only making one-way calls. He’s timed this to happen while you’re busy rolling out phase two — and he’s not likely to offer an extension. What’s your employee vetting process?”

This last question, aimed at Peyton, was intentionally spoken in the same casual tone. The operations manager had very intentionally started a pissing contest with him, and now Logan planned to douse him in his own ammunition.

It took Peyton a moment to realize the query was aimed at him. “Our background investigations on potential staff are more robust than SCI clearances.”

“Any spy agency in the world could make the same boast — yet double agents get hung every day. I hope your people are mobilizing. You’ve got a lot to do — without raising any hue and cry.”

Logan held the gazes of both Peyton and Kramer. He already knew he’d never be friends with either. So he’d do the next best thing: make sure they did what he asked.

“So we agree: the threat is real.” It was Christie who spoke. “In that case, Jeremy, what next?”

“First, Mr. Christie, I’d like you to clarify something — if you don’t mind.”

The elderly man raised a liver-spotted hand for him to proceed.

“When you brought me in to investigate this situation, nobody knew if Spearman’s death was a tragic coincidence or something more. Now three are dead — and we can be sure it wasn’t coincidence. Our opponent has done my work for me. Given the landscape has changed, do you wish me to stay on?”

Christie nodded.

“From the start, you gave me wide-ranging authority. If I’m to finish this, I’ll need total carte blanche: to ask any questions, talk to any personnel, requisition any sort of data — not just from those at this table, but across the entire Complex. And, within reasonable limits, the authority to take necessary action — on your behalf, of course — to bring this matter to a confidential but acceptable conclusion. Will you give me that authority?”

This time, there was a slight pause. Then Christie nodded again.

“Thank you, sir.” Logan let his glance settle on Peyton before continuing: Pissing contest final score, 1–0. “I’ll make my analysis brief because all of us now have a lot to do. I can tell you why that note on the screen means business. Despite the use of the plural tense, I don’t believe we can assume this was sent by a team as opposed to an individual. In any case, I’ve read more than my share of voluntary false confessions — they’re rarer than you might think — and I see no self-punishment pathology, delusions of guilt, or anything else to suggest that here. Our opponent freely admits what he, she, or they have done: an admission that, by its very nature, makes it hard to dismiss. And he promises another demonstration, which unfortunately seems very likely to happen: he wouldn’t mention it otherwise. He places great emphasis on timing, which — along with the mention of the Voyager devices already distributed — shows he knows what pressure you’re under. More troubling, he has no delusions of grandeur. Quite the opposite: he seems rather humble.”

“How could you know that?” Asperton asked.

“Because of the line near the bottom: ‘with a CI of plus or minus 1.5.’ ‘CI’ is short for confidence interval. This person is referring to the accuracy of a sample distribution. In other words, returning to game theory, our opponent isn’t promising a thousand people exactly will die — but rather, that it’s a tight interval and he’s confident the number will be inside one and a half percent. Maybe at most fifteen fewer, or fifteen people more, will die; that’s as close as he can make to a promise. That’s where the game theory comes in.”

This was greeted by another silence. Finally, Kramer said, under his breath: “Jeezus.”

“This is all distressingly convincing, Dr. Logan,” said Christie. “But my question remains: What next?”

“As I see it, you can do two things, not necessarily mutually exclusive. First, prepare to follow whatever instructions you receive Sunday for paying the ransom. And second — meanwhile — let’s get working to prevent whoever’s behind this from killing a thousand of your customers.”

Another silence blanketed the room. “What if we pay and the killing continues anyway?” Kramer asked. “What guarantees do we have?”

“None whatsoever,” Logan replied, staring down Kramer. “But the alternatives are demonstrably worse. Now — since this meeting has taken close to twenty minutes already — I suggest there is no more time to waste.”