Kill Decision

CHAPTER 26

Reston, Virginia, was a prosperous town — although it wasn’t really a town. It was officially a “census-designated place” with “government-like municipal services” provided by a nonprofit association. The Dulles Toll Road ran straight through Reston’s center and was lined with brand- new ten- and twenty-story office towers bearing clever logos that screamed high tech and whispered defense. There were German sedans in the parking lots. Scores of upscale eateries along with the usual midscale chain fried-everything theme restaurants for the junior engineers. There were plenty of trees and parks. Planned development was the norm here.

There were American flags too, of course, fluttering on vehicle fenders, corporate campuses, and public areas just as they had after 9/11. But there was a sense of purpose here as well; “stopping the evildoers” was what they did in the defense corridor. Half these companies hadn’t existed before 2001. Now the military couldn’t find its soldiers without them. National security was the town’s main industry. And business was booming.

In college if anyone had told Henry Clarke he would be doing top-secret work, he would have laughed in their face. He was going to be the next social media wunderkind. In a way he was-except that he could never tell anyone. Now here he was, putting in another late night managing cyber battalions in far-flung time zones from a suburban tech defense park.

It was past one in the morning, and as he clicked across the quiet building lobby from the parking elevators, the RFID tag in his badge identified him to the armed security people at the front desk before he arrived. He didn’t recognize this crew, but then, security people were always rotating. And the security system told the guards everything they needed to know about him.

“Evening, Mr. Clarke.”

Clarke nodded as he passed the buff Latino and his female colleague in navy blazers.

“Should I turn on the lights for twenty-two?”

“Don’t bother. I like the darkness.”

Clarke nodded to them as the elevator arrived, and he tapped the button for the top floor. In a few moments he was moving through the lobby of his company’s full-floor office. The full floor wasn’t necessary, but then, they had lots of subtenants who didn’t want nameplates and addresses of their own. It was hard to say what any of them did, but none were here at the moment. The place was deserted.

Although it was originally Marta’s idea, Clarke had started to enjoy coming in to the office in the wee hours. It was relaxing not having his phone constantly ringing. Instead he was issuing most of the messages without having to deal with real-time responses.

He drew a key card out of his pocket and unlocked his office door with a muted bleep-bleep. Tossing his leather satchel onto the sofa, he moved across the large corner office in the dim emergency lighting. There along the far wall was his favorite piece of art-a slab of cut blue-green glass six feet wide, four feet tall, and one inch thick on a three-foot-tall granite pedestal. Projected into the heart of the glass by an ingenious arrangement of blue, white, and red lasers and spinning mirrors was a map of the world, onto which was projected the current “mood” of every continent as derived from word forms flowing through the public Internet-data from Web search queries, blogs, social media entries, Wikipedia edits, news articles, and on and on. Tag clouds of the ten most common words and phrases flowing through the veins of the Net filled the boundaries of each continent. Positive words such as hope and great were depicted in blue, neutral words in white, and negative words in red. Even as he watched, large red letters for attack seemed to encompass half of North America. He could spend hours watching the mood of the world shift and spread like a lava lamp of news. When the Japanese earthquake and tsunami occurred, he had seen the red data race across the globe faster than the actual shock waves.

The artful device had cost him two hundred and ninety thousand dollars, but he would have paid double. With it, the moment anything happened in the world, he knew. It was his personal crystal ball. Nothing could surprise him as long as he gazed into its depths.

“A fascinating piece,” a voice spoke from behind him.

Clarke spun in alarm toward a darkened corner where his reading chair stood.

“I saw something like it in Germany. Except it wasn’t so beautiful.”

“What the hell? Who are you? How did you get in here?” Clarke started edging toward his desk and his phone.

“Looking for this?” The man tossed Clarke’s desk phone into the center of the room, where it clattered to a stop. A tail of severed cord trailed from it. “Don’t reach for your cell phone either. You wouldn’t live to dial.”

“What are you doing in here? Do you have any idea how serious…” Clarke was still backing up as an intimidating man with cold blue-gray eyes emerged into a shaft of light. The intruder was dressed in a white plastic smock with rubber gloves and plastic booties. A six-inch killing knife held firmly in one gloved hand. “Oh, God.”

“Surely you knew there would be consequences for what you’re doing?”

Clarke looked around and considered shouting for help.

“Go ahead. No one can hear. I imagine that’s the whole point of this place.”

Clarke bumped into the edge of his desk. “I don’t know who you’re working for, but I can pay you more.”

“I’m not here for money. What I want is information.”

“I’ll tell you everything I know. No problem.”

“Your firm is part of a private intelligence-gathering operation. One designed to detect and neutralize opposition to your clients’ enterprises. Correct?”

Clarke struggled to find words. It was a familiar-sounding process but with an entirely different emphasis. “Wait, wait. We gather information from legal sources. We market ideas. We predict likely scenarios-what we do is simple business intelligence.”

The man stared. “You’re a propagandist, Mr. Clarke, and personally, I don’t give a shit how you rationalize it in the wee hours of the night. What I want to know is who hired you to push autonomous drones.”

Clarke was at a loss. “Is that what this is about?”

“Who hired you?”

“Surely you-”

“We could breach your network, examine your banking transactions, trace payments to and from offshore shell companies-but frankly, fuck that. I don’t have the patience. It’s three times now that some asshole has tried to kill me with a drone strike, and I’m ready to start sending back severed heads. And unless you tell me something I don’t already know, I’m gonna start with yours.”

“Oh, God.” Clarke started to hyperventilate. “You think I have something to do with the drone attacks? Hold it, hold it. I’ve got nothing-nothing-to do with those attacks. We were hired by M and R to help mold public opinion in support of the drone appropriation. That’s all I know. That’s it-”

“Who at M and R?”

“I could give you names, but they’re just lawyers. They’re all just lawyers. I’m telling you, they’re all half out of their minds with fear that they’re going to be the next one hit by a missile-they’re sending their kids to suburban schools like this is the London Blitz or something. We were paid to sell drones to the public, but frankly it makes sense-we’re under attack. Why wouldn’t we want to launch drones in our own defense as quickly as possible?”

The man moved closer, rolling the knife in his palm with frightening skill. “Time’s up.”

“Wait! Wait!” Clarke held up his hands defensively. “Rita Morehouse. Jack Allenby, Aaron Nichols, uh, Uma Verazzi.”

“Those are your handlers at M and R?”

Clarke nodded, suddenly sweating and trembling. “Yes. Please don’t kill me. I promise I won’t warn them. I swear it.”

“Well, you’re not someone I’d want watching my back. I didn’t even have to cut you.” The man deftly grabbed Clarke’s silk tie and, with a single frictionless motion, cut it clean away, leaving an orphaned double-Windsor.

Clarke recoiled, trembling and clenching his eyes shut as he held up his hands defensively. “Please! I promise you. I swear it.”

After a few moments he opened his eyes warily, but the man appeared to be gone. Clarke lowered his arms to see his office door open and himself alone. He let out a deep sigh, just now realizing he’d forgotten to breathe. He leaned back against his desk and tried to collect his thoughts.

The first thing he did was edge toward his office door. He then leapt forward and closed, then locked it. He peered through the glass at an angle to see if anyone was outside. The man seemed to be gone.

Clarke reached into his jacket and produced his iPhone. A moment later he was listening. Even though it was one in the morning, it only took one ring to pick up. It never occurred to him to wonder why. “Marta! Some SAD-SOG asshole just threatened me at knifepoint in my own goddamned office.”

“He said he was SOG?”

Clarke took a deep, calming breath. “No, but he sure as hell knew who we are. He said he’d been attacked three times by drones, and he was coming for somebody’s head. He was definitely black ops and wanted the names of my contacts at M and R.”

“Who did you give up?”

“Some mergers-and-acquisitions people. The first names that came to mind…”

I n a panel van half a mile away, Mordecai Evans, Linda McKinney, and Foxy sat listening to the conversation as they watched the voice patterns on a laptop monitor. The voice of Mr. Clarke was filled with anxiety.

“… I need protection, Marta. This guy walked in here like it was a public restroom. This wasn’t some amateur. I don’t know how he got past security. ”

“Calm down, Henry. If they wanted you dead, you’d be dead.”

Evans was busy clattering at a laptop linked to an almost Soviet-looking stack of ruggedized radio receivers dotted with antennas. “I’ve got her IMEI and IMSI. Looks like a company phone-no name-but I place her near the Georgetown waterfront. Stationary, so she’s probably at home. I’ll use the control link to direction-find her when we’re close.”

Clarke’s voice pleaded in the background. “… this is no joke, he literally cut the tie off my neck.”

“It will be handled. Just go home. Get some rest.”

McKinney watched Evans working.

Evans answered a question she was only thinking. “Multichannel digital receiver.”

“I didn’t know it was this easy to intercept cell phone conversations.”

“Well, it is. It’s called meaconing.” He pointed. “Wireless phone systems consist of base stations spread around town. When you turn on your phone it searches for the base station with the strongest signal and establishes a control link-down which it sends information about the phone’s identity. The first thing I do is jam the target phone’s existing control link. That forces it to scan for a new base station-which I mimic by providing a stronger signal. Basically I become his cell tower, and that gives me a control link to his phone. I can then listen in and see the identities of any phone he communicates with. The control link is completely separate from the connection that people use to talk on the phone. That means I can remotely program a target phone to turn on even if it’s off. I can activate the microphone when he’s not on a call-use it as a bugging device. And lots of other things. Even if they’re using civilian encryption, it won’t help. Most encryption is done at the base station… and of course, I’m now his base station.”

“Is this what you did for Odin overseas?”

He nodded. “Yeah, it’s great for mapping the structures of fluid organizations like criminal gangs, knowing who’s important to whom. Dropping bombs on people.”

“I’m starting to realize that.”

The rear door to the van opened, and Odin, Smokey, and Ripper entered-the latter two wearing security guard blazers.

Evans scowled at Odin. “I thought you said your whole team was dead?”

“I said what was necessary to get your cooperation.”

“Asshole…”

Odin nodded to the screens as he closed the doors behind him. “Who’d he call first?”

Evan gritted his teeth for a moment. “Looks like a Beltway bandit. He wanted protection. She told him to strap on a pair.”

Odin tossed the stub of a lavender silk tie into McKinney’s lap. “Get us moving.”

M arta’s city address was an ultramodern penthouse overlooking the Potomac, just west of the Watergate. It had set the firm back five million, but it was essential to have a base of operations suitable for entertaining, close to the Kennedy Center, the waterfront restaurants, and other cultural landmarks. There was an expansive terrace area overlooking the Francis Scott Key Bridge-a terrace with built-in catering facilities and space enough for a hundred cocktail party guests. At night the view was beautiful, but she seldom noticed it-especially tonight.

Instead Marta sat alone at the head of a postmodern cherrywood table in her massive formal dining room, flanked by granite tile and glass walls and valuable modern art, idly perusing the latest foreign policy best seller-penned by a policy wonk she knew. Just another heavy business card. She took a sip from a full glass of very good Cabernet.

Before her hall clock sounded two A.M. she was startled by a hoarse caw and looked up to see a large black raven ominously perched atop the chair-back at the far end of her dining table, twenty feet away. She calmly closed the book and waited.

A few moments later a handsome, athletic man in a gas company uniform, helmet, and climbing harness stepped partway around the corner. He had cold steel-blue eyes and the self-assured gait of a special operator.

“I’ve been expecting you.”

The man registered not the slightest hint of surprise. At a gesture from him the bird flew off, across the living room and out her open sliding glass door.

“Do you normally leave your doors unlocked and your alarms deactivated?”

“I didn’t want you to break anything. I’m having a party tomorrow night.”

“And your security detail?”

“Sent away for the same reason. I’m not foolish enough to resist the U.S. military.” She appraised the man before her. “You’ll have to forgive Henry. He’s a bit naive and self-impressed. But then, that’s what the young are. The moment he called me, I knew to expect your visit.”

The man said nothing.

“What can I do for our friends in The Activity?”

With his other hand he produced an insectlike robot the size of a toaster oven from around the corner and tossed it into the center of her dining room table. It left several nasty indentations on the rosewood before it clattered to a stop, facing her like a dead black spider.

She grimaced. “Ah, drones.”

“Autonomous drones.”

“And because we’re promoting autonomous drones on Capitol Hill, you think we have something to do with these attacks against the United States.”

“The drone strikes here are just the beginning. I’m more concerned about swarms of kill-decision drones overturning thousands of years of military doctrine and rules of conduct. That’s a lot of hard-won experience to throw away without any debate.”

“Well, we advise everyone from African dictators to country-western recording artists, to supermarkets-and, yes, aerospace. But we have nothing to hide from you.”

“You’re going to tell me who’s running the project.”

Marta pushed the book away. “You of all people should know these things are compartmentalized. Even if our side was somehow behind this, why would I know? And why would I know who knows? Tell me, Mr…”

“You call me Odin.”

“Mr. Odin-you don’t seem like someone who needs to be told what to do. In truth, despite the fact that everyone wants you to stop, you’re still searching for the people behind these attacks.”

He just stared, unreadable.

“That’s because an expert knows what needs to be done. That’s why they’re an expert. I’m a public relations expert. My clients include aerospace interests, and I know that drones are the future. Dozens of nations plan on using drones to shift the balance of geopolitical power-to undo U.S. aerial and naval supremacy at a bargain price. We need to win that struggle. Are we behind the attacks? How the hell should I know? And, frankly, it doesn’t interest me.”

“You have no idea what this will unleash.”

“And if we don’t do it, everyone else will.”

“Clarke and his people were manipulating social media. You were the one giving him access to raw telecom, geolocation, and Internet data-telling him who and what to oppose. How do you get access to that data? Are you NSA?”

She gave a tight smile. “It works the other way around, Mr. Odin. The NSA gets their data from us. A little-known fact got lost in the uproar about warrantless wiretapping: It wasn’t the NSA that did the tapping. The work was outsourced to experienced companies that had already tapped most of the world’s fiberoptic grid for other governments-some not so nice. Privately held companies the public’s never heard of. Those companies have three thousand clients in a hundred and fifty countries-and one of those clients is the NSA. Do you get my meaning?”

“Did it ever occur to you that all this surveillance and data tracking has actually put the country in danger, instead of protecting it? It’s being used to target drone attacks.”

“That’s a use I hadn’t heard of. Although, this is the problem with a surveillance state; once you build it, it always grows. Do you realize how many industries use this data? How many people are busy building the systems to gather and analyze it? How much economic activity that’s generating? Ah, but then, you’ve seen the valuations of social media companies and mobile start-ups. That list will continue to grow, and it will create inertia that resists any attempt to tear the surveillance system down. You’re fighting against the tide of progress, Mr. Odin. It’s not a matter of stopping me. I’m nothing. And there is no one person or group driving this. It’s progress. You can’t stop progress.”

“This isn’t progress. It’s regression. We’ve been here before. Consolidation of power is as old as history. Power in the hands of very few. That’s fundamentally at odds with democracy.”

“I should think you’d be happy to have machines fight your wars for you.”

“Whose wars? Who’s to say who controls an autonomous drone? They can build their army in secret and fight wars anonymously, using surveillance data as the targeting mechanism. By that measure, America is more vulnerable to drones than just about any society on the planet. We’re essentially giving an ant-level intelligence policing authority over us.”

Marta took a sip of wine. “Well, I can hardly prevent that. And as you’ll learn, there really isn’t a central authority. There are only… interests.” She raised her eyebrows. “Is there anything else I can do for my friends in The Activity, Mr. Odin?”

He stared at her, again unreadable. Marta usually prided herself on her ability to read people. This man was like a stone obelisk. His training, probably.

The man pulled an index card from somewhere with a close-in magician’s dexterity. He approached Marta and left the card in front of her as he collected the carcass of the shattered drone.

“If this surveillance system can find anything, then you’re going to make it work for me.”

She shook her head. “I can’t use it to find who’s behind these drone attacks, Mr. Odin. I thought I made clear that there is no single entity resp-”

He put the card into her hand. “Read it. I want raw intercept data on anyone who’s been dealing with that precise combination of chemicals over the past six months.”

Marta sighed and read the words printed neatly on the index card. She sounded the words out slowly. “Perfluoromethylhexane… dimethylcyclohexa…” She looked up. “What are these?”

“You have three hours to get the data. The where, the when, the who.” He nodded at the card. “Have your people send it to the FTP share on the card. We hijacked it, so don’t bother attacking the owner. If you don’t comply or try to double-cross me, I’ll take it as a declaration of war from you personally.”

Marta held up her hands in acquiescence. “As I said, I’m always happy to help The Activity, Mr. Odin. And if this data pull will get you to move along, I’ll be happy to accommodate you.” Marta again lifted her wineglass. “You do realize, though, that whoever is doing this might not be so happy to see you?”

Odin cast a parting glance at her as he carried his dead drone toward the exit. “You have three hours.”

Marta watched him go before studying the list again in more detail-and taking out her cell phone.