Private Rogue

Chapter 84

“Has Sci found anything?” I asked.

Mo-bot shook her head. “Not last time I checked.”

“Someone killed an entire unit of Green Berets and tore up Afghanistan looking for this thing,” I remarked. “Roslov was dismembered, likely as punishment for losing it. What’s so special about that figure?”

I studied Roslov’s photo, wondering why so much horror had been perpetrated in pursuit of such a mundane object.

“Keep digging,” I suggested. “We must be missing something.”

I left Jessie and Mo-bot and headed for the door. Justine followed me and we walked the short distance down the corridor to the forensic science lab. Justine swiped a key card and we stepped inside a laboratory that would have been the envy of any forensics specialist. I’d always invested in cutting-edge technology, and the spacious lab contained everything from a scanning electron microscope to flow cytometers to an X-ray machine. We could conduct most forensic scientific experiments within the confines of the room, and it looked as though Sci had made use of many of the machines. There were discarded consumables all over the workbenches. He stood on the other side of a protective screen, near the X-ray machine, busy studying an image on a monitor. Floyd was standing beside him. Both men turned when we entered.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Floyd said. “Didn’t seem right with Beth and the kids...” his voice trailed off. “Anyway, I wanted to see if I could help.”

“Anything?” I asked.

Sci shook his head. “I’ve treated it with chemicals, put it under the microscope, X-rayed the thing. It’s a perfectly normal bronze statue. And I’ve never hated a thing more.”

“Any chance the X-ray missed something?” Justine asked.

“It’s solid metal all the way through,” Sci replied. “No secret chamber. No concealed surfaces. Nothing abnormal in any of the reactions. It’s a copper — tin alloy with traces of other metals. There are no hidden markers...”

He stopped, clearly taken by an idea.

Sci grabbed the bull from the X-ray plate and hurried over to a bench at the back of the lab. “An optical microscope can enlarge the physical structure. We already checked for engravings or concealed codes carved into the bull...”

He went to a white box a little larger than a microwave and opened a door at the front of the device. “We didn’t find anything, but maybe we didn’t go deep enough.”

Sci put the bull inside the device, closed the door and activated a series of switches. The box was connected to a couple of monitors by a thick tube that looked a little like a high-tech drainpipe.

“This scanning electron microscope can see down to the atomic level. With it we can view each and every one of the copper and tin atoms that make up the surface of this thing.” Sci switched on the monitors and operated a rollerball mouse that seemed to control the resolution of the image onscreen.

An image of a tiny section of the bull filled the monitor. Sci adjusted it to a pin-sharp resolution. “I was on a flight once,” he said absently while he made fine tweaks to the machine settings. “I got to talking to the guy sitting next to me, and it turned out we were both due to be speaking at the same conference in Denver. Anyway, this guy was a physicist. He’d trained under Heinrich Kuhn, one of the guys on the Manhattan Project, and he told me how Kuhn had solved the problem of calculating the weight of uranium atoms. ‘You use light, my dear boy,’ was how he’d put it. Anyway, this physicist was gassing away about how light could be used to read and store data and...”

Sci hesitated and took a deep breath. He gestured at the screen. I saw the tiny craters and formations of an atom. But, more importantly, inscribed around the atom was a series of stripes. Some were thick, others thin, but there appeared to be only two types of mark, and they ran across the atom in a seemingly random pattern.

I gave Sci a puzzled look

“Is that a form of code?” Justine asked.

“Looks like binary,” Sci replied, staring at the screen. “Well, this is quite a thing. Someone has figured out how to store vast quantities of data on real objects.”

He shifted the microscope and moved to another atom, where a similar pattern could be seen.

“I can’t believe it. This technology alone is worth billions,” Sci said excitedly. “But my guess is it’s the data they want back.”

He turned to Floyd. “You may have unwittingly stolen the most valuable object on the planet.”

“So someone has an atomic-scale engraving machine?” Justine asked.

“My guess is they have a box in a lab, probably in SVR headquarters in Yasenevo, that can use beams of single photons to burn data onto the atoms, certainly of metal objects, but why not other substances too? Once the object has been encoded, it is placed into either the same box or another, which acts as a reader to decode the data. Maybe there is even a portable reader you use to scan the object? There might only be a handful of readers in the world, so you can store the most precious secrets and never have to worry about being discovered or losing your data. Unless the object is stolen, of course.”

“Everyone just sees a bronze figure,” Floyd remarked.

“Exactly, but in reality it’s a vast data repository. The ultimate USB drive. How many atoms form the surface of this bull? Billions? Maybe trillions? Effectively limitless storage capacity on just this one object. I’m just...” Sci trailed off. “I’m just blown away. This is revolutionary.”

“Can you decode it?” I asked.

“Unlikely without a reader,” he replied. “I can capture as many images as I like and try to decipher them, but we’re talking about a painstaking process. Imagine trying to reconstruct a photograph from binary. Who knows how this data is parsed?”

“Do your best,” I said.

“What are you thinking, Jack?” Justine asked.

She knew me well enough to spot an idea forming.

“I’m thinking it’s time to call Victor Andreyev and tell him we’ve found Captain Floyd.”