She settled deeper into her chair.
If nothing else, she thought, I’m safe here.
The rail-thin man sitting next to her got up to leave.
60
The National Security Agency was born in 1952 as a child of the Cold War, tasked by none other than Harry S. Truman to crack the communications codes of hostile nations, in particular those in the Communist Bloc. Its very existence was classified for years, leading to the running jest that its acronym stood for “No Such Agency.”
By turn of fate, the end of the Cold War coincided perfectly with the rise of the information age, and seeing its primary mission fading, the NSA did what government agencies always did when survival became an issue — it morphed into something its creators could never have imagined.
Today’s NSA operates on a budget of no less than forty billion dollars a year, the exact amount being highly classified. It is run by forty thousand employees, and the headquarters building alone contains seventy acres of floor space. Dozens of subsidiary data centers lay scattered across the country like seeds on the wind, a cyber network whose collective electric bill is north of a billion dollars a year. Yet if any one fact could cement its reputation, it is found amid the personnel rosters: The NSA is the world’s largest employer of mathematicians. By their efforts, and without question, the National Security Agency is caretaker to the greatest pyramid of knowledge ever assembled. And Trey DeBolt, by no choice of his own, found himself at the apex.
“NSA,” he said.
“Naturally,” said a pleased Patel.
“So META is run by the government.”
“The government,” Patel spat. “Our government is nothing but a behemoth, a beast that feeds and grows, and becomes so large it cannot even see itself. META is but a lost grain of sand, a program canceled before the people who paid for it even realized what was in their grasp. As of today, the program is officially dead, along with nearly everyone who had knowledge of it.”
“So my abilities are going to shut down soon?”
Patel smiled broadly. “Quite the opposite,” he said, “and therein lies the elegance of what I’ve created. You must understand, the NSA processes fifty petabytes of information every day … fifty petabytes. That’s an amount of data few people can grasp, save for the armies of analysts who do the sorting. What I have given you and Delta is unique. Not only do you have a connection to NSA, you have the highest priority access for cyber, on par with only a handful of people. The president, the director of national intelligence. The heads of CIA and NSA. In recent years great efforts have been made to expedite high-level requests, to hack into servers and get near-instantaneous results. It’s called tailored access operations. I was granted permission to install META under the guise of a DOD experiment, to explore the feasibility of bringing such near real-time access to Special Forces operatives in the field — it would be the greatest advance in weaponry since gunpowder.”
“A weapon,” said DeBolt. “That’s how you envision META?”
“Not at all. That was how General Benefield saw it, and the reason I was granted access. On paper, the project has ended, and by all appearances it has. Even I no longer have the ability to manipulate the software — it is now air-gapped, completely out of my hands. But deep within the NSA’s tailored access architecture, inside the most capable servers on earth, the code I implanted endures in utter silence.”
“And on the outside?”
“You and Delta are the only benefactors.”
DeBolt looked obviously at Patel’s weapon. “So what’s the point of that?”
Patel sighed forlornly. “I never expected two successes from our first four trials. Honestly, I predicted that META’s next phase, which was another year away, would be the first chance for a subject to survive the surgery. I wish I could work with you, study your abilities. But it’s simply not possible. Given what you know … the risk is far too great.”
A metallic clatter sounded somewhere down a hallway, the noise reverberating under the high ceilings. Patel’s eyes never wavered.
DeBolt said, “So you’ll eliminate me — like all the others. But what about Delta? He’s a killer, a madman. Why choose him as the test subject for your perverse experiments?”
“For one good reason — he will always do as I say.”
DeBolt was baffled by Patel’s answer, yet he sensed an opening. He closed his eyes for a brief moment, then said, “Tell me about Delta. How could anyone control him?”
His patience finally paid off.
Delta watched the thinning crowd in the aisle. Another minute, two at the most, he could finish what he’d come to do. The woman was still there, alone now in the last row. She’d glanced over her shoulder a minute earlier, her eyes actually passing over him. But there had been no recognition. Like any good predator, Delta could tell when his prey had been alerted.
He began edging away from the alcove, closing in. His hands lifted out of the pockets of his overcoat.
Then the most peculiar thing happened.
Patel lowered the gun ever so slightly, but DeBolt was still too far away to cross the divide and wrestle it away. So he waited. He listened.
“Delta?” Patel said derisively. “He is my idiot savant. A thug born in a uniform who now takes his orders from me. Right now he has Miss Lund cornered not a hundred yards from where we stand.”
DeBolt shuddered inwardly. “Shannon … she’s here?”
“Of course. We brought her here, in very much the same way we brought you.”
DeBolt remembered the message as if it were still in his visual field:
META CHIEF PROGRAMMER, DR. ATIF PATEL
CURRENT LOCATION: VIENNA, AUSTRIA
“You manipulated what I saw.”
“Not me. META is embedded now, so I no longer have access. Delta took care of it — he does everything I tell him to do.”
“But why? What hold do you have over him?”
“You haven’t spoken to him, have you?”
“We’ve crossed paths twice, but they weren’t exactly social encounters. He did send me a message directly through META.”
Patel smiled with satisfaction. “Another success — intranetwork messaging. You see, Delta is no longer on speaking terms with anyone. He has lost his ability for speech — a complete mute.”
“Because of the META surgery? What was implanted in his head?”
“That’s what he believes. I’ve told him his loss is reversible, and that in time I can find a surgeon who will repair the damage. It gives him great hope.”
“But it’s not true.”
“Not at all. The implantation procedures were performed by Dr. Abel Badenhorst, a very capable surgeon — he also did your work. He assured me that Delta’s speech loss was entirely the result of the accident that brought him to us. It was an explosion, a combat injury that nearly killed him. The damage to his frontal lobe was significant, and it robbed him of his ability to communicate. It can never be repaired. ‘Complete verbal apraxia,’ I think was the term Badenhorst used. Yet Delta believes in me. He is amazed by what I’ve given him, and each day I teach him more about operating META to its full effect. He will do what I ask — my army of one, connected to the most capable, intrusive computer servers on earth.”
“Aren’t you worried he’ll learn that you’re lying to him?” DeBolt asked.
“How could he? I tell him I am coordinating with great surgeons, devising a plan to reverse the damage. But such things take time. A year, maybe two. At that point I won’t need him any longer.”