“So, what about the meeting? Who was there with Hussein?”
“That’s what’s bothering me the most. I was just saying to Bob, I didn’t recognize the guy, but he was a four-star general, Josh. U.S. military. And he was protected by some very well trained guys. I don’t know if they were secret service or something, but they were definitely G-men.”
“Holy shit…”
“Indeed.”
“Adrian, this is getting worse by the minute.”
“Tell me about it. Where are you, anyway?”
“Me and Schultz flew back to HQ in California after we dropped you off at the jet. Just scanning through our intel, planning the next move.”
Clark abruptly stands at his desk, pushing the chair backward and knocking it over.
“Fuck me…” he says in a disbelieving whisper.
“Josh, hang on a sec, I think we might have something,” I say, before holding the phone against my chest and looking over. “Bob, what is it?” I walk over and look at the screen.
“I’ve got in and decrypted the information Hussein had,” he explains. “A lot of it is useful, but not groundbreaking — financials, locations of safe houses and the like. But then I find this…”
He leans forward, tapping a few keys and bringing up something that looks like a blueprint of some kind.
I shake my head and shrug. “Looks impressive, but means nothing to me,” I say.
Clark points at the phone. “You got Josh on the line?”
I nod.
“Put him on speakerphone — he’ll want to hear this.”
I do, resting the phone on the desk next to the laptop. I say, “Josh, you’re on loudspeaker. Bob’s here and looks distressed.”
Before he could say anything, Clark started talking. “Josh, we have a serious problem. Yalafi Hussein has the schematics for Project Cerberus on his computer.”
Silence descends, and after a few moments, I begin to feel awkward, like I should say something, but don’t know what.
“Fuck me…” says Josh.
“Okay, that’s what Bob said,” I say. “Everyone’s doing that thing where they all talk in some sort of code, and everyone seems to understand it except me. And you all know how that pisses me off. Somebody start talking — in Adrian language.”
“Adrian, Project Cerberus is a government-funded program for NASA,” explains Josh. “It was one of the first things the new president invested in.”
“NASA? So it’s a rocket or something?” I ask.
“It’s a satellite,” he continues. “A very powerful satellite. Its primary purpose is to act as a roaming firewall, protecting all the important information the U.S. government doesn’t want falling into the wrong hands.”
“Like…”
“Like information for the Department of Treasury, military strategies and programs, nuclear launch codes…”
I raise an eyebrow. “Fuck me…”
“Exactly!” says Josh. “Cerberus is basically a large, floating, un-hackable computer in space, looking down and protecting all the important data the U.S. has.”
I massage my temples, trying to process the information. I’m far from computer-illiterate, but I’m not technically-minded like these two. I prefer paper, a pen, and a gun. I see absolutely no reason to put more and more information on smaller and smaller computers.
“So, the fact a terrorist has the blueprints for this satellite is a very bad thing, right?”
“Bob?” Josh says, as if prompting him to add to the conversation.
“That’s… not all the satellite does,” he says, somewhat reluctantly.
“Oh, great — there’s more…” I say, despairingly.
“Everything Josh just said is accurate, but that’s only what the official statement to the media said about the program.”
“And you’re about to tell me the unofficial statement, correct?”
Clark sighs, and I hear Josh shuffling on speakerphone, which I take as a sign of discomfort.
“Cerberus is also capable of monitoring and recording… well, everything,” Clark says. “Every phone call, e-mail, text message, photo, video, camera feed… literally everything.”
“Not wishing to state the obvious moral and legal arguments of what you just said, but whose bright idea was that?”
“The primary function of the program is to safeguard all top secret and critical information in a place no one could break into, that much we all know. But the secondary function is to protect the nation as a whole from any potential threats. To do this, it monitors everything, all the time. It searches for certain parameters and records everything to do with what it finds, storing it on its servers for up to seven years, and transmitting anything that falls within certain pre-set boundaries directly to the Pentagon. As you say, Adrian, there’s a very obvious moral issue, to say nothing of the legalities of the technology. Even President Cunningham couldn’t have sold such a massive invasion of privacy to the American people.”
That’s a lot of information to take in, and I move over to the window and look out to the street below, gazing aimlessly as I wrap my head around it. This Cerberus thing isn’t a computer or a shield for the American people — it’s a goddamn weapon! And Hussein has the blueprints for it… so this must be the Armageddon Initiative’s goal — to somehow gain control of this satellite! Christ, they’d be able to hold the country to ransom…
I walk back over to Clark. “Okay, here’s a question: how do you two know all this top secret shit that no one else does?”
It’s Clark’s turn to walk off and pace the room.
Josh clears his throat on the line. “Adrian, we know because… we built it.”
15
“What?” I ask.
“NASA’s budget has always been unjustifiably large,” explains Josh. “But most of that is for research nowadays, not production. The project was outsourced to GlobaTech for us to physically build the satellite. We had a hand in the design, as NASA wanted our opinion on certain things, then once it was completed, they launched it and took the credit.”
I shake my head. I’m genuinely shocked and borderline offended by what this country’s become in recent years.
“And you didn’t think to question all of these little extras they asked you to put in?” I ask.
“Adrian, I know where you’re coming from, I do. But it doesn’t work like that. GlobaTech is a worldwide company who make weapons and technology, as well as contract out their own private army to countries around the world to solve problems. We’re not here to debate the moral implications of what people pay us billions of dollars to do.”
I look at Clark, who seems to be doing his best to avoid my gaze. “And what happened to the ethical reign of the mighty Robert Clark?” I clench my fists as I fight to retain control of my, typically short, temper, enraged by my own helplessness.
He turns and glares at me, a flash of anger in his eyes. “Hey, don’t lecture me on ethics, you self-righteous sonofabitch!” he yells, with a distinctly confrontational tone to his voice that takes me by surprise. “All day you’ve been insinuating I’m not good enough to help you, and I’m sick to death of it! Then you have the audacity to question me on a morally-gray business venture that the U.S. government paid me a small fortune to be part of? Don’t you dare start pointing the finger at me and mine over this!”
Still on speaker, Josh takes in a breath and holds it, the shock of Clark’s outburst stunning him into silence. He knows as well as anyone that there aren’t many people alive today who can say they’ve spoken to me like that and have gotten away with it. I take a couple of deep breaths, finding it very hard to resist lunging for his throat.