Chapter 82
Seth Mallus went over the final lines of the programming script on his computer display and inserted a missing semi-colon. It was horribly manual work, no high-level software had ever been written to do what he was about to do. The thousands of lines of code had been tested and re-tested several dozen times on his simulator; now, with this final adjustment, it would run perfectly.
He hit a key and the code executed, running through the simulation one last time. It really took him back, seeing the scripts run, right back to the early days of the nanotech boom, when he would still get involved in the programming; before the money, the empire, the power. It was an old-fashioned and usually unnecessary way of doing things. The only reason he had used the arcane method was that it was only in this way, by communicating directly with the machine, that all of the ghosts introduced by decades of amended programming sitting between the user and the processors could be eradicated. The last thing he wanted was some obscure security protocol getting in the way at the last minute and ruining so much hard work.
It was the language that the DEFCOMM Satellite Defence Network, or SDN, talked, and its beauty was that almost no human being alive was able to interpret it. Above ground level, outside the hermetically-sealed bunker in which he was now placed, the team of primary coders lay dead, gassed in their labs by the new air-conditioning system. It would be at least an hour before they were discovered, but by that time it would already be too late to stop him.
He finished running the simulation and checked the logs: no errors and the output was perfect. The paranoia of the world in trying to defend itself from an enemy that didn’t exist would now be exploited to the maximum by a simple computer program.
The code was packaged, uploaded to the SDN mainframe, and executed.
The United States of America was about to come under attack.
Twelve hundred miles away in New York, Frank Bartolini kicked open the side-door to the Lafayette Grill kitchen and strode out, a leaking garbage bag held at arm’s length and a disgusted look on his face.
“Jesus, Harry, how many times have I told you not to throw drinks in the waste?” he shouted over his shoulder.
He’d just thrown the bag into the dumpster and was wiping his hand on his apron when the white utility vehicle caught his attention. It was worthy of his attention because it was parked in the chief’s spot, and the chief was due to arrive any minute now.
He went back in, cursing. “Anyone know what idiot’s parked here?” he shouted through the swing doors and into the bar area; the restaurant was emptying after the lunchtime rush, but the bar was always held up by a handful of regulars.
A quick roll call established that nobody within was responsible, and Frank cursed some more as he dialled the tow company. It was free parking by law, but in practice, it was the chief’s spot, and even the tow company knew that, the owner being the chief’s brother.
Better still, he’d go out and make sure that on top of the tow fine, it would never occur to the utility vehicle’s owner to park there again. Armed with a rolling pin, he quickly checked that nobody was passing by before attacking the van’s headlamps. He then broke the tail lights, and took a final swing at the rear window. After two hits, the glass shattered, leaving a gaping hole in one half of the split rear doors.
He was about to leave it at that when curiosity overcame him. The van had blacked out windows, so maybe there was something inside worth hiding. He peered in.
A tarpaulin covered something about the size and shape of a fridge lying on its back. On one corner the tarpaulin had slipped off, and he bent his head round through the broken window to get a better look.
Whatever the object was, it was smooth and painted glossy white.
It looked just like his fridge at home.
He pulled his head out, no longer interested in the contents of the van, and was about to go back to the kitchen when he heard a click behind him.
“Stop!” the female voice cried. “Stop right there, or I fire!” He stopped. “Now, turn around, slowly, and drop the weapon on the floor!”
He obeyed, the rolling-pin bouncing on the pavement and into the gutter, and he found himself facing a female cop, a good foot shorter than him, holding her Taser up with both hands and pointed directly at his chest.
Chapter 83
“One of my researchers is convinced,” Larue breathed in deeply, he couldn’t believe he was actually going to say it, “that DEFCOMM is planning to start World War III this afternoon by simulating an attack on the United States of America.”
There was silence at the other end of the line. Larue decided it was best not to interrupt it.
“DEFCOMM?” the reply came, incredulous. “The guys who design and make our defence satellites?”
“And are also responsible for the video feeds from the Mars missions.” The story was still wafer thin.
More silence, but somehow this time more pensive. “How?”
Larue didn’t know; neither had Martín, nor his source. All they had was speculation. They could speculate that they could somehow override the USA’s missile launch codes and start the war automatically, but that was incredibly unlikely – if anything could be less likely! – given the safeguards in place. The best theory was that the attack would be a ghost, fabricated by the network of sensors placed in orbit and around the country, in the hope that the USA would respond in kind.
“But we will know it’s a fake,” the reply came, “it’s happened before, both here and in Russia! Once a visual confirmation cannot be made, the assumption is that there is a bug somewhere. That’s why we retain human control.”
A reply he’d been expecting.
“Remember that DEFCOMM don’t only make defence satellites,” he said. “But also a large part of your next generation nuclear weapon deployment systems,”
A short pause. “But, why would they want to do such a thing?”
To this question, Larue didn’t know what to say. If it were all true, if it was all about to begin and they had so little time left, then finding a motive could wait.
He’d made the call thinking he would be laughed at, and had only picked up the courage to do so because of Martín’s insistence. That, and a niggle in the back of his mind that there might actually be something to the crazy story.
But by the time he’d put the phone back on the hook he hadn’t been laughed at. They hadn’t hung up on him, and they had even thanked him, sincerely, for his information. This meant that there were people on the other side of the Atlantic who at least half-believed him.
And he found that deeply unsettling. Because the odds of Martín being right had just dramatically shortened.
Chapter 84
Martín looked sideways at Jacqueline, who forced a smile. The lights of the city flickered across her face as the TGV picked up speed on its way out of Paris. He was awestruck by her beauty, which almost made him forget why they had run to get the train.
And yet his mind did stray back to that rush, and also to the young family they had bumped into in the Gare de Montparnasse. The couple, with two small children aged no more than one and three, were just off the train from northern Spain and had been looking at their Metro guide. They had stopped Martín in his tracks, asking for directions in broken French.
He had greeted them in Spanish, and they had laughed enthusiastically; the eldest of the two children was tired but excited on this adventure to a foreign country, while her young brother slept in a sling on the father’s chest. The mother had turned to share her map with him, pointing to where they intended to go.
Martín had looked across at Jacqueline in despair; what could he tell them that would possibly help? If someone had stopped him in the street a week ago with the same information he had now, how would he have reacted? If he told them to flee Paris, they would think he was mad, and yet if he told them how to get to their hotel, he may live to regret it for the rest of his life. He’d sent messages to any family member or friend he could think of: simple and short, it had advised them to get away from any large cities. To people you knew that was an easy thing to do. It was something else entirely to stop random people on the streets and spread panic.