"As long as it is totally untraceable and doesn't look like the wealth of nations."
"Trust me. If these loons think about it at all, they'll figure we really are South American drug lords. Anyway, I'll have their wish list for you in a week or so. If all goes according to plan, you'll have full access to the San Diego bio labs for almost four hours, sometime in late December."
"Excellent."
"And then maybe you'll tell me just what you're looking for in those labs."
"We believe the Americans are up to something there."
Rabbit's eyebrows raised. "A Great Power betraying its own kind?"
"It's happened before," though not since the early part of the century, the Sino-American misunderstanding.
"Hmm." For a brief moment, Rabbit seemed almost thoughtful. "I trust you'll let me in on what you discover."
Alfred nodded. "If we can can keep this between the two of us." In fact, Rabbit learning about Alfred's YGBM project would give new meaning to the phrase "worst-case outcome."
Fortunately, Rabbit did not push the issue. "There is one other thing," said the creature. "One last contact, an interesting fellow — in a way more interesting to me than all your espionage hugger-mugger."
"Very well." Alfred resolved to accept whatever foolishness the other was spouting.
A picture of a youngish Chinese fellow hung in the air. Vaz's gaze swept through the attached bio. No, this chap wasn't young. "That's Bob Gu's father? You're going to fiddle with — " He spluttered into silence, remembering recent events in Paraguay. For a moment he forgot the need for placid acceptance; some types of foolishness were very hard to swallow. "See here, this operation was to be discreet. How could you — "
"Not to worry. I have zero interest in Junior. It's just one of those crazy coincidences. See, Bob Gu's father is Alice Gu's father-in-law."
Hmm ? Alfred parsed the contorted language. Then he realized that Rabbit was talking about Alice Gong. Oh . Rabbit had left the land of the foolish and was trekking deep into madness. Alfred was speechless.
"Ah, you know about Alice then? Did you know that she is tooling up for a full-scale audit of San Diego bio-lab security? Just think! Real soon now, the Americans are gonna go ask Alice to tighten up the guard there. Tracking her is muy importante , old man."
" .. Yes." The EU and Japan would bail out if they knew Alice Gong Gu was on this case. And Alice will surely detect what Ym doing at the bio labs . "So what are you proposing?"
"I want to make sure Alice is not guarding the labs when we go in. I've had Gu Senior on a line for several days. But that's going too slowly. Besides — " another challenging, toothy grin " — I'm dying to talk to the guy directly. We need a zombie contact." Another picture/bio popped up.
"An Indian national?"
"Subtle, am I not? Yes, though for the last two years Mr. Sharif has been living in the U.S.A. He really has no connection with any Indo-European intelligence service. I'll contact him like the gentle cloud of coincidence that I am. If the Americans identify him, he will be a perfect red herring. Your EU and Japanese friends would be too cowardly to go for this. You , I think, have more courage. So I'm here to give you a heads-up. Cover me on this. Keep your people out of Sharif's way. Sometimes he will really be me."
Vaz was silent for a long moment. He had not known that Alice Gong Gu was training for an audit of the San Diego labs. That was bad news. Very bad news. It wasn't enough that Gong be kept away one night. Then inspiration struck. Alice's genius came at a terrible sacrifice. He had stumbled on her secret several years ago; in her own way, she risked more than Alfred ever had. And my weapon, incomplete as it is, could stop her cold . He looked back at Rabbit. "Indeed, you have my support in this. It should involve just the two of us."
Rabbit preened.
"But if I may make a suggestion," Alfred continued, one colleague to another. "It may be best if we schedule things so that Alice Gu is on duty the night we go in. With proper preparation, we may be able to turn her presence to our advantage."
"Really?" Rabbit was literally bug-eyed with curiosity. "How is that?"
"I'll have the details for you in a few days." In fact, there were lots of details, but not for Rabbit's ears. Alfred was already posting the mission requirements to his inner teams. How long would it take to build a Pseudomimivirus appropriate to Alice's special weakness? What was the surest delivery method? Indirect infection was probably not practical here.
And what cover story would work best with this wretched rabbit?
Said rabbit was still looking at him expectantly.
"Of course," Vaz continued, "there are aspects of the matter that I should best keep to myself."
"Heh. Of course. World-shaking plans, and so forth? Never mind, I am content to remain your Great Cutout from Heaven. I'll be in touch. Meantime — " Suddenly he was wearing a gray uniform studded with medals and draped with aiguillettes. He stuck his arm out in a hitlerian salute. "Long live the Indo-European Alliance!"
With that, the rabbit's image vanished like the cheap theatrics it was.
Alfred sat motionless for almost two minutes, not responding to the shrill alarms that pounded through the office network, not responding to the various staff analyses that were already being generated. Alfred was rearranging his priorities. He hadn't known about Alice Gong Gu, but now he did and with enough time to turn her presence into an advantage. It was a sad thing that he would harm this woman who was actually fighting on his side, who had done more than almost anyone to keep the world safe.
He forced his attention back on track. Besides dealing with Alice, there was another new priority: to learn more about Rabbit, to learn how to destroy him.
Alfred Vaz had no official rank in the External Intelligence Agency, but he had immense power there. Even with modern compartmentalization techniques, he never could have cloaked his research programs otherwise. Now… well, Rabbit's visit to EIA headquarters was arguably the most spectacular intelligence failure of the decade — but only if outsiders knew to argue about it! Alfred used all his power in the Agency and all the secret political levers he had accumulated over seventy years to keep the news within his own teams. If the EIA inspector general had got a whiff of it, all Alfred's plans would have unraveled. It was a sad fact that his own government would probably count him as a traitor if it knew of his efforts to save the world.
All this made investigating Rabbit's jape a delicate affair. Somehow this enemy had penetrated the most secure isolation firewall known. Rabbit had even coopted hi-res localizer support (evident from his perfectly positioned imagery). The obvious explanation was that Rabbit had succeeded in subverting the Secure Hardware Environment. If that were so, then the foundation of all modern security was suspect — and Rabbit's visit was a clap of doom.
Surely Armageddon would not be announced by a silly rabbit? There followed almost eighty hours of uncertainty as Alfred's inner teams pounded away at the mystery. Finally, his EIA analysts discovered the true explanation, something at once comforting and deeply embarrassing to them: Rabbit had — admittedly with extraordinary cleverness — exploited a combination of buggy software and foolish registry settings, the kind of flaws that bedevil careless consumers. The bottom line: Rabbit was far more dangerous than Alfred had originally thought, but he was not the Next Very Bad Thing.
Vaz suffered through every moment of the suspense. But in the end, the most infuriating aspect of the incident was the piece of carrot that Rabbit left on his desk. With all the resources and expertise of the modern Indian state, it took EIA signals intelligence almost three days to obliterate the logic that injected that image into his office network.