‘You mean he outwitted you,’ came the gravelly voice. ‘You were too elaborate.’
‘Planning, preparation, subtlety. I make no apologies for the elegance of my methods.’
There was a harsh edge to the reply. ‘Elegance is for the decadent, Swedish. And I do not want your apologies. I want a job completed. A bullet to the back of the head is effective, I hear.’
‘No doubt,’ said Ekstrom, controlling his anger. ‘A Chinese firing squad is also effective. But I do not intend to verify the fact in person.’
‘I will protect you. You may count on it,’ said the Chinese voice in careful English.
Ekstrom’s silence showed he had no intention of counting on Zhang’s “protection”. When he spoke his tone was businesslike. ‘The target has flown. Do you know where he is? I need to be right behind him.’
‘I can do better than that,’ said Zhang. ‘I can put you ahead of him. You will leave in thirty minutes.’
Ekstrom hung up. He’d planned the hits on Oyang and Stone such that even with the double hit, he would be beyond suspicion. It had worked out fine with Oyang. But Stone was still out there. And Ekstrom was a professional. He had to finish the job.
There was too much self-assurance in Zhang’s voice for Ekstrom’s liking. Zhang wanted to take control. But Ekstrom hated relying on others. He felt uncomfortable. Bad things happened when he relied on others.
On the other hand, the job must be completed. The reputation of Johan Ekstrom and Special Circumstances depended on it. He would take Zhang’s car when it arrived in thirty minutes.
Chapter 61–11:10am 13 April — Balong Polo and Country Club Resort, Zhejiang Province, China
Carslake knew plenty about Steven Semyonov, going right back to the photos in his highschool yearbook, then his conviction and his time in prison. He knew less about the man’s illnesses, which Stone had learned about from Virginia, and for that matter, pretty much seen for himself.
One of the difficult things in the story was grasping that the regular, skinny thirteen year-old in the high school yearbook, with hair and clear skin, was the same person as Semyonov. At first glance, no one would believe they were the same person, and Stone could see why Semyonov, the person, had seemed to appear from nowhere. It was a key to the person he was, and what had happened to him.
When Carslake finished talking again, and lay back in that stifling bedroom to gaze once more at the ceiling lightbulb, Stone rehearsed the story of Semyonov through in his mind.
It seemed that until the age of thirteen, the boy called Steven Starkfield was a normal, happy teenager. He also had a beautiful, clever sweetheart called Virginia Kocszelny. The two were inseparable, both clever and so different from anyone else at the small community school, in Coldbury, New Hampshire. However, at the age of fourteen, Steven became ill. For whatever reason — hormone changes maybe, or some mystery virus — he became afflicted by the most acute eczema and asthma. He later discovered they were caused by allergic reactions to normally harmless bacteria. Sores covered his body and his face. It must have felt like he was breathing through a straw. The doctors treated with heavy doses of steroids for the asthma, which explains why the school photo at age fourteen shows a boy forty pounds heavier than the year before, and covered in acne and sores.
At that time of life, any kid would be sensitive of his appearance. Steven found his body bloated by steroids and his face covered with zits and acne right down to his chest. Stone could guess how it panned out next. Kids can be cruel to one who looks different. But Steven never gave them chance. He hid himself away. Depression, isolation — a very common thing with teenagers who are long-term sick. He even stopped seeing his best friend Virginia, which is why she felt so eternally guilty about it all. Virginia was intelligent, blossoming, beautiful. She would soon escape to a top university, call herself Virginia Carlisle, and never look back.
Meanwhile, young Steven Starkfield turned in on himself. The computer and the Internet became his world. He applied himself for days on end to programming and hacking, and he was good at it. Virginia said he was inspired by Marc Andreessen, a college kid who wrote the software for the first web browser.
Carslake pointed out that Andreessen didn’t invent the Web, but it seemed like it at the time. His web browser was the first software you could use to access the Web easily. It was world-changing, but in fact it had been put together in a few weeks by a college kid.
Young Starkfield suddenly knew what he wanted in life. He wanted to write software that would change the world. According to Carslake, Starkfield would have seen through Andreessen in a few weeks. Because Andreessen’s genius was in the idea, not the programming. Steven would have realized very soon that he could do better than Andreessen, which must be a weird feeling if you’re fourteen.
Whatever the exact sequence was, Andreessen was key to Steven, because it was Andreessen’s next venture that really lit the touch paper for Semyonov’s life work. Andreessen’s next venture was Infoseek, the first major search engine on the Internet. Semyonov’s career had been about search ever since, and the Machine was just an extension of that.
But back then, Steven Starkfield was into hacking and programming. This was where Carslake’s knowledge had been so useful, because he’d looked up the court case against Starkfield, and found out a ton of stuff. It was used in court evidence against the young Steven. Semyonov couldn’t go to school, so he programmed, twelve, fourteen hours a day. He must have hated everyone back then. Thought everyone was an idiot, even Andreessen. Even Virginia.
Steven Starkfield, sick and reclusive, was arrested for hacking Defense Department servers when he was eighteen. And the computers seized by the FBI showed a remarkable level of programming. He’d made his own operating system, like Bill Gates did at that age. It was simpler than Gates’, but more powerful. Also code-generators, programs to write programs. And the programming code showed that he was obsessed with concision. Making his programs as short, but as powerful as possible.
Prison was the key event in Semyonov’s life. He would have hated the fact that the FBI took all his work and analysed it, and he resolved that no one would be able to figure out his programs again. You didn’t have to be a genius to work out that prison would have been disastrous for his health too. The weight, the eczema, the sores — it all went out of control.
He was lucky to get away with a year in jail, according to Carslake. The US can be very hard on hackers, especially if they target the Defense Department. And Starkfield was banned from the Internet for two years when he got out. It was when he did his best work. Away from the Internet, entirely on his own.
As for the Chinese: Carslake knew for certain Semyonov shared a cell for a while with a Chinese guy. Maybe it gave him the idea. Maybe he learned a few Chinese characters. Who was to say?
However it happened, Virginia’s tech guy, a man called Ostrovich, had analyzed Semyonov’s video technology. He said he could begin to work out the programming, but it looked like whoever wrote it redesigned the whole system to use a few hundred Chinese characters as short cuts. The character for gold would be for the function “print”, for example. But it went much further. Semyonov used a single Chinese character as a short cut for a whole complex algorithm. It was ultra-concise. For Semyonov, who had it all memorized, it would be ultra-quick to write his programs. Which is why he’d achieved so much, working entirely alone.
Best of all, his own system, full of Chinese characters, was private to Semyonov. No one looking at it would have a clue how it was done. Including the FBI, if they ever seized his computer again. Semyonov was determined that if anyone ever saw his work again, it would be impossible to decipher. Which was something the guys at SearchIgnition had found to their cost.