“We can’t.”
“That’s not acceptable,” Klein said.
“LayerCake,” Zellerbach said. “It’s not about the networks. Or the grid. Or the Merge. It’s about search. It’s about Javier.”
“Who’s Javier?”
Zellerbach didn’t answer, mumbling to himself and beginning to count something on his fingers.
“He may be talking about Javier de Galdiano,” Klein said. “He’s the main tech person behind LayerCake. He’s why Dresner’s search subsidiary is run out of a campus near Granada, Spain. De Galdiano doesn’t like to leave home.”
“Marty,” Smith said. “Look at me.”
He didn’t seem to hear and Smith reached out to force his head around. When their gazes met, Zellerbach came back from the brink a bit.
“We…We can’t stop him from triggering it, Jon. He’ll have too many fail-safes. But maybe we could change the way LayerCake judges people.”
“What do you mean?” Randi said.
“What if we could make it think everybody’s great? Then he can trigger it all he wants. It won’t do anything.”
“Can you hack in, Marty? Rewrite the parameters?”
“No. There’s no outside access. We’d have to be inside the building. And we’d have to have Javier’s password.”
“What do we know about him?” Randi said. “Dresner’s security is notorious but we might be able to get to him somewhere else. Can we find the address of his home and a schematic of any security systems he has installed? How does he get to work? Does he drive himself? Does he have family or friends he visits? What about hobbies that would take him outside? Biking and skiing are big in that area.”
“I can get that,” Klein said. “It’ll take some time, though.”
“Jon,” Zellerbach said, tugging on his sleeve.
“Just a second, Marty. We also need to start looking into the security at the campus. Even if we get to—”
“Jon!” Zellerbach repeated, this time grabbing Smith’s shoulder and shaking him.
“What is it, Marty?”
“I know him.”
“You know who?”
“Javier.”
“You’re friends? How close?”
Zellerbach’s words came out in a breathless jumble. “I’ve never actually met him. He’s an old hacker, like me. There are five of us who have a competition and we set up challenges and try to do them and get a trophy we pass around. Javier has it now. He broke into my system to get it. My system! He’s so smart, Jon. So smart.”
“Can you get in touch with him?”
“Yes. We have a private chat room. The five of us.”
“Tell him you’re coming to Spain and you want to meet.”
“Face-to-face? We don’t do that. He won’t want to do that.”
“You said he has the trophy right now,” Klein interjected. “What if you won it and said you wanted to pick it up personally?”
“Yeah. That’s in the rules. I could do that. But I haven’t won it. He knows I haven’t won it.”
“What’s the current challenge?” Randi said.
“To turn all the screensavers at the National Security Agency to gay porn.”
Klein laughed. Probably not at the image but more at the fact that Zellerbach’s contest happened to be very much within his sphere of influence. “That won’t be a problem.”
“No. It’s hard. This challenge has been out there since they repealed don’t ask don’t tell. The security is tough and getting it to hit all the computers at once is nearly impossible. No one’s even close as far as I know.”
“Trust me,” Klein said. “Tell him you’re coming to Granada and you want him to deliver the trophy personally.”
70
“There she is,” Randi said, dropping her duffel on the dirt airstrip and pointing into the jungle.
The plane was a large turboprop but it was hard to tell the exact make through the modifications, rust, and camouflage paint. Smith approached a little hesitantly, looking at holes where rivets should have been and the cracked glass in at least a third of the windows. Zellerbach just stopped dead, suddenly forgetting the cloud of insects buzzing around him.
“This is it? This is the plane you told us about? What’s wrong with the one we flew here?”
His alarm was understandable but there wasn’t much they could do. Dresner had intelligence capabilities so cutting-edge that there was no way to anticipate them. While every effort had been made to ensure that the planes used by Covert-One were completely anonymous, it was impossible to guarantee in a post-Merge world. This plane, though — while maybe not entirely airworthy — could never be tracked back to Fred Klein or the president.
“It’s better than it looks,” Randi said, recruiting Smith to help pull the camo netting from the fuselage. “And my friend left a laptop with a satellite link inside. He says it’s a super-fast connection.”
“I’m not a child you can ply with candy.”
“Suit yourself. Did you bring a magazine? Maybe you could just hang out in the sun and read.”
Zellerbach looked around him at the jungle, at the old truck they’d driven there, at the mosquitoes.
“Come on, Marty,” Smith said, yanking off the last of the netting and opening the door. “It’s got air-conditioning.”
Of course that was a lie — the heat billowing out of the plane felt like a kiln — but it did prompt the sweating hacker to inch closer.
Zellerbach peeked inside and crinkled his nose as Randi made her way to the cockpit. The seats had all been ripped out but, true to her word, there was a card table with a laptop on it near the back.
“There is not air-conditioning.”
“Gotta start the engines first,” Smith promised, lacing his fingers and offering Zellerbach a boost up.
He followed and closed the door, looking back to see Zellerbach on his knees examining something on the floor.
“Is this cocaine?” the hacker said, bringing his nose within a few inches before Smith grabbed him by the collar and dragged him to the table containing the laptop.
“Just dust from the insulation, Marty. Why don’t you fire that thing up and see if you can get online.”
It was another lie. The plane belonged to a Colombian acquaintance of Randi’s who had helped her do away with a couple of Hamas guys looking to get into the drug trade. It had been a mutually beneficial operation — she got rid of two terrorists and he got rid of two potential competitors — that had gone smoothly enough to prompt them to stay loosely in touch.
Once Zellerbach was settled and had forgotten the coke in favor of the even more addictive glow of the computer screen, Smith went forward and took the copilot’s seat.
“Nice rig,” he shouted, putting on a headset as the props came up to speed. “You think it’ll actually make it over the Atlantic?”
“Diego swears it’s a cream puff.”
She eased the throttles forward and the plane bumped its way to the makeshift runway.
“And you trust him?”
“Truth be told, he has a thing for me. And he’s dying for me to go to work for him. Apparently, he has some other competitors he’d like retired.”
“Good work if you can get it.”
She grinned and twisted around to look through the tattered cockpit curtains. “Hang on, Marty!”
Despite its appearance, the plane felt solid as they lofted into the air and began to bank out over the jungle. Randi had an intense expression of concentration on her face and Smith remained silent. With her questionable skills and the unfamiliar aircraft, her focus was best left unmolested.
After a few minutes, they leveled out and she relaxed a little. The brief calm before it got dark and instrument-flying was required.