30
Prince George’s County, Maryland
USA
MORNING,” SMITH MUMBLED as he stepped into Covert-One’s inner offices. He’d been up all night working and didn’t bounce back from sleeplessness like he had in his twenties. Of course, he could use his Merge to knock him out at six o’clock tonight and be good as new by morning, but now he felt a little hesitant.
“Everything all right?” Maggie said, peeking out from behind the monitors she was barricaded behind.
He’d caught up with Klein on an encrypted line late last night and it was likely that she hadn’t yet been briefed on the conversation. Maggie was the only other person who knew the full extent of the Covert-One operation and she wasn’t accustomed to being in the dark.
“Yeah. Randi’s got a burr under her saddle…”
“Nothing new there.”
He laughed. After years of dancing around, Randi had been brought into the C1 fold only recently. And while she’d already proved her value ten times over, neither Maggie nor Klein had completely figured out how to deal with her. When they did, hopefully they’d teach him.
“It’s one of those things that’ll probably turn out to be nothing.”
“But you’re not a hundred percent sure.”
“Exactly.”
She retreated behind her monitors. “Go on in.”
Klein was on the phone when Smith entered, so he just fell into a chair and looked around at the old maps decorating the walls.
“So nothing at all. You’re telling me straight, right, JC?”
Smith perked up at the initials. It was what close friends called the director of the CIA.
“…No, no reason,” Klein continued. “Okay. Maybe next week? Give me a call.”
He hung up the phone and immediately went for his pipe.
“Any whispers?” Smith said.
“Nothing at all. In fact, the silence is deafening. No one seems to know anything about this.”
“And you think they’re telling the truth?”
Klein couldn’t reveal the existence of Covert-One or his working relationship with the president, so he had no authority beyond his history and reputation. And while both carried a fair amount of weight, they didn’t preclude the possibility that he was being kept out of the loop.
“I’d say I’m seventy-five percent confident that no one in the intelligence community knows anything about the Merge being used in Afghanistan prior to its release—or even that it existed before Dresner’s unveiling.”
The skepticism was not only audible in his voice, but clearly visible in his face. And it wasn’t hard to guess why.
“Randi…” Smith said.
Klein’s pipe finally caught and he gave it a few hard pulls. “We both know she has a way of grabbing hold of things she can’t let go of. And that she’s a bit of a technophobe.”
Smith shook his head. “I know she can be a pain in the ass, Fred. Probably better than anyone. But if she says that’s what happened, that’s what happened.”
“I appreciate your loyalty, Jon. And let me be clear that I have a lot of admiration for Randi Russell or I wouldn’t have sent her out there in the first place. This isn’t specifically aimed at her. I wouldn’t take this kind of intel on faith if God himself sent it down on stone tablets. Trust but verify, right?”
Smith nodded hesitantly. He wasn’t accustomed to questioning Klein, but in this case it seemed justified. “So you didn’t send her out there for this—the behavior of the people in Sarabat, the heads…”
Klein didn’t respond immediately, obviously considering how much he wanted to reveal. “There seems to be some money bleeding out of the Pentagon. I’ve been after it for more than a year and still only have a few vague scraps. Whoever’s behind it is incredibly thorough at covering his tracks. But we recently found something—a small and very indirect payment to mercenaries who were reported to be operating in that region.”
“So this didn’t have anything to do with the Merge.”
“Not at first. But now I’m concerned. Have you had a chance to examine the head she brought back?”
“I took it to my lab and spent the night looking it over. Exact time of death is hard to determine at this point but the three months that Randi’s telling us is completely plausible.”
“What about the studs?”
“They weren’t added postmortem, if that’s what you’re getting at. There’s new bone growth around them. I’d say they were installed about a month before death.”
Klein set his pipe down. “And the bodies? Can I assume there were no actual Merge units in evidence?”
“Randi said she didn’t check all of them, but the few she did—and the one she brought back for autopsy—didn’t have units. Someone would have had to remove them. Maybe when they were sawing off their heads.”
Klein just nodded, probably thinking the same thing Smith was—that this stank to high heaven of some kind of covert U.S. test. But if it was, who the hell authorized it?
“The way I see it, Fred, is that if we aren’t responsible for this, we need to find out who is. I’ve been working with the Merge for a few months now and my opinion of it has gone nowhere but up. This is going to be a transformational technology, and exclusivity is an important part of that. If someone had access to this thing before us, we have to find out who and what exactly they’re doing with it.”
“How plausible is it that someone has gotten access to the military version of the operating system?”
“Not. It only runs on our network and the encryption is generations ahead of anything else out there. Plus, I’m the only person who can authorize apps. That means that not only does my password have to be entered, but it has to be entered by my brain pattern.”
“What about Dresner himself?”
“It’s his system and I haven’t been able to figure out a way to shut him out of it.”
Klein put his pipe down and let out a long breath. “Who would have ever thought I’d look back fondly on the Cold War? This damn thing’s only been out for a few months and we’re already worried that it’s filtered down to a bunch of goatherders in Afghanistan. Technology cannot be controlled, Jon. Not anymore. And it’s going to be our downfall.”
Smith nodded sympathetically. “It seems unlikely that Christian Dresner would make an end run around us and hand over this technology to our enemies. He was never obligated to give us the exclusive deal. If he wants to sell it to anyone with a handful of cash, he has every right to do it. No, there are simpler explanations, don’t you think?”
The implication was obvious: The United States had a small, beyond-top-secret team who had been involved in some early tests that wouldn’t look good in the newspapers.
“Understood,” Klein said. “I’ll speak with the president and make sure this particular dark corner isn’t one he wants to remain dark. Until then, you’re not to continue any inquiries into the matter.”
“I assume you’re going to tell Randi the same thing?”
“I am. And I expect you to make sure she complies.”
Smith let out a short laugh at the idea that he could control Randi Russell. “In that case, sooner might be better than later for your conversation with Castilla. Randi’s not the most patient woman in the world.”