14
Lansing liked doing business at Harry’s New York Bar, on Central Park South. It was far from Wall Street, filled with clueless tourists, and had enough background noise to hide a conversation. The bartenders there also made a wicked gimlet.
Thirty-six hours had passed since the sting. Lansing had retreated to his Trump penthouse, waiting for Moro to do his investigation. It had been the longest thirty-six hours of his life. He had been unable to do anything—eat, sleep, follow the markets, even read the Journal—while wondering if Moro was going to be able to track down the bastards who had stolen their money. He was so tense about it that he couldn’t even get it up with his girlfriend that morning. The people who had done this to him were going to pay, and the more he thought about it, the more he realized that the payment had to be of a primitive kind. The most primitive kind. That had led him to undertake the research that eventually led him to two brothers from Kyrgyzstan who were in a special business and said to be very good at it.
Finally Moro had called him. And there they were, at the best window seat in the house, watching the sunset over Central Park as the lights of the buildings along Fifth Avenue blinked on.
The waitress came over. Lansing ordered his gimlet and turned to Moro. “Your poison?”
“Programmers don’t drink,” said Moro, pushing the hair off his face with long, grimy fingers, his nails so bitten to the quick that they were practically bleeding. “Kills brain cells.”
“But today you’re going to make an exception.”
Moro responded by ordering a lychee double martini, straight up.
“So—what have you got for me?” Lansing asked.
“Drinks first.”
Moro sat back as his drink arrived, then brought the rim of the stemmed glass to his lips, pursed them out, and sipped loudly. Lansing watched and tried to contain his impatience.
Moro put the glass down, tucked a greasy wisp of hair back behind his ear, and pinched his nose, giving it a quick rub and snort. Long ago Lansing had learned to tolerate Moro’s low-class mannerisms. He had to put up with a lot when it came to Moro, but in an odd way, despite all that, he was rather fond of the boy.
“Good news and bad news,” said Moro. “Which first?”
“Always the bad.”
“I haven’t found the bastards yet. But I did figure out how they did it. About ten days ago, they hacked directly into our computers and downloaded Black Mamba. They must have picked it apart—and that’s how they managed to write a program that targeted Mamba so perfectly.”
“How did they get through our firewalls?”
“These guys were smart. Really smart. They exploited a hole in a low-level I/O subroutine that no one had ever found before. I’ve plugged it now, but it’s kind of shutting the barn door too late.”
“No idea who?”
“They covered their tracks with such a web of proxies that it would take years to follow them back to the source.”
“So what’s the good news?”
“You remember that explosion at the Goddard Space Flight Center?”
Lansing nodded.
“I have an old Johndoe pal who was boning a computer programmer up at Goddard involved in that project, and he learned some vee-eery interesting information from this chick.”
Lansing waited as Moro took another vulgar suck from his drink, gurgling down the level by a third.
“So this buddy of mine was shagging this girl named Patty Melancourt, who worked on a team writing software for the project. This team was headed up by a person named Melissa Shepherd. Shepherd’s a legend in programming circles. Turns out she made a badass coding breakthrough for the project software. This is the breakthrough of the century, the Holy Grail of computing. She invented a new language. Strong AI. If we could get our hands on how she did it, we’d rule Wall Street.”
“That’s a pretty big statement.”
“Not made lightly.”
“So what’s the breakthrough? I thought Black Mamba was AI already.”
“Not what we call ‘strong AI.’ According to my Johndoe friend, this NASA program thinks like a person. It’s autonomous. It learns from its mistakes. It’s not tied to specific hardware. It can go anywhere. It’s the closest thing to a disembodied human brain that could exist in purely electronic form.”
“And how will this solve our problem?”
Moro shook his head, his long hair swishing back and forth. “Dude, with a little tweaking this program could pierce firewalls, break into networks, fool people, lie, cheat, steal. A computer program that could be as crooked, vicious, cunning, and sneaky as a human being.”
“This sounds like some hacker’s urban legend.”
“I am assured this is for real. If I could get my hands on the coding manual, with a little help from this Melancourt gal I could write a program like that. Anything a human can do, a program can simulate. We can make it do whatever we want. Black Mamba on steroids. The ultimate bot.”
“Even if this were true,” said Lansing, “you’re off subject. I want to find out who took my money. I don’t need another Mamba right now.”
“The point is, an AI program like this would be the ultimate hunter. You ask it to find out who took your money, then slip it into the system—and it’ll be like a hound dog, following the scent, going from server to server, following the proxy trail of the scumbags back to the source. It could do in a day what would take me ten years.”
Lansing shook his head. “I don’t believe it. Sounds too good to be true.”
“That explosion at NASA? Melancourt knows what really happened. It’s classified information. The software was doing fine, passing all the tests. And then it was loaded into an experimental boat with sensors, cameras, microphones. The program went nuts. It panicked. It freaked out, blew up the facility.”
“I’m not sure I understand why this makes it a good program.”
“The point is, it was thinking like a human being. It tried to escape. Think about it. That’s freaking amazing. But the AI software was destroyed in the explosion, so we’ll have to write a new one.”
Lansing sighed. Moro was subject to enthusiasm. “Assuming all this is true, how do you plan to get the coding manual and write the program?”
“Melancourt’s got a copy of the manual and she’s gonna help me write the code. She’s already on board. She needs money bad, she feels unappreciated by NASA—and, most of all, she’s got a personal grudge against Shepherd for balling my Johndoe pal even while he was boning Melancourt. Together we’ll write a program that will hunt down the scum who boosted our money.” Moro leaned forward, breathing lychee breath in Lansing’s face. “Her price is one hundred grand.”
Lansing looked down at his now-empty glass. “That’s a lot of money. I need some kind of assurance this is going to work.”
“Trust me on this one. Please.”
“I want to meet her first.”
“No problem.” Moro smiled, leaned back, tipped the martini glass up, and cleaned out the last drops with a swipe of his tongue and various slurping sounds. He put it back down. “I’m curious about something. When you find the guys who did this to us, what’re you gonna do?”
“I’ve thought a great deal about this. You understand that what they did to us was not illegal. We have no recourse through the courts.”
“That sucks.”
“Our reputation is at stake. Reputation is everything in this business.”
“Right.”
“We have to make a statement. We can’t do nothing. Others must take note that those who did this to us were punished.”
Moro nodded.
“Our options are limited. To only one.”
“Which is what?”
“I’m going to have them killed.”
There was a silence as Moro stared at him, his eyes widening. “Really?”
“Yes. Really.”