Phantom zero, p.5
Phantom Zero, page 5
“That’s part of the information,” Trent insisted. “We caught these guys just before they blew up the building.”
Todd blinked. “Ah. Got it.”
“They poured kerosene over a pile of books in the middle of the factory floor,” Maya explained.
“Wait,” Todd interrupted. “Books?”
“Yes. Most of those books were textbooks and instruction manuals.”
“Text…” Todd shook his head. He was beginning to regret asking for succinctness. “What kind of textbooks?”
“They appear to be professional-level texts on radio physics, instruction manuals for the current American fleet of GPS and communications satellites along with a scattering of the same for China, Russia, the European Union, and Brazil. More instruction manuals and maintenance books for twenty different models of airliner with chapters on satellite and radio navigation and communications highlighted. There are notebooks also, with diagrams and a bunch of math that looks like it’s related to this attack. I’ll send you pictures if you want, but it’s a lot. You might want to send people to pick the whole pile up.”
“Send people who know how to clean kerosene off of books,” Trent added. “A lot of this stuff is soaked through.”
Penny frowned. “Are you suggesting that Keller might have taught people how to conduct an attack like this one?”
“More likely he taught himself,” Maya said. “We found scuff marks and crumbs in one of the offices that indicate someone was sleeping and eating in there.”
“So Keller was living in his old headquarters and learning how to screw up air travel over the past five years?”
“It appears that way, yes.”
Todd turned to Penny. “When Morningstar was shut down for mismanagement of client data, did the report say exactly what data was mismanaged and how?”
“No. His clients were mostly defense contractors and government agencies. A lot of the information was redacted.”
“I’ll call NSA and tell them to get it unredacted,” Todd said. “This is starting to smell like revenge or blackmail to me. Maybe both.”
“Before you do that,” Maya interjected, “you’ll want to hear about the other notebook we found.”
Todd shared a look with Penny. “Go ahead, Specter.”
“Keller wasn’t just researching,” Maya said. “He was writing. I’ll send you the entire notebook over text, but I’m going to read a passage that I think might help us understand his motivation.”
“All right. We’re listening.”
Maya cleared her throat and began to read.
“In the beginning, Lucifer was cast out of the Garden for daring to share with humanity the secret of knowledge. He was punished for offering humanity the power to resist the control inflicted on them by an unseen god who hid from them the information they needed to make informed decisions.”
Not sure about that one, buddy, Todd thought.
“Today, knowledge is contained in the digital infrastructure that sustains this world. Data is the new currency. And who, may you ask, controls this currency? Our rulers. Our gods. They decide who can know and who must remain in ignorance. They decide the value of knowledge, and they decide it based on how it can serve them.
“To be blunt, they use it to control you. All of us. They control knowledge for the same purpose Jehovah controlled knowledge, that the people under their thumb remain content in the garden, fed only what they feed us, clothed only in what they deign to allow us, ignorant of all of the events that shape our world.”
“Lovely,” Todd scoffed. “Another tinfoil hat guy.”
“Shh,” Penny scolded.
“I will once more extend this gift to the world,” Maya continued. “As the Serpent benevolently extended the gift of knowledge to humanity, so will I provide knowledge to the world. Everything they try to hide, all of the secrets they keep from us: I’ll make sure humanity knows it all.”
Maya fell silent.
“That’s everything?” Todd asked.
“Oh no. There are years of entries here. I haven’t read through all of them myself. Most of them are disjointed and esoteric. Some are just long whining rants about how unfairly he was treated. What I just read was written about a year ago and is the most coherent passage of the diary.”
“Guy’s a nutjob,” Todd said.
“He can’t be that much an idiot,” Penny countered. “He just stopped air travel worldwide.”
“Even if he were a genius,” Maya said, “this isn’t something one person could do on their own. It’s not his intelligence we need to worry about, it’s his charisma.”
“And that brings me to the pièce de resistance,” Trent said. After we looked through this, I went back to the van. One of the dead terrorists’ cell phones was intact. I cracked into it, and I found the destination they were traveling to. Turns out it’s a commune.”
“A commune? Like a socialist village where hippies live?”
“Or a compound where cultists reside,” Maya said.
“Where is it?”
“In the Catskills in New York. Near the Slide Mountain Wilderness. We can fly into Ellenville and drive out in a Jeep.”
“I’ll make that happen,” Todd said. “Good work, you two.”
He hung up and folded his arms across his chest. “The cult leader thing kind of fits,” he said to Penny. Keller’s using a Biblical motif. He’s talking about giving knowledge to the world and casting off the chains of the current ‘gods.’ He’s threatening to bring the wrath of his own version of God down on us if we don’t follow through. I still don’t get the air travel angle, though. Why not just attack data centers directly?”
“Maybe he knew he wouldn’t succeed,” Penny replied. “The greatest repositories of classified information in the United States are the CIA, the NSA, the DIA, and DARPA. Each agency is protected with bleeding-edge technology that makes obtaining records next to impossible, let alone deciphering those records without tripping failsafes that corrupt every bit of data.”
“If the guy could teach himself how to become a radiophysicist and an aerospace engineer by reading textbooks, then he could have taught himself how to crack into records.”
“I personally created the encryption software used by the CIA and recently adopted by the DIA,” Penny insisted. “I can honestly say without a hint of arrogance that it’s harder to crack that software than to crash GPS satellites.”
Todd lifted his hands in surrender. “Okay, so it’s harder to attack data centers than to kill air travel. I still feel like we’re missing part of the point here.”
“The point is spectacle.”
Penny pointed at the monitor. The red Xs were all black Xs now that all flights had been grounded and there was no further risk to human life. No immediate risk to human life, anyway.
But already six thousand people had died. Even if no more died, the tragedy was enormous.
Fits with a group that named itself after Satan.
His desk phone rang. “It’s Director Harris.” He answered, “Hello, Director. I was just about to call you with an update.”
“You can tell both of us,” Director of the CIA Yolanda Harris replied. “I’m conferencing you with the President.”
Todd swallowed. He was rarely nervous, but being on the phone with the President, especially under these circumstances, would wrack even the toughest of nerves. “Hello, Madam President.”
“Just call me Gloria,” President Klein replied in the harsh Boston twang she’d made no effort to soften during her political career.
“Not a chance, ma’am. Respectfully.”
The President chuckled briefly. “Fair enough. Ma’am, then. I don’t like Madam. Makes me sound like I run a brothel, not a country.”
Todd felt the safest response to that comment was silence.
“I understand you’re managing the CIA’s response to this incident,” the President said.
“Yes, Ma’am. Our agents are currently following the trail of the individual we believe to be responsible for this attack.”
“Adrian Keller.” When Todd replied with stunned silence, the President explained, “Yolanda passed along your wife’s report.”
“Ah. Yes, they’re on Keller’s trail.”
“Any progress?”
Todd hesitated. “Yes, ma’am, and I’ll tell you, but I’d appreciate it if you kept it out of the media. We don’t want our enemy forewarned.”
“I’ll keep it out of the media, but unless Keller is stupid, and he’s not, he knows we’re coming after him.”
That was probably true. “The agents raided the former headquarters of Keller’s company, Morningstar, Incorporated. They found evidence that Keller’s been living there since the failure of his company teaching himself to… well, to commit this attack. They also found a diary with some disjointed stream of consciousness stuff that amounts to the closest thing Keller has to a manifesto. Basically, he feels that the government hides information so they can control the narrative.”
“And he wanted to go farther than an online soliloquy.”
“I guess so, ma’am.”
“Where are your agents now?”
“They’re on their way to a commune in the Catskills.”
“A commune?”
“That’s how they described it, yes. It seems that Lucifer’s Gift is a cult of some kind.”
“Oh, shit. We should have known that. The asshole named the group after Satan. Of course it’s a damned cult.”
“To be clear, ma’am,” Penny interjected, “that’s only speculation. All we know for sure is that our agents are on their way to the destination the terrorists at Morningstar programmed into their GPS.”
“Well, don’t worry, I’m not in a hurry to call CNN about this,” the President said. “Any idea what they’re planning?”
“You mean what the unimaginable consequences?” Todd sighed. “I mean, he’s got to know that he’s not going to convince the governments of the world to release restricted data to the public.”
“He could be that foolish,” Penny said. “If he really buys into the Biblical stuff, he could think it’s his destiny to accomplish this.”
“Doesn’t matter,” President Klein interjected. “Your husband’s right. He’s not going to get shit. Not from us, and not from anyone. There might be a day when we’ll have to break our rule about negotiating with terrorists, but this is sure as hell not the day.”
“My concern is that he might know that,” Todd said. “I just don’t feel like killing air travel is enough?”
“Not enough?” Klein interjected. “Forget about the death toll for a moment. Well, don’t forget about it, but… Look, the global economy is shrinking by billions of dollars already. If we don’t get planes online in about five days, that’s going to turn into trillions of dollars. Food, water, and medical supplies aren’t being shipped to places that need it. Business has ground to a halt, and… I mean, I could spend all day listing everything that’s going wrong because of this, but I think you get the point.”
“I do, ma’am, but if he can target specific GPS satellites and radio signals, he can target other GPS satellites and radio signals. If he issues certain commands on certain radio signals, certain very big firecrackers go off in certain very inconvenient ways. He wants that information. The manifesto we found at Morningstar is proof that he takes this stuff seriously. If we don’t give him that information, he could go nuclear, and I unfortunately have to inform you that I mean that literally.”
“I’m aware,” President Klein replied. “As I’m sure you’re aware that giving him the information he’s requesting gives him the capacity to go nuclear.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
President Klein sighed. “Shit. We just need to stop him. We need to eliminate the threat, and we need to do it ASAP.”
Penny tapped her fingers on the desk. Her ordinary skin tone was a breathtaking chocolate brown. Right now it looked like the gray of a corpse.
Todd made a mental note not to tell the mother of his child that she looked like a corpse, then broke the silence. “Who else is involved right now?” he asked the President.
“Everyone. The NSA is working with Europe to try to organize all of the information, China’s working with the FAA to try to restore some sort of communication system so we can at least get emergency flights up and running, and just about every military great power on Earth has volunteered to help eliminate Keller once we find him. Which can’t happen if he’s on U.S. soil, so are you certain your agents can handle him if they find him?”
“Yes, ma’am. One hundred percent.”
“I like your confidence. I only wish I shared it.”
Todd smiled wanly. “Can’t say I blame you, ma’am.”
“Just to be safe,” Penny said, “I advise that you contact the Pentagon. Tell them to disarm our nukes, just in case. Removing the guidance computers from the weapons and shutting power to the launch facilities would be the easiest and fastest way to prevent terrorist misuse,” Penny said.
“Already done, and our contacts in Russia and China have already followed through on their promises to do the same. The other nuclear powers are being pissy, but they’re coming around.”
Todd relaxed a little. “Well, that’s a relief.”
“It is,” President Klein agreed, “but I don’t think our guy’s after nuclear winter.”
“What do you think he wants?”
“Why do we control information, Todd?”
Todd blinked. She was asking him the same question he asked all new analysts recruited by the EOT. It was pulled straight from the CIA’s orientation and considered especially important when working for the Agency’s most secretive unit. “We control information because information controls actions and actions control outcomes.”
“Exactly. This guy claims to be acting for everyone’s benefit, but he just killed six thousand people, so I don’t buy the benevolent bullshit. He wants information for himself. He wants to control information because then he can control actions and if he controls those actions, he can control outcomes.
“It makes sense,” Penny said. “Lucifer was kicked out of the Garden for sharing the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, but he was kicked out of Heaven for waging a war against God. He never shared knowledge with humanity because he wanted to help them. He wanted to gain allies in his war against God. He wanted to weaken his enemy’s position.”
“So what outcome does our new Lucifer want?” President Klein asked.
Todd’s lips spread into a thin smile. “The same outcome the original Lucifer wanted. He wants to become God.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Alan Reidigger rubbed his hand across the stubble coating his chin. Christ, he was tired.
He got to his feet and headed for the kitchen to grab a coffee. He stopped when he saw Zero standing in his office holding two cups. For a second, he was afraid that both of those cups were going to go into his eye, but then he saw the smile on Zero’s face. It looked about as real as Alan’s college girlfriend’s smile when she told him she definitely wasn’t screwing the football team captain behind his back, but knowing Zero, this was an honest effort at bridging the gap between them.
Which surprised the hell out of him.
“Hey.”
“Hey,” Zero replied. “Coffee?”
"That depends. To drink or to have poured down my nostrils while you pin my arms to my side?"
Zero laughed, and that was a genuine sound. God, Alan missed that.
“You’d be a hell of an interrogator,” Zero said. “If you ever acted on your imagination, you’d be the most frightening man alive.”
“Considering who’s talking to me, I’ll take that as a high honor.”
They fell silent for a moment, then a long moment, then an awkwardly long gulf of time that reminded Alan of the night his college girlfriend admitted that yes, she was banging Danny, and yes, she was going to keep banging him, and yeah, okay, that probably meant that the two of them should break up.
Why am I comparing Zero to Keisha? “Yeah, I’ll take some coffee.”
Zero handed him the cup and smiled slightly. “I figured I should tell you I’m not mad at you anymore.”
“Sure. I figured I should tell you I’m actually Gary Oldman.”
Zero laughed again. “Okay, fair enough. I’m still mad at you. But not that mad. Not anymore.”
He sat in the other chair in Alan’s office and sighed heavily. Alan studied the lines on his friend’s forehead. They were deepening. His once beautiful (though he would never use that word to Zero’s face) dark brown hair was liberally sprinkled with gray. As he had noted before, the man still looked like he could toss a discus the length of a football field, but the skin around that muscle was thickening at the joints and tiny threads crisscrossed the valleys of his elbows.
First you compare him to your ex, and now you’re ogling the guy. Drink your coffee, Alan.
He sipped the brew, some fancy Indonesian stuff that Trent had brought home a couple weeks ago, and sighed with satisfaction. Zero gave him a wry smile and asked, “Is there a reason you’re staring at me like that?”
“I was just thinking about how old you look.”
Zero burst into laughter again. After a moment, Alan joined him. It felt good. He hadn’t felt like Zero’s friend for a while now. It was nice to share a moment that wasn’t fraught with tension.
“Yeah,” Zero said, wiping tears from his eyes. “Well, you’re no peach yourself, Mitch.”
Alan’s birth name was Mitch Thurman, and it was the name he went by in his public life, which consisted of shopping at the Wal-Mart in Lovettsville and occasionally popping in to remind his employees at Miracle Mitch’s Auto Garage that he still existed. Alan Reidigger was the false identity given to him by the CIA, just as Kent Steele was the name given to Reid Lawson. He thought of himself as Alan, not Mitch, so that was the name he used with the people closest to him.
