The iris algorithm, p.3
The IRIS Algorithm, page 3
CHAPTER 5
Jason pasted on his most patronizing smirk and arched an eyebrow ever so slightly. It conveyed an air of confidence and superiority, a kind of resistance is futile attitude. He frequently practiced the look in the mirror after plucking and trimming his eyebrows. Most guys didn’t bother with proper grooming, but Jason knew the right look made all the difference in closing the deal. This deal would be closed before the sun came up tomorrow.
“You need a Tums?” Rachel asked, poking at the croissant with a butter knife. “You look like you have gas or something.”
“Rachael Logan. Always with the jokes.” He chuckled confidently and flicked away the barb with a wave of his manicured fingers. “I think it’s a smoke screen. Makes me wonder what dark secrets you’re hiding.” Satisfied, he sat back in his chair. He’d worked out that line weeks ago and waited for the right moment to use it. It was good. Good enough.
Rachel focused her stare upon him like a magnifying glass on an ant. He found the concentration of her gaze equally exhilarating and terrifying. He definitely had her full attention, which was difficult with a brainiac. Without blinking, she surveyed him through mesmerizing blue and gold cat eyes. He’d made the mistake of complementing her eyes once, the cobalt blue iris outside changing to a starburst of gold around the pupil. She didn’t say thank you. Without emotion she said the condition was called central heterochromia and was the result of a disease when she was eight. She could have said thank you anyway.
Rachael Logan thought she was an impenetrable fortress, but he would find a way inside tonight. He had to.
“Look, Rae Lo….”
Rachel gripped the fork and butter knife in a menacing way. “Jason, do not call me Rae Lo again.”“Sorry.” He held up his hands. Some people were wound too tight to appreciate camaraderie. “Won’t happen again. So, Rachael, we both have a problem. I’ve got to close the biggest deal of my career, and you need to get your laptop back before VTI realizes a hundred million dollars of intellectual property is at large. I know you’re upset about losing your laptop, understandably so, but I can help with that. When you travel as much as I do, well, you know people. I’m pretty confident I can make some calls and track down your laptop in a couple of days.” He paused to see how impressed she was with his world class traveling status.
She didn’t look impressed. She looked catatonic.
“In the meantime, I need your help with my problem.” It was always good to empower people, to let them know they were an important part of the solution. “I need our software loaded on that laptop upstairs. We don’t have time to wait for VTI to ship a replacement laptop to us, not to mention the fact that we don’t really want to tell anyone that your laptop is missing with a working version of VTI’s latest software on it.”
Rachel took a deep breath and released a weary sigh. “There are other VTI personnel here. Find one with a quad processor, and I will re-format it.” Rachael toyed with the stale croissant. “Even though I know my laptop can’t be cracked, no one else is going to believe that. Martin is going to blow a gasket. How about your buddy, Dave? He probably has a laptop.”
“The VTI folks who are here are all sales and marketing types. They have dinky gear like me—I’m definitely just talking about my laptop.” He tossed his head back slightly with a carefully measured laugh. She didn’t get it. “That computer we have upstairs is a beefy geek computer, like yours. Same model. Let’s just use that one for now. When we’re done, we’ll put it back just like we found it. No one will ever know.”
“I told you, it has some kind of industrial strength encryption system on it. It is definitely a geek computer. We cannot use it.”
“That’s what you do, geeky computer stuff.” He turned up the heat a little. “You designed the entire suite of authentication based, cryptography software for VTI.” If he got her pride and ego involved, things would go quicker. “I’m set to close a seven figure deal with an important global organization based on your design. We’re banking on the fact that you know what you’re doing. Are you saying you aren’t smart enough to get past the encryption on that laptop upstairs?” It was a cheap shot, but the feeling of impending disaster mounted with each passing minute.
“Jason, I design systems that keep the bad guys out. I am not some hacker.”
“But you could, right? It’s not like we’re going to steal something. We just need the machine for a little while. What’s the harm?”
“The harm? I do not lie, cheat, or steal for a reason. It is not because my morals are so high. It is just too much damn trouble to keep up with it all. I just do not do it.”
“Oh, come on, Rachael. It’s not like we’re breaching national security here. We just need to use some schmuck’s laptop for a day or two.”
“No.”
“Rachael.”
“No”
“Rachael, I need your help. Please do this for me.” Hearing the weakness in his voice, his face flushed with anger.
“No. Is there an echo in here? I think I have heard ‘no’ three times. I’ve got to make a phone call.” Rachael stood and walked away.
Jason tried to maintain the appearance of professionalism while his mind raged.
Bitch. You are so going to pay for this. To think I was actually feeling bad about what was happening.
He mentally spruced up his look, his mask of confidence, his air of self-sufficiency. He didn’t come this far to lose it at the finish line. “Oh, well. I’m sure I can think of something,” Jason called after her. “I’m just here to get the job done.”
CHAPTER 6
Jason settled at the table and regained his composure. He pulled his spine up straighter; good posture was important to command respect. He read an article about never letting them see you sweat. A few times during his conversation with Rachael, he definitely felt sweaty and slouchy. Damn!
He looked over the pulsating crowd, thick and lively as the official start of the conference approached. He felt better. He glanced at the heavy Swiss watch strapped to his wrist. He felt worse. Already 8 a.m. and the day slipping away. The company expected him to close at least three major deals before the end of the quarter. That would put him one step closer to the President’s Club—the company’s reward for top salespeople. The elite. Jason had a bigger deal in mind. Screw Martin Stafford and small-minded suckups. Jason was in a club all his own, and no mentally maladjusted code monkey like Rachel would stop him.
Dave reclaimed his seat and stared at the uneaten croissant. “Thanks for giving me the brush off. There was nothing left but bran muffins a constipated goat wouldn’t eat.”
“Sorry, Dave. Business before pleasure. You know how it is, my man.”
“Yeah, sure. I saw her holding your hand while I stood in line listening to my stomach growl. Some business.”
“What can I say? She adores me. Who doesn’t?” Jason grinned.
“Yeah. You da man. Whatever. It’s hard to believe you started in engineering.” Dave sat up tall, a swollen rooster on a fencepost and flicked his wrist to adjust the sleeves of his two thousand dollar, Canali, two-button suit. “Nice Armani, Glunster. I’ll bet they didn’t wear anything like that back in engineering.”
“Are you kidding?” Jason said, “If software engineers show up with most of their sensitive parts covered, it’s considered a bonus.”
“You’d better be careful messing with that one. She’s one of the original gang of seven. Untouchable. You following me, Glunt-man?”
“Get out.” Jason sprouted a condescending smirk. “I know she’s been with the company since dirt, but one of the gang? No way. The seven that started the company live like gods and goddesses in the executive suite. She’s downstairs with the rest of us peons.” A crease of worry crossed his forehead. “Who said she’s one of them?”
“It’s a little known fact that there are actually eight in the gang of seven. Rachael Logan is number eight.”
“Ha, ha. You had me going there for a minute. Very funny.
“I shit you not. My boss, Lenny, was employee number one hundred, which meant something before we had two thousand. About a year ago, we were in this big strategy meeting, and I was getting a little steamed at Rachael. She shot down every marketing idea we proposed.”
“Typical engineering type.”
“She was right, but I didn’t like the way she told us.”
“No finesse?”
“Not a shred.”
Jason shook his head. Rachael often said: “The truth is a beautiful thing…try it sometime.” She was convinced sales and marketing personnel were genetically incapable of telling the truth. What a load of crap. It depended on which truth you were talking about.
The truth is highly overrated and appropriately undervalued.
“When we broke for lunch,” Dave said, “my boss clued me in. Rachael is employee number eight. She wasn’t technically a founder. They’d been in business for about a year when they found her, but they didn’t have a commercial product until she came on board. That’s a fact.”
Jason stared in the direction Rachel had departed. “That explains why she works from home whenever she wants.” If questioned, Rachel always said she had an understanding with Martin Stafford.
“According to Lenny, she used to come into the office more often, strange hours when not many folks were around. She didn’t talk much, stayed in the back in a big conference room converted to a work space just for her, a real loner.” Dave eyed the mangled croissant.
“She’s so special she gets an extra big office? Sounds like ego needs to me.”
“It wasn’t an office, Glunster. Conference room. All the walls were covered with whiteboard material from ceiling to floor. No windows. She had this little cheesy workstation right in the middle.”
“Who needs that much whiteboard? What was on the walls?”
“Numbers. Lots of numbers. Prime numbers out to like a bazillion places. Equations everywhere. Nobody was allowed in. But when they were getting the space ready for a visit by a big potential client, Lenny tagged along with the guy in charge of engineering. He convinced the boss it would help seal the deal if the client got a tour of engineering—the lab, they called it— see the code monkeys at work. It was a big deal.” Dave pushed the croissant around, as if inspecting it for bite marks.
“What’s the big deal?” Jason asked. “We do those tours three days a week.”
“That’s because now we don’t do anything anyone wants to see. Everything VTI does on the system is just derivative work or maintenance of the real magic done in that lab eight or nine years ago; almost all of it created by Rachael.”
“Dave, I have a technical degree, and I worked in engineering before I was promoted to this position. We can hold our own against Rae Lo uber geek.”
Dave put the fork down and stared directly into Jason’s eyes. “You don’t understand. Lenny said it was spooky stuff. We’re talking Rain Man. The day Lenny went back, she hadn’t been out of her office in three days. Everybody was scared to go in. While Lenny’s in the hall arguing with the director of engineering about uncooperative geek types, the door flies open and out pops Rachael. Hair all messed up, dark circles under her eyes, looking like some crazy woman in tattered jeans and a baseball cap. She grabbed the director, literally dragged him into her workspace, and babbled about prime numbers and divine shapes and reduction algorithms. I can’t even begin to tell you. Lenny said every inch of those walls was covered with number sequences, formulas, symbols, code snippets, and all kinds of freaking backwards writing.”
“Backwards writing?”
“Freaking backwards writing, dude.” Dave reached a decision, grabbed the croissant, bit off half of it, and stood to leave. “Lenny said it looked like freaking Egyptian hieroglyphics.”
“The gang of seven are all multimillionaires now. You’re telling me that the frump-meister herself is sitting on twenty plus million dollars of preferred VTI stock?”
Dave shoved down the other half of the croissant. “Who knows? Maybe more. Company valuation is just north of a billion dollars. Employee number eight. Do the math.” With a two-fingered salute, he sailed into the blue suited ocean, ignoring the monsters that swam below the peaceful sundrenched surface.
Jason did the math. It was staggering. It was important information, but he didn’t have a clue what to do with it. All this time, he’d treated Rachael as a peer, less than a peer since he was promoted out of engineering. She said she arranged the sales engineer job for him as a desperate act to stop him from screwing up anything else in engineering. He thought it was her lame attempt at humor. Now he wondered.
There had been a number of uncomfortable conversations with Rachael during his three years at VTI. He always managed to put his foot in his mouth. Hell, she didn’t even like the nickname he gave her. Most people would like to be compared to Jennifer Lopez. Once, when she brought her son to the office, he made some silly remark about Mr. Rae Lo only to have her tell him, in front of her son and a small crowd, that she lost her husband in a tragic accident before her son was born. He felt like shit.
He knew what it was like growing up without a father. His father wasn’t lost in anything as noble as a tragic accident. When he was fourteen, his father walked out on him and his mother. Maybe he could have forgiven him for leaving, but he would never forgive him for what he said on the way out: “Boy, you ain’t never gonna be anything but worthless and broke. Just like me.”
When Jason closed this deal—this one deal—he planned to track the worthless bastard down and show him how wrong he was. Screw it. Time was running out, and Rae Lo had to play ball, one way, or the other.
He had important people waiting on him.
CHAPTER 7
MOBILE ALABAMA – 8:00 A.M. CDT
Obadiah sat ramrod straight in his plush leather chair behind his polished mahogany desk. Despite his eighty-four years, he made an imposing image. With his well-kept six-foot-three frame, square shoulders, and strong jaw, Obadiah wore his blue pinstriped suit, starched white shirt, and scarlet necktie like a much younger man. He didn’t just look like the leader of the American Edification Movement; he looked like the leader of the free world. This, of course, was his intention. Everything Obadiah did was intentional. The American flag in the stand to his right and the red, black, and blue AEM flag to his left completed the powerful picture. His eagerly awaited, weekly webcasts were recorded in his well-planned office and beamed around the globe.
Obadiah considered all that he had made, and he saw that it was excellent.
Every week, hundreds of thousands of people beheld Obadiah steadfast at his desk, heard him explicate the dire nature of the world’s current state of affairs, and felt his studied wisdom edify them. Even his detractors, who were legion, admitted his theories and strategies were compelling, if uncomfortable to hear.
Few entered his regal inner sanctum. The security risks were too high. Obadiah understood too well that knowledge and enlightenment had been dangerous blessings since the beginning of time. Prophets died at the hands of the ignorant. He, on the other hand, had well-armed security.
The classically appointed, worldwide headquarters of the American Edification Movement were quietly cloistered among the aging crumble of Mobile’s downtown—a locale suitably obscured from prying eyes. A city block of wounded sidewalks and dying buildings garnered little attention as long as generous donations made their way to the proper people and organizations. It was a simple formula that had worked since the Civil War Reconstruction when the city lost the last of its luster.
America’s gleam of inspiration, which once made the country great, was lost, strangled by ignorance. Within the shadows of a corrupt and defiled government, hidden hands suffocated the dream. Soon, he would forever release right-minded people from the chokehold of stupidity. Time was running out.
For years, the CIA had worked with his enemies to kill him. One day they would succeed. He’d foiled them for so long, it would be a hollow victory for them. Amateurs. He scowled bitterly at his wrinkled hands with a long sigh. Eventually, even amateurs succeed.
In a recent, closed door meeting with select members of congress, the Head of Homeland Security acknowledged that AEM intelligence and counter-intelligence operations were extensive and formidable. Obadiah’s twisted smile shadowed his face. They had no idea. The admission wasn’t insightful; it was inescapable. Within twenty-four hours of that meeting, Obadiah knew everything they discussed. When it was too late, they would understand the true power of an edified mind.
The video crew would arrive soon to tape his latest installment of China: New Dynasty - Old Threat. Unconsciously, he checked the knot of his necktie, an unnecessary gesture. He never allowed himself to appear less than presidential. His hand trembled slightly at the knot. A sour taste rose in his throat. Hateful words boiled on his tongue: threatening, malignant. He longed to release them. Instead, he grew a little hook of a smile.
Patience sat in a Victorian, wingback chair along the opposite wall of her father’s office and casually checked the status of her new acrylic nails. “Father, I’m afraid our interrogation last night failed to produce anything of value.” As usual, Patience wasn't satisfied with a passive role in the interrogation process. “In the end, the dear woman was quite a good sport about it. With the goons out of the way, I believe her last moments were rather satisfying.”
Virtue stood by the bookcase, as near to the great mahogany desk as she dared. “Yes, I’m sure she immensely enjoyed playing her part in your quest to plumb the depths of perversion.” She gave her older sister a well-practiced look of condescension that rivaled their father. “Grateful until the end no doubt. Tell me, what it’s like to be so loved.”
“It’s wonderful.” As she stood, Patience’s eyes flashed blue lightning. “Shall I show you?”
