by Kirk Russell
Last night, Indonal and Eckstrom had met for drinks at a bar named the Blue Jaguar. When Eckstrom didn’t come home, his girlfriend, Laura Trent, called Ralin. That was just before three a.m. That and Ralin’s explanation here was what I had to work with. I’d called Laura Trent and questioned her but didn’t get much. This visit was well worth it and really might explain why the guys disappeared.
After we left here, I’d drop Ralin at the Independence Base guard gate. Someone there would drive him across the base to the half-subterranean building that housed the AI, Indie, and I’d begin looking for Indonal and Eckstrom, starting with the Blue Jaguar. At the FBI we’d go out with an APB, all-points bulletin, that morning on both unless they turned up.
“You’re telling me you think the guys quit and walked away?” I asked. “That’s what I’m hearing and that’s what Eckstrom’s girlfriend didn’t say last night.”
“They’ll turn up,” Ralin answered.
“So, are they taking a break or did they quit?”
“I can’t answer that. I just don’t know.”
“If we go out with an APB, agents will get diverted from other investigations and their disappearance will get spun all kinds of ways. With the knowledge they carry, it’s inevitable treason and the question of whether they’re traitors out selling secrets to our enemies will come up.”
“I get it,” Ralin said. “And I’m worried.”
“All right, let’s head back.”
“I’m sorry about last night. I’m sorry I didn’t say more then.”
He could easily have said more, but he hadn’t. Instead, he’d brought me out here, which to me said he wanted to control how the story evolved.
“No need apologize,” I said.
“I’m the one who should apologize. I should have said more last night.”
“Let me ask you something: Would DoD shut Indie down if you recommended it?”
Ralin looked at me as if I’d asked an unusually naïve question.
“Do you understand what’s at stake?” he asked. “Everything is at stake. Absolutely everything. Our freedom, our military might, our economy, everything. We can negotiate on our terms if we get there first, but not if we lose the race. We have to solve this, but we also have to be first. We cannot, we must not, lose that race.”
2
“Where are you at?” my supervisor, Ted Mara, asked.
“I dropped Ralin off. I’m on my way to the Blue Jaguar, the lounge bar where Indonal and Eckstrom were drinking before they walked out and disappeared last night.”
“The bar is open?”
“Not until late afternoon, but the waitress who served them volunteered to come in early. She knows them. I’m going to talk with her and a bar manager.”
“Good, but don’t lose track of time. We’ve got a one o’clock meeting with the Department of Defense agents, and I want to meet alone with you after. You also got a message this morning from the Nevada State Highway Patrol. They’ve got something for you on that dark web group you’re tracking. Bismarck and his followers are here or close to here. Highway patrol pulled over a half dozen of their vehicles for broken taillights, no plates, no current registration, you name it. They told the officers they’re here to mind-meld with the AI.”
“I’ve known why, but I didn’t know they were already in Nevada. Bots originating somewhere in Eastern Europe are helping drive his followers out here. Someone wants to amplify Bismarck’s mind-meld crap. If he’s here, I’ll find him.”
Bismarck’s true name was John Bales. Dark web followers know him as Bismarck. I’m a follower, as are other agents on domestic terrorism squads at six other FBI offices. Nineteen years ago, his parents approached the Boston office—where I was stationed for a year—with fears surrounding letters their son had written, in which he detailed fantasies of killings where he absorbed the life energy of the victims. We questioned him at length, but there was nothing to charge him with.
Five years later, he approached the FBI voluntarily with information about a young woman named Janet Li who’d been reported missing. Her body was never found, and he knew way too much about her. That was the start of him taunting us and the start of an ongoing file on Bismarck.
Trespassing, disturbing the peace, poaching—he’s been charged with those crimes but not a single violent crime against another individual. And yet, he lingers on an FBI watch list. That’s in large part for the tips he’s provided us. He’ll send photos of, say, a piece of charred human skull in a firepit in a remote meadow somewhere that was given to him by a person he’d never seen before but prayed for later. His tips have led to exhumations and long interrogations he seems to enjoy.
At the Jaguar I sat with the waitress who’d served Indonal and Eckstrom drinks. She knew and liked both, but I had to remind her of their last names, which seemed to embarrass her.
“They’re not here that often, but I always talk with them. I hardly did at all last night because it was so busy, and they weren’t alone like they usually are. A woman was sitting with them, and a guy at the bar seemed to know them. The woman who sat with them sat close to the taller one, Alan.”
“Alan Eckstrom?”
“I don’t remember his last name. I might not even know it, but he’s a nice guy and shyer than Eric.”
“They’re regulars?”
“More like once a week and they’re always friendly and they tip. The woman with them wasn’t anyone I’d ever seen before and not someone I would have expected to be with them.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know, maybe she’s more refined or something. That might not be the right way to say it . . .”
Alan Eckstrom was the taller of the two. He was my height, six foot one, and had brown hair and acne scars on his neck.
“You don’t miss much,” I said. “You ought to come work for us.”
She smiled and said, “You have to watch everything when you’re running cocktails, and I like those two guys. I didn’t mean anything bad about them. They’re really nice guys. They’re just much more casual than she was dressed. She’s a different type. The guys are always easygoing.”
When I left the Blue Jaguar, I checked with the businesses along the street that had surveillance cameras and struck out with the first half dozen storefronts before getting lucky.
The owner of a boutique shoe store went out of her way to help. We found Eckstrom and Indonal on her security surveillance video. At 9:21 p.m. last night they walked past her store. Two other businesses down the street caught them on surveillance video. My progress slowed at an intersection then moved forward again when a department store’s surveillance cameras showed them crossing a wide, empty lot toward a van. The van’s headlights came on, and a woman got out and hugged Indonal hard. I replayed that several times then stopped worrying about abduction.
Neither Indonal nor Eckstrom had any criminal record. Indonal had a speeding ticket five years ago. He was homeschooled in Northern California and accepted to Stanford at age seventeen after testing off the charts in math, physics, and geometry. He excelled in the Stanford School of Engineering where he took up computer programming and data science. That’s where he met Eckstrom, who knew Ralin.
Near noon, after returning to the office, I learned more about them on a call with Sally Weiss at Stanford. I was referred to her. She’d worked with all three.
“Indonal is far and away the brightest,” Weiss said, echoing what Trent said last night. “If you’re asking me how they got to the breakthrough, Mark Ralin wrote a significant algorithm they call the Golden Algorithm. It came at just the right moment for the neural-network approach and was a big step at the time, so I don’t want to downplay Mark, or Alan for that matter. But the later advances that truly changed AI were possible only because Eric has mathematical gifts that are once in a generation. Or that’s my opinion, but I’m ce
rtain Google would have loved to have had Eric Indonal on the DeepMind team.”
“You see him as key to the current project?”
“It’s not that simple, but I’m sure he is. I see Indonal as the true genius. Other people may disagree, but I was around them for a long time.”
“Thank you, Sally. If I need your help again, what’s the best number to call you at?”
She gave me her cell just before I headed in for the meeting with the Department of Defense agents that turned out to be a lot of nothing except for one thing. DoD had stalled, delayed, rescheduled, and otherwise messed with us for months, but now all of a sudden, they wanted to work closely with us.
No one bothered to ask why. Everyone in the room already knew. The pair of DoD agents here to meet with us today weren’t the ones who made the earlier decisions, so why harangue them? They would agree we should have started working closer together months ago. The threat level was way up, and DoD was worried. They’d wanted to maintain the highest level of secrecy and were afraid our agents would compromise that. They’d deny it forever, but that’s the bottom line.
Now they’re scared, now they need us. Indonal and Eckstrom missing was just one piece of that. We went down the list of things we would coordinate together, and then ended the meeting. After we broke up, Mara wanted to meet alone with me. He’d been secretive about this closed-door meeting. I worried it was about my back, and it was at first, and then about something else entirely.
3
“Special Agent Kristen Blujace has transferred here and will join our domestic terrorism squad tomorrow. She’s en route and will get here this afternoon,” Mara said as he closed the conference room door.
“Jace told me she was applying for a transfer here. I didn’t know it had gone through, but that’s great.”
“Jace is a nickname?” Mara asked.
“She goes by it. When I worked with her, everybody in the San Francisco office called her that.”
“SF to Vegas is an unusual transfer,” Mara said. “I’d like to team her with you, Grale, assuming you’re comfortable with that.”
“I’m fine with it.”
“She’s talked a lot about you, so I’m going to ask something you could take offense to, but please don’t.”
“Okay, ask.”
“I have to be blunt. I’m sorry, I don’t know another way. I’m not any good at these kinds of questions. Is there an attraction between the two of you that needs to be managed?”
I sat on that several seconds then asked, “Where are you coming from with that?”
“I want to know you’re comfortable being paired with her.”
I stared at him, then said, “I’m fine with it, and there’s no reason for you to be asking. Where did you get that idea?”
“So, no issues?”
“None. Did Jace talk with you about her fiancé?”
“No, she didn’t say a word about marriage plans. When is that happening? We need everybody right now. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have—”
“It’s not happening. Her fiancé was in a motorcycle accident that left him brain-dead. A new start in a new place could be a big part of her move here. I think her dad lives here as well. That might figure in. We’re lucky to get her, and you’ll like her. You’ll love her follow-through. Jace is a natural investigator, and she gets the reports done. She’s your dream agent and may be the most naturally talented young investigator I’ve ever met. I don’t know where you got the idea there’s something between us. You’re way off with that.”
I’ve had my share of supervisors. I’ve been one. I get it. Something happens over time where they start thinking that knowing everything about you is part of their job, and not just their job but their right.
Mara was putting in the hours. Everyone was, and things were tense. We were ratcheting up toward something we couldn’t see yet. The threat level focused on the AI at Independence Base was ominous. Something was going to happen. We all knew that. The question was whether we could head it off and what an attack would look like. The most computer-knowledgeable people I talked with put their money on a sustained cyberattack that would cripple Indie.
I could have called Mara out on the “attraction” needing managing, but I let it go knowing the stress he was under. In the past year the hair at his temples had gone from black to the color of ashes. His voice was rough. He’d lost weight and looked gaunt. He hammers the exercise equipment in the FBI gym to relieve stress, and I rarely see him eat much. He’s always in the office ahead of me, and I’m in there early.
He was out of line with his question about Jace and me, but there was something else that had me on edge. Mara knew I’ve had other back flare-ups, so I wasn’t sure it was that. It was more that something between us was off.
“Let’s talk Ralin before we get to other things,” Mara said. “Give your thoughts after being with him this morning.”
“He wanted to talk about a lot of things, including Indonal and Eckstrom, who he says are his equals. Someone else I’ve talked with who has known all three for years said Indonal is the true genius and key to the project. These aren’t just coders. Ralin needs them and is worried they’ve quit. He’s worried about a lot of things having to do with it, including what he perceives as a fragile lead the US has.”
“Where did you go with him?”
“Out to a military test site where Indie killed two observers after a test battle between two drone squadrons, one directed by an Air Force officer and the other by Indie.”
“Who won?”
“Indie and the killing of the two observers afterwards is unexplained, which is why Indonal and Eckstrom argued for a shutdown until they had figured out what happened.”
“The machine executed two observers?”
“Yes, with missiles after the fighting was over. He says he believes that’s the real reason Indonal and Eckstrom disappeared. Nobody could explain what Indie had done.”
“And Ralin didn’t say anything about this last night?”
“No.”
“There’s something about him that bothers me but let’s not go there right now. Let me pass on what we’ve learned about Indonal and Eckstrom. Their passports haven’t been used. They haven’t left the country through an airport, or are unlikely to have. You watched security video footage this morning. You saw a woman hug one of them and you don’t think they were kidnapped. How do you think we should approach this? You know just as well as I do how shorthanded we are, so that’s a factor, and we’re also being asked to help protect coders, computer scientists, and others who commute to work at the base. So far, I haven’t made you part of that, but you may see more Ralin time.”
“Meaning what?”
“Well, let’s talk about that and your back issues together. I don’t want to leave you sitting in a car all night watching Ralin’s house if you’re in pain.”
“My back issues are temporary. Let’s stay on Ralin.”
“Ralin and his wife are separated. Did you know that?”
“No.”
“He sometimes stays at her house. He’s between there and an apartment. They have two boys, six and eight. His wife grew up in Vegas and has moved back here with their two kids and leased a house close to where her parents live. Allegedly, they’re trying to get their marriage back together, so that’s something to know.
“The next you already know. DoD has serious reservations about Dr. Mark Ralin, as well as the two missing coders, Eckstrom and Indonal. All three favor open source code, meaning they’d share the blueprints to the AI with the world if they could.”
“You don’t know that and you don’t know any more about open source code than I do.”
“I know they may have taken the code and are out there trying to sell it,” Mara said. “They may think since they helped create it, they own it.”
&nbs
p; Mara waited for a reaction, but I just shrugged. I didn’t want to go down a speculative rabbit hole this morning. There were arguments on both sides of the open source code debate, and we didn’t know yet why Eckstrom and Indonal staged a disappearance.
“More on Ralin,” Mara said. “He bounces between Las Vegas, London, and Stanford, where he’s a visiting professor in the School of Engineering. In London he has a girlfriend named Claire Henley that British intelligence suspects is taking directions from Moscow. The Brits briefed the CIA, and the CIA briefed headquarters. Henley is a computer scientist who approached Ralin ten years ago. That’s a Russian concept, paying attention to the rising stars. She’s also married to an eighty-seven-year-old Russian oligarch the Brits suspect distributes money for Russian operations in the UK. He’s quite wealthy and very forgiving of his younger wife. Ralin has been warned about Henley but has continued the affair. That might be his way of pushing back, or maybe he just doesn’t like being told how to live his life.”
“How long have Ralin and his wife been separated?” I asked.
“Two years.”
That was long enough to know where the marriage was going, but Ralin’s marriage wasn’t any of our business, and highly capable people were already all over Ralin. He was probably monitored from every which way.
“Henley isn’t the only other woman he’s seeing. There’s a PhD candidate at Stanford he mentors far too closely.”
“Is the Stanford woman a suspected spy?”
“Not as far as I know.”
“Okay, what else?”
“I’m just bringing you up to speed, Grale. If you don’t want background on Ralin, I won’t bother you with it. And it’s not why we’re in this room. Let’s talk about your back. Whatever flare-up from your old bomb injuries you’re having has gone on longer than any I remember.”
