Rydell tilted his head up to take stock of him, then just shook his head and turned away.
“Answer him,” Matt barked.
Rydell looked at Matt, then back at Jabba. After a brief moment, he just said, “Smart dust.”
“Smart dust? But that’s not . . . I mean, I thought . . .” Jabba stammered, shaking his head with disbelief, a deluge of questions battering his mind as it stumbled over Rydell’s answer. “How small?”
Rydell paused, reluctant to engage Jabba, then shrugged. “A third of a cubic millimeter.”
Jabba’s mouth dropped an inch. According to everything he’d read or heard about, that just wasn’t possible. Not even close. And yet Rydell was telling him it was.
“Smart dust”—minuscule electronic devices designed to record and transmit information about their surroundings while literally floating on air—was still a scientific dream. The concept was first imagined, and the term coined, by electrical engineers and computer scientists working at the University of California’s Berkeley campus in the late nineties. The idea was simple: Tiny motes of silicon, packed with sophisticated onboard sensors, computer processors, and wireless communicators, small enough to be virtually invisible and light enough to remain suspended in midair for hours at a time, gathering and transmitting data back in real time—and undetected. The military was immediately interested. The idea of scattering speck-sized sensors over a battlefield to detect and monitor troop movements was hugely appealing. So was sprinkling them in subways to detect chemical or biological threats, or on a crowd of protestors to be able to track their movements remotely. DARPA had kicked in the initial funding, as, although the concept also had a host of potential civilian and medical uses, the more nefarious surveillance possibilities were even more alluring. But funding doesn’t always lead to success.
The concept was sound. Breakthroughs in nanotechnology were inching the dream closer to reality. Theoretically, manufacturing the motes was possible. In practice, we weren’t there yet. Not overtly, anyway. Making the sensors small enough wasn’t the problem. The processors that analyzed the data, the transmitters that communicated it back to base, and the power supply that ran the whole minuscule thing—typically, some kind of minute lithium battery—were. By the time they were added on, they turned the dust-sized particles into hardly stealthy clusters the size of a golf ball.
Clearly, Rydell’s team had managed to overcome those hurdles and achieve new levels of miniaturization and power management.
In secret.
Jabba was struggling to order the questions that were coming at him from all corners. “You were working on it for DARPA, weren’t you?”
“Reece was. The applications were endless, but no one could figure out how to actually manufacture them. Until he did. He told me about it before letting them know he could do it. We stayed up late one night, imagining all kinds of things we could use it for.” He paused, reliving that night. “One of them stood out.”
“So that whole biosensor story?” Jabba asked.
Rydell shook his head. “Just a smoke screen.”
“But . . . how? Where are they coming from? You dropping them from drones or . . . ?” His voice trailed off, his mind still tripping over the very notion.
“Canisters,” Rydell told him. “We shoot them up, like fireworks.”
“But there’s no noise, no explosion,” Jabba remarked. “Is there?”
“We’re using compressed air launchers. Like they’re now using at Disneyland. No noise. No explosion.”
The questions were coming to Jabba fast and furious. “And the motes . . . How are they lighting up? And how’d you get the power source down to a manageable size? What are you using, solar cells? Or did you go nuclear?” Sensing, sorting, and transmitting data used up a lot of juice. One option scientists were exploring was to sprinkle the motes with a radioactive isotope to give each mote its own long-term energy supply.
Rydell shook his head. “No. They don’t actually need an onboard power source.”
“So what are they running on?”
“That was Reece’s brilliant brainchild. They feed off each other. We light them up with an electromagnetic signal from the ground. They convert the transmission into power and spread it across the cloud where it’s needed.”
The answer triggered a new barrage of questions in Jabba’s mind. “But how do you get them to light up?”
Rydell shrugged. “It’s a chemical reaction. They’re Janus particles. Hybrids. They light up and switch off as needed to take on the shape we want, like skydivers in an aerial display. They burn up after about fifteen minutes, but it’s long enough.”
Jabba was visibly struggling to absorb the information and complete the puzzle. His voice rose with incredulity. “But they’re constantly moving around. They’ve got to be. I mean, even the slightest breeze pushes them around, right? And yet the sign wasn’t moving.” He extrapolated his own answer, then his eyes widened. “They’re self-propelled?” He didn’t seem to believe his own words.
“No.” Rydell shook his head, then glanced over at Matt, his expression darkening with remorse, his shoulders sagging, before looking away again. “That’s where Danny came in. His distributed processing program . . . more like massively distributed intelligence. He designed it. He came up with this brilliant optical system based on corner-cube reflectors. It lets them communicate with each other very elaborately while using up virtually no energy. It literally brought the motes to life.” He exhaled uncomfortably, then continued, “We needed the shape—the sign—to stay in one place. But you’re right, the motes, they’re so small, so light, they’re floating around, moving in the air like dandelion seeds. So we needed them to be able to talk to each other. Several hundred times a second. When one mote that’s lit up moves away, it turns itself off and the one that drifts closest to where it was lights up instead and takes its place and assumes its position in the display. So the sign appears stationary even though the dust particles are always changing position. Factor in that we wanted the sign to constantly morph in shape to appear like it’s alive, and . . . it’s a hell of a lot of processing power in a machine the size of a speck of dust.” He lifted his gaze back at Matt, guiltily. “We couldn’t have done it without Danny.”
“Oh, well in that case, I guess you did the right thing by locking him up all this time,” Matt retorted.
“You think this has been easy?” Rydell shot back. “You think this is something I just got into on a whim? I’ve put everything on the line for this. And the way things are going, I’ll probably end up dead because of it.”
“It’s a distinct possibility,” Matt confirmed dryly.
“I had no choice. Something had to be done. This thing’s getting out of hand, and no one’s paying attention.”
“Global warming?” Jabba asked. “That’s what this is all about, right?”
“What else?” Rydell flared up, pushing himself to his feet. “You don’t get it, do you? People out there—they’ve got no idea. They don’t realize that every time they get into their cars, they’re slowly killing the planet. Killing their own grandchildren.” He was gesticulating wildly, all fired up. “Make no mistake, we’re getting close to the point of no return. And when that happens, it’ll be too late to do anything about it. The weather will just shift dramatically and that’ll be the end of us. And it’s happening faster than you think. We owe it to our kids and to their kids to do something about it. Sometime in the next hundred years, people will be living on what will undoubtedly be a very unpleasant planet to live on, and they’ll look back and wonder how the hell no one ever did anything about it. Despite all the warnings we had. Well, I’m doing something about it. Anyone who’s in a position to do something about it has to. It would be criminal not to.”
“So you decided to go out and kill off a bunch of decent guys to get everyone’s attention,” Matt said.
“I told you, that wasn’t part of the plan,” Rydell snapped.
Matt’s point must have hit home, as Rydell didn’t have a quick answer for him. “What did you want me to do? Give up on the whole thing and turn Maddox and his people in? Waste everything we worked on for all those years, throw away a plan that could change everything?”
Matt didn’t waver. “But did you ever even consider it?”
Rydell thought about it, and shook his head.
Matt gave him a small, pointed nod with his head. Rydell’s face sank and he looked at Matt blankly before turning away.
“What about Father Jerome?” Jabba asked. “He’s not part of this too, is he?”
“I don’t know. He wasn’t part of the original plan,” Rydell said. “They came up with that one all on their own. You’ll have to ask them about it.”
“He can’t be in on it,” Jabba protested. “Not him.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Matt interjected firmly. “I just want to get Danny back.” He turned to Rydell. “Where is he?”
“I don’t know,” Rydell said. “I told you, I’m out of the loop.”
Matt raised the big handgun and held it aimed squarely at Rydell’s forehead. “Try again.”
“I’m telling you I don’t know, not anymore,” Rydell exclaimed. “But the next time the sign shows up, you’ll probably find him there.”
“What?” Matt rasped, thrown by Rydell’s answer.
“That’s why we needed him alive,” Rydell pointed out. “To make the micro-adjustments in real time. On-site.”
“‘On-site’?” Jabba asked. “He has to be there? He can’t do it remotely?”
“He could, but data transmission isn’t foolproof over such long distances, and even the smallest time lag could mess things up. It’s safer having him on location, especially if the sign’s gonna do more than just pop up for a few seconds.”
“So he was out there?” Matt asked. “In Antarctica? And in Egypt?”
“He was in Antarctica,” Rydell confirmed. “Egypt I don’t know about. Again, it wasn’t part of the plan. But from what I saw on TV, I’d guess he was there. He has to be within half a mile or so of the sign. That’s the transmitter’s range.”
An approaching siren wailed nearby. Matt tensed. Through a narrow passage that led to the main drag on the other side of the low, commercial buildings that backed up to the alley, he spotted the flash of a police car blowing past.
It was time to vamoose.
He turned to Jabba. “We need to move.” He flicked the gun at Rydell, herding him on. “Let’s go.”
“Where?” Rydell asked.
“I don’t know yet, but you’re coming with us.”
“I can’t,” Rydell protested. “They—”
“You’re coming with us.” Matt cut him off. “They’ve got Danny. I have you. Sounds like a good trade.”
“They won’t trade him for me. They need him. Much more than they need me. If anything, they’d probably be happy to see me dead.”
“Maybe, but if they haven’t killed you yet, it means they also need you for something,” Matt observed.
Which, judging by Rydell’s expression, struck a nerve. But he seemed to quickly shelve it as he told Matt, “I can’t go with you. They have my daughter.”
Matt scoffed. “Sure.” Rydell was, clearly, a cunning liar. Which suddenly put everything else he’d told Matt in question.
“I’m telling you they’ve got my daughter—”
“Bullshit. Let’s go,” Matt prodded him, though something about the intensity in his voice, in his eyes—was Matt missing something? His fury at Rydell didn’t let it in and plowed ahead. “Move.”
“Listen to me. They grabbed her. In Mexico. They’re hanging onto her as security. To make sure I don’t rock the boat. They can’t even know I talked to you. They’ll kill her.”
Matt wavered, suddenly unsure—and Jabba stepped closer.
“Maybe it’s true, dude.” He turned to Rydell. “She’s here.”
Rydell’s head jerked forward with attention. “Here?”
“We saw her,” Jabba informed him. “A couple of hours ago. Maddox and his goon squad flew her into a small airport near Bedford. We thought they were her bodyguards.”
Rydell’s expression clouded.
“They have your daughter, and you only think you’ve been ‘side-lined’?” Matt’s expression was heavy with contempt. “I don’t know, man. Me, I’d take it as a definite sign that you guys are now enemies.”
Rydell looked at him blankly, Matt’s words clearly weighing him down.
Matt shook his head indignantly and just said, “Let’s go.” He motioned to Rydell with his gun.
Rydell’s features fogged up as he desperately searched for a glimmer of clarity. He then shook his head and raised his hands in surrender, palms out, and took a step backward. “I can’t.” He took another step back, then another. “They’ll kill her.”
Matt’s anger flared. “You should have thought of that before you started looking the other way while your people got bumped off.”
“How many times do I have to say it?” Rydell blurted. “I didn’t want any of that.” He shook his head stoically. “Even if I wanted to help you, I can’t. Not as long as they have her. So do what you want, but I’m not going anywhere with you.”
Matt raised his gun at him, but Rydell didn’t stop. He kept inching backward, his palms spread, his eyes darting around, taking stock of his surroundings.
“Stop. I mean it,” Matt ordered.
Rydell just shook his head and kept backing up. He was now at the mouth of the small passageway that led to the main drag.
Matt hesitated. Rydell saw it. He gave him a small, knowing, almost apologetic tilt of the head before bolting into the passageway.
“Shit,” Matt muttered as he took off after him. “Rydell,” he yelled, his voice echoing through the narrow brick canyon as he charged down the grubby passage, Jabba in tow. Within seconds, they burst onto the main road. Matt stumbled to a halt. A few pedestrians stood there, on the wide sidewalk, motionless, eyes locked on Matt, taken aback by his sudden appearance and his gun. Behind them, Rydell was backing away, arms spread out in a calming gesture.
Matt felt too many eyes on him. Rydell was slipping away, and he couldn’t do anything about it.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” he told Jabba, before turning and rushing back down the passage toward the Bonneville. He’d lost Rydell, but Danny was alive, and right now, that was all that mattered.
Chapter 59
Alexandria, Egypt
The decision to avoid Cairo Airport proved to be an inspired one, although it hadn’t started off that way. Gracie had gotten herself into a knot by picturing herself doing what Finch normally took care of—in this case, trying to sneak Father Jerome past an Egyptian passport clerk who would be either maniacally fastidious, sexist, anti-American, or any combination thereof.
The plane was waiting for them when they got there. Darby had come through, as promised. They made their way to the civil aviation office in order to access the tarmac without going through the main terminal, and kept Father Jerome well out of view. They were well aware that the merest glimpse of him could trigger a stampede. He was too recognizable—perhaps the most recognizable face on the planet right now. The clerk manning the small office turned out to be a Copt—a one-in-ten chance in Egypt—and a devout one at that. One look at Brother Ameen’s cassock did the trick. Within minutes, their passports had been stamped, the gates had been opened, and they were climbing up the stairs of the hastily chartered jet. The plan was for the driver to wait and make sure the plane took off unhindered before letting the abbot know it was safe to announce that the priest was no longer at the monastery, in the hope of defusing the tense crowd besieging its walls.
Gracie started to relax as the Gulfstream 450’s wheels lifted off the runway and the sleek fourteen-seater aircraft streaked upward to its cruising altitude, but her relief wa
s short-lived. It only allowed darker thoughts to resurface. Thoughts about Finch. Visions of him, lying there in the sand. Dead.
A veil of grief descended over her. “I wish we hadn’t left him there,” she told Dalton. He was in the seat opposite her, facing back. “It feels awful. Us being here, while he’s . . .” She let the words fade.
“We didn’t have a choice,” Dalton comforted her. “Besides, it’s what he would have wanted us to do.”
“And to think, just when he was covering the story of a lifetime.” She shrugged, thinking back. “After everything he’s been through, all the wars and the disasters . . . to die like that.”
Dalton nodded, and they just sat there quietly, crippled by the loss. After a moment, Dalton said, “We’ve got to tell the folks back home about Finch.”
Gracie nodded quietly.
“We need to give Ogilvy an update on our ETA,” he added. “I’ll go talk to the pilot. See if he can patch us in to the desk.”
He pushed himself to his feet, but Gracie’s hand reached out and arrested his move. “Not just yet, okay? Let’s . . . let’s just take a few minutes for ourselves, all right?”
“Sure.” He glanced back at the galley and said, “I’ll see if they have some fresh coffee. You want one?”
“Thanks.” She nodded, then added, “If they’re out, a couple of fingers of Scotch will do just as nicely.”
THE FALSE PRIEST who had chosen to be called Brother Ameen watched Dalton rise from his seat opposite Gracie and head his way. He acknowledged the cameraman with a friendly nod as he walked past him to the back of the plane, then turned away and stared out the window.
It was his first kill on this mission, though he’d killed many times before. The war in his homeland had been brutal. It had turned a lot of young Serbian men like him into heartless killers. Once the war was over, some had been able to smother that aspect of their past and morph back into average, amiable folk. Others liked what they’d discovered in themselves. And some of those, like Dario Arapovic, also discovered that the talents that they’d forged in places like Vukovar and during operations like the Otkos 10 offensive were in strong demand. That region of the world was still unstable. It was an ongoing struggle, and any lull was but a temporary pause in the Great Game. A game that people like Maddox were actively participating in, a game where talents like Dario’s were coveted—and richly rewarded. And his decision had paid off handsomely, for although Dario had taken great pride in playing a covert role in helping shape his homeland’s future, his being picked by Maddox to play this key position in a far more important match was a source of even greater satisfaction.
The Sign Page 31
