by Theo Cage
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Nowhere,” she lied. “I just don’t want to be followed. Being with you two, for me, is like throwing chum in shark-infested water.” I couldn’t help but glance at the rearview mirror again. Paranoia can be contagious.
“Now, if you are going to find Chappy for me, you need to understand what he was up to. He is a very obsessive man. This Revelations thing I mentioned in the email? He was trying to break a code. Professor Kaufmann, a friend of his, bet him that he couldn’t ‘crack’ it. So of course, Chapertah had to. To keep face. He wrote a program that probed the darknet for references to every single line in Revelations.”
“Darknet?” I asked.
“Don’t you guys know anything? You’re supposed to be protecting people.” She shook her head. “The Internet most people use every day is only about five percent of the web. There are millions of websites out there that search engines can’t access – everything from shops that sell designer shoes, to members-only child pornography sites. That’s the darknet.”
I had to rub my eyes. I was imagining a pool of polluted water and just under the surface I could make out the shapes of some very ominous looking creatures. A kind of swirling sewer of technology. I wasn’t sure where the designer shoes fit in though.
“Chappy started to get results – like answers to things no one understood before. Professor Kaufmann thought he was insane because he was mailing ideas to him at any time of the day or night. Then Chappy decided he didn’t like the idea of emailing anything. He was growing paranoid. He took me aside and told me that from now on, I was not to write anything down.”
“What did you do?” Jann asked.
“I remembered everything. I have a photographic memory. Have you ever heard of a Mentat?”
Jann shook her head. “Some of the tribes that inhabit Borneo keep Mentat slaves. They are captive scribes. They keep a history of each rulers life up here,” she tapped her forehead. “They have no written language. Chappy used to call me his Mentat.”
“For his research?”
“No. For his obsessions. The university didn’t fund the Revelations project. That was just a hobby.”
Some hobby, I thought.
“Why do you think his research got these other people in trouble?”
“I’ll tell you why. Here is what we found. The book of Revelations is all about sevens. Everything is sevens. Seven heads of state, seven corrupt churches. Seven candles. Here’s an example.”
Then she quoted a passage from the bible.
“The mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my right hand and of the seven golden lamp stands is this: The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lamp stands are the seven churches.”
Then she turned around on her seat and looked out the back window and continued.
“Seven has been believed to be a magical number for thousands of years, so it’s no surprise that the bible is chock full of references. And since Chappy’s a math geek at heart, he could relate too.
For example – seven is the lowest natural number that cannot be represented as the sum of the squares of three integers. It’s also the first integer reciprocal.” She continued, still looking out the rear window for suspicious activity.
“Seven seas. Seven heavens. Seven hills of Constantinople…”
Seven Eleven, I thought. I could really use a coffee. I was beginning to get a headache. Integer reciprocals?
She turned around and leaned up against the front seat. “Have I lost you yet?”
“Does that happen a lot?” I asked.
She wasn’t fazed by my rapier-like wit.
“We created a clever little darknet hack. And guess what? It turns up seven computers. But not just any computer. The General Dynamics Avion – the world’s most powerful supercomputer, originally designed for the U.S. government. The CIA has one as well as NSA, but there were seven private sales in its first six months on the market. There’s that seven again.”
I was familiar with the Avion. I had worked on a case a few years before with the CIA. Their shiny new supercomputer almost got my daughter killed.
“There are seven of them now?” I asked.
“Seven sales of forty million dollars each. This is the world’s most expensive hunk of silicon. Seven sales by five different companies for installation in seven cities. New York. Washington. LA. Hong Kong. London. Rome. Sydney.”
She was finally silent for a moment. Maybe she wanted this last statement to sink in. Jann just wanted to know what made these Avions special.
“An Avion can work millions of times faster than your average computer. So if you’re an engineer, in the aerospace industry, you might use one to analyze wing cross-sections. That kind of stuff takes a regular computer years to do.
Or biotech companies could use one to crunch DNA research. Quadrillions of calculations done very quickly.
Rumor had it that Spielberg was going to buy one for movie animation. I guess now he’s on the waiting list. Very weird.”
Jann turned in her seat. She had her FBI-issued Black phone out of its case. “Who are these companies? Do they have anything in common?”
“Harcover is in plastics. Cup holders mainly. Another company that builds pollution controls called GenraSyn. An importer. No one who needs a supercomputer to run their business.” She shook Hyde’s shoulder. “Turn left at Wyatt. Right up there at the light. Follow it for about ten blocks.”
“So no connection?” asked Jann, her hand now on my shoulder.
“Chappy. Poor dear Chappy insisted there was. So he tried to prove it. All of these companies are privately owned, first of all, so getting information out of them was like pulling out a fence post with your bare hands.
GenraSyn came up in a top one hundred report in US Business Today magazine. When he talked to the reporter, he was told the company was very concerned about giving out details. All he could get were the names of the President and CEO – a guy by the name of Miller out of Atlanta. Nobody knew Miller. Been in manufacturing his whole life. Kinsman. NRA member. Nothing unusual for Atlanta. Wouldn’t say much. But it did lead us to the NRA.”
“The NRA?”
“They keep lists. And they work the lists. Raised forty million dollars last year from memberships and donations. They also sell their list – so I bought it.”
“You bought it!” I said, wondering where this was going.
“Yes. Chappy was nervous. Thought he had revealed his hand too much by calling around. So I bought the list under my name. Said I was developing an email newsletter on deer habits – or some other nonsense. We matched the NRA list against the President and CEO’s of the other seven companies. We got five matches.
Think about it? What do these seven companies have in common? Seven random international firms in seven different businesses. Each one buys the world’s most expensive supercomputer. Each head-office location is pretty much right on equidistant from the other. Just check your local map. Exactly what Revelations talks about. And finally, five of the CEO’s are paid-up members of the NRA.
I don’t know about you, but it gives me goose bumps.”
I guess people who make great analyst are far more interested in trivial details than I am. The hairs weren’t standing up on my neck. And I couldn’t see how an NRA mailing list was getting us closer to getting inside Parkhurst before Monday noon. Or biblical quotes.
“Rupi, can we skip all the Armageddon nonsense? Some right-winged fanatics are planning the end of the world. I’m sure it’s a crowded calendar. I just want to know how to get into this militia compound.”
Rupi let out a big breath of air. I could sense her impatience with me. “Detective. Turn in at the Cavalier, right ahead.”
The Cavalier was a seedy bar in the working-class part of town, as far from campus as you could get geographically and socially. The lot was filled with pickup trucks and four by fours. More than a few had gun racks on the back window
.
We parked, and Rupi made us wait. She explained that she was watching for a tail, a suspicious vehicle slowing down or stopping. We waited for several minutes in silence. Hell, maybe it was seven minutes. I forgot to keep track.
Jann looked up from her smart phone. I could see she was browsing the Internet. Probably hooked into some FBI database on known whack jobs.
“Rupi, you’re safe. There were no tails. Right, Detective?” There she was calling me Detective again. I didn’t answer. I couldn’t see any sign of someone following us, but I wasn’t forgetting how clever these people were. I was even glancing up into the sky now, searching for air surveillance.
I crossed my arms. “What do you know about Parkhurst?”
“I’ll tell you. Indra figured it all out. But you need to let me finish.”
I shrugged my shoulders.
“Chappy became a card carrying member of the American Gun Alliance – the AGA. At the time, I thought it was just part of his obsession with knowing things. Until I looked up the Soldiers of Patmos on the Net and there it was, a link to the AGA. There’s your connection, Mr. and Mrs. FBI. Parkhurst. The Soldiers of Patmos. The NRA. The AGA. And there’s a lot more.”
I stared at the entrance to the bar. A cold beer was looking pretty good right now. My head hurt from all of this nonsense of right-winged nut jobs, end of the world fantasies and computer talk. These people were simply killers. Why dress it up? I wanted to lock up every one of them.
Jann was still intent on something on her James Bond phone. I was hoping the battery would die and we could go back to talking like human beings again. I couldn’t believe she thought that any of Rupi’s information was going to be helpful. I had booked off a vacation day to come here, and paid for the flight out of my own pocket. And here I was sitting in the parking lot of a seedy bar with a high IQ wing nut in the back seat.
I turned to Rupi. “I’m not FBI. I’m a Homicide Detective for the Washington police.”
“Homicide?” she whispered, her eyes starting to fill with tears. She was making the connection pretty quickly. Jann was right again. She was bright. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Jann turn to me. I continued, “Chapertah wasn’t murdered. He committed suicide.”
I heard an intake of breath from Jann. I knew she wasn’t going to be happy about letting this out this way, but I didn’t have all week to make this researcher understand. Rupi had covered her face with her hands. I noticed for the first time the detailed paintings on her fingernails. That was all it took to make me feel like a brute again. And Jann was shaking her head at me. Score another one for Hyde.
Jann took over. “I’m sorry, Ms. Gupta, for being so blunt, but that’s why we’re here. There have been a number of odd deaths over the past week and we thought you could help us find out what happened to Chapertah.”
Rupi had curled up on the back seat in a fetal position. “I know about the deaths. I know. That’s why I sent the email. But they killed Chappy? I can’t believe it. You need to go after these people.” She tried rubbing the tears away from her eyes. She shuddered once, took a deep breath, stared at the ceiling for a brief moment, then sat up and started again.
“I need to finish this. The GOA is linked by their Directors and members to a number of other groups – the National Rifle Association, Aryan Nation, the Gun Owners Foundation, the Liberty Firearms Fund, the John Birch Society, the Klan, a number of state militia’s and the Soldiers of Patmos.”
Jann looked at me. She could see I was skeptical. She was ready for a fight. She was obviously on the girl’s side now and not mine. ”She’s right, Hyde. We’ve made those connections too.”
I shrugged. “I don’t have the horsepower you guys do. I knock on doors and knock on heads. This right-winged laundry list means nothing to me. So how does it help us?”
Rupi continued, her eyes red, her voice thick with anger now. “The Soldiers of Patmos operate out of the Parkhurst Foundation. Parkhurst is one of the biggest computer contractors in the East. No other right-winged organization is so technologically advanced. That was the link I think Chapertah was working on to the seven supercomputers.” She stopped, then tried to continue. “The link that got him killed.”
We were all silent for a moment, digesting the possible scale of this organization.
Rupi continued. “My friends would tell you that J-Day is a joke. But it’s not. These fanatics can pull this off. They can shut down the modern world. Kill the stock markets. Destroy the banks. Stop the trains and subways and power plants. Breakdown safety systems in nuclear power plants. Stop the ATM’s. Who’s going to stop them when nobody believes it? Like you guys. Or if they do believe it, they end up dead.”
I looked at Jann. She looked like a believer now. Where did that leave me, I wondered? She knew all along that there was some connection between this Parkhurst group and the CIA and the dead professors and J-Day. But she also knew I would never have believed it if she just told me over the phone. I only had one question.
I put my arm on the seat back and moved closer to Jann. “What do we do now?”
She was off in thought. “What do we do?” she answered, looking out into the half-empty parking lot. “Tomorrow at noon, if you believe it’s possible, the Soldiers of Patmos are going to trigger the end of civilization. And then thousands of their soldiers will deploy into the countryside and attempt an armed attack on Washington and the White House. A White House without defenses, by the way, because hackers from all over the world will have disabled our ability to respond effectively.”
“You’re right,” answered Jann. “It does, but think about it, Hyde. What if J-Day does cause some of the markets to crash and companies to lose billions? Maybe only some of our systems go down. Then even if Gideon completely fails to win a military battle, his attempt would show the world our confusion and our shame. We would look like a third-world country fighting a coup. It would be an international disaster. Meanwhile, he gains a million recruits to his church because his prophecy came true.”
I was stunned by her perception. Jann was right. Gideon could win a dozen ways, and in every scenario. America might never be the same again.
Rupi sat up straight then and reached across the space separating Jann and me. She was pointing at the bar. Her hand was shaking.
“Inside that bar? There’s a man who can save us,” was all she said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The Cavalier was as dark and chilly inside as a subterranean cave.
What looked like windows from the outside were fake portals hung with beer-branded neon signs, providing zero illumination to the inside.
When the front door closed behind me, I had to stop, worried that I would step on someone in the beery gloom. Eventually, as our eyes adjusted, Rupi led us to a booth near the back. Seated there was a white-haired Caucasian male in his fifties or sixties, very tanned. He looked like he had slept in his clothes the night before. This was our savior?
Rupi made introductions. “Detective Hyde. Agent Stone. I’d like you to meet Professor O’Brien.” This was the man who was supposed to be dead at the bottom of a lake; who had witnessed Chapertah jump to his death from the hotel, the professor whose wife was missing and probably dead. I had to give him credit. He wasn’t a young man, but he clearly looked like he still had some fight left in him.
Jann and I identified ourselves, trying not to draw too much attention from the scruffy lunchtime crowd in the bar. I felt like I was back on the beat again.
I sat down across from O’Brien. “Could you identify yourself?”
“Sure. Here’s my wallet, still a bit damp from a midnight swim,” he said. “Are you going to wand me too?” Two strikes against him already. A smart ass – and a thick Boston accent. My experience is bars bring the worst out in people. He looked pretty tired, but also obviously fuelled by some anger bubbling just under the surface. Something I could relate to – so I cut him some slack.
“We understand you witnessed Dr.
Chapertah’s suicide.” O’Brien just nodded.
“Tell us about your wife,” Jann said.
O’Brien rubbed his hands together as if they were numb. I kept thinking – if they wanted to sell more cold beer in here, they should stop giving all the customers hypothermia.
“Some American ex-military fanatic broke into our house last night.” He stopped for a second, his voice raw. “And took her away. Rupi here believes they have her at Parkhurst. I don’t know why, but I hope she’s right.” We all looked at Rupi, who smiled for the first time since I met her.
“Why would they go after your wife?” asked Jann.
O’Brien spread his hands. “Probably this Revelations business. I think these Patmos fundamentalists are upset that Chapertah figured out their scam. She knows about it. Read the entire white paper. Probably the only person on the planet patient enough to plow through all that prophecy nonsense.”
“So what happens next?” I asked.
“J-Day, the cyber Apocalypse is Monday …” He could see the skepticism on our faces and stopped. “I didn’t make this stuff up. You asked.”
“Go on,” I said.
“Hackers and booters world-wide have been planning for years to bring the Internet down. So they could say they did it, I guess. The Soldiers of Patmos cooked up a plan years ago to help them. Get them resources. Use bribery and extortion to acquire passwords. These hackers couldn’t do it on their own. And have nearly as much impact.”
Rupi added “So when J-Day kicks off at noon tomorrow, it will get a huge boost from this Gideon Lean, who hopes to leverage the chaos to make war with America.”
“Don’t look so skeptical,” O’Brien said to me. “This has happened dozens of times in the past century. Under far less extreme circumstances.”
Rupi jumped in. “He used to be a History Prof at Boston U. He taught a course on government takeovers.”
“I’m glad students today have that valuable information at their disposal,” was all I said. O’Brien glared at me.
