Robert Ludlum's (TM) The Utopia Experiment (A Covert-One novel)

by Kyle Mills

  With no other option, he took cover behind it, tensing as he waited for it to blow up, tip over on him, or fly away. When none of those things happened, he risked a quick peek around its edge at Randi, who was still trying to get to the edge of the house.

  She had what looked like an open line and her hesitant pace suggested that he wasn’t the only one who thought it was too easy. It looked like she was going to make it right up to the moment when she suddenly disappeared into the earth.

  “Randi!”

  No answer.

  Smith grabbed a faded lawn gnome and threw it into the open. When the machine gun started tracking it, he slipped around the fountain and leapt over a rusting wheelbarrow in an effort to get to her.

  He was less than halfway there when a familiar mechanical whirring started at his two o’clock. This time, there was nowhere to hide. The roar of the second gun filled his ears just before an impact sent him headlong into the dirt.

  He reached for his chest and his hand came away bright red. Dead center of mass. He closed his eyes and the breath escaped him.

  He’d always known that one day Marty would be the death of him.

  Randi Russell stood on the mattresses stacked at the bottom of the concrete-lined pit and looked at the steel doors that had closed above her. She’d heard a second machine gun come online a few seconds after she’d fallen but now everything was silent.

  “Jon!” she shouted. “Jon! Can you hear me?”

  It wasn’t Smith who answered, though. Instead, a section of wall next to her slid aside, exposing a computer monitor with Marty’s Zellerbach’s disembodied face centered in it.

  “Randi! How could you possibly still look so hot after all that? Is there no limit to your sexiness?”

  “Marty?”

  “I should have known I couldn’t sucker you with the planter. You wouldn’t believe the thing I built back there. It’s based on an orb spider’s—”

  She rushed the screen and slammed her hands on both sides, trying to ignore the half-drowned, mud-splattered reflection in the glass. “I’m going to kill you, Marty. And that’s not a figure of speech. I am actually going to murder you and then hide your body somewhere no one will ever find it.”

  “What?” he said, sounding genuinely surprised by her anger. “You do this for a living. Would I get mad if you asked me to fix your router?”

  “Where’s Jon? Is he okay?”

  “Oh, he’s just lying there milking it…Wait. No, he’s up now. Hmmm. He looks a little pissed, too.”

  “You were shooting at him with a machine gun, Marty!”

  “Don’t be so melodramatic. The right barrel had blanks in it and the left one’s a paintball gun. Man, you guys are pretty quick. I’m going to have to replace the turret motors with something more powerful. Or maybe it’s just the rain we’ve been having. Some rust could have gotten in there and—”

  “Marty…” she said, trying to sound calm through clenched teeth.

  “What exactly was it that you didn’t like about the planter, Randi? What if I made it a statue? Maybe me on a horse. That would be—”

  “Shut up, Marty! Shut up, shut up! And get me the hell out of here!”

  37

  Alexandria, Virginia

  USA

  JAMES WHITFIELD SAT IN THE windowless room at the back of his house, illumination coming only from a small lamp hovering over his desk.

  Arrogance.

  With age was supposed to come wisdom, and for the most part it had. But now he’d made grave, and uncharacteristically amateurish, mistakes. Not only had he drawn conclusions with insufficient facts, he’d erred on the side of underestimating an opponent instead of the other way around. In his younger years battling the KGB, he’d be dead. A fate that would have been richly deserved.

  The clock on his laptop ticked over to four p.m. and before he could even reach out, a quiet ring emanated from it. Another example of the captain’s unflagging efficiency.

  “Yes,” he said, picking up the heavily encrypted line.

  “Did you receive the file I had couriered to you, sir?”

  “I did.”

  “You know we use the Internet to transmit—”

  “I’m aware of that, Captain. Thank you. Now, what have you found out about the transfers?”

  “Not as much as we’d hoped. I have been able to confirm that both are on hold.”

  “Why?”

  “Smith reported a concussion from a car accident this morning.”

  Whitfield would have actually allowed himself an admiring smile if the situation weren’t so dire. Had that simply been a convenient excuse or was the army scientist sticking his middle finger in the air?

  “And Russell?”

  “Some sort of disciplinary action. Obviously, our eyes aren’t as sharp inside the Agency.”

  Disciplinary action. He himself might not have thought of that. Credible in that it was something that could crop up suddenly, would prevent reassignment, and also was entirely fitting with her work history. Clever. Clever enough to make him break a sweat.

  “Keep me informed, Captain. There are no details too trivial.”

  “I understand, sir.”

  Whitfield severed the connection and reached into an open safe to retrieve the file on Smith, ignoring for the moment the much thinner one on Russell. His wife started a vacuum cleaner somewhere in the house but the comforting sense of normalcy that it usually provided didn’t come. Not today.

  He spread the contents across his desk in neat stacks—not something that could be done with the computer files the captain was constantly trying to get him to use. There was something about seeing it all laid out that helped him think. Though he recognized that his was the last generation harboring such a bias.

  Lieutenant Colonel Smith’s record was spotless. He had performed admirably as a front-line doctor in virtually every hot spot on the planet and later had become one of the army’s top virus hunters. It seemed generally agreed on that he was borderline brilliant in the realm of science and, more interesting, just as capable in combat. On no less than two occasions, he had taken command of the special forces team he’d been embedded with as a doctor and the experienced operators had fallen in behind him without question.

  If he had any weakness, it was that he wasn’t terribly good at hiding the fact that he believed himself to be the smartest man in the room. It was an attitude that tended not to be particularly appreciated by one’s superiors, but one that Whitfield could sympathize with. And in Smith’s defense, it appeared that he generally was the smartest man in the room.

  In truth, if he had been aware of the existence of Lieutenant Colonel Jon Smith, Whitfield would have seriously considered recruiting him. The problem was that he suspected someone had beat him to it.

  Many of Smith’s exploits were easily explained on the surface. The Hades virus had been very much within his sphere of influence. And his involvement with DNA computers could—tenuously—account for his actions in France. Even his participation in investigations in Russia and Africa tracked to a bioterror angle. But upon deeper analysis, disturbing questions surfaced. Actual orders were hard to come by and it seemed that he had been on mysterious leaves of absence during a number of those episodes.

  Just as strange was his on-again-off-again partnership with Peter Howell. Not that anyone wouldn’t want the former SAS/MI6 man watching their back, but he was a retired foreign agent. The U.S. military had its own people for these types of operations.

  And finally, there was the stalling of the transfers his contacts inside the army and CIA had orchestrated.

  The obvious explanation was that Smith, and possibly Russell, had a power base outside the organizations they were publicly affiliated with. A power base that was in no way trivial.

  Whitfield continued to shuffle through the papers for another ten minutes, but finally had to admit that the answers weren’t there. Only dangerous hints and impenetrable shadows.

  Re
vealing himself had been stupid. He’d been understandably reluctant to move against two patriots who had served their country so admirably. It seemed reasonable to believe that his conversation with Smith, combined with the transfers, would convince the scientist that he had inadvertently tread on ground well beyond his pay grade. As far as Russell was concerned, she was even easier. Embroil her in the Yemeni resistance and she’d forget all about this. That woman just liked to fight.

  Now, though, he was paralyzed until he could gain a deeper understanding of the situation and players. Any blind action on his part could have serious and unpredictable repercussions.

  Patience was the only available course of action. He’d have to be content to watch and wait. It wouldn’t last, though. Soon he would have to act and deal with the blowback as best he could.

  38

  Near Washington Circle, District of Columbia

  USA

  JON, YOU LOOK TERRIBLE. But you, Randi…you are a vision, as always.”

  Marty Zellerbach was standing in the doorway, his pale, puffy head and hands the only thing emerging from a shimmering red tracksuit. Undoubtedly, his finest regalia in honor of Randi’s visit.

  He turned and headed back into the house, indicating for them to follow. “Try not to get the rug dirty, if you wouldn’t mind. It’s new.”

  Randi pantomimed strangling him from behind and Smith grinned as he examined the side of his friend’s head. He spotted telltale glimmer of studs when they passed beneath a light.

  Not that he was surprised—Zellerbach was a lifelong technology addict. There was very little of interest that he hadn’t bought and disassembled. In high school, his room had been piled with the carcasses of everything from Atari game consoles, to Rubik’s cubes, to VCRs. It was precisely this tendency, along with his two PhDs, that made him perfect for the job.

  They entered a room in the back dominated by an enormous worktable and an even more enormous Cray computer.

  Zellerbach dropped into the only chair and left them to lean against the back wall. “Now, why is it you’re here?”

  Smith pointed to a Merge disassembled on the table. “That.”

  His response came out in one long rush. “Isn’t it incredible? I mean, I knew Christian Dresner was a genius, but he always seemed to waste it on boring things like antibiotics and hearing aids. Who would have thought he had this in him? I’ve already got four apps in to Dresner for approval, but I haven’t heard back yet. One’s particularly sweet. It lets you—”

  “What do you know about it, Marty?”

  “The Merge? What do you mean?”

  “You’ve taken it apart. What did you learn?”

  “Oh, that. They sent me one for free because of my tech blog. Thought I’d have a closer look.”

  “And?” Smith said, trying not to let his exasperation show. As he suspected, Zellerbach was just about due for another dose of his meds and was starting to lose focus. He’d get increasingly manic until he took a pill that would then cause him to descend into sluggishness. It was the brief span between those extremes when his incredible mental horsepower really shined.

  “You tell me, Jon. Rumor has it that you’re running the military’s development program.”

  Smith frowned deeply. Was there anyone on the planet who didn’t have that particular piece of classified information? “And where did you hear that?”

  “If the military doesn’t want people on their networks they should do a better job of securing them.”

  Smith just let that go. “What about the Merge? Can it be hacked?”

  “If you were to give me the encryption codes.”

  “I don’t have them.”

  “Come on. After everything I’ve done for you, you’re going to stand there and lie to my face?”

  “Scout’s honor, Marty. I don’t need Dresner’s approval to upload software but I can’t get into the operating system.”

  Zellerbach couldn’t hide his disappointment. “In that case, it can’t be done.”

  “You’ve told me a hundred times that there’s no such thing as a completely secure computer.”

  “But this is different,” he whined. “You don’t just have to come up with the password—and it isn’t going to be his birthday or his dog’s name—you’d have to mimic the way his brain communicates that password to the system. And he’s the only person who knows the language the brain speaks.”

  “Catch-22,” Randi said.

  “Exactly. In order to access the system you’d have to know so much about it you wouldn’t need to access it.”

  None of this was any real surprise. Smith’s own people, as well as the NSA’s brain trust, had told him exactly the same thing.

  “You’re sure the military doesn’t have access and you’re just not telling me, Jon? I can keep a secret. And I have some other app ideas that Dresner’s gonna be a dick about. You know, with the right camera, you could see everyone naked—like those glasses in the comic books when we were kids. Tell me that’s not a moneymaker.”

  “You’re already rich,” Randi pointed out.

  “True. Would you like to come out on my yacht? I have a bikini in mind for you that would—”

  “You don’t have a yacht.”

  “But I do have the bikini.”

  She gave him a stern look that hid a smile. “Let’s see if we can focus on the task at hand, shall we?”

  He shrugged. “There is no task at hand.”

  “So, you’re telling me that no one has hijacked this system.”

  “Hijacked it? No way. Not without Dresner’s direct involvement. And if he’s involved, that’s not really hijacking, is it?”

  It always circled back to Dresner. Did he know the asshole who totaled the Triumph? And if so, what exactly was their relationship?

  “Can it affect your mind?” Randi said.

  “That’s all it does—makes you hear and see things that aren’t really there. Icons, maps, music…”

  “What I mean is, could it, for instance, make a soldier not defend himself? Could it turn a very religious person into an atheist?”

  Zellerbach’s brow knitted. “I’m not sure what you’re asking.”

  “Simple question, Marty.”

  He pondered it for a moment. “I mean, I could code something that made everyone who attacked you look like your mother. That might make you less likely to fight back. Not sure how you’d turn someone into an atheist.”

  “I’ve talked to a few neurologists about this,” Smith said. “And they all tell me it’s pretty far-fetched. There is evidence that religiosity and the propensity for violence have a genetic component. And they have been able to manipulate it in a crude way using magnetic waves, but it takes a lot of power and the effect is pretty unpredictable.”

  “Maybe someone’s figured it out. I’m guessing that if we asked your neurologist friends a few months ago about projecting Angry Birds onto my visual cortex they’d have said no chance in hell.”

  “Touché.”

  Marty shook his head. “It’s possible, but really unlikely. Even if you could figure out how to do it, the magnetic fields you’re talking about would take so much juice. Seriously, if you were eating breakfast, you’d be in danger of your spoon flying up and sticking to your head. That’s just physics. Ever wonder why you have to have the unit plugged in for the sleep function? Power. And sleep is light-years easier than changing someone’s personality.”

  “So you’re saying there’s no way to affect someone like that.”

  Another shrug. “You could make people dizzy and nauseous. That’d make them not want to fight or go to church.”

  “Yeah,” Smith said. “But if the Merge really started screwing with you—made you sick, changed your personality, or whatever—why wouldn’t you just turn it off?”

  “Someone could disable the switch.”

  “Sure,” Marty said. “But there wouldn’t be anything stopping you from taking it off and walking out of range. Or hi
tting it with a hammer. Or throwing it in a pool. Or—”

  “I get the point, Marty. Thank you. What about something permanent?”

  “You think Christian Dresner is trying to give us brain damage?” he said, squinting a bit as he examined Randi. “Why are you asking all this stuff?”

  Smith wasn’t prepared to tell him about Afghanistan and that reticence made this line of questioning less effective than it could be. Science was about the free exchange of ideas and he always seemed to be in the position of having to hide something.

  “We’re just brainstorming here. We’d like to make sure we cover all the angles before we hand it out to our entire military.”

  Marty didn’t seem entirely convinced. “The short answer to Randi’s question is no. Doing physical damage to the brain would take still more power. Even if you suddenly emptied an entire Merge battery into one skull implant, it’d just give you a nasty shock and confuse you for a few seconds.”

  “Very brief, very weak electroshock therapy,” Smith agreed.

  “Maybe our question needs to be broader,” Randi said. “Marty, is there any way you could use this thing to do mischief?”

  It was a beautifully phrased challenge. Marty’s job, his passion—in fact all he really ever thought about—was new ways to do mischief. And in light of that, his answer was surprising.

  “Not without getting Dresner to approve apps that he’d never get behind in a million years.”

  “I can’t believe you’re so easily defeated.”

  Another nicely phrased challenge. Smith decided to reinforce it. “He’s right, Randi. It’s a tough problem. Maybe we should go see that kid from Anonymous. I hear he’s—”

  “I didn’t say I wouldn’t look into it! Did I? Did I? I don’t think so.”

  “Well, we—”

  “Look, there are a few things in the Merge hardware that I don’t completely understand,” Marty said, suddenly desperate to prove his superiority over his Anonymous nemesis. “I assume they’re future upgrade paths or maybe something to do with battery management. But if they’re not being used, maybe they’re not locked down by the operating system. It’s possible I could get control of them. And I’ve only been thinking about this for less than a half an hour! You can’t expect me to work that fast! No one can!”