The Quantum Spy

by David Ignatius

  “But will it crack codes? It’s dark out there. We need some light.”

  “I am working as hard as I can,” said Schmidt emphatically. “I’ve found a way to program my machine so that the annealing function can also factor numbers, but it keeps crashing. Tell Mr. Green that I think I know how to do it, even though I can’t actually do it yet, if that’s comprehensible.”

  “Is there anything you need from us? Do you have enough money? Are you able to hire the people you want?”

  “Money is fine. People, well, let’s be honest, there aren’t enough smart Americans. Life would be easier if I could hire more foreigners. But we know that, right?”

  “Yes, we know that. And on the subject of the Chinese, for goodness sakes, don’t forget to let us know if Parcourse tries again. And recheck your suppliers, please. Trusted foundries, only.”

  “Christ, I hate security. It is the enemy of science. But yes, I’ve got it.”

  Sturm shook his hand. That was what she needed to hear.

  Out in the corridor, Ford waited. The moment brought a sense of isolation. In this business, access was everything. And she needed to know, if she was going to do her job. Ford stood by the doorway. The technicians and scientists had gone back to work on machines down the corridor. She stepped a few feet into the first bay and entered the darkened recess. What a beautiful machine it was, a universe in miniature. She wanted to understand it.

  The door to Schmidt’s conference room was still closed. He and Sturm would be talking a few more minutes, at least. Ford tiptoed near the edge of the machine and the control module that recorded the mysteries inside. So many questions: What were the parameters within which this machine produced its quantum effects? How cold was the chip, precisely? How fast was the processor that ran the machine? What was the architecture of the processor?

  Ford edged soundlessly closer to the machine. The digital display panel that monitored the machine’s performance was covered by a plastic sheath overlaid with TS/SCI classification warnings. She gently tugged at the plastic cover. As it fell away, she quickly began studying the categories and numbers on the digital displays: precise temperature; active qubits in the attached chip; power required to achieve quantum effects; target time for problem solution.

  The machine began a loud, regular electronic beep. Ford bit her lip. She quickly reattached the cap. The beeping stopped, but a red warning light was flashing behind the machine. She stepped away. The technicians were busy at their work, and Ford hoped that nobody had noticed. She eased toward the entrance to the bay, hoping now that Sturm’s meeting would end soon.

  A technician was striding toward the bay where she was standing. He was wearing a badge that said “Security.” He marched past Ford to the machine and its flashing light. He quickly typed a command on the keyboard and waited until the machine reported the nature of the violation of its electronic space.

  “Ma’am!” the security officer said sharply as he approached Ford. She paused and then took a step toward him. Nothing looks as guilty as a frightened woman trying to deny what’s obvious. She straightened her skirt. She pulled a wisp of hair away from her forehead.

  “Did you touch the machine, ma’am?”

  Ford opened her palms, in a gesture of mute apology. She was shaking her head.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I think I may have bumped it accidentally. I didn’t mean to do anything wrong.”

  “Someone tried to remove the protective seal. Was that you?”

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “I certainly didn’t intend to. Maybe the casing was loose. I feel terrible. I know how important security is.”

  Ford removed her green CIA badge from her purse and showed it to the security officer. He studied it, a puzzled look on his face.

  “Ma’am, did you see anyone else approach this machine?”

  “No, but I wasn’t paying close attention.”

  The security officer’s face was impassive. It was impossible to read whether he believed her or not. He hesitated a moment more and then strode to Schmidt’s conference room, twenty yards away, and rapped on the door. When Schmidt emerged, the security man whispered in his ear.

  “What?” roared Schmidt. “The display access panel? Are you kidding me? Who did it?”

  “I don’t know, sir.” He gestured toward Ford. “The visitor was standing in the bay where the intrusion happened. She said she may have bumped the machine, by accident.”

  “I am so sorry,” Ford repeated, walking toward Schmidt. “I was looking at that amazing machine, and I stumbled, and I must have set something off. Forgive me. This is so embarrassing.”

  Ford turned to Sturm, who had been watching from the conference room door. “This is my fault,” she said earnestly. “I had no business being near that machine. Please apologize to everyone.”

  Sturm pulled her colleague aside, out of earshot of the others.

  “Did you try to access the machine? Come on. This is serious.”

  “No, Kate. As I said, I was taking a look, I was curious. I must have bumped the wrong thing, or something was loose. I don’t know. I didn’t take anything. Check my pockets.”

  Before Sturm could answer, Ford turned the pockets of her jacket inside out, showing each empty one to her CIA colleague.

  “Thank you. That wasn’t necessary.” Sturm turned back to the group.

  “My colleague has extensive TS/SCI clearances, even though she has not been read into the details of this program. Please check the computer and file the proper security-intrusion notice. The seal may be defective. It may be sending false signals. Figure that out. Send the Bureau a report. They’ll brief me on whatever you find.”

  “If this is QED’s fault, I’m sorry,” said Schmidt, shaking his head. “Please understand, we take security seriously. Forget my griping earlier. I know it matters. We’ll find out what happened here and let you know, as soon as we can.”

  Sturm and Ford shook the CEO’s hand and walked slowly back down the hall to the door. Schmidt apologized again. Sturm reassured him and gave him a card with her direct number at work; Ford was silent.

  Before Sturm boarded the flight back to Washington, she got a text message advising her to call Headquarters. Her deputy at Support said that a man named Jason Schmidt had called to report that he had notified the FBI of the security breech.

  Sturm excused herself, showed an airline official her badge, and went to a quiet room. She called the head of the FBI’s Seattle office and explained the sequence of events that day. The special agent in charge said that forensics would check for fingerprints on the protective casing as soon as it could, but the lab was swamped and it might take a day or so.

  Sturm said she could wait. As soon as the lab could find time. She didn’t want a flap. Ford had already had suffered enough from rushed judgments.

  Ford tried to chat on the flight back. She mentioned a novel she had been reading and a favorite new restaurant. Sturm said she was tired. She closed her eyes and was silent for most of the long overnight trip back across the country.

  Kate Sturm debated with herself through those sleepless hours whether to call Vandel when she got back. She was fastidious about security, but she was torn: Denise Ford had been the victim of hasty and unfair treatment in the past. Sturm didn’t want to add to that history. Women fought against the odds in the agency; if the “house” could extend them a little credit for once, then that was only fair. Sturm decided to wait until she’d heard more from the FBI forensics team.

  When they landed at Dulles early the next morning, Sturm gave a bleary-eyed Ford a sisterly hug and said good-bye.

  Sturm was just dozing off at her town house in Reston at 7:30 a.m. that morning when she was roused by an insistent phone call. She had hoped to ignore it and get a little more sleep before going into the office, but the same number called back immediately. This person badly wanted to talk.

  Sturm answered her phone with a sleepy hello. It was John Vandel. His usu
ally modulated voice was a breathy shout.

  “We got him,” he said.

  “What are you talking about? Got who?”

  “We got him!” Vandel repeated. “It’s Kronholz, that son of a bitch from IARPA. We need to lock this down. Meet me at Courthouse at 9:00.”

  “I just got home,” murmured Sturm. “Can we make it 10:00? Or 11:00?”

  “Chang and I will be there at 9:00. Mark Flanagan has come back, too, to help with surveillance. Big day! You can sleep later.”

  “I’ll be there,” she said wearily. “Of course, I will.”

  Sturm quickly showered and dressed and by 8:00 she was on the road, fighting the morning traffic to Arlington. She was very glad that John Vandel had found his mole. That meant, among other things, that she could put aside her worry about Denise Ford.

  17.

  ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA

  “Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity,” said an exultant John Vandel to Kate Sturm and Harris Chang when they met at 9:00 a.m. upstairs in the secure area at the Courthouse facility on North Glebe Road. His face was glowing. “That’s what people forget,” he said, wagging a bony index finger. “If they send a message, no matter how careful they think they are being, the chances are that we’re going to see it land. And then, pop.”

  Vandel punched the buttons of the cyber-lock and opened the door. The room inside looked like a motel lobby with a cheap blue carpet, two shiny, red, fake-leather couches, and a mahogany coffee table with a tray of pastries and a coffee pitcher.

  He was giddy. He turned to Kate, who was shaking her head. “Behind every great man is a woman rolling her eyes.”

  “You’re in a good mood,” she said, laughing despite her fatigue.

  “I am in a very good mood, yes ma’am, thanks to our brothers and sisters at the NSA. They managed to intercept a version of an IARPA contract after it had been decrypted in Beijing. And guess who had just signed off on the contract for IARPA? Yes, that’s right. Roger Kronholz.”

  “Congratulations, boss,” said Chang, pumping Vandel’s hand. It wasn’t one of the two Chinese-American suspects, after all.

  “We got lucky,” said Vandel. “And we don’t actually have the hard proof yet. We need to catch him in the act. Speaking of which, where is Mark Flanagan? He’s supposed to be here. Harris, go check.”

  Chang trundled down the hall to the waiting room on the other side of the security barrier. Sitting stone-faced in a corner, reading a tattered copy of People magazine, was Flanagan. His face was pallid and puffy from fatigue. He looked up as Chang approached and glowered at him.

  “Jesus! Where have you been? I’ve been waiting here since 7:00 a.m. I fly in from Tokyo, sixteen hours of misery to get here, and the Office of Security says they’ve never heard of any ‘DDO Small Group’ and I’m not cleared to be in this location and please go sit in the unsecured lobby. And I don’t even know what I’m doing here in the first place.”

  “Sorry, Mark. Sit tight. I’ll get you cleared.”

  Chang trotted back to the secure office and returned with Kate Sturm, who spoke to the guard and then to the guard’s boss. She brought a special badge to Flanagan and apologized for the inconvenience.

  “Don’t worry,” said Flanagan. “I’ve worked here twenty years. I’m used to being treated like shit.” Flanagan had joined S&T directly out of Cornell. He liked to think of his directorate as part of the agency’s blue-collar workforce, perpetually abused by the big shots on the Seventh Floor but loyal, nonetheless.

  Vandel was slouched on the couch, eating a glazed donut, when the three entered the cyber-locked office. He unbent himself and shook Flanagan’s hand.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting out there,” said Vandel, bits of glazed sugar falling from his lips as he spoke.

  “The little people are accustomed to delay,” said Flanagan acidly. “What am I doing here, anyway?”

  “I have a special assignment for you.”

  “I don’t like ‘special.’ I like ‘regular.’ And my wife likes it in Tokyo. Does this involve what happened in Singapore? Because that wasn’t our fault.”

  “I can’t talk about it until we have a deal. Don’t be an asshole, Mark. Just give me an answer.”

  “Yes.”

  “Meaning what?” Vandel’s eyes narrowed.

  “Yes. Of course, I’ll do it. I’m a lifer.”

  “Good. You had me worried for a moment. It’s dumb to be a rebel when you’re over sixty. You remember the CIA penetration mentioned by the Chinese scientist in Singapore when he was being debriefed?”

  “Absolutely. I was on the other end of Harris’s wire. The Chinese guy said they had someone inside.”

  “So you’re now one of the mole hunters. We have a suspect, but we need to nail the case before we take it to the Bureau. This compartment has me, Chang, Kate Sturm, and now you, plus Warren Winkle by VTC, plus the Director, but he’s leaving it to us.”

  “What’s the crypt of your, uh, compartment?”

  “There isn’t one. There are no cables, no files, no cover-your-ass memos, nothing. The China mission manager has not, repeat not, been informed. S&T has been told to let you go for a few weeks. Any questions, refer them to me. Got it so far?”

  “Not really. You haven’t told me anything. Who’s the mole?”

  “His name is Roger Kronholz. We think. But we don’t have proof. That’s why we need you.”

  “Kronholz at S&T? Shit! I know him.”

  “He transferred to IARPA. He manages quantum computing programs for them. One of his black contracts just landed in Beijing. It involves ‘ion-trap’ technology, whatever that is. The point is, Roger Kron-holz is IARPA’s contract officer on this ion-trap thing. They just had a breakthrough. Kronholz ordered it classified. Two days later, the MSS has the specs and is tasking its people to find out more. He’s got to be the leak.”

  Sturm squinted, and not just from fatigue. “A dozen people must have reviewed the paperwork when this went black. It could have been any of them.”

  “True,” said Vandel. “But Kronholz meets all the other tests for this agent, Rukou. He has traveled abroad in the past year, he has a brother in the agency, and he has clearances for our most secret supercomputer programs. We just need to nail his ass.”

  “Are you sure it’s him, sir?” asked Flanagan. “We’ve worked together on some S&T assignments. Kronholz may be an asshole, but he doesn’t strike me as a Chinese spy.”

  “I’m not absolutely sure,” said Vandel. “If I was, he’d already be in handcuffs. We need to catch him in the act. That’s your specialty, right, Mark?”

  “I guess,” said Flanagan.

  “Then let’s get started. I want bugs in Kronholz’s office, car, and home before the end of the day. Then we feed him some intel that the Chinese would want and see if he bites.”

  “I don’t mean to be fussy,” said Flanagan, “but isn’t that illegal inside the U.S., unless you have a warrant?”

  “It’s legal enough,” said Vandel. “I talked to Miguel Votaw, the FBI deputy director. Walked him through a ‘hypothetical.’ He says it’s probably covered under standard protocol for insider threats. And even if it isn’t, the Justice Department would never prosecute this. Never. And if they did somehow, a jury would never convict. And if by some infinitesimal chance there was a conviction, you’d get a pardon.”

  Flanagan looked to Chang. He opened his palms.

  “Hey, Harris, am I nuts? I’m exposed here.”

  “You’re not nuts, Mark,” said Chang.

  Vandel leaned toward the S&T veteran.

  “Okay, straight up, Mark: You’re the only person who’s read into this and has the tech skills to do it. You’re a stand-up guy. And the fact is, you’ve already said yes.”

  Flanagan studied the DDO for a moment and then nodded.

  “Got it. How do I start?”

  Vandel gave the technician a sly look. He scratched his stubbly head.

&nb
sp; “Well, if it were me, I’d give my old friend Roger Kronholz a call this morning. Tell him you’re home from Tokyo on TDY, you’re thinking about your next assignment, and you’ve asked HR for permission to contact people and get some advice. You’re interested in IARPA, and you want to know what he thinks. How does that sound?”

  Flanagan, Chang, and Sturm all voiced their assent.

  “Let’s not screw this up,” said Vandel. He looked at his watch and stood abruptly. He had an appointment back at Headquarters. “I’ll think about what intel to feed Kronholz. You get the bugs in place. Let’s meet back here at 6:00.”

  Kate Sturm called her deputy back at Headquarters and asked him to collect some surveillance equipment and bring it to the Courthouse building. The gear arrived in less than an hour. Technology made snooping so much easier. Batteries could be woven into fabric. Microphones could be tiny oscillators that operated remotely from their power source. The filament in a light bulb could pick up sounds, if you tuned it just right.

  “Don’t you love this stuff?” said Flanagan as he packed the gear into a bag an hour later. He talked over with Sturm and Chang where he would put the bugs and how they would be monitored.

  Just after noon, Flanagan drove a rented car to the IARPA outpost at Office Park 2 in the Maryland suburbs. He was relaxed, even fighting the traffic on the Beltway: He had installed surveillance devices in a hundred places around the world, many of them hostile environments where getting captured could mean time in prison, or worse. The only hard part about this assignment was that he was bugging a colleague.

  Kronholz greeted him like a long-lost comrade from the secret fraternity of S&T. Flanagan scanned the small office. There was a lamp atop the desk with a big, conical shade. It was too translucent to hide a bug. The teak desk had an overhang of six inches on all sides, plenty of room underneath for a microphone embedded in a clear adhesive strip.