Entanglement

by Michael Brooks

  Michael Brooks is the physics consultant to New Scientist magazine in London. Before joining the magazine as a features editor five years ago, he wrote freelance for many publications, including the UK's Guardian, Observer, and Independent newspapers, and edited a book on quantum computing.

  MICHAEL

  BROOKS

  ENTANGLEMENT

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including printing, photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Random House Australia. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Entanglement

  ePub ISBN 9781864714456

  Kindle ISBN 9781864716894

  Original Print Edition

  ENTANGLEMENT

  A BANTAM BOOK

  First published in Australia and New Zealand in 2007

  by Bantam

  Copyright © Michael Brooks, 2007

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  This electronic book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication Entry

  Brooks, Michael, 1970–.

  Entanglement.

  ISBN: 9781863256568

  I. Title.

  A823.4

  Transworld Publishers,

  a division of Random House Australia Pty Ltd

  Level 3, 100 Pacific Highway

  North Sydney, NSW 2060

  www.randomhouse.com.au

  Typeset by Post Pre-press Group, Australia

  Printed and bound by Griffin Press, South Australia

  To Kevin Conroy Scott for his sixth sense,

  Phillippa Brooks for her uncommon good

  sense, and Deborah George, whose sudden

  passing made no sense.

  Table of Contents

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  CHAPTER 54

  CHAPTER 55

  CHAPTER 56

  CHAPTER 57

  CHAPTER 58

  CHAPTER 59

  CHAPTER 60

  CHAPTER 61

  CHAPTER 62

  CHAPTER 63

  CHAPTER 64

  CHAPTER 65

  CHAPTER 66

  CHAPTER 67

  CHAPTER 68

  CHAPTER 69

  CHAPTER 70

  CHAPTER 71

  CHAPTER 72

  CHAPTER 73

  CHAPTER 74

  CHAPTER 75

  CHAPTER 76

  CHAPTER 77

  CHAPTER 78

  CHAPTER 79

  CHAPTER 80

  CHAPTER 81

  CHAPTER 82

  CHAPTER 83

  CHAPTER 84

  CHAPTER 85

  CHAPTER 86

  CHAPTER 87

  CHAPTER 88

  CHAPTER 89

  CHAPTER 90

  CHAPTER 91

  CHAPTER 92

  CHAPTER 93

  CHAPTER 94

  CHAPTER 95

  CHAPTER 96

  CHAPTER 97

  CHAPTER 98

  CHAPTER 99

  CHAPTER 100

  A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER 1

  LASZLO GIEREK WAS TO be left alone.

  But Paul Radcliffe was expendable. In fact, making a bloody little mess of Radcliffe would be a good thing. It would remind Gierek that he wasn't off the leash just because his machine was working now. Gierek was still part of the team.

  They had a lot to do in the next few days, and they were all on edge. So it was best that Gierek didn't engage in whispered conversations. He could keep his job at the university, he could teach, he could continue to publish a stream of stuff that was nicely behind the times. But whispered conversations in hotel bars were definitely out.

  Alex Genovsky swiped the card-key through the lock. The security here was shocking; getting the key from reception was hardly a test of anyone's skills. Hotel staff were too easily charmed by a smile and an apologetic excuse.

  The room was dark. Radcliffe hadn't opened the drapes. Genovsky walked to the window, pushed them aside and looked out at the view. Sixteen floors down, three ships bobbed gently in Baltimore's inner harbour. In the fading light of the late November afternoon their masts were lit up with coloured bulbs, like Christmas come early.

  Radcliffe had packed already. Genovsky stepped towards the case, put the knife's blade against the lock, then backed off again. Better to get it from the horse's mouth, so to speak. Better to wait and see what spilled out with the blood.

  Getting what you wanted was always about patience. About waiting. There was no point searching for something when you didn't know what you were looking for, or where it might be. Best just wait.

  Genovsky sat in the plush armchair by the bedside, invisible from the door, and waited. In the half-dark, the vertical stripe in the wallpaper was mesmerising. Something about the spacing made the stripes merge into a green haze if you stared at them long enough. It was like transcendence: time passed unnoticed.

  Then the lock clunked, and Radcliffe wandered in, oblivious.

  It was easy, effortless, to strike the blow that rendered him senseless for a few minutes. Long enough to strip him, tie him up, prepare him.

  He came round easily, his eyes suddenly bursting wide in terror. He was right to be terrified; he was going to die in that room. The smell of his shit and piss made the bound man retch and heave against the cords, but the stench was hardly his fault. It was only human to lose control over your body in a situation like this. It happened every time.

  The left thumb came off first. Only then did Genovsky ask a question.

  '
What did Gierek tell you?'

  The other thumb. For a moment, the smell of blood and meat hung rich and fresh in the room's warm air.

  It was impossible to tell how any particular body would cope with the trauma; some were more resilient than others. This one was on the weak side, already wheezing like someone was trampling over his chest. He could barely stammer out an answer. Still, at least he was no hero: Genovsky didn't have to ask twice.

  'He said he wanted me to look after a disk.'

  The last word came out as a falling hiss. Radcliffe was losing consciousness already.

  'Where is the disk?'

  A careful incision in the face, from the eye to the mouth. A trademark, if you will.

  'I haven't got it.'

  Then came the resistance. The realisation of imminent death produced a senseless bravado in some – it could even arise in the weak ones sometimes. It just appeared out of nowhere. Then you had to push. Trouble was, some of them – especially in this diseased, desperate, god-forsaken country – had hearts that were already one tick from the exit. It's not like you could take a medical history. Tell me, before I slice into your hamstrings, any history of heart disease in the family? It was true that you could go too far too fast. But there was no way of knowing, no rhyme or reason to it. And if you wanted to get the job done, you had to take the chance.

  The blade had hardly marked the cartilage of Radcliffe's right ear when he began to fade out. He fought the disappearance of consciousness for a moment, and then he simply let go.

  But not before he whispered a name. It was barely audible; his mouth hardly moved as he spoke. Something Virgo.

  It was enough to go on. It would have to be enough. Paul Radcliffe was dead.

  CHAPTER 2

  TWELVE FLOORS BELOW, NATHANIEL Virgo looked up from his laptop for a moment and surveyed the dark wood panelling and glowing brass fixtures that dominated the hotel lobby. His eyes fell on the pegboard sign at the entrance to the conference suite, and he smiled to himself.

  The Renaissance Baltimore Harborplace Hotel welcomes the first American Quantum Information Conference.

  Maybe it was a journalist's cynicism, but Virgo found it hard to see why anyone would welcome a collection of bearded nerds into their midst. Maybe the conference fee and the booked-out rooms had something to do with it.

  A tall figure hesitated in front of the sign. He was heading across the edge of the lobby, towards the conference room. Quickly, Virgo stuffed his laptop into his bag and stepped across the floor. He would look at that disk again later. For the moment, he had to block this guy's path.

  'Excuse me, Dr Hillborough?'

  The final hour of the conference was in session, but Virgo wasn't going to let this opportunity pass. Hillborough, the head of the quantum technology group at the government's Los Alamos labs, had just made a provocative announcement. Virgo would be on a plane in a couple of hours, and it would be good to arrive back at the paper with another story on the go.

  'Your statement – this morning? You're taking this stuff seriously?' he asked.

  Richard Hillborough glanced at Virgo's press badge. 'We have to,' he said. 'It's my job to make sure all government codes remain unbreakable for the next twenty years. We don't know if the quantum computer will be built in that time frame, but we know it's possible. And that means we can't be confident about the safety of our codes.'

  'But the quantum computer's a dream. It's a powerful idea, but no one knows how to build one. Anyway, it's been possible since Daniel Born published his blueprint fourteen years ago. What's changed now?'

  Hillborough smiled slyly. 'Nothing's changed,' he said. 'We're government. We take time to make decisions.'

  He was glancing around, looking for an out. He wasn't going to get one just yet. But he was going to get an easy question before the next real one. A softener. Virgo shifted his stance, lowered his notebook. Made himself a little more submissive, a little more friendly.

  'You know, I interviewed Born for a magazine feature back then,' he said. 'He told me he came up with the blueprint so people could build a machine to investigate the laws of physics. He said he was disappointed it had become something that spies wanted to use. Do you think he was being naive?'

  Hillborough hesitated, then glanced down at Virgo's badge again. 'You're from the Herald? In London?'

  Virgo nodded.

  'Your paper broke that story on the leaked Homeland Security report last year. The one about future security technologies – teleportation, remote viewing, all that sci-fi stuff.

  Did you write that piece?' Virgo shook his head. 'It was a colleague of mine; I've only just come onto the science beat.'

  'So how did your colleague get hold of the report? That was quite a scoop. Embarrassed a lot of people.'

  Virgo acted out a shrug. 'She got lucky, I guess.' He knew much better than that. Embarrassment caused to the US government was entirely deliberate. Always.

  Hillborough raised an eyebrow. He didn't buy it either.

  'But that's why I'm over here,' Virgo continued. 'My editor wants me to separate science truth from science fiction.'

  It was Hillborough's turn to shrug. 'Yeah,' he said. 'That's hard. Especially where Homeland Security is concerned.'

  Virgo lifted his notebook. 'Can I quote you?'

  A flicker of a smile crossed Hillsborough's face. 'I'll deny it.'

  Virgo returned the smile. Fair enough. Back to the real question.

  'So – was it all science fiction?' he asked. 'The report also mentioned quantum computers and quantum encryption, as I recall. The kind of stuff you say you're looking into. Was there more truth than fiction?'

  Hillborough pursed his lips. Then he smiled again. 'Maybe we could talk some more later,' he said. He neatly sidestepped Virgo and headed towards the hall.

  Interesting. Frustrating, too, but interesting, nonetheless. There was something there. Virgo followed Hillborough into the hall, and reclaimed his seat.

  He struggled to listen. He was still trying to make sense of Hillborough's announcement. The US government was starting to step up its security in the light of the threat posed by the quantum computer. A machine to break every government code on the planet – if you believed what Hillborough said. But these things were decades from being useful. It was like the difference between knowing you could split an atom, and being able to build an atomic bomb. What did that take? Forty years? Anyway, if you were worried, why tell anyone? Hillborough's announcement made no sense. Unless he was trying to get a message out. Unless . . . no, it made no sense.

  He couldn't think. These quick hops across the Atlantic were a nightmare. The jet lag killed him every time. He consoled himself with thoughts of the flight ahead: he could sleep on the plane. The planes. They'd be away on holiday – some quality time with his family, at last – almost as soon as he got back. He would take the Tylenol he'd bought yesterday, and sleep all the way to Cuba.

  Just one more hour to get through.

  He looked up at the screen above the stage. It was covered in an array of numbers:

  2519590847565789349402718324004839857142928 2126204032027777137836043662020707595556264 0185258807844069182906412495150821892985591 4917618450280848912007284499268739280728777 6735971418347270261896375014971824691165077 6133798590957000973304597488084284017974291 0064245869181719511874612151517265463228221 6869987549182422433637259085141865462043576 7984233871847744479207399342365848238242811 9816381501067481045166037730605620161967625 6133844143603833904414952634432190114657544 4541784240209246165157233507787077498171257 7246796292638635637328991215483143816789988 5040445364023527381951378636564391212010397 122822120720357

  'So, this is the Rivest, Shamir, Adleman protocol: RSA – an unbreakable code.'

  The presenter stood with one hand in his jacket pocket while the other ran repeatedly through his thick grey hair.

  Virgo glanced down at the program next to him to find the speaker's name. Laszlo Gierek. Boston University. 'Actually, it migh
t be the industry standard, but it's not unbreakable,' Gierek continued. Maybe it was just the trace of Eastern Europe in his accent, but to Virgo's ears he seemed distracted, like he wasn't here to talk about the details. 'It's just tiring. Factoring, the technique behind RSA, is really only child's play made difficult. I could give a ten-year-old child a two-digit number, and they could find the factors: the two numbers that multiply together to make it. I say 'fifteen', they could tell me 'five and three'. They're in a position to break a very simple RSA-type code. The British government, the White House, the Bank of England, the CIA – they're all relying on the fact that no one, and no computer, can search hard and fast enough to do the same with big numbers.' He pointed up at the screen. 'Like this one.'

  Gierek walked to the far end of the stage, and stood at the top of the steps. His clothes were simple but smart: a plain, leaf-green sweater and grey, baggy moleskin trousers. His hair was grown long and skimmed his shoulders. A thick moustache drooped over the corners of his mouth. The corners of his eyes drooped too; Gierek must have been around fifty, but the years hung heavy. He had stopped stroking his hair now, but even from his position at the back of the auditorium Virgo could see both of Gierek's hands were shaking. His eyes kept darting over his audience, like he was looking for someone.

  'Enter the quantum computer,' Gierek said, walking quickly back to the lectern. 'Super-fast computing using the weird rules of the quantum world. Even though it doesn't yet exist, any of you computer scientists in the audience should look on the potential of this machine with envy. With all the Intel chips in China, you can never have anything like it. We use single atoms instead of silicon chips. We can use superposition, where the atoms exist in several different states at once – our atoms can encode more data than standard processors can dream of. And with entanglement between the atoms we can do a million calculations at once.'

  Gierek stood still and stared out from the podium. 'Einstein hated the idea of entanglement, called it "spooky action at a distance", but it is no curiosity,' he said. 'It is all around us. Every process in the universe, at its most fundamental level, is creating entanglements. When you look at a star, the photon of light hitting your eye is still entangled with the atom, deep in that distant star, that fired it out.' He paused, then looked up at the ceiling. For a moment, he seemed enraptured, and he raised his right arm heavenwards. The shakes had gone. 'I could change the quantum state in a star, light years away, just by changing the state of its entanglement twin rocketing towards my eye. In theory, that is.'