'Nat, come in here.'
The two men saw Virgo, and stepped into his path.
They were both tall and heavily built, wearing charcoal suits and grim-set faces. One of them had shocking ginger hair, neatly combed into a side parting. The other was dark, with a thick moustache. It didn't take Virgo's degree in physics to work out that their interest in him was not going to be a good thing. They flashed warrant cards in his face as he got near. The ginger man spoke first, his words nailed onto a harsh Glaswegian accent.
'Nathaniel Virgo, would you come with us, please?'
The voice was calm and business-like, but it was clearly not a request. The dark man reached a hand out and placed it lightly on Virgo's upper arm.
Virgo shook the hand off. 'Why? What's this about?' Against his will, his gaze moved momentarily past the two men. Every one of his colleagues was watching.
'Don't make a scene, Mr Virgo.' This time it was the other man who spoke. He stepped closer. His breath smelled of coffee, and there was a sliver of white pastry on his moustache. They had stopped for refreshments on the way. This was all in a day's work.
Mercer had reached them now. 'What's this about? Let's step into my office,' he said. The men ignored him.
'We have some questions concerning a Paul Radcliffe,' the Scot said to Virgo.
Virgo's brain wheeled, but he could think of no response. The dark man gently gripped his arm, and Virgo allowed himself to melt into submission. They led him into the lobby. Mercer's face, normally on the edge of a wry smile, showed both anger and concern, but even he was doing nothing now. The office was as silent as Virgo had ever known it. Everything around him had halted – either that, or he had simply stopped hearing anything but the rapid, insistent thudding of his own heartbeat. He sensed his field of vision narrow and his cheeks started to burn, as if the stares were focusing all the light in the office on his face. What had these people said at reception to just be allowed to come up and take him like he was theirs?
Both men now kept a hand resting lightly on Virgo's upper arms. He moved forward as if propelled by their touch. As the lift doors closed, he found his voice.
'Are you police?'
The reply was curt. 'Not exactly.'
The lift doors opened again at the ground floor, and the three men moved silently through the glass and steel atrium. Above them, the glowering London sky pressed down on the building. They hesitated at the polished revolving doors, then the Scotsman thrust himself into the cycle while his partner held Virgo back until the next opening came round. Outside, they marched to the edge of the pavement. The parade of motorcycle couriers eyed Virgo with what looked like contempt. The Scotsman spoke into his sleeve. 'We're out.'
A black Jaguar swung round the corner and glided in towards the kerb. The dark man pulled the door open and got in. The Scotsman pushed Virgo in beside him, then crouched, squashed himself in and slammed the door. The windows were blacked out, and Virgo felt nausea rise in his abdomen. He had had a few brushes with the police, but this felt different. Very different. The Jaguar pulled away smoothly, without a sound.
The journey might have taken a few minutes, it might have been half an hour. In the dark cocoon of the car, Virgo simply couldn't tell. Every one of his questions hit a wall of silence; any attempt to move was quietly resisted. Eventually, he was led from the vehicle into the enclosed courtyard of what appeared to be some kind of mansion. The Scot pressed him through a narrow oak doorway into a cramped corridor with a low, damp-spotted ceiling.
He was sure that no one knew where he was. Had anyone at the office even asked who the two men were? Why had Charles given in so easily? This was the whole problem with the new international obsession with security. There were unchecked powers at work these days, and they were accountable to no one. Even newspaper editors were flinching. Virgo could feel the panic trying to establish its grip on him as they marched quickly forward. His breathing was becoming more laboured – the damp, the anxiety and the pace of the march made his head spin. He stumbled over a small hump in the floor and fell forward onto the stone. It was cold, and covered with a thin layer of greasy dirt.
Strong hands pulled him up again and propelled him forward, but only for twenty more paces. The march stopped in front of a metal door that looked just like all the others. The dark, moustached man pushed it open, and they went in.
The contrast with the dingy corridors shot a searing pain into his eyes. Harsh striplights, suspended from the concave ceiling, lit up a technological paradise. One wall was covered, floor to ceiling, by what appeared to be a bank of computers covered in a vast array of tiny, flashing LEDs. Their intermittent light created random, dancing patterns of red and green across the wall. A row of slim dehumidifiers sat against the wall to Virgo's right, emitting a low hum as they sucked and processed the atmosphere.
Straight in front of him stood racks of electronic equipment.
He recognised many of the boxes: signal generators, oscilloscopes, parametric amplifiers – the same kind of stuff that had competed for space on the shelves in the lab where he'd done his PhD. Huge strings of cables and connectors hung from hooks beside the shelving. He had enjoyed the company of these boxes then; looking them over, knowing what they could do, gave him a sense that anything was possible, given the right kinds of connections. Now, they just looked threatening.
The wall to his left was almost entirely filled by a plate of blackened glass. In the centre of the room were three gunmetal chairs and a large oak table. Though its plain legs were dark and angular, the table's top had been sanded into smooth, gentle slopes. It looked unnervingly like a butcher's counter.
'Sit down, please, Dr Virgo,' said a voice. An American voice. Virgo turned. A powerfully built man in his fifties came into the room behind him. He looked like he might burst out of his navy blue jacket at any moment.
Virgo remained standing.
'Just sit down, Virgo.' The voice was rich and deep. 'We need to ask you some questions.'
Virgo risked his voice. 'Who are you?' It came out thin and reedy, weak. No matter: he knew his rights. He remained standing and looked around the room. 'This isn't a police station. You can't question me without proper recording equipment.'
A slight lift at the corner of the man's mouth betrayed amusement. 'I think you'll find we can pretty much do what we like.' He motioned again to one of the chairs. 'My name is Frank Delaney. I work for the FBI. Virgo, I need to find out what you know about certain things. Sit down.'
FBI? OK. That was a start. Virgo walked over to one of the chairs, and sat. The seat was cold. He got up again and removed his phone from the back pocket of his jeans. The display told him he had no signal.
'I'm afraid you'll find that rather useless here. The science guys tell me it's a Faraday cage down here. You studied science at college, Virgo – you ever heard of a Faraday cage?' Delaney looked amused. 'The walls are lined with steel. No signals in, no signals out.'
Virgo leaned back in his chair. Delaney had been through his résumé. That was thorough. Too thorough. What was this about? What had Radcliffe done? The steel pressed into his vertebrae and chilled his skin through the thin cotton of his shirt. The Scotsman shut the door. Virgo was alarmed by the sound: no metal clang, but the soft hiss of a tight seal. Glancing around the room, he could no longer see the other man, the one with the moustache. Then his focus changed, and he saw him in the reflection of the blackened glass. He stood inches behind Virgo's left shoulder.
With the door closed, there was a new quiet to the room; the hum of the dehumidifiers seemed to have faded into silence.
'Now,' Delaney said, squeezing his bulk into a seat opposite Virgo. 'What do you know about the quantum computer?'
Virgo felt himself relax. 'A bit,' he said, trying to inject confidence into his voice. 'Where do you want me to start?'
Delaney fixed him in a cold gaze. 'Why don't you start by telling us about progress in the field? You've just been to a conference on this
machine: what did you find out?'
'It's meant to be the ultimate code-breaker. When it's ready, that is.'
Delaney stared at him, not moving. 'Go on.' What had happened to Paul Radcliffe, that Virgo was here giving an FBI agent a lesson in quantum technology? They could find this stuff out for themselves. Where was this leading? Virgo took a breath.
'Quantum computers encode numbers in single atoms rather than on bits of silicon like ordinary computers, and that enables them to do enormous numbers of computations in parallel.' He paused. 'But that's just the theory. No one has managed to build one yet. At least, not one that's worth anything.'
Delaney raised an eyebrow. 'What do you mean?'
Virgo shrugged. 'Code-breaking is just a big maths problem: you have a huge number, hundreds of digits long, and you need to find the factors, the numbers that multiply together to give the number. It's designed to be hard. And the best attempt at building a quantum computer so far can only do maths about as well as a ten-year-old child. It can find the factors of . . .' – Virgo stumbled around for a suitable figure – '. . . I don't know, fifteen? It can work out that five and three multiply together to make fifteen.' He allowed himself a smile. 'Impressive, huh?'
'And where is this computer?'
'At the US government's standards lab in Colorado.'
'Have you seen it?'
'No.'
Delaney seemed not to be listening. He was simply observing, his eyes shifting back and forth, looking for the smallest crack. Somehow, this wasn't going well. Cut to the quick.
'So what's this about?' he said. 'What's happened to Paul Radcliffe?'
Delaney stared at him for a moment, his eyes fixed and unreadable. He leaned forward.
'He's dead.'
Virgo tried to contain his shock. Delaney watched him in silence for a full five seconds.
When he could breathe again, Virgo asked the obvious question.
'And you think this has something to do with me?'
The grimmest of smiles cracked over Delaney's broad face. 'He died a very horrible death, Virgo. For some reason I don't yet understand, he was tortured.'
For the first time since he left the office, Virgo realised he hadn't even stopped to pick up his jacket. He shivered, then leaned forward and spread his fingers out on the table, letting them stroke the rough grain of the wood. He could handle this kind of attention. He'd done nothing wrong. And there was obviously a story here with Paul Radcliffe. Just keep to the truth.
'You think I did it?'
'Did you?'
'Of course not.'
Delaney smiled coldly again. 'But we have witnesses saying you had a – what did they say? – a very intense conversation with Paul Radcliffe in Baltimore just yesterday. What was it about? Did he give you anything? Anything to look after?'
Virgo maintained the direction of his gaze, but shifted his focus to stare beyond the leathered face across the table. Keep to the truth, he told himself.
'He hardly said anything. He gave me a disk,' he said. 'It was blank.'
Delaney's face didn't flicker. 'Where is it?'
Virgo hesitated, a fleeting moment that escaped his clutches. 'I Fed-Exed it back to him.'
'Already?'
Virgo nodded, and concentrated on holding Delaney's gaze. He didn't know why he'd lied but there was no point in trying to take it back now.
CHAPTER 6
GABRIEL MACINTYRE SWUNG HIS car into the back lot, grabbed a Red Sox cap from the glovebox and pulled it down hard over his brow. He liked to call this – his building in Newton, Massachusetts – his 'satellite office', but no one at the company knew about it. It wasn't registered to Red Spot Industries, but to a holdings company in the Caymans. It was untraceable.
He felt the breast pocket of his jacket. The disk was there. He picked up the yellow legal pad from the passenger seat, then jumped out and scurried down the covered walkway that led to the office door. A passer-by would mistake him for a lonely, two-bit accountant who crunched numbers for a low-grade clientele. But no one would be passing by down here: he was in the nether regions of an anonymous Boston suburb. The set-up was perfect.
In all the time he'd been using it, nothing had gone wrong. No interference from neighbouring offices, no break-ins, no incident at all. Not that anyone breaking in would consider it worth the effort. Gierek's machine looked like a crappy old computer, abandoned on the bottom shelf of an unlocked cupboard.
He shut the door behind him. The shabbiness of the place always made him smile; compare it with his downtown offices and you'd think he was out of his mind. How could Red Spot's Vice-President of Energy even be here? How could anyone wearing a Gucci suit sit on this plastic swivel chair? MacIntyre remembered spending long, sweaty summers sitting in a chair just like it. He had been grateful to do the filing at Delgado and Preece, Arkansas' least prestigious law firm – he really had worked his way up from the bottom. Which made it all the sweeter. Now he was sitting on this cheap upholstery out of choice, making millions with a halfhour manoeuvre.
>Load activator
MacIntyre always hesitated before he put the disk into the machine. He liked to savour the moment, contemplate the extraordinary nature of what he was able to do. Then, with a soft touch, he slid the activator disk into its slot.
>Location:
MacIntyre tapped at the keyboard.
>Facility:
A few more keystrokes.
Another prompt asked him about prices. MacIntyre referred to the legal pad, and typed in the numbers. Jakarta Power and Light was about to get its control systems tweaked. He pressed Send. Let the magic begin.
MacIntyre wasn't foolish enough to think he understood the entanglement. No one understood it. Even Einstein had said it made no sense that two atoms could have an invisible, untraceable link across space and time. But it was written into the equations of quantum theory. It was real, it was true, even if it made no sense.
And it wasn't like he had gone into this blind. He had checked it out in the science section at Barnes & Noble after the first approach, read enough to assure himself it wasn't voodoo. It made his head spin – give him economic theory, any day. He knew enough, though. The details of the experiments eluded him, but at least they were all written down in black and white, with names and places – he had even heard of some of them. Schrödinger, the guy with the cat, was one. And there was Einstein, of course. Things happened in Copenhagen and Vienna, Brussels and Geneva. There were even quantum things going on at IBM and the government labs in Los Alamos these days. He had got so caught up he sat down to sip a cappuccino while flicking through the pages. It was wild, wild stuff. Who would have placed him, an Arkansas farm boy, at the forefront of quantum technology?
The machine had worked perfectly from the get-go. Gierek and his business partner had chosen this place, far from prying eyes, scoped it out and installed the stuff before MacIntyre had even seen it. They chose him some targets and brought him over on a Sunday afternoon to see how easy it was. He still remembered the thrill of discovering that Global Energy was using Red Spot's firewall and systems protection software. Such irony that a competitor's caution had opened it up so wide. Its automatic software update had pulled in the hidden entanglement codes that Gierek had created; within just ten minutes, MacIntyre was getting a tutorial in how to reset his competitor's pricing structures.
Of course it came at a price: dealing with Vasil Marinov. They had met in the car park outside. That was where Mac- Intyre first saw those glacier grey eyes – he looked into them as he shook Marinov's hand and something inside him told him to walk away. But he had long ceased listening to that voice. Following your gut instinct is for when it leads you into something, not out. That was the path to success. And to an ulcer, of course.
Marinov had a long streak of grey ponytail running down his back. Put that together with their odd accents, Gierek's drooping moustache, and their affinity with electronics, and it would have been easy to dismiss th
em as a pair of Eastern European nerds with a new toy to show off. Until you saw Marinov's eyes. If Marinov had made the first approach, maybe MacIntyre would have run a mile. But Laszlo Gierek was a professor at Boston University: it couldn't hurt to see what he said he had invented. And when he mentioned a novel form of access to the Asian markets – well, how could MacIntyre turn him down?
They didn't say a word to each other until they got inside. Then Gierek flicked a switch and blew MacIntyre's mind.
'It's that simple?'
'It's that simple.'
They were gathered round the screen, but Marinov's head was turned and he was staring directly into MacIntyre's eyes. 'However you store information or instructions on a computer, it's physical. A hard disk, a floppy disk – whatever – the information is encoded in something physical.' He tapped the machine. The information here is in the magnetisation of the atoms on the hard disk. And that's a quantum thing.'
'Tell me what you do again,' MacIntyre had said.
Marinov's eyes narrowed slightly, and he'd almost smiled. 'I'm a businessman,' he said. 'But I trained as a software engineer in Bulgaria. And then NASA brought me over here to work for them in Houston.'
MacIntyre broke eye contact to look back at the screen. Marinov had been headhunted by NASA. He must know what he's talking about.
'So this entanglement can manipulate the atoms on a hard disk halfway across the world, and no one would ever know how it happened?'
'From halfway across the universe if necessary. And no, no one can tell. It looks like magic.'
Gierek broke in. 'You have to set it up right,' he said. 'You have to put the atoms into the right quantum state to begin with. But, ironically, that's getting easier every day. We'll soon be getting a gigabyte on every square millimeter. That means every piece of binary data – every 0 and every 1 – is pretty much on the atomic scale.'
'So how do you control the atoms?'
'That's a software issue,' Marinov said. 'It's about creating instructions that set up the right kind of magnetisation on the atoms in the hard disk.'
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