Final Theory

by Mark Alpert

  She pointed at the load of trash inside the canvas Dumpster. Confused, David looked at her. “In there?”

  “That’s right. You can lie on the bottom and I’ll pile the garbage on top of you. Then both of us can get inside the building to see Gupta.”

  Shit, he thought. And it was his own idea.

  LUCILLE PARKER SAT IN ONE of the passenger seats of the C-21, the air force’s version of the Learjet, as it streaked over western Pennsylvania. She looked out the window and saw the turnpike stretched like a rope across the green hills and valleys. Somewhere along its length was the service area where David Swift had been spotted, but Lucille couldn’t find it. Most likely they’d passed it already. Up ahead she could see the city of Pittsburgh, a gray blot straddling the Monongahela River.

  The call from the Bureau’s director came in just as the plane began its descent. Lucille picked up the handset of the ARC-190, the air-force radio that enabled secure communications with the ground. “Black One here.”

  “Hello, Lucy,” the director said. “What’s going on?”

  “I’m about ten minutes from Pittsburgh International. There’s a vehicle waiting for me at the airport.”

  “What about the stakeout?”

  “No sign of the suspect, but it’s early yet. We have ten agents surrounding Gupta’s building and another ten inside. Video cameras in the lobby and all the entrances, and listening devices on all the floors.”

  “Are you sure this is the right way to play it? Maybe we should just grab Gupta now and see what he knows.”

  “No, if we detain Gupta now, the word will get out pretty quick. Swift won’t come anywhere near the place. But if we keep our heads low, we can nab both of them.”

  “All right, I’m counting on you, Lucy. The sooner we finish this job, the better. I’m getting tired of fielding calls from the SecDef.” The director let out a long sigh. “Is there anything else you need? More agents, more support?”

  Lucille hesitated. This was going to be tricky. “I need the personnel files for every agent in the New York region.”

  “Why?”

  “The more I think about what happened at Liberty Street last night, the more I’m convinced there’s been a breach. The attackers knew too much about our operations. I think they had help from inside.”

  The director sighed again. “Jesus. Just what we need.”

  IT WAS DARK AND UNCOMFORTABLE and smelled a lot worse than David had expected. Most of the garbage piled on top of him was inoffensive stuff—papers, rags, bits of cloth, and so on—but someone had thrown the remains of a breakfast burrito into the trash and now the sulfurous aroma of rotten eggs permeated the bottom of the Dumpster. Adding injury to insult, the jagged edge of a wooden board lay across his back and dug into his shoulder blades whenever the wheels of the Dumpster hit a bump. David winced as Monique pushed him out of the Purnell Arts Center and down the path toward Newell-Simon Hall.

  After a minute or so his eyes adjusted to the dark and he noticed a small vertical tear in the Dumpster’s canvas lining. Wriggling on his elbows and knees, he inched forward until he could peer through the opening. They were in the parking lot now; just ahead was the Highlander robot car, which was moving briskly toward the service entrance of Newell-Simon. Monique was following the vehicle and the pair of graduate students who were tracking its progress. The plan seemed to be working. In a few more seconds they’d be inside the building. Then David heard someone yell, “Heads up!” and a second later there was a crash in the layers of junk above him. A blunt object struck the back of his head, mashing his nose against the bottom of the Dumpster. The pain was intense but he didn’t make a sound. He soon heard footsteps, the slap of sneakers against asphalt. Through the tear in the canvas he saw a pair of pale, hairy legs, then another. Oh fuck, he thought. It’s the football-tossing agents. They’d thrown their pigskin right into the Dumpster. Worse, the impact had jostled the garbage above him, exposing his shoulders and the top of his head.

  The agents came closer. One of them was less than five feet away. David lay still, just waiting for the man to lean over the side of the Dumpster and spot him. Then he saw a third pair of legs, smooth and brown, step in front of the agent’s. “Goddamn it!” Monique yelled. “You almost hit me with that thing!”

  “Sorry, ma’am,” the agent replied. “We didn’t—”

  “This ain’t a playground! You boys should watch what you’re doing!”

  The man took a step back. With just a few words and a little attitude, Monique had thoroughly intimidated him. David had to admire her strategy. The best defense is a good offense.

  The toes of Monique’s sandals turned toward the Dumpster and she bent over its edge. David felt her hands on his back as she picked up the football and rearranged the trash to cover him. Then she turned back to the agents. “Here’s your ball. Now go play somewhere else.”

  The pale legs retreated. The brown legs stood guard for a few seconds longer, and then they disappeared from view and the Dumpster began moving again.

  Soon they passed through Newell-Simon’s service entrance, a loading dock that also served as a garage for the Highlander. Monique steered toward the freight elevator and pressed the button. David held his breath until the elevator door opened and Monique pushed the Dumpster inside. As soon as the doors closed, she coughed twice in quick succession. Because they assumed the FBI had laced the building with listening devices, they’d agreed on a signaling system—when Monique coughed twice, it meant, “Are you all right?” David coughed once to answer in the affirmative, and then they arrived on the fourth floor.

  After rolling down an immaculately clean corridor, they came to the reception area for Amil Gupta’s office, which David recognized from his last visit to the Robotics Institute. A sleek black desk crowded with computer monitors stood in the center of the room, just as David remembered, but the receptionist was no longer the tall buxom blonde who’d made eyes at him as he’d waited for his interview with Gupta. It was a young man now, very young, eighteen years old at the most. David tilted his head a bit so he could get a better view of the teenager through the hole in the canvas. The kid was staring at a computer screen and madly manipulating a joystick beside the keyboard. He was most likely an undergraduate, a computer geek who’d finished high school a few years early and was now working his way through college by doing secretarial work for the Robotics Institute. He had a somewhat pudgy face, with olive skin and thick black eyebrows.

  Monique left the Dumpster behind and approached the boy’s desk. “Excuse me?” she said. “I’m here to clean Dr. Gupta’s office.”

  He didn’t look up. His eyes stayed on the screen, darting back and forth to follow the convulsions of whatever computer game he was playing.

  “Excuse me?” Monique repeated, a little louder this time. “I’m going into his office to empty the trash cans, all right?”

  Still no response. The boy’s mouth hung open as he stared at the screen, and the tip of his tongue rested on his lower lip. There was no emotion at all on his face, just a steady, machinelike concentration. The overall effect was a bit disconcerting. Maybe he wasn’t a college student, David thought. It occurred to him that there might be something wrong with the boy.

  Monique finally gave up on him and headed for the door behind the reception desk. She grasped the knob but it didn’t turn. Frowning, she turned back to the teenager. “The door’s locked,” she said. “You gotta unlock it so I can do my job.”

  The boy didn’t answer, but David heard a loud whirring start up somewhere nearby. It was the whine of an electric motor and it seemed to be moving toward the Dumpster. A bewildered look appeared on Monique’s face as she gazed across the room. Then David saw what had caught her attention: a boxy silver machine, about the size of a suitcase, rolling toward her on caterpillar treads. It stopped at her feet, extended a robotic arm and pointed a bulb-shaped sensor at her.

  The machine looked a bit like a tortoise with a very long
neck. Monique and the robot regarded each other warily for a couple of seconds, and then a synthesized voice came out of the machine’s speakers: “Good morning! I’m the AR-21 Autonomous Receptionist, developed by the students at the Robotics Institute. Can I help you?”

  Monique gawked at the thing. She glanced at the human receptionist, probably wondering if he was playing a joke on her, but the teenager was still engrossed in his computer game.

  The machine reoriented its sensor so that it tracked her face. “Perhaps I can be of service,” it intoned. “Please tell me what you want and I will attempt to help you.”

  With obvious reluctance, she turned back to the machine and looked into its bulbous sensor. “I’m the cleaning woman. Unlock the door.”

  “I’m sorry,” the AR-21 replied. “I didn’t understand what you said. Could you please repeat?”

  Monique’s frown deepened. “The…cleaning…woman,” she said, loudly and slowly. “Unlock…the…door.”

  “Did you say, ‘Curriculum brochure’? Please answer yes or no.”

  She took a step toward the machine and for a moment David thought she was going to kick the thing. “I need…to get into…Dr. Gupta’s…office. Understand? Dr. Gupta’s…office.”

  “Did you say, ‘Gupta’? Please answer yes or no.”

  “Yes! Yes! Dr. Gupta!”

  “Professor Amil Gupta is the director of the Robotics Institute. Would you like to schedule an appointment with him?”

  “Yes! I mean, no! I just need to clean his office!”

  “Professor Gupta has office hours on Mondays and Wednesdays. His earliest available appointment is next Monday at three o’clock. Would that time work for you? Please answer yes or no.”

  Monique had reached her limit. Raising her hands in surrender, she stomped back to the Dumpster. David felt a jolt as she gripped the edge of the canvas lining, and then she began pushing the thing backward, out of the reception room. They moved rapidly down the corridor, the Dumpster’s wheels rattling over the tile floor. Instead of returning to the freight elevator, though, Monique opened the door to a supply room and maneuvered the Dumpster inside.

  As soon as the door closed, she reached into the load of trash and swept aside the crumpled papers and dirty rags that covered David’s head and shoulders. Propping himself on his elbows, he looked up and saw Monique’s exasperated face leaning over the side of the Dumpster. The message was clear: she needed some help.

  David cautiously raised his head and surveyed the room. The walls were lined with metal shelves holding an assortment of janitorial and office supplies—jugs of floor cleaner, packs of toilet paper, boxes of printer cartridges. In the corner was a large stainless-steel sink. No sign of any surveillance cameras. Of course the FBI could’ve hidden one somewhere, but David doubted that the federal agents would install an elaborate video system in a room that was so small and seldom occupied. Listening devices were a different matter, though; it would be no trouble at all to put one in every room in the building. Without saying a word, he clambered out of the Dumpster, went to the sink, and turned on the water full force. He’d seen this trick in a movie but had no idea whether it would really protect them from eavesdropping. To be safe, he pulled Monique close and whispered in her ear. “You have to go back to the reception room.”

  She shook her head. “No way,” she whispered. “That damn robot is useless. Shitty communication software, that’s the problem.”

  “Then go back there and get the kid’s attention. Tap him on the shoulder if you have to.”

  “It’s not gonna work. The boy looks like he’s handicapped or something. And the FBI agents are probably listening to everything I say in there. If I make too much of a fuss, they’re gonna get suspicious.”

  “Well, what are we going to do? Wait here until Gupta runs out of toilet paper?”

  “Is there another way into Gupta’s office?”

  “I don’t know! I haven’t been here in years! I can’t remember what—”

  Something suddenly bumped into David’s heel. It was just a light tap on the back of his sneaker, but it scared the shit out of him. He looked down and saw a blue disk, about the size of a Frisbee, slowly moving across the floor of the supply room and leaving a wet, zigzagging trail on the linoleum.

  A second later Monique saw it, too, and let out a startled cry. David clapped his hand over her mouth.

  “Don’t worry,” he whispered. “It’s just a floor-cleaning robot. Another of Gupta’s projects. It spreads cleaning fluid in a programmed pattern, then sucks up the dirty water.”

  She scowled. “Someone should step on that thing and put it out of its misery.”

  David nodded, staring at the device as it crawled away. It did look a bit like an oversize insect, with a spindly black antenna rising from the rim of the disk. Gupta outfitted all his robots with radio transmitters because he was obsessed with monitoring their progress. When David had interviewed Gupta ten years ago, the old man had proudly shown him a computer screen detailing the locations of all the autonomous machines wandering the corridors and laboratories of Newell-Simon Hall. The memory of that screen, with its flashing blips and three-dimensional floor plans, now gave David an idea.

  “If we can’t get to Gupta, we’ll get him to come to us,” he said, stepping toward the floor-cleaning robot. He leaned over to grasp the machine’s antenna. “This’ll get his attention.” With a flick of the wrist he snapped off the spindly wire.

  The robot immediately let out a deafening, high-pitched alarm. David jumped back. This wasn’t the response he’d anticipated; he’d expected an alert that would appear only on Gupta’s computer, not this ear-piercing shriek.

  “Shit!” Monique cried. “What did you do?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “Shut it off! Shut the thing off!”

  David picked up the device and turned it over, frantically looking for a power switch, but there was nothing on the machine’s underside but dripping holes and spinning brushes, and the whole thing was vibrating in his hands from the force of the alarm. Giving up, he ran to the sink and smashed the robot as hard as he could against the stainless-steel edge. The machine’s plastic shell broke in two, spilling cleaning fluid and cracked circuit boards. The noise abruptly cut off.

  David leaned over the sink, breathing hard. He turned to Monique and saw a queasy look on her face. She didn’t say a word but it was clear what she was thinking. The FBI agents must’ve heard the alarm. Soon one of them would come into the supply room to investigate. Monique seemed paralyzed by the thought, and for several seconds she just stood there in the center of the room, her eyes fixed on the door. Looking at her, David felt something lurch inside him. They were trapped. They were helpless. Their plan had collapsed before it could even be conceived. They couldn’t save themselves, much less the world.

  Then the door opened and Amil Gupta stepped inside.

  “OKAY, TALK TO ME. WHAT’S our status?”

  Lucille stood in a mobile command post that the Bureau had towed to the Carnegie Mellon campus early that morning. From the outside it looked like an ordinary office trailer, a long beige box with aluminum siding, the kind of thing you’d typically see at a construction site, but on the inside it held more electronics than a nuclear sub. At one end was a bank of video screens displaying live images of the various offices, stairways, elevators, and corridors under surveillance in Newell-Simon Hall. A pair of technicians sat at a station facing the screens; in addition to scrutinizing the video displays, they wore headphones to monitor the conversations picked up by the listening devices. At the other end of the trailer, two more technicians examined the digital traffic on the Robotics Institute’s Internet connections and monitored the building’s radiation levels, which were always a concern in any counterterrorism operation. And in the trailer’s midsection, Lucille was grilling Agent Crawford, her dutiful and ambitious second-in-command.

  “Gupta’s been alone in his office since ten o’clock,�
�� Crawford reported. He read his notes off the screen of a BlackBerry cradled in his hand. “At ten-fifteen, he went to the men’s room, returned at ten-twenty. At eleven-oh-five, he went to the break room for a cup of coffee, returned at eleven-oh-nine. You can see him now on screen number one, right over there.”

  The screen showed Gupta at his desk, leaning back in his swivel chair and staring intently at his computer monitor. The man was small but spry, a five-foot-tall seventy-six-year-old with thin gray hair and a doll-like brown face. According to the file Lucille had read while en route to Pittsburgh, Gupta’s small stature was the result of the malnutrition he’d suffered as a child in Bombay in the 1930s. But he certainly wasn’t starving now; thanks to the sale of the software company he’d founded and the various investments he’d made in the robotics industry, he was worth about $300 million. Although the guy was scrawnier than a plucked hen, he wore a beautiful olive-green Italian suit that no government employee could ever afford. “What’s on his computer?” Lucille asked.

  “Software code, mostly,” Crawford replied. “Our tap on his ISP cable shows that he downloaded a monster-size program, more than five million lines of code, as soon as he got into the office. In all likelihood, it’s one of his artificial-intelligence programs. He’s been making small changes to it for the past two hours.”

  “What about e-mail and phone calls?”

  “He’s gotten a dozen e-mails but nothing unusual, and all his incoming calls are going to voice mail. He obviously doesn’t want to be disturbed.”

  “Any visitors come to his office?”

  Agent Crawford glanced at his BlackBerry again. “One of his students, an Asian male who identified himself as Jacob Sun, came into the reception room and made an appointment to see him next week. No other visitors except a FedEx deliveryman. And a cleaning woman, she just left the reception room a minute ago.”

  “Did you run them through the biometric database?”

  “No, we didn’t see the need. None of the visitors fit the profile.”