Bio-Strike (2000)

by Clancy, Tom - Power Plays 04

  “That’s why I was calling,” Ashley said. “I think you should come down here. And that you’d better bring along Pete or one of the others. I’ve heard from Eric Oh, the epidemiologist. There’s been some word about Gord’s illness, and I don’t know exactly what to make of it. Except that it’s important.” She paused. “I’m sorry I’m being disjointed ...”

  “Don’t worry about that, Ashley. My guidebook’s open in front of me, and it says it’s allowed under the circumstances.”

  Megan heard Ashley move the receiver from her mouth and clear her throat.

  “Thank you,” she said after a moment.

  “Thank the writer.”

  Another brief silence. When Ashley spoke again, her voice was a bit steadier. “Eric’s heading over to meet me,” she said. “And Elliot Lieberman, Gord’s regular doctor. Eli has an office at the hospital ...”

  “Yes.”

  “Someone from Richard Sobel’s genetics lab is also coming. The tests are still inconclusive, and I’m sure they wouldn’t be willing to disclose anything if they didn’t trust us to be discreet. Not yet. Not until they had more proof. People would jump all over them. Attack their reputations, lump them with flying saucer theorists—”

  “Ashley ... what is it they’ve found?”

  Ashley took an audible breath. The words weren’t coming to her lips easily. “They think that the virus was manufactured,” she said at last. “That someone may have specifically designed it to kill ... to murder ... Roger.”

  Megan held the phone a moment, stunned. “I’ll be right over,” she said.

  Ten minutes after ousting Ricci from his office, Carmichael sat at his desk with the door locked behind him, his telephone unplugged, and his intercom and corporate cellular turned off. Before severing these contacts with the outside world, he had instructed the group of analysts working on Palardy’s secret communication to call him on his personal cell phone if they shook anything loose.

  He needed to be alone. To think. And puzzle out what appeared to be a simple—even primitive—cryptogram that he was sure Palardy must have known would be decipherable to UpLink’s specialists, experienced pros who were used to making and breaking messages generated with the most sophisticated methods of algorithmic encryption.

  There was something about the bigrams and poly-grams ... something that kept tickling Carmichael’s mind right below the uppermost level of consciousness, trying to burrow up to the surface like an insect through a thin layer of soil. It had been about to emerge before the flurry of interruptions from Ricci and company startled it away. Now, absent distractions, he hoped to coax it back out of its hidey-hole.

  To help him focus, Carmichael had added a clip-art icon from his word processor to the string of ciphertext transmitted by Palardy, and the image on his wall panel looked like this:

  RHJAJA00BHJM00WHRH!JM00WHBHJA00

  TJAJ00?!CAJBJTRH

  GWRHMVGCRHUGBHAJ00RHJBAJ00.RHBH

  CAJBJTRHGCBHGWJA00TJ:CARHJA00

  CATJJA00UG?!BHJBJAMVGCRHJA00RHJB

  JA00RHGW!!RHJA“”ALRHMFTJJAUGRHBH

  :MVGCRHJA00TJJGWH!AJ00JPGCTJTJJA

  00UGRH!?JA00RHUGBHMVBHJARHJTRH

  JA00GWRHJB.JAMVJGTJJA00”“MVGC

  BHAJMV,TJGCJBJMJMRHJAJGTJJA00!

  CA!BHJTRHGWRH.

  He sat at his computer console and stared at the cryptogram. It reminded him a lot of the type that might have been incorporated in an old-fashioned potboiler, circa the 1890s, meant to amuse and challenge the astute reader with a basic knowledge of encipherment techniques. And he had a feeling Palardy had wanted it that way. Wanted it to be just difficult enough to buy him time to retract it unbroken, should that become advantageous, and simultaneously rattle whoever might steal his laptop in the event he was harmed beyond retracting it.

  Carmichael stared at his monitor. It almost was as if he’d stepped into a Holmes novel. Or one of Poe’s prototypical mystery stories. And the damnedest thing, the thing he would never have admitted to anyone outside his crypto section, was that getting to the clear might have actually entertained him were the stakes not so terribly high.

  “Give it to me, Palardy,” he muttered into the silent room. “Give me something.”

  A thoughtful expression on his face, hands poised over his keyboard, Carmichael decided to remove the punctuation marks from the character string. They had almost jumped out at him as nulls on first impression, and that feeling had only grown stronger as he studied it.

  He typed, repeatedly tapping the delete key. The image in front of him was now:

  RHJAJAOOBHJMOOWHRHJMOOWHBHJAOO

  TJAJOOCAJBJTRH

  GWRHMVGCRHUGBHAJOORHJBAJOORHBH

  CAJBJTRHGCBHGWJAOOTJCARHJAOO

  CATJJAOOUGBHJBJAMVGCRHJAOORHJBJA

  OORHGWRHJAALRHMFTJJAUGRHBH

  MVGCRHJAOOTJJGWHAJOOJPGCTJTJJAOO

  UGRHJAOORHUGBHMVBHJARHJTRH

  JAOOGWRHJBJAMVJGTJJAOOMVGCBH

  AJMVTJGCJBJMJMRHJAJGTJJAOO

  CABHJTRHGWRH

  Carmichael stared at the monitor. Trying to stay mentally loose and limber, slip into what athletes liked to call “the zone,” a space where you didn’t second-guess yourself, where you let yourself be guided by the automatic cognitive and sensory processes that equaled instinct.

  “Come on. Give it up.”

  He typed again. Letting his thumb give the space bar some action. Splitting up the obvious letter groups to leave him with:RH JA JAOO BH JMOO WH RH JMOO WH BH

  JAOO TJ

  AJOO CA JB JT RH

  GW RH MV GC RH UG BH AJOO RH JB AJOO

  RH BH CA JB JT RH GC BH GW JAOO TJ CA

  RH JAOO

  CA TJ JAOO UG BH JB JA MV GC RH JAOO RH

  JB JAOO RH GW RH JA AL RH MF TJ JA UG

  RH BH

  MV GC RH JAOO TJ JG WH AJOO JP GC TJ TJ

  JAOO UG RH JAOO RH UG BH MV BH JA RH JT

  RH

  JAOO GW RH JB JA MV JG TJ JAOO MV GC BH

  AJ MV TJ GC JB JM JM RH JA JG TJ JAOO CA

  BH

  JT RH GW RH

  Carmichael stared at the monitor. All right, he thought. Getting somewhere. And here it came again, that tickle of a thought in his brain soil. Some of those discrete letter pairs ... What was it about them that seemed to bait it out?

  Carmichael did a quick cut and paste to put the combinations that kept drawing his eye onto a separate screen:

  GW JA TJ JM AJ

  He stared at them.

  “Come on, come on, let’s see you. Come on ou—”

  He straightened in his chair and sat very still for about five seconds. Then he abruptly reached into his pocket, activated his cellular, and called one of his section mates.

  A woman answered.

  “Michelle?” he said.

  “Jimmy, hi, what’s up?”

  “Better head over to my office. I think I’ve got something figured.”

  Her tone was crisp. “Be right with you.”

  “Thanks.” Carmichael’s finger paused over the disconnect button. In his excitement, he’d almost forgotton to ask for what he wanted her to bring along. “Michelle, still there?”

  “Yeah, Jimmy, I was just putting back the phone.”

  “A favor. It’s no big deal, I suppose. We can get the info easily enough on-line or something—”

  Impatience: “Jimmy— ”

  “Sorry, Michelle, I’m a little hyped,” he said. “Since you’re passing the reference library anyway, would you see if you can find that book on the American presidents?”

  The highway’s posted speed limit was sixty-five miles per hour. The jet black Beemer’s speedometer had ticked up near ninety. This was the Bay Area. Megan Breen was at the wheel. She was in a rush to get to the hospital and hadn’t bothered with the radar detector.

  Belted into the passenger seat, Rollie Thibodeau gripped his assist handle as she wove in and out of the left lane to pass a Suburban snailing along at a mere seventy-five miles per hour.
>
  She snapped a glance at him through her sunglasses. A deep crease had established itself across his brow. He was very quiet. It occurred to her that six months was not very long ago when someone was recovering from the kind of internal damage he’d suffered in Brazil.

  She resisted the urge to sway around the Lincoln now in front of her.

  “Rol, everything okay?”

  He nodded. “Just thinkin’. Don’t slow down on my account.”

  “Oh. That’s not why—”

  “ ‘S’okay, chere.” He patted her shoulder. “You my favorite gal.”

  She checked the rearview and passed.

  “Those thoughts,” she said. “You feel like sharing them?”

  He turned to look at her.

  “Guess I better.” He hesitated. “Came to me what happened to the president-elect in Brazil last month. Colon. I was recollectin’ how he took sick, died so sudden. His symptoms ... ones we know about ... ones his government didn’t cover up ...”

  He didn’t have to say any more than that.

  His symptoms, Megan thought, had been strikingly similar to Gord’s.

  She felt her heart clamp in her chest.

  “Rollie, UpLink was about to cut a development deal with his administration. Our advance team met with him weeks before he died. You remember us talking about it on the Pomona?”

  He made an affirmative sound.

  “There’s my thoughts,” he said. “All wrapped in a bundle.”

  Megan nodded and jammed down on the Beemer’s gas pedal, shredding over the road like the devil’s black stallion.

  “Megan phoned,” Nimec said. “She’s with Ashley and Rollie at the hospital.”

  Ricci’s shoulders tensed almost imperceptibly.

  “The boss ... ?”

  “He’s hanging on.”

  “Oh.” Ricci breathed. “I didn’t know my arch nemesis was heading over there.”

  Nimec was silent a moment. They were in his office. Just the two of them, by his choice. He’d wanted a chance to toss things around with Ricci before calling Vince Scull.

  “Megan grabbed him, hustled off.” Nimec paused. “Tom, the docs and lab coats have turned something up. And I’ve got to tell you, it blew me away.”

  Ricci looked at him.

  “Long and short?” he said.

  “Looks like the virus that’s affecting Gord was bioengineered. We’re not talking about something cultured in some Iraqi or Sudanese ‘baby milk factory.’ The bug’s some kind of mutant created with black bag technology.”

  “How sure a thing is this?”

  “Sure enough for us to run with it,” Nimec said. “I asked Meg to give me a dumbed-down explanation of their testing processes. From what I understood, there are confirmed techniques for scanning plant and animal genes for evidence of modification. Before UpLink sold off its biotech division to Richard Sobel, we were doing it for the ag department and other clients. You take a cucumber that has some superficial difference to all the rest at the green grocer, bring it to the lab, and they do a PCR exam, same as they would on a crime suspect’s genetic material. The DNA doesn’t compare with that variety of cuke, they move on to another level of testing. There are places on the gene string where scientists know to look for ... I guess they’re the equivalent of splices.”

  Ricci rubbed his neck. “A cucumber isn’t a virus,” he said.

  “But the scientific principles behind the tests are identical. Or close to identical. Meg could give you a fuller rundown. All I can tell you is that these are confirmed procedures,” Nimec said. “They’ve only had, what, a day or two to do the lab work, so I don’t know whether the findings meet a standard of proof that would satisfy the scientific establishment. Doesn’t matter. Nobody’s writing any articles for the New England Journal of Medicine. We’ve been given an inside line, and that’s how it stays for now.”

  Ricci was still and quiet in his chair.

  “Ever miss the twentieth century?” he said after a minute.

  “More and more.”

  “But here we are in the future.”

  “That’s right.”

  “If we have to put up with this bullshit, where are the flying cars? And the robots that pop hot food and drinks out of slots in their chests?”

  Nimec managed a half smile. “I always looked forward to the jet packs,” he said.

  There was a brief silence.

  “Where do we go with this, Pete?”

  “I was hoping you’d have some ideas. Obviously we’ve got to learn who developed the virus. And how Gord was exposed.”

  “The forensics on Palardy might help steer us in the right direction. We’ve also got to know whether there’s anything to his E-mail,” Ricci said. He scratched behind his ear. “You hear from our code-breaking whiz?”

  Nimec shook his head. “Not for a while. He stopped picking up his phone.”

  “Booted me right out of his office,” Ricci said. “You think we should go knock on his—?”

  Nimec’s phone broke in with a twitter. He picked up, grunted, nodded, grunted again, replaced the receiver, and abruptly rose from behind his desk. “Timing,” he said.

  Ricci looked at him. “Carmichael?”

  Nimec nodded, tapped Ricci on his shoulder as he hastened around his desk. “Let’s move,” he said. “He’s got something big for us.”

  “It’s quirky but clever, when you take into account that Palardy may have been on his way out when he devised it,” Carmichael was explaining virtually as they reached his door. “Sort of a cross between a polyalphabetic and geometric cipher.”

  What Ricci and Nimec saw on the flat-panel wall monitor facing them was a large graphic:

  ROUGH CIRCLE (CLOCK) TABLE

  “Palardy did have a thing for clocks, Ricci, and it’s obvious he used one to work out his substitutions,” Carmichael went on. “Sooner or later, the computers would have solved this thing mathematically, even without your having made the observation. Just as they would have if some of those letter combinations hadn’t jumped out at my eye. The GW in particular ... How many people don’t immediately think ‘George Washington’ when they look at that letter pair? Once I let my nose follow that clue, I started noticing other bigrams also corresponded to presidential initials. Jefferson, Jackson, and Teddy Roosevelt’s especially popped out at me.”

  He paused, motioned them into the office. A trim, blonde woman of about thirty-five was standing near the middle of the room.

  “Michelle Franks,” she said, putting out her hand.

  Nimec and Ricci quickly introduced themselves.

  She said, “We won’t waste precious time with a long explanation ...”

  Good, Ricci and Nimec both thought at once.

  “... but want you to understand how we got this figured, and whipped together the chart in front of you.”

  “What Palardy did was take a circle and divide it into sixty equal parts by drawing lines across its diameter,” Carmichael said.

  “Sixty parts, as in sixty minutes on the clock, ” Michelle said.

  Carmichael nodded. “It was obvious to me in Palardy’s office that each of his character groups were substitutions. But my first guess was that they stood for letters or syllables, when in fact they stood for numerals.”

  Right, Ricci thought. Get on with it.

  “When Jimmy got his hunch about the groups representing the initials of United States presidents—” Michelle began.

  “Every one of them early presidents,” Carmichael cut in. “There were no RRs, as in Ronald Reagan, RN for Nixon, BC for Clinton and so on ...”

  “When he noticed those things, we chose the first twenty-six sets of initials—”

  “One for each letter of the alphabet,” Carmichael said. “Another thing I might’ve mentioned in Palardy’s office is that the punctuation marks looked like probable nulls. And they wound up being just that. Characters that stand for nothing. Palardy used several: an exclamation point, a peri
od, and a question mark, to name a few.”

  Which was something both Nimec and Ricci had already discerned for themselves.

  “Take the three nulls, add them to the twenty-six initial pairs, and it equals twenty-nine substitution symbols,” Michelle said.

  “Next you add the double zeros,” Carmichael said. “They always follow a set of repeat presidential initials ... belonging to those who would have served their terms later in the chronology of chief executives. Namely Presidents James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, and An-drew Johnson.”

  “This gives you a grand total of thirty ciphertext characters,” Michelle said.

  “Half of sixty, and also half of your total number of points on the outside of the circle ... or circumference of the clock dial,” Carmichael said. “After that fell into place, we had to determine which of the letter pairs corresponded to a particular number between one and twenty-six, since that number had to represent a letter in its proper alphabetical sequence. Palardy could have made that part easy by having the numerical order match the order of presidents—”

  “Number one being George Washington, two being John Adams, three being Thomas Jefferson, for example ...”

  “But he didn’t, probably because it was too easy. By randomizing the alphabetical and numerical correspondents ... leaving them up for grabs ... he ensured that whoever got to the clear would have to do exactly what you talked about before, Ricci. Run all the possible matches through a computer until it came up with ones that enabled the person to compose intelligible sentences. Either that, or work it out on paper, and that would take forever. And again, this presupposes that the would-be code breaker could recognize the bigrams, the nulls, the pattern in general.”

  Michelle was nodding. “He must have felt that was unlikely. Felt that we’d have the know-how and experience to swing it, but the laptop thief wouldn’t.”