by Sam Fisher
'Any idea what?' Pete asked.
'None at all. Either the spooks know and there's a complete security lockdown, or they've had a tip-off but nothing specific.'
'Okay,' Mark said. 'Keep monitoring it, Tom. The first hint of anything clearer, let me know.'
He was about to add something more when a technician came in. 'Sir?'
Mark approached the technician, who whispered in his ear. Mark looked grave. Turning to Maiko, he said. 'Mai, can I have a private word?'
They stepped into the empty corridor. Through a large window they could see palm trees swaying in a gentle breeze.
'What's up?' Maiko asked.
'It's a private matter, Mai. It's your mother. She's had a stroke.'
She stared at Mark, her expression blank with shock. Then she suddenly seemed to jolt into awareness. 'I have to go,' she exclaimed, looking around as if she was trying to find the exit there and then.
Mark fixed her with his eyes.
'You do understand, don't you?' Mai said.
Mark ran a hand over his forehead. 'Yes . . . yes, of course, Mai,' he said heavily. 'Leave it with me.'
19
At 2.54 pm Josh was woken from a deep sleep by the buzzer beside his bed. Only six hours earlier he had completed a 48-hour sleep-deprivation exercise.
'It's Mark,' came the voice at the end of the line. 'You'd better get to Cyber Control, fast.'
When Josh arrived, looking bleary-eyed, he found Mark already there. Pete entered a few moments later, then Stephanie, who had been down in the hangar getting instruction in how to use the Mole.
'What's happened?' Josh asked, as they gathered near Tom's computer module.
'About 30 minutes ago the CIA comms network went into overdrive,' Tom replied. 'Both the US and UK governments have gone to their highest alert levels. Neither have made it public yet.'
'Anything specific?'
'I'm trying. Sybil's analysing the comms. Everything's encoded, of course. I've got the system to pick keywords from the intelligence traffic. Here we go.' The holographic image shifted in front of Tom's eyes and he slid his fingers over the metal surface where the keypad was visible as a light projection on the desk. 'Here're the top three.'
Three lines of numbers appeared from the confusion of text.
'It's an RSA code,' Josh said, suddenly wide awake. He felt energised by the fact that he could at last employ his knowledge of cryptography.
'Which is?' Pete asked.
'It's like the system used for credit cards,' Tom interjected. 'It depends on the level of encryption, but most of them are considered completely unbreakable.'
'Well, yeah, that's true for commercial transactions,' Josh added. 'The PIN number you use, or your bank password, is almost impossible to crack. But if you look at these rows of numbers, you can see they break up into smaller segments.'
'Tom,' Mark said, 'can you put them on the big screen, please?'
A few seconds later, numbers a foot high appeared on the wall.
'It's been estimated that to crack the very best of these codes it would take all the computers in the world – even working together – something like 12 million times the age of the universe,' Josh commented. 'But this doesn't look like a particularly complex one.'
'And we have one shit-hot advantage,' Tom added, patting the desk in front of him affectionately. 'The only quantum computer in the world.'
'Okay, Sybil,' Josh said. 'I think the spooks have used a third-level factorising equation to get these numbers. Which means we have to reverse the process. Let's take the first number cluster – 657609873. What do you make of it?'
All eyes were on the big screen. Then Sybil's synthetic voice cut through the quiet. 'Best fit is REHKTHY.'
No one spoke for a moment, then Tom laughed. 'Fantastic – that's C-3PO's mom, right?'
Josh sat down and ran his hands through his hair. He had dark rings under his eyes. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and peered at the screen. Then he stood up suddenly. The others looked on in silence.
'Sybil,' he said after a long pause. 'Good try. Let's look at the second number cluster – 6858876568.'
Another few moments of silence. Tom twirled a pen across the fingers of his left hand.
'Closest correlation is HYJJHHHKIO.'
Tom dropped the pen onto the console attached to his wheelchair.
'Okay,' Josh sighed. 'Sybil, the third numeric cluster – 7876345256.'
The silence was oppressive, then the computer voice rang out. 'SELL ONE GAS.'
'Oh, for Christ's sake!' Pete exclaimed.
'It's alright. It's an anagram,' Josh said. 'LOS ANGELES.'
Mark shot a glance at the cryptographer and nodded. 'So the spooks must know something big is about to go down in LA.'
'Yeah, but they obviously have no idea what it is, or clues to that information would have been imbedded in the encoded traffic we've picked up between the agencies. You haven't isolated any other keywords have you, Tom?'
'No.'
'Which means,' Josh continued, 'we have absolutely no idea what's about to go down either.'
Part Two
ENTER THE DRAGON
20
Downtown Los Angeles
10.11 am, Pacific Standard Time (Incident time minus 9 hours, 6 minutes)
Senator Kyle Foreman stretched his long legs as best he could in the back of the Mercedes and watched the buildings flash by along Pico Boulevard. The morning sun was bright in a perfect blue sky. I could get used to this place, he thought to himself. Flying out of JFK only four hours earlier, he had left behind grey skies and rain. Sometimes he could barely believe LA and New York were part of the same nation. Whenever he flew into LAX, the City of Angels always felt like a foreign land to him, every bit as exotic as its name.
The car slipped into a short tunnel and he caught his reflection in the window – high cheekbones and square jaw, salt-and-pepper hair slicked back, large hazel eyes that spoke of his Italian ancestry. He looked weary. He had been working hard and it was showing. His skin was a little saggy around the eyes and there were new wrinkles at the corners of his mouth. He glanced down at the briefcase on his knees and tried to focus on the job ahead, but his mind kept wandering and it always returned to the same thing, Sandy. He hated leaving her right now. The timing could not have been worse. Only the night before, he had rushed her to Mount Sinai Hospital. It was a false alarm, but her due date was only two days away. The baby could arrive at any time.
He cursed his schedule. He had utter belief in his cause, but sometimes . . . Then reason prevailed. This gig had been booked more than eight months earlier. How could he have known?
Tonight's speech was to be the most important he had made, the culmination of two years of campaigning and dedication. He had been captivated by environmentalism three years earlier. Looking for a new direction in his career, he had found an immediate simpatico with what he quickly realised was the cause of the era. Environmentalism, as he often now said, was beyond politics.
Kyle Foreman's critics – and there were many, from all parts of the political spectrum – claimed that all he ever did was preach to the converted. He knew this was untrue and that in just two years his organisation, OneEarth, had grown from being a group of likeminded enthusiasts to a global campaign with over a million paid-up members. But even he had to admit that tonight's event was partly a show for the troops.
He was not doing all this purely for political impact, nor simply to enhance his profile. He sincerely believed in the cause, and he was a man who threw himself heart and soul into anything he felt passionate about. Now, at the age of 43, Foreman was at the top of his game, one of the most popular and successful members of the Senate, a man tipped to go all the way.
His had been a remarkable ascendency. Born into a poor family and brought up by his widowed mother in Ford Heights, Chicago, he had been forced by necessity to fight for absolutely everything he had achieved. Graduating from Yale summa cum lau
de, he became obsessed with succeeding as a politician because he believed politics was where the real action was. It was the arena in which he could do most to bring positive change to the world. He soon learned he possessed natural charisma and could communicate easily with people from all walks of life. Coupled with his massive, restless energy, these qualities set him on the road to great things long before the media made him famous.
Through the window, he could now see the California Conference Center, the massive complex of arenas and exhibition halls where, in less than eight hours, he would walk onto a stage to greet a thousand key supporters. He couldn't help but feel proud and excited, but at the same time he had a growing sense that his real place now was 2500 miles east – with Sandy in their upper eastside apartment.
The lead car pulled into the underground garage, Foreman's followed and the rear car came up to the bumper. Four CIA security agents surrounded the senator as he passed through a glass vestibule into an brightly lit reception area. A delegation of half a dozen officials from the Center met him. A member of his staff made the necessary introductions. It took another half an hour of glad-handing and backslapping before he reached his private suite on the top floor of the Hilton annex, which adjoined the CCC. Foreman threw his jacket onto the bed, loosened his tie and dismissed the two CIA agents who acted as his personal bodyguards.
Sitting up against the headboard of the bed, he dialled home. It would be lunchtime there now. There was a pause as the connection was made, then the comforting ring. Sandy didn't pick up. The senator felt an immediate ripple of anxiety. After a few more rings he put the phone down and redialled. It rang and rang. He stabbed at the disconnect button and called Sandy's cell phone. It could only mean one thing, he told himself, and let out a heavy sigh. 'I just knew this would happen.'
The cell rang five times before Sandy's message service kicked in. Foreman winced. Disconnecting, he threw down the phone, jumped off the bed and marched to the bathroom. He ran a bowl of cold water and threw two handfuls over his face, enjoying the shock of it.
The phone rang. He rushed back into the bedroom and snatched at the phone.
'Honey?' a voice said.
'Whoa – you had me worried there, Sand.'
'I was just seeing Marianne to her cab.'
'Of course, I forgot, your sister . . .' He was making a gargantuan effort to sound calm.
'So, no problem, okay?' Sandy added. 'Now, look. You get yourself nice and relaxed before your speech. And stop worrying!'
'Okay, boss,' he laughed.
'And, honey? Good luck.'
21
Monterey, California
10.13 am, Pacific Standard Time (Incident time minus 9 hours, 4 minutes)
The Dragon surveyed the motel room. Four walls, a bed, a bathroom, and an arsenal of weapons. On the bed lay two M60 7.62 mm machine guns, each capable of firing 550 rounds per minute. Next to these was a box containing 1000 rounds of M61 armour-piercing shells. Towards the pillows lay two of the most powerful handguns in the world, his trusted Smith & Wesson Model 500 Magnum and an Israeli Army standard issue semi-automatic Mark XIX Desert Eagle .50 AE. Next to these rested a leather box containing six M67 fragmentation hand grenades, each with a 'guaranteed killing radius' of five yards. To complete the collection, propped up on a pillow, was an SAS favourite, a Fairbairn-Sykes No. 2 commando knife.
The Dragon was an ordinary looking man. He was 47 years old, with light-brown neatly cut hair, greying at the temples. He had a plain face, with a nose that was perhaps slightly too big, and watery pale-blue eyes. He was wearing a paleblue shirt, cream chinos and conservative loafers that made him look like a college professor on vacation, or a middle manager on a mufti day. There was only one detail about his physical being that spoke of something else, something darker – a red tattoo of a coiled dragon on the inside of his left wrist. The dragon's tail ran back the length of his arm. It had hideous black eyes and a lascivious, lashing tongue; the words Death, Conquest, Pestilence and War spewed from its mouth.
The Dragon's appearance may have been completely unremarkable, but the man's CV read like something from a Bond movie. Once upon a time he had been Igor Andrei Makanov, the son of Andrei and Lena Makanov. His Russian father had been sent to a Gulag in 1975, where he died from frostbite-induced gangrene. Lena was a Pole who had been only twelve when the Russians invaded her homeland. Igor had also been the brother of Angela and Ania, who, along with their mother, had died from malnutrition in Moscow. Igor, the youngest of the family, was the sole survivor. When he reached the age of seventeen he joined the army. He was later trained by Spetsnaz, the Soviet special forces.
With the collapse of the USSR in 1991, Igor destroyed all trace of his former life and relocated to America. He changed his physical appearance and severed all connections with his previous existence. He quickly forged links with the eastern-seaboard mafia families, who were happy to find work for muscle with no history. Searching for something more reliable, he headed south, where he became the personal bodyguard for the family of a Texan oil baron. When the youngest son of the head of the family was elected to high political office, his bodyguard went with him to Washington.
It did not take Igor long to cross the paths of the Four Horsemen and to acquire his new name. Now, after so many years, he had almost forgotten his birth name, but the memory of his family's suffering remained undimmed. He could not pin the blame for those horrors on any individual, but he knew that he would rather kill himself than ever be poor again. And because of this he had immediately clicked with the Four Horsemen, to whom the acquisition of money was everything.
The Four Horsemen demanded exclusivity, and the Dragon was happy to provide it. They paid him extremely well and he enjoyed his work. In ten years of service, he now had eliminated over two dozen people for them. The most recent had been the killings in the Hollywood Hills, but his CV was diverse.
One of the Dragon's earliest assignments had been Victoria Bramley, a lawyer working in the Department of Justice in Washington. The woman had stumbled upon some documents she would have been better off never seeing. The fact that Mrs Bramley was a young mother with two kids in preschool did nothing to dent his enthusiasm for his task, and he had completed it without fuss. Another prominent victim was Peter du Feu, an octogenarian congressman from Nebraska who had been sniffing around some elaborate financial operations planned by the Horsemen. He had enjoyed that assignment. Du Feu was a repulsive old weasel who smelled of death. The Dragon considered the job little more than euthanasia, almost a mercy-killing.
He was nearly ready. He placed the weapons in their various carriers, zipped up the bags and closed the latches. He had parked his anonymous, rented white Toyota close to the door of the motel room. In a few moments he had loaded the car, returned his room keys to reception and signed out as Michael Connor.
Now his adrenaline was starting to pump. Although he was over 300 miles from his destination, he was at last on his way.
22
Route 1, Big Sur, California
10.45 am, Pacific Standard Time (Incident time minus 8 hours, 32 minutes)
A Red Hot Chili Peppers song was playing loud through the stereo of the old VW campervan. Steve Marshall, his hair shaved to a stubble, wearing ripped jeans and a vintage 1977 Led Zeppelin US tour T-shirt, was at the wheel and singing at the top of his voice. Todd Evans sat beside him, his long stoner hair tucked behind his ears. He was crumbling some Lebanese blow onto a line of tobacco on a cigarette paper placed precariously on a CD case.
In the back sat Dave Golding, playing a Nintendo DS, a joint dangling from his lips. He had ultra-short hair and wore round John Lennon glasses. Dave was rake-thin, a fact accentuated by his baggy jeans and a 49ers sweatshirt at least three sizes too big for him. He looked like a prisoner released from a detention camp and hurriedly dressed by liberating troops. The three of them were sophomore students at Berkeley, and were travelling to Los Angeles for Senator Kyle Foreman's speech at th
e California Conference Center. They were serious OneEarthers at Berkeley, handing out leaflets, chairing debates and writing inspirational articles for the university magazine, The Daily Californian.
The VW camper was Todd's, the spoils of a three-month stint in his second term holding down two jobs – days at Starbucks and evenings at Jerry's Steak and Chop House on Montgomery. Built in 1970, the camper was a piece of shit. It leaked oil, the carburettor filter needed cleaning every thousand miles, and it had two bald tyres. The best thing about it were the stickers on the rear window – 'No Blood For Oil' and 'Global Warming – It's A Hot Issue'. Some 150 miles out of Frisco all three students were quietly amazed they had got this far. The plan was to share the driving so they could get to the speech that evening. Later they would find some quiet lane, sleep in the van and head back to Berkeley at first light.
'I need a leak,' Dave said, tossing the Nintendo onto the seat beside him.
'Again!' Todd and Steve said in unison.
'Yes, again. I'm terribly sorry.'
A few minutes later they saw a small café and gas station just off the main road.
'Better get some gas anyway,' Steve said, eyeing the gauge. 'Fuck. This thing sure is a thirsty bastard.'
'She's an old lady, leave her alone,' Todd responded, patting the dash.
An attendant came out as the camper pulled into the station. 'Just some gas,' Todd said, jumping out the passenger side. 'I'll do the screen.'
'Don't tell me – students?' the attendant sighed. 'Counting the cents?'
'You got it, man,' Steve retorted. He grabbed the sponge and bucket of tepid water beside the pump. 'And I make no apologies.'
