Reardon said, “Well, Mr. Monroe, we had better get going. We have an investigation to return to.”
Monroe nodded as the three of them rose from their chairs. “Of course. Thank you for stopping by. I know you’ll keep me updated.”
“We certainly will,” Reardon said. Reardon stopped for a moment on his way to the door. “Do you mind if we stop by and see Ms. Lee?”
“Not at all.”
Brooklyn, New York
Wednesday, March 12, 2:15 p.m. EST
Light from her computer monitor flickered and flashed throughout the darkened room as a quixotic piece from an alternative rock group out of Prague, Czech Republic massaged her ear drums. Subconsciously, Lyn Lee adjusted her glasses with her left hand before returning it to her computer keyboard, where it flitted and leapt alongside her right like Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth executing a jitterbug dance. The digital objects on her screen popped up and folded away as commanded by Lee as she copied and pasted a series of numbers and notes from an experiment in text format, entered them into the spreadsheets, and began formatting the spreadsheets. Her focus was such that she did not notice Reardon and Frank until they had parked themselves in front of her desk, blocking the light emanating from the front of the room, and causing the shadow cast by her monitors on the adjacent wall to darken from merely the basil shade of green to something closer to phthalo.
Lee slid her earphones off and rose to her feet.
“Hello, Lyn,” Frank said, extending her hand.
Lee nodded and took Frank’s hand in her own. “Jillian.”
Frank and Reardon stood in silence for a moment, as though waiting for her to initiate the conversation with a word or two. Thinking that all available options were clumsy, however, Lee opted to remain silent.
“It’s good to see you again,” Frank said.
Lee nodded.
Reardon said, “We were just up speaking to Charlie Monroe. We wanted to come down and say hi and…to thank you.”
Lee remained silent. Jillian Frank said, “We understand you’ve been given your job back.”
Lee said, “Yes. Back at it. Surprisingly.”
“Surprisingly?” Frank said. “What makes you say that?”
“It happened abruptly. I was never told why I’ve been allowed back.”
Frank’s face segued into an expression of surprise. “We have Zhang in custody. We made a deal with him. Zhang cleared you.”
“How do you mean?”
“He admitted that you were set up, essentially.”
“How was I set up?”
“They found a lookalike of you from China to pose with their guys at the bank. It’s amazing what a little sophisticated makeup can do these days.”
“And the deposits?”
“The Chinese government hacked into the bank where your accounts are located and submitted the deposits fraudulently. We’ve been in touch with your bank, and they’ve confirmed the breach.”
“I hope they didn’t do any more damage?”
Frank shrugged. “We don’t know yet.”
“Did he say how they found out about me?”
“Zhang told us that they never really knew for sure whether you were working for us. But Xiang was too deeply involved with their scheme and they didn’t want to risk anything. Apparently, they were pressing Xiang to break it off with you, but he refused. So they felt they had to do something to intervene. I don’t think they ever really believed you were involved with us until the incident at Zhang’s lodge up in Connecticut.”
“What about Xiang?”
“We have him in custody. We feel we have a good case against him, and he will be put on trial for espionage charges.”
Lee sighed. “Spying is a tough business. I mean, I think Xiang is a decent guy at heart.”
“He made the mistake of getting caught,” Frank said. “That’s why I’ve always stressed to never let your emotions get involved.”
“So you’ve figured out how he was getting the Magus data out of the facility?”
Frank said, “Actually, we have no idea at the moment.”
“I have a theory, if you’re interested in hearing it.”
“Absolutely. What are you thinking?”
“In a nutshell, I think they’ve been using sound signals.”
“Sound signals? What makes you think that?”
Lee reviewed the information on ODCM she had uncovered from Zhang’s computer as well as the security measures Brooklyn had in place.
“I did a little research into the radio studio over in the Hoover Building,” Lee said. “It’s a small studio that’s been around since the 1950s. From its beginning, until 1972, it was home to a KXWT, a small AM station broadcasting mostly local news. Beginning in 1972, it was bought out two different times by larger companies out of Manhattan until Brooklyn Capital purchased it in 1979, along with four of the buildings that are part of the current complex. The broadcasting company that was managing the studio at that time was forced to move to a different building in Manhattan and the studio fell into disuse for a couple of years even as the rest of the complex around the studio was rebuilt and re-modeled. But Monroe, who is ever the capitalist, didn’t want to just let the studio go to waste. Much of the equipment was actually really valuable at the time because it was old equipment, some of it even antique. Instead of clearing it out and using it for research, he refurbished it with the idea of making a profit.”
“Sounds like you’ve taken a good amount of time on this,” Reardon said.
Lee shrugged. “I really was just curious how a progressive radio station managed to find its way inside a world-class research facility.”
“So, the inference then is that Xiang or others working for the Chinese have been somehow embedding all of this classified information into radio signals that are being broadcast by the radio station.”
“That’s what I believe.”
“But how could they have pulled all of this off without Monroe finding out about it? You’ve already explained the lengths to which Brooklyn’s security team goes to track information.”
“From the research I’ve done, ODCM has traditionally not been a viable option for transporting data because it lacked efficiency. Up until a couple of years ago, the signals couldn’t get very far from its broadcast source without the data eroding rapidly to an extent where it became irretrievable.” Lee chased a tendril of hair away from her eyes.
“I mean we’re talking a maximum distance of around twenty meters or so before the data had eroded to a point where it could no longer be retrieved and encoded. Plus, the amount of data that could be embedded within a given signal was minimal. However, in 2009, a group of Japanese scientists working in Tokyo made major advances in the technology. The advances were more than sufficient to make it a viable option for the Chinese. I have all of this info in a folder, which I can forward to you if you want.”
“Absolutely, please do,” Frank said.
“Anyway, to solve the problem of evading our security apparatus, I think that the Chinese have been transporting paper documents into the studio through a secret tunnel that had been part of the original facility built during World War Two.”
“Why do you say that?” Reardon asked.
“For a couple of reasons. First, because they couldn’t have sent the Magus documents directly to anyone who had direct physical access to the studio, because none of those people are research personnel who have any security clearance. Second, the people in the studio would never be able to access Xiang’s or Dr. Liu’s accounts because they don’t have access to the servers where their accounts are stored. They’d have to pass biometric screening upon entering the facility each day for them to access these servers. The other scenario is if Xiang or Dr. Liu physically walked over to the studio every day and accessed their accounts from the studio. But, again, this would be impossible because their movements are tracked. I’ve gone back and looked at the historical records and there’s no record
of any researchers with security clearance who have been over in the studio on a consistence basis for the past few months. At least, not by navigating through the regular, authorized entryways and corridors. The only way this could happen without the knowledge of the security team is if they physically navigated an unauthorized route.”
“May I ask how you obtained the security clearance to obtain all of this information?” Reardon asked.
“I was given the clearance by Mr. Monroe himself earlier this year when I agreed to assist you guys.” Lee saw no reason to implicate Maliq Okoye, so she left him out of the conversation.
“Do you know where this secret tunnel is located? Where to access it?”
Lee smiled. “I have a very good idea. Come around here so you can look at my computer screen.”
Lee pulled up the two articles and the schematics that she had already examined to locate the tunnel. She then overlaid the schematics to show where the tunnel was located.
“Also, I kind of stumbled across something else interesting.”
The dark room fell into silence for a few moments, except for the clicking of the keys as Lee navigated through the company portal.
“The other day, I started examining the .mag files, which are the files created by the avatar scanner after a scan has been completed. Anyway, I ran a couple of simple searches and discovered that the vast majority of these files were created during normal working hours. The only ones that weren’t were all created between five and nine o’ clock in the evening during the first two weeks after the scanner was installed. But this was only because we were working late in order to complete the initial install for all our personnel. There was only one single file created after five o’ clock after that initial two week interval. It was done at 8:32 p.m. on November 12th of last year.”
“Why is that relevant?” Reardon asked.
“Because the entrance into the secret tunnel is located in the room where the avatar scanner is located. I’m very curious to see if whoever was running the paper documents back and forth through the tunnel may have accidentally scanned himself or herself while in transit. I mean, it gets really dark in there with the lights off.”
Lee clicked a couple more times with her mouse. “Here it is. It’s this file here.” She brought up the document’s properties and confirmed the date and time.
“Can you take us over there now?” Frank asked.
“Sure. It’s just down the hall.”
Lee led the two FBI agents out of the room with her desk and into the dimly lit corridor. They walked for a few yards and then turned left, down another section of the corridor. As the sound of their dress shoes clip-clopping on the asphalt floor reverberated, they found themselves entering the section of the corridor that was still alternating between blackness and light. It had been weeks since one of the bulbs had gone haywire, and it still had not been replaced.
The three of them entered into the pitch blackness of the room. Lee used the light from her phone to guide them through the screen of the scanner to the center of the room, where she pulled on a string that hung down from the light. They heard a soft click in the darkness a split second before the light came on.
“You see how I pulled on this string to switch the light on?” Lee said. “There’s this chain here, as well. The chain was added so that people can come down here and scan themselves if they want to update their avatar. That way, the company doesn’t have to have someone here all of the time. You can see how it would be easy for someone to accidentally pull the chain in the darkness and scan themselves if the scanner was left on.”
She paused for effect. “Anyway, follow me.”
At the rear of the room, Lee found a standard-sized door with a brass knob, which she opened. Frank and Reardon followed her into a closet filled with an assortment of ancient cleaning supplies set upon a set of shelves, stacks of old company newsletters long since yellowed over time, and other odds and ends. Stacks of miscellaneous metal parts had been placed in the closet, including a number of metallic rectangular desktops, minus the legs. The desktops, in addition to a few large boxes that had been disassembled, had been lain against a collection of wooden beams, metal pipes, and insulation, which was what the back of the closet consisted of. Lee saw that the metallic desk legs had been bound together in fours with twine and stashed on the shelves in orderly stacks.
“As many times as I’ve been in this room,” Lee said, “I have not been inside this closet. Not one time.”
Lee flicked a switch, and an opening approximately a foot wide behind the disassembled boxes appeared after the shadows had been chased away. She slid the boxes out of the way and stepped through the opening, followed by Frank and Reardon. They found themselves in another enclosed area with old red brick from floor to ceiling on all of the sides apart from the partition they had just stepped through. To Lee’s left, on the floor, was a heavy iron trap door. She heaved it open, then laid it back down on the tiled floor with Reardon’s assistance. A narrow set of stairs made of aged brick descended down into blackness. Lee, using the light from her phone to guide her, stepped tentatively down the stairs.
Lee said, “Not sure if Reardon can fit. Hopefully he can come down too.” Lee had not meant for the comment to be funny, but Frank laughed nonetheless.
When she reached the bottom, she found herself inside a corridor with walls constructed of more of the same red brick and a floor of cracked asphalt. Guided by the light from her phone, she glided easily along the length of the corridor. Affixed to the walls of the corridor was a black handrail and a series of dusty black-and-white photos that had clearly been taken decades ago. The subjects of the photos were men and women who had labored within the factory complex at the time of the Second World War.
Frank and Reardon following closely behind, Lee progressed until she came to another brick staircase. Here, she ascended into another anteroom similar to the one back in the Kennedy Building.
“This would be the Hoover Building,” Lee said, as Frank and Reardon caught up with her.
She stepped across the anteroom to another door, which she carefully opened to ten degrees. Within her small sliver of vision into the room, she made out a segment of a bright, multicolored rug, the corner of a charcoal gray sofa, and a wall that was constructed of oak paneling and glass. Lee was about to enter the room when a man and a woman dressed in casual clothing appeared in a hallway on the opposite side of the glass, conversing animatedly about something. Lee waited until they had disappeared from view before opening the door and stepping through into a room that appeared to be a sitting room.
Lee said, “According to the building schematics, we should be in the radio studio now.”
They proceeded a little further into the room and found that, because all of the walls throughout the studio were made of glass, the whole of the studio opened up within their field of vision. They saw a handful of middle-aged men dressed in casual clothing—jeans, T-shirts, and sneakers—who had their hair tied into pony tails. A woman off to their left was standing, speaking into a smart phone.
“A whole different culture in here,” Lee said, smiling. “They could never get away with that attire elsewhere in the facility.”
Lee turned to Frank and Reardon. “Do you want to invade the premises?”
“No, not now,” Reardon said. “We wouldn’t want to scare anyone away. Let’s go back and take a look at the .mag file you mentioned.”
The three of them reversed course until they were back in the scanner room. Lee tapped on the keyboard connected to a computer on a metallic work desk, which contained the scanner software. The monitor flickered to life, and Lee brought up the operating system’s navigator and began searching through the various scanner-related documents until she found the .mag file she had identified earlier. She clicked on the file but an error appeared. Lee searched the computer for another minute or two, and then sighed heavily.
“How odd,” Lee said. “For some reason, it appears the
scanner software has been deleted entirely from this computer.”
Reardon said, “Xiang or Liu or someone may have deleted it before we had a chance to apprehend them.”
“Wait a sec,” Lee said. “The files themselves are still here, though. And I’m pretty sure the polymaths created a piece of software that converts the .mag files into .mat ones.”
“What are .mat files?” Frank asked.
“They’re the files used by the Modern Art devices.”
Lee clicked through a few more documents until she found the polymath software and opened it up. A few seconds later, she had converted the .mag file into a .mat file and emailed it to herself.
“Well, this should be interesting,”
“What should be interesting?” Frank said.
“We can still see what’s on the file, but we need to go to the lobby. Follow me.”
Lee led them back down the corridor and into the main lobby of the Kennedy Building. They weaved their way around small clusters of researchers engaged in quiet conversations until they came to another small, vacant desk tucked away in the middle of some trees in the arboretum. Lee brought up the company email utility, logged into her email account and brought up the email with the .mat file attached.
“You see that three-dimensional depiction of Enrico Fermi over in the clearing?”
Frank and Reardon followed Lee’s gesture to a life-size three-dimensional depiction of the famed Italian scientist hovering inside a cylindrical glass case.
“Whatever was scanned last November should come up…now.”
The three of them walked to the cylinder. Frank and Reardon watched intently as Fermi melted into a sludge of tiny, microscopic grains of brilliant color. Once Fermi was gone entirely, the grains began reconstituting themselves into another human form from the toes on up: black sneakers with white stripes, tan slacks, teal-and-blue sweater. It was a young man, hunched over, with a stack of white papers in his curled left arm, looking upwards with a confused look on his face.
The Thought Cathedral Page 54
