Gideon's Corpse

by Douglas Preston

  Gideon parked in the rear of the lot for Tech Area 33, where he worked. It was an enormous, warehouse-like building of white stucco and Pro-Panel. The building housed the offices and labs of part of the Stockpile Stewardship Team, along with access to the underground test chambers and a small linear accelerator for probing aging bomb fuel and other fissile materials.

  In the dark of the car, Gideon checked the phony six-gun. It was a replica of an old Colt Model 1877 double-action revolver, nickel-plated, and fully loaded with blanks. Blanks or not, he hoped he wouldn’t have to use it.

  He shoved it into his waistband and covered it with his shirt. “We’re here.”

  Alida threw off the blanket and rose. “Is that it? No more security?”

  “There are other rings of security but not, at least, to visit an office.” He checked his face in the mirror—not exactly clean, and not exactly shaven. He was known around his department as a slapdash dresser, so he hoped his present disheveled state would not be noted. Most of the physicists, it had to be said, were infamously sloppy; it was sort of a badge of honor.

  He got out of the car. They walked through the parking lot and around toward the front of the building.

  “Is this Bill Novak you told me about, the network security guy, going to be in?” Alida asked. “It’s after eleven.”

  “Probably not. But there’s always someone in the security office. Tonight it’ll probably be Warren Chu. At least I hope so. He’s not likely to give us much trouble.”

  They entered the building. An L-shaped hall ran through the front section; the labs were in the back and below ground. Gideon walked slowly, working on his breathing, trying to stay calm. He turned the corner and came to a closed door, knocked.

  “Yeah?” came a muffled voice from inside. The door opened. Chu stood there, a round, smooth fellow with glasses and a cheerful expression. “Hey, Gideon. Where you been?”

  “Vacation.” He turned. “This is Alida—she’s new. I’m showing her around.”

  The round face turned to Alida and the smile broadened. “Welcome to Mars, Earthling.”

  Gideon let his own expression turn serious. “Can I come in?”

  “Sure. Is there a problem?”

  “Yeah. A big one.”

  Chu’s face fell as Gideon stepped aside. They walked into his tiny, windowless office. Chu swept the only extra chair clear, eyeing Gideon’s muddy pants but not commenting on them. Alida sat down, Gideon stood. He smelled coffee and spied a box of Krispy Kreme donuts. He was suddenly starving.

  “You mind?” He sidled up to the box, tipping it open.

  “Be my guest.”

  Gideon took a glazed cruller and a New York cheesecake. He caught Alida’s glance and took another two for her. He stuffed the cruller into his face.

  “So what’s up?” Chu looked annoyed at seeing four of his donuts vanish so quickly.

  Gideon swallowed with effort, wiped the crumbs from his mouth. “It seems somebody used my computer while I was on vacation. Hacked into it. I don’t know how they bypassed my password, but they did. I want to know who.”

  Chu’s face paled and he lowered his voice. “Jesus, Gideon, you know you’ve got to report that through proper channels. You can’t come here. I’m just the tech guy.”

  Gideon lowered his voice. “Warren, I came to you because whoever did this seems to have it in for you.”

  “Me?” Chu’s eyebrows shot up in astonishment.

  “Yeah, you. Look—I know you didn’t do it. But whoever did it plastered your picture on my screen, giving me the finger. And a cute little poem: Warren Chu says Fuck you too.”

  “Are you serious? Oh my God, I can’t believe it. Why would someone do that to me? I’ll kill him, I swear I will.” Chu was already turning to his monitor. “When did this happen?”

  Gideon considered the time line. He had to have been framed at some point between the plane crash and his attempted arrest. “Between, um, four days ago and very early yesterday morning.”

  “Wow,” Warren said, staring at his screen. “Your account’s been frozen. And they never told me!”

  “That’s because they suspect you.”

  Chu practically pulled at his long hair. “I can’t believe it. Who would do this?”

  “Is there any way to get into my account and take a look around? Maybe we could figure out who did it, you know, before it gets out and security comes down on you like a ton of bricks.”

  “Hell, yes. I have the clearance to override this. If they haven’t taken that away.”

  Gideon’s heart quickened. “Really?”

  “Sure.” Chu’s fingers were beating a furious tattoo on the keyboard. “How’d the hacker get your password?”

  “I was hoping you’d tell me.”

  “You write it down somewhere?”

  “Never.”

  “You ever log on in front of anyone?”

  “No.”

  “Then it would have to be someone with high-security clearance.”

  Gideon watched intently as a series of numbers scrolled by on the screen, faster and faster. Chu was the very picture of nerdy outrage.

  “Gonna find the mother,” said Chu, clicking away. “Gonna find the mother… There—I’ve broken into your account!”

  A final, triumphant rap of the keyboard and Gideon stared at the screen. It showed his post-login home page. Where would the incriminating “jihadist love letters” be?

  “Let’s check my email,” he said.

  Chu continued typing, and Gideon’s secure email account popped up. Again Chu was forced to override the locked-up account.

  Looking at the mass of emails, Gideon had an idea. “Are there any to or from Chalker?”

  “Reed Chalker?” Chu seemed uneasy, but typed in the request. A list popped up, dating back to the months before Chalker disappeared. Gideon was stunned by the number of messages; he couldn’t remember ever having corresponded with Chalker.

  “Looks like you guys had a lot to talk about,” said Chu. “How’s this supposed to help us find the hacker?”

  “Those emails were planted,” said Gideon. “Planted by the hacker.”

  “Yeah?” Chu sounded doubtful. “That would have been quite a job.”

  “I never emailed Chalker. Well, hardly ever.” Gideon reached past Chu, bent over the keyboard, highlighted a year-old email innocuously titled “vacation,” and hit the ENTER key.

  Salaam Reed,

  To answer your question: you remember what I said about the world being divided into Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb—the House of Islam and the House of War. There is no middle ground, no halfway place. You, Reed, have now personally entered the House of Islam. Now the real struggle begins—with the House of War you left behind.

  Gideon stared in disbelief. He’d never written that. It didn’t just make him look like a co-conspirator with Chalker; it made him look like his recruiter. He quickly opened the next.

  My friend Reed, Salaam:

  Jihad is not just an internal struggle, but it’s also external. There can be no peace for you as a good Muslim, no cessation of struggle, until all the world becomes Dar al-Islam.

  He began paging forward through the emails. This was clearly a complex, highly sophisticated and exhaustive fraud. No wonder Fordyce had been taken in. He noticed a more recent email, opened it.

  The time is now. Do not hesitate. If someone receives the message of Islam and dies rejecting it, they are forever destined to Hellfire. Anyone who truly believes in the message, their previous sins are forgiven and they will spend eternity in Paradise. If you have belief, act on it. Do not worry what anyone else thinks. Your eternal life is at stake.

  It continued in a similar vein, persuading Chalker to convert. Gideon read on with mounting outrage. Not only had he been framed, but he had been framed in a most sophisticated fashion—by someone on the inside.

  39

  WARREN CHU GAZED at the emailed messages with growing horror and disbelief
. These were not planted. How could they be? Nobody but a chief security administrator could do that.

  He slowly turned and looked at Gideon, staring at him, as if seeing him for the first time. A thought went through his mind: you just never could see inside another person. He never would have guessed.

  “I can’t believe you wrote this,” he burst out, almost without thinking.

  “Damn it, Warren, I didn’t,” Gideon told him forcefully. “Those emails were planted!”

  Chu was taken aback by his vehemence. Again, he wondered how such a thing could be done. It seemed highly unlikely. Not only that, but that business about himself being targeted as well? It was starting to smell phony.

  He cleared his throat, tried to sound normal. “Right. Okay. Let me work on this for a while. See if I can figure out who did this, and how.”

  “You’re a real pal, Warren.” Gideon crammed the rest of the cheesecake donut into his mouth.

  A beat. “Gideon, um, would you mind? I can’t work with someone staring over my shoulder.”

  “Right. Sorry.”

  Gideon retreated to the other side of the office, at the same time—Chu noted with irritation—helping himself to yet another donut. The guy acted as if he hadn’t eaten in days.

  Chu opened another email, then another. This was scary stuff. The secure network ran as a Type II Virtual Machine environment: was it possible somebody had leveraged the VM monitor, maybe gained root access or swapped out the guest OS, then planted a keylogger or compromised the secure login feature somehow? It was theoretically possible—but it would take more skill than Chu himself had.

  The more he thought about the robustness of the VM architecture, the isolated address spaces, and the virtual memory abstraction, the more difficult the hack seemed. And he had always thought Gideon just a little too independent…sketchy, even. But that meant—if these emails hadn’t been planted—that Gideon was a terrorist, a traitor to his country, a potential mass murderer… Chu, overwhelmed by the thought, felt his bowels loosening.

  What in God’s name should he do?

  Suddenly he realized that the woman who had come in with Gideon, the new employee, had come up behind him. He jumped as she laid a hand on his shoulder and squeezed, hard enough to send a message. He glanced up, looked around. Gideon was at the door now, looking out, left and right, down the halls, keeping a lookout. For the first time, Chu noticed a handgun stuffed into the waistband of his pants.

  She leaned over him and whispered. “If you’ve got an alarm, activate it. Now.”

  “What?” Chu didn’t quite understand.

  “Gideon’s with them. The terrorists.”

  Chu swallowed. Confirmation.

  “Just do it and keep cool.”

  Chu felt unreality take hold. His heart surged in his chest and he felt the sweat glands on his face prickle. First Chalker, now Gideon. Unbelievable. But there were the emails, staring him right in the face—practically a smoking gun.

  Casually, he reached beneath the desk, found the button, pressed it. He’d never done this before and wasn’t sure what would happen.

  A low siren went off. In the hallway, red lights began to flash.

  “What the hell?” Gideon spun away from the doorway.

  “Sorry, pal,” said the woman, turning toward Gideon and crossing her arms in front of her. “You’re busted.”

  40

  GIDEON STARED AT her in disbelief. Surely he must have misheard or misunderstood something. “Alida, what are you doing?”

  She turned to him, poised and collected. “I’ve been waiting for my opportunity. I told you I couldn’t wait to turn you in. Remember?”

  For the moment he was too shocked to feel any anger.

  “You almost had me believing you back there,” she said. “But when I saw those emails—”

  “They were planted!”

  “Yeah. And all those FBI agents, all those choppers, everyone shooting at you—I suppose that’s all just a mistake, too. It’s just too much to believe, Gideon. I’m not that gullible.”

  Gideon heard footsteps pounding down the corridor. He quickly drew the six-gun, fired it once into the air. Then he grabbed Chu’s arm, turned his arm behind his back, and put the gun to his head. “Out,” he barked. “Into the hall.”

  With a gasp of fear Chu scrambled to obey.

  “The gun’s a fake!” Alida cried, chasing after them.

  “Trust me, it’s real!” Gideon said. “Don’t make me kill him!”

  Gideon pushed Chu ahead of him, at a jog. The high-security checkpoint to the inner labs was just down the hall. They rounded the corner and came to the checkpoint, with two metal detectors and several guards—all of whom had their own weapons drawn.

  “He’s a dead man if you stop me!” Gideon shouted, shoving Chu through the metal detector, which went off with a shrill alarm.

  “It’s a stage gun, you idiots!” Alida yelled.

  “You want me to prove it’s real? If you follow, I shoot!” He continued on, thrusting Chu down the hall to the emergency stairs. He slammed open the door with his shoulder and dragged Chu down the stairs with him. The only person to follow was Alida.

  “Bitch!” Gideon said as Alida threw herself on his back and tried to grab his gun. He knocked her aside but she came back at him again, punching him, again trying to rip the gun out of his hand.

  “Stop it!” yelled Chu.

  Gideon twisted away, pushing Chu through the doors at the bottom of the stairs and into the particle accelerator control room. Two operators stood there, at the large semicircle of monitors and instrumentation, staring in shock.

  Gideon again heard the pounding of feet in the corridor outside.

  “On the floor! Everyone!” He fired the gun into the ceiling.

  The operators dove to the floor. Funny, Gideon thought grimly, how the makers of some of the world’s most fearful weapons were in reality a bunch of rabbits.

  Seconds later half a dozen security officers burst in, weapons drawn. They were not Los Alamos security—they were all wearing NEST uniforms.

  “Drop the gun!” one shouted as they all leveled their weapons at him.

  Gideon pulled Chu around as a shield, the gun pressed to the man’s head. Chu issued an inarticulate croak.

  “He’s got a fake gun, damn it!” Alida cried.

  The lead security officer swiveled around, leveling his gun at Alida. “You!” he yelled. “On the floor! Now!”

  “Me? What the—”

  With a jerk of his head, the officer signaled to two others, who immediately tackled her, slamming her to the ground. They began searching her roughly.

  “Son of a bitch!” she screamed, writhing on the ground.

  “Quiet!” One of the men struck her in the face.

  Gideon couldn’t believe it. They really thought she was a terrorist, too.

  The NEST leader turned his gun back at Gideon. “Drop your weapon and release your hostage—or we open fire.”

  Gideon realized that, Chu or no, they weren’t kidding: they would shoot right through Chu to nail him, if necessary.

  “All right,” he said.

  It was over. He lowered the gun from Chu’s head and held it out, letting it drop to the floor. Chu scrambled up and away, behind the guards. Slowly, Gideon raised his hands.

  The two guards jerked Alida back up, their search completed. Blood poured from her nose, spotting her white shirt.

  “Cuff her,” the NEST leader said. “And you: Crew. Facedown on the ground. Slowly.”

  “Morons!” Alida yelled, trying to kick one of them. One of the guards struck her in the stomach, doubling her over.

  “Leave her alone, she had nothing to do with it!” Gideon said.

  “On the ground!” the man shouted at Gideon, leveling his gun.

  Keeping his hands out, Gideon began to kneel—and that was when he saw an opportunity. As he went down, he steadied himself with a hand on the accelerator control console, layin
g it casually over a small switch covered with a red plastic cap—the emergency power cutoff switch. He rested one knee on the ground, then the other, while beneath his cupped hand he worked off the cover to the emergency switch, grasping it tightly.

  “Hurry up and get down! Flat on the floor! Flat!” the NEST leader shouted impatiently, twitching the .45.

  Gideon steadied himself. Then he said in a quiet voice: “If I pull this switch, we’re all dead.”

  There was a sudden silence.

  Gideon turned to the operators. “Tell them.”

  One of the operators glanced at Gideon, saw his fingers gripping the switch. The man turned white. “My God,” he said. “That’s the emergency power cutoff. We’re at full power. If he pulls that… Jesus, don’t do it!”

  Nobody moved.

  Thank you, my friend, Gideon thought. Aloud, he said: “Tell them what will happen if I do.”

  “It will shut off the power to the magnetic beam corridor. The beam will decollimate, and a whole lot of us will be blown to bits.”

  “You heard him,” said Gideon calmly. “Shoot me, I fall, the switch gets pulled.”

  The security officers seemed paralyzed. Six pistols remained pointed at him.

  “I’m a desperate man,” Gideon said, his voice low. “And I have nothing to lose. I’m going to count to three. One—”

  The head officer glanced left and right. He was sweating like hell, clearly certain that Gideon would do it.

  “Two…I’m deadly serious here.”

  The leader laid his gun down, and the others quickly followed.

  “Good decision. Now release her.”

  They released Alida. She fell to her knees, then got up again, breathing hard. She wiped the blood from her nose.

  “For the record,” said Gideon, “both of us are innocent. This is a frame job. And I’m going to find out who did it. So I’m sorry, gentlemen, but I’m going to have to leave you. Alida? Whether you like it or not, you’d better stick with me. Please collect their guns from the floor and hand them to me.”