The Cotten Stone Omnibus: It started with The Grail Conspiracy... (The Cotten Stone Mysteries)

by Lynn Sholes

Kai dropped Devin’s wrists and picked up her purse from the floor, digging through it. Finally, she lifted her cell phone and flipped it open. Moving to the window, she kept her back to Devin and pressed speed dial.

  book of emzara

  Mace stood back and waited until the group of Asian tourists moved away from the front of James Smithson’s memorial inside the Castle of the Smithsonian Institute. The guard had told him they were the last group to come through and he would have about ten minutes of privacy until closing. He was intrigued by the substantial collection at the Institute and came often to meditate among the relics of the ages. As he stood in reverence to the founder of the Smithsonian, he heard a voice.

  “He was the illegitimate son of the Duke of Northumberland and Elizabeth Hungerford.”

  Mace turned to see the Old Man standing behind him.

  “Some of the best men in history were bastards,” Mace said. “This one died in Genoa, but Alexander Graham Bell brought his body here.” Mace looked into the eyes of his mentor, hoping to soften the blow of the bad news he had delivered earlier when he requested the meeting. News that not only had the boy escaped before giving Tor the complete operating system code for the Hades computer but that the kid may have scrambled parts of it. Then there was the fact that the banker and Tor’s assistant were both dead. Finally, the second thodium artifact sent to Tor was only slightly more reliable than the degraded original. “It’s a shame Smithson didn’t bother to add objects made from thodium to his vast collection here.”

  “That would have made it too easy, Pursan.” The Old Man came to stand beside Mace. “Has Tor located the child?”

  “He spent the day searching the woods but no sign of the boy. I had him take Jackson’s body to the banker’s cabin along with some of the boy’s belongings.”

  “Tor must make sure there is no trace of either one of them at the Hades facility,” the Old Man said. “If the authorities do come around, they must find nothing more than a collection of rundown buildings on an abandoned radar installation.”

  “We have all the paperwork in place showing that one of the buildings is being used by an Internet data storage company operating out of the Midwest. They have a long-term lease on file with the Department of the Interior to rent the property. All the documentation is in order in case Tor must prove he has a permit to be there.” Mace watched the stoic expression on the aged face of the Old Man. “These problems can all be dealt with. The bigger issue is where we will get a non-degraded source of thodium. All we have had to work with were some raw pieces of planks left of the Ark. Even extracting the crystallized sap from the wood has been a task.”

  The Old Man smiled—the all-knowing expression that often annoyed Mace. “Then we must find out if there were other objects made from the Tree.”

  Mace thought hard, trying to recall his Biblical history, but nothing came to mind. “But if there were, wouldn’t they have vanished in the Great Flood?”

  “Maybe there was something taken aboard Noah’s barge. Certainly if there was an object made from the Tree of Life, it would have extraordinary sacrosanct value to Noah. Such an article would not have been left behind. And then of course, the obvious—the lumber of the Ark was distributed and used in the new world for building houses and furniture and producing tools. It could be worth the effort to track the family lineage. Who knows what may have been passed on from generation to generation?”

  “Mr. Secretary,” a young FBI agent said, approaching Mace. “We need to leave in five minutes.”

  Mace gave him a be-right-there wave and waited until the man walked back to the entrance to the shrine of the Smithsonian’s founder. “How can we find out what might have survived?”

  “There are a number of ancient writings dealing with Noah and his clan—documents that were ultimately rejected by the Church at the First Council of Nicaea. The reason given was that some would have been contradictory to Church teachings at the time and possibly taken the faith in a different direction. Instead, they were destroyed or hidden away from the eyes of the world.”

  “Which should we be seeking?” asked Mace.

  “One comes to mind—the Book of Emzara.”

  “Which is?”

  “Pursan,” the Old Man said in a condescending tone. “I would have thought you to be more versed in these matters.”

  “Ancient scriptures are not a topic that interests me.”

  “In order for the Hades Project to succeed, ancient writings like the Book of Emzara will be the key.” He looked harshly at Mace. “Emzara was Noah’s wife. She is not named in Genesis, but the Book of Jubilees identifies her. In Jewish tradition she is called Naamah, but I prefer the later. Emzara was the designated scribe of their ordeal, and she kept good records of the event, including a manifest of the Ark’s inventory. Maybe she chronicled the family history after the Flood. The Book of Emzara may lead us to your alternative thodium source.”

  “Mr. Secretary,” the agent said, walking toward Mace.

  “Coming.” He waited until the man had retreated. “Where is this Book of Emzara?”

  “Among a collection of other sought-after remnants of religious antiquity.”

  In an instant, Mace realized he knew the location.

  As they turned to leave, the Old Man said, “There is one other thread that needs tying up—the matter of your fellow cabinet member.”

  Mace smiled. “It’s being taken care of even as we speak.”

  the news

  Lindsay fluffed the pillows, trying to make them look a little more attractive in their yellowed cases. This was the third room she’d cleaned this morning and it was only 8:00 AM. The majority of the guests were either fishermen who got up before dawn or long-haul truckers who left the do-not-disturb signs on their doors most of the time.

  She smoothed the wrinkles from the bedspread and stepped back. It was the best she could do. The material was faded, like the walls and carpet in every room of the Dos Palmas Motel. She knew the linens were clean because she had laundered them all herself. The management didn’t provide bleach, just a generic brand of detergent. She’d been told that bleach would shorten the life of the linens, gradually eating them up, but maybe putting some of the sheets and towels out of their misery would be a good thing. She bought bleach at the Winn-Dixie supermarket nearby and kept it in her room, taking it with her when she did the motel laundry as well as her own.

  While she worked, Tera sat on the floor with a baggie of Cheerios and leaned back against the foot of the bed.

  “Get up,” Lindsay said, her face grimacing at the thought of what lay hidden in the depths of the carpet. She grabbed a fresh but threadbare towel off the cleaning cart parked outside the room. “Sit on this,” she said, tossing it to Tera.

  Tera spread the towel and plopped down, Cheerios in one hand and the TV remote in the other.

  Lindsay moved on to clean the bathroom. She heard Tera change the channel on the television. “I hope you’re watching something educational,” she said. “If we were home, this would be school time.”

  Lindsay scrubbed the tub, but the glossy finish on the porcelain was long gone, and no matter how clean she got it, it still appeared dull and drab. A lock of her hair fell in her face and she used the back of her forearm to sweep it away. When was this ever going to end? She wanted normalcy in her life. Lindsay sat back on her heels with her rubber-gloved hands in her lap. She couldn’t recall the last time her life had been normal. It had to have been before Tera was born. It was hard to remember what that had been like.

  She leaned over the tub again and sprinkled more cleanser as if it might make a difference.

  And where was her friend, Cotten? She hadn’t even responded to the message Lindsay had left. After getting no return call from Cotten the first time, Lindsay didn’t bother to call back, assuming that she would become a nuisance to her old friend. And after
all, they hadn’t seen each other in years. What had she thought, that Cotten Stone, famous television journalist, would drop everything and come running? “Stupid, Lindsay. Just plain stupid,” she said aloud. “You and Tera are in this by yourselves.”

  “Momma,” Tera called.

  Lindsay had a hard time finding her voice. It wanted to crack with the threat of tears, and she didn’t want Tera to hear that.

  “Yes,” she finally managed to say. Lindsay scrubbed the dull porcelain in circles. She exerted more and more pressure, as if that helped her fight back the urge to cry. In a moment, when her daughter hadn’t responded, she stopped and listened. “Tera?”

  No answer. Lindsay chucked the sponge in the tub and got to her feet. “Tera?” Slowly, she emerged from the bathroom, peering around the door.

  Tera stood in front of the television, her gaze fastened on the screen, the bag of Cheerios open, a small sea of oat circles on the floor.

  “What is it?” Lindsay asked, snapping off the gloves and dropping them on the dresser.

  Tera touched the television screen with her index finger.

  Lindsay’s attention moved from her daughter to the story on the morning news, only catching the tail end. “And so what could have been a tragedy ends on a happy note,” the reporter was saying. A video of a man embracing a boy filled the screen. “Devin Olsen is safe and home again.” There was a pause. “In other news—”

  “We have to go see him,” Tera said.

  Lindsay had seen several reports in the newspapers and on television about the boy’s disappearance, and was happy to hear that he was found and safe. She certainly felt for his dad and understood how helpless the man must have been. And the boy was autistic on top of it all. Most stories of missing children with disabilities didn’t have happy endings. Why did Tera have such an interest? “Why do we have to go see him, Tera?”

  “I know him,” Tera said.

  “No, you don’t sweetie. He’s from Miami, not Loretto.”

  “No,” Tera said. “I mean from before.”

  “Before what?” Lindsay took both her daughter’s hands in hers. “We’ve never met that little boy,” she said.

  “Not you, Momma. Me.”

  Lindsay pulled Tera near the bed and had her sit on the end. She cradled her daughter’s face in her palms. “That’s impossible,” she said.

  Tera smiled with a knowledge that seemed to go beyond her years. “You weren’t with me then.”

  “Where, Ladybug? Where did you go without me? Where did you meet him?”

  “Before I was born. In heaven.”

  exfiltration

  Tor looked at his watch. Five minutes to go. Mace would be calling for an update, and he wanted to be ready.

  “It’s freezing in here,” he said to himself, rubbing the end of his nose to warm it. He had lowered the temperature to fifty degrees earlier in the day. Icing down the building was necessary to prepare for the enormous flood of information that would start pouring into the system over the next twenty-four hours as the Hades Worm—hiding dormant deep inside millions of computers around the world—was triggered as each system went out and synchronized to the international atomic clock.

  Although the data from individually infected systems would trickle out information about the users, the computers, and the affected business enterprise networks, the overall amount of data would be enormous. The mainframes in the Hades facility would be working at maximum capacity, and overheated processors were the last thing he needed.

  It seemed like everything was getting on his nerves as the pressure of the phase-two deadline loomed. First off, he was now alone at the old military base in the middle of the Arkansas backwoods since his assistant was killed when the kid escaped. Burying the body in the rocky terrain had taken half a day away from his work, which hadn’t been going that well in the first place. The frigging quantum computer still wasn’t as stable as he would like. Even if every phase of the Hades Project went flawlessly, if the computer didn’t maintain stability using the degraded thodium sample, he would never be able to crack the government encryption codes. And to add to the aggravation, Mace was calling two, three, sometimes four times a day.

  Tor much preferred to talk to Kai—in many ways. It amazed him that Mace was vain enough to believe that the Chinese beauty was attracted to him—and dedicated to his cause. Mace didn’t understand that Kai Chiang always fucked the highest bidder. Years ago, Tor had once been the guy with the biggest payoff. How the hell did Mace think Kai found her way into Mace’s life, anyway? Tor had been a stepping stone—he’d known it and really hadn’t given a rat’s ass. She’d been a wild ride for a short time—no investments, no commitments. Suited him just fine. Tor knew the bitch would sell out anybody—just like she was doing to Alan Olsen. One day she’d hock Rizben Mace for the next stone to step on.

  As if on cue, the phone rang.

  “Are we on schedule?” Mace asked.

  Tor looked at his watch again. “Thirty seconds to midnight GMT.”

  Starting at 12:00 AM GMT and each hour following, as the next time zone clicked over to midnight, the Hades Worm would come alive and start identifying servers on each affected network. Once the servers were identified, an attempt would be made to log in, using null password authentication—searching for any usernames with blank passwords. If the worm resided on a computer where the user had administrative privileges, it would hijack the user’s credentials and complete the login.

  Once the Worm accessed the system with borrowed administrative privileges, it would act as the authorized user and instruct the compromised computer to start looking for other hosts across the network. Utilizing basic ping requests, which would appear as benign traffic, it would try to connect to specific domain names followed by their respective dot com, net, org, edu, gov, and mil extensions. Each of these specific hosts held pieces of the virus. As each ping hit the host, the reply back to the compromised computer would include more and more pieces of the virus.

  Tor knew that the great part of using these common ping packets was their ability to hold hidden data in unused sections of the packet header. Virus hunters would never think to look at the headers to reveal the pieces of the Hades Project code. Like a cyber scavenger hunt, the compromised computer would eventually bring all the pieces together to assemble and execute a rootkit program, with the sole mission of giving the Hades Project complete control and backdoor access to the compromised computer.

  A novice hacker would have had the worm connect to the host computer via IP addresses instead of host domain names. In that scenario, once the authorities took down that IP address, the game would be over. But Tor had designed the worm to look for host computers via domain names. The domain name address could point to as many different IP addresses as there were that hosted mirrored versions of the virus. Even better, Interpol and the FBI would be chasing IP addresses all day while new IP addresses are assigned to the sole domain name. Since Tor had already hacked into and hidden the virus on host servers all over the world, the authorities should give up the hunt after dealing with the headaches from hosting providers in multiple countries. By the time they got to the end of the trail, phase two of the Hades Project would be old news.

  “Are we poised to begin phase three?” Mace asked.

  I’ve told the bastard a thousand times already, Tor thought. That’s the way he would like to answer Mace, but he knew better. It didn’t matter that Tor was Nephilim, the offspring of a Fallen Angel and human—which made him a Ruby—Mace would have him out on his ear or worse if he showed insubordination. “Yes, we’re on schedule,” Tor said. “Remember, Rizben, we’re creating millions of zombie computers out there. It’ll take time to distribute the rootkits. As soon as we do, phase three will begin immediately.”

  Tor liked to call phase three “ID Recon”—the identification of specific, main targets in order t
o manipulate their systems. The final success would depend on a predictable human reaction causing a domino effect of catastrophic proportions.

  Mace said, “We’re only going to get one shot at this. The reaction we’re predicting must be correct.”

  “I just do the geek stuff. You’re the one who calculates how people will think. I take no ownership in that part.”

  Tor reviewed the main targets in his head. The GPS Satellite diagnostic and control systems; Air Traffic Control Emergency Notification Grid; SWIFT Global Banking network; Defense Information Systems Agency Network and its Global Information Grid; the U.S. Power Grid Network and corresponding foreign networks; the maintenance channel for Safety Parameters Display System that monitor and control nuclear power plants; eighty supervisory control and data acquisition networks that included electricity, natural gas, water, sewage, railroads, and telecommunications; and the mother of all targets—the AT&T Global Satellite Communications monitoring station.

  He glanced at the monitor displaying the operating system interface to the Hades quantum computer. The little shit thought he was so smart, Tor thought, picturing Devin Olsen typing away in the game room, trying to trick him by mixing things up. But Devin wasn’t the one with doctorates in theoretical physics and mechanical engineering. Tor was. After the call from Kai warning him that the kid had tried to be clever, it only took Tor a few hours to straighten out and complete the code. Who’s the clever boy now?

  One last time, Tor looked at his watch. A few seconds to go.

  The screen was blank. He could feel his heart beating heavily in his chest. Despite the chill, he started sweating. His grip on the phone tightened. He heard Mace’s breathing on the other end.

  Midnight.

  Tor held his breath. This was it. No second chance.

  Suddenly, the Hades Project’s master control monitor blinked. A line of text appeared on the bottom of the monitor.