by Mike Maden
Ouch.
60
WASHINGTON, D.C.
SITUATION ROOM, THE WHITE HOUSE
For this emergency meeting, the long mahogany table was crowded with more principals. The chairs along the walls were occupied by department and agency staffers, mostly military.
Each principal had given a brief summary of their findings and concerns. The latter was a considerable list. It all amounted to a seemingly insoluble challenge.
Ryan called this latest meeting as soon as he got word about the Labrador Sea sinking from Admiral Talbot before his day had even begun.
They all had been lulled into a false sense of victory after the Glazov was forced to the surface and perp-walked back to Russia three days ago. But the sinking of yet another ship in the Indian Ocean had shattered that illusion.
Now the news of this additional sinking in the Labrador Sea proved the crisis was spinning out of control. Nobody knew who was behind the attacks, how they were conducted, or where the next ones would take place.
“It’s like we’re boxing with blindfolds and earplugs,” was the way Arnie put it. “And the ring just keeps getting bigger and bigger.”
These escalating attacks by an unknown hostile deploying an assumed but as yet unidentified weapons system threatened to destabilize the global economy. This was the worst crisis Ryan’s administration had ever faced.
And he took full responsibility for it.
Ryan needed more hands on deck if he hoped to get ahead of this thing.
DARPA sent over a department head and two leading researchers working on extra-large unmanned undersea vehicles (XLUUVs), and Admiral Talbot flew two officers in from the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Keyport, Washington: the commander of Submarine Development Squadron (DEVRON) 5, and the commander of the newly formed Unmanned Undersea Vehicles Squadron (UUVRON) 1.
Ryan scanned the room. All eyes were on him. These were earnest, serious people looking for guidance and, more important, confidence. They were scared. So was he. Ryan knew they weren’t looking for answers because there weren’t any. They wanted leadership.
Ryan stood.
“We’re standing right in front of a brick wall, no two ways about it,” Ryan began. “A wall so tall and wide we can’t comprehend it. Randy Pausch was right about brick walls. They’re there to show us how badly we want something. And they only stop the people who don’t want it badly enough.
“I know most of you in this room, and more important, you know me. You know how badly I want to find and stop whoever is behind these attacks. I don’t know how we’re going to do it. I don’t know how long it’s going to take.
“What I do know is that the Labrador incident is the first lucky break we’ve had because it’s the first sinking we’ve been able to detect in real time, thanks to SBIRS picking up the thermal flare.
“The second lucky break is that it appears to be a simple, conventional chemical explosion, and definitely not nuclear, according to MASINT.
“The third thing we know is that no known hostile combat aircraft were in the area, and no cruise, ballistic, or hypersonic missiles were detected before, during, or after the attack.
“Which I believe is connected to the fourth thing in our favor. DNI Foley has assured us that there has been no Chinese or Russian chatter about these events, and SecState Adler has not received any back-channel communications from either principals or opposition from within their respective governments. We still don’t know who is behind all of this but we are now reasonably confident it isn’t the Russians or the Chinese, which takes a World War Three scenario off the table.
“Now it’s time to roll up our sleeves, and find a way to get our tails over, under, around, or through this goddamn brick wall. Who’s coming with me?”
Ryan sensed rather than heard a collective sigh of relief around the table. Nodding heads and smiles told him he won the room over.
“We’re with you, Mr. President. All the way,” Foley said.
More nodding heads. Even a few laughs.
Not a bad little pep talk, Ryan thought. If only I believed it myself.
The room’s secure door opened, and Ruby Knox, the temporary lead agent of the Presidential Protective Division, approached him.
That wasn’t good.
The PPD knew exactly how important this meeting was. Nothing short of an even greater national emergency should be interrupting it.
“Excuse me,” Ryan said to the table as he stepped closer to Knox and out of earshot from the others in the room.
“What is it?” Ryan asked in a low voice.
“The Treasury secretary is in the Oval, along with the chairman of the Federal Reserve. They’ve requested a meeting with you ASAP.”
Ryan frowned, genuinely confused.
“I’ve got more important things on my plate right now than worrying about the ECB dropping interest rates a quarter point next week.”
Knox nodded. “I explained that to them, sir. But they’re quite insistent.”
“Did they tell you what it’s all about?”
“I’m just the hired help, sir.”
“What do you think?”
“I think SecTreas Hodge is going to stroke out if you don’t get up there pronto, and if I’m not mistaken, Chairman Moorcroft has already pooped his pantaloons. Sir.”
61
THE WHITE HOUSE
Agent Knox opened the northeast door leading from the President’s secretary’s office into the Oval. SecTreas Stephen Hodges and Chairman Wesley Moorcroft were sitting together on one of the long couches.
Both men bolted to their feet when the door opened and President Ryan and Arnie van Damm marched in. Knox closed the door behind them for privacy—and security. The two financial executives each wore expensive, tailored gray suits. Hodges wore a silk rep Harvard tie and held a leather folio in a white-knuckled grip. Moorcroft wore a bright yellow bow tie and glasses.
Ryan beelined to the two men and waved them back to their seats on the couch. Both executives were in their mid-sixties and in good health, and known for their steady nerves and keen minds navigating the turbulent world of global and domestic finance.
It scared the hell out of Ryan that both men were visibly shaken.
“Gentlemen, please. Let’s forget the formalities. What’s going on? You two look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Ryan took one of the chairs and Arnie grabbed the couch opposite the two financial wizards.
Hodges opened his folio, pulled a letter from it, and handed it to Ryan. He also gave Arnie a copy.
“Mr. President,” Hodges began, “our offices simultaneously received this letter approximately one hour ago. You can read the details in full later. But the letter claims—and unfortunately, my office has verified that claim—that five trillion dollars has been stolen from the accounts of the world’s one hundred largest banking institutions.”
No one moved. No one breathed. They couldn’t.
“Now wait one goddamned New York minute,” Arnie said. He leaned forward, his face a welter of confusion. “Did you really just say five trillion? With a t?”
“I’m afraid so,” Hodges said.
“And it’s already stolen? Gone? Just disappeared?”
“Yes.”
Arnie threw his hands in the air. “That’s utter bullshit.”
“Unfortunately, it’s not,” Moorcroft said. “It’s absolutely accurate. We’ve verified with over forty-two banks so far, and others are reaching out to my office even as we speak.”
“I’ve already been contacted by the presidents of Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase,” Hodges said. “Eighteen of the world’s largest banks are Chinese, including the top four. The U.S. has twelve of the largest banks; Japan eight; France, South Korea, and the UK each have six; Canada, Germany, and Spain five.”
“What about the Chinese?” Ryan asked.
“When I didn’t hear from them, I took it upon myself to reach out to the governor of the People’s Bank of China. I hope I didn’t overstep my authority, but time is not our friend.”
“You did exactly the right thing,” Ryan said.
“Thank you, sir.”
“What did the Chinese say?”
“The governor hasn’t responded to my repeated calls. They’re clearly stonewalling. Not surprising, really, given the way they work. The PBOC is an organ of the Chinese Communist Party, like almost everything else over there. In a crisis like this, the governor isn’t going to communicate with any outsiders without official instructions from the higher-ups.”
“Unless they’re the ones behind all of this,” Arnie offered.
Ryan thought of that, too. “And what about the Russians?”
“They only have one bank in the top hundred, Sberbank,” Hodges said. “We have, shall we say, third-party access to their organization. Apparently, they have not been hit.”
Interesting, Ryan thought. Fits perfectly with the improved Kilo-class scenario.
He couldn’t share that with the finance men, though he would need to read Hodges in to that crisis soon, before word got out about it and that crisis started a global economic panic.
“Five trillion?” Arnie asked again. “It’s mind-boggling. How is that even possible?”
“Digitally, of course,” Hodges said.
“Only eight percent of global money is actual physical currency these days,” Ryan said. “The other ninety-two percent is just ones and zeros on a hard drive somewhere.”
Hodges pointed at the piece of paper in Arnie’s hand. “Read the letter, Mr. van Damm. It appears the thieves have acquired the technical means to break into each of these banks and rob the till, so to speak. Whoever it is used a computer they call TRIBULATION.”
Ryan pulled on his reading glasses and scanned the letter. His eyes fell upon one particular passage. His blood ran cold.
. . . Your best interest is to make arrangements to cover my theft. Do not pursue me or I will RETALIATE. You are dealing with the person who created the first true quantum computer. Everything is open to me: all of your secret files, all of your official lies, all of your weapons systems and energy grids . . . every savings account, every retirement account, every investment account. Corporations and governments are equally exposed. Everything is open to me.
But I’m not greedy. Five trillion dollars is enough for what I have planned. Within the next several months, I’m confident that the world will have developed quantum cyberdefenses against me so my window of opportunity will close—which is your only hope.
And now, gentlemen, please convey this special message to President Ryan: Do not pursue me. You will fail.
If you attempt to pursue me, I will burn your world to the ground, starting with a press release detailing my theft. My silence is your only protection.
As proof of your commitment not to pursue me, you will personally instruct Chairman Moorcroft to deposit one hundred billion dollars into the account described below by nine a.m. EST. We both know the chairman has the power to do that. After all, didn’t he print sixteen trillion dollars out of thin air to bail out your “too big to fail” bankster buddies?
If you fail to make the deposit by nine a.m. EST, I will unleash unimaginable chaos.
“I don’t understand,” Arnie said. “Is he saying that if we pay the one hundred billion he’ll return the five trillion?”
Ryan shook his head. “No. He—or she—is keeping the five trillion. That’s an all-out assault on the world. But the additional one hundred billion dollars is directed at me, jerking my chain. Somehow this is personal.”
* * *
—
Hodges said, “If he really has constructed the world’s first true quantum computer, he’s perfectly capable of overwhelming the encryption security protecting the world’s largest financial institutions, just as he claims.”
“What does the theft of five trillion dollars do to these banks? To the global monetary supply?” Ryan asked. The questions were rhetorical. His background in Wall Street investing gave him a firm grasp of markets and money.
“For the banks, it’s absolutely devastating,” Hodges said. “Their primary function is lending money. Without money, their function ceases. If families and businesses can’t borrow money to buy homes or make products, the global economy collapses.
“The only good news I’ve heard from the banks so far is that they have each been left with enough operating capital to last them the rest of the week,” Hodges said.
Moorcroft added, “For the global money supply, it’s a somewhat different story. Global money supply is approximately ninety trillion dollars. The choice of the five-trillion-dollar figure is an interesting one. The theft has removed only about five and a half percent of that total.”
“You make it sound like it’s no big deal,” Arnie said. “A nickel out of a dollar.”
“Oh, no, Mr. van Damm. It’s a really big deal. Maybe the biggest of all time. If people discover their life savings and college funds and checking accounts have all been emptied out, they’ll lose complete confidence in the monetary system as we know it. It will be the end of capitalism.”
Hodges leaned forward for emphasis. “We’re not talking about a temporary banking or stock market or real estate crisis like we’ve experienced over the last few decades. Those were bad, sure, but they were part of the business cycle, and we bounced back from all of those. But this? There won’t be any bouncing back. If there’s a global economic collapse, and trust in the currency is destroyed, capitalism will be irretrievably discredited. And I think we all know what comes next.”
“Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, Tojo, Mussolini. They were all products of economic collapse,” Ryan said. “And the result was war: civil, regional, global.”
“We’re talking an economic apocalypse,” Moorcroft said. “And a political one.”
62
SecTreas Hodges and Chairman Moorcroft stared ashen-faced at the President. Ryan shared their concern. But now was not the time to quail.
Ryan tried to hide his rage along with his growing sense of panic. Every major government in the world was chasing quantum computing. A quantum computing arms race was raging across the globe.
He had convinced Congress to take the threat seriously and help speed along the research rather than simply wait for the private sector to figure it out. The stakes were too high to let a bad actor acquire quantum computing first—as today was proving out. Quantum computing would be the technological equivalent of nuclear weapons for the twenty-first century, and suddenly, the United States was completely disarmed.
“He’s put a countdown clock on us, Mr. President. Two, actually. First, as you’ve just read, he demands we deposit a sum of one hundred billion dollars into an account he’s specified within the next”—Hodges checked his Patek Philippe Geneve watch—“forty-seven minutes as proof you’ll not pursue him.”
“He’s badly mistaken if he thinks I won’t hound his ass to the gates of hell and back. But to buy time, I’m authorizing you to make the deposit.”
“Very good, Mr. President. I assumed you’d agree to his condition, and I’ve prearranged everything. One call and the transaction will be completed.”
“And the second ticking clock you were talking about?” Arnie asked.
“The banks I’ve spoken with are fully aware of the scale and scope of this crisis. I’ve received personal assurances from each
of them that they won’t act unilaterally but they will only give us until end of business today to work out some kind of a solution.”
“And I’ve reached out to my counterparts at the ECB and the BOJ,” Moorcroft said. “They also agree to abstain from any unilateral action until we can coordinate our response. The question remains, what is it we want to do?”
“How long do we have to fix this thing?”
“The sooner the better.”
“Obviously. But what’s the absolute outer limit of time we have to come up with something?”
“It’s Wednesday,” Hodges said. “If we could come up with some plausible reason for an extended global bank and market holiday through the weekend, we’d be pushing it. I’d say before markets open Monday morning would be the absolute outer limit. And that’s assuming we can get the Russians and Chinese on board.”
Ryan checked his watch. “Just under one hundred and nineteen hours to save the world? No wonder you guys were sweating buckets when we came in.” Ryan rubbed his chin, thinking. “Can your technical people come up with some kind of story about a computer virus that’s playing havoc in the international banking community?”
“That kind of news could cause a panic all on its own,” Hodges warned.
“Not if we say it’s contained, that all records are digitized and in order, and that no one has lost any money. We’ll tell them that in order to purge the system we need to shut it all down. Something along those lines. I’m not a computer guy. It just has to be believable to the average joe to avoid a mass run on the banks and a general panic.”
“We can get the big banks and Wall Street behind this,” Arnie said. “They can make announcements in support of all of this, and they’ll do it because it’s their bacon in the frying pan.”
“Assuming we can convince the whole world to stop banking until next Monday, then what?” Hodges asked. “How do we restore the five-trillion-dollar losses to the banks?”
