He entered a coded sequence on his keyboard and a warning indicator beeped. A light above the door turned from green to red as he stood to face his team. “Now that I have your attention,” he said with a smirk, “I’ll explain why I’ve ruined your weekend.” He brought up the dossier on Charles Palmer and sent it to the main display. “This is Charles Palmer. Some of you may recognize him. He was the brother of our friend, Archaeology Professor Laura Palmer.”

  Therrien groaned from the back of the room. “How did I know it was going to be them ruining my weekend?”

  “An understandable conclusion, though incorrect. This time it’s not their fault. Here’s the rundown. I’ll send you the files but let me make this clear. This is top secret, and I mean it in every sense of the word. You cannot repeat this to anyone outside of this room.” He pointed at the indicator over the door. “That’s why we’re in lockdown. If you need to leave, you leave with an armed escort. All devices are being scanned and any unauthorized activity will be strictly dealt with. You’ll understand why in a minute. Charles Palmer was not just the brother of Laura Palmer. He was the founder of Palmer Technologies, which he sold a couple of years before his death to Meitner Telecom, a name you might recognize from the incident in Austria a little while back. Palmer died ten years ago in an accident at one of Professor Palmer’s dig sites in Jordan. Now, here’s the critical component. His body was never recovered. The Jordanians ordered the immediate shutdown of the site and no one’s been allowed back since.”

  He brought up the photo of Palmer at the movie theater. “Facial recognition has confirmed that this is him. We’re going to analyze the shit out of this to make sure it’s not a fake, but Tommy Granger’s already given it more than a once-over and he can’t find any obvious evidence. Does anybody notice what’s odd about this?”

  Child’s arm shot up. “Ooh, pick me! Pick me!”

  Leroux chuckled. “Yes, Randy?”

  “The last time I was at a movie theater, I didn’t see a lot of dead people in the audience.”

  Leroux jabbed a finger at him. “Bingo. You’ve got it. This photo was taken at a theater playing a movie released years after his death. If it’s genuine, it means either he’s got a twin that his own sister didn’t know about, or he’s still alive.”

  “Why would he fake his death?” asked Tong. “Was somebody after him?”

  “And that’s the question, isn’t it? Why would a man like that fake his death? His classified file, which I’ve just read for the first time, indicates no criminal history, no debts, no bad romances, no connections with any criminal elements. So why would a man like this fake his death? The conclusion the few of us in the know have come up with is that it has to do with his work.”

  Child spun in his chair, staring up at the ceiling. “But he sold his work. Isn’t he supposed to be retired?”

  “No, he apparently sold his company to pursue a passion project. Randy, you’ll like this. He specialized in artificial intelligence and quantum computing. A CIA inspection of his private lab just before he died suggests he might have been close to a breakthrough in the latter.”

  Child’s foot dropped, killing his spin. “Holy shit. That’s like the holy grail if he’s figured it out.”

  “Figured out what?” asked Tong.

  Leroux waved a hand at Child, letting someone answer who understood these things far better than he did. Child eagerly leaned forward. “Well, it’s like this. Most encryption systems are based on complex mathematical equations. They’re so complex that without the private key to unlock them, they’re nearly impossible to break. Our most powerful computers would take millions of years, so that secures our networks. But in theory, because of the potential speeds of quantum computing and how they work in entirely different ways than current computers which are limited to bits which are either zeros or ones, on or off, qubits can exist in three states—”

  Tong raised a hand. “Too much detail.”

  Child’s cheeks flushed. “Sorry, I’m just excited. If he’s figured it out and come up with a stable quantum computing device that can handle the computations, he’s essentially rendered all current encryption obsolete.”

  Therrien rose, walking down the steps to be in the direct line of the conversation. “So what? My banking password’s useless?”

  “Forget your banking password. This doesn’t deal with passwords. This is encryption. All they need to do is intercept the data. And remember, almost all data is sent out over the open Internet, and it has identifiers saying where it came from and where it’s going to in each data packet. Let’s say you want to monitor the Federal Reserve to see what they’re up to. You just need to know their identifier, which is easy enough to figure out, and then intercept those packages. The bank will never know because they don’t care. Even if you intercepted all their data, it’s encrypted, impossible to break. But if Palmer’s figured it out, then they just run one of these encrypted packets against his system, it figures out the encryption key, then they can instantly read everything that’s being sent.

  “All emails, all communiques, all data being transferred. Everything. Who needs a password to go through the front door when you’ve got access to the whole damn house? And remember, no one would ever know, and this is true of any communications, even if it’s not over the Internet. Let’s say burst traffic sent by our military through the satellites, those go through the open air. The Chinese intercept that stuff, and it doesn’t bother us. It’s encrypted. If they had this device, they could read everything. Troop movements, orders. Everything.” Child shook his head. “Holy shit. Do we really think he’s done this?”

  Leroux held up his hands. “No idea. But it is why we think he might have faked his death. If word got out that he had created this or was nearing a breakthrough, there’s not a government on the planet that wouldn’t kill to get their hands on it. We think he might have faked his death to get away from what was to come.”

  Therrien perched on the edge of a workstation. “Wait a minute now, you said that we got into his private lab and it looked like he was close to a breakthrough. It’s been ten years. Could he have still been working on it?”

  “Was Doc Brown happy living a simple life in the old West?”

  Child grunted. “All I can say is if I were him, with his brains and resources, I don’t care if people thought I was dead. I wouldn’t be able to resist continuing my work.”

  “Even if it was so dangerous?” asked Tong.

  Child shrugged. “Somebody has to be first. Better us than them. The sooner we make the breakthrough, the sooner we make the countermeasure. And if I were him and I created this, I’d be hard at work on my next invention, which would be the one that neutralizes the first one.”

  Leroux ended the speculation. “For the moment, what he has or hasn’t accomplished is irrelevant. Randy, we need to have that photo analyzed to see if there’s any evidence of it being a fake, but in the meantime, we’re going to assume it’s not. I want every bit of horsepower this agency can muster searching for any more images that might have Palmer in them. We need to find him before anyone else does.”

  Therrien scratched behind his ear. “What’s the urgency? He’s been dead ten years and nobody’s found him. Why all of a sudden has this become an emergency?”

  “Because you haven’t asked the all-important question.”

  “Which is?”

  Leroux jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the photo of Palmer at the movies. “Where did we get that photo?”

  Therrien’s eyebrows shot up. “Where did you get that photo?”

  “Tommy Granger was putting together a montage in honor of the tenth anniversary of Palmer’s death as a gift for Laura. He commandeered all of the networked computers at St. Paul’s University and had them running searches using Palmer’s name, then used the results as jumping-off points for bots he created to crawl and pull any images that would then be analyzed by a program he wrote to see if Palmer’s face was in any of them.”

  Child whistled appreciatively. “Damn, that guy’s brilliant. He should be working for us.”

  Leroux agreed. “And if it weren’t for his juvie record, he just might be. But can anyone see the flaw in what he did?”

  Therrien raised his arm high in the air, mocking Child’s earlier display. “Ooh, pick me! Pick me!”

  Everyone laughed and Child delivered two spinning birds to the room.

  “Yes, Marc?”

  “He created a large amount of Internet traffic using Palmer’s name that if anyone who knew what Palmer had been working on and had any suspicions he might not actually be dead, they might detect the increase in interest.”

  “Exactly. Right now, we might be the only ones looking into this, but we have to assume that the Chinese, Russians, anybody, hell, even the Brits, he’s a British citizen after all, could be looking into it. We need to find him first, because we can’t have that kind of technology falling into the wrong hands. Even the hands of our allies.” He clapped his hands together. “Now let’s get to work.”

  20 |

  CIA Headquarters Heliport

  Langley, Virginia

  Kane pulled into the small airstrip just outside of Langley. Fang and Sherrie were in the back seat, still a little giggly as he hammered on the accelerator, surging them toward a chopper powering up ahead. “Just how much did you two have to drink?”

  Sherrie grinned at him. “Enough that if you wanted to do a mile-high three-way, it might just be your lucky day.”

  Fang snickered. “Yeah, baby. What do you say?”

  Kane rolled his eyes. “Now I know you’re drunk.”

  Fang leaned forward and squeezed his shoulder. “I’m just joking. I had three fingers.”

  “So did I,” said Sherrie. “We’re just feeling a little warm. You know we train for this. We’ll be fine if we’re needed.”

  Kane brought them to a halt. “I hope so.” He turned the engine off then climbed out, and the three of them headed toward the chopper with their go bags. He grinned at Fang as she squeezed an ass cheek, then his eyebrows shot up when the other cheek received similar attention, despite Fang’s right hand occupied by her bag. He glanced over at a grinning Sherrie, who burst out laughing, as did his girlfriend, both cheeks released.

  “You two are trouble when you’ve been drinking.”

  Sherrie leaped into the back of the chopper followed by Fang as Kane rounded to the other side and occupied the copilot’s seat. He signaled for the pilot to get underway and moments later they lifted off, heading toward what he hoped would end up being nothing, but feared could be much more. He glanced back at the giggling ladies.

  They’d better sober up soon.

  21 |

  Acton/Palmer Residence, Overlook Village Gated Community

  St. Paul, Maryland

  Laura stared at Tommy’s closed laptop. “Can they trace that to here?”

  Tommy nodded. “In theory. But now that I’ve shut everything down we should be okay.”

  Acton paced by the window. “The question is, what do we do now? The fact that someone was just pinging the shit out of your laptop tells me somebody’s on to us, and it can’t be the good guys because Dylan’s people wouldn’t do that. They already know we’re on this.”

  Tommy disagreed. “Kane’s people might not have, but there are other branches of the CIA that could have. And don’t forget the NSA, FBI, Homeland Security, any number of agencies we’ve never heard of that would do anything to get their hands on him or his design. We’d be naïve to assume it was a foreign government trying to find me.”

  Acton paused. “Is there any way to figure out who was trying to find you?”

  Tommy’s fingers drummed on the closed laptop. “Possibly. But if we’re talking about who I think we’re talking about, in other words, somebody very professional, they’ll likely have security software at least as robust as mine. It’s highly unlikely I’d be able to trace them without them detecting it. And it could potentially lead them directly to us.”

  Laura dismissed the idea. “Forget it, too risky.”

  Acton sat back down. “Can you send the info to Leroux? Maybe his people can do something with it?”

  Tommy nodded. “Yes.”

  “Then do it.”

  He flipped open his laptop and Mai gasped, leaning forward and shoving the screen back down. “Can’t they find you as soon as you turn that on?”

  Tommy gently removed her hand and raised the screen once again, powering up the laptop then pressing another button. “I’ve disabled all the connectivity.” He pointed at the button. “No Internet, no Wi-Fi, no Bluetooth, nothing.”

  Her shoulders slumped. “Sorry, I should have known you’d be on top of it.”

  He smiled and leaned over, giving her a quick kiss. “Better safe than sorry.” He went to work and Acton turned to Laura.

  “Perhaps we should give Cam a call.”

  Laura pursed her lips, her head slowly bobbing. “I think that’s a good idea, but when I last spoke to him, most of his men were split between Peru and Egypt, and he was in Australia visiting his girlfriend. I don’t think any of them could be here in time.”

  “Probably not, but he might have people here that he trusts.”

  “You’re right.” She picked her phone up off the table then hesitated. “Is it safe for us to use our phones?”

  Tommy continued to work. “Oh, yeah. If they’ve tapped our phones we’re screwed already. A phone is a hell of a lot easier to track than a laptop.”

  Acton wasn’t sure he liked the sound of Tommy’s reassurances, but the kid was right. If whomever they were worried about had access to their phones, it was already too late.

  Laura dialed Cameron Leather’s number. He was the head of her private security that she had hired years ago to protect her dig site in Egypt, his company’s duties now extended to include Acton’s dig in Peru as well as providing security for them personally when it was necessary. Leather was former British Special Air Service, and most of the men that worked for him were retired Special Forces from various branches around the world. Leather and his team had trained Acton and Laura on how to use most weapons effectively, as well as in hand-to hand-combat, survival skills, and tactics most civilians would have no clue about. That training had saved their lives countless times over.

  The phone rang several times and Acton worried they weren’t going to get an answer. After all, the man was on vacation. He did the mental tally on what time it was in Australia compared to Maryland and determined the man should be awake, when it was finally answered with a breathless “Hello?”

  Someone giggled in the background. Tommy and Acton exchanged grins.

  “Cameron, it’s Laura and James. I hope I didn’t catch you at an awkward time.”

  There was a pause. “Um, no, ma’am. Awkward isn’t the way I’d put it. How can I help you?”

  “We’ve got a situation and we might need some help.”

  “Ma’am, you assured me you were both staying in the United States while I was on vacation.”

  “We still are. We’re at home. It’s about—” Laura’s voice cracked and Acton squeezed her hand, leaning closer to the phone.

  “Hi, Cam. It’s Jim. It’s about Laura’s brother. As you’re aware, he died ten years ago, but we’ve stumbled across photographic evidence that he may actually still be alive.”

  “Bloody hell. You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  “One hundred percent. We have a photo of him at a movie theater playing Terminator: Genisys some years after his death. He was a huge fan of the franchise.”

  Tommy leaned forward, interrupting him. “Make sure you don’t say his name just in case automated systems are monitoring.”

  Acton hesitated.

  Leather broke the silence. “Who’s that?”

  “Tommy Granger and Mai Trinh are here with us.”

  “Anybody else?”

  “No, just the four of us.”

  “Good. The lad’s right. Don’t say the name. If I remember from his file, he was quite the genius. Artificial intelligence and quantum computing, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes,” confirmed Laura.

  “And what makes you think you’re in danger?”

  Tommy leaned forward. “Sir, a few minutes ago I was continuing the search for more evidence when my security software detected someone trying to locate my laptop. At least half a dozen alerts within a few seconds.”

  “Have you shut down?”

  “Yes, sir. I’ve completely disconnected and I’m sending the logs to our CIA contacts so they can determine who it was.”

  “Stay offline. In fact, if someone’s already trying to locate you, that means either they know what you know or they’re suspicious as to why you’re looking into a man who’s been dead for a decade. I’m going to make some calls and see if I can get some trusted people to your location ASAP. For now, I recommend shutting off any Internet and Wi-Fi at the house, turning off your cellphones, unplugging your landlines, and making sure all your doors and windows are secure. Stay away from the windows and arm yourselves. When my contacts get there, they’ll knock in a three-one-two pattern. Got that?”

  Acton repeated it. “Three-one-two pattern. How long?”

  “I’m not sure, but it could be a few hours.”

  Laura leaned closer to the phone. “Cameron, should we be worried or am I just being paranoid?”

  “Ma’am, if you’ve already got somebody trying to locate Mr. Granger’s laptop, then yes, you should be concerned.”

  “Should we leave?”

  “No. You’re in a gated community with excellent police response time and familiar surroundings. Remember, whoever’s after you also has to position people. I’m going to let you go now. The sooner I can make my calls, the sooner I can get people to your location.”

 

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