The IRIS Algorithm, page 16
“Think about it Simone. Jason’s been ready to run for the hills since we got here. Now he’s volunteering for a suicide mission. Why? What’s in it for him?”
“Maybe he is trying to help a friend. Maybe he is trying to help save Samuel. Maybe there doesn’t have to be something in it for a person to help.”
It was pointless to explain how wrong she was. He gave an exasperated nod. “So, you and Jason been friends a long time?”
Simone looked at the scuffed concrete floor. “Not really.”
“I’m guessing no, not at all. You haven’t changed that much in ten years.” He leaned over a folding table covered with a patchwork of spray paint tailings from projects long forgotten, found a precision metric caliper, and pretended to examine it. “Where was Jason when your laptop was switched?”
“I thought about that, but he was with me. There was confusion in the line. Things backed up, and he helped me repack on the other side of security. There was only the one laptop, and it looked just like mine.”
“He didn’t have to be working alone. Someone creates a diversion; your laptop is quietly picked up, leaving the substitute. Not that hard with a little coordination.”
“Too much of a stretch. Like you said earlier, Jason is not exactly intelligence agency material.”
Simone fixated on the mathematics, the statistical improbability that Jason was capable of being a devious, and possibly clever, son of a bitch. “You said he was pushing you to crack the substitute laptop. Now we know what happens when you crack it. It sends a message back to the bad guys. Maybe he was trying to get that done back in Houston.”
“He needed a laptop for the demos we had to set up. He did not push all that hard.” Simone waited patiently for him to provide mathematically valid information. He changed the subject.
“By the way, my team deciphered the message. It simply said, ‘IRIS – MESSENGER OF THE GODS.’ No GPS coordinates or tracking information of any kind.”
Simone frowned. “What was the point of that?”
“I think somebody wanted to confirm you could crack it. The message itself doesn’t draw attention to any law enforcement or intelligence community email scanners. The IRIS reference is a bit too cute.”
Simone closed her eyes and pressed her fingers against her forehead. “So now they know Department of Defense level encryption can be cracked rather easily if you know how.”
“Why did the other IRIS team members die rather than give up the algorithm?” Logan asked.
Simone pressed her head until her fingers lost color. “They did not know how to make it work. I am the only one who made it work, only once, for a demonstration. NSA was about to shut the whole project down. Dr. Yu was under a lot of pressure to demonstrate progress.” Her eyes drifted between her father’s creative debris. “It was a mistake.”
“Then why the backdoor? Why risk going to prison for twenty years for compromising a NSA top secret project that doesn’t work?”
Logan followed her slow walk through the barn, among the multitude of Lester’s unfinished projects, between the dreams not quite realized.
“It was a brilliant team, and the framework for the application was complete. It was only missing the final piece of the puzzle. The one obvious thing no one would ever guess, unless God had shown it to you. I plugged in the final piece one time for a small internal audience to prove the concept was viable, then I removed it. Doing that was not a small thing to God. He told me if I revealed the secret, I would surely die along with those I love.”
“But you didn’t die. I suppose technically you didn’t reveal it if nobody else saw the actual part that makes it work. You took it out.”
“God’s not impressed with technicalities. Two weeks later, we were in Germany. Don’t you see? They were trying to kill me, not Ricky.”
Logan’s gut churned at the mention of Ricky, the awful day when he held his friend bleeding out on a filthy German backstreet. How could she be so cruel?
“Ricky died because I got sloppy.” Logan’s reddened eyes were sharp as daggers. “It was supposed to be nothing. A walk in the park for my last assignment. A low level analyst like Ricky didn’t even warrant an escort. It was just a way to get a little R and R on company time. I can’t believe you’re trying to make it about you.”
“It was about me.”
“Stop it!”
“I made IRIS work. Somebody noticed.”
“Who? God?! I thought lightning was his weapon of choice. Not a guy on a motorcycle with a silenced MAC-10.”
“God did not say He would kill me. Just that I would surely die.” Simone was matter of fact, satisfied with the numerical perfection of her logic about the incident. “When Ricky was killed, I knew I had to leave the agency, but I needed a way to get back in, to make sure there was nothing about my work that could ever make the IRIS algorithm complete.” She hesitated. “I knew I would need the leverage.”
“For what?”
“For this. For today.” Simone fixed him with a far-away gaze. “It was always going to end up like this.”
Logan moved to the door and shoved it rumbling to a close. Light filtered from high above: slanted white shafts through the peculiar scents in the heavy air. As he walked past the workbench, he picked up a dingy hammer and a roll of duct tape, looking directly into Simone’s searching eyes.
“Just remember, I always loved you.”
CHAPTER 38
Despite the fact that Logan intended to beat me to death with a hammer, my heart soared when he said he loved me. Love is like that. Irrational. Illogical. Mathematically unsound. Love fit nicely with my undeniable decent into insanity so long ago. I wondered if Martin could get a refund from Glenn Haven after so much time had passed. Probably not.
Logan focused on the jumble of furniture in the shadows. “I hope your father won’t mind. At this point, it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission.” He casually moved one of the derelict chairs from a pile crowded at various angles: victims of Florida Cracker Furniture experiments, frightened dusty lab specimens cowering in the far corner.
“I don’t think Lester will mind too much.” Admitting my father would not mind if Logan killed me hurt more than I thought it would. That surprised me. The data and the numbers, the purity of mathematics, were neither cruel nor compassionate. The results simply were what they were. It was confusing to feel any other way. Still, I felt something unusual, and painful.
“I closed the door in case he happened to come out here while I was in the middle of this.” Logan chuckled. “I guess I’m more worried about him trying to help me than trying to stop me.”
Yes, that would be awkward. They both had ample reasons to hate me. No matter how hard I tried to carry this burden, to do the right thing, in the end I let everyone down, including my son. Including God. Maybe including the whole world if the IRIS algorithm got into the wild. That I deserved what was about to happen to me was not in doubt.
Unfortunately for Logan, giving up is not what I do. Even when I should. While Logan sorted through the chairs, I glanced at the workbench and tried to identify something to use as a weapon. Looking for the perfect chair to duct tape me to, he seemed unusually meticulous. I thought any old chair would do.
Nothing on the workbench looked promising for a direct assault on a two-hundred-pound, trained, field operative. It was sixteen steps to the barn door, the perfect square of four. It was another forty-nine steps to the house, the perfect square of seven. The big yellow and red handled screwdriver inserted into the hasp on the outside of the barn door should slow him down long enough for me to make it to the house.
“I don’t like it, Simone. I don’t like it at all, but I’m going to do it anyway.” He finally selected a suitable chair, dragging it away from the rest. He knelt beside the chair, inspecting the legs.
There it was again: that odd feeling of relief and strange warmth. He did not like it. He did not want to do it. He loved me. There is something wrong with this data set.
Logan ran his strong hands gently up the legs and across the rounded seat, gaging the sturdiness against the struggle to come. “Simone, for a long time I thought you would come back. That you just needed some time.” He nodded. “When I finally realized you were never coming back….” He stared into the darker shadows of the barn, where the ghost of retrospection hid. “You were the best thing and the worst thing that ever happened to me.”
I do not watch regular television; however, I do watch a fair number of movies. The melancholy monologue moment was the perfect time to make a break for it. Even so, I wasn’t about to let that nonsense he was spouting go unchallenged.
“You could have found me. That’s what you do, isn’t it? You track down people all over the world that are better at hiding than I am. Right? You could have found me.”
“Did you want me to find you?”
“Well, no, but that’s beside the point. You did not try.”
He slammed the hammer down. It clinked loudly on the concrete floor and skittered a few feet away. “That is precisely the point. Yes, I could have found you. Of course I could have found you.” He stood quickly. “I could have found you in less than twenty-four hours.”
All the data processed through every model said I should be running instead of yelling. “Then why didn’t you?” Every petition for logic was overruled by something else. Something unreasonable and absurd. Something too despicably strong to resist.
“Because I couldn’t bear to hear you say you were never coming back.” His words sputtered, uncharacteristically weak. Logan looked ill and confused. When he turned back toward the old chair, I knew I could walk right out of the barn, but I stayed.
My mouth talked without permission.
“I found out I was pregnant in the morning. Ricky died in the afternoon. That night you explained what you really did for the agency. I was mad, confused, scared.” Not sure I could go on, I hesitated to catch my breath and plan my next move. “I am still angry you lied to me.” I knew I should not add that last part, but it was the truth. And the truth will set you free. Right?
“Logan, I did not leave because I was angry.” I stepped cautiously toward him. “Bad things happen to the people I love. They were trying to kill me, not Ricky. They would not stop as long as they thought I could make the IRIS algorithm real. I had a child to think about.”
His back to me, his voice bitter, Logan launched another barb. “We had a child to think about. Your meticulous logic is sometimes as deceptive as a bold faced lie.”
What an illogical statement. I had sufficiently explained that I left to save him and Samuel. That peculiar feeling flooded my chest again, drowning the logic, refuting the numbers, defying the calculations. It made my head hurt worse. I pressed my hands against the sides of my forehead.
“These chairs are obviously not part of the Florida Cracker Collection.” He picked up the hammer and the duct tape.
“Lester got these from yard sales and wherever else he could find them. He dismantled and studied them to figure out how they were put together. Of course, he was not satisfied with any of the designs.”
“I’m no carpenter, but that chair I’ve been sitting on in the computer room is killing my back. I hope that’s not representative of his best efforts.”
“No. He just keeps the rejects. The good stuff is either sold or given away.”
Logan tapped the cross supports back into the legs. The heavy wooden chair he selected probably did not need the support, but he used ample layers of duct tape crisscrossed around the joint, to make sure they stayed in place.
“Like I said, I don’t like Jason’s plan at all; mainly because it’s Jason’s plan,” Logan said. “But I’m going to do it. We’ll make it work.”
A deranged hyena laugh slipped out, before I choked it back down. “You are using the hammer and duct tape to fix the chair.”
He paused and looked over his shoulder as he squatted by the chair. I could have sworn he gave me a little wink. “What else would I use it for?”
I wanted to hold Logan’s hand on the walk back to the house, but he was carrying the chair. A desperate little voice told me the numbers did not lie; only people did. For the first time in my life, I had just the thinnest sliver of doubt. It was annoying and terrifying.
Soon, I would forget all about the annoying part.
CHAPTER 39
MOBILE, ALABAMA – AEM HEADQUARTERS – 2:00 P.M. CDT
Obadiah sulked in his mahogany sanctum. Even through the insulated walls and the thick wooden door, he could hear them arguing in the adjacent conference room. Patience’s voice could penetrate concrete when it suited her. He didn’t mind if they argued. It was good for them to struggle with decisions for a change instead of depending on him for every minute detail of planning, execution, and vision. He coughed into his red satin handkerchief that hid the flecks of blood.
His tailored, black suit with thin, black, herringbone stripes was not his favorite, but with his maroon silk tie over a starched royal blue shirt it conveyed his mood. Serious. Resolute. Inexorable leader of The American Edification Movement, now and forever.
Who would continue his work when he was gone? Certainly not one of the three arguing next door. Perhaps together they possessed the collective competence to follow in his formidable footsteps. Perhaps. His face soured, acrid and ashen. With a sudden vicious sweep, he raked the decorative pen set off the desk with his left hand. The polished cherry box fell beyond the ornate Persian rug and clattered on the hardwood floor. “I will not!”
He coughed and wheezed into the red handkerchief again. Death and sickness tainted the air, a sour reminder of fate’s cruel certainty. Here at the brink of the most significant event in world history, the defining moment for The American Edification Movement, the irreproachable culmination of his life’s work, his body failed him. It was maddeningly unacceptable. He needed twenty more years. A hundred more years. If there was a God, unique and critically important visionaries would not be restricted to the limits of their flimsy, mortal husk. If there was a God.
He refused to die of natural causes. He needed to make himself available. Assassins would take care of the rest. Standing tall, between Old Glory and the silky flag of the AEM, he straightened his maroon tie, buttoned the top button of his black suit, and summoned forth his gall. The second he entered the conference room, the arguing stopped.
He assumed his position at the head of the polished table. A moment passed in heavy gestating silence. Patience sat erect on the edge of her chair, bright red claws on the table, a tiger interrupted mid kill. Virtue hid behind a stack of classification folders and a laptop computer, a lamb, anemic and frail, desolate and submissive. Fagon’s impenetrable façade creaked under the weight of the moment, hairline fractures crossing his damp brow, obsidian eyes murkier than usual.
What secrets did a liar like Fagon drown in those dark wells? A trained liar hides a great number of dark treasures. Did he want to know what Fagon’s were?
“I will have results, not excuses.” Obadiah’s deific stare, merciless and unforgiving, lingered on them one by one. “Now explain to me how Mimosa will be operational in three days.”
Fagon collected himself first. “We were just discussing a rather significant change to the plan. We are not yet in agreement.”
“So I heard. Patience, I presume you are the source of this significant change. Explain yourself.”
“Indeed, I am.” Feline energy coiled and bound, Patience’s mouth twitched on the left side, threatening to curl. “I spoke to the illustrious Mr. Glunt and—”
Obadiah’s imperious scowl turned on his daughter, dismissing her. “Contacting him was a waste of time and an unnecessary security risk.” A ragged edge caught in his throat, betraying his annoyance. “By now I would expect—”
Patience would not be silenced. “I’m not an imbecile, Father. You would do well to recognize that fact.” She leaned forward, the heels of her hands on the table edge, red claws digging hard against the varnish. “Mr. Glunt used a secure channel to contact me. He had important information, which I believe warrants a change in our plans.” Patience leaned back and smiled cruelly. “Now is not the time to become rigid and frail in our thinking.”
His mortality laid bare, the starving tiger was off the chain and on the prowl. “Apologize!” Virtue smacked a delicate fist on the table with barely a sound. “You cannot address Father that way.”
Patience shrugged without apology.
“Apologies are for the weak,” Obadiah said. “I don’t need apologies, nor do I accept excuses.” He stiffened his spine and considered his few options.
“Sir, if I may.” Fagon cleared his throat. “Glunt suggested we exchange him for the boy and keep him as a way of insuring full cooperation from Simone Dancing.” Fagon explained the two-key protocol. “Glunt would have the second key, and since we would have him, cooperation would be enviable.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Voluntarily or not. Clearly Glunt is just involved for the money, so it seems plausible we would have no difficulty with the second key.”
“Just find them and pick them all up,” Obadiah suppressed the hacking cough that bucked in his chest. “Cooperation will be forthcoming without making any deals.”
“That won’t be easy.” Fagon stroked his groomed goatee. “Simone’s ex-husband is with her, a fellow by the name of Logan Ranes. I know him by reputation in the intelligence community. Somewhat of a black ops legend. I thought he was dead.”
“Agency?”
“CIA, NSA, DIA. Specialized in extraordinary rendition, target recon, and other unsanctioned intelligence work—officially denied but necessary work. Put a major dent in the world’s terrorist inventory.” Fagon breathed deep, brow furrowed. “He works for a private security firm now.”
“That’s good, I suppose.”
“Actually, sir, that’s bad. No matter how vicious a U.S. Government agency might like to behave, there are rules. Private firms were created to do the things the government is unwilling to consider.”
