01-01-00 (11 page)
Authors: R. J. Pineiro
He had observed six surveillance cameras, two at each end and two toward the center of the long and wide corridor.
Strokk walked up to Monet's
Water Lilies.
He had never cared much for the work of the French artist but pretended to enjoy it nevertheless while inspecting the metallic receptacle just a few feet to his right. He walked casually toward the wastebasket and leaned down, while pretending to tie the laces of his sneakers. Peeking in between the wall and the receptacle, he spotted a manila envelope, which he quickly slipped into his jacket before proceeding to the nearest exit.
Once outside, he retrieved his weapon from the same female operative. Together they walked straight to a nearby underground station, Embankment Station, catching the yellow Circle Line to High Street Kensington Station.
“¿Lo encontraste?”
Celina Strokk asked. She was as tall as her brother, with closely cropped blond hair, and a gaunt face that made her brown eyes and full lips quite pronounced, giving her a somewhat unrefined but appealing look. Her pale skin came from her Russian heritage, but her Latin features made her look more Hispanic than Slavic. Celina could pass as either not just because of her physical appearance, but also because, like her brother, she was fluent in several languages, including Spanish, Russian, and English.
“SÃ,”
Strokk replied while patting the right side of his jacket. Together they often reverted to their native tongue.
The ride on the “Tube,” as the London underground was locally referred to, was uneventful. They got off at the High Street Kensington stop. Walking up the oval-shaped tunnelâits brick walls layered with advertisementsâthey reached a long escalator leading to the surface. Strokk and Celina went up, reaching the street, heading down Kensington High Street, toward Holland Park, taking a left on Earl's Court Road.
Strokk kept a safe house three blocks away, a two-story brownstone near the intersection of Pembroke and Earl's Court Road.
Once inside, he sat at the kitchen table while Celina made some coffee. He tore open the envelope and inspected its contents, a couple of typed reports, a city map of Washington, D.C., and vicinities, and a half-dozen photographs taken with a telephoto lens. He studied the first brief, a report from the European Economic Community relating to software preparations for the year 2000. By the time Celina brought two cups of dark Colombian coffee, he had already moved on to the second brief, which described the global virus and the ongoing investigation at the FBI. He glanced at the photos, the reverse side of each containing an explanation.
Celina sat down next to her brother and asked,
“¿Quién es ella?”
Strokk stared at one of a handful of photographs of an FBI analyst named Susan Garnett. “The lead investigator at the FBI on the strange computer virus that's causing all of the commotion.”
Celina reached behind her and removed her pistol, a Beretta 92FS, and set it on the table. She planted both elbows on the polished mahogany surface and brought the cup of coffee to her lips. “And our mission is?”
“Same drill as the executive from California a year ago.”
Her right eyebrow rose. “Yes ⦠I remember.”
He pointed at the laptop on the small desk in the open living room. “Log in. Check the account.”
Celina brought the cup of coffee with her and began to pound the keyboard.
As he heard the laptop's modem dialing, Antonio Strokk returned his gaze to the photographs. A medium-height, slim woman in her mid-thirties. The brief dossier on the back of the largest photo, a color eight-by-ten, mentioned the deaths of a husband and a child a couple of years back, victims of a traffic accident caused by a computer virus. Strokk would have felt sorry for her, but he had no such feelings left in him. This was just another job for the former Russian Spetsnaz officer, and the thumbs-up that Celina gave him while pointing at the screen officially initiated this operation.
As Celina logged off the system, Strokk stood. “Gather the team. We're leaving immediately through the usual route.”
2
Paris, France
A wave of Fiats, Renaults, BMWs, and Mercedes rushed past the tourists gathered by the obelisk in the center of the Place de la Concorde, at the south end of the Champs-Ãlysées. The wide boulevard, known to Parisians as the Voile Triomphale, or Triumphal Way, began at the Louvre, passing through the lush Jardin des Tuileries, across the Place de la Concorde, and up the Champs-Ãlysées to the Arc de Triomphe.
The Paris vista known the world over bustled with activity during the lunch hour. Horns blared. Street vendors shouted. The mellow tunes from a sax player outside the American embassy blended with the sounds of children singing Christmas carols on the steps leading to the terrace overlooking the Louvre and the Seine. Beyond the Arc de Triomphe, down Avenue Kléber, across the Seine, rose the Eiffel Tower, completed in 1889. High up on this world-class monument stood a millennium clock, its constant flashing marking the passage into a new era, a new one thousand years of human history. Its powerful display stained the steel beams with its crimson light, pulsating upon them, bringing them to life, the surreal effect visible even beyond the Louvre and the world-famous Hotel Crillon, past the gardens surrounding the Palais de l'Ãlysée, home of the Ministère, the various ministries of the government.
Philippe La Fourche, minister of industry and economy, stood by the windows behind his desk, gazing at the Palais de l'Ãlysée, the presidential residence across the Boulevard Saint Honoré. The elderly politician, dressed in a fine Italian suit, kept his hands behind his back while contemplating the arched entryway to the elegant palace. The president was not home today. He was traveling to Brussels to meet with the leaders of the other EEC nations to discuss final preparations for the transition into the year 2000. Included in the discussion would be the level of preparedness of Europe's vast computer networks.
La Fourche pressed his wiry lips into a frown at the state of his country's computer systems, the result of negligence on the part of his president for failing to dictate stern policy to force corporations and government offices into a unified plan to get Year 2000 compliant, like the Americans had done.
“Quel imbécile,”
La Fourche mumbled, his eyes gazing at the palace. His president, as well as the presidents of the other European nations, had underestimated the task, and had further ignored the severe economic consequences of such neglect. While the United States led the Y2K-compliance race with their systems approaching the ninety-five percent compliance mark, France was still in the low eighty percent range.
La Fourche, whose future as minister of industry and economy depended on how well France survived the millennium bug, had spent the past months desperately searching for ways to get his country higher up on the compliance ladder. But he had found that there was no quick way to fixing France's remaining Y2K problems, mostly in embedded computer chipsâthose controlling equipment ranging from elevators and copy machines to medical monitors, traffic lights, fuel-injection systems, and a variety of military applications. The mighty United States had invested hundreds of billions of dollars in the past three years to get to where it was today. France didn't stand a chance this late in the game to get past eighty-five percent, even with so much help pouring in from the United States and England.
And the president is going to let me take the fall for this, even though it was his negligence that got us in trouble in the first place,
he thought, anger swelling up in his gut at the thought of the many times he had requested his president to take action. A week ago, frustrated, La Fourche had been on the verge of resigning, having explored all viable avenues and seeing no way out of his predicament.
But then this global virus had struck, threatening all countries, regardless of their level of preparednessâin a way, leveling the playing fields. And a thought had struck him: Control of the potion that killed this virus meant control of one of the most powerful pieces of software in the world. The value of such software was beyond his imagination. If America spent hundreds of billions of dollars fixing Y2K problems, it would not blink at spending a fraction of that to acquire the cure for this potentially dangerous virus.
And so, Philip La Fourche, resigned to the fact that he would be politically ousted, had opted to use his last days in office to find a way to get his hands on that potion.
Turning around, La Fourche faced a man in his early fifties sitting across from his desk.
“All set then?” the minister asked, also sitting down and crossing his legs.
Henri Jourdain, the corpulent chief of the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (DGSE), the French version of the CIA, gave him a slight nod. “The contractor should be on his way today, monsieur.”
La Fourche shifted his gaze from Jourdain's square face to the computer on the corner of his desk. “Is the mission clear?”
The seasoned spy nodded. “The contractor's mission is three-fold. First he will spy on the FBI as it struggles to crack this global virus. Second, in the event of a breakthrough, he will be ready to steal the potion from the Americans and deliver it to us. And third, he will make sure that the Americans can't reconstruct the potion, leaving them at our mercy.”
Philippe La Fourche nodded, keeping his eyes on his computer system, not wanting to know exactly how this contractor was going to achieve all of that in such short time. “Have you used him before?”
“
Oui, monsieur.
With the most satisfactory of results last year in California.”
La Fourche nodded, remembering an operation that had resulted in the recipe for manufacturing a faster video controller. The contractor had forced the Sunnyvale executive to yield the schematic database, before killing him and setting his company ablaze. “That was him?”
“
Oui, monsieur,
and he will deliver again. This time his results will benefit us directly.” Like La Fourche, Henri Jourdain was equally motivated to use his last days in power to set up his future. Jourdain, as well as several other close friends of the minister, would all be politically banished following La Fourche's downfall.
The minister locked eyes with the DGSE chief. “He can not fail us, or we lose everything.”
“He
will
deliver, monsieur, regardless of the cost. And then we will have the power to name our own price. Many countries will pay dearly for the code. We will be set for life.”
Exhaling heavily, the fourth most powerful man in France returned his attention to the windows, to the presidential palace, to the lush gardens leading to the Champs-Ãlysées, to a country that would soon betray him, outcast him, disgrace him. As Henri Jourdain left the office, a passing cloud momentarily blocked the noon sun. The elder official watched it in silence.
December 13, 1999
Susan Garnett sipped coffee while waiting for the guards to escort Hans Bloodaxe to one of the visitor's rooms at the Haynesville Correctional Institute in northern Virginia, just an hour's drive from Washington, D.C.
Windowless walls of peeling off-white paint washed by the grayish glow of fluorescents surrounded the FBI analyst as she contemplated the single metal door. A metal table bolted to the concrete floor stood in the center of the room. A steel hook had been secured to the table with thick bolts. Susan eyed it, momentarily wondering its purpose, while sitting on one of four metal chairs nervously crossing and uncrossing her legs. The murderer of her family would soon walk through that door and Susan feared that she would not be able to contain her deep-rooted hatred for that man.
She set the cup of coffee on the table and shook her head in amazement.
Exactly what are you doing here, Sue? What do you expect to accomplish?
Leads, clues, suggestions, anything!
Troy Reid had shouted before sending her off to Haynesville.
Just be sure to come back with something to keep this investigation alive! The White House is on our asses demanding answers!
She took a deep breath and checked her watch.
Almost five o'clock.
The virus would strike in another three hours and she had no idea what to do different from the day before to learn something new. Her software traps were already deployed andâ
The door creaked open. Susan sat upright, hands on her lap, shoulders aching with tension, hazel eyes zeroing in on the handcuffed figure dressed in a gray jumpsuit flanked by two corpulent security guards, their bulging biceps stretching the short sleeves of their khaki uniforms.
The figure in gray raised his head, brown eyes flashing instant recognition. Bloodaxe abruptly stopped, but his lanky frame could not match the forward momentum of the guards, who lifted him off the ground with ease and sat him in a chair across from Susan.
She took a deep breath, hiding a mix of anger and apprehension at meeting with this man. The smell of cheap cologne assaulted her nostrils.
“Youâwhat in the
hell
is going on?” Bloodaxe, who had grown a beard in the months since the trial, turned his gaunt face to the guard on his left. “Hey, man! What in the fuck's going on? I thought it was my lawyer coming to see me! I don't want to see
her!
”
The guard he was addressing, a large African-American, slapped Bloodaxe in the back of the head, not very hard, but firmly enough to get the inmate's undivided attention. “Quiet, moron. Warden's orders. Now, be nice to the lady, or I'll whack you again.”
“Lady? You're calling
her
a lady? She's the reason I'm stuck in thisâ”
Whack!
“All right, all right! Just stop that, would ya?” Bloodaxe said, rubbing the back of his head as he stared suspiciously at Susan Garnett. The African-American guard planted himself right behind the inmate. The second guard left the room.