Energized (15 page)

Carlos shook his head. “Too trivial for a hack sanctioned by a foreign government. You want my guess? The Chinese this time. Kids, trainees showing off for the props. But where an attack starts, let alone who's behind it, is nigh unto impossible to prove. When you know what you're doing, and the pros do, you work through long chains of anonymous relays.”

“How often…?” Marcus wondered.

“Don't ask,” Carlos said. “If I told you, I'd have to kill you.

“The good news is I didn't see any gaping security holes in the PS-1 design. And kudos on one feature: I approve that core powersat functions like authorizing downlink sites
aren't
network-accessible. What you can't net into, you can't hack.”

“Any other advice, guys?” Marcus asked.

Savannah laughed. “Yeah.
Illegitimi non carborundum.
”

Don't let the bastards wear you down? Easier said than done when geopolitics—or was it the excellent beer?—had Marcus's head spinning. “Is that it for the Russians?”

Carlos nibbled on maki, considering. “They'll pressure us to abort the project. They won't
do
anything.”

“Because they can't?” Marcus said. It didn't seem plausible.

“Because militarizing space is expensive, with too much bad press for whoever goes first. And WMDs in space are illegal by international treaty. No, the Russians will keep claiming
we're
the ones taking that first, illegal step.

“And because the Russian space forces
do
understand your safeties and interlocks. PS-1 isn't a weapon, not as built. After today, my feeling is they don't even need to convince anyone PS-1 is a disguised weapon. It'll suffice to call PS-1 an accident waiting to happen.”

“There has to be a way to make powersats more acceptable.” Marcus picked at his food, wishing he believed himself. In all those town meetings, had he changed any minds?

“Cheap, reliable electricity. That's what people will understand.” Savannah shook her head. “If we don't lose our nerve first.”

*   *   *

Fish scraps swallowed whole did not a meal make, and if the Japanese had any concept of dessert, Marcus had yet to encounter it. Somewhere in Los Angeles a Snickers had his name on it. He was begging off an evening of barhopping when a call from Ellen made excuses moot.

“How'd your call go?” he asked her. She looked drained.

“Interesting,” was all she would admit. “How soon can you get back to the hotel?”

“Once I get a cab, maybe twenty minutes.”

“I'll be in my room.”

He was at her door in twenty-five minutes, after a short cab ride spent surfing news sites. The death-from-the-skies narrative had already begun.

In person Ellen looked even worse than over the phone.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“I've had easier days.” She waved him inside. “Sit. I'll fill you in.”

Marcus took a chair. Ellen sat on the foot of the bed. She said, “Not to keep you in suspense, PS-1 testing can proceed. If we get through this week's review without showstoppers. If we redouble our efforts at test and inspection before going live. If we, government and contractor alike, prove we take our responsibilities seriously.”

“What's a showstopper? Who decides?”

“Our blue-ribbon review panel, for starters. And the administrator will review their findings. And behind the scenes, so will someone from the White House.”

Marcus thought back to his unsettling dinner conversation. “And Resetter pressure? Foreign propaganda?”

“The official guidance is: Prove them wrong.”

“Redouble our efforts.” Marcus gazed out the window, trying to imagine what redoubling would entail. His imagination failed him.

“The administrator and I had a long talk after the conference call. He wants to send an independent inspection team. I'd been considering one anyway.”

“An onsite—on
orbit
inspection?”

“Right.”

“And Phil agreed,” Marcus said dubiously.

“It's not his decision.” Ellen sighed. “I'll miss having you around every day.”

Huh? “You're
firing
me?”

He had immersed himself in this project. He had devoted three years of his life to PS-1. To become some sort of public sacrifice to show NASA was serious?

In his mind's eye, Sean leered.
You're a sucker, bro.

“Fired?” For an instant, Ellen just stared. “Marcus! Of course not! I need a personal representative up there with the inspection team. Someone who knows the system inside and out. Someone I know I can trust.

“Who do you imagine I'd send?”

 

Saturday, August 12

“Then the lobbyist says…” “The old goat doesn't have interns, he has a harem.” “Lost their budget so fast they still don't know what hit them.” “So the deputy undersecretary called over to Interior…”

Ah, Washington gossip.

Soaking it all in—the good, the bad, and mostly the banal—Yakov took his turn manning the grill. Earl Vaughn, friend, neighbor, and host, held court at the bar. People thronged the patio and deck and spilled onto the lawn. Someplace in the press of neighbors and other guests, wherever the conversation was liveliest, Yakov knew his charming wife would be found.

“Oh, crap. It's you.”

A hell of a greeting.
Yakov turned. “Good to see you, too.”

They had a bit of playacting to go through. Tyler Pope, an analyst at the CIA, would pretend not to know Yakov was Federal Security Service. Yakov would pretend not to know he knew Tyler knew. An open question: whether Tyler knew Yakov knew.

Tyler said, “Every time I see a foreign national, it means filing another pain-in-the-ass contact report.” His Texas drawl grated—if not as much as when he chose to practice his Russian.

“I am sorry to be such a burden.” Yakov flipped a row of burgers. “Let me make it up to you. Have some barbecue. Grab a bun.”

“Have you seen the form? My fingers will be bloody stumps before I'm done typing. Give me
something
to report.”

“You can say I buy corn. But, Tyler…” Yakov leaned forward conspiratorially.

“Yes?”

“I think maybe I will continue to buy corn.”

“Thanks a bunch, neighbor. Or should I say, a bushel?”

They exchanged a bit more such nonsense before Tyler went off with a burger. It was all comfortable and familiar. Safe and predictable, if you were logical and thought ahead.

Yakov thought
far
ahead.

As a boy, to be a chess grandmaster had been the limit of his ambition. He could have achieved it, too—of that he was certain. Instead, the Federal Security Service (in its Russian acronym, the FSB) recruited him first. It turned out they recruited many chess prodigies, especially those, like Yakov, also skilled with languages. Nations played their own games, with the entire world as their game board.

Nations had neither permanent friends nor permanent enemies, only permanent interests. But not even nations were permanent: Yakov had watched the Warsaw Bloc come unglued, the Soviet Union break apart, and America's own jetliners turned against her.

The game of nations was more challenging by far than chess, more interesting, and—unlike chess—still far beyond the capabilities of any computer.

Bureaucratic maneuvering was also a game, one at which Yakov excelled. He had climbed rapidly in the ranks of the FSB. With influence at home came his choice of postings abroad. Less patriotic master players chose Stockholm or Paris.
He
had chosen the hellhole that was the Restored Caliphate.

“Allowing” a few old Soviet nukes—rendered subtly unstable—to fall into the hands of the fanatics had been his boldest gambit.

A very successful gambit, too, after which Russia dominated world petroleum markets. Bolivia and Chile controlled the lithium essential for electric car batteries—and Russia could, as needed, coerce Bolivia and Chile. If America was not yet quite prostrate, time was on Russia's side. The game of nations should have ended with the Crudetastrophe—

Only the game of nations, unlike chess, dealt the occasional wildcard.

Phoebe
was a wildcard. The dormant comet had come hurtling, quite literally, out of nowhere. For as long as the Americans controlled Phoebe and its resources, an escape from their dilemma existed for the Western powers.

The powersat project had to fail, and fail so spectacularly that no one would attempt it again. Not until the last drop of petroleum was under contract, and Russia was without rival, and it suited her to reintroduce the technology.

And so, for a little while longer, the game of nations would continue. Russia would still win.
He
would still win. Very soon now.

Allowing a neighbor to relieve him at the grill, Yakov headed for the bar. He felt like celebrating.

*   *   *

Dillon sat in his parked car, windows open for the nonexistent cross breeze, sweating buckets. Only principle kept him from raising the windows and blasting the air conditioner.

Damn
Yakov, anyway.

From a house down the street from where Dillon waited, fuming, happy chatter rose. A neighborhood get-together? He ached to crash the party looking for Yakov, but resisted. What he had to say to the bastard must be said in private.

Dillon turned on the radio. He watched and waited until, finally, singly and in pairs, people began emerging from the backyard gathering. A man and woman came Dillon's way. The woman was blond and fair, entirely ordinary. The man was dark and stocky, his features broad, his salt-and-pepper hair thick and unruly—almost like fur. Everything about him hinted at ancestors from the Eurasian steppes. Yakov, damn him, Brodsky.

Dillon got out of his car.

Yakov said something in Russian to the woman, presumably his wife, who nodded and went into a house. “I am surprised to see you here,” Yakov said. “McLean is off your beaten path, I should think.”

“I've been leaving messages for more than a week. You didn't return my calls.” You bastard.

“I have been busy.” Yakov gestured at his front walk. “Very well, come inside. I trust you had a pleasant drive from New York?”

Nothing about today could be pleasant. Giving no response, Dillon followed Yakov up the front walk, inside the house, and into a dark, book-lined study. A magnificent chessboard, black onyx and white marble inlaid into a mahogany tabletop, stood beside the desk. The wooden chess pieces, intricately carved, were lustrous.

With a flick of the wrist, Dillon disdained offers of a drink and a seat.

“As you wish.” Yakov poured vodka for himself. “What is so urgent?”

“I thought we had a
partnership
.”

“We do. A very productive one, to my way of thinking.”

“Did, Yakov. We did have a partnership. Past tense.”

The picture of nonchalance, Yakov settled into the leather wing chair behind the desk. His drink sat untouched. “My sources identify interesting start-up ventures. Your company gets my experts inside those ventures for a closer look at new technologies. Together we discourage … unfortunate … new infrastructure. The arrangement serves us both.”

Amazing! The bastard dared to imply a moral equivalence.

They had—
had
had—a marriage of convenience. When they met, long ago, at a glitzy Manhattan high-tech expo, Dillon had thought himself
so
clever to have enlisted the resources of a Russian trade representative.

Too late Dillon understood who had recruited whom.

He said, “You want high energy prices out of pure greed. I want high prices to save the planet.
Someone
has to force people to reduce their impact on Mother Earth.”

Yakov took a pawn and began rolling it between fingers and thumb. “As you say, we both aspire to high energy prices. I fail to see what troubles you.”

“People
died,
damn it!” Only a few caged animals in the Nature Conservancy's wildlife research center were supposed to roast, and
that
had been difficult enough for Dillon to accept. True, he hoped humanity would develop the wisdom to let itself become extinct. That was a far cry from slaughtering a little girl. “Innocent people, Yakov.”

“A few dead birds would not have served my purpose, so our people pointed the transmitter elsewhere. But be at peace. The man owned a yacht. How innocent could he be?”

A not-so-veiled threat? Dillon owned a yacht, too, and Yakov knew it. “You and I are through. Your engineers no longer work for me, no longer will have access to … anything I see.
That
is what I came to tell you. You can forget we ever met.”

“I think not.”

“It isn't for you to decide.” Trembling with rage, Dillon turned to leave.

“You must see something before you go.” Yakov smiled dangerously. “I promise. It will be worth your while.”

Setting down the pawn, Yakov pressed a thumb against the sensor pad on his desk. Emitting a red laser beam, the computer—no mere datasheet—scanned his face, seeming to linger on an eye. The computer announced something in Russian and the beam disappeared.

“With certain information, one cannot be too careful.” Yakov typed a long string of commands. Finally, he turned the display so that Dillon could see.

Video, but of what? The color balance was odd. Night vision? As the imagery jittered and bounced, Dillon needed a few seconds to parse a gigantic pillar rising from the sea and a man waiting on a spidery catwalk.

The vessel with the camera glided to a stop, and the image stabilized. The camera zoomed into a tight close-up of a face.
Dillon's
face. Sick to his stomach, he saw himself lower the gangplank and welcome three men dressed all in black onto the oil platform.