Game Changer (27 page)

“Oliver Wendell Holmes,” said Rachel.

Regev smiled. “I should have known you’d be familiar.”

“This
is all very fascinating,” said Quinn. “But let’s get back to Kovonov. What the
hell is going on now?”

“I’m
getting there,” said Regev. “And trust me, this background is useful. When the
first breakthroughs were made, Kovonov didn’t test this on himself. The
government wouldn’t let him take the risk. You make gambits with your pawns and
knights, not your queen.”

“So
you had others take the shakedown cruise,” said Quinn.

Regev
nodded. “After fourteen months with no discernible issues in hundreds of test
subjects, and with no discernible behavioral or brain abnormalities, Kovonov
insisted he be allowed to use his own invention. And he went hog wild with it,”
added Regev. He raised his eyebrows. “Although this may be one of your idioms
that isn’t strictly kosher.”

Quinn
smiled, but Rachel’s face remained serious. “
How
hog wild?” she asked.

“He
sucked up many times more knowledge than any other subject had before. Other
than you, he had already been the world’s leading authority on the scientific
principles of Matrix Learning, but he had every other neuroscience discipline flashed
into his brain as well. And not just neuroscience. Physics. Computer science.
Robotics.”

“Isn’t
there a limit to how much knowledge you can shove into a brain?” asked Quinn.

Regev
gestured toward Rachel with his head, indicating that she was the right person
to answer.

“I’m
sure there is,” she replied. “But the limits aren’t precisely clear. With a
hundred billion neurons and almost infinite number of possible connections, the
brain’s capacity is very, very high. Consider a foreign language. Fluency
requires a very broad knowledge of vocabulary, syntax, and so on. Yet a cardinal
named Giuseppe Mezzofanti, born in 1774, was known to have spoken thirty-eight
languages and forty dialects. John Browning, a governor of Hong Kong in the
eighteen hundreds, claimed to speak a hundred languages, although I doubt this
is accurate. But you get the point.”

Quinn
nodded. He had taken Spanish in college but was horrible at it. He couldn’t
imagine being fluent in even two languages, let alone dozens.
 

“Using
this extensive knowledge base,” continued Regev, “and with the help of his
team, Kovonov went on to make quite a few advances in neuroscience. Advances
that could all be used in scary ways in the wrong hands.” He gestured at
Rachel. “The very ways you lecture about.”

The
Harvard professor nodded, looking more troubled than ever.

“I
must have missed these lectures,” said Quinn. “What scary uses are we talking
about?”
 

“If
you truly understand the brain there are all kinds of levers to push on,” said
Regev. “Memory implantation, as you know better than anyone. And memory erasure,
of course. But addiction, sex drive, rage, depression, and many others
—
all can be impacted if you know the right place and
manner to push.”

“Davinroy
mentioned Pandora’s box in the vid-meet,” said Rachel. “But this is the
true
Pandora’s box.”

“I’m
still not sure I’m grasping the possibilities the way you two are,” said Quinn.

“Take
sex drive as one example,” said Rachel. “Imagine if you could manipulate this.
Ratchet it up to obsessive levels. A woman who wouldn’t think of cheating on
her husband becomes insanely hypersexual and seduces a co-worker. You could use
this to ruin people. Lie in wait and then blackmail them. Sex has brought down
empires. The Trojan War, which many scholars believe is loosely based on actual
history, was started over the lust for the beautiful Helen of Troy. Bill Clinton
almost lost the presidency because he couldn’t resist oral sex with an intern. And
don’t forget the example of the forty-year-old who suddenly became sexually
obsessed with children.”

“Okay
then,” said Quinn, putting on a disturbed expression. “Thanks. This does paint
a vivid picture.”

“Kovonov
wanted badly to use these neuroscience advances against Israel’s enemies,” said
Regev. “Forgive the language, but in the Mossad, we thought of these
capabilities collectively as
fucking with
people’s minds
.”

Quinn
had to admit that as inelegant as this phrase was, it got the point across well.

“Kovonov
was zealously patriotic about his adopted homeland,” continued Regev. “He argued
that Israel shouldn’t hold back against the barbaric hordes devoted to our
destruction. If we had the upper hand, we should press our advantage. Kish
tended to side with him, while
my
boss, Avi Wortzman, was adamantly opposed.”

Regev
paused. “Wortzman is in a tough business, but he strives to be as ethical as possible.
He has Nietzsche’s warning framed in his office, the one about not letting the
battle with monsters turn you into one. He argued that the fly drone invention,
a direct result of the Matrix Learning program, and other tech that resulted,
gave Israel more than enough of an advantage. While he supported using advanced
technology to defeat our enemies, he drew the line at fucking with people’s minds.
That was beyond the pale.”

Amen to that
,
thought Quinn.

But
while this was his immediate reaction, he could well understand those Israeli factions
in favor of using every arrow in the quiver. After more than seventy years of
being surrounded by those who had made repeated attempts to destroy them, it
would take impressive ethical resolve not to use all the weapons at their
disposal. Especially against ruthless groups that wouldn’t hesitate to do the
same, with no ethical qualms whatsoever. In 1973, Syria and Egypt joined forces
to invade Israel on Yom Kippur, the most holy day of the Jewish year, when Israeli
soldiers were fasting and in prayer
—
something
Israel would never consider doing in reverse.

“Wortzman
also argued there was a logistical hurdle to overcome,” continued Regev, “before
these neuroscience capabilities could be deployed, anyway. Kovonov would need
to invent a way to manipulate brains less invasively. Like Rachel mentioned in
her lecture. Not requiring them to plug in like Neo, or even like we were
doing, but remotely. Wirelessly. Until this was perfected, mind tampering
wouldn’t be all that useful. Say you wanted to implant a memory in the leader
of Iran. First you’d have to kidnap him, bring him back to our facility, inject
implants, and then stick him in a machine. Not very stealthy. You could then
make him forget this happened, but still . . .
 
Best case, this would require a lengthy abduction.”

“Given
Kevin’s false memories,” said Rachel, “this seems like a hurdle Kovonov was
able to overcome. Unless you’re suggesting he captured Kevin and transported
him to Israel and back.”

“No.
Kovonov must have found a more portable, less invasive solution,” agreed Regev.
“But let me go on. We can circle back to this in a few minutes.”

“Okay,”
said Rachel. “I believe you were saying that Kish and Wortzman disagreed over
the use of some of these advances.”

“Since
this disputed tech was used on
me
,”
said Quinn, “the prime minister must have won the day.”

Regev
shook his head. “The opposite. Wortzman convinced Kish he was right. Together
they made sure the lid to Pandora’s box remained nailed shut.”

Quinn
squinted in confusion, but only for a moment. “I see,” he said, as the answer
became clear to him. “So Kovonov must have decided to take his toys and leave,
refusing to abide by these restrictions. Which means the part of your story
about him going rogue was true. But not because he was still loyal to Russia.
But because he had lost an argument with Kish and Wortzman.”

Regev
sighed. “If only it were that simple,” he said miserably.

42

“We’ve been in place for some time now,” reported the life-sized floating
head of Daniel Eisen in Hebrew.

“How goes the recon of our evangelicals?” asked Kovonov.

“Quite well. We’ve surveiled the proceedings on our own and have now set
up electronic surveillance in key locations. My confidence is high that this
will go off without a hitch.”

“It had better. This is one reason I chose this group, and this venue,
from among all the possibilities. They should be ripe for the taking.”

Kovonov told his underling when he planned to arrive and they discussed logistics.
“While you’re waiting for me,” he said, “I want you to locate a Middle Eastern Islamic
terrorist somewhere in the States. Preferably one long affiliated with ISIS.
Make this your highest priority.”

“I don’t understand,” said Eisen. “Do you have intel that one is planning
an imminent attack?”

“One is
always
planning an
imminent attack. But no, I have no specific intel.”

“And you aren’t interested in a
specific
terrorist. Any one will do?”

“That’s correct.”

“Does it matter if they are at large or in custody?”

Kovonov shook his head. “I’d prefer at large, but either way will work.
As long as they’re part of ISIS and not an American citizen. A home-grown
terrorist is no good to me.”

“I’ll have to pan through US intel for this,” noted Eisen. “Once the
Americans become aware of a foreign terrorist within their borders, they
usually don’t leave them at large for long.”

“Understood,” said Kovonov, frowning. He had planned to get Azim Jafari
to deliver the terrorist they needed, but this was no longer an option. Oh
well. Kovonov was smart and had his fingers deep into the US intelligence
apparatus. He had no doubt he would find what he needed soon enough.

“Can you tell me
why
this is
such a high priority?” said Eisen. “And your plans once such a man is
identified?”

“I can’t tell you that right now. But I’ll make all of my plans clear in
due course.”

Eisen stared at Kovonov’s virtual image for several seconds, not happy
about being kept in the dark, but finally nodded. “Okay, Dmitri. I’ll get on
this right away.”

“Good,” said Kovonov. “I’ll be in touch.”

43

Quinn’s
intuition told him everything the Israeli was saying was the truth, although he
had to admit he had thought the same before. Intuition might be more perceptive
than conscious reasoning at times, but it was far from perfect.

Still,
Regev’s answers to questions were quick and well thought out and had an impeccable
logical consistency. And how many ways could the explanation of known facts be
contorted, tortured, before the truth became the only remaining option with any
chance of being believable?

“About
two months ago,” said Regev, “two researchers on our Matrix Learning team began
behaving erratically. And not because their memories were tampered with. What
we told your president about that isn’t true. We thought it was the best way to
convince your people that Kevin had been manipulated. So they would be on their
guard and so they would let us recruit the two of you.”
 
 

Quinn
was familiar with the expression
wheels
within wheels
, but what the Israelis had done took this to an entirely new
level. Without question lying to achieve specific ends took more brilliance and
creativity than telling the truth.

“We
monitored these two researchers and came to realize that they had become
delusional. Paranoid. Megalomaniacal. There was a lot more to the diagnosis,
but I’m not a psychiatrist. Let’s just say that their grip on sanity wasn’t
what it used to be. But what was most alarming was that these two were among
the first subjects to undergo the Matrix Learning procedure. One had done so
two months after the very first test subject, and one three months after. ”

“Uh-oh,”
said Rachel grimly.

“Uh-oh
is right,” replied Regev. “It would be accurate to say the Mossad was more than
just panicked. It threw us into a
frenzy
.
We put considerable resources into analyzing what might have happened, and began
careful evaluations of all subjects who had undergone the procedure during the
first six months of its use.”

Regev
seemed shaken to the core, even from just the recounting of these events. After
several seconds of hesitation, he took a deep breath, gathered himself, and
continued. “Then, about a month ago, Dmitri Kovonov did exactly what we said he
had. He killed four members of the fly drone team, took their inventory, and
destroyed the factory.”

“Didn’t
you say he waited fourteen months after Matrix Learning came online to try it?”
said Rachel.

“Yes.”

Rachel’s
eyes narrowed in thought. “But he had crammed in ten times as much knowledge as
anyone else,” she said, almost as though talking to herself.

“Excellent,”
said Regev. “You’ve grasped the situation immediately, of course. Seems the
procedure does have one or two problematic . . . side effects . . . after all. As
you already deduced, we concluded that Kovonov had gone insane as well, and
that his procedure was responsible. Although we didn’t see the possibility of
the equation you’re alluding to
—
even
though we
should
have
—
until after Kovonov’s actions.”

“What
equation?” said Quinn.

“The
procedure eventually leads to insanity,” said Regev. “But
when
this will happen depends on a complex combination of two
factors. One, the length of time after first exposure to the procedure. And
two, the cumulative amount of information implanted. The very first subject
this was used on barely had anything implanted, and is still doing fine. Like
Rachel deduced, Kovonov, even though he avoided the procedure for over a year,
used it extensively, so was impacted earlier than all but two of the rest.”

“So
Kovonov went rogue,” said Quinn, “not because he isn’t loyal to Israel. But
because he’s stark raving mad.”

“Yes.”

“Well
that’s
much
better,” snapped Quinn
sarcastically.

“This
is a disaster of epic proportions,” said Eyal with a fierce scowl. “Dmitri
Kovonov was a fine man. He may have argued for more widespread use of his
neurotech, but he wasn’t a killer. Quite the opposite. But now, like we told
your president, we have a brilliant man wielding a game-changing technology
—
more
than one, but we didn’t tell that to your people
—
who is off the reservation. Ruthless, driven, and
unpredictable. Almost certainly suffering from paranoia and megalomania.”

“Yeah,
nothing bad can happen from that combination,” said Quinn in disgust.

“He
also managed to recruit a number of our best people when he left. Maybe they
were enticed by the prospect of finally pulling out all the stops to destroy
Israel’s enemies. Or maybe he used his tech to, um . . . fuck with their brains.”
Regev shrugged. “We only know the end result.”

“And
you have no idea where they went?” said Quinn.

“We’re
working on it, but with little success. In addition to taking a number of sympathizers
with him, we believe he left several behind as well, who are helping him elude
us. We’ve recently taken to trusting only a few handpicked agents with details
of our manhunt.”

“Let
me be sure I have this right,” said Quinn. “Kovonov is off somewhere with a
group of followers who are brilliant, have more knowledge packed into their
skulls than even the most experienced operatives, and are armed with fly drones
and numerous other breakthrough technologies. And don’t forget, know all of
your agents, your methods, and your secrets.” Quinn raised his eyebrows. “Not
to mention many of
ours
. And you’re
nowhere close to finding them.”

“You
forget to mention a group led by a man who is now ruthless and willing to do
anything to achieve his goals. And also that his followers will begin their own
descent into madness over the months and years ahead.”

“Sorry,”
said Quinn wryly. “I didn’t mean to sugarcoat the situation.”

“You
think you’re saying that ironically,” said Regev. “But you aren’t.”

“What
does
that
mean?”

“It
means that this story gets a lot worse,” whispered the Israeli. “Matrix
Learning was so effective it was irresistible to the higher-ups in Israel. They
used it to flash-educate themselves as well. Wortzman. Kish. Numerous others.”
He paused, a horrified expression on his face. “The entire upper level strata
of Israel’s government and military will eventually go mad.”

For
the first time, Quinn’s mouth dropped open.

“Not
to mention all the scientists and diamonds in the rough we used this on,” continued
Regev, “many who are now CEOs of our companies.”

“Incredible,”
said Rachel in dismay. “You’ve managed to turn scores of the most brilliant,
accomplished, and powerful people in your country
—
with knowledge of the most advanced technology base
in the world
—
into ticking time bombs.”

Regev
nodded solemnly.

“It’s
hard to imagine how you could have possibly screwed yourself any worse,” said
Quinn.

This
seemed to shake Regev from his depression. Strength and resolve returned to his
features. “When we told your government about how we stopped imminent attempts
by Iran and North Korea to use nuclear weapons, this was true. So while things
don’t look good, we owe our very existence to the Matrix Learning program.
Without it, Israel and Washington both would be radioactive wastelands. If we
could go back in time, we’d still do the same thing we did. We were enormously
lucky to get it to work, and now the universe is evening the scales by hitting
us with an enormous dose of
bad
luck.”

“How
good is your computer model when it comes to the onset of madness?” said
Rachel. “Can you get any sense of precision from just three data points?”

“We
can’t be certain, but we think so. Our model would have predicted the timing of
the first three cases with great accuracy. The good news, if there can be any,
is that we have about three months before the next of our people go over the
cliff. After that it will be a steady drip, drip, drip. Fifteen to twenty
months from now, an avalanche of people will be affected, although most of them
don’t know anything about this yet. We’re debating what actions to take as each
victim approaches their tipping point. Surveillance, at minimum. Sedation?
House arrest? Imprisonment? There are no easy answers.”

Regev
paused and there was an extended silence in the room as the two Americans
struggled to digest the unthinkable.

“There
is only one answer that isn’t catastrophic on a number of levels,” continued Regev
finally. “We need to learn why this is happening. We need to find a way to stop
it. Reverse it. Everything depends on this. And not just for our country. Even
if we discount Israel tearing itself to shreds and the collateral damage that
is bound to follow, the threat to the entire world that Kovonov poses, all by
himself, is off the scale.”

“And
you have no idea what’s causing it?” said Quinn.

“No.
It’s subtle, whatever it is. Neurons and brain structure look normal. Our best
people are mystified.”

“That’s
why Rachel is so critical to you,” said Quinn. “Isn’t it? Because she’s the
only neuroscientist alive more brilliant than Kovonov. Not to mention having
the added advantage of being
sane
.”

Regev
nodded. “We see her as our only real chance. We hoped to convince her to lead a
team to find a cure for whatever this is. In a hurry. Secondarily, we hoped she
could help find a way to detect when a mind has been tampered with along the
way.”

The
Israeli turned to Rachel. “It is a lot to ask, and the stakes couldn’t be
higher. That’s why I enrolled in your class. So we could get to know each
other. So we could increase our chances of successfully recruiting you. Everything
depended on it. As important as we portrayed you in our fabricated story to
President Davinroy, it turns out you’re a hundred times more important in
reality.”

Rachel blinked rapidly, dumbfounded by these revelations.

“Our intent would be to disclose to you everything we know. How our
system works and all of our data. We could leapfrog you many years ahead of
where you are now.”

“What, using Matrix Learning?” said Quinn in disgust.

Regev nodded reluctantly. “We’re running out of time,” he
explained. “Once we’ve loaded all the information we have on our Matrix
Learning program into her brain, we would plan to load additional fields that
she could draw upon for a solution. Computer science, physics, medicine,
mathematics. Far lesser scientists than her have made huge breakthroughs after our
procedure. The extension of their working knowledge helped to spark unprecedented
connections between seemingly unrelated ideas and fields.”

Rachel shook her head in disbelief. “So your plan is to hit me
with the same tech you know leads to insanity?”

“Believe me, I know how much we’d be asking. But I’m not sure you
can fully appreciate the stakes even now. We’re desperate. More than desperate.
My trip here to begin to recruit you is one of the most important assignments
ever given. Maybe a lesser scientist will solve this, but you are our best
hope. If you refuse, or if you fail, the world faces catastrophic consequences.
But if you succeed, you probably save millions of lives, and perfect a
technology that has been your lifelong dream.”

Rachel nodded slowly. “Is that everything?” she said. “I want to
be sure you’ve put everything on the table before I tell you what I’m thinking.”

“Yes. That’s all of it.”

“No it’s not,” said Quinn. “You’re close, Eyal. But we’re not quite
finished yet.”