The Florentine Deception (39 page)

I tried the right drawer and found a stack of yellowing exams. A thin, shiny-covered picture book sat partially covered at the base of the drawer under the stack. I pulled it out.
How Animals Hide: Camouflage Techniques of the Animal Kingdom
read the title. I flipped through the glossy color photos, catching successive glimpses of a salamander, a stick insect, and a flounder in the blur of pages. Who knew that flounder could change their skin colors? Not me.

I dropped the book back on top of the stack and eased the drawer shut.

Then the solution hit me like a load of bricks, or rather a net full of flounder.

Chapter 61

I raced back to Amir's laptop, grabbed a soda from the refrigerator, and in just five minutes had created a new payload, actually two new payloads—my plan required a two-phase approach—and saved them under the names Flounder1.dat and Flounder2.dat. In another three minutes, I'd selected two new authentication keys—the next two from the bottom of the list of ten—picked a new cancellation password, and prepared the two command lines to submit my new payloads to the Microsoft Update servers. Eight minutes flat: an Occam's razor solution if there ever was one. Assuming the approach was sound—and this, I wanted Amir to corroborate—all I needed to do was hit the Enter key twice to submit the two payloads, and Khalimmy's impending attack would be fully neutralized, with little collateral damage, by five minutes after ten a.m. on Wednesday morning.

But where was Amir? I had no way of contacting him without leaving the Cellar, so I returned to the laptop and began reviewing my logic, running through every possible contingency. I couldn't find any flaws, but I needed him to double check. I rubbed my eyes and looked over at the wall clock. He'd been gone for nearly two hours.

Something was definitely wrong.

I tucked the laptop under my arm, then worked my way around the piles to the Cellar's exit. Amir hadn't left me his keycard, so I grabbed several thick manuals from the nearest desk and propped open the door as I left. Just in case.

If I wasn't mistaken, and it
had
been a long time, Nelson Keller's office was in a suite on the fourth floor. The emeritus professor, who was considered prehistoric when I was an undergrad and prattled incessantly about programming with punch cards, was almost certainly near death at this point. I took off toward the northwest stairwell to head up.

I reached the pair of glass doors leading from the atrium to the second-floor hallway, pulled the door open halfway, and stopped cold; standing no more than ten feet down the hall was a solid-looking guy in a blue suit, a cellphone at his ear, talking in what could only be described as agitated Russian.

How the hell did they find me? I eased the door closed, and just as I released the handle, the man turned around and headed for the elevator. He nodded to me curtly as he passed. I nodded back, as nonchalantly as possible, then did an about-face and began walking unhurriedly back to Cellar. At about ten steps from the Cellar door, I heard his voice again. I turned my head reflexively to look back; his eyes stared intently at me as he continued talking calmly into the phone in Russian. I kept walking.

When I reached the Cellar door, I took another look back—the phone was gone and the guy was surveying the atrium warily. Then his right hand reached inside his navy blue coat.

I wrenched open the door, kicked the manuals out of the way and slammed it shut behind me. I'd be safe for the time being—the guy wasn't going to raise hell blasting through the metal door with a pistol. I scanned the dimly lit grotto for a campus phone to call 911. Nothing. Nor did Amir have one in his vault.

My mind blanked as I tried to concentrate, to identify my options. Then I heard it: the click of the metal door's lock. Somehow the guy had obtained a keycard. Shit.

The door opened slowly, just a crack, casting a narrow strip of light along the right wall. Acting entirely on instinct, I threw my body up against the door, slamming it shut, then slapped my hand down on the light switch and dashed around the back of the closest heap of junk. The room was now totally dark. Laptop under my left arm, right hand out in front, I edged forward on my knees toward the back of the room.

The door clicked again, then opened. An instant later, the overhead fluorescents flickered back to life. This was it. I was dead.

“Excuse me,” came a voice—Amir's voice—from outside. “Can I help you?”

“Building maintenance,” said the man in brusque, Russian-accented English.

“I'm sorry, but this is a restr …”

I didn't wait for Amir to finish. I rose, fumbled left around a dented, six-foot-tall metal-mainframe chassis, and sprinted toward the rear door.

Expecting it to stick from years of disuse, I wrenched the handle and the door flew outward, nearly slamming into my face as I reeled backward. I dropped down and inched through the doorway, yanking the door shut behind me.

The cinderblock walls of the tunnel stretched off a good fifty or more feet without any obvious hiding places so I took off, sidestepping down the corridor to avoid the angry-looking plumbing, wiring, and electrical boxes strapped along both walls. After about thirty seconds of gentle uphill travel, the narrow passage opened up into a four-way intersection.

I was now almost certainly under the Court of the Sciences, or maybe a bit farther east, under the Geology building or Young Hall. While I hadn't navigated the steam tunnels before, I'd heard endless stories about ways to access the network of passageways, and if my memory served me, a doorway in the basement of Franz Hall was my closest option for escape. I turned left into the wider artery, heading toward north campus and Franz Hall, Amir's laptop cradled under my left arm. With each step, the heat increased. It was now easily eighty degrees and uncomfortably humid; overhead, bare light bulbs hung from aging PVC piping bolted into the concrete ceiling, painting the tunnel's walls a harsh, artificial white.

The passage took a hard right turn after another hundred and fifty feet or so. I turned to look back but as I did, the cement wall to my left exploded in burst of tiny fragments.

Shit. I dashed right and sprinted about fifteen feet, then hit another T-shaped intersection. If my mental map was correct, I was either under or nearly under Franz Hall. I turned right toward the south, hoping to find an exit into Franz's basement. Behind me I heard echoes of running footsteps—he was getting closer. The passage veered left again. I followed the bend, walked four steps, and ran into a solid wooden door bearing a plaque labeled “Franz Basement.”

I grabbed the metal doorknob and cranked it counterclockwise. The knob hesitated a millisecond, then twisted clear off the door and into my hand. “Dead end,” I whispered to myself, “literally.” A large drop of sweat trickled down from my right temple onto my cheek.

Louder footsteps, more hesitant now. He couldn't be more than fifteen or twenty feet away. I had a fifty-fifty chance. If he veered left at the T, he'd almost certainly get lost in the larger network of tunnels heading to the north campus. If he chose right, it was game over.

Even odds were unacceptable. I edged up to the bend and hurled the doorknob north, past the last intersection, then backed up and stood deathly still. Before the knob finished clattering along the floor, the Russian bolted northward after it. I lingered until his footfalls faded and then walked stealthily back around the loop, sprinting once I reached the main north-south artery.

One thing was clear. Whether or not I ultimately survived, I needed to launch the antidote as soon as possible. With God-knows-how-many other Russian agents patrolling the Engineering school, I couldn't afford to vet my solution with Amir, assuming he was even still alive. Any delay, and I might not get a second chance.

I slowed as I approached the four-way intersection, turned right, and began sidestepping down the middle of the narrow passage back to the Cellar.

I reached for the door handle, then jerked reflexively as a pipe a few feet behind my head exploded in a blistering burst of steam. A second bullet smacked into the wooden door in front of me. I pulled the door open and jumped through, slamming it shut behind me, then made a split-second decision—I needed at least thirty uninterrupted seconds to launch the attack, and while Amir's storage vault was a dead end and a likely death sentence, the atrium offered no cover whatsoever; I'd be a sitting duck. I slalomed around the piles toward Amir's vault, kicked up its doorstop, and slammed the door closed.

The first of the shots smacked into the metal door just as the laptop finished waking from its hibernation mode. The Russian rattled the door, then fired another shot into the lock. A combination of fear and adrenaline caused my fingers to shake near uncontrollably, but I managed to switch windows and hit the Enter key to launch the first phase of my antidote. The program launched and quickly printed “
обработка
…” then paused a second, then two, then three.

Why was it taking so long? Was it working?

I heard a kick, then another, and turned to see the metal door crash open. I returned my gaze to the screen and switched windows to launch the second phase of my cure but before I could hit the Enter key, my body lurched forward and onto the desk. No pain, somehow, but the gunshot's blast registered a millisecond later in my ears. I heard a second blast and a scream, probably my own, as my vision grayed and I lost consciousness.

Chapter 62

“Alex, can you hear me?”

“Mmmmmm?”

“I think he's awake,” said my mother, excitedly. “Alex?”

“Yes,” I said, my mouth unbelievably dry. “Can I get some …” The word wouldn't come.

“Water?” responded my mother. I felt a hand, her hand, squeeze and then let go of mine.

“Yes.”

My mind latched on to the rhythmic beeping of a heart rate monitor—I was in a hospital. Again. I tried to sit up but was rewarded with searing pain in my back and stomach. I groaned and tried to open my eyes. That lasted all of about two seconds.

“Don't move, Alex.” It was my father.

“Here,” said Mom. She inserted a straw into my mouth and I sipped weakly. When she removed the straw, she continued. “Need anything else?”

“No,” I said, again fixating on the pulsating beeps. Beep … Beep … Beep …“What … what happened to …” The name wouldn't come.

“To who, Alex?”

I couldn't remember. “The world is going to end,” I mumbled.

“No, everything's going to be fine, honey. Just rest and everything will be fine.”

I tried to concentrate. Why was the world going to end? “The world is going to end at … ten. What time is it?” I tried to sit up again. Again, stabbing pain. The monitor's beeping quickened.

“No honey, everything's going to be fine. Just relax.”

I was certain she was wrong, but I wasn't sure exactly why. “
Moooommmm
,” I pleaded.

“It's actually a few minutes before ten, Alex. You'll see, everything will be just fine. You're just a little sedated right now so you're having strange thoughts. It will pass soon.”

“Amir!” I cried. It was slowly coming back. I opened my eyes again. My mother and father blurred in and out of focus. “Can I get some more water?” Mom placed the straw between my lips and I drank again, this time until I was sucking air. “More?”

“Who's Amir?” asked my father.

“Amir is … Amir …” I couldn't quite find the words to explain. “But is he okay?”

I heard a pouring noise and shifted my gaze over to Mom, but couldn't focus on her.

“We don't know who Amir is, honey,” she said. “Can you tell us?”

I couldn't. I shook my head weakly. Beep … Beep … Beep …

“The world is going to end at ten a.m. … on …” then it came to me, “Wednesday.”

“No, honey, everything will be fine. Here, take another sip.”

Again, she placed the straw between my lips and I sucked.

Then the heart monitor stopped beeping.

Three seconds later, the lights went out.

Chapter 63

Four weeks later

Baltimore, Maryland

“I think we're ready to begin, Mr. Fife.”

I gave a thumbs-up to the agent. Amir, seated next to me in an ill-fitting gray suit, an arm sling, and his signature Mickey Mouse watch, patted me on the back with his good arm and delivered the proud smile of a father as I rose to take my place behind the podium.

“Good afternoon, everyone.” The agent tapped on the microphone several times to quiet the audience, then continued, “Good afternoon. Today I'm pleased to introduce our speaker, Mr. Alex Fife. Mr. Fife will be briefing our team on the recent Iranian-initiated Florentine cyber-attack. Before we begin, I needn't remind any of you that this briefing has been classified top secret. Alex,” he smiled at me, “your reputation already precedes you here at the NSA, but for those who have been conducting signal intelligence in Antarctica over the last few years, let me give a brief bio….”

“Thank you, that was very kind,” I said once he finished. I removed a stack of notecards from my suit pocket and walked behind the podium. Before me sat nearly two dozen agents from various three-letter American and Israeli agencies. I smiled at the crowd.

“Hello everyone. I'm excited to be here, and frankly happy to be alive at this point—the past month and a half have been quite harrowing. Before I begin, I'd like to say a few words about your colleague, Doctor Arnold Altschiller. By now, you all probably know that Doctor Altschiller was murdered four weeks ago, while in service to his country. While Doctor Altschiller was obviously one of the world's, no,
the
world's most influential cryptographer, he was also an inspiration and role model. And in fact his career—his discoveries and innovations—are what inspired me to pursue my career in cyber-security. So I owe Doctor Altschiller a great personal debt, as does our country.” I took a sip of water, then cleared my throat and continued.