The Term Sheet: A Startup Thriller Novel (4 page)

P
olice had blocked
off the celebration areas the night before, but people started streaming into the streets at dawn. By breakfast, the crowds were in full force. There were flags and banners everywhere. People started cheering slogans that didn’t quite rhyme and barely made sense, like “Let’s go Mike, this time it’s right” and “Two more years, John’s our beard.” Election Day had begun.

Shawn and his team had been working through the night on logistics. Though the morning had been going smoothly so far, he was in a sour mood and everyone knew it.

“Sir, Congressman Jones from Minnesota has just arrived,” said Brandon Frank while staring intently at his iPad. “High winds made the landing pretty rough, though.” The Secret Service didn’t usually keep track of senators and congressmen, but for Election Day, Shawn was put in charge of all travel. His boss had told him they needed a bigger picture and more centralized access to information, but Shawn thought it had more to do with recent budget cuts.

“That’s fine. What about the train schedules?”

“All trains have reported on time so far. Extra security has been posted at all the stations.” Brandon scratched his head and adjusted his glasses.

“Check them again, and get it right,” barked Shawn.

The temporary transportation headquarters tent had been set up on Constitution Ave. NW near the Washington Monument, the epicenter of this year’s Election Day Celebration. Outside the tent were three large black buses with electronics and antennas coming out from all sides. Near the buses were a line of militarized Hummers carrying gas generators and a satellite dish soaring fifty feet in the air. Surrounding all this were rows of police cars with all their lights flashing like the Fourth of July. Compared to the outward military appearance, the inside of the tent looked more like an operating room.

Shawn walked up and down the three rows of desks, looking over shoulders at large screens with people on phones yelling status updates to each other. As he approached the third line of desks, filled with maps and checklists, the tent flexed and billowed slightly in a gust of wind. He re-reviewed the printouts with flight schedules, car schedules, and train schedules for all public figures and family members leading up to, during, and following the day’s events. It was one of the biggest events of the year.

“Air Force One has landed,” yelled Abigail from the corner.

“Brandon. Show me the routes we have planned for the president’s ride to the Mall.” The table of papers in front of Shawn was cleared and a large map was spread out, filling most of the table. Though Brandon had suggested that Shawn use digital maps, Shawn insisted on redundant paper copies of every important plan and route.

“Here are the main and secondary routes.” Brandon pointed at the red and blue lines on a sheet of paper that featured an atlas of information, including the locations of gas stations, office buildings, and even fire hydrant level details. “Police have blocked off the main route.”

“The president’s in the Beast,” said Abigail.

“Redirect the police blockade to the secondary route right now. Tell the driver to use the secondary route.”

Shawn’s staff scattered and started yelling orders into their radios.

“The main route goes over a train line. Jesus Christ, Brandon, why am I the first one to catch this?”

“We have eyes on every train within ten miles of the president, sir.” Brandon scurried through his notes. “There’s nothing wrong with this route.”

Shawn looked indignant.

“I don’t care, there is no need to take unnecessary risks. Redirect the president to the secondary route right now. Why the fuck are we arguing about this?”

“Yes, sir.” Brandon was nearly hiding behind his iPad.

“I swear to god, if you say sir to me one more time…”

“The president’s on the secondary route now and the police blockade has been moved. Mall arrival in twenty-three minutes.” Abigail held a hand to her ear to hear an update. “Senator McMinniman from Oregon has just landed.”

“Make sure no other cars cross any train lines for the rest of the day. Go.” More of Shawn’s staff scurried off to their radios and computers.

Shawn had not found any more messages since the newsgroup went quiet seven months earlier. The now-abandoned email addresses had been run through a series of anonymizers and proxies which led nowhere. But that made Shawn even more convinced that something was imminent. It was too quiet. Against Shawn’s adamant recommendation, six California congressmen insisted on a grand entrance in an old steam train to a turntable surrounded by press promoting a Green Party stunt. Shawn tried to explain to the congressmen that the steam came from burning coal, but the point seemed lost on them.

“Brandon, when is the Green Party train stunt happening?”

“Twenty minutes; it was scheduled for eleven but Congressman Dernier was late. Apparently he had been celebrating a little heavily the night before.”

Abigail looked up from her computer, growing panic on her face. “Sir, there is a problem with the president.”

Shawn and half of the team rushed over to Abigail’s workstation. “What’s going on?” said Shawn with clenched fists.

“We re-routed the president, but the secondary route has a roadblock. Division Avenue is shut down due to a water main break,” explained Abigail. The pressure was high, but she kept her composure. “I looked for ways around the roadblock, but every route crosses a train track.”

Shawn smiled. This is it, I knew it. “Get my maps.”

He shoved a computer aside to make room. A large map with red and blue lines was brought next to Abigail’s station. She pointed to Division Ave. Shawn stared at the map and the room went quiet. He pulled out a yellow sharpie from his back pocket and uncapped it. Without hesitation and with a single smooth, confident motion, Shawn drew out a route and handed the map to her.

“Station two police cars each one block on either side of this train intersection. Once you have confirmation that they’re in place, send the president through. Brandon, send the helicopters in to watch the area from above for any trains.” Shawn relaxed his shoulders, remembering to breathe. The room returned to its clatter and chaos as people continued to shout orders and report status updates.

Brandon held his hand to his ear again. “Sir, there are two trains within a mile of that intersection, each going opposite directions. One is a freight train and the other is a passenger train.”

“Is either train running on steam?” asked Shawn.

Brandon looked down and talked into his earpiece.

“No sign of steam power.”

“Tell the DC Railway Station to stop those trains.”

“Yes, sir.”

Abigail looked back at Shawn. “The police cars are in position, they’re confirming they can see trains approaching in both directions. Both trains appear to be slowing down. The driver’s awaiting our signal.”

“Tell him to proceed.”

Abigail’s monitor began to quiver. The last significant earthquake near DC had been in 2011. At magnitude 5.8, it didn’t damage any buildings, but Shawn remembered it well because his wife was taking a shower when it happened and it was just enough movement to have her fall and break her arm. The quiver became a shake, and a grumbling noise grew into a roar. This earthquake was worse. Maybe a seven or an eight? Then Shawn heard a whistling sound. The kind a guy makes when he is trying to call a taxi. But the whistle grew louder. The roar and the whistle grew deafening and computers began falling off desks. Half the tent was gone. Brandon was on the floor. Shawn was standing over Abigail’s shoulders, but in a flash she had disappeared. Where did Abigail go? The hot summer sun was streaming in and bathing the chaos with stifling heat. Then everything went dark and the ground stopped shaking. Something was blocking the sun; something black. Steam had filled the air. Shawn found himself on broken concrete. He was warm and wet and covered in red.

“
M
r. Douglas
, thank you for being here today. I know it has only been a week and I understand you are still recovering and appreciate you comin’ in today. I have enormous respect for your, let me see here, forty-one years of service. Can you please walk us through the events that led up to that horrible incident?” Senator Gadfly from Arkansas spoke with a low, almost apologetic tone. He was an older Southern man in a seersucker suit and bow tie, practically a stereotype. To either side of him were a half-dozen members of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Terrorism and Homeland Security. The Senate office they were in usually felt cozy with wood paneling on the walls and ceiling, but that day it just felt crowded and stuffy.

“Yes, Senator, of course,” Shawn stood up in front of the panel of senators like a bird with a broken wing. “The day started with the planned arrivals of the president, congressmen and senators, coming together to celebrate each other’s victories.”

“Did anything go wrong with your preparation that morning?” interrupted Senator Gadfly.

“No, sir. The morning went smoothly. It was not until the president’s arrival that something started to go awry.”

“What about Congressman Dernier? I read that he had been…” Senator Gadfly scrutinized a piece of paper as he spoke, “intoxicated, I believe, the night before and had held up a train? Was that not something that had gone wrong?”

“I suppose so.” Shawn clenched his fist on the table. “Yes. That did go wrong, but they just held the train for him, adding a twenty-minute delay.”

“I see. Go on, please.”

“Upon the president’s landing, I noticed that the main ground route crossed a train track. I don’t know how we had missed that earlier, but I redirected the driver to the secondary route, which did not cross any train tracks.”

“Couldn’t a helicopter or even just a policeman at the intersection have identified if a train was likely to intersect the president’s path? Why redirect in the first place?”

“I didn’t want to take any chances. It was a hunch. We didn’t know what exactly their plan was, clearly.”

“Of course, hindsight being what it is, we all now know that crossing the train track could have been dangerous indeed. However, Mr. Douglas, how exactly did you know that crossing a train track could be so dangerous? What intel did you have on this possibility?”

Shawn relaxed. Finally, a question he was looking forward to answering. “Senator Gadfly, I had picked up chatter on the Internet about seven months prior to the attack that hinted at a steam powered train-based attack. My team researched stream trains still operational in the United States. At 485 tons with 6,200 horsepower…”

“We’re not looking for a Wikipedia report. Please just tell us what happened next.”

Shawn coughed. “It looked like an oversized canon on wheels to me. That’s why we recommended to the California congressmen who were insisting on using it to make a grand entrance to find another means of transportation.”

“And they decided to use it despite your warnings?”

“That’s correct, Senator.”

“So the train was supposed to arrive at 11:00 a.m.? Is that correct?”

“Yes, but because of its late start, the new arrival time was revised to 11:23 a.m. It was running on a train line usually reserved for military and police needs. There were four cars hooked up to the locomotive. The first was full of coal. Behind that were three exhibition passenger cars. The one in the rear was made of glass, that was where the politicians were waving and smiling to the crowds.”

“Were we not watching that train with a helicopter?”

Shawn picked up a glass of water and took a long drink as if he hadn’t had water in days.

“Our resources were focused on the president at that moment.” He picked up a piece of paper with notes on it. “At 11:10 a.m., the train was moving out of the station. The conductor was asked to slow down, but we did not receive a response. A few minutes later, it was picking up speed quickly. The train was far too heavy for regular service, it was only used for slow-moving excursions and celebratory events. Once a train that heavy gets moving, it’s nearly impossible to stop.”

“I see. So would it be appropriate to say that the train became a speeding bullet.” Senator Gadfly gave a proud smile at that remark.

“Yes, I guess that’s one way to put it. There were only a few miles of track left when the train reached the point of no return. But even so, by our calculations, there were no attempts at trying to stop. By the time the locomotive hit the end of the track it was going approximately seventy-five mph.”

“Why didn’t the train conductor stop?”

“We have reason to believe that the train conductor was already dead. The investigation is still underway.”

“I see. Please continue.”

“The train bore through twelve cars and three city blocks. It tore a hole through a historic four-story brick building that used to be a brewery. It destroyed a communal city garden. It destroyed the entrance to a federal courthouse. It came to rest shortly after tearing apart a large white tent set up next to the courthouse for transportation coordination.”

“Why didn’t you evacuate the area?”

“We…we didn’t have enough warning. All our resources were looking in the wrong place.”

“What was the extent of the human destruction?”

“There were forty-two injuries and thirty-eight casualties,” said Shawn solemnly. “Including twelve Secret Service agents. My team.” Abigail, where did Abigail go?

“Mr. Douglas, we're very sorry for your loss and can’t express enough our gratitude for your service and the service of the brave men and women that day. Thank you again for your time today.”

A
ndrew stared crookedly at David
. David was swirling a make-believe mustache in his fingers and curling it at the tips. David looked totally deadpan as he explained, “I have a plan, sir. A cunning and subtle plan.”

Picking up on the Blackadder reference, Andrew got himself into character. “As cunning as a fox who’s just been appointed Professor of Cunning at Oxford University?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, it’ll have to wait. Let’s get coffee.”

They walked to a local coffee shop with marble floors and countertops. It had a sleek modern feel blended with a traditional hole-in-the-wall French coffee shop vibe. The owner was a classic Portland hipster. Trim, thirty-something, dressed to the nines with short dark hair slicked back with pomade. He had a thick black apron, and a grey short-sleeve button-down shirt that was just short enough to show off tattoos of old carnival scenes.

“Hey David,” said Billy with a smile. “What would you like today?”

“Ummm, I’m not sure yet. Andrew, you order.”

“I’ll get a large vanilla latte.” Andrew pulled out his credit card. He looked at Billy with half a smile. “And a banana.”

Billy swiped Andrew’s card and mumbled: “You know we don’t sell bananas.”

Andrew looked at David and asked: “Why is it that Starbucks has a whole case of bananas and all I can get here are croissants? Come to think of it, Starbucks probably has the healthiest drive-through fast-food anywhere.”

Billy forced as polite a tone as he could. “So what can I get you?”

“Macchiato, please,” said David. He turned back to Andrew. “Remember that link you sent me a few weeks ago, the one about encryption?”

“Yeah, the one you said was all hype.”

“Well I figured it out. Only better.”

“Oh?” Andrew leaned in and rested his arms on the marble countertop.

“You see, there are two big problems with the way everyone else is doing encrypted services. First, like I told you before, they’re all centralized. No matter how good the encryption schemes are, the government can come in and tap the host servers’ Internet connections and passively listen to every piece of information coming in and out.”

Andrew looked at David, half confused, half excited. “Okay, but what does that matter if the information is all encrypted? The government will just be getting a bunch of junk.”

“That brings us to the second problem: people assume that bad guys and governments can’t break strong encryption.”

David sat back and took a sip of his macchiato. If David had said this ten years ago, people would have called him crazy. Since Snowden’s leaks, however, amateur conspiracy theorists were no longer the fringe, but the norm. The implications were staggering. Every email from Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, Apple and everywhere else was being stored and snooped on by the United States government. Every chat and IM was archived indefinitely.

“I think I follow, but what can you do about it?”

“Even though we have to assume encryption can be broken, it doesn’t mean it’s cheap or easy to do. Just imagine, if you are a human being and you hear the sentence: ‘Dick and Jane run up the hill,’ you can understand it immediately. No processing power required. If it’s slightly obfuscated, like if you remove the first letter of every word, it’s harder to understand and takes a bit more brainpower, but you still get it. Ick nd ane un p he ill. But if it’s just a bunch of jumbled letters and numbers, it’ll take a while to puzzle out the solution.”

“So did you invent a stronger type of encryption?”

“No. But if you make it unbearably loud with so many different voices, it makes finding the signal in the noise asymptotically difficult. Combine this with no central datacenter, make it totally distributed, and things get interesting. Every message travels encrypted to a bunch of other anonymous users of the app who then repeat the message encrypted yet again. Simultaneously, it sends out tons of bogus messages that are also re-encrypted and repeated by a bunch of people. The end result is that for every one encrypted message you send, anyone spying will have to sort through thousands of bogus ones. Potentially hundreds of thousands.”

“Huh. I think you lost me.”

“Spies and hackers and foreign governments can probably decrypt anything, but it’s not easy and takes time, effort, and resources.”

“Right.”

“So if they can decrypt anything, let’s give them so much fake encrypted noise that they have to search for a needle in a haystack.”

“Got it, and the more people who use your app, the bigger the haystack.”

“Bingo.”

“David, this is a good idea.”

“I know.”

“No, I mean this is something that could change the world.”

“Yeah,” said David as he finished his macchiato. The last bittersweet swig made his throat warm and his stomach relax.

“You should build it,” said Andrew almost as an afterthought.

“It’s just a thought experiment. Nobody pays to use mobile chat apps today.”

“It’s way better than your jellyfish idea. How’s that going anyhow? Sold anything yet?”

“Not yet, but I’ve got some ideas. This week’s blog post is about jellyfish mating rituals.”