Zimmerman's Algorithm Read online

  As he came to, he could see the garage was fully lit and filled with men in black jumpsuits and body armor. They ringed him and Raphael. One was staring at Gideon's belt. Gideon's badge was visible where his overcoat had fallen open. One of the men in black said, "Fuck, they're cops."

  Gideon's vision was blurred and half focused. He might have blacked out again. When he opened his eyes once more, one of the men was looking closely at him, and Gideon could feel fingers on his neck. "This one's still alive."

  Gideon heard the sound of a walkie-talkie from somewhere else in the room. A muffled radio voice said, "The operation is compromised. Move to our fall-back position. All unexposed units are being extracted."

  Someone responded, "We copy that."

  Past the man leaning over him, he could see the others removing silencers from the compact submachine guns they carried.

  Before he blacked out again, he heard the tearing sound of Velcro. He could just see someone peeling a piece of black fabric from the back of his neighbor's jacket. It revealed bright yellow letters, "U.S. TREASURY."

  The last thing Gideon was conscious of was the sound of approaching sirens.

  1.01 Sun. Feb. 15

  Gideon awoke to the sounds of two uniformed officers pulling a man with a video camera out of his room. Gideon had just opened his eyes, and for a few moments all he could focus on was the fish-eye lens of the camera, and his own reflection in it. He looked like hell.

  Then one of the officers reached a hand over the lens, pushing the camera back. The cameraman didn't move quite as fast as the officer was pushing and the camera tilted back over his shoulder. The camera fell with a crash to the floor. "That's private property," the cameraman yelled as the two officers pulled him out of the door.

  "And this is a private room," said a familiar voice from the opposite side of the room. Gideon turned his head, and felt the pull of tubes that went up his nose and down his throat. He wanted to spit up the foreign object, but he could only manage a hacking wheeze. He tried to raise his hand to his throat, but it was immobilized in a heavy cast.

  Gideon managed to turn enough to confirm that the speaker was who he thought it was. It was Chief Conroy, which explained the cameraman. Every step Conroy took was controversial, if only because everyone thought of him as the token white on the force. Whatever he did, someone would accuse him of being racially motivated. The man had a lot more respect from inside the force than he had outside it. Very few D.C. residents, most of whom thought of the police as the enemy in the first place, understood why Mayor Harris dragged in some white guy from California to run the police department.

  Gideon had to close his eyes. Waking up here, with chaos swirling around him, was disorienting enough to make his head ache. He felt light-headed, drugged, a sensation as if his body was tumbling through space with only the most tenuous connection to his head.

  Outside, the reporter shouted, "This is suppression of the media!"

  Gideon forced his eyes open to see Conroy shake his head and turn to one of the three staffers who'd accompanied him. Conroy waved at where the camera had fallen. "Get that camera—and an appropriately-worded letter of explanation—to that man's employer."

  The staffer walked toward the door.

  "And empty it first," Conroy added. The staffer nodded as he left.

  Gideon tried to say something, but he found it too hard to talk. His throat was raspy, and there was a tube down it.

  "Detective Malcolm?" Conroy approached Gideon.

  Gideon shook his head. It was beginning to sink in, what had happened, why he was here. The memory was painful enough that Gideon tried to recapture the sense of floating disorientation he'd had before.

  He had seen Raphael die.

  He remembered his brother's death, and his mind wouldn't let go of the image.

  Conroy shook his head, attempting to be sympathetic, and the sight only made Gideon angry. He tried to yell at him to get out, to leave him alone, but all he managed was a painful cough. All the anger and frustration balled up in Gideon's gut with no way out. He couldn't move, couldn't speak, and it felt as if the acid in his stomach would burn a hole in him all the way to the floor.

  His vision blurred, and he closed his eyes.

  Gideon felt Conroy's hand on his good shoulder. Gideon wanted to pull away, roll over, but he didn't even have the strength to flinch.

  "I know," Conroy said. "It's an awful mess."

  Gideon shook his head. He felt a wave of resentment for Conroy. Who the fuck was he to sympathize? Conroy must have sensed Gideon's sentiment, because he withdrew his hand.

  Mess? Gideon thought. It was a disaster. What happened? He stared at Conroy, trying to will an answer from the man. What the hell happened?

  Conroy took out a business card, and placed it on the nightstand next to Gideon's bed. "You can call my office if you need anything."

  Gideon stared up at Conroy's face and felt a burning, unreasoning hatred. He wanted Conroy to feel just a little of what he felt right now.

  Conroy turned and walked around the front of the bed and spoke. Gideon felt as if Conroy was talking through him, rehearsing a speech. It intensified Gideon's feeling that he wasn't completely here with Conroy, that he was watching everything from a great distance.

  "What happened to you and your brother was a disastrous case of mistaken identity." Conroy looked up, past Gideon. The loss of eye contact made everything seem even more far away. "Apparently the Justice Department had custody of the Daedalus thieves about twenty-four hours after the computer was stolen.

  They kept their capture, and the recovery of the supercomputer, under wraps because the Secret Service wanted to run a sting operation to nab the 'terrorists' who contracted the theft." He shook his head. "I'm not surprised nobody informed our department about it, but I don't have any idea why no one apprised the Bureau."

  Gideon felt his gut tighten in a knot. It was one thing to get taken down by the bad guys. That was a risk that he, and Rafe, accepted as going with the territory. The idea that this had happened because of some interdepartmental screwup was worse than infuriating.

  "The papers are already talking about this in the same breath as Waco and Ruby Ridge. The Secret Service has promised me its own internal investigation, and there's talk on the Hill of a Congressional hearing."

  Gideon closed his eyes. He wanted Conroy to leave. He didn't want to hear anymore. All he wanted to do was find that little corner of unconsciousness he had before these men had awakened him.

  He heard Conroy say, after a moment, "We better leave him to rest."

  Gideon was gratified to hear the Police Chief and his entourage leave the room. He was left mired in his own thoughts about himself, and Rafe, and the Secret Service, and what the hell went wrong.

  After that, his only other visitor was a uniformed cop stationed outside his door to keep out reporters.

  He came in and ate what passed for dinner and told Gideon what a raw deal the Feds had given him.

  Gideon just shut his eyes until the man went away.

  There was no one else. Rafe was his only real family since his dad had died. There was his sister-in-law, Monica, but Gideon hardly knew her. They'd married after Raphael had moved to New York. Now she was burying her husband because he'd come down to "visit." Gideon suspected that she would blame him for Raphael's death.

  Gideon found it pretty easy to blame himself. It had been his call, his tip. It should have been him taking the fatal shot. Rafe was the one with a decent career, a wife, a family . . . Who the hell would miss the fuckup, Gideon Malcolm?

  He couldn't sleep. He spent most of the time drifting through a haze of semiconsciousness. During one particularly lucid moment, when his self-loathing had reached a momentary nadir, he could hear a television from beyond the open door to his room.

  ". . . from the Treasury Department. While there was a federal warrant issued, there was no notification of local authorities. Beyond those basic facts, neither t
he Treasury Department nor the Justice Department have issued any comment. Attorney General Alexander Lloyd told the media in a press conference today, quote, 'This entire episode is a tragic accident, and I take full responsibility for it.'

  "Elsewhere in the Capital, there is growing sentiment in Congress for a full investigation of the shooting."

  The sound changed, and Gideon heard a different voice giving a sound bite. "It's clear here that some segments of federal law enforcement have gotten out of control. We have a federal culture that is completely without accountability. Congress abdicated its task of overseeing the executive branch when President Rayburn was elected. . . "

  Gideon closed his eyes and tried to tune out the news broadcast.

  Not only had he gotten Rafe killed, he had done it before a national audience. It was ridiculous, Congressional hearings? Christ, every problem D.C. had was because Congress was directly involved in the city government. Congress was why the city couldn't afford new police cars, or more and better-trained police officers. It was why the city government was constantly on the edge of bankruptcy—so much so that the city offices didn't have basic things like paper clips or staplers.

  The haggard D.C. police department was a direct consequence of federal control of the District budget, and Chief Conroy—the white knight from the West Coast— couldn't do much about it.

  Gideon wasn't one of the blacks who thought Conroy was part of some racial conspiracy, but he also wasn't one who believed that Conroy was turning the force around single-handed. As far as Gideon was concerned, as long as Congress was involved in city finances, nobody could.

  The idea of a Congressional investigation of what happened came across as some kind of sick joke. What they would probably find was that Rafe had died because some bureaucrat in the city government couldn't afford toner for his fax machine, and never received the warrant from the Treasury Department.

  But even as his consciousness slipped away again, he couldn't help thinking about the silencers.

  1.02 Sun. Feb. 20

  LyAKSANDRO Volynskji sprawled on the bed in his hotel room, remote in hand, flipping through channels on the television. He flipped through half a dozen before he settled on the local public television station to watch the News Hour. The Daedalus was still one of the leading news stories, along with calls for a Congressional inquiry.

  Volynskji frowned when he saw that one of the feature stories would be about Colonel Ramon and the other men who had stolen the computer. He didn't like being reminded of that. Ramon didn't know his name, or the people he worked for, but he had seen Volynskji's face, and that was bad enough.

  Fifteen minutes into the news, the phone rang. Volynskji picked it up, saying, "Are our friends listening?"

  Volynskji was asking the caller how secure the phone lines were.

  "As they always are," came the reply. If there was a possibility of a live tap on either of them, the caller would have simply said "yes" and hung up. Fortunately, the response meant that they were secure from everything but the government computers that filtered almost all electronic communications in this country. They were safe as long as they avoided certain keywords. Volynskji put down the remote and picked up a dog-eared computer printout. It was a highly classified list of words, ten pages long, three columns to a page. On that list were words like "Daedalus," "Volynskji," "bomb," and the name of the organization Volynskji worked for, the IUF, the International Unification Front.

  As long as Volynskji and the caller avoided the words on this week's list, their conversation wouldn't be flagged by any government computers.

  "This is a mess," Volynskji said. "You insisted on using the Colonel rather than have me bring my own people into the country. It is unlikely that we'll ever get another opportunity."

  "I understand your frustration. Their capture wasn't anticipated."

  "You, of all people, should have anticipated it."

  "You know bringing any more of your people into the country would bring unwelcome attention to our operation, and the Doctor."

  "Have you seen the news lately? I think there's more than enough unwelcome attention to go around."

  "It's a screwup, but because it was the Colonel and not your people, your organization has remained out of the spotlight."

  "If my people were involved, they wouldn't have been captured, and this travesty with your Secret Service never would have happened." Volynskji thought for a moment about the man on the other end of the phone. Volynskji knew he was a twisted and dangerous individual with many reasons to want the IUF to stay out of the spotlight in this country. "This was by your design, was it, friend?"

  "No."

  The flat denial only made Volynskji more suspicious, but he didn't press the point. "What about our equipment? The Doctor can't proceed without it, and we cannot go out and acquire another one now that everyone in this country is aware that we want one. Security on the existing items will become impenetrable."

  "I know. The equipment is my problem now. I have a better chance the way the situation has developed."

  "Okay. Should I return to the project now?"

  "No, there're still a few things that need doing down here. First, you need to find the leak that led those two cops there. It didn't come from my end, so it must have been from yours."

  "Thanks for your confidence."

  "Word of the pickup got out somehow, before you were called off. The cops didn't know it was a setup, so the leak didn't come from inside the government."

  "I've got you. What do you want me to do with any leaks I find?"

  "Plug them, permanently."

  "The cop?"

  "Forget him for now. He's not a problem."

  "What about the Colonel and his people?"

  "Nothing. They aren't a threat to us and we need a distraction right now. Take care of the leaks."

  "I'll do that."

  "I'll be in contact." The phone hung up and Volynskji lay for a moment listening to dead air. He didn't like that man. He didn't like working with an official of the U.S. Government, even if this man had brought his people Doctor Zimmerman and the potential of her work. The fact that his people were beholden galled Volynskji. Now they would be beholden for the Daedalus as well.

  On the TV, the show had changed to a program called The McLaughlin Group.

  "Issue one," said the TV. "Gunfight at the D.C. Corral."

  Volynskji watched as the host gave a synopsis of the shooting incident over the Daedalus. It was unnerving to think that it could have been him and his people in there, rather than a D.C. cop and an FBI agent. Volynskji had been warned off shortly after Colonel Ramon had been captured, but he could still picture himself walking into that trap. If it was his call, he would have called off the whole project by now.

  "What is the political fallout from this shoot-out? I ask you, Pat."

  "John, this is another Waco. We have another federal law enforcement agency going where it shouldn't go, doing things it is not qualified to do—and this time it isn't even the alleged 'bad guys' who are the victims. This just gives more ammunition to people who believe that the federal government has no business in criminal law enf—"

  "Are you saying that Attorney General Lloyd should resign—"

  The one woman on the panel interrupted. "From all accounts he's already abdicated. The Secret Service was out of control here. They should stick to guarding the President."

  Volynskji tossed aside the remote and walked over to the bar. Digging around in the little refrigerator, he came out with a can of ginger ale. He stood by the small sink and thought about possible leaks. Not his people, but maybe Doctor Zimmerman's. He'd had a few of the technical types set up the transportation of the Daedalus, since they had the expertise in the computer. That was most likely the weak link.

  "Issue two; Y2K Mark Two," called the TV host, interrupting Volynskji's thoughts. He watched the TV with some renewed interest.

  "Everyone who owns a computer has been aware of the
much ballyhooed millennium bug, known to the digital intelligentsia simply as 'Y2K.' However the attempted theft of a Daedalus supercomputer has brought to light what may be the true threat of the 21st century—digital terror."

  The scene on the television was replaced by stock footage of people surfing the Internet. It showed scenes in typical offices, a library, and one of the popular Internet coffee houses. The host continued in a voice-over. "Item—A Tangled Web. The Internet, especially the World Wide Web, has undergone phenomenal growth. Internet connectivity is now a standard part of all computer operating systems and estimates are that nearly 90% of all computers in the U.S. spend some time connected to this data superhighway. But this information superhighway is a two-way street, while these computers are searching for data elsewhere, other parties—possibly with nefarious motives—can access those same computers. According to experts, the security on most computers is inadequate to deal with an intentionally malicious attack."

  Volynskji nodded and wondered if this blustering Washington pundit had any idea what the words "digital terror" might actually mean.

  "Item—Wall Street Meltdown," the TV continued. The voice-over talked over scenes of the trading floor in New York City. "Two months ago there was a panic as the Dow plummeted five hundred points in a single afternoon. Economists were quick to blame a crisis mentality on Wall Street that reflected no true economic factors. In the past few weeks, investigators at the Securities and Exchange Commission placed the blame for the downfall at the feet of an old demon—program trading. Despite safeguards placed in the eighties to stop an automatic sell-off if the market suffered a too-steep decline, this drop was the result of computers—not people—engaged in a flurry of selling. This was a repeat of the last program sell-off disaster, but this time with a new, underreported, and sinister twist. Several pension funds, along with two major brokerages, were infected with a computer virus. A virus that seemed otherwise benign, but whose presence prevented the programmed brakes from taking hold during the five-hundred-point drop." The scene returned to the roundtable and the host turned to his left. "Mort, I ask you, shades of things to come, or—"