Craig Kreident #1: Virtual Destruction (4 page)

They passed through the second airlock door together.
 
Craig took the point; Goldfarb and Jackson fanned out.
 
Holding his badge high, Craig raised his voice—firm, businesslike, no-nonsense.

“May I have your attention please?
 
We’re with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
 
All operations must cease immediately.
 
Do not touch anything.
 
Do not shut down any processes or equipment.
 
We want everything nice and clean, just the way it is.”

A storm of voices swirled around him in several different languages.
 
He noticed for the first time the dark almond eyes behind many of the face masks, saw Korean and Vietnamese workers, probably at minimum wage, doing sophisticated high-tech labor.

“Goldfarb and DeLong, secure the lab.
 
Jackson, round all those people up by the desk.
 
I’m going to start taking pictures, get an inventory.”

As confusion bubble around him, Craig snapped a series of quick shots with the small camera, fumbling with the button through the rubber gloves.
 
Then he set to work on the part that most interested him, the large x-ray lithographic chip-imprinting apparatus.
 
The three-foot by three-foot negatives were used to burn patterns upon the coated sapphire wafers, thin circular disks that looked like CDs.
 
The process exposed incredibly reduced and intricate electronic circuits that would then be etched.
 
Once imprinted, the thin wafers were chopped into small rectangles, individual chips.

Craig spread out the set of four overlarge negatives on a light table rigged next to a high-resolution x-ray camera.
 
He flicked on the table and picked up a loop the size of a postage stamp.
 
As the white fluorescent light flooded beneath the negative, he squinted and scanned down the complex labyrinth of millions of circuit paths.

He ran his pen along one edge, counting grid lines over, searching for the spot the original PanTech designer had told him to look for, the small signature of his own design—a tiny circuit loop connecting nothing, difficult to find and impossible to deny.
 
Like the tiny intentional mistakes on copyrighted maps, this signature proved the identity of the original designer.

Craig found it without much difficulty, proving that this set of masks had been stolen from NanoWare’s primary competitor.
 
Then the negatives had been altered—sabotaged—to make the bootleg chips malfunction frequently.

“Dead to rights,” Craig said, snapped off the light table, and rolled up the negatives.
 
He raised his voice, calling attention to himself.

“Goldfarb, Jackson, DeLong, you all saw me take this set of negatives out of their apparatus.”
 
Craig rolled up the large dark sheets, placing an IMPOUNDED sticker on the side.

The inner door of the clean room burst open.
 
A dark powerhouse of a woman barged in without bothering to put on the entire clean-room outfit.
 
Craig paused only a moment, noting to himself that with all of NanoWare’s difficulties, a contaminated clean-room environment was one of the most minor things the company had to worry about right now.

The woman was short, stocky, and filled with an energy born from contained fury.
 
She had dark Indian skin and bright flashing eyes under glossy black hair cut short like a man’s.
 
“Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Craig refused to be intimidated, though, standing up and meeting the brunt of her anger.
 
“Are you Ms. Ompadhe?” Craig said and removed all the appropriate documentation one piece at a time.
 
“I’m Craig Kreident from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
 
These are my agents.
 
This is my search warrant.
 
I think you’ll find everything is in order.”
 
He narrowed his gray eyes and tapped his finger against the rolled up lithographic negatives.

“What—” she started to say, but Craig decided he didn’t want to let her finish a sentence.

“Alleged bootlegged chips, stolen circuit design, industrial sabotage, market fixing.
 
I could probably go on.”
 
He held up his hand again before she could say anything.
 
“I know you’re probably going to say you don’t know anything about this, Ms. Ompadhe.
 
For your sake, I hope that’s true.
 
But for the moment I would advise you not to say anything at all.
 
Unless you’d care for us to read you your Miranda rights here and now?”
 
He stared her down.
 
Finally Ompadhe flinched and followed his advice, saying nothing.

“When is Mr. Skraling supposed to be back?” Craig asked. “We have a subpoena for him.”

Ompadhe flinched, stared at the floor, then looked up to meet the eyes of all of the non-English-speaking line workers herded into an open area beside one of the workstations.

She looked squarely at Craig.
 
“He should be on a plane right now, flying back from Bermuda.
 
We expect him to come in to San Francisco International late tonight, and he plans to be back at work tomorrow.
 
When I see him, I’ll tell him you’re expecting him.”

“Thank you,” Craig said with false levity, “but I think I’d rather you gave me his flight number.
 
We’d prefer to meet him at the airport directly.
 
Saves time.”

Ompadhe’s shoulders slumped just enough to let Craig know she realized she was defeated.
 
“Come back to my office,” she said.

Craig motioned for Goldfarb to stay and watch over the facility.
 
He and the two others followed Ompadhe out of the clean room, shucking their white Tyvek costumes and returning to their suit-and-tie FBI uniforms.

As they followed the slender woman down the carpeted NanoWare halls, Craig had to fight to keep the springy bounce from his step.
 
This entire investigation had gone well.

CHAPTER 3

Tuesday

Building 433—T Program

Virtual Reality Chamber

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

With their noise and bustle and unpredictability, little kids had a peculiar way of getting on Gary Lesserec’s nerves, no matter how understanding he tried to be.
 
It wasn’t so much the incessant whining, the tear-filled eyes, or the blatant refusal to obey simple commands—it was more the indefatigable lack of logic.
 
Children didn’t make sense, and that scared him.

Still, he had a role to play as the T Program deputy, now that Michaelson had left him in charge.
 
Smile, put on a good face for the PR show.
 
Associate Director José Aragon was watching as he led the tour group of “challenged” children for the Coalition for Family Values, happy as a dung beetle deep in his element.
 
Aragon was going to get a lot of good coverage for this event.

Lesserec pretended to be happy as he greeted the visitors, the smile burned on his face to cover his alarm at the group of wheelchair-bound, emotionally disturbed, Down’s syndrome, or otherwise crippled children.
 
Even normal, rambunctious kids threw a complex situation into chaos, but this group created even stiffer problems, required more careful watching.

But it also gave him a marvelous opportunity, without watchdog Michaelson looming over him, and he could finally install those new bootleg chips and give them a whirl.
 
He took it as a challenge.
 
If Lesserec intended to reach out to a huge market share with his own VR breakthroughs, perhaps children like these, who had so little to start with, had the most to gain from his simulations.

Lesserec watched the last of the children ushered through the open security door into the T Program exclusion area.
 
Aragon stood like a cable-car conductor, motioning everyone to come forward.
 
Escorted by nurses, attendants, or parents, the children moved into the common area.
 
Upon hearing the first high-pitched tiny voices, the scuffling of feet, the bumping against wobbly modular office furniture, he thought,
Showtime
!

He felt tense, unlike any time when he had stood up to Hal Michaelson or any of the other head-up-their-butts management types.
 
The mob of children descended upon the Virtual Reality laboratory like a plague of locusts.

Lesserec scanned the room in reflex, all the other T Program engineers who had slapped together Aragon’s demo in record time.
 
“Everybody ready?” he muttered, only loud enough for the technicians to hear.

Danielle, one of the programmers behind a workstation, punched in an access code, prepping the simulation run.
 
“Equipment’s all set up, Gary.
 
You’re the MC.
 
You know which buttons to push.
 
It’s your show. . .solo.”

“Hey, where are you guys going?”

Danielle jabbed her fellow programmer in the side and motioned with her head for him to follow.
 
“Errands.
 
We skipped lunch today so we could head out to Lab supply this afternoon.”

“Yeah, Gary,” said Walter, the other programmer, nodding. “You okayed it, remember?”

“Hey, that was before we set up this tour!”
 
Lesserec pushed weakly up from his chair.
 
“You’re not leaving me alone?”

“Of course not,” Danielle said with a parting shot.
 
“You’ve got all those kids to keep you company.”

Lesserec muttered something he would never have wanted the children to hear, then looked up to see José Aragon extending a hand to him.
 
He smelled of strong aftershave.
 
His dark hair glistened with hair oil, sculpted in place like meringue on a baked Alaska.
 
“Ah, Gary!
 
It’s good to see you again.
 
Thanks for all your help.”

Lesserec made sure his smile remained firmly in place as he shook the Associate Director’s hand, squeezing firmly into the other man’s clammy palm sweat.
 
Aragon wore a leisure suit, as usual, and trousers just a tad on the short side.
 

“Welcome,” Lesserec said to the audience, rubbing his hands together.
 
“We’ve got a good show for you today.
 
I’m sure the kids will enjoy it.”

He cleared off the front of his computer console, leaving a small plastic model of Snoopy, a picture of him and his girlfriend Sandra standing outside their new condo by Lake Tahoe, and a small bumper sticker that said PORSCHE DRIVERS DO IT AT 150 MILES AN HOUR.

With a stage manager’s bustle, Aragon continued to look around the workstation area, his dark eyes carrying a glazed shallowness.
 
“So, Hal didn’t stay to show us around?”

Lesserec erased his scowl before it could show.
 
“He’s in Washington for a high-level meeting.
 
Don’t worry, though, Mr. Aragon—I can handle it.”

“Yes, of course.”
 
Aragon seemed flustered, as if he didn’t know how to deal with a change of routine.
 
“Glad you could find time to show the children around, Gary.”

“My pleasure,” mumbled Lesserec, meaning exactly the opposite.

“Excuse me,” Aragon said. “I have to help the rest of these youngsters in.”
 
He patted Lesserec on the shoulder and moved over to help the group enter the secure facility through the unsealed emergency exit, though it looked as if he were only getting in the way.
 
A Protective Service Officer stood watching the slow progress.

Lesserec watched, having no idea how many visitors they were expecting.
 
It would take all morning long just to get a dozen of them inside.
 
He wondered whose idea this crazy spectacle was anyway.
 
Probably Aragon’s.

Now alone in the control area, Lesserec turned to his computer console and called up a file from his private directory.
 
He decided that would be best, and Michaelson wasn’t here to breathe down his neck anyway.
 
Normally, he would have arranged for a computational physics simulation of one of the Lab’s new high-priority “dual-use” missions, something that would feed into the commercial sector, or perhaps even be used by the Pentagon.

He considered bringing up the jet fighter dog-fight sequence—normal, red-blooded kids should get a blast out of that—but the thought of these handicapped children disoriented by Top Gun maneuvers made him pause.
 
He couldn’t think of anything more appropriate than the Yosemite simulation he had shot and dimensionalized himself last month.
 
He hoped Aragon wouldn’t squeal about his fooling with the VR chamber for other than “official” business; but if the kids were satisfied with the show, he didn’t suppose that would be a problem.