Game Changer (36 page)

Carmilla sighed. None of this
helped as much as it should. The drugs were a godsend, but the knowledge of the
manipulation not as much. She still felt keen loss and despair. The man of her
dreams had shaped her unconscious in such a way that it refused to listen to
headquarters when it reported her love was a facade.

But she shouldn’t be surprised in
the least, she realized suddenly. How many men and women throughout history had
known intellectually that the object of their romantic love was wrong for them?
But the inner mind could be impervious to reason. It wanted what it wanted,
immune to rational thought.

“Once he decided he didn’t need you
anymore,” said Rachel, “he must have wanted to see if he could drive you to suicide.
There is no reason to end the relationship with such over-the-top cruelty
otherwise. He’s a scientist, so it’s no surprise that he wants to test the
limits of his new toy.”

“And it worked,” said Carmilla. “I
became suicidal just like he wanted. If not for Kevin I’d have succeeded.” Her
face twisted in confusion. “But how is it that Kevin was there? How did he know
about this? About me?”

“As you know, Kevin has been
injected with nanites also,” said Rachel. “So using him as a guinea pig, I’ve
been able to decipher how Kovonov is able to do what he does.”

“Most of it is based on her ideas
anyway,” pointed out Quinn.

“The important thing,” said Rachel,
“is that I was able to figure out how to usurp Kovonov’s nanites to implant
simple memories of my own choosing. It’s painstaking, rudimentary, and clumsy, but
with enough brute force work and Kevin to guide my efforts, I can manage it. An
analogy would be that Kovonov is using an elegant and sophisticated programming
language, while I’m entering ones and zeros by hand—with mittens on. And
blindfolded. I’m very limited in what I can do, and it takes orders of
magnitude longer to accomplish than it would for him.”

“Still quite an accomplishment,” said
Carmilla. “Congratulations.” Her eyes narrowed. “But how does this apply to
me?”
  

“As I said earlier,” replied Rachel,
“Kovonov programs these nanites using radio signals. I realized I could take
advantage of this to reach people he’s manipulating.”

“Her brilliance really knows no
bounds,” said Quinn, shaking his head in genuine awe.

“Take advantage how?” asked
Carmilla.

“Cell phones work on radio waves.
Cell towers are powerful radio broadcasters. I wondered if I could press them
into service to send out the instructions for a simple memory implantation. See
if I could get his victims to contact me.”

Using cell towers for this task was
quite inspired, but Carmilla still wasn’t sure where this was going.

“Unfortunately, because my ability
to use Kovonov’s system is still so clumsy,” continued Rachel in obvious
frustration, “I need to broadcast for an extended period. We could blanket the
entire country with a signal and find anyone in America that Kovonov has
manipulated, but that would require taking down the nation’s entire cell
network for about an hour. Well, not taking it down, just borrowing it for our
purposes. But the effect to cell phone owners would be the same. No service. Despite
our military and government connections, and the critical nature of what we’re
doing, we weren’t able to get permission for this.”

“Not surprising,” said Carmilla.

Rachel frowned. “It’s maddening,
but there isn’t anything we can do about it. Those with the keys to the system
won’t allow hundreds of millions of cell phones to be simultaneously turned
into paperweights, even if only temporarily. Not under any circumstances. We
were able to get permission—barely—to do this quadrant by quadrant. Disruptive
for an hour to cell phone users within the quadrant, but the overwhelming majority
of the nation’s system would still be effective.”

“How long will it take to sweep
across the entire nation?” asked Carmilla.

“At the rate we’re going, almost
three weeks. And that’s if our permission isn’t revoked, which could happen at
any time. Let me tell you, it’s taken some high-up, shadowy, powerful players
in Black Ops calling in favors to even make this happen.”

“We started with the Eastern
Seaboard,” explained Quinn. “We hit your neck of the woods yesterday morning.”

Carmilla shook her head. “I don’t
mean to seem slow, but I’m still not quite getting your strategy. What memory
did you try to implant?” she said.

“Not try to implant,” said Quinn
with a smile. “Succeed in implanting. You’re living proof—and I stress the word
living
, since you wouldn’t be if it
had failed. The program Rachel devised and sent out causes anyone hosting
nanites to remember having sent a DNA sample to a company called GeneScreen Associates
for a full genome sequencing and analysis.”

Carmilla gasped. “Of course,” she
said, her eyes now as wide as half dollars. “That
is
brilliant. And it worked like magic. I remembered sending in a
sample. And you implanted a memory of a phone message stating that the results
were in and that I needed to call an 800 number to get my results. This was crystal
clear. I knew something was a little off about this. Sending out for a genome
analysis wasn’t something I would ever do. I was puzzled by it. But since I
remembered already having done it, I chalked it up to the effect that Dmitri
was having on me.”

“That’s the beauty of this ruse,”
said Rachel. “The conscious mind is expert at fooling itself. No matter how
strange an action seems, if you have a firm memory of having taken it, your
mind will invent a reason for why you did.”

Carmilla nodded. “In retrospect it
is remarkable that I didn’t question it more than I did.”

“We asked the Prep H guys to man the
800 number 24/7 in case anyone called,” said Rachel. “And gave them precise
instructions what to say if someone did.”

“Prep H guys?”

Rachel smiled. “Long story. Our
security team. Anyway, I can’t tell you how amazing it was when they told us
you had called. Even though I had tested it on Kevin, who now also falsely remembers
sending his DNA out for analysis, you were the ultimate confirmation that we
were on the right track.”

“But why be so indirect? Why didn’t
you implant memories directly into Dmitri’s mind instead of mine?”

“Couldn’t,” replied Rachel. “Only
works on those with nanites in their brains, and he doesn’t have any. He has
electronic implants
, and his
neurons can only be manipulated if he’s plugged in, so to speak, to an
expensive MRI-like device. This system is much more of a hassle, but it’s far
more powerful. In hours, or even minutes, it can download a field of knowledge
into his mind that otherwise would have taken him many years to learn on his
own.”
 

Carmilla considered this for a
moment. “I see,” she said. “So you were just hoping that someone close to him
did
have these nanites onboard.”
 

Rachel nodded.

“And when I called with my name, the
man who answered asked for my address to verify that I was really me, since
genome information is private.”

“Exactly,” said Quinn. “But it
wouldn’t have mattered, even if you didn’t give an address. Calls to that 800
number are tracked using the most sophisticated methods known to the military. Even
if you had a phone that couldn’t be tracked, this wouldn’t be true anymore once
you actively connected to this number. At that point, the system is able to
trace back your location instantly. Unless you’re ultra advanced and run the
line through decoy systems and dummy routers.”

 
“The moment you got off the phone,” added
Rachel, “Kevin and two members of our security team took a helicopter to
Princeton, where they had cars waiting for them. The idea was to stake you out.
Learn if you were working with Kovonov. Ideally, we were hoping you could lead
us to him.”

“We had one member of our team
stake out your lab,” said Kevin, “and two of us were on your house. When you
left, I followed, and my colleague stayed behind to keep watch on your home.”

“But why did
you
go on this mission in the first place?” said Carmilla. “Weren’t
you Rachel’s only guinea pig? And wasn’t this potentially dangerous if I did
lead you to, um . . . Kovonov?”

Rachel grinned, immensely pleased
by this question. “Exactly!” she said. “Spoken like a true scientist and a
rational, thinking human being. I had no idea Kevin planned to be in on this.”

She turned to Quinn. “That was so
reckless—and stupid!” she added, unable to help herself, but Carmilla could
tell she had enormous affection for the man and this was out of concern rather
than malice. “How could you not realize that you’re indispensable? Or did you
think
indispensable
and
expendable
were the same thing?”

“We’ve been over this already,”
said Quinn. “You’re right. It won’t happen again.”

“Well, at least now you have
another subject,” offered Carmilla.

“Thank you,” said Rachel. “This
will be helpful. But it only means that both of you are indispensable.”

“To get back to what I was saying,”
said Quinn, “I followed you, hoping you were driving to meet with Kovonov. I
hung back so you wouldn’t notice you had a tail. When I realized what you were
doing I barely had time to ram you off the tracks.”

“You took a huge risk for me,” said
Carmilla gratefully.

“As much as I’d like to appear
heroic, the truth is I wouldn’t have taken such a crazy risk for a stranger. I
did this only because you were a possible connection to Kovonov, our only lead,
and I wasn’t about to let you get turned into paste.”

“Thanks anyway,” said Carmilla. She
tilted her head in thought. “Have any other victims phoned your GeneScreen
hotline?”

“So far only you,” replied Rachel.
“Which brings us to the heart of the matter. Kovonov didn’t just do this to you
for kicks. He had to have chosen you because you’re one of the most
accomplished molecular biologists on the planet. So there’s something you left
out of your story. Namely, what did he want from you? You must have done
something for him that involved your expertise?”

Carmilla didn’t need to think about
this for even a moment. She sighed, embarrassed by how easily she had allowed
herself to be used. “I engineered a designer virus for him,” she said. “His
sister has epilepsy.”

She shook her head and frowned
deeply. “Well, the implanted memories I have tell me his sister has epilepsy. And
now that I think about it, his sister probably isn’t real either. I
 
constructed the virus to exact specifications
to help her. I thought I’d gotten the specs from his sister’s doctor, but they
must have come from him.”

“And what does this virus do?”
asked Quinn.

“It’s designed to attack
exquisitely precise regions of the brain. Regions I had thought the doctor
wanted knocked out because they were the epicenters of his sister’s seizures. I
was too blind with love to even question any of it.”

“What regions?” said Rachel.

“I don’t recall offhand. I know
they meant nothing to me.” She raised her eyebrows. “But I kept the
specifications, which have the targets listed. It would be a simple matter to
pull them from my cloud account.”

Rachel Howard could barely contain
herself. “Please do that,” she said. “Right away. Because I’m certain they’ll
mean something to
me
.”

Her lip curled up into a scowl.
“Let’s find out what this twisted bastard is up to.”

59

Volunteer Landing Park was situated
on the banks of the Tennessee River and offered visitors a picturesque stroll near
the tracks of the Three Rivers Rambler, a steam engine powered train that took
passengers on a lengthy journey along the Tennessee River to the Three Rivers
Trestle, where two other rivers joined to form the Tennessee.

Colonel Stephen Hansen arrived at
the park just before five thirty and sat on a bench near a busy playground.
Toddlers and grade-schoolers in brightly colored clothing were squealing in
delight as they splashed through several fountains and a man-made waterfall,
while their parents either assisted or looked on in amusement. A college-aged
woman wearing a white backpack squirted by on a unicycle, and Hansen shook his
head and smiled. As unlikely as this was, it was nothing compared to being
ordered by the head of PsyOps to meet with a Black Ops operative at this
ridiculous location.

The man he was to meet, going by
the name Darryl Dorton, had doubtlessly staked out his arrival and knew exactly
where he was, probably pissed off that he had parked himself on a bench rather
than wandering aimlessly through the park. Hansen wondered how long Dorton
would make him wait, either for silly cloak-and-dagger reasons or just because
he could.

Ten minutes later a man approached him
and sat down on the bench by his side. “Colonel Hansen,” he said by way of
greeting, “I’m Darryl Dorton. Angela Reader sent me.”

Hansen appraised him carefully. The
man’s pronunciation was a little off, like he was a foreign actor trying to put
on an American accent, but Hansen couldn’t quite place it. “You were at
Starbucks earlier today,” he said, having recognized him immediately. “Working
on a laptop. Why were you spying on me?”
 

Now the man’s futuristic laptop
made sense. It must be an advanced prototype only available to elite members of
the military.

“I assume the general made it clear
that this is my show, not yours, correct?” said Dorton, shooting him a look of
contempt.

Hansen frowned. “She did.”

 
“So my taste in coffee is not your concern.”

Hansen took a deep breath. “Okay. I’m
sure you had your reasons.” He paused. “So what can I do for you . . . Darryl?”

“As you’ve probably already guessed,
I want al-Bilawy. An off-the-books transfer. Can I assume you have prisoner
transport vehicles with commercial markings?”

Hansen nodded. “One at the moment.
A ten-foot moving truck with U-Haul markings. Indistinguishable from the actual
vehicles from the outside, but with untraceable plates. Reinforced body,
bulletproof windows, and four seats bolted in with secure restraints.”

“That will do fine,” said Dorton.
“You’ve done some excellent work, Colonel. But now it’s time to demonstrate
some . . . advanced interrogation techniques. I want you to secure al-Bilawy in
the transport and drive—alone, of course—to an unpaved road within Cherokee
National Forest. I’ll send you the GPS coordinates later this evening.”

“What timing do you have in mind?”

“I’ll meet you there at midnight,”
replied Dorton. He raised his eyebrows. “And pack a bag for up to a week, since
we’ll be working together for potentially this long.”

“So you can teach me these advanced
techniques?”

“That’s right. Leave al-Bilawy
unsedated. Note in the log that you have reason to suspect a security breach at
the Knoxville site and you’ll be taking the prisoner alone to an unspecified
location until you can investigate this suspicion further. Disable any means of
tracking the transport vehicle. Don’t mention this to anyone, not even General
Reader. She ordered you to follow my instructions, not to report the content of
these instructions back to her.”

“Understood,” said Hansen.

Dorton stood, pausing to watch a
mom scoop up a toddler who had been scurrying in their direction for reasons
that only the toddler understood. “I’ll see you at midnight, Colonel.”

“Roger that,” said Hansen,
wondering what Angela Reader had gotten him into.