Genocide of One: A Thriller (36 page)

Negotiations concluded, Burns crossed his legs, trying to calm down. The anger he
felt at being forced to give in was somewhat lessened by the admiration he felt at
how brilliantly he’d been played. “I wonder if you’ll indulge me and hear what I have
to say now.”

Gardner nodded guardedly. “Of course.”

“What I’m about to say is entirely hypothetical,” Burns emphasized. He had no ulterior
motives and simply wanted to satisfy his curiosity. “Suppose there is a scientist.
He undergoes a thorough background check and obtains a high-ranking post in the government.
He’s in his sixties, a warm person with a brilliant record who’s respected by everyone
around him. He lives a very modest lifestyle for one of his position, is not excessively
greedy for fame or money, and cares for his family above all. A model citizen. But
for some reason this man betrays his country. He isn’t motivated by money or goods,
and he isn’t blackmailed because of some dark secret he’s hiding. So why does he do
it? Why would he do something so dangerous?”

“Maybe he gets well compensated for it.”

“But according to investigators his estate hasn’t increased by a dime. And he hasn’t
received any other benefits—fine meals, expensive liquor, women, or some privileged
position. He sold out his country but got nothing in return.”

“Mr. President, you don’t seem to understand scientists. We are an especially greedy
type of people.”

Gardner stared straight at Burns. The president noticed that the look in the scientist’s
eye had changed.

“Our instinctual desire is a thirst for knowledge. This is as strong as, or maybe
stronger than, ordinary people’s desire for food or sex. We have an inborn desire
to
know
.” As he spoke, the scientist’s eyes sparkled. Burns was astonished at the savage,
hungry look in his eyes. Melvin Gardner had discarded the mask he usually wore, that
of a faithful, sincere man, and was now showing his true colors. And Gardner did not
possess the type of surface cunning of those greedy men who frantically pursued the
money game. Instead he let this unusually powerful desire show, honestly and openly,
with no attempt to hide it.

“More than anyone else, we want to understand—the riddles hidden in prime numbers,
a theory that describes the entire universe, the secret of the beginning of life.
But those aren’t what I really wanted to know. I wanted to know about man. Whether
the Homo sapiens brain has the intellect to explain the universe or whether it will
forever be unable to comprehend it. Whether in this battle of brains, with nature
as our opponent, there’s any chance that someday we’ll prevail.”

“And you found the answer?”

“I did. A small computer was sent to me. From where I don’t know. I used it to communicate,
and someone on the other end gave me those answers. At first I thought it was some
kind of joke, but eventually I realized I was dealing with a fearful intelligence,
and I came to believe. The ‘strong anthropic principle’ that some physicists advocate
is simple egotism. The one who can correctly grasp the universe is not human. There’s
someone that comes
after
us.”

“Are you telling me the person you communicated with was—Nous?” Burns said, using
the code name of the being he had ordered killed.

Gardner didn’t answer. “Please Mr. President, let me perform my final task as science
adviser. You know, fifty years or so ago President Truman asked Albert Einstein if
aliens were to land on earth how we should deal with them. Einstein advised him that
we shouldn’t attack. You won’t defeat intelligent life that surpasses human beings.”

Were he and his staff underestimating the biological threat that had suddenly appeared
in central Africa? Burns wondered. As he always did when he felt anxious, he sat up
straight and looked down at his opponent. “Are you saying, then, that Operation Nemesis
was a mistake?”

“I am. Your decision to kill this new intelligence that has appeared on earth was
a total mistake. You should halt Operation Nemesis immediately.”

Since Burns had taken office, no one had ever spoken to him like this. “So,” he said
coldly. “That’s why you tried to save Nous? Even if it meant betraying your country?”

Gardner shook his head sadly, as if upset by this hopeless display of distrust and
intolerance. “I didn’t do it for this country alone but for all mankind. If we attack
Nous he will use all his power to retaliate in order to save his species. And if that
happens, we will be wiped out.”

“Exterminated?”

“That depends on how brutal he turns out to be.”

To break the oppressive atmosphere Burns tried cracking a joke. “If he’s as moral
as we are, there’s nothing to worry about.”

There was a trace of scorn in Gardner’s eyes as he looked at his country’s leader,
but this was quickly replaced by a look of weariness. “At first this is what I thought.
If Nous is really an evolved human he wouldn’t try to wipe us out right away. He would
need to take over the knowledge and technology mankind has accumulated, and he’d need
reproductive partners in order to increase his race’s numbers—assuming crossbreeding
is possible, that is. But Operation Nemesis has put us in a grave position. If intelligent
beings discover that there are others in the world trying to kill them, what do you
think will happen?”

“I can’t imagine.”

“It’s easy to picture. Think about a human child. The family is a small child’s only
world. How will that child react if he discovers an enemy in the family who tyrannizes
him? If this weak, childlike mind is thrown into a violent environment with no one
to protect him, what will happen to him?”

As Gardner said, Burns could easily picture this. He remembered himself as a small
child and his father towering over him like a giant. A kind of uncontrollable anger
toward Gardner welled up in him just then, from deep in his unconscious. “Are you
saying that no decent person can come out of that kind of environment? That seems
kind of a prejudiced thing for a scientist to say.”

“I’m talking about risk factors. Many people overcome problems in their environment
and become solid citizens, it’s true. Others sublimate their anger and become successful.
But in some cases the anger they direct toward the outside world connects with an
innate propensity for violence and they commit vicious crimes. The kind of people
who shoot up their workplaces. They want to destroy themselves and the world. Operation
Nemesis is doing just that—planting fear and anxiety, and anger, in Nous’s heart and
trying to demolish his self-respect. Imprinting the idea in his mind that the world
hates him. If the operation continues, Nous will wind up with his tremendous intellect
intact but with a broken spirit.” The scientist fixed his gaze on the president. “What’s
really terrifying is not intellect, much less military force. The most frightening
thing in this world is the personalities of the people who use them.”

After a forty-minute drive in his Audi, Rubens arrived at NSA headquarters at Fort
Meade, in Maryland. He parked his car in one corner of the huge seventeen-thousand-space
parking lot and looked up at the imposing main building, the symbol of Crypto City.
It was a pitch-black glass-covered building, the actual shape of which was hidden
within. The black glass outer structure and the inner defensive shield weren’t just
to prevent furtive outside surveillance but were themselves counterespionage equipment
used to block electric and audio waves produced within the building.

Rubens went to the visitor screening station, passed through a rigorous identity check,
and was given a badge that said
PRIORITY VISITOR
, for important guests. As if waiting for him to finish, a plump man who’d been standing
off to one side walked over. “Mr. Rubens? I’m Logan with the W Group.”

An employee of the NSA Operations Directorate. The W Group’s full designation was
the office of Global Issues and Weapons Systems. Logan wore a blue badge, which signified
that he had access to the highest-level secret codes. “This way, please,” he said,
unlocking a revolving door that led to the interior of the building and motioning
Rubens inside. They were heading to Operations Building 1. The walls along the corridor
were lined with printed warnings about the need to maintain security.

“Sounds like you’ve had some serious problems,” Logan said as they walked.

The affair with Gardner. The NSA really did know everything. “Did you hear anything
about how the dismissal of the indictment came about?”

“That’s the part we don’t know anything about.”

Dr. Gardner must have sensed that the investigation led to him and come up with a
way to turn the tables and bring himself back from the brink of disaster. But what
exactly he did to achieve this was unclear. Since he was released without being interrogated,
the whole affair was shrouded in mystery. Apart from that, the fact that Gardner had
revolted against Operation Nemesis came as a mild shock to Rubens. Obviously Gardner
had concluded that the operation was a grave mistake.

Logan stopped in the corridor and knocked at a door. Inside was a conference table,
where three staff members were already seated. They ranged in age from their twenties
to their forties. All had the same blue ID badge, and none of them wore a suit. After
some perfunctory greetings they got down to business.

The first to speak was the oldest employee, a man named Jurgens. “This is the laptop
computer we confiscated from Melvin Gardner’s home. It’s a commercial Taiwan product,
sold last summer in an electronics store in Tokyo. It’s impossible to trace who purchased
it, however.”

“What about the contents?” Rubens asked.

“The hard drive was severely damaged by electromagnetic waves.”

“Will it be difficult to restore? I want to know about any communications log.”

“All that data’s been destroyed.”

Rubens was crestfallen. What Gardner and Nous had discussed would remain a riddle
forever.

“There is one thing,” Jurgens continued. “The LPS—Laboratory for Physical Sciences—was
able to recover about fifteen megabytes of data.”

“What’s on it?”

“We were able to determine a lot of interesting things.” Jurgens let one of his colleagues
continue.

Durant, a man in his thirties, took up the story. “Of the fifteen megabytes, three
were, we think, part of the operating system code. But this isn’t like any existing
operating system we’ve ever seen.”

“Meaning?”

“What’s installed on that machine is an entirely original operating system. Probably
a system created from scratch to prevent anyone from hacking the computer. That’s
the reason, I think, why the computer used to communicate between the Congo and Japan
can’t be hacked.”

“No vulnerabilities that can be exploited?”

“That’s right. It’s an extremely secure system. I think that small laptop was made
specifically for communications purposes.”

Even if communications were intercepted, the encryption was unbreakable, and if someone
tried to hack it he’d be rejected. Rubens wanted to find out what the world’s largest
intelligence organization intended to do. “The only alternative would be to get to
the provider and cut the communications, right?”

“That’s one way, but if the user’s got another provider ready then it’s just a vicious
circle.”

They’d already tried.

“Anything else?”

Jurgens gave a meaningful smile. “There’s the twelve megabytes of information that
remain. Fisher will fill you in.”

Fisher was in his twenties and wore thick glasses. “I copied the twelve megabytes
of information we could extract from the computer onto a disk.”

Fisher placed a single CD-ROM disk on the table.
VRK
was printed on the front of the disk, a secret classification.

“The code means ‘very restricted knowledge,’” Fisher nervously explained. He seemed
like a student, but was apparently a mathematician. “Would you like to see the contents?
I don’t think you’ll understand much of it, though.”

“What’s recorded in it?”

“A random number sequence.”

“What?” Rubens exclaimed.

“Pseudorandom numbers, I would think, and it’s not clear what algorithm created it.”

This was surprising. Like a child who’s received a better Christmas present than he
ever imagined, Rubens gazed hard at the CD-ROM. “So this is the key to breaking the
code?”

“Yes. They use these random numbers to encrypt and decrypt undeciphered text. I applied
this random number sequence to all the communications we’ve intercepted up till now.”

“And? Were you able to decipher anything?”

“Not a thing.”

Rubens wasn’t disappointed. He could grasp the NSA’s intentions. “But if you use this
random number sequence you’ll be able to decipher any future communications?”

“Correct.”

“We ambush them, in other words,” Jurgens said. “I advise letting them continue communications
between the Congo and Japan. We’ll intercept the coms, and at some point we should
get some valuable intel. Like the enemy’s present position.”

Twelve megabytes of information was the equivalent of several dozen printed books.
The operation had begun to unravel, but it now looked like they could get a handle
on it again. “Okay. Let’s go in that direction,” Rubens said. “Thank you for all your
help.”

“You’re welcome,” Jurgens said, smiling. “There’s one more bit of info that should
be helpful. Around six a.m. yesterday the amount of communications between the Congo
and Japan increased to a level we haven’t seen before.”

Rubens calculated the time difference. This was the time period when the three armed
forces in the eastern Congo would have been pursuing Nous and his group.

“So you think the enemy’s control center is in Japan?”

“That’s what we’ve concluded. The control tower, so to speak, is in Japan, and is
sending instructions to Nigel Pierce in the Congo.”