The Siren Project (17 page)

“Now what?” Christa asked.

The lights at the corner turned from green
to red, no amber. Cars screeched to a stop, taken by surprise at the sudden
change. Pedestrians half way across the street, suddenly faced red 'Don’t Walk'
signs and scurried to safety.

“That way,” Mitch said, pointing to the
green 'Walk' sign facing them, wondering at the speed with which EB had taken
over the department store's security system and the city’s traffic lights.

They ran across the road and continued on
down the street. They'd gone a block when the sound of helicopter rotors grew
behind them, although the aircraft was still hidden behind buildings. At the
next intersection, the lights again turned green to red, and a 'Walk' sign
flicked on in front of them.

“EB’s good,” Christa panted with
admiration.

“Yeah, or too good to be true.”

They ran along the street, then as they
passed another department store, the illuminated sign over the entrance began
flashing and the automatic glass doors slid open and stayed open, even though
no one was passing through them. Mitch grabbed Christa’s arm and pulled her to
a stop. He could hear the helicopter approaching now, very close. Covering the
door was a security camera which swiveled slowly toward him and stopped.

“In here?” Mitch said slowly for the
security camera to read his lips.

The department store sign stopped flashing.

“This is it,” Mitch declared to Christa,
leading her inside. The glass doors shut behind them, returning to automatic, as
once again the department store lights went out, except for a path of ceiling
lights that led to the down escalator. They followed the path to the lower
level, where another series of fluorescent lights showed them to an elevator. The
elevator doors opened to reveal five people inside who breathed a sigh of
relief, thinking they'd been trapped. They stepped out of the elevator, as
Mitch and Christa pushed past them.

One of the escaping passengers said. “Hey
man, don’t get in that one, it’s broken. We’ve been trapped in there for five
minutes. Even the emergency phone doesn’t work.”

“Thanks,” Mitch said, “But we know the
driver!”

The elevator took them down to the
underground parking area, where they found a cab waiting. The cab driver stuck
his head out the window.

“Mr and Mrs Eb? I got a booking for Mr and
Mrs Eb? Is that you?” He tapped the digital readout mounted above the steering
wheel that displayed the job.

Mitch grinned. “Yes, that's us.”

They climbed into the cab. Christa gave the
driver their hotel's address, but Mitch put a restraining hand on her arm.

“We can’t go back there,” he whispered, then
he spoke louder to the driver. “Head north on Wisconsin Avenue. We'll tell you
where to stop.”

The cab driver drove up to street level,
sliding into traffic unseen by the helicopter circling above. Mitch fell into a
deep silence, his mind plagued by EB’s dazzling skill, and worse, by what he'd
told him.

Echelon was tasked
against them!

They walked to a small diner after the
cab dropped them off, then Christa accepted the risk of calling Knightly from a
public phone, informing him that Senator George W. Fraser was a senior figure
in the Siren Project organization, and more importantly, he was not
conditioned. Knightly listened, then told her to attend a meeting he'd planned
for that night.

“Mitchell has the address memorized,” he
said, then hung up. The call had lasted no more than fifteen seconds, but a
transcript would be on Senator Fraser's desk within twenty four hours.

“Okay Mitch, what's Echelon, and why
couldn’t I tell Gus about it?”

“What’s your security clearance?”

“Higher than yours.”

Mitch sipped his coffee thoughtfully. “Then
how come you don’t know about it?”

Christa hesitated, genuinely puzzled. “I
don’t know. Should I?”

“You’ve been working in the intelligence
community since you were fifteen, and you don’t know about Echelon? You sure
they trust you?”

Christa pondered the question for a moment,
then offered a possible solution. “I’ve been in Metapsych for much of that
time.”

“Meta what?”

“It’s one of those things I’m not supposed
to talk about.”

“If you Monitor guys lose out, whatever
this Meta thing is, may not exist. But it might come in handy for me to know
what it is.”

She considered his comments, then nodded. “It
was started by Gus, years ago, long before I joined. Initially it was a kind of
university research project, until he started getting clinically provable
results.”

“What kind of results?”

“He proved the mind has capabilities beyond
merely thinking, beyond memory, beyond running our bodily functions. He found
there are senses we don’t use yet, like sight, or hearing, but on a higher
level.”

Mitch listened attentively, but could not
hide his skepticism. “Brain sight?”

“You asked. Should I continue?”

“Sorry. It sounds flaky, but go on.”

“Most of our brain’s capacity is unused. Gus
figured out techniques to unlock some of that extra potential. Enough to get
the attention of the intelligence community. The next thing he knew, Metapsych
was a very well funded, very secret, research center.”

“When we met, you said you did tests at a
university. That was to get into Metapsych?”

“Kind of. You see, my mother was already in
Metapsych. She was Gus' star student. She’d already noticed I had some of the
same talents she had, when she was a child. She thought, maybe if I started the
training younger, I’d go further. So she got Gus to give me the tests.”

“It’s hereditary?”

“Maybe. It’s stronger in women than men,
because men control their emotions and have more logical minds. That inhibits
sensitivity. Men still have the potential, they just suppress it. Women are
more inclined to listen to their intuition. That's the key.”

“So what exactly are these extra senses?”

“For one, I can sense when someone’s mind
is tampered with. You’ve seen that already. That’s a ‘sight’ type sense. Another
sense makes me aware when someone is close, it’s kind of a ‘hearing’ sense.”

“Are you saying that no one can sneak up on
you?”

“It’s not perfect, but that’s one use for
it. Of course, if my emotions are highly activated, then I’m blinded. Or deaf,
depending on the sense. I have to be emotionally tranquil for it to work. There
are other faculties, some I have, some I don’t. No one really knows why someone
has one sense, and someone else has another. Gus hopes to figure it out one
day. He’s really the genius, not me.”

“But you’re highly intelligent?”

“Yes, far above average.” She looked like
she was holding something back.

“And?”

“Gus thinks it's kind of an evolutionary
thing. Some people are further along the evolutionary path than others. If
you’re further along, you can get access to these higher senses.”

“Ah huh, and if you’re a Neanderthal like
me, you’re stuck with a malfunctioning brain.”

Christa patted his hand sympathetically. “Don't
worry, you'll be okay in another million years.”

Mitch smiled, accepting his humble place on
the evolutionary ladder. “So you’ve been in this Metapsych thing since you were
a kid, wrapped in cotton wool, learning how to see and hear with your mind,
instead of your eyes and ears. And they taught you to shoot and do other spook
stuff along the way.”

“Yes, that’s about it. Gus was always very careful
to control my education. Every piece of information I received was carefully
designed to stimulate my development. I guess knowing about Echelon wouldn't
have helped.”

“So how many field assignments have you
had?”

“Including this one?” She asked with a
smile. “One.”

“I knew it! You’re a highly trained,
psychically gifted, rookie!”

“Don’t underestimate just how highly
trained I am. And I really do have faculties you don’t, so I’m not as much a
rookie as you might think.” She sat back. “So what’s Echelon?”

“It's not as exotic as Metapsych,” Mitch
said. “The foundations of it started back in the Second World War, when the
English speaking democracies formed the closest alliance the world had ever
seen. I’m talking about the US, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The
alliance included intelligence gathering operations all over the world. After
the war was won, a secret treaty was formed between the United Kingdom and the
United States called the UKUSA agreement, which also included the other three
countries. It’s an exclusive, very secret club, where the members work together
to spy on the rest of the world. UKUSA is the true core of the Western
Alliance, not NATO.”

“UKUSA?” Christa said thoughtfully. “I’ve
never heard of it.”

“They don't exactly publicize it. Officers
from each member country are stationed in the other’s intelligence agencies, to
ensure the highest level of cooperation. The geographic locations of Britain,
North America, New Zealand and Australia mean that the English speaking world
is able to electronically monitor most of the rest of the world from within its
own territory. There are some listening posts in other countries, but those
countries don't really know what's going on. The UKUSA stations are highly
automated, intercepting communications from satellites, undersea cables, radio,
microwave, cell phones and fiber optics. The works! It cost billions to build, all
in total secrecy. It’s called the Echelon System.”

“That's a lot of calls. How do they know
which ones to listen to?”

“No, no, you’re thinking too small, Princess.
They don’t pick and choose. They listen to everything, everywhere in the world,
all the time. Millions, maybe billions of communications per second. Super
computers in the intercept stations search every telephone call, fax, email and
text, for keywords. The keywords are recorded in five dictionaries, one for
each UKUSA country, so they can target the intelligence they're interested in. When
a keyword is detected, the communication containing that keyword is recorded,
then automatically bounced back to that particular country’s signal
intelligence organization for analysis. Basically, there are five NSA’s, all
working together, busily reading the rest of the world’s communications. And
they can crack any code ever invented, so there’s no place to hide.”

“That’s strangely disturbing.”

“If they have a recording of your voice,
they can search for your exact voice print. It’s easier than you might think. A
digitally recorded voice is nothing more than a string of numbers. It’s easy
for computers to match one set of numbers with another. It’s a great system for
winning a Cold War or hunting terrorists. We know what the bad guys are doing,
as soon as they do, and they don't know we know.”

“So we invented this monster to guard
democracy, and now it’s being used against us? Kind of a Frankenstein, isn’t
it?”

“It's not supposed to be,” Mitch said. “Someone
must have gotten their hands on it.”

“Is there any defense against this thing?”

“Sure, step back two hundred years. Don't
use technology. Use couriers and hand written letters, but they have their own
risks, and are slow. You can also encrypt your electronic communications, but
the UKUSA countries are the world’s master code breakers and they go all out to
limit the development of cryptographic technology by everyone else. Echelon has
all the aces.”

Christa studied Mitch’s face. “Sounds like
you admire it.”

“When I was in the Secret Service, Echelon
intercepts often made the difference between success and failure. How can you
beat knowing what your enemy is going to do, before he does it?”

“Ironic, isn't it? The most freedom loving countries
on Earth have made Big Brother a reality.” Christa looked confused. “So why did
you let me call Gus?”

“Because he had to be told about Fraser. It’s
information they know we have already, so we gave them nothing new.”

“But you wouldn’t let me mention Echelon to
him. Why?”

“Because they don’t know, we know, that
they control Echelon. If you mentioned Echelon to Knightly, they’d know they
had a leak, and we’d have compromised EB.”

“So you think they heard my call to Gus?”

“Absolutely. We can’t say anything over the
phones they don’t already know, that we know.”

“But EB told you about Echelon. Wouldn’t
they have heard that?”

Mitch looked thoughtful. “I’ve been
thinking about that. EB knows about Echelon, so he must have a way to beat it. He
wouldn’t give himself away, I’m sure of that. I was thinking maybe he did
something with the electric current, ran his signal through the power lines,
rather than via conventional communications.”