Unforgettable - eARC (11 page)

Chapter Fifteen

I sat back, a little stunned by the implications. Being able to see anything, anywhere in the world was something any intelligence service would kill for. No wonder Jamshidi wanted the device.

But some things didn’t add up. If the device worked like Bernstein said it did, then Qela Industries would almost certainly have bought the rights. After all, it would make most of their surveillance drones obsolete. And the other venture capitalists would have seen that the government market for such devices would be huge, no matter how much the privacy advocates might scream.

“Can I see a demonstration?” I said.

His face fell. “You have to understand, it works very well in theory,” he said. “If I already had all the kinks ironed out, I wouldn’t need the capital to buy all the quantum computing equipment I need to make it work properly in practice.”

“So you don’t have a working prototype?” That would explain why Yelena had not found it last night: Jamshidi’s men had sent us on a wild goose chase.

“Of course I have a working prototype,” he said. “I’m just warning you that it doesn’t have full functionality yet.”

“Consider me warned,” I said.

He pulled an oversize cell phone out of his pocket. “The device is on a single chip. I installed it inside my phone so I could demo it easily while away from the office.” The cell phone had a large touchscreen, and he maneuvered through various menus until he got what he wanted. He then set the phone down on the table. The screen was completely black. “It takes a little time to build the picture, but I’m sure with enough funding I can speed the process up.”

I looked at the screen. Tiny dots in various shades of gray popped into existence at random.

“Where are we looking at?” I asked.

“Yes, well, that’s one of the current limitations,” he said. “For now, the only place where the picture comes in clearly is the location of the device. As you try to offset it, there’s some interference, but with a powerful enough quantum computer, the interference could be eliminated and the picture would be clear.”

On the screen, I could see a vague impression of the conference table. Maybe.

“How powerful a quantum computer?” I asked. The prototype chip I had stolen in Barcelona—which Yelena then stole from me—had been capable of processing 128 quantum bits at a time. Maybe Jamshidi wanted it to process the input from Bernstein’s device.

“It would depend on the image size and quality you wanted,” he said.

I could now make out Bernstein’s general shape on the screen. “Say, a one megapixel grayscale image.”

He pressed his lips together and rubbed them with an index finger.

“That’s a fairly basic image,” I said. “About the minimum any intelligence agency would want to deal with.”

“Yes,” he said. “I don’t know the exact figures off the top of my head.”

He was stalling, I could tell. That meant it was bad news. “Would 128 q-bits be enough?”

“You’d probably need something more powerful.”

“How much more powerful?” I asked. “Ballpark figure. Just tell me the truth.”

He sighed. “It was nice to meet you,” he said. “I just wanted to tell you that, before you get up and walk out of the room.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because everyone does when I tell them. You’d need about an eight megabit processor to process the image and remove the interference in a reasonable time.”

“Eight megabits?” I did a quick calculation in my head—that was about sixty-five thousand times more powerful than the chip I’d stolen in Barcelona, which was the most powerful one I knew about. “Eight megabits? Unless someone makes a major breakthrough, it’ll be twenty or thirty years before anyone has a processor that powerful.”

“I was thinking that running a bunch of computers in parallel might work.”

“You’re talking about a server farm with thousands of computers, just to process one image. That’s crazy. Nobody has that kind of money to spend on…” Except maybe Jamshidi did have that kind of money to spend—especially if he was stealing a lot of his technology. He could be building the ultimate spying machine. And if he could use it to remotely examine technology blueprints, he wouldn’t even need to hire thieves to steal technology for him after that.

Denying Jamshidi access to this device was vital. So maybe Yelena should report her failure to the Iranians. But there was nothing to stop them from hiring someone else to do the job, someone who might succeed. So we needed to get the device and follow through with the original plan.

And with the guard here, a snatch and grab probably wasn’t going to work. So I tried another approach.

“Mr. Bernstein, I’m not actually a venture capitalist,” I said. “My name is Nat Morgan, and I’m an officer of the CIA.”

His face lit up in a grin again. “Well, then, surely you can see the importance of funding my work.”

“I’m sorry, I have no authority in that area. I’ve been assigned to locate the lab of an Iranian billionaire who’s been stealing quantum technology from all over the world.”

“Is he the one who ordered the robbery last night?”

“Yes,” I said. “And my partner is undercover, working as a thief. She’s the one who broke in.”

He stared at me. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I need your help to stop this man. We have to locate his lab, and our best chance of doing that is by having my partner deliver a piece of technology he wants. So I’m asking you to give me your prototype.”

“Just give it to you?”

“Yes.”

“So you can stop an Iranian billionaire.”

“Yes.”

“That’s the most preposterous thing I’ve ever heard.”

I shrugged. “I could tell you something more preposterous if you’d like. This happens to be the truth.”

He chuckled. “You know what’s really funny?”

“What?”

“I believe you. I actually believe you. You would have to be incredibly stupid to tell me this if it wasn’t the truth.” He picked up his cell phone and removed the SIM card. “I can always build another prototype. And the fact is, like you said, nobody’s going to be interested in my quantum viewer for decades. I’ll probably be dead by then. At least this way it can do some good now.”

“It will be a big help,” I said.

Bernstein held up his index finger. “Not so fast. I said I believe you, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want some verification of your claim to work for the CIA.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “What kind of verification?”

He pushed a button on the teleconferencing equipment built into the table.

“Who would you like to call?” asked a smooth computer-generated female voice.

“The Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Virginia,” he said.

“Dialing,” the computer replied.

Bernstein said to me, “I presume someone there can confirm your identity.”

“Of course,” I replied.

“Central Intelligence Agency,” said a voice on the phone. “How may I direct your call?”

I gave Edward’s extension number, and after the phone rang a couple of times, he picked up.

“Strong here,” he said.

“There is a file folder labeled ‘CODE NAME LETHE’ in the back of your bottom desk drawer on the right,” I said.

“What? Who is this?”

“Just look for the file folder. And don’t reveal anything sensitive, as I’m on speakerphone with Yitzhak Bernstein of ChazonTec.”

Bernstein leaned forward and hit the mute button. “He doesn’t know you.”

“What he finds in the file will let him confirm my identity,” I said. “He has to read what’s in there. Be patient—it’ll take a couple of minutes.”

We waited in silence until Edward said, “How do I know you’re really Nat?”

Bernstein undid the mute.

“We have an authentication protocol,” I said. “It’s on a bright yellow sheet of paper.”

“Jimmy Stewart,” Edward said.

If his keyword was an actor, mine needed to be an author beginning with the same letter. “Jane Austen.”

“All right,” Edward said, “what can I do for you and Mr. Bernstein?”

“I’m trying to convince him to give me the quantum viewer so we can use as bait to locate Jamshidi,” I said.

“Hmph,” said Edward. “I thought another party had been tasked with obtaining it.”

“The theft attempt didn’t succeed. I thought we might try a more direct approach. Mr. Bernstein understands Iran is a threat.”

“In that case, Mr. Bernstein,” said Edward, “I appeal to your good sense. We will use this device of yours to stop a clear and present danger, not only to the United States, but to Israel as well.”

“So you confirm that Mr. Morgan is working at the CIA’s direction in this?” asked Bernstein.

“Yes.”

“And you believe Jamshidi is an actual threat?”

“Mr. Bernstein, you work with quantum tech, right? Have you ever thought about what would happen if Iran had a quantum supercomputer that could analyze in real time Israel’s complete defense structure down to the level of individual bullets and then give the Iranian military a plan that took advantage of every weakness?”

Bernstein blanched. “That’s what Jamshidi’s building?”

“No,” said Edward. “What Jamshidi’s building is about a billion times more powerful than that.”

“Point taken. Thank you.” Bernstein hung up. “That confirms it to my satisfaction.”

He started to hand the quantum viewer over to me, and I reached out to take it. But he stopped, then moved the screen closer to his face. “That’s odd,” he said.

“What?” I asked.

He turned the screen so I could see it. The picture had become much clearer since I’d last paid attention. It showed Bernstein sitting in his chair at the table. His mouth was blurred, as were his hands, like a long exposure film. I assumed that was because he had moved during the time the picture was forming.

It took me a moment to see what he had seen: in the picture, the chair I was sitting in was empty.

“That’s never happened before,” he said.

I didn’t really understand it myself. Normally, computers and cameras didn’t forget me until a minute after I was gone.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “As long as we have something to deliver to the Iranians, little glitches like this don’t matter.”

He nodded and handed the phone over to me. I shook his hand. “Thank you, Mr. Bernstein.”

“Always happy to stick it to the Iranians,” he said.

“If you wouldn’t mind escorting me out of the building,” I said, “I would appreciate it. That way no one will suspect me of stealing this.” After things had worked out so well, the last thing I needed was for him to forget he’d given it to me and sound the alarm.

* * *

“I would not believe if I had not heard,” Yelena said when we met in her room back at the hotel. “You almost give me heart attack when you tell him truth.”

“Maybe you’re right,” I said, “and I do rely on my talent too much. If that hadn’t worked, I could have gone in again with a different approach. But it actually felt really good to get what we needed without stealing it.”

“But now he has forgotten and will think someone stole it.”

“True.” I pulled the cell phone out and put it on the desk. “But the fact is he was a nice old man and I felt kind of bad about stealing from him.”

Yelena picked it up. “I could only hear, not see. What is weird?”

“Oh,” I said. “Let me show you.” I took the cell phone from her and went through the menus to set the quantum viewer in operation, then put it on the table.

“We should remain still while it builds the picture,” I said.

In silence, we watched as the pixels gradually appeared on the screen. After a couple of minutes, I could see vague shapes starting to appear.

“Take too long,” she said. “Just tell me what is weird.”

“What was weird was that I didn’t show up in the picture. Bernstein was there, but the chair I was sitting in was empty—like the quantum viewer didn’t even know I was there.”

“So? Is your talent.”

“Except my talent is being forgotten after I’m gone. That’s not the same as being invisible while I’m still there.”

“Maybe because process take so long,” she said. “Early pixels forget you before picture finish, so you not notice few pixels that show you.”

“Maybe,” I said doubtfully. From the experiments I’d done to test the limits of my talent, I had concluded that as long as I was interacting with a camera, the recording of me remained intact even if it was longer than sixty seconds. But once I was gone for a minute, the whole recording vanished.

Maybe quantum cameras were different somehow.

“Anyway, it doesn’t matter,” I said. “You can contact the Iranians, let them know you have the device. Try to set up the meet to hand it over in Tehran rather than Moscow. Then I can try to follow—”

“Nat,” she said. “Look.” She pointed to the cell phone screen.

The picture had resolved enough to show Yelena standing in the room. And right next to her, clear enough to be recognized, was me.

* * *

“I’m really glad you called,” said Edward after he’d skimmed my file and I’d brought him up to speed on what had happened since coming to Israel. “I’ve got a mission you’ll be perfect for.”

“But what about tracking down Jamshidi’s lab?”

“This is an easier way to do it than following stolen tech. One of Jamshidi’s top scientists, a guy named Parham Rezaei, is in his hometown for three days of mourning his father’s death. We have intel that he’s actually a prisoner being forced to work against his will. With your talent, though, you could get to the guy, get him to tell you where the lab is, and he and his guards wouldn’t remember it—they’d just go back to the lab after you’re gone.”

Rezaei had mentioned something about his father being sick. I sighed. “I’m the one who got the intel that he’s a prisoner. And I feel kind of guilty about leaving him that way. What if we could get him out?”

“Given the current tensions with Iran, kidnapping an Iranian citizen would be touchy.” He let out a long breath. “But, if he’s willing to defect, that would put a crimp in Jamshidi’s plans and give us valuable intel on what he’s doing. So, if he agrees and you can find a way to do it without too much risk, you’re authorized to bring him in.”