Chasm Waxing: A Startup, Cyber-Thriller (33 page)

To anonymously and privately navigate
the Internet, Josh used the Tor Browser, bundled within Tails. He
also used a Virtual Private Network connection from a German VPN
firm. The Tor Browser automatically contacted the Internet via Tor.
Tor stood for, ‘the Onion Router.’ Tor sent encrypted Internet
packets through many different servers or relays.

This made
Tor
an
excellent
mechanism to ensure anonymity
and circumvent NSA eavesdropping. Political dissidents,
journalists, hackers, and criminals used Tor.
In addition
, Becca made sure
all the Tor traffic
was
initiated
through the VPN connection, and
that Josh only used the DuckDuckGo search engine. DuckDuckGo did
not record searchers’ data or filter search results.

With all of these
precautions—the VMs, secure operating systems, VPN, Tor,
DuckDuckGo—Josh still felt like the FBI could rush through the door
at any second. Everyone shared this fear.

“
Josh, you did it! I’m so
proud of you. My man is making history.” She squeezed him even more
tightly. Since leaving Maryland nearly a month ago, Becca and Josh
moved in with Jared Adler. They slept in separate rooms. Like his
office, Jared’s estate
was also
located
in Greenwich. Week-by-week,
Josh
and Jared
worked to patch their relationship.

They were all extremely
careful to limit discussions and work related to the Ark solely to
the server room. They considered it their
private
SCIF. Outside the server
room; Josh, Becca, and Jared communicated about the Ark only with
handwritten notes.

For the first few weeks,
FBI agents followed Becca and Josh wherever they went. But the
couple
went
out of their way to be boring. Becca’s
experience
told her that
unless they did something stupid, the FBI would reassign the agents
soon—especially with the
ramped
up Caliphate threats.

Sure enough, the FBI tail
disappeared. As de facto deputy of operational security, Becca was
adamant. She constantly told Josh and Jared that anything on the
Internet was hackable. The only safe
computer
was a computer that
was
turned off.
This wasn’t
true for phones.
Becca
said
the NSA had ways to monitor cell phones that
were powered
down.

The server room of Adler
Capital was
windowless.
It was located two stories underground for
security reasons and to reduce cooling costs. The server room
remained off limits to everyone except Becca, Josh, Jared, and
Kishore.

While Josh worked on
refining his
deep
learning algorithm
to narrow-in on the
Ark, Becca
continued to monitor operational security. She also began writing a
Python program to assist in creating a disinformation campaign. It
was imperative that the campaign
be
consistent with their current
pattern of life operations.

Becca would implement
this
campaign,
once
it was decided to leave
the country in search of the Ark. Her previous work with Josh’s API
allowed her to incorporate AI features into the disinformation
software.

Becca also worked
with Kishore. She assisted him in
architecting a trading platform that leveraged
Josh’s AI. Jared Adler was ecstatic about the preliminary results.
The platform was making
remarkable
predictions. They were
getting more precise by the day.

Jared breathlessly ran
into the server room. “Josh, your trading algorithm is cleaning up.
We just made $5M
on
the open. I’m going to allocate more capital to
the platform. I’m shocked. I’ve been doing algorithmic trading
since
1993
. I’ve never seen anything like this!”

Born in Israel in the
early 1970s, Jared Adler
immigrated
to the US when his father
died in 1989. Eschewing his acceptance
into MIT
to support his mother;
Jared clawed his way up Wall Street. As
a stockbroker
, he began to see the
benefit of working with computers for stock, bond, and currency
analysis. He also foresaw the potential of automated
trading.
This was
well before ‘quants’ became
mainstream
on Wall Street.
After working
at
a number of
brokerage firms, Adler started his
own
hedge fund with
$575,000.

Adler Capital’s proprietary computer
models produced returns that consistently out-performed his peers,
even in the wild bull market of the 1990s. More importantly, Jared
Adler’s computerized analysis got him out of equities in time to
miss the dot.com crash in the early 2000s.

In 2007, Adler’s models
led him to massively short residential mortgage stocks and
high-risk-averse
currencies, like the New Zealand Kiwi, Mexican Peso, and
Turkish Lira. Adler profited from their collective decline to the
tune of over $1 billion. Jared continued to prosper over the coming
years.

“
That’s awesome, Dad,”
replied Josh,
not
matching the excitement of his father.

“
What’s that?” asked
Jared, looking over Josh’s other shoulder.

“
Dad, it’s the Ark of the
Covenant. It’s in Jerusalem, about 1800 feet south of the Temple
Mount.”

“
Oh my—,” said
Jared.

He was going to say ‘God,’
but even a secular Jew like
Jared
knew not to verbalize that name
at a time like this. “Well, I wouldn’t believe it without seeing
your AI’s trading results for myself. That’s amazing Josh. I’m
proud of you.”

Josh looked at his beaming
dad. Josh couldn’t remember the last time he saw a smiling,
proud
father.
Then the thought crossed his
mind;
It must be because of the money I
just made him
. “The AI places the Ark
right here.” Josh pointed at the geo-marker. “It looks like this is
an Arab neighborhood they call, ‘Wadi Hilweh.’ I don’t think
they’re going to be open to selling
property
to Jews.”

Jared Adler thought for a
moment. “Let me make some calls. I know a lot of people. With
enough money, there’s a way to
make
this work.”

“
Be careful Mr. Adler,”
said Becca. “I know I sound like a broken record, but the NSA can
tap any phone call they
want,
unless you use an encrypted line.
And Unit 8200 is not far behind them in capabilities.” Unit 8200
was responsible for SIGINT in
Israel. They
were Israel’s NSA
equivalent.

“
Yes, thanks for the
reminder. Since all the revelations about the NSA came out a few
years back, I invested in a system of secure telephones and email.
I’ll make sure to communicate using encryption.

“
Fortunately, all my
associates in Israel are pretty
well versed in
technology. They don’t
want Israel, Russia, or
the
Americans to monitor them
either. I’ve
also got
an extensive network
of
clients that I can tap for this
mission. Do you have any indication as to why the AI selected this
location? The research I’ve done said the highest probability site
was directly underneath the Temple Mount.”

Josh replied,
“It’
s difficult to
determine
why the AI predicts
certain
outcomes. It’s a black box. The
system ingests
information,
and the neural network
makes sense of it. But it looks like it’s heavily weighting the
works of Josephus,
especially
his description of Jerusalem
in,
Wars of the Jews.
That manuscript
was
written
in 75 AD.

“
Who was Josephus?” Jared
asked.

“
Josephus was a famous
Jewish historian who was eyewitness to the Roman destruction of the
second Temple in 70 AD. There’s a quote from
Wars
stating that the Acra, also
known as the City of David, contained the lower city. It says
it
was located
on a ridge shaped like a horned moon. I’m not exactly sure
why that’s so important to my
AI,
but look at this satellite image.
You can clearly see that the geography around the geo-marker is
crescent-shaped.”

“
Maybe Josephus hid the
Ark?” asked Becca.

“
No,” replied Josh. “You
have to remember that there were two Temples. King David’s son,
Solomon, constructed the first Temple.
The Babylonians destroyed it
in
587 BC. That’s when the Ark disappeared from history.

“
The second Temple was
started when the Jews returned from their Babylonian exile, after
70 years. Then, around 500 years later, Herod the Great extended
the entire Temple complex.
That
was
the Temple that existed
during
Jesus’
lifetime.”

Becca scrunched her nose in
confusion.

“
What I mean is, the Ark
disappeared almost 600 years before the birth of Jesus. Josephus
wrote about 50 years after Jesus’ death. He wasn’t describing the
Babylonian
destruction of the
first Temple;
he was describing the Roman
destruction of the second Temple.”

“
Ok, I get it.”

With the location finally
pinpointed; Josh, Becca, and Jared could now implement further
steps of their plan. The most contentious issue thus
far
involved the
travel of Josh and Becca. Josh was immovable. He wanted to be
physically present to find the Ark. Becca was equally unequivocal.
She would follow Josh
wherever
that took her. They were in
this together; this was their adventure.

Jared
adamantly opposed the
idea.
His argument was that Josh and Becca were already something short
of fugitives. General Shields said that they were both on
the
no-fly list
.
This meant
that air travel with their passports was out of
the question. Jared wanted to hire an experienced
archeological
team to lead the excavation. Becca and Josh could watch
remotely, from the safety of the United States.

Josh
vehemently
argued that he
needed to follow this through. The disagreements were tense. Jared
didn’t want to see his son in prison for espionage. And digging
underground was extremely dangerous. The excavation could collapse
at any
moment
or
ground water could flood
the dig.

With the location
pinpointed to Israel, Jared’s concern boiled over. “Josh, if you
get out of the US, how are you going to get into Israel? Even if
you get
into
Israel, there are the surveillance drones, soldiers, and
police everywhere. Then, if you get to Jerusalem, you’ve got to
work within an area less than a mile from the Temple
Mount.

“
That’s the most
contentious 35 acres of real estate on the planet. There are eyes
on every square foot of that place. We all know that the US and
Israel regularly share information, especially regarding
terrorists. If General Shields has passed any of your
information
to
the Israelis, Shin Bet will arrest you on sight. Then,
they’ll deport you to the US for prosecution.” Shin Bet was
Israel’s FBI.

“
Dad, I understand your
concern.
This is
just something I have to do. Someone hid the Ark
over 2500 years ago. They hid the Ark so it could
be found
. Maybe
it’s the
latent
Jew in me, but I feel like I’ve been selected to
find it. I was made to find the Ark. Its discovery would be a
remarkable contribution by AI to humanity.”

This was
the exact passion and tone of
their
arguments when he was
thinking about quitting MIT. However,
this time,
Josh needed his dad’s
help.

Jared’s
eyes pierced Josh’s soul. Josh didn’t know what
was going to come out of his father’s mouth next.

“
Alright, Josh. I’m not
going to make the same mistake twice. I’ll support you with every
resource at my disposal.” With his best Yiddish
accent,
Jared said, “Who
knew Indiana Jones was a Hebrew?” The father and son laughed
together. Jared hugged Josh awkwardly.