God Hammer: A novel of the Demon Accords (16 page)

The big guy in the boss suit took a seat at the head of the table farthest from us, Viori hovering by his shoulder while the chubby guy dragged out a chair on the boss’s left side. I recognized the chubby guy from Galina’s description.

Declan was frowning.  “I know you.  You’re the one with the Taser at Spring Break,” he said to the boss.

“Yes Mr. O’Carroll, you provided a hell of a demonstration.  Opened a lot of eyes that day,” he said. “Your remotely piloted… clay models…robots or whatever they were was interesting as well.”

“You never gave your name,” Declan said.

“No I didn’t,” the boss agent said evenly. He paused for a moment, looking between Declan and myself.  “I’m Victor Donlon, Deputy Director, SID.”

“Signals Intelligence Directorate?” I asked.

His eyebrows might have twitched slightly higher.  “Very good, Mr. Gordon,” he said with a nod. “You’ve been doing your homework.”

“So what can we do for you?” I asked.  “Seeing as how you brought us all this way.”

“You approached one of our assets today. That concerns us,” he said smoothly.

“If you mean Lyle Standish, we never actually approached him.  We
did
stop the car on his street,” I said.

“Mr. Standish is a valuable employee of this organization, recovering from serious illness.  We protect our employees, Mr. Gordon,” Donlon said.  “Why did you want to see him?”

“We wanted to ask him about Anvil and find out how to get it off our backs,” I said.

He paused, poker-faced.  “I don’t know what you’re referring to?” he said.

“Anvil is an NSA watchdog surveillance program written by Lyle Standish and Thomas Nagle, who is sitting to your immediate left.  The program is, at this point, autonomous and has expanded its role much farther than its original mission, and for the better part of last year has been actively targeting myself and my people,” I said.  “Our goal, Deputy Director Donlon, is to learn enough about Anvil to convince it to remove our names from its threat profile.”

“And you brought a first-year computer science student for assistance?” Donlon asked.

“Exactly,” I said.  “Wouldn’t you?”

That made him pause for a moment.  “Talking with the supposed programmers of this alleged program was going to help you how?”

I looked at Declan.  “Anvil started with a set of written parameters for its threat definition.  Those have likely been modified and expanded, but understanding the originals might give us insight into its current definition and might help us frame an argument why our names should be removed from that list,” he answered.

“Interesting.  I still don’t understand your role is this, Mr. O’Carroll.  Aside from your unique abilities with mobile clay dolls and high voltage non-lethal weapons, you haven’t even completed your first full year of college.”

“I’m just an intern, Mr. Donlon.  I go where the boss tells me to.  You know, pick up coffee and donuts, get the dry cleaning, that sort of thing,” Declan replied.  “But seeing as you’ve brought Mr. Nagle with you, maybe he could give us a few tips on old Anvil and we could be on our way.”

“My grandmother would call you cheeky,” Donlon said.  “I call it being a smartass, Mr. O’Carroll.  Either way, it’s not really an endearing quality.  You understand that you’re sitting in a room in the middle of the largest SIGINT organization on the planet, smack dab in the middle of a US military base, back talking to the man who gets to decide whether you can leave or if you should stay for a much, much longer visit to discuss how you know the code name of a highly classified government program?”

“One, I believe the Chinese now have the largest SIGINT organization, at least by headcount, as demonstrated by how much US information they keep helping themselves to, and two, this is what my aunt would call a grand opportunity to expand my horizons, Mr. Donlon.  But I don’t think you came in here to do the usual threat thing.  The whole ‘you’re in a lot of trouble young man, blah blah, national secrets, blah blah, put you in prison till you go blind, blah blah.’  Miss Viori even indicated that armed troops aren’t considered an effective deterrent, and you haven’t even isolated us and done the whole one-on-one interrogation thing, so maybe we can just slide past the threat stuff.  Consider us duly chastised and suitably afraid,” Declan said.

I knew the kid had a real problem with authority figures, but damn.

Donlon’s face had gone bright red, looking my way with a mixed expression of intense anger and bewildered confusion. 

I thought maybe I should intercede before my intern gave him a heart attack. 

“Apparently you’ve encountered Declan before.  So you should be aware that he has, ah, issues… mostly with threats.  It’s a trait we share.  It may seem like arrogance, but it’s really born of regular episodes of unrelenting danger mixed with possessing and
controlling
extraordinary capability.  We have that in common as well.  In addition, we were both voted most likely to
not
be a threat to our own country in our high school yearbooks.  However, your
asset
launched a Tomahawk missile at my associates and myself, along with over fifty sworn law officers of the State of New Jersey and about twenty reporters. It also appears to have activated some space based weapon and tried to fry us. Most recently, it bypassed the safety controls on an elevator in our building, almost killing nine college-age summer interns.”

“There is no evidence that the missile was launched by our asset,” Viori said when her boss still looked like he was choking.

“Really?  Would you let my associate here examine the sub’s computers?  I bet he’d find a trace that you all missed,” I suggested.

“That is never going to happen,” Donlon finally said.  “We don’t grant baby programmers access to government systems because they can stir love potions and chant Irish drinking songs.”

A-ha.  A chink in the armor had appeared.

“You truly don’t understand, do you?” I asked.  “I thought the first-year comment was just posturing, but you don’t know much about my intern, do you?  Oracle has kept you out of the loop,” I said.

“Oracle is a tiny, inconsequential agency wasting taxpayer money on mumbo jumbo and voodoo Kool-Aid,” he hissed.  It was an actual hiss, almost snakelike.

A sudden buzz sounded and Declan suddenly jumped a bit, then reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone.  He read the screen, then typed rapidly before looking up apologetically.

“Sorry—my college roommate.  He picks the worst times to text.  I told him that we were in a meeting,” Declan said. 

Donlon was full on frowning while his assistant looked slightly incredulous before looking down at her clipboard, which I could now see held some kind of tablet.

“What?  I told him not to keep texting,” Declan said.

Donlon steepled his fingers in front of him and leaned forward.  “This brings us to the main reason we, ah,
invited
you here today,” he said with a glance my way.  “Do you know what our employees say that NSA stands for?”

“No Such Agency?” I guessed.  “No Snacks Allowed?” Declan asked.

“Close.  No Signal Allowed,” Donlon said. “We don’t allow personal devices to operate in this building or its vicinity.”

“Look, I said he wouldn’t do it again,” Declan said.

“I think Mr. Donlon is referring to the fact that it worked at all,” I said.

“Exactly, Mr. Gordon.  You should not be able to send or receive a thing.  Yet you did.  And I’m going to climb out on a limb and guess that we couldn’t intercept it, correct?” he asked Viori, who shook her head.

“Within the last several days, signal traffic from the Demidova Corp has increased while simultaneously becoming opaque to our systems.  We have the most advanced technology, software, and programmers on the planet and we can’t get a thing from your web traffic.  How is that possible?” Donlon asked.

“Ah, I see.  Your
asset
almost destroyed our corporation and when we blocked it, you got worried.  What you’re really worried about is a new technology that you can’t hack,” I said.

He leaned back.  “A moment ago, you said you hoped to convince us that you weren’t a threat to national security, and yet you apparently possess technology that every terrorist group in the world would kill for.”  He turned to Viori and nodded.  She immediately fiddled with her tablet, and the wall monitor lit up.  A news clip started and I recognized myself from the night before.

“Let me ask you this—what would you pay for unhackable software?  Computer security software that not only defends but counter attacks?”

“And it seems you plan to sell it to the highest bidders.  You understand that
your
country feels that this is a threat to national security?” Donlon asked.

“It was a rhetorical question.  We haven’t made any decisions on selling it, if, in fact, it can be sold.  My statement, which you nicely pulled out of context, was designed to address the business world’s concern’s about our viability, which for the first time in weeks, is back on track, thanks to our proprietary software,” I said.  Declan was frowning at me, but he smoothed out his expression as I waited for Donlon’s response.

“This is exactly why you and Demidova are on our threat list and will remain so,” Donlon said.

“So you want us to give up the only advantage we have on Anvil?  That’s not going to happen,” I said.

“You understand that
my
boss will brief the President about this development first thing tomorrow morning?  That Demidova Corp will come under the scrutiny of
all
facets of the US government in that case.  Where will your viability be then?”
 

“I’m not sure.  Maybe our viability is more international.  Maybe we’ll take our technology to other countries, like we have our drugs.  See how that goes,” I suggested.

“We’ll freeze your assets, seize your hardware, and reverse engineer it,” he said with a smile.

“You’re certainly welcome to try.  How will you deal with the mumbo jumbo part of it?” I asked.

“Anvil’s here,” Declan suddenly said, looking at the monitor.  “I think it’s about to do something.”

Viori and Donlon looked at him, confused.  Interestingly, the chubby programmer who had to be Thomas Nagle looked fascinated.  He had been nervous and sweaty right up until now.  His eyes were wide and excited.

“You can sense it?” he asked. 

Declan looked surprised by the question, or maybe the source of it.  He looked at me and I gave him a tiny nod.

“I can.  And your program is as loud as a boy band concert.  Never felt anything like it.”

“You can
feel
Anvil?” Nagle asked, glancing nervously at Donlon, who remained quiet.

“I don’t know how everyone else can’t,” Declan said.  “It’s a beast,” he said, then lifted his gaze to the monitor. “I mean beast in the complimentary sense, Anvil.”

“You think it can hear you?” Nagle asked, half incredulous and half nervous.

“Of course it can hear us.  We’re sitting in its living room.  Shit, it listens anywhere there’s a microphone, camera, telephone—” Declan said, pointing to the black phone on the wall by the agent hitman’s shoulder, “—or cell phone.  Come on; you designed it?  What did you think it would do?”

Nagle looked at Donlon again, who just looked back at him calmly, his face a much cooler shade of pink.

“We designed it to penetrate the Dark Web,” he said.  “To follow trails through the Tor system.”

I looked at Declan for translation.  “The Dark Web is a term for the system of cloaked IP sites and access points that people who want to roam the web anonymously or communicate through it secretly use.  It overlays the regular web, but you need special software, Tor, and site addresses to get into it.  Used for criminal and terrorist activity.  Guns, child porn, and drug deals are all available on it.  Ironically, it was designed by the military,” he said.  “Now the terrorists use it.  So, let me guess: Anvil was programmed to infect any computer that downloaded Tor software, right?”