The zenith angle (11 page)

Even Tony Carew, the proverbial dot-com rich kid, had hit hard times. Tony never said a word about red-hot market opportunities anymore. Tony was fiddling with science projects in Colorado, he was angling for high-tech defense work. Tony had lost more money than Van knew how to count. And he still had to live out there.

Inside the Vault, though, a guy could get along on powdered eggs and grits. Creditors would never find you there. You didn’t have to watch financial news on TV or glimpse the stocks in a newspaper. The Vault had hot macaroni and cheese. The Vault had dry yellow cake. There was no beer or alcohol of any kind allowed. There was grape juice.

That was what there was. That was all there was. That was the Policy, and it was the federal government. You didn’t have to think about it.

It got worse. Federal procurement systems were notoriously sluggish. When he and Jeb had gone over the stats for the Grendel system, they had discovered that it would take eight times longer to pay for Grendel than it would to simply build it themselves. They could wait for a procurement check to be cut, but by that time, they would have lost the critical first-mover advantage that had led them to plan a Grendel in the first place.

So Van had paid for Grendel’s hardware himself.

Van still knew that this was the sensible choice. He knew that the baby CCIAB would quickly die if they didn’t prove their serious chops as go-to technical people. Jeb had promised that the feds would be good for Van’s money sooner or later. As the legendary Admiral Grace Hopper had often told Jeb, it was always easier to apologize to a bureaucracy than it was to get permission. Jeb did not have the necessary money, himself. Jeb had spent most of the last twenty years as a federal law-enforcement instructor.

So, Van personally tasked Fawn with buying 350 used PCs on eBay. As a bridge loan for the CCIAB, Van sold his Range Rover. The Range Rover was in big trouble parked in his Washington neighborhood anyway. It was smarter to sell his truck than to have it carjacked.

Ironically, after selling his Rover, Van had no problem at all requisitioning a posh federal limo. In fact, the black limo driver was a neighbor of his. So Van slithered around Washington in a bombproof stretch limousine with smoked windows, a vehicle often used by the Secretary of State. Then he went home to sleep in a slum.

Fawn was a practiced eBay hand. Fawn bought most of her clothes there, from tiny New Age retailers who made anti-allergenic clothing. Now Fawn bought herself a set of fake eBay IDs for “security reasons.” Soon she was elbow-deep in a web of electronic transactions that Van had no time or energy to oversee.

The 350 used PCs showed up very quickly. Most of their hard disks were crammed with pirate software, viruses, and pornography, but that posed no problems. Van stuck the 350 PC motherboards into hand-welded frames. He installed a completely new operating system that turned them all into small components of a monster system. Grendel was installed in a spare Internet rack in the bowels of the Vault, directly connected to all-powerful servers in the NSA’s Fort Meade. Days later, Van’s office furniture arrived. Van hadn’t asked for new furniture—he had been working off metal folding chairs—but Fawn took matters into her own hands. She bought a discontinued office suite from a defunct dot-com and boldly had it crated and shipped to the Vault’s secret mail drop in West Virginia.

The CCIAB’s cheerless chunk of bunker blossomed with leopard-dotted Leap Chairs and strange, hexagonal, filmy office sets, featuring spandex light shades and tiltable desks. Fawn’s flamboyant gear was a major hit within the Vault. Such comforts were unheard-of in federal employment. Envious Defense Department drones would come by just to steal Fawn’s golden paper clips and her teakwood thumbtacks.

The CCIAB won a lasting nickname: “Those Cyberwar People.”

Once again, Van expected someone to lower the boom on them for being too bold, but nobody ever lowered the boom on small boards of advisers that worked for the National Security Council. Except for the President himself, there just wasn’t anybody in the federal government with direct authority to fuss at the CCIAB. Even the President himself would have to create a Special Review Board just to review his special boards, and in times of war, that was out of the question.

The CCIAB was not really a federal agency. Like the National Security Council itself, it was a small, make-do work gang of close colleagues that was trying to steer huge federal bureaucracies into the latest and trendiest policy directions. Like a president, the CCIAB was just a temporary passerby in the federal system. Except for Fawn herself, who had had no job when she begged Jeb for a favor, there was no such thing as a career CCIAB person. Every bureaucrat in the CCIAB was seconded-over from other careers in other bureaucracies. Karl Bowen, their top policy analyst, came from Los Alamos National Lab. Brian Coon, their chief investigator, was from the Office of Criminal Investigations of the IRS. Herbert Howland, the public relations guy, was from the Navy Broadcasting Service. And so forth. Jeb’s game plan for the CCIAB was to create a realistic policy for National Cyber-Security that the President, Secretary of State, DoD, CIA, NSA, and Joint Chiefs of Staff could all sign off on. The pitifully vulnerable federal computers had to become less sleazy and less easy. Through their own good example, sheer panic, and grim threats, the CCIAB would beat, beat, beat the bureaucrats into line. Whatever could budge would be made to budge. And the devil take the rest. During the Christmas season, the political pace slowed down. Vital people simply vanished from Washington. Contacts did not answer e-mail. Van was glad for the chance to concentrate. His emptied head was buzzing with hot new technical ideas.

Back in his Washington apartment, Van was waiting for his latest batch of code to compile. Living in a high-crime area had brought Van useful insights about real-world security. In real life, if you had a solid wall, then you could lock the door. If one lock wasn’t enough, it helped to install five or six locks. But computer networks didn’t have walls. So the “firewall” metaphor was just that, a metaphor. A far more fertile approach would be a computational
immune system.
After all, the vast majority of serious computer attacks were not carried out by outside hackers. Hackers did not “break in” through anything that could “break.” Most real-life computer acts-of-evil were carried out by crooked insiders already
within
the firewall. Thieves or double agents, people who knew the system already. Usually, they knew very well what they wanted to corrupt, erase, alter, or illicitly copy. So a better security model would not “lock” or “wall away” anything. Instead, it would scan constantly for evil processes inside the machine. It would hunt for bad acts inside the system, in the way that the bloodstream fights germs.

This was an exciting new paradigm. It offered fruitful ways forward that resolved a host of the day’s knottiest security challenges. The concept was a generation ahead of its time. Maybe two generations, given the awful state of the computer market.

All the more vital, then, that the CCIAB should pioneer a serious breakthrough like that. They could run it within the Vault, an ideal place to start a working demo for a core audience. A streaming distributed supercomputer, on broadband wireless, featuring a pilot, alpha-rollout immune system. This inspiration set Van’s brain afire. It was fantastic. And it was really likely to work, too, that was the best part. The CCIAB didn’t have a whole lot of money, but they did have the attention of the top experts in the field. There was no competition in creating computer immune systems. There were no stovepipes. There were no established industry vendors trying to protect market share. So they could farm the project out just like Open Source, develop it quickly, quietly, in closed modules, on a need-to-know basis. So while Jeb was struggling with the state of federal security in his political, bureaucratic way, he, Van, would be literally building and assembling the future of computer security. Hands-on. The real deal. Proof-of-concept. Wow.

Van’s son flickered onto his laptop screen, the size of a postage stamp. Ted’s creche in distant Colorado featured a webcam. Both Van and Dottie commonly watched Ted’s webcam during their workdays, though nothing much ever happened there. The day care was run by a bouncy, well-scrubbed Buddhist feminist from Boulder, a thirty-something woman in braids, who wore denim overalls and a head kerchief. She commonly sat cross-legged in her Timberland boots as her little charges crawled all over her. Sometimes she read them non-gender-specific fairy tales. Ted seemed to find this treatment more or less okay. He definitely looked a little bewildered sometimes. Sometimes Van would touch his son’s flickering image on the screen and murmur a few words. He couldn’t help himself.

On the day after Christmas, Van squinted through the peephole of the apartment door and was stunned to see Tony Carew.

Van undid three locks and two chains. Tony slipped inside, with a final wary glance down the gloomy hall. Tony wore a pale, tailored trench coat, a spotless snap-brimmed hat. He looked very Washington. He’d never looked that way before, but he sure looked it now.

“Van, you’re a hard guy to find. Don’t you answer your phone?”

“No. Not anymore.”

Tony confronted the apartment. He summed it up and dismissed it in disbelief. “Is this a safehouse? If so, it’s not very safe. I brought a bodyguard and a chauffeur to this part of town. I’m really afraid somebody’s going to hurt them out there.”

Tony put his black shoulder bag on Van’s peeling Formica counter. He unzipped it and displayed a newly purchased bottle of brandy and Benedictine, still in a paper sack. The B&B bottle was two bottles really, double-necked and welded together. Glass twins in green and yellow. In their teenage undergraduate days, Van and Tony had considered brandy with Benedictine to be the height of sophisticated drinking. It was, of course, illegal for them to be drinking at all, and doubly illegal to do it on campus, which made a doubled form of booze even tastier, somehow. They each had elaborate theories on the exact proportions of brandy and Benedictine necessary to get properly hammered.

The sight of the two crooked bottles gave Van a warm nostalgic glow. There had been such innocent joy in his life then. Tony had been such good fun. Tony Carew was the guy who had found Van the best fun he had ever had: a serious girlfriend.

Van had never before had a roommate who could match him in intelligence. And it hadn’t hurt Van’s feelings any that Tony was witty, fast-talking, and great around girls. Tony took off his brand-new hat and placed it on top of his bag, so that his hat would not have to touch the disgusting countertop. “I don’t suppose there’s such a thing as a ‘snifter’ around here.”

Van fetched them a couple of jumbo disposable foam cups. He’d been meaning to buy himself some glassware, but had never found the chance.

Tony set to work to open the bottles. Van checked the Casio strapped to his wrist. It was only 6:00P.M. “Are you drinking, Tony?”

“How could I not?” Tony said. “I just came back from a rotten little holiday emergency in the bowels of the FCC.”

“Oh.”

“No, Van, it’s even worse than that. I strongly advise you to join me immediately in a heavy boozing session.”

“All right.” Van knew that Tony had a point. He knew it all too well. Tony poured their potions. He clowned around with the flimsy cups, acting drunk already. Tony wasn’t genuinely wasted yet—Van pretty well knew what Tony looked like under those conditions—but Tony definitely had that first, lit-up look.

Tony had brought a burden with him. It couldn’t be just the awesome, industry-smashing train wreck in federal telecommunications policy. Tony would not have come here personally just for that. Tony’s priorities shifted around some, but Tony was always Tony. Tony Carew was into money, women, technology, and status games. Tony Carew was a very charming guy. He was fluent and persuasive. Van had never competed with Tony in those aspects of life. That was why Tony trusted him. Like most overachievers, Tony had personal burdens that weighed on him like anvils. But Tony’s idea of burdens—the big money, the fast women, the struggle for status—those things fell on Van like a light refreshing rain. From their first day as friends, Van had been able to drink in Tony’s problems. Van didn’t judge Tony, he didn’t scold. He couldn’t even say that he sympathized. He needed Tony to trust him, somehow. He needed to be trusted with those things.

Van offered Tony the magnesium chair and sat on the weight-lifting bench. Tony stroked the shining chair. With Tony inside it, it was a throne. “Wow! You should get a dozen of these. They stack!”

“Great idea.” Van tilted his flimsy white cup and sipped his B&B. Instantly, its familiar velvety burn made him feel nineteen years old.

Tony studied the apartment’s bare walls. Van had managed to rid himself of the kung-fu posters, along with all the previous tenant’s possessions. He had kept the weight-lifting set, though. The weights were his consolation prize.

“Van, couldn’t the NSC get you a furnished apartment?”

“It
was
furnished, Tony. I threw everything out.”

Tony’s eyes narrowed. “So you swept it all for bugs, huh? Yeah, I’ve seen that done before. Man, that really wrecks the place.”

Van shrugged.

“Van, I can’t believe they made you into a fed. I know you’ve got the right family background there, but that line of work doesn’t seem much like you.”

“Times change.”

“But why are they wasting your valuable time? Why you? You’re the computer-science gold standard, man. Can’t they FedEx their little password crypto puzzles over to Merwinster? You’ve got a decent place up there.”

“I’m selling my house.”

“No way! It can’t be!” Tony blinked. “Mondiale is cratering that hard? Mondiale, too?”

Van nodded. “On a federal salary, I can’t pay the real-estate taxes on that place. I’ll be lucky to sell it. I wish I knew who could buy it. The whole town’s been turned inside out.”

Tony’s face fell. Tony was a rich kid from a wealthy family, but the money issue between them had never much bothered Van. Dottie’s dad was also pretty well-to-do, and Dottie was just fine. “I knew your scene up there had a serious downturn, but . . . Did you tell that to Dottie?”