The zenith angle (29 page)

“Your AFOXAR people are still inside my damn plane,” Tony told Van. “Meet me there before the demo, all right? We’ve got to cross some i’s and dot some t’s.”

“Tony, I can’t do anything they can’t do. They’re fully trained Air Force technicians.”

“You and I need to talk, Van.”

Van scowled. “You’re not getting cold feet about this, are you?”

Dottie broke in. “He’ll be there, Tony.”

Tony nodded and moved on. Van looked at her, upset. “What was that about? Ted and I were just about to bring you the fruit plate.”

“Honey, that was over two hours ago. I feel fine now. We have to do the banquet dinner now.”

Van despaired. “Oh, honey, please don’t make me do the banquet dinner.”

“They got Ted his own high chair. It’s all been arranged. They’re seating me with the other CIA wives. I wouldn’t miss this for anything.” Dottie smiled. “It’s important, honey. They really want you to go.”

Van did not want to go to the stupid banquet even the least little bit, but without a Dottie to run away and neck with, there was no point in fleeing. At least the food was good—the food was great, in fact—and he was not required to rise and speak in public.

Van wasted many valuable moments of his life listening to tedious master-of-ceremony business. Boring crap about lost objects, departing buses, golfing opportunities . . . Then Jeb rose to speak. It cost Van a pang to see poor Jeb walk to the podium. Jeb was actually walking rather than waddling. The poor guy had lost a whole lot of weight while running the CCIAB. Rumsfeld, who had lived to be seventy-something and was in top physical condition, had been ruthless with Jeb. Rumsfeld had sent Jeb a bullying torrent of inter-office notes, “Rumsfeld Snowflakes,” demanding Bethesda checkups and heart-safe exercises.

Jeb put on his bifocals to pick through his three-by-five notecards. Van had never seen Jeb so meek and dull and conciliatory. Jeb didn’t even start his speech with his customary risqué joke.

“The President’s board has accomplished, magnificently, the principal goals set for our strategy . . . Speeches, articles, and private meetings have changed the paradigm of the IT buying community. We will never return to the old, careless ways . . . The CCIAB projects already in progress will be making a smooth transfer to the Assistant Undersecretary for Infrastructure Protection in the DHS . . . Quiet but effective work is being done today by the OMB to make our federal government the smartest and the largest buyer of safely configured software and hardware . . .”

What in the name of Pete was all that about?
This
was the big show-stopper Jeb had promised? Where were the tough guys? Where were the antiterror warriors who were going to kick everybody’s ass?

Trained, efficient, cold-eyed operatives who would crush cyberterror without mercy? To hear Jeb talk, the whole effort had been about procurement issues.

“. . . the safe computing benchmarks developed by the U.S. National Security Agency and the Center for Internet Security . . . The National Institute for Standards and Technology’s Certification and Accreditation Program . . . the Undersecretary of the Information Analysis Infrastructure Protection Directorate who will oversee collection and storage of the critical infrastructure data in a database . . .”

Van’s eyelids were fluttering. He looked around the conference room, past the bouquets and sweating ice pitchers. Jeb’s audience was drinking Jeb in. This was
normal
speech to them. Jeb was
normalizing
the computer world. People who had been howling, paranoid prophets in the cyberwilderness two years ago were getting turned into fully vested bureaucrats. They were
real
bureaucrats, with real titles and real offices. A little slice of the funding pie there. An undersecretaryship here. Funding. Turf. Accountable responsibilities. Oh, my God.

Now Jeb was gallantly name-checking all the usual suspects within the CCIAB. “I can’t say enough about the tireless efforts of Herbert Howland, our director of public relations . . . Stand up, Herbert, where are you, take a bow . . .” A pattering of applause.

Van’s fingers dug tightly into the linen tablecloth. Oh, Jesus. So this was why they had insisted on his being here at the banquet. The ritual applause. Stage fright bit deeply into him. His cheek jumped. Restoring nerves were tingling in there, as they grew their way back through the bone cement in his head.

“And the CCIAB’s heroic Deputy Director for Technical Services, Derek Vandeveer!”

Van forced himself to his feet. To his shock and awe, there was thunderous applause for him. The loudest applause of the night, by far. Frantic, almost. The idiots would not shut up. There was even
whistling.
The whistling was coming from Michael Hickok, who was at a table with the AFOXAR crew. Hickok went on for a good eight or nine seconds when everyone else had stopped. Van sat down, his face flushed and blazing. What was that about? Had he really done that great a job?

Impossible. That crushing humiliation with the KH-13 . . . Van looked dazedly across the room to Dottie’s table. Dottie looked happy enough to burst.

When the banquet broke up, Van sought her out. “Did you hear all that clapping?” he asked her. “Was that just me?”

She jounced Ted on her hip. “Oh, honey, Ted and I were just so proud.”

“Let’s get out of here. That was truly weird.”

“You promised Tony you’d go to the landing strip and help him with the test flight.”

Van had promised Tony no such thing. “Let’s go put our feet up. We’ll feed the swans or something.”

“Oh, no, not now. I’ve got to go have a drinky-winky on the big verandah with the CIA wives,” said Dottie. “They’re telling me all these amazing stories about the husband I never knew I had.”

“They’re not ‘CIA wives,’ honey.”

“Well, that big redhead sure is. The one who’s really looped. I think she knew your mom!”

TWELVE

ERLETTE HOUSE, VIRGINIA, MARCH 2002

V
an had no alternative but to walk to Tony’s jet. It was a surprisingly long way. Erlette House had actual fields out here, growing tall, peculiar, East Coast historical crops. What was that stuff over there?

Flax? Hops? Hemp? He’d never seen the like.

The AFOXAR staffers, eager for publicity, had flown in an entire Joint Special Ops command post. It was pushing it more than a little to have tents, briefing boards, spotters’ binoculars, laser rangefinders, and spidery spread-spectrum antennas, but AFOXAR was never going to have a better opportunity than this to advertise their services to a crowd of feds. Van offered a vague wave to Hickok, who tapped the side of his ground-contol helmet and gave a thumbs-up.

Van walked up the jet’s embarkation stairs. Tony’s jet was scarily big. It could have held twenty people, if someone had ripped out the love nest’s white leather couches and the twenty-three-inch tiltable digital display screens.

So here he was inside a fully fueled private jet in Virginia. It really was that easy. If he knew how to fly this jet, he could be smashing into the White House in minutes. Van went up to the cockpit cabin, which had no security door. There was no pilot on duty. There was no one inside the jet but Tony Carew.

“Where’s your pilot?” said Van. “AFOXAR said they’d put five or ten tech guys in here!”

Tony lifted a finger to his lips. “Shhhh!”

Van had never been inside a jet’s cockpit before. The BBJ had two pilot’s seats, tastily upholstered in lamb’s wool, plus two black plastic yokes and six bluely glowing digital screens. Big flat planes of glass surrounded Van on three sides.

“You’re the pilot, Tony?” Van said. “When did you get a pilot license?”

“Oh, come on, Van. Who needs one? John Travolta can fly one of these things. Fleabitten al Qaeda guys straight from Yemen can fly them. They’re not a big deal. And whose show is this, anyhow? Is this about a bunch of punk kids from AFOXAR? Why let them hog the glory?”

Van said nothing. He wasn’t thrilled at the way this was going. He scrunched himself into the copilot’s seat. He was looking at a gleaming forest of switches and dials. The BBJ had a massive double-handled throttle, like a huge yellow beer tap. His seat had a flip-down pane and an overhead projector.

“I flew her over from Colorado myself,” said Tony. “That was a milk run. I had to fire my pilot. I’ll have to get rid of that leather decor, too. I’m selling this thing, you know. I’m selling her to the party directorate of Bharatiya Janata. In India, she’s gonna be a political campaign plane.”

“No kidding.”

“Indians can do all kinds of cool things with jets once they’re free of the good old FAA regulations. For those village voters in India, a jet like this is pure stage magic. They’ll paint her green, white, and saffron. Dress her up like a sacred cow on parade. They can fill the fuel tank with luminescent sparkles and outdo the Navy Blue Angels. Her best days are all ahead of her.” Tony patted the instrument panel, his face tinged with sadness in the glow of the altimeter dials.

“Why did you sell your jet?”

“Why else? I had to. In some other, better world I’m just a dashing tramp flyboy, Van. Maybe I do some milk runs from Bombay to Dubai. I fill this bird up with gold chains and bangles. I settle accounts with some
hawala
guys and then I can buy another plane. That’s how they finance Bollywood movies . . . but, you know, come on. That’s a mug’s game, it’s the smuggler’s blues, right? That kind of life doesn’t
push the high-tech edge.
”

Tony leaned forward in his pilot’s seat. “There are only sixty-one of these babies in service in the whole world. And I have the only one that can be flown off a Web page.” Tony held up a clipboard. “Really. I mean, here’s tonight’s little flight plan, okay? Twenty minutes, and it’s almost all automated.”

Van rubbed at his twitching cheek. All automated? No, not exactly. The exact situation involved Michael Hickok standing outside in the gently gathering Virginia darkness with a portable plastic gizmo frankly based on a Nintendo control joystick. Nintendo joysticks worked great, actually. They were extremely dependable interface devices.

The engines began to roar.

“Van, in politics, people need a damn show!” Tony shouted. “And that’s just what we’re gonna deliver. Think of the takeaway sound bite we’re giving these guys! ‘I went to Virginia and Derek Vandeveer grabbed a jet plane right out of the sky!’ ”

Van stared at him.

“You know what I like best about this remote-control rig of yours?” Tony bellowed over the engines.

“That it’s all
invisible
! I mean, if we didn’t know better, we’d think we were haunted by spooks!”

Tony sent the plane into a taxi run. The engines drank fuel and they picked up speed in a hurry. The jet left the tarmac. They were airborne.

“No freight load,” said Tony as the roar of takeoff faded. “She’s light as a feather with just you and me on board. Stop looking so freaked, Van. I’m telling you, this is totally a picnic. We could go in the back and watch stag films.”

Van found his voice. “I don’t think stag films will go over real well inside India.”

“People are the same all over, Van. I mean, just maybe, you live in a nation of rich maharajas, influence peddlers, crooked elections, and corrupt accountants. With big software industries, and huge gaps between the superrich and the underclass. Where son follows father in political dynasties, hassled by Moslem terrorists. Is that your country? Really, pick any two.”

The jet began to bank. Van sneaked a look out the flat black pane of the window. Maybe he was going to survive this.

“Let me show you something really cool here,” said Tony, scrabbling under his seat. “Look, the pilot’s got his own gun.” He produced a snub-nosed Smith & Wesson revolver. “Boy, a pilot with a gun, that makes you feel a lot safer, right?”

“Put that away, Tony.”

“It’s never loaded,” Tony assured him. “Bullets equal zero.” He tucked the weapon back in its holster.

“But they always ask me about that now. They do, I swear. I’ve got, like, fifteen Taiwanese chip executives in here for a dirty weekend in Bangkok, and it’s like: ‘Does our pilot have a pistol in the cockpit?’ Like what, you Chinese businessmen are aching to polish each other off inside the fuselage?

The world has gone nuts, Van. It’s like we’re all under a curse.”

The plane bounced twice, violently. The engines whined.

“This must be the good part of tonight’s show,” said Tony. He took his hands from the controls. “We just got fake-hijacked in mid-air, right in front of your adoring crowd.” For the first time, Tony clicked his seat belt.

“So,” said Tony, stretching, “tell me about your next big step, career-wise.”

“I don’t know,” Van told him. “I think I might move out to Colorado with Dottie.”

Tony was astonished. “What? You’re gonna waste time out there with my little telescope? Didn’t you hear those clowns yelling and cheering at that banquet? Man, you can have any post you want!”

“I don’t know what that was even about.”

The plane went into a terrifying sideways slide. Van clutched at his armrests, heart hammering.

“Do I have to spell it out to you in words of one syllable?” Tony said, unperturbed. “I guess I do, huh?

Van, you are their hero.”

“Huh?”

“You’re their man, Van. You’re their ball-breaker, you’re their kick-ass guy. What cyberwar people want more than anything in the world is a geek who is genuinely tough. Did you see any ‘Cyberspace Force’ people in there at that meeting? Did you wonder why not?”

The plane leveled out. Then, sickeningly, it began to climb.

Tony glanced at his clipboard. “I’m loving these AFOXAR kids. They’ve got brio. No, Van, the unlikely attempt of Colorado Springs to become the computer-security capital of the visible universe, whoa, that has come to sudden grief. Word got around. When I found out my pal was in a damn hospital, I made some words move around. To the President’s political adviser, specifically. He’s a busy guy, but he didn’t mind when I gave him just a few words: ‘illegal bug,’ ‘National Security Council,’ ‘rogue operation inside Washington,’ some words like that. Major General Wessler has got himself a brand-new field assignment. General Wessler is going to be sucking brown dust in Mesopotamia.”