The Inner Circle (35 page)

"So? What the hell happened?"

"Something came up," Marshall said. "There’s a major decision we have to make right away."

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Armour sat at his desk, staring at the clock, watching as the seconds hand appeared to move much quicker around the numbers than usual. Since every worker in the building was busy trying to figure out one thing or another, Armour still heard plenty of commotion just outside his office door. Normally, this noise would have been bothersome to the NASA Chief, but now he hardly noticed it.

Every few seconds, he gave a quick glance to the black briefcase that sat on the ground next to his desk. With a single word of approval from the president, that briefcase would be opened and the laptop computer inside would be hooked into the NASA computer mainframe. Armour – who had barely been computer literate until the past few years – would need a mere two minutes and a couple dozen clicks on the keyboard to move forward with their plans.

His final gaze fell upon the cell phone that sat on his desk a few inches from his resting hand. He anxiously awaited the familiar jingle that his phone played when he received a call. Even though Armour knew the phone was fully charged, he still checked its battery anyway. Satisfied that the phone was in working order, his eyes wandered back toward the clock.

It's been ten minutes already, what is taking Marshall so darn long? He said he would call back in five. Mansfield is probably holding him up, that no good –

His phone finally rang.

"Mr. President?"

"Peter is writing my speech now," Marshall said. "Do it."

This was all the president had to say and all the NASA Chief had to hear. Armour hung up his phone without saying goodbye and immediately placed the briefcase on his desk. It took less than a minute for the laptop to boot up, and within minutes, Amour had connected a cable into the network modem of his normal work computer.

A year earlier, Armour had consulted with a highly experienced computer-security company and they had recommended software that was guaranteed to cover his tracks when he broke into NASA’s network. The software – which had been brand new at the time of the consultation and had not been released to the mainstream public – was designed to erase Armour's point of entry into the network. If it worked the way he was told it would, nobody could trace his entry into NASA's computer system.

Computers – at least when it came to hacking and security purposes – were still mostly a mystery to Armour and he was taking a giant leap of faith by entrusting this software to cover him. If it did not work the way he hoped and somebody discovered that what he was about to do originated from his computer, Armour did not see how the 'Inner Circle' would be able to cover up the mess that would surely follow. Of course being the head of NASA did have privileges, and Armour would likely know whether his people were testing his computer for security breaches, which would give him a chance to stop anyone from prying unnecessarily.

For now, though, Armour could not contemplate the possibilities of getting caught. The entire comet situation always made the threat of discovery a black cloud over their heads', but they still had to follow the plans they made.

Even if they were moving up the timetable a bit.

Over the past few months, Armour had even done several trial runs, proceeding through all of the required steps, stopping before he sent the final command. But now was time for the real deal.

After activating the software to make him traceless, Armour clicked his way to the correct system. All of these tiny folders and their files may as well have been Greek to the older man – who’d missed the computer generation by a decade – but he’d been trained on exactly what to look for and exactly what to do. He removed something the software consultant had told him was a 'firewall' – he'd reminded the consultant several times that he wanted to change what the computers read, not start a fire, to which the consultant laughed at the NASA chief's naiveté – dropped in the 'worm' – another consultant term,
why were all computer terms so darn strange?
– and put the firewall back online. The entire process took only a few minutes.

Armour was not sure how long it would take or even if he’d completed all of the steps in the correct order, especially since nothing out of the ordinary appeared on his computer screen.
Would some sort of message appear on my screen saying that the worm had been uploaded properly?
While a part of Armour now wished he had asked more questions, he’d known at the time to be careful about getting too specific with the software consultant. The consultant had probably learned too much just from the questions Armour was asking and the NASA Chief shuddered to think how Peter Mansfield would deal with an outsider who knew too much information.

Now I just have to wait and see what happens.

Armour unplugged the wire that connected the two computers and was in the process of packing the laptop back into its case when a pounding on his office door assuaged his fears about the effectiveness of the worm. Before he could even respond to the frantic knocking, the door flew open and a red-faced, breathless young man stood in front of the NASA Chief.

"Sir, you have to come quickly," said the young man, who Armour recognized as Newton's personal assistant. "There's a problem in the control room."

Armour fought an urge to smile. Instead, he closed the laptop case, put the portable computer under his desk and rushed out of the office, following the distraught young man's lead.

Time to earn my Academy Award.

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"What the hell could have happened to it? This can't be happening," Armour said, his voice feigning disbelief.

Armour was pleased with himself for faking shock so well, yet he felt equally as bad that he had to upset William Newton, his old friend. Newton's face looked as white as a bedsheet. The rest of the workers at mission control were loudly and busily typing into their computers, leaving Armour barely able to hear the man he appointed head of Mission Control so many years before.

"I don't know, Jim," Newton whispered. "One minute we were getting readings from the system, the next minute all of the screens just went blank. Sort of like..."

His sentence trailed off.

"Sort of like what?" Armour asked.

"Sort of like the probe exploded, sir."

Armour looked at the large screen at the front of the room, a screen that had given many of the key readings from the probe just minutes before. Now, none of the readings were being registered, as all of the probe's systems had apparently vanished. The computers in the row closest to Armour were also blank on readings, as the first part of the worm had apparently worked to perfection.

"Exploded?" Armour asked. "How could it have done that?"

Newton turned to one of the mission control workers, a nervous skinny man of forty-five with thick glasses and balding hair.

"We can't say with any sort accuracy, sir," the man responded. "But we assume the problem must have been linked to the power loss earlier."

"Did anybody ever find out where the unknown power source came from?" Armour asked.

"No, we’re still working on that. But I have a feeling that this power source must have overloaded other systems - especially the thrusters – which could have caused an explosion," the man explained.

"There's only one way to find out," Armour said.

"Of course," Newton said, surprised that nobody in mission control had realized the obvious way to check on the probe. "I don't know why we didn’t think of this sooner. Myers!"

"Yes, sir?" a man across the room answered.

"I want you to reroute the main telescope to the position where the probe should be right now. If it’s still intact, it should still be close enough to Earth to spot from one of the ground telescopes."

"Yes, sir."

A few of the workers huddled around Myers' desk, doing quick calculations of where the probe should be at this point of its journey. Newton turned back to Armour.

"This should confirm whether or not the probe was destroyed," Newton said.

Armour swallowed hard, praying that everything had gone according to plan and the probe would not be there.

"Put the telescope picture up on the main screen," Newton yelled to nobody in particular. A few seconds later, an unfocused image of space through a moving telescope replaced the empty probe readings.

An entire, stress-filled minute passed until the moving image finally stopped, as the telescope found the correct coordinates. The picture was still unfocused though, and Armour could not tell if the blurry picture contained an image of the probe.

"Enhance the resolution," Newton shouted.

A course of gasps sounded throughout mission control when the picture was brought into focus.

Time for my encore performance,
Armour thought to himself.

"The president is not going to be happy with this," Armour said before turning and walking out of the room full of stunned workers.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Molly Wilson glanced up from her mystery novel to see a beautiful and buxom bikini-clad young woman walk by in front of her beach chair.

What's wrong with girls nowadays?
she thought to herself
. Don't they have a sense of modesty anymore? When I was her age, I never would have worn such an outfit in public. Doesn't she realize that all of the dirty old men on the beach will be staring at her?

Molly looked over at her husband, Henry, and was surprised to see that he was
not
one of the old men doing the staring. Instead, he was just looking straight ahead into the ocean, seemingly lost in thought.

"Are you okay, Henry?" she asked.

Henry blinked and looked over at her. He grinned at her, but after thirty-five years of marriage, she knew him well enough to recognize when he was forcing a smile.

"Yes, of course, dear. Why do you ask?"

Because you didn’t even sneak a quick peek at the walking peep show.

For as long as they were married, Molly realized that her husband had a wandering eye. And she had a feeling that sometimes another part of his body would wander, too.

In their younger days, Henry had been quite the romantic and never would have considered straying from their marriage. After all, Molly had been a beauty queen when she was in her late teens and early twenties, a girl who could have had almost any man she desired. She'd decided on Henry Wilson, a handsome boy who came from a wealthy family of politicians. She'd had a free meal ticket for the length of their marriage and never had to work a day in her life. As she grew older though, her pride had to pay a price when she began to suspect that Henry was sleeping around. Molly always used to catch Henry looking at attractive women for a bit longer than a married man should, but early on in their marriage, she'd convince herself that looking was as far as he would go.

Then he began to come home late. When he would finally show up hours later than he was supposed to, he would reek of a woman's perfume that Molly knew was not her own. Then he began not to come home at all on most nights.

"No reason, you just look preoccupied," Molly said.

Henry turned his gaze back to the ocean. She still thought he was like a little boy, so obvious to read when there was a problem, so shy when it came to admitting something was wrong. It was one of the reasons she still loved him and stayed with him, despite all of his infidelities.

Of course the mansion, exotic beach house and countless diamonds helped, too...

Henry knew that his wife was still looking at him, but he did not have time to worry about what she was thinking. She always wanted to know what his problem was; she was always nagging him to tell her what was wrong. He had always appreciated her concern throughout the years, but ever since the discovery of the comet, he just wanted to scream at her to leave him alone. It was bad enough that he had to keep this secret, now it was like she was trying to force it out of him. Didn't she realize that he was the Secretary of Defense and couldn't tell her about every little thing that was on his mind?

When Henry saw out of the corner of his eye that Molly returned her attention to her book, he took a quick glance down at his watch. It was past noon already and the success or failure of the probe launch had to have been determined by now. The fate of the world was in the process of being determined, but instead of being there firsthand to witness it, the Secretary of Defense was stuck on a beach, sitting on the hot sand, pretending to enjoy himself.

What the hell is President Marshall thinking?
he wondered
. He probably isn't thinking at all. That damn weasel Mansfield probably told him to send me here.

A few days ago, President Marshall summoned Henry to the White House, where he told him that the final plans of the comet probe were moving ahead as scheduled. None of this came as a surprise to Henry, not until Marshall told him to disappear on the day of the launch, to take a vacation for a few days.