Authors: Dominick Fencer,Baibin Nighthawk
118
The town seemed to be sleeping, there were few people on the dusty streets and the atmosphere seemed suspended, as if time had taken a moment’s pause for eternity in the place.
After getting out of the taxi, Anaïs walked the streets for an hour, she wanted to walk a bit, but of course, the scenery was anything but thrilling.
She decided to take a room at the Ranger Inn, eat fried chicken and salad, and spend the evening studying the situation in depth and to add the information she had collected from Langley in her analysis.
At 10:00 pm she was fed up of being locked up in that anonymous, although comfortable, motel and she decided to get some fresh air.
The only detectable life was in the city center where besides the shops on the main streets there were several pubs teeming with students from Northwestern Oklahoma State University.
As she walked toward the centre, her attention was attracted by the voice of a man who spoke Russian:
"Полковник Козлов? добрый вечер (Colonel Kozloy? Good evening.)"
Anaïs without being noticed snapped several photos of the person in question, he was one of the transplant patients she had transported twice, under sedation, from Oklahoma to New Mexico and back, officially because of a problem related to post-operative infection.
However, now that she heard him greeting Colonel Kozloy, she saw things in a different way; she could hear that in a short time they would contact a carpet seller in New Mexico to learn how to repair the carpets with invisible mending so that they could be independent.
She had never heard of Kozloy, the name meant nothing to her and with that excuse, that in reality wasn’t an excuse at all, she sent a message to Mark Savannah who had carefully avoided calling her.
The message was as follows: "Colonel Kozloy must meet the carpet seller in New Mexico to learn how to use invisible mending on the carpets in order to be autonomous. The speaker was one of the three sedated transplant patients that I gave a ride. Attached is the best photo I was able to take. Do you know who he is? For your info, my engine died during flight. I recovered, but I preferred to land.
“I'm at the Alva Regional airport. This all seems like the Game of the Goose, I end up back at the start!"
It didn’t take long for Savannah to call her on the secure line.
"I really cannot leave you alone. Kozloy is a former KGB agent from the time of the Cold War, born the same year as Reed, now a U.S. Citizen. The “nice guy” is Borislav Lebedev, a former Russian nuclear submarine officer. Nine years ago, he acquired U.S. Citizenship…of course, don’t ask me how that could have happened.
“The meaning of the message, considering the other details you told me, seems to be the following: Reed is going to give them the composition and production methods of the tissue and of the scaffold, but why he intends to do this, sparking fierce competition, in addition to economic factors, is not at all clear to me. I miss you, you know?"
Anaïs pretended not to have heard and answered: "It will be necessary to prevent the project’s devastating side effects from escalating. Reed must be stopped at all costs."
"Where are you sleeping?"
"Here in Alva, it's very boring. I'll resume the journey tomorrow. I'll be in California, I have to be geo-localized there for a day and then I’ll switch off as usual; this way Green won’t be suspicious."
"When are you coming back to Dallas?"
"In three days, if I have any news I'll call you. Bye."
"Watch out for that engine,” said Mark. “I'm waiting for you…let me know when you are arriving and I'll pick you up. Goodbye and good night."
119
At 9:00 in the morning, after a sleepless night due to a hard mattress and a mosquito that had buzzed around her head despite not considering her good enough to eat, Anaïs showed up at hangar 2 of the Alva Regional Airport.
"All right lady, you can start again. I cleaned the tanks, I filled them up, and the engine has been running for about twenty minutes. Do you feel like taking her up?"
"But of course, thank you."
Anaïs arrived at the Charles M. Schulz airport in Santa Rosa in the late afternoon; she took a taxi and headed to Sacramento.
120
It was 5:25 am when Pavel Doko rose from his chair to go and get some chocolate ice cream from the fridge, he also opened a box of cookies, he’d got hungry while obsessing over the Biosketch Technologies Inc. system.
After many hours of research, Professor Doko was frustrated, he did nothing but move forward through the system, always careful to erase his tracks, without finding anything interesting except for company policies, organization, procurement, accounting and management data. No evidence of the production procedures for the molecules, the tissue or for the scaffold.
At 3:45 local time in the underground bunkers of Biosketch Technologies Inc. a fire started due to a short circuit, most probably caused by the overheating of a server-mirror as a result of a lampropeltis triangulum that had knocked out the cooling circuit and allowed it to enter, though it wasn’t clear how, the chassis.
The fire immediately activated the plant’s inert gas extinguishing system, putting out the fire immediately, but as a precaution the central unit decided to disconnect the server from all the others, turning off the firewalls, the honeypots, and the network intrusion detection system for one minute.
At 5:48 local time, Pavel saw as if by magic, appearing out of nowhere, a protected area that contained a very bulky database and all the procedures for the "Transtem 1.1" operations, starting from the purchase of raw materials to the finished product.
He also noticed that there was a particular path in an area of the disk reported as damaged; he managed to open it and found a sub area with what seemed like the same manufacturing procedures and a small database.
Pavel, after having quickly considered some hypothesis as to why the protection systems had suddenly collapsed, inoculated a program he had created to compress the identified data quickly and began to transfer the procedures from the main area, and then the whole area below that to his servers, shielding this action by simulating a disk cleaning operation.
The operation lasted more than an hour, during which Pavel remained terribly anxious since he knew perfectly well that the protection systems would definitely reactivate and that it was now afternoon in New Mexico. Finally, he deleted the software and logged out, having erased any traces.
Exhausted and with the pepperoni still weighing heavily on his stomach, he fell asleep; it was past 7:00 am.
121
"You did a great job, Ransley! All the major media outlets reported on the press conference and the television news in Europe transmitted part of the conference," Walton I. Reed said loudly during the evening meeting with Bain and Green.
"Catherine has been instrumental as always,” remarked Ransley Bain. “Anyway, I gave her $10,000. I hope you don’t mind, Colonel."
"You’ve done very well and, by the way, I think she hangs around you whenever she can. She's a discreet woman, I would say, and very smart."
"Yes, she’s attractive, although she’s not really my type."
"You can invite her to dinner, can't you?” laughed Reed. “Should I arrange for a casual dinner at my home? Green prepare yourself, you have to be there, too."
"Why not?” Bain replied laughing. “It might be fun and we always eat very well at your home, Colonel!"
"Ok, I’ll arrange it in Washington, D.C. in a week, Tuesday, 8:15 pm. I'll invite Catherine tonight. What about Anaïs?"
"She traveled with me, sir,” replied Bain, “then went to California, but she didn’t tell me where."
"Well, it's better she’s already left. That girl is able to put me under pressure with that inquisitorial look that she has, and in this period it’s better to have no special observers. Now, everybody go home.
“Jago, stay here a moment, I have to talk to you."
Walton I. Reed waited until Ransley Bain had left the office, then he said to Green:
"Kozloy wants to close the deal, we have to meet him in Switzerland. It was the only condition that he demanded for the exchange, I told him that it was fine with me."
"When?" asked Green.
"In two weeks. We have to choose a quiet place that won’t attract too much attention."
"Colonel, I’ll submit a couple of proposals to you within three days. I have to be sure that there is no risk of any kind, including having to deal with any meddlers. In any case, I think it would be better that Catherine Leed organize a press conference in Geneva, so we can also involve the Swiss in later partnership agreements. What do you think?"
"It sounds like a great idea Jago. You cannot always think that things will go unnoticed, despite taking all possible precautions; it's better in this case to come on the scene theatrically, that way no one will get suspicious."
"I finished the audit."
"And...?"
"Quality’s reducing the scaffold production by a day has nothing to do with the increase in the intensity of the brain waves or their frequency, Colonel. I surrender. I have no more ideas."
"Damn! Does Bain know about this?"
"No, sir. I finished the audit just before entering the meeting, and for the moment I wanted to talk about the outcome with you alone."
"Call Bain, please. We need to take a definitive position now."
Bain arrived a few minutes later and again sat where he had been sitting before.
"Nothing has been done," said the Colonel. "Reducing the scaffold production by one day has had no effect on the question of the brain waves. Ransley, at this point WE DON'T KNOW why, WE DON'T KNOW HOW, we just know when, and we don’t give a fuck about that!"
"Have there been other incidents of violence, Colonel?" Bain asked frowning.
"No, thankfully."
"We must remember that the violence originates from having suffered an attack or a provocation, perhaps the concentration of incidents that occurred was just a coincidence," Bain continued.
"Maybe, but...that American Airlines pilot?" Green asked.
"He had an argument with his superior before boarding, the company had changed his work assignments for the next month. He wasn’t happy with the changes and he hadn’t managed to convince them to change their minds."
"Ransley, but is the abnormal situation stable or fluctuating?"
"Absolutely stable. You have to consider that we’ve increased the dose of anxiolytic in the therapy which, in any case, achieves its optimum effect through accumulation. I believe that if other sporadic cases like these manifest themselves, it would be difficult to prove that the cause is due to the scaffold and tissue transplant."
"Are you thinking what I'm thinking? That is we forget about the fucking side effects so as not to screw up years of work and our wages. After all, the probability that they are going to bust our balls is very low."
"Exactly, Colonel," Bain replied with a serious face.
"I think it's ok.
You know perfectly well
that I'm always ready to follow you," Green said.
"Jago, please,
we know perfectly well
that you have nothing to fear because you’ll never be held responsible in any hypothetical and remote investigation," Ransley Bain replied sarcastically.
Jago C. Green raised his middle finger at Bain and turned to the Colonel: "I say it again. I’m always ready to follow you, sir."
"Well, the meeting is over. We’re all agreed, the project goes on in accordance with the protocol; however, we’ll continue monitoring the situation to limit the damage as much as possible. Good evening, gentlemen!"
Walton I. Reed clenched his jaw with satisfaction and was the first to leave his office.
122
"I was getting worried!" Anna's voice was agitated. "I’ve called you at least six times Pavel, has something happened?"
"What time is it?"
"Two in the afternoon."
"Say again!"
"Two in the afternoon, but how are you?"
"Shit, it's so late! I have class in fifteen minutes."
"I asked what happened to you. Hellooo?"
"I didn’t digest that pepperoni pizza, I couldn’t sleep and I had to take two anti-acid tablets. The result was that I collapsed at 7:00. But thank you, I'm fine now. I’m sorry, I have to go. I'm late, bye, Anna."
"Are you coming to dinner tonight?"
"I'm sorry, but I have to finish a very urgent job for the university. I'll call you around 9.00 pm to say good night. Besides it would be better if I have a light dinner after last night."
"So good afternoon, professor. Talk to you tonight!"
Pavel got to the classroom ten minutes late and gave the worst lesson of his life; he kept thinking about the data he had downloaded from Biosketch Technologies Inc. and wanted to go home quickly to examine it. He answered the student’s questions without verve and he ended the question and answer session a quarter of an hour earlier than the usual lesson schedule, and finally went home after shopping at a supermarket.
At 8:30 pm he decided to have dinner, Italian pasta and tomato sauce. He put the grated cheese on and then prepared a fruit salad with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
He called Anna at 9:00 pm, and five minutes later he returned to his bunker to continue examining the data.
At 8:00 am he lay down on the bed still dressed and exhausted. That day, fortunately, he didn’t have to give lectures at the university.
He awoke in the late afternoon. He finished compiling the comparative analysis of the same partition of the two data bases and made it accessible and comprehensible to Mark Savannah, a psychiatrist and not an IT guy.
At 10:30 pm he sent the results in different encrypted data packets to avoid problems of speed and security.
"QRV? Digitrevenant69." Pavel wrote to Mark. It was 3:30 pm in Dallas and Savannah was in his office examining his patients’ medical records.
“QRV, How are you?" Mark replied.
"Fine, thank you, despite the fact that Anna is trying to kill me with her awful food…her sandwiches are great, but everything else...and you?"
"I'm working…Anaïs Degann knows where I am...she came to see me..."
"How the hell did she find you?"
"She managed to inject a RF-ID transponder under my skin. I told her about you and she told me about what’s happening at Biosketch Technologies Inc.. I’m convinced that Colonel Reed is trying to sell the technology of the scaffold and of the tissue to Grigoriy Kozloy, a former KGB officer, now FSB."
"Damn, that girl is smart or were you careless? FSB...but why them?"
"Good question, Pavel. I don’t know how to explain it. Reed, even if he’s greedy, has always stolen and been involved in illicit trade, therefore he doesn’t need money, he has already accumulated wealth. Frankly, I can’t understand it."
"I analyzed the data, I have encrypted and sent the results to you. The key is under the door."
"Yes, thanks. I understand."
"Now it's up to you, as you’ll see, the procedures differ: one is standard and the other not. Let me know your evaluation."
"So it was probably Green."
"At the moment, you have to focus on the data, afterwards we’ll take care of the other issues; however, I had an idea. I asked Jànos Kozma for his opinion, and he came to the same conclusion as me. As soon as you understand what's been happening, give me a call. Bye, Mark. I’m going to sleep finally!"
"Thanks, see you soon my friend."