Paolo Bacigalupi - The Doubt Factory

I know what you do .

She smiled brightly at him. “I thought I’d surprise you. You want to go out for lunch?”

“I’d love to! Just let me finish up an e-mail.”

He sounded so pleased and happy that Alix felt herself faltering, even as she followed him past reception and down the hall, past conference rooms and offices to his own corner office, looking out across DC toward the Washington Monument. She couldn’t really do this, could she?

The next kid like Tank is on you , she reminded herself.

She steeled herself for the next step.

“Oh, Dad, I almost forgot! Denise needed to print out some essays for her Georgetown interview. I told her I could print them here and get them to her. Is that okay? It’s just a PDF.”

“Sure, Alix.”

Alix hugged him and gushed. “Oh my God, you’re a lifesaver! Denise is going to love you forever.”

She fished the USB key out of her pocket. Smiled innocently. “Can you just print it?”

He didn’t even blink. He took the key and popped it into his computer.

Of course he did. He trusted her.

The file opened up.

Political Innovations in Cluny, France .

“Looks dry,” Dad commented.

Alix’s mouth sure felt dry. “Yeah. That’s the one.” She suddenly felt horribly and completely transparent, standing next to him, staring at the computer’s screen, wondering if Kook’s virus would work.

“Just one copy?” he asked.

“Um… I think she wanted two.”

Alix was sure he could hear her heart drumming out warnings of betrayal. She stared at the screen, trying not to look suspicious and feeling flagrantly so.

Nothing telltale happened. Which was good, Alix hoped. The virus was supposed to be stealthy. While they were looking at medieval European power in the church, Kook’s program was slicing through Dad’s computer defenses and setting up shop.

As least, that was the idea.

Either that or it was all a fantasy, and Kook wasn’t the hacker who had successfully rewritten a Stuxnet virus, and she wasn’t the girl who spent her late-night hours hacking Chase Manhattan for Eastern European credit card thieves. Maybe she was just a crazy girl in over her head, with a boy who wasn’t all he was cracked up to be, and Alix was about to set off every single alarm in the whole damn building.

Alix licked her lips, waiting for alarms and red flags. Sirens. Security guards. German shepherds. SWAT.

The printer began spitting out paper.

“I’ll just print out one more,” Dad said. “Just in case Denise spills coffee or anything.”

Alix looked up at her father, her heart thudding with wonder as everything went exactly as planned.

“You’re the best, Dad. Thanks.”

When she came out of her father’s building after lunch, she saw Moses. He was in jogging clothes with an ostentatious Bluetooth headset on his ear, and he was stalking back and forth on the far side of the street, doing stretches and pretending to be one of those pretentious people who liked to believe that everyone wanted a sampling of their oh-so-important conversation.

Alix crossed the street. He looked different. He’d done something with makeup to make himself look older. Small lines. A bit of gray at his close-cropped temples. It was amazing how makeup reshaped a person. It was a trick Adam had known how to do, Moses had said. That boy could make anyone look like anything. Give him a wig, a uniform, a little greasepaint, and a little foundation, and people’s faces changed.

And that was without even adding any latex. None of the real makeup craft of the theater. Adam had made Moses look legitimate enough as a driver of an eighteen-wheeler that they’d been able to hijack an entire shipment of rats, and drive it right out of a testing facility without raising alarms.

And now Moses was using Adam’s tricks again. Moses looked almost distinguished, except that he’d pulled his socks up on his calves, making himself look intentionally dorky. And that headband. Alix shook her head. Nothing like the Secret Service–style agent of cool who had whispered in her ear outside of Widener Hall when they’d first met. Nothing like the boy she was falling in love with.

Slow down, girl .

Moses turned away from her as she passed, ignoring her entirely, saying something into his headset—“don’t care who you have to get on the wheat-subsidies study group”—and then she was past him.

Amazing. His whole body language was different.

Alix kept walking. Moses would stay a little longer, making sure she wasn’t being followed. She’d protested that it wasn’t necessary, but Moses had just given her a bored look. “How about you trust the experts on this, huh?” And she’d subsided.

If everything went well, he’d be joining her soon. She abruptly turned around and flagged a cab. Another thing Moses had told her to do. Do something surprising, see if anyone gets startled.

A few minutes later she was sipping a skinny latte on the steps of the Library of Congress, looking across at the arrogant rise of the Capitol. The white dome stood against the blue sky. It was hot. She kept an eye out to see if anyone seemed to care about her, but, of course, no one did.

A half hour later, Moses ambled down the street and joined her. Relaxed in a suit jacket, no tie, looking like any one of a million other government workers.

“Well?” He leaned against the concrete wall. “How did it go? Did you figure out which computers we’ll need to install this on?”

Alix grinned and tossed him the USB key. Moses grabbed for it and barely caught it.

“It’s already done,” she said.

She couldn’t help laughing as Moses gaped in surprise.

“I told you. I’m your secret weapon.”

IN THE HEART OF THE DOUBT FACTORY,a series of alerts began popping up on the company’s central servers.

One by one, notifications appeared on cell phones and workstations in a variety of offices around DC, and people whose job it was to pay attention began paying attention.

At Williams & Crowe’s regional office, a nondescript building in Arlington, Lisa Price checked her phone as a message arrived.

Five minutes later she was pushing through glass doors emblazoned with the words Data Integrity Monitoring. A Williams & Crowe computer-security technician was staring at a slew of warnings and alarm messages.

“What do we have?”

“Not sure yet. Something running on the servers at BSP. Cerberus flagged it and sent the alert.”

“Do we know who did it?”

“Cerberus diagnostics says it came from… a Mr. Simon Banks’s workstation. It’s also under his login.” He pointed as a new window opened up. “Now Portcullis just flagged it, too.”

“Call and get me a rundown of everyone who’s in the building.”

The technician picked up his phone and started making calls as Lisa scrutinized the rest of the diagnostic information their security alert had sent.

“This is a pretty sleek virus,” Lisa said.

The tech hung up from his calls. “Sneaky as hell, for sure. We’re running pattern matching now. It looks a little like code that was used to go after online commerce sites a couple years ago. Estonian, we think.”

“What did we ever do to Estonia?”

The tech smirked. “Decided not to use the chip-and-pin system?” He popped open another screen. “And here we go…. Beltway Properties is sending us their K Street building’s access data now. Let’s see who went up to Banks Strategy Partners… tenth floor.”