Chris Mooney - World Without End

Angel Eyes, posing as Mr. George Winston, the name of the main character from Orwell's 1984, approached Matthews with an offer of half a million dollars for the device. It was not known how Angel Eyes discovered the device or how he found out the name of the Cambridge, Massachusetts, company developing it. What was known was that Matthews accepted the offer.

Matthews was a bitter man, insecure, a brilliant loner who craved a glamorous lifestyle. On the day of the exchange, Matthews did not bring the schematics for the spy device called Tempest. He told Winston the device was worth more than half a million. The new deal required Winston to double the purchase price or the deal was off.

Mr. Winston accepted. Matthews, who had full access to the company and its lab, arranged a break-in.

A week later, on a Saturday evening, the spying device was stolen from the company's lab. A fire broke out sometime after midnight. By the time firemen arrived on the scene, the raging blaze had already decimated half the building. Matthews's charred body was found in the ashes. The device wasn't recovered.

The fire was front page news for both the Boston Globe and the Herald, but the theft of the spying device was never made public. The FBI was called in to investigate. One of the agents was a CIA liaison; the information was forwarded to Raymond Bouchard.

Matthews's condo was broken into the same night as the fire. The thief stole every item that could be easily fenced, including Matthews's computer equipment, discs, answering and fax machines, cell phone, pager and his Palm Pilot electronic organizer. What the thief didn't know about was the floor safe under the rug inside the walk-in closet.

Stored in the fireproof safe was a microcassette recorder that Matthews had used to keep a running verbal diary on his meetings with a man named George Winston. The tapes were mostly full of Matthews's ramblings about how smart he was and how he was going to retire off the money. He also boasted that if George Winston tried to double-cross him, Matthews would threaten Winston with the tapes.

While the tapes didn't contain an actual recording of Angel Eyes's voice or any in-depth descriptions of the man, they did contain one gem, the golden key the IWAC team needed to possibly infiltrate Angel Eyes's covert group: the name of Matthews's friend who was working on a highly advanced military combat suit that used a technology called optical camouflage.

Winston was very interested in this cloaking technology and offered Matthews an additional $200,000 for the information. Matthews refused, saying that he wouldn't accept an offer less than two million. Winston agreed and deposited the money in a Cayman Islands account that could be accessed only by Matthews, and only after the business was completed. Matthews handed over the name of his friend, Major Dixon that was actually the guy's God-given name and the name of the company developing the technology: Praxis, based in Austin, Texas. The money in the Cayman account was withdrawn just two hours before Matthews was killed. Had Matthews checked his account, he might have known that Angel Eyes had a change of heart.

By the time Angel Eyes, still posing as Mr. Winston, contacted Dixon, Conway and the IWAC team were already in place. Conway worked as the company's network security administrator, a position that granted him access to all the company's servers, including the one that stored all the information on the project code-named ROM ULAN It took the better part of a year for Conway to form a bond with the slightly aloof Dixon. During that time, Dix opened up and told Conway that a man named George Winston had contacted him via e-mail and then by phone and offered half a million dollars for detailed information, preferably testing footage, of the military suit and its applications.

An additional 4.5 million would be paid to Dixon in cash should he decide to sell the prototype.

It took Conway only a few months to convince Dix to sell the information to Angel Eyes. Conway was in the perfect position to help Dixon. As the company's network security administrator, he could doctor the audit logs to show that Dixon had never accessed or downloaded the highly protected schematics or the more prized video footage showing the stunning cloaking technology in action.

Dix agreed to sell the video.

Today, after skydiving, at one o'clock, Major Dixon would walk through the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport to Terminal D, where he would wait for Winston and then hand over a compact disc containing video footage of the stunning optical camouflage technology. Dixon would walk away with half a mil in cash, the advance for the compact disc. Angel Eyes would walk away with video footage that contained a computer virus that would infect all of his system and registry files, decrypt his e-mail, and send all of the information, along with his location, to Delburn Systems. A microscopic transmitter inserted in the CD would allow the IWAC team to track the disc's location within a two-mile radius.

The door to the conference room opened. Conway turned around expecting to see Pasha. Instead he saw Raymond Bouchard, the team leader of the IWAC group, walk into the room.

"Stephen." Raymond Bouchard reached across the table with an extended hand. Conway shook it, feeling the power in Bouchard's long fingers as they wrapped his own.

"Nice to see you."

"You too. You look good." The guy always did. With his deeply tanned face, his thick gray hair cut short, and his sharp, modern dark-blue suit with matching shirt and tie, Raymond Bouchard had the commanding, confident look of a powerful Hollywood agent about to ink the kind of deal that made national headlines. As always, his eyes were bright and clear, and he looked well-rested, as if just moments ago he had returned from a long and satisfying Caribbean vacation.

Bouchard pulled out the chair, eased back into the soft black leather and then crossed his legs, the cool air scented with coffee and a whiff of the man's cologne and shampoo. He scratched his chin a sure sign he was about to deliver an unpleasant piece of news.

Conway sat back down.

"What's up?" he asked, reaching for his coffee cup.

"Last night Echelon picked up a transmission."

Echelon was the name given to the U.S.-owned global surveillance network whose existence had, until recently, been kept secret.

Monitoring stations placed around the world used computer-programmed dictionaries and voice-recognition systems to covertly intercept telephone calls, mobile phones, faxes, and e-mails. It was rumored that the U.S. had used the system for economic spying on other countries. With the Cold War over, the name of the game now was obtaining information on new and upcoming technologies to gain a competitive and economic edge.

"As you know, Echelon has the ability to lock on to key words or phrases," Bouchard said.

"The male caller used the words optical camouflage, so Echelon recorded the conversation. The caller said, "I can't wait to see this optical camouflage stuff in action. Everything's in place. Don't worry. It's all going to go down according to plan." Then the call ended."

"You run the voice through the computers?"

"Same voice that called Dixon months ago, that's it. We traced the call to a pay phone about a block away from Dixon's condo."

Conway's mind jumped into overdrive, his imagination conjuring possible scenarios, none of them new. These scenarios and how he would respond to them had visited him in his sleep in one form or another over the past two years.

"You thinking Angel Eyes is going to make a run on the suit?" Conway said.

"Today, in broad daylight?" Bouchard shook his head.

"Too risky. Besides, the Praxis lab employs some of the latest advances in bio-metric security voice and fingerprint authentication, microchip-encoded badges. If he or anyone else tried to set foot in there without a properly encoded badge, the lab's alarm would sound and he'd be locked inside the lab."