Ramez Naam - Apex

And it was seldom as bad as this.

“Next,” Pryce said after thirty minutes, acknowledging General Gordon Reid.

The NSA Director nodded. His craggy face looked almost… uncomfortable. Something Pryce wasn’t used to seeing on the career Air Force cryptographer.

“In the matter of Director Barnes’s suicide, we’ve found evidence that his home’s security system was indeed penetrated by a hostile attacker.”

Pryce felt a small jolt of surprise.

Was I wrong? she wondered. Was the President right? Was Barnes murdered? His confession a fabrication?

“Can you track down who the intruder was?” she asked.

Reid spoke again. “Dr Pryce, our forensics team found telltales of an attack developed by China’s Advanced Electronic Brigade, launched by an attacker from within China.”

Everyone started talking at once.

Pryce sliced her hand through the air. “Quiet!”

They all fell silent.

“China?” Pryce asked the NSA Director. “Are you sure?”

Reid looked at her. “As you know, one hundred percent doesn’t exist in this business. But the telltale matches an attack AEB’s used twice before, and while the attacker took steps to hide their tracks, we successfully traced it back to the PRC.”

Pryce leaned back and exhaled softly. China. Her eyes drifted to the Situation Room’s digital threat board, with the Chinese coup listed prominently, the hardliners back in power. Could they be doing this to distract the US? To keep the President from responding to what was happening there? But the risk! The provocation!

It made no sense. Rationally, the risk/payoff ratio was absurd.

Everyone else was staring at her, waiting.

“Dr Pryce,” Reid said, “I need to add something here. The Chinese don’t know that we know about this attack technology, or have a way to detect it or trace it.”

Pryce’s eyes snapped back to Reid’s, the wheels in her mind spinning.

“I appreciate,” the NSA Director went on, “that this is a very important moment for the President, politically…”

And now Pryce understood the unease she was reading from him.

“…but if we reveal to the American people that we were able to detect a subversion of Barnes’s home security system, even if we don’t mention China, then we’ll be tipping our hand to them, and giving away an intelligence advantage that we have.”

Pryce held Reid’s eyes. “The President will have to make that decision.”

“Can I count on you,” the NSA Director asked, “to counsel the President in the direction of maximizing US national security?”

“I don’t think he’ll need that counsel from me, General,” Pryce told him.

Then she turned to the others. “Reactions?”

It was another twenty minutes before she came to the last item on her agenda.

“Finally,” she said. “The President has tasked me with investigating the allegation that the PLF was created as a black op inside the Jameson Administration.”

She looked around, saw the different expressions, some blank, some openly dubious.

“He’s given me complete authority to dig wherever I need. Now, this may turn out to be a complete fabrication. Or it may be true. But if you know anything about this, you have twenty-four hours to let me know. In that time, whatever I learn, I’ll do my best to see that wherever it came from, you’re given due credit for that when the butcher’s bill comes due.”

She kept looking around, making eye contact with each of them as she spoke, nodding conversationally. She was, in fact, on thin ice. Stockton hadn’t rescinded her authority to dig on this topic. But it was clear he’d made up his own mind with Barnes’s death.

So she was going to use that investigative authority now in case he took it away from her later.

“ Beyond twenty-four hours from now, if I learn that any of you have been holding out on me, I will nail you mercilessly to the wall.”

She let her eyes slide around them once more, marked who looked away, who met her eyes with hostility, who with humor.

“Am I absolutely clear?”

She was just outside the situation room, in the long hallway that ran the length of the upper deck of Air Force one, when a glint through one of the giant windows caught her eye. It was a brand new F-38, flanking them, its chameleonware skin detuned to let all the world see it – just one of the small squadron of human-piloted and autonomous fighter craft that now protected Air Force One wherever it went. It was something Pryce still wasn’t used to, something that had only come into effect four months ago, with the attempt on the President’s life.

She shook her head. Air Force One was as safe a place as any on Earth. Even without the squadron flying air support, the double decker plane had its own anti-missile defenses, its own small fleet of mini-drones it could launch, its own stealth capabilities, and other surprises up its sleeve that few knew about.

The screen of her slate flashed. Pryce looked down, found the kind of message she’d half expected. Anonymous, of course.

[Ivory Tower bitches like you should keep their noses out of wet work. Or they might find those noses cut off.]

Pryce chuckled at that. Another threatened Cro-Magnon, resorting to hurling archaic gendered insults to soothe his battered ego.

She subvocalized to Kaori.

[Pryce: You get that?]

[Kaori: Got it. Starting the trace now.]

She doubted anyone with something truly important to hide would be so stupid as to draw attention like that. Still, you explored all leads, however unlikely. That’s how you made your luck.

Pryce looked back out at the F-38, glinting in the sun, armed with the latest high-tech weaponry, ready to shoot down any bogies that came in range.

She snorted and shook her head.

Pointless. Unless they were in a full blown shooting war with China, any successful attack on Air Force One wouldn’t come from the outside.

It would come from within. From one of their own.

14

HR Gambit

Sunday 2040.11.04

“…Our treaty obligations compel us to honor this request,” Aggarwal said.

Kade closed his eyes.

“Unless,” Aggarwal continued, “you give us your full and absolute cooperation in our plans for Nexus.”

Kade opened his eyes.

“I won’t help you spy, or coerce, or use Nexus as a weapon,” he told the man.

Aggarwal frowned and opened his mouth to speak.

The woman next to him cut in smoothly.

“Mr Lane,” she said. Her accent was crisp, British. “We haven’t been introduced. I’m Lakshmi Dabir.”

She moved forward as she spoke, lowering herself slowly into one of the chairs across the table from Kade, her dark eyes on his. She didn’t offer her hand.

“Kaden Lane,” Kade told her. “Kade to my friends.”

From the corner of his eye, Kade saw Aggarwal take the other seat.

“Kade,” Lakshmi Dabir said. “If I may?”

“Are we friends?” Kade asked, eyebrow raised.

Lakshmi Dabir smiled faintly and pressed on. “Secretary Aggarwal may have given you the wrong impression. Let me describe our interest to you.”

“Please,” Kade replied.

“India is now the most populous nation on Earth, Kade. One point six billion people. And we’re also quite young. There are three hundred and fifty million Indians under the age of fifteen – almost the same as the entire population of your country.”

“Not my country anymore,” Kade said quietly.

Dabir nodded slightly and continued. “The point, Kade, is that India has unparalleled human resources. If the human mind is the ultimate source of wealth – if it’s the most valuable resource that we know of – then India is blessed in that way beyond any other nation on Earth.