The quantum solution, p.4
The Quantum Solution, page 4
Outside the seaplane the engines roared, water became land, then water again, a deeper shade, the surface more restless as the sun extinguished itself in the west.
4
WASHINGTON, DC
“So it’s reversed now,” An Binh said.
Ben Butler, close beside her, said, “Is that so terrible?”
“Benjamin.” Her beautiful lips quirked into a smile. “Everything in life that is terrible has already happened to me. That cup is full. There can be nothing terrible for me now.”
They were down in the basement gymnasium where she had helped Ben recover from the wound that, but for her, would have caused him to live the rest of his life in a wheelchair. He was watching as An Binh did sets of leg lifts. She used a weighted barbell rather than one of the state-of-the-art machines Isobel Lowe had installed. An Binh was definitely old-school when it came to physical workouts.
The two of them had become fixtures in Isobel’s magnificent newly renovated mansion, surrounded by its garden of hollies, pear trees, and Japanese maples; by beds of roses that in the past would have been in the throes of winter’s anorexia but that were now half-leafed, sporting tiny flowers like a child’s fingernails. Tulip bulbs slept peacefully under the earth, and azalea bushes poked their labyrinths of spiky arms toward the unaccustomed warmth of the sun. The whole was screened in from the street by twelve-foot-high evergreen hedges embedded with electric wires guaranteed to bring down a rageful lion, let alone a human intruder. AI cameras, small as gnats, surveyed every square inch of the garden with the relentless persecution granted only to machines.
Isobel Lowe was the head of Parachute’s two-year-old industrial-espionage arm. Who she didn’t know inside the Beltway wasn’t worth knowing. Her home, situated near the corner of California Street NW and Massachusetts Avenue, in which they had become something akin to family, was a cream and butterscotch Italianate mansion, where Ben worked and lived, and An Binh recuperated.
Ben had for some years, many years ago, been Isobel’s partner when she was a field agent for Mossad. Later, Evan had been his partner in the field when they both worked for the US DOD, and then when he ran his own shop as part of the DOD. Until it was summarily shut down last year. Both he and Evan had come to work for Isobel then and, by proxy, Marsden Tribe, the genius founder/owner of Parachute, whose major business was constructing and utilizing quantum computers. They were of Tribe’s groundbreaking design; they were far and away the best on the planet—faster, more stable, more utile in the service of any number of tech spheres, including one supervised by Isobel.
“Join me for a cup of tea,” An Binh said, after the last set. Just because the woman didn’t sweat didn’t mean she wasn’t working hard. The amount of weight she had instructed Ben to load onto either end of the barbell was more than most men could tolerate. She had completed a third set of fifteen leg lifts.
“Of course,” Ben said, looking her straight in the face. He was like that. He looked you in the eye when he spoke. She appreciated that in him.
Ben, who was used to her silences, knew they were as significant as her words, went on because he knew she needed an explanation. She was feeling strong, but feeling strong and being fully healed were two separate issues; he knew that from personal experience.
“Time and practice,” he said as she stood up. “There’s no need to rush it.”
“But there is,” she said. “I know I overstepped boundaries last year.”
“You had a debt to settle. It was understandable.”
It was difficult to believe that just a year ago she had been shot, on the very precipice of death. But from deep inside herself she had worked on her ravaged body with the same curious combination of Eastern modalities she had used on him to get him back on his feet when medical experts swore he’d never walk again. When she was strong enough it was Ben who took her through the increasingly rigorous physical regime she had designed for him. That began three months ago; her recovery had been fully as astonishing as his had been. They were locked now—the two of them—because of shared near-death experiences, caring for one another in body, mind, and spirit. In short, they had been through a war together and the experience had changed them both forever.
“For you perhaps, but for Isobel, I don’t know.” She shook her head. “I’m not altogether comfortable taking advantage of her hospitality.”
Isobel, refusing to give up even in the face of the surgeons’ dire prognosis for Ben, had hired An Binh, who had been urgently recommended by Evan’s father, Dr. Reveshvili, to be his physical therapist. It turned out she had skills far beyond anyone’s imaginings. Discovering the problem in Ben’s hip after he had been shot, she guided him back to health.
“I want to earn my keep, Benjamin.”
“Absolutely not.” He knew what she meant; she wanted to work with him and Evan, be part of his team.
Her voice softened, lowered. “You know I have resources you don’t. I can do what you can’t.”
He found himself actually considering this. Since last year he and Evan were no longer a team; Tribe was now the one she reported to. He didn’t know how Isobel felt about the change; they’d never discussed it. As for himself, initially he’d been dismayed, but change had become a part of their lives the moment they signed on to Parachute. If that’s what Tribe wanted, that’s what he’d get. It was either that or resign from Parachute, a path he was unwilling to take. Besides, Evan seemed fine with her new role; their trust in each other remained a constant.
Just then Isobel burst into the gym and hurried toward them. With her was a tall, beefy man, a little overweight but still retaining most of his athlete’s form, whom Ben recognized as Wes Connerly, head of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.
Out of the side of his mouth Ben told An Binh who Connerly was. “Never a good sign when he’s around,” he said softly. “Especially when he’s accompanying Isobel. Most especially when he’s here inside the DC Parachute grounds.”
“I can stay,” she said. “Start now.” She was entirely serious and he knew it.
He sighed. “Now you’ll have to drink your tea by yourself.”
“Don’t worry.” Her voice was carefully neutral. “I’m used to it.” Then she stepped away, crossed to the far side of the gym, exited through the door to the sauna.
Isobel and her guest approached Ben. He glanced at Isobel, saw she did not seem well pleased, before his gaze fell fully on Connerly.
“Butler.” Connerly did not offer a hand; both were plunged deep into the pockets of his too-heavy tweed overcoat.
“Wes,” Ben said with a hint of irony. He had worked for people like Connerly and he didn’t like them. More tellingly for him, he didn’t trust them.
Connerly’s eyes narrowed. His cheeks pillowed out before he pushed out an audible breath.
In order to keep matters from turning into a pissing match, Isobel injected herself into the conversation. “Mr. Connerly has come here specifically to—”
“Who was that?” Connerly overrode her.
“Who?” Ben said. He was determined to make Connerly work for every little detail.
“That woman. The Asian.”
Ben stiffened, looked Connerly in the eye. “What does her ancestry have to do with anything?”
“Asian-born,” Connerly said. “Is she Chinese by chance?”
Even before Isobel put a hand on Ben’s forearm she could sense the tensing of his muscles. He was far from a hothead but she knew he and An Binh had a special relationship. Even if Wes Connerly was a racist, she knew it was not politic to call him on it. Not here, not now. Maybe never.
There now fell a silence heavy as a blanket of snow.
Interestingly, it was Connerly who broke it. Perhaps he sensed that he had crossed a line. “Listen, you two, I have hundreds of Chinese and North Korean cybercriminals trying to break into every government database. They’re like a swarm of fucking locusts, so excuse me if I’m a bit overprotective on this point.” He shrugged, then appeared to think it was time to get to the point. “Brady Thompson was a friend of yours.”
“Hell, no.”
Connerly pursed his lips. He didn’t like to be contradicted. “Still … You knew him, yes? Knew him well.”
Ben nodded.
“Okay, then.” Connerly gestured curtly as he turned on his heel.
With a last glance at Isobel, Ben followed him.
* * *
Later, when he was sitting beside Connerly in a government-issue black Navigator, the head of NGSA said, “We haven’t exactly gotten off on the right foot. I know that the president pulled the rug out from under you, but I assure you I’m one of the ones who saw that as hasty.”
“Sure,” Ben said, a sharp edge to his voice. “Let’s go with that.”
Connerly stared out the window at the passing buildings. “Wouldn’t by any chance be interested in coming back.”
“I’m completely happy where I am,” Ben said.
“I could make it worth your while.”
“I very much doubt that.”
“My agency has many perks on offer. Unlimited funds, as well.”
“I had no idea you had a sense of humor, Wes.”
At that, Connerly turned back, fixing him with his mild, entitled gaze. “We’re not on a first-name basis, Butler.” Then he shrugged. “Took a shot.”
“Seriously? It didn’t seem like your heart was in it.”
Connerly made a wry face. “That attitude, I assure you, is as carefully cultivated as an African violet.” He shifted from one buttock cheek to the other. “Allows me to stay within spitting distance of the snake pit without getting bitten.”
But it was Ben who, like a dog with a bone, kept the subject alive, possibly because it wasn’t only the DOD that had done him dirt but a member of the FBI as well, and that betrayal still burned like a match struck in a bale-filled barn.
“It wouldn’t matter anyway, Wes,” he said now. “Even if I agreed I wouldn’t give you what you want.”
Connerly, with a dead-eye stare, said, “And what might that be?”
“Access to Tribe. Or more accurately his secrets.”
“Come on, Butler. You don’t have them,” Connerly said flatly and as if the answer wasn’t of the gravest import to him.
“You can’t know that,” Ben replied blandly. He was enjoying immensely Connerly’s growing discomfort.
Connerly made a sound of derision. “I knew this fishing expedition was a waste of time.”
Ben ignored him. “The point is if I did I wouldn’t give it to you people.”
“Yes, Marsden Tribe’s exalted quantum computers.”
“They’re a damn sight better than what you have. Or IBM, or Amazon, or Cambridge. Or everyone else scrambling to unlock the secrets of quantum space, for that matter.”
Connerly closed his eyes. “How much easier my job would be if I could have the use of Marsden’s marvels.”
“You do have the use of them,” Ben reminded him needlessly. But a knife turn nonetheless.
“Limited use. For a fat fee,” Connerly groused.
“We run a business, not a charity.”
Connerly kept doggedly on point. Maybe he’d been given a script. “Fraction of the whole. Glimpse of the promised land. What he SaaS’s to other companies.” He meant Software as a Service. “But we are the US government. On another level entirely. Entire platform is required. Whole nine yards.” The SUV had slowed in piling traffic. He pushed himself forward, presumably to give the driver alternate instructions. When he again sat back in his seat, he rumbled on. “Trouble with all these billionaires. Not a drop of patriotism in their blood. They owe us—all of them. Big time. Giving them the freedom to make their billions.”
“How neofascist of you.” Ben had ceased playing around with this putz. He meant what he said and in the change in Connerly’s posture and expression it was clear the other man knew it. A government putz Wes Connerly might be, but unlike so many senators who approved his department’s annual budget he wasn’t stupid.
But just like him he ignored Ben’s thrust. He licked his lips. “And paying not a penny of taxes.”
“Send Congress a memo.”
Again, Connerly contrived to ignore Ben’s slings and arrows. “Let me tell you, Butler. Hell of a thing when the United States government can’t get what it wants.”
“Democracy in action,” Ben opined dryly.
“Piece of work,” Connerly said, clearly disgusted, “you are.”
They had finally left the snarl of traffic behind and arrived at their destination: a sprawling white building a stone’s throw from CIA HQ in Langley, Virginia. The façade was as anonymous as the side of an Egyptian pyramid, its interior just as mysterious.
“Change your mind soon enough,” Connerly said as they exited the Navigator. “They think.” With no indication of who “they” were. Ben figured he’d soon find out.
“Hold that thought,” Ben said.
Connerly eyed him with a glimmer of a smirk. “Stranger things have happened, my friend.”
Ben remembered what happened when the FBI turncoat, Jon Tennyson, started calling him “my friend.” Bad things happened, nearly costing Ben his life.
5
ISTANBUL, TURKEY
The goldsmith Hamit’s shop was on a wide boulevard in Sultanahmet. Evan came upon it quickly as she rounded a corner of a side street and entered the vast and heaving flow of the boulevard. The marble and glass shopfront looked quite posh. Lyudmila had mentioned that Hamit’s clientele was firmly upper-class.
Instead of heading directly in, Evan moved off to the opposite side of the boulevard. She sipped on pickled cucumber and cabbage juice in a plastic cup bought from a street vendor. She waited twenty minutes, marking the people who went in and out of the shop, as well as anyone hanging about, other than shopkeepers, street vendors, and the like. Having witnessed nothing untoward, she picked her way through the throng to the opposite side and entered the shop of Hamit, the goldsmith.
It was large for a shop in Istanbul, with high ceilings and plenty of light via lamps. On either wall hung black-and-white blowups of Hamit’s handiwork: jeweled necklaces, rings for both fingers and toes, thick chokers, drop earrings made from clusters of jewels. It seemed odd to have these fine works of art in black-and-white until Evan approached the three-tiered glass case three-quarters of the way back. Then the eye was dazzled by the colors of the stones, deep and rich. It was, Evan thought, like stepping out the front door of Dorothy’s home in Kansas into the Technicolor of Oz. A neat trick, meant to entice the eye, speed up the pulse, and open the wallet of prospective buyers.
Two young men in traditional Turkish outfits stood behind the cases, removing items from their velvet beds as well-heeled women in French and Italian designer clothes pointed to them. The odor of too much money and privilege surrounded them like a haze of overpriced perfume.
Evan looked beyond the young men, to the back wall. To the right she saw an opening obscured by a curtain of golden beads that now clattered as a man who must be Hamit held aside the beaded curtain for a woman of estimable means with whom he had been conferring. Hamit pressed a buzzer, and without breaking stride the woman passed through a panel in the long case that ran from one side wall to the other. She looked neither to the left nor right as she traversed the thick carpet in her high-heeled pumps. It seemed as if the two young men relaxed their shoulders the moment she was gone.
Hamit, standing with a clutch of design drawings in his left hand, watched Evan as she slowly approached the counter. She could feel him sizing her up as to whether she would be worth his time.
He was a tall, slim man in his midsixties, handsome, dark of mien. He sported the slicked-back hair and pencil mustache of an old-world impresario. He moved like one. Though he was wearing an imported tan summer-weight wool suit, his footwear was strictly Turkish—thin blue calfskin loafers imprinted with gold Arabic letters.
Seeing that his two assistants were still busy helping customers, he put the drawings aside and approached Evan. “How may I help you, madam?”
“Rakel sent me,” Evan said softly. “I am her sister.”
“Rakel’s sister.” Hamit raised one eyebrow, deliberately theatrical. “Mm.”
She showed him the token Lyudmila had given her.
He took the token, inspected it as if it were a diamond, then dropped it back into her palm. His expression lightened enough for the semblance of a smile to form on his lips. “Yes, of course.” He moved to the gate in the case, gestured. “This way, madam.”
He led her through the beaded curtain into a cozy, overheated space. Again he gestured and she sat on a wooden stool facing him across a lacquered table. He turned his head subtley toward a wooden screen at the rear of the space and in a moment a girl of no more than thirteen emerged with a tray on which stood a tea service. She poured the steaming liquid the proper way, from high up, into a glass encased with a chased gold server with a handle. She set a small plate with a variety of sweet cookies on the table, then withdrew.
It was only after they drank, after Hamit asked after Rakel and Evan replied, that she got down to business. “I’m looking for a pair of sisters. Turkish. Late twenties, early thirties. Probably twins.”
“Madam,” Hamit spread his hands, “I am no magician. These sisters could be anyone and everyone of that age of the female persuasion.”
She described them as best she could. “It’s possible they’re of Russian descent.”
“Ah.”
“You know them, then.”
“I do not.” He raised a long, elegant forefinger. “However, two young women similar to the ones you described were in this very shop yesterday. They spoke Turkish to me, but Russian to each other.” He shook his head. “Aptalca şeyler, they were.” Foolish things. “They were looking at my most expensive pieces. When I asked them if they could afford these pieces they laughed. Laughed, can you imagine!” He shook his head. “They claimed they were about to come into an inheritance, but to tell you the truth I didn’t believe them. I shooed them out of the shop and that’s the last I saw of them.”
