knees. “The old system of phones — still used in most places back home…” He meant the CIS. “They use analog- wave signals. Sound waves goes out through the telephone exchange, where you hear the clicks, electromechanical switches, then the signals go down cable pairs — or to conductors, if you like — to the next switch, and so on. At the receiving end the telephone converts the electrical wave back to sound. Now with digital — used all over America now — you use the binary scale — a series of zeros and ones representing any number you dial. Information’s broken down the same way — into zeros and ones. Like fax. It’s sent via the bipolar pulsing system. Follow me?”
“No.”
“Okay, look. Christ, you’ve eaten all the nuts!”
“You can buy some more. What about this digital crap?”
“What I’m saying, it’s a computer-based system that transmits all information — voice, data, you name it — in a binary code, so, for example, the number sixteen is one-zero-zero-zero-zero, ten is zero-one-zero-one-zero. Got that?”
“Sort of — not much good at math.”
“Doesn’t matter. Don’t worry about it. The point is, what we get is a coded stream of pulses at 1.544 megacycles a second. That’s over a million and a half pulses a second. Computer uses a wave form code. Anyway, just think of it as a whole bunch of pulses containing zeros and ones. Right?”
“Go on.”
The taller man stopped for a moment to tie a lace, his gray tracksuit patched with sweat despite the cold, looking around to see if anyone was following, then started off again.
“Now, because you’re dealing with all info in binary combinations of zeros and ones, you can process signals much faster and more cheaply than with the old mechanical switches that have to clunk through one, two, three, four, five… Follow that?”
“Yeah.”
“Fine. Now digital networks all have to be synchronized, otherwise in a sequence of zeros and ones you wouldn’t know where the start of a message or the end of it was. Only problem is, in order to have all the computers synchronized so they know where the start, middle, and end of a message is, you have to have ‘em all keyed into a cesium atomic clock — it’s got the most accurate beat in the world.”
“That’s why our guys are gonna hit the clock?”
“You win the car. Now, when you lose synchronization with the clock, you can ‘free run’ awhile without synchronization, but the ones and zeros start to pile up in no time, run into one another like rush hour on the turnpike. You have one big god-awful traffic jam. You with me?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. When that happens — a pileup — you’re out of sync. Computer networks become a horizontal Tower of Babel. Most important thing — data circuits, like radar, are much more sensitive than voice circuits, so the data circuits pile up much faster, or, as the boys in the trade say, the ‘byte error’—the slippage — becomes unmanageable. And it’s garbage out. So a page of printout that should normally take half a second, runs two seconds. Loss factor four. And alarms aren’t set off in the digital system the same way as they are in analog circuits. You can alter the alarms through interfering with the software, but—” Another jogger was coming their way. When he passed, the man in gray turned about to double check, then continued. “The weak link is that with the cesium-atomic-clock-synchronization system, everybody, and I mean
“The same clock?”
“Right — including the military. No matter how many different codes there are, military has to use the same synchronization. So you hit the clock, military computers go out — AT and T’s stations board in New Jersey lights up like the Fourth of July. Massive computer network breakdown. You remember the big screwups in the early 1990s?”
“No.”
“Biggest one was ‘ninety — January twenty-ninth. Two twenty-five p.m. Hit every one of a hundred and fourteen big computers. Cost ‘em over forty million. Year before in Paris, the big police computer went on the fritz — misread over thirty-nine thousand magnetized labels of drivers’ licenses. Started charging auto drivers all over France with everything from rape to homicide. It was beautiful.”
“Doesn’t the military have a backup?”
“Sure. Don’t have to use land lines — can use satellite pulses — but if the cesium clock’s out, it’s all over except for the crystals.”
“What are they?”
“Crystals? Closest things to the cesium clock in their beat accuracy. Only trouble is, they have to keep them in ‘double oven’—constant temperature. If you lose the clock, the idea is you go to ‘holdover,’ using the crystals as your drum.” The tall man paused, then smiled. “ ‘Course, if you cut off the electric power — no oven. That’s what your third man in the cell is going to do.”
“So then all the defense computers are down?”
“You’ve got it. Military gets the old ‘all circuits are busy’ crap just like everybody else. The entire continental-based missile defense system of the United States shuts down because over ninety percent of all military phones in this country are slaved to AT and T and the other companies. Private enterprise at its best, my friend.”
“What about the other carriers — Ma Bell and —”
“All in the same boat. The clock goes — they go. I love complex microchip technology. It’s so easy to fuck up.”
“When do we move?”
“When you see the ad.”
They walked down toward the Swedish Cottage, where they said good-bye. They would not meet again. Everything was in place. The man in blue turned left and exited on West Eighty-first Street; the other walked into the American Museum of Natural History. There was a new acquisition of pre-Cambrian fossils. It put everything in perspective. The fossils were all that remained of an entire epoch. The Christians were right about that — in the end, it was all dust to dust, ashes to ashes.
The exhibit’s attendant, who looked a little pre-Cambrian himself, gave the jogger a glance that said he wished visitors to the museum would be better dressed. Then again, he was mollified by the fact that, unlike the ruffians on the streets, here at least was a man of breeding, a man of cultural refinement.
The jogger looked up at the museum clock. It was 1300 hours. Kirov’s “Ballet” was about to begin. What the man in gray hadn’t told his cohort was that the really big payoff of such a massive computer screwup would be the havoc it would play with the navy’s “burst” coded communications for its submarines at sea. They wouldn’t know what the hell was going on, and if they came up near the surface to get emergency TACAMO — take charge and move out — aircraft messages, Novosibirsk would pick up the displacement bulge — the radiant heat difference between the sub and sea temperature — and BAM! — they’d be targeted by the Siberian fleet’s Hunter/Killer subs before the Americans knew it.
“It’s wonderful, isn’t it?” commented the attendant for the pre-Cambrian exhibit.
“Certainly is.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Freeman was kneeling, saying his prayers. There was a crack — like pine board splitting. He spun about, grabbed the riot gun — its five rounds filled with razor-sharp flechettes — and aimed it at the door. He’d dismissed the reporter’s rumor about a possible SPETSNAZ attack, but all the same…
There was no one at the door. He lifted the phone connecting him to the duty officer. “What in hell was that?”
“River, sir. Ice splitting.”
