designed to hold about two hundred people; at the moment it held ten. In a meeting about Zimmerman, ten was a quorum. It consisted of the National Security Council and a few select people from the various intelligence agencies.
In particular, Mecham noticed a new face from the DISA who sat next to General Adrian Harris, Chairman of the JCS.
'This is what we have,' Mecham said, switching on a remote that operated the screen behind him. Surveillance photographs crossed the screen. 'We've received these pictures from the team observing Gideon Malcolm. The team on Malcolm was carefully chosen and isolated, our communication has been through uncompromised channels.' Mecham manipulated a mouse pointer across the screen behind him, highlighting the pictures in turn. 'While the hope was that Malcolm might uncover new intelligence by his investigation, he has—up until yesterday—been researching already well-covered ground.
He's visited Dr. Zimmerman's home and members of her family. . .'
Mecham clicked a button, and the pictures changed to street scenes in Greenwich Village. 'The second hope, that allowing Malcolm to roam unhindered would draw out other forces interested in Dr. Zimmerman, has borne fruit.' Mecham clicked the mouse on one picture of a man dressed in a jogging suit. The picture blew up and filled the whole screen with a grainy, but recognizable photo of one of the gunmen who had attacked Malcolm and Zimmerman's sister. 'This man is named Lyaksandro Volynskji, born Ukrainian, but he's been a resident of various Islamic states, mostly parts of the old Soviet Union. He is a recognized assassin, he's worked in Bosnia, Palestine, and inside Russia. He's associated with the International Unification Front, a loose confederation of extra-national paramilitary groups that operate out of the Middle East. After some backtracking, we've pinpointed his entry into this country as December 3, last year. He came into Miami on a Cuban passport.'
Mecham slid the mouse around and clicked on another photograph. This time another man's picture expanded to fill the screen. 'Hashim Abu Bakr, Syrian. We suspect that he's been involved in organizing various terrorist training camps in Syria and Libya, part of the same IUF. He entered the country on a Palestinian passport on December 2, last year.'
Mecham clicked the last picture and a young man with dark hair and intense black eyes filled the screen. 'The third man hasn't been identified yet. However, it seems clear the IUF is responsible for killing at least three people involved with Zimmerman. Consulting with the CIA, we've positively identified Volynskji as the shooter in the assassination of Morris Kendal.'
Mecham shut off the display and leaned forward on the podium. 'I'll hand the floor over to the CIA's expert.'
One of the ten people stood up and walked over to the podium. He was a short black man named Williams who was one of the CIA's resident experts on Middle East terrorist organizations. 'Gentlemen, we
are dealing with a very dangerous situation here. While, over the past decade, the IUF has been shifting its focus to economic and technological espionage, they are still terrorists. While I understand the grave threat Dr. Zimmerman poses to our SIGINT capabilities, I think the presence of the IUF suggests a threat that's much graver than the exposure of our cryptographic resources.'
What little noise there was in the room silenced. Mecham looked up at Williams. He knew what Williams meant. Ever since Zimmerman's disappearance, the fear had been that her mathematical work for the NSA might be exposed. For a few years before Dr. Zimmerman came to work for them, the NSA's mission had been hampered, especially with digital communication, by the presence of strong cryptographic methods. After Zimmerman came, there was no such thing as strong encryption.
But that wasn't the only thing that Zimmerman was working on.
'If crypto was all the IUF was interested in, Zimmerman would never had had to disappear. Zimmerman's work could be passed on a single CD. They didn't need her work, they needed her. And from all appearances, Zimmerman went willingly. They've since been trying to get access to a Daedalus supercomputer. That doesn't make any sense unless they were interested in Zimmerman's work in information warfare. The fact that they're still operating in the country means they haven't smuggled Zimmerman out. That implies that they have a definite plan, and they need a Daedalus to carry it out.
We've had a number of alerts recently, where it appeared that there were hostile forces attacking domestic information systems. The virus that instigated the Wall Street crash has only been the most public. Since Zimmerman's disappearance, we've had computer-related power failures at seven major facilities, lost two major air traffic control systems for over three hours, and—for five minutes—lost the entire long distance phone network between the Rockies and the Mississippi. These may all be related, and may only be tests.' Williams paused for emphasis, then said, 'If they get access to a Daedalus, I would consider it as much a threat to the United States as if they had access to a weapon of mass destruction in every major city in the country.'
Colonel Mecham was back in his office before eight in the morning, and around eight-fifteen, Emmit D'Arcy was knocking on his door.
'Come in, sir,' Mecham said, standing up to meet D'Arcy.
D'Arcy shut the door behind him and took off his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose. 'I wanted to talk to you, Greg. I wanted your take on Williams' analysis.'
'I respect his expertise.'
'That's an evasion.'
'I know,' Mecham waved to a chair in front of his desk. 'Why don't you have a seat. You look tired.'
'Four hours' sleep in the last three days, half unintentional.' D'Arcy moved over to the chair and sighed. 'You know he's right on the money about the IUF. They're probably the worst people that could have Zimmerman.'
Mecham sat down himself. 'Yes, I know. I don't dispute that.'
'You have a reservation about something.'
Mecham nodded. 'I have reservations about Zimmerman. She wasn't taken. She left with an almost obsessive amount of premeditation and planning—'
'As Williams said, if the IUF has her, she went willingly.'
'But why? Have you read her psychological profile?'
'Five times.'
'Then you know what's bothering me. She's not an ideologue, barely a political bone in her body. Her personal life is practically antiseptic. No debts, and she cares little for money. Her strongest beliefs are about mathematics. How can someone like that be recruited by the IUF, of all people? She had the best hardware, the most sophisticated forum possible for doing her work, which is all she really cares about. You couldn't bribe her away from that. She doesn't have anything you can blackmail her with—even her family, she hasn't communicated with any of them in a couple of years.'
'I've read the same things you have. Assuming the profile isn't wrong—and someone with her intelligence would be able to intentionally skew our profile, and hide her true feelings— assuming it isn't wrong, what conclusions are you drawing?'
'Zimmerman would only have left—and I don't care who might have facilitated it, because I doubt she would've—if it meant she could do work that, for one reason or another, she couldn ’t do here. She would never have left here just so she could reconstruct old information warfare viruses she's already designed for us. Doing old work would be pointless to her.'
'What kind of work would she be doing?' D'Arcy asked. He leaned forward, his expression suddenly showing an intense interest in what Mecham was saying.
'Something that requires a Daedalus. Other than that, I don't know, and that's frightening.' Mecham shook his head. 'I suspect it has something to do with her work at MIT, since people from the Evolutionary Theorems Lab are working with her—but what it could be, I don't know. I'm not a mathematician, and, until now, I had thought that everything she did here was a logical extension of her work there.'
D'Arcy nodded and leaned back. 'True, perhaps, but nothing you've said means we change how we deal with this. Zimmerman is still a threat, probably more so than we ever thought. We still have to keep a tight watch on every Daedalus out there. Eventually the IUF will move on one of them, and then we have her.'
'I just wish we hadn't lost Malcolm . . .'
Gideon and Ruth spent a good part of the evening on the subway. They went as far as Queens and back again, switching trains a number of times in an effort to foil any pursuit. Ruth was exhausted and spent most of the time asleep, leaning against Gideon's shoulder. Gideon was too keyed up to sleep. He spent most of the time
