Straits of Power

catastrophic.” Mohr was breathless by the time he was done.

Jeffrey glanced at Felix. “Lieutenant? How much on-scene vetting could you do before the final extraction?”

“Klaus gave references to unclassified work on the theory, and some lab experiments that showed the principles did work. Tunable laser diodes, narrow band-pass wavelength filters, beam-splitter crystals, semireflecting mirrors, and a bunch of other, weirder stuff. We checked them on-line at a pay terminal. Some of the papers were even written in Israel. Tel Aviv University, and the Technion in Haifa.”

“Well,” Jeffrey told Mohr, “there’s plenty of time to sort this all out when we get you to America.”

“You don’t understand. Plan Pandora has been moved up. Berlin must have suspected something, either a leak or a spoiling attack by the Allies against the Afrika Korps. Their worst fears will be confirmed when they find the dead Kampfschwimmer and no sign of my corpse.”

“What’s their launch date for the offensive?”

“Six A.M. Tuesday, Berlin time.”

Jeffrey was shocked. “That’s way earlier than we thought. Way, way earlier.”

“We have to stop the computer attack soon, or all is lost.”

“You want us to go after the attack team?”

“There are too many of them.”

“Explain.”

“There are eleven separate teams, to make sure that at least one succeeds. Every gear set in existence has been thrown into this. Different approach routes and methods of attack. Some are going by U-boat, after covert pickup on the Turkish coast. Others will ride on merchant ships. At least one will go with help from local anti-Israel extremists into southern Lebanon.”

“Details? Routes? Specific targets?”

“I was insulated from that part, for security. But there are two methods of inserting the entangled photons for the worm. One is by directly tapping a fiber-optic land line.”

“So the teams need to get into Israel?”

“And survive long enough to hook up the equipment to the lines, which takes less effort than you might think.”

“What’s the other method?”

“It’s heavier, less mobile, but it can work from outside Israel’s borders.”

Jeffrey didn’t like the sound of this at all.

“It involves more hardware to protect against quantum decoherence through the open air, and a special transmitter.”

“Transmitter?”

“Some military radars work at frequencies ideal for my purposes. Radar, like all radios, and in fact all electromagnetic radiation, uses photons too, just as light does.”

“Yup.”

“The transmitter is what’s called a maser, the equivalent of a laser for the proper sort of radar beam…. There’s a big radar installation on Mount Hermon in northern-most Israel. Their antennas are one portal for picking up a maser beam of entangled radar-frequency photons. Others are any patrolling radar-surveillance planes. Even a fighter aircraft can have its radars infiltrated, and a maintenance or intell avionics download would then inject the photons into the wider networks. Entangled photons imprint on photons of different energy, and even on electrons, so they pass right through all the modems, amplifiers, and connectors involved.”

“How perfect, pervasive, would this assault really be?”

“There’ll be isolated pockets that escape contamination, but most such people won’t be able to find each other amid the chaos. Nothing wireless will work because the central-station software won’t be functioning. Remember, Israelis for years have been heavily dependent on cell phones instead of land lines. Cell phones can only talk through central stations via towers, they can’t talk one to one, on their own. The same applies to modern data- link army radio sets. They aren’t walkie-talkies.”

“So what are you suggesting?”

“We have to get to Israel before any of the attack teams. I have a patch that counteracts the worm, but only if it’s injected before the first worm arrives.”

“It’s like a vaccine, not a cure?”

“Exactly. I can get it into Israel’s networks, the same way the German teams plan to attack.”

“So you want me to take Challenger toward Israel, raise an antenna mast, and beam in this patch?”

“If only it were that simple, Captain. To be absolutely sure of success, it has to go in through a fiber-optic line. That version of my equipment is the only type I could possibly bring out with me. The other type is nowhere near man packable.”

“Say that again. Slowly, in simpler words.”

“You need to sneak me into Israel, now, so I can tap into a fiber-optic trunk somewhere.”

Chapter 39

Mohr’s statement hung in the air pregnantly. Parker exploded. “This is absurd! This man is asking us to do his dirty work for him! He’s using us to deliver the virus!”

Mohr was deeply offended. “I am not a saboteur. I gave up everything to help you.”

“Quiet,” Jeffrey said, “everybody…. I have one big question for you, Klaus. Why didn’t you warn Israel directly?”

“Warning alone would do no good. You can’t stop the worm simply by knowing it’s coming. No normal computer-security methods have any effect against quantum teleportation. If Israel shuts down all their radars and signals-intercept equipment to avoid penetration that way, they’ll leave themselves blind before an imminent Axis blitzkreig, and they’d still be wide open to the worm via fiber optic.”

“Couldn’t you slip them the patch conventionally, on a disk, like with regular virus protection?”

“The patch’s being distributed by regular means to all the users in Israel who need it would be spotted at once by German agents. I’d have been dangling from a noose within hours, and Berlin would work to replicate the unique expertise I intentionally hoarded. It might take them a year, but eventually they’d be able to recalibrate each of the handmade gear sets with a different worm, while also making more gear sets.”

Jeffrey nodded. “And you wouldn’t be there to help Israel the next time, because you’d be dead.”

“The only reason I’m valuable to you, Captain, now that the consulate knows I disappeared, is that the Axis is under such immense strategic pressure to keep up their war momentum after their recent setbacks. The Afrika Korps juggernaut is primed to jump off from their starting positions soon. To cancel things and wait a year to try again would be militarily unacceptable. They need to use the worm I already programmed for them, the one for which I have a patch. That’s why we must hurry. Berlin’s best choice is to push their quantum-attack teams forward urgently. Think of what that means, Captain…. Israel is in tremendous danger.”

“Or at least, so you say. Don’t try to stampede me. I want to understand why you didn’t offer your full assistance to Israel weeks ago, quantum-computer equipment and everything.”

“I did. I contacted them, indirectly, before I reached you more elaborately. The Israelis traced me back to my group. That’s when my staff at the consulate started dying, and then they took a shot at me. The Mossad must have thought the simplest way to stop Pandora would be to kill me right away, in Istanbul. And they’re viciously untrusting people, Captain. With the atom bombs they planted in Germany several years ago, sometimes I think they’re outright fanatics.”

“Mr. Parker?”

“That last part in and of itself makes sense. It’s consistent with things we know independently, including the report of the hit attempt by our agent in the brothel. But as you and I discussed with others at the Pentagon, Israel