getting serious about things.”
“Look, Dr. Warren,” Clark said, “if you have a problem with me, I apologize. I shouldn’t have expressed my personal views, which aren’t relevant, as obviously I’m not the one who makes those decisions. If you’d rather, then I will take you down to the Oval Office right now, and the man who does make those decisions will personally make this very same request. That’s how important this is to us.”
He didn’t sound like he was bluffing. He sounded like he was one word away from taking us to see the most powerful man in the world.
I suspected from Sophie’s speculative expression that she was actually quite willing to go spy on Convoy for the government, but first she wanted to go visit the White House, just for fun. That didn’t sound like a good idea to me. Meeting the President and making him ask nicely for our help purely for our own entertainment felt like trespassing on Mount Olympus during a thunderstorm.
“We could say we’re going to calibrate the drones,” I suggested, before she could say anything. “For the new design. Just for a few days.”
Sophie frowned, looked at me, sighed, acquiesced: “OK, fine.”
“Good.” Clark looked relieved, and hurried to change the topic before she changed her mind. “Now tell me about this kill switch. My staff tell me you might be able to turn their drones off remotely.”
Sophie paused, visibly trying to figure out how best to communicate with this tech-illiterate barbarian. “Maybe. There is a kill switch built into every Axon in case we need to shut them down, but don’t get the wrong idea, I can’t just shout ‘Klaatu barada nikto!’ and watch all their drones fall out of the sky.”
I smiled at the reference. Clark looked puzzled.
“Think of a drone as a cell phone with wings,” Sophie said. “Imagine that if you send it a particular text message, it will switch off and stay off. That’s the kill switch. But you have to be able to connect to send that message, like a cell tower connects to your phone. So I’d need to know the details of its communications protocol, and the appropriate keys if its control channel is encrypted, which it probably is. Given that, yes, we could shut down all their drones. But that’s a lot to ask.”
“Interesting.” Clark considered. “But you said they’ve modified your designs, right?” Sophie nodded. “So they might have removed the kill switch?”
“No,” she said flatly. “It isn’t a piece of code you can cut out, it’s an intrinsic part of the network. This isn’t procedural software. All the knowledge and intelligence in a neural net is dispersed across millions of connections, in the same way memory and thought are dispersed across the neurons and synapses of our own brains.” She saw Clark’s blank expression, switched to an analogy. “Consider your own brain. At its core, the medulla and thalamus control your most basic functions. Eating, drinking, sleeping, waking, sex. Call that the reptile mind. The cerebral cortex, where language and music and mathematics live, evolved on top of that. You can retrain and evolve my nets, and that’s what the cartels appear to have done -” this was the first I’d heard of it, and it amazed me – “but their higher capabilities are still wrapped around their reptile minds, where the kill switch lives. Even if you know it’s there, going after it would be like performing brain surgery with a hatchet. The operation might succeed, but the patient would never survive.”
“Charming image,” Clark said waspishly. “Never mind the technical details. The point is, if we can get onto their network, we could shut all their drones down.”
“Probably. Unless they know the kill switch exists, and they’ve programmed their communications hardware to filter it out before it reaches the neural net.”
“Who knows that sequence?”
“Until a few days ago, just James and me. No one else, I don’t think.” I shook my head in confirmation. I’d never considered it a great secret, but I’d never had any reason to tell anyone else. “I’ve since shown it to Dr. Elliot and some of his staff.” Clark looked blank. “The head of the DEA technical team.”
He nodded, pleased. “Nice to know we might be able to end this whole shitstorm with one fell swoop.” He switched to exhortation mode. “That’s why your visit to Convoy is so important. We need to get onto their drone network and shut it down before more people die. Whatever you two find down there might help.”
“No. Not both of us.” Sophie turned to me. “Just me, not you. Not after what just happened.”
“Forget it,” I said firmly. “I’m coming. A little Caribbean R &R sounds like just the thing for me. I mean, we’re just talking about paying Jesse and Anya a friendly visit and keeping our eyes open, right? No big deal. It’ll be fine. It might even be fun.”
I didn’t really believe that. But I wasn’t about to let her go by herself, and not just out of concern for her safety. It was past time to find out what Sophie was hiding.
“Try to stay out of trouble this time,” Lisa advised me as we departed.
I smiled. “I’ll do my best.”
Chapter 21
A government driver took us to a Holiday Inn via downtown’s Apple Store. I emailed Jesse from there while Sophie bought me a new iPhone. En route to the hotel I checked mail on it, and found his response:
Come on down. Good timing – going into Port-au-Prince tomorrow for supplies. Can supply airport pickup for small fee. Anya suggests one pound of flesh nearest heart, per passenger, plus tip. Email flight details.
“Is your phone on?” I asked, as we continued on to the hotel.
“I’ve been mostly keeping it off. Not that it would matter much. They must have someone here who harvested the DEA chief’s address. It wouldn’t be hard to find out what room we’re in and train a drone to hit that window.”
“Great.”
“Yeah. It used to be reasonable to assume that if someone wanted to kill you, they’d at least have to take some kind of personal risk. Not any more. That changes everything.” She sighed. “I’ve been working with the DEA’s technical staff for the last couple of days. Unpaid, I might add. They’re hopeless. No clue.”
We left the car, entered the Holiday Inn, made our way into the elevators. For the first time since we had left Pasadena we were alone together.
“Your poor face,” she said softly, touching it.
“I fear for my modelling career.”
We looked at each other.
“At the school, that was an ambush, you know,” I said. “They were waiting for us. I think for you.”
It was intended as an opportunity for her to open up and tell me everything.
Instead she just shrugged. “Who knows?”
The elevator dinged open. We made our way to the big and impersonally nice hotel room, where Sophie’s things lay scattered untidily. The window had a view of the Washington Monument. In a fit of paranoia I closed the curtains before turning to her. I didn’t quite know what to say.
She could tell by my expression that something was wrong. “What is it?”
I took a deep breath.”Michael Kostopoulos.”
“What about him?” She looked puzzled.
“Why was he sending you emails just before he died?”
“He – what? Kostopoulos? Sending me emails?” She sounded genuinely dumbfounded. “What are you talking about?”
“I broke into your mail,” I said harshly. “I read it. You were supposed to meet him at the Cadillac Hotel.”
After a brief pause Sophie burst out laughing.
“What the fuck?” I was well on my way to outrage. “You think this is funny?”
“Yes,” she gasped, getting hold of her mirth. “I’m sorry. But it is. That wasn’t my account. You didn’t hack into my email, you hacked into me hacking into someone else’s. You have to admit that’s pretty farcical.”
I took a moment to absorb that revelation. Sophie had never known Kostopoulos at all: she had just read an email he had sent to someone else. It took some of the wind out of my indignant sails, but it also raised a hundred
