“Until now.”
“Yes, until now. Or, more accurately, until Matthew Zimmerman received this footage in his Dropbox. A day later, he too was dead. Not a suicide this time. An accident. Yet both of them murders.”
“And Piratbyrån?”
“Since Piratbyrån’s dissolution, much of the group’s philosophy has been inherited by the Pirate Party, which has made great political strides not only in Sweden but in Germany too. But, while many of the same people were involved in founding both groups, Piratbyrån was more of a loosely organized think tank, a philosophical greenhouse, not a political party.”
“Is Piratbyrån affiliated with Anonymous?” Decker asked, remembering what Emily had told him in the bathroom the previous day. This is important, she’d said. H2OO2 was involved with Anonymous.
“If Piratbyrån’s was the original brain trust, I guess you could say that the Pirate Party is the political wing and Anonymous the cyber-military wing of the movement.”
“I wonder if H2O2 and Barzani knew each other.”
“Probably. H2O2 was affiliated with Anonymous, the Occupy Wall Street movement, Wikileaks and, at least unofficially, Piratbyrån,” Lulu said. “He once hacked into Syrian President Bashar Assad’s office for emails about the Homs massacre on behalf of WikiLeaks. But you already knew that. It’s in his file. The one that you sent me.”
“Right. I’d forgotten.”
“Sure you did. What are you driving at, Decker? You didn’t forget.”
“Our team didn’t find anything about H2O2’s affiliation with Anonymous in his loft.”
“And?”
“And yet,” Decker continued, “three of his friends later testified that he owned a Guy Fawkes mask, the symbol of Anonymous, and that he’d worn it on several occasions. But it wasn’t found in his loft when we searched it. Strange, don’t you think?”
“It’s as if the assassin made a point of removing it,” Lulu said, “after taking him out. But why? Why try and cover up H2O2’s affiliation with Anonymous unless it signaled something that the assassin and his sponsors didn’t want you to know.”
“Wait a minute. You said three things,” said Decker. He leaned back on his stool. “First, it was the fact that Zimmerman was murdered. Then, this stuff about Ibi Barzani. What’s the third thing. Maybe, I don’t want to know. Do I want to know?”
Lulu pushed the keyboard away and stood up from the workbench. “In looking through Zimmerman’s correspondence, it’s clear that he had an assistant. A man named Rutger Braun. But Braun vanished soon after Zimmerman died in his car accident. Turns out Braun and Zimmerman were both working on some ultra-secret project code-named Riptide. Ever hear of it?”
“Riptide? Sounds familiar,” said Decker. “Some sort of data warehouse project, right? Very hush-hush. Part of the NSA’s new complex in Utah. Someone at the office mentioned something about it. He thought I might be involved, said something obliquely, but when he realized I didn’t know what he was talking about, he shut up, got all nervous. What about it? What did you learn?”
“Most of the data about this project is missing but here’s what I could piece together. Apparently, Zimmerman was recruited by his Harvard roommate, Rory Woodcock of Allied Data Systems, to work on this project for NSA called Kabbelung designed to integrate various data feeds — information re possible terrorist activities, from VISA applications, to car rental records, financial transactions, phone logs, et cetera. They were doing some predictive modeling leveraging user scenarios. Something like that. It isn’t specific. But it was clearly domestic spying. The stuff George W got into trouble for.”
“And Kabbelung is German for Riptide.”
“You speak German?”
“A little.”
“A little? And yet you know the German word for riptide! Exactly how many languages do you speak… fluently, I mean?”
“I’m barely fluent in English,” said Decker with a laugh. “Look, are you suggesting that Zimmerman and this Ibi Barzani were terminated because they knew something about some Top Secret government program involved in domestic spying? That’s a bit of a stretch, don’t you think? You don’t really know what Riptide is. You’re just guessing. And, besides, there…”
Decker saw the object out of the corner of his eye. It was just outside the door. Right there — in the corridor. Then he heard it. Some sort of buzzing sound.
“What the…” Decker was about to get up and take a look when he felt a flash of jolting pain in his wrist.
He looked down. The robotic hand by the 3-D Printer had reached out and grabbed him.
Decker tried pulling away but the grip was too strong. He was helpless. Then the mold over the 3-D tray began opening — opening and closing like the mouth of some mechanical Venus flytrap, the fleshy plastic covering shiny with green and gold chiplets.
Decker wrenched at his wrist. He tried to pry it out of the bot’s steely embrace but it was useless. He could feel the bone of his wrist start to buckle. “Jesus Christ, help me,” he shouted.
CHAPTER 34
As Decker struggled in the grip of the mechanical hand, Lulu rushed in beside him. She had picked up a piece of chemistry equipment — some beaker stand — and began using one of the metal legs to pry at the mechanical fingers. They loosened slightly. Decker managed to pull his wrist free just a little but not enough to release himself.
“Take my gun out and shoot it,” he cried. “It’s breaking my fucking wrist. Shoot it, Lulu. Shoot it!”
It was almost too late. The mechanical hand had pulled Decker’s own wrist and hand over to within inches of the mold on the tray. It continued to open and close like a predator’s mouth as his fingers inched closer and closer.
Lulu pulled out the beaker stand and jammed it into the mold. The mold buckled down on it but it could no longer close, pinned open as it was by the legs of the beaker stand.
Meanwhile, Decker continued to wrench at his own hand, trying to wrestle it free from the robot’s metallic embrace.
Lulu reached over and ripped the Python out of Decker’s left shoulder holster. She aimed at the mechanical hand.
“Be careful,” said Decker. “Open your eyes.”
“They are open. I know what I’m doing.”
“Then, do—”
There was a terrific explosion. Lulu pitched backwards. The gun flew from her grasp as she somersaulted out of sight. Decker felt as if she had just shot off his hand. He was reluctant to even look down.
Holding his breath, he finally glanced down at his wrist — one eye open, the other pressed shut. The shot had been perfect… or lucky. He flexed his fingers and wrist. Still in one piece.
He was about to go over to Lulu to help her back on her feet when he noticed the object outside the door once again. It looked like a small rotating Frisbee, only three or four inches across, gun-metal gray, hovering six feet off the ground. Then, he remembered the NCTC cafeteria.