“Fine. Let’s start,” Carlucci said. “But give me the Cliffs Notes’ version.”
“Yes, sir,” Menendez said. Solid and shorter than medium height, Menendez sported a goatee and spoke with a slight Cuban accent. His great grandfather had fought in the Cuban Bay of Pigs conflict, and he came from four generations of CIA officers. “The name of the operation and the name of the worm itself—”
“Worm?” Carlucci asked.
“Sorry, Mr. President,” Menendez said. “By ‘worm’ we mean an algorithm. A computer program. A virus. A piece of software code that gets inserted into an adversary’s computer systems with the intent of causing various forms of damage, like the Stuxnet virus did to Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility some time ago.”
“Right,” Carlucci said. “Please ignore my ignorance and proceed.”
“The name of the operation and the name of the worm — the algorithm — are the same, and that name is Harmaakarhu, which in Finnish means ‘grizzly bear.’”
“Wait, why Finnish?”
“Well, sir, of all the languages’ translations of the word ‘grizzly bear,’ the Finnish version is the coolest.”
Carlucci laughed.
“Actually, sir, it was a random word generator run by CIA, but I like my version better,” Menendez smiled.
“Go on then, Mr. Menendez.”
“Yes, sir. Anyway, the effect of the worm will be to invade Iranian Navy computer systems and cause them to stop communicating with each other. Most of them will just brick — go black, sir, and stop functioning. The worm is intended to paralyze Iranian logistics networks and operational control assets of the Iranian Air Force, Naval Air Force and Iranian Navy’s surface action forces. Pretty much everything in the Iranian Navy with the exception of their submarines.”
Carlucci frowned. “Why not their submarines?”
“Sir, that ties into a separate operation that we will be briefing you on next week.”
Carlucci waved. “No problem. So, why are we doing this, exactly?”
“Well, sir, technically, it’s not we who are doing it. The Mossad will be executing the cyberattack. We’ll hand the worm code over to Mossad after you sign off with your permission, and then they will get it inserted into a normal system software patching and update version, so it will be accepted into the Iranian networks and then go to sleep for five days, then it will become active.”
“Okay, understood, but that’s tactics, Mr. Menendez. What is the grand strategy here?”
“Functionally, Mr. President, we’re fundamentally attacking Russian systems from a vector they trust — the Iranians. We infect the Iranian systems, and within days, the multiple interfaces between Iranian systems and Russian systems put the worm deep into the Russian networks. All their analysts will see is a threat vector from Iran. Sir, they will chase their tails for three weeks over this, minimum. At the point you deem appropriate, you can order the kill code. Boom, worm dies. All Iranian and Russian systems return to nominal. And the attack on Russian systems, well, it flanges into your directive regarding an operation we can’t talk about here, at this time.” Because, Menendez thought, the Israelis weren’t read into the Fractal Chaos program.
“Okay. I understand the front end. I understand the objective. Now tell me about the downside. First, can we or Israel be blamed for this attack?”
“Sir, we can’t promise the answer is negative, but we have done everything technically possible to scrub the code of any agency fingerprints. We’ve actually hired amateur coders — hackers, if you will, Mr. President — to give the line-by-line code the look and feel of it being originated by civilians, not state actors. We’ve run it through the AI that guards our own networks to see if it could detect it. It was not able to detect it. So confidence is high, sir.”
“Mr. Menendez, if our guardian AI missed detecting this virus, isn’t that cause for concern? If you and your band of scruffy hackers can defeat it, what’s to stop some angry Venezuelans from penetrating our systems?”
“We have a briefing for you on that on Wednesday, sir.”
“Oh my God, this never ends, does it?” Carlucci remarked in frustration.
“Sorry sir,” Menendez said in sympathy.
“And what, Mr. Menendez, are the unintended consequences of us releasing this bug? Sorry, this worm?”
“Nothing that can be foreseen, sir, but let me reassure you that everything that can be anticipated that could blow back on us has been considered.”
“This will affect Iran and Russia only? No chance of it breaking out of those two cages and getting into Germany’s defense systems? I don’t need Iron Ida Schwarzzen to be pissing in my ear that all her naval systems are down.” Ida Schwarzzen was the renown prime minister of the new German government, a scrapper who had no affection for America or Americans.
“Not a chance, sir. It will definitely stay in its lane.”
“Well, okay then,” Carlucci said, sounding almost sleepy. “You have permission to proceed.” Menendez handed Carlucci a leather folder with a document inside it. Carlucci scanned it and signed it with a fountain pen enclosed in the folder. He stood up. “Well, have a good weekend, all.” With another politician’s smile flashed at the crowd, he disappeared out of the room, the crowd of military officers and cabinet officials leaving after him.
Angel Menendez looked up at the video screen and saw his boss, Margo Allende, turn to talk to a man partially off-screen. For a moment, he leaned in to point at something on Allende’s tablet computer, and when he did, Menendez recognized the famous billionaire and software mogul, Elias Sotheby, one of the architects of the Harmaakarhu worm. Allende smiled at him and nodded, and he left. She turned back to the screen. Menendez gave a crooked smile to Allende. “Well, Madam Director, get that worm going and get back here. You know what they say about when the cat’s away.”
Allende smiled. “I have it on good authority that you love when your boss is out of town.”
“Total lies,” Menendez laughed. “Whoever says that is totally lying.”
“See you soon, Angel.”
With that, Allende clicked off.
Pacino blinked in the bright sunshine of the pier, his eyes used to the relative dimness of the submarine’s interior. The air smelled funny, then he realized it was because it was fresh sea air that didn’t stink of atmospheric control amines, diesel fumes, ozone and cooking grease. He half ran over to the waiting white bus with the DynaCorp logo painted on the side. He stepped in the bus door and took the two steps up to the aisle between the seats, and immediately the Vermont’s officers started jeering at him.
“Look at this guy,” Quinnivan teased. “Khakis and a damned Polo shirt. And fancy little topsiders.”
Pacino surveyed the crowd, who all seemed to sport cargo shorts, flip-flops and T-shirts as if they were headed to the beach rather than dinner with the admiral in command of the submarine force.
“Well, Bullfrog, he is sort of royalty,” Romanov said, smiling that beautiful smile of hers at Pacino, her eyes sparkling. “He has to dress the part.” Pacino looked at Romanov, who looked stunning, wearing shorts that revealed her long, tanned legs, with a tight, revealing tube top and sandals that had three-inch heels. Her hair shone, cascading in loose curls down to her shoulders. Her eyes were made up, the eyeliner making her eyes even more gorgeous. Lip gloss graced her full lips. For a moment he stared at her, unable to deny an animal attraction to the woman, and when she noticed, she winked at him and said, “sit down, you non-qual air-breathing puke.”