“Did you know that Dali had quite a lineage,” Nathan said. “His full name was Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech.”
Emily jaw dropped. Where does he keep this trivia? she wondered.
“He even had a title,” Nathan said. “1st Marquess of Dalí de Púbol. It’s quite possible he awarded himself that one.”
“Is he still alive?” she asked.
“No. He died in 1989. He was eighty-five. He did okay though. Anyway, enough of Dali. This painting is Edvard Munch, I’m telling you,” Nathan insisted.
“Look,” she said, zooming in and pointing to the bottom right of the picture.
Kubacki
“The artist’s name is Kubacki.”
Who the hell was Kubacki? Nathan thought. “Emily, can you grab the second illustration from the document and isolate the topmost layer.”
“What are you thinking?”
“Not sure yet,” he said. “I have a hunch.”
Emily pulled the next illustration into Photoshop. Like the others, it was psychedelic nonsense. She exposed the top layer.
“This one I’m sure about,” Nathan said with certainty. “It’s Vincent van Gogh’s ‘The Bridge at Trinquetaille’.”
Both looked closely at the bottom right of the painting.
Kubacki
It was the same with the third and subsequent composite images Emily had extracted from the document. The top layer was a well-known painting signed with the name Kubacki.
Nathan and Emily stared at each other in sudden realization. Kubacki was the person who had broadcast the data from the Mojave.
“We need to let JW and Uri know as soon as possible,” Nathan said.
“They should be back soon,” Emily said.
Uri had taken James and Obadiah on a guided tour of parts of Groom Lake’s military complex.
“I need a break,” she said. “My eyes can’t take any more staring at this monitor. How are you doing with those formulas?”
Nathan couldn’t make sense of them. The formulas appeared to have more to do with geophysics than with inertial engines. “I’m going to run some of these by Uri,” he said. “Let’s see what he can make of them.”
“But, for now, we need to find out exactly who this Kubacki person is,” Emily said. “Think Sven can help?”
“I’m sure,” Nathan replied. “I’ll leave him a message after dinner.”
Emily and Nathan were making small talk about some plans for their garden when James, Uri and Obadiah came through the Level-2 door just after six thirty p.m.
“It’s great to finally get out of the heat,” James said. The expression on his face was like that of a child who had just unwrapped all the birthday presents wished for.
“You look happy,” Emily said.
“You should have seen his face an hour ago,” Obadiah said. “I don’t think he’s ever seen such radical aircraft designs.”
With his interest in rockets and military aircraft, Emily could understand James’s excitement.
“I don’t even know how some of them get off the ground?” James said. “I suspect Uri showed us a few things way above our notorious security clearance.”
“How they’re able to fly, sadly cannot be disclosed James,” Uri said. “I’m sure you understand.”
“No problems with that at all,” James replied. “It was more than enough for me to have seen some of what’s being developed here. I can’t thank you enough.”
Emily watched James’s smile grow even broader.
“So,” he said. “Made any progress with the technical illustrations?”
Emily explained how the images had been assembled into an array of individual layers and what they had discovered about the topmost layer.
“Kubacki?” James queried, turning to Uri. “Any idea who that might be?”
“No idea at all,” he said. “We’ll ask LaForgue when we speak to her in the morning.” He looked at his wristwatch. “It’s after nine thirty p.m. there. She will have already left the office and gone home.”
“And I’m hungry,” Nathan said. “Let’s go get some dinner.”
Emily could never understand how Nate could eat as much as he did, and remain so skinny. She just had to look at the mayonnaise on her salad to put on a few pounds.
Chapter Thirty-One
Following a satisfying breakfast, the next day, Emily and Nathan walked briskly to Building-3A, avoiding as much of the early morning heat as possible by taking advantage of the shade cast by the numerous hangars. They felt quite safe having left their laptops in the security of Level-2 overnight. Lugging them back and forth didn’t make sense. Anything urgent that needed to be communicated to SkyTech could be done through a secure phone call or Messenger.
From the kitchen, Nathan brought a bottle of water for Emily and a mug of coffee for himself, then sat down at his designated workstation and activated his computer from standby.
“Got a response from Sven,” he said. “He asked us to phone when we could.”
Emily drank from her bottle of water while Nathan connected through Shred-It; SkyTech’s clandestine phone app that couldn’t be traced by national security.
“Sven,” Nathan said. “Hope all is in order on the home front? Emily’s with me. I’ll put you on the speaker.”
With Shred-It carving up the communication, there were a few seconds delay between Nathan talking and Sven responding.
“Hey, Sven,” Emily said. “How’s Kayla?”
“Great,” Sven replied. “Thanks for asking.”
“Were you able to dig up anything on someone named, Kubacki?” Nathan asked.
“Quite a bit actually,” Sven replied. “First thing this morning, I sent out a spider.”
Instead of letting the IBM scan the internet on its own, a spider-search sent the request to additional search engines which, in turn, propagated to others. As an alternative to only one search provider doing all the work, hundreds would be working collectively gathering possible results. These were returned in milliseconds, rather than seconds. Software developers, especially those of Sven’s calibre, had little tolerance for searches taking longer than two seconds.
“From the thousands of hits, I refined the search with specific keywords such as ‘inertial’, ‘reactionless’ and a few others.
“Any luck?”
“A single hit.” They could hear the pride in Sven’s voice.
“Okay, we’re impressed,” Emily cut in with a smile. “So, tell us what you found.”
“César Kubacki,” Sven said. “A low-key design engineer working at a Los Angeles based electrical machinery supplier. He was obsessed with the Dean Engine and many years ago downloaded everything available from public domain.”
“How could you possibly know what he downloaded?” Nathan asked.
“The NSA’s databanks,” Sven replied.
“I hope you were careful, Sven,” Nathan said with concern.
“Don’t worry, Nate. For the search, I used the IBM, but used my private home-based network to get into the NSA’s data.”
Sven engaged in almost all hacking activities, ethical or otherwise, from his home computer. If national security ever associated his Trinity internet-handle with SkyTech, there would be some serious consequences for James and everyone working there.
“What’s the NSA’s interest in something that’s on public domain?” Nathan asked.
“They tagged Dean’s files. Anyone downloading them triggered an alert. Kubacki was the only one.”
Nathan, raising an eyebrow, glanced at Emily with a baffled expression.
“There’s more,” Sven said.