Ian opened the bottle of mineral water placed before him, waiting for any mention of Semaphore. The word was not spoken.
With Wolfe was Bob Goldfarb, director of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the nation’s foremost computer research hub. Goldfarb was old and gnomish, with as much hair sprouting from his ears as on top of his mottled head.
“Hello, Bob,” said Ian. “Long time.”
“Exaflops,” whispered Goldfarb. “Can it be?”
Ian answered with a cryptic smile. All good things to those who wait.
“Shall we get down to brass tacks?” said Wolfe. “Are we to understand that you’ve solved the heating problem?”
“That’s correct,” said Ian.
“And none too soon,” said Goldfarb. “Cutting it close, are we?”
“We can’t risk another incident,” said Wolfe diplomatically. “Bluffdale is our number-one priority these days. We have a lot invested in the demonstration.”
Bluffdale, Utah, was home to the Utah Data Center, soon to be the world’s largest intelligence collection and storage site, where six months earlier the NSA had installed two hundred Titan supercomputers. It was billed as “a state-of-the-art facility designed to support the intelligence community in its mission to enable and protect national cybersecurity.” In reality the Utah Data Center was a vacuum cleaner designed to suck up as much of the world’s communications traffic as technologically possible. It collected traffic from undersea cables and underground fiber-optic cables, from satellites high in the sky and dishes on firm ground. Its servers were so large that they measured contents not in gigabytes or terabytes or even petabytes. They measured their take in yottabytes, where one yottabyte equaled 500 quintillion (500,000,000,000,000,000,000) pages of text.
It was the Utah Data Center’s primary mission to gather and store all communications traffic generated by the entire world for the next ten years.
“And ours, too,” said Ian. “But that was six months ago, immediately after we took over the project from John Merriweather. As you’ll see, we’ve made some improvements.”
“Frankly, the boys at Oak Ridge are skeptical,” said Goldfarb. “A few of us are more than that.”
“Until yesterday I was doubtful, too. I can promise you that the specs are accurate.”
“Exaflops,” said Goldfarb. “Really?”
Patel chimed in. “It was our team’s primary consideration when we took over management of the project. Speed’s the primary factor when executing algorithmic strategies.”
The strategies Patel referred to involved decrypting encoded messages, or, in the vernacular, “breaking a code.” There was only one reason the NSA wanted the world’s most powerful supercomputer. It was during an initial test that Titan had overheated. A second demonstration was scheduled for the following morning, with many high-ranking government officials set to attend, including the vice president. It would be Titan’s second and final chance.
“I’m sure we’ll be able to judge for ourselves,” said General Wolfe, playing the peacemaker. “So? The test?”
Ian nodded at Patel, who distributed a set of bound notebooks to the NSA men. No one spoke as the government officials studied the detailed results of the prior day’s test. The men finished reading. Their eyes met each other’s, then Ian’s. Ian imagined that Franklin Roosevelt and his advisers must have looked much the same way after Robert Oppenheimer informed them of the successful test of the atomic bomb in May 1945.
“Exaflops,” said Goldfarb.
“Exaflops,” said Ian.
“Exaflops,” said General Wolfe, taking ownership of the word.
“Two hundred degrees Fahrenheit,” said Goldfarb. “Sounds low.”
“Two hundred six, actually,” said Ian. “Then the cooling system kicked in.”
“At which point Titan’s internal temperature decreased to one hundred eighty degrees,” added Patel.
“How?” said Wolfe. “It’s a gosh-darned miracle.”
“Just a little tinkering,” said Ian. “An extra fan here and there.”
“Whatever you did,” said Wolfe, “we want Titan on-site at Fort Meade.”
“I believe that’s another contract,” said Ian.
“Soon you’ll have a monopoly,” said Wolfe. “There won’t be a network in D.C. that doesn’t come from ONE.”
“Maybe one day,” said Ian.
Bob Goldfarb’s skepticism had vanished. His dark eyes sparkled greedily as he placed his elbows on the table and leaned forward. “How soon can we install it?”
“Dev can work with your people to install the software patch today. If all goes as it should, we can keep to our plan for the demonstration tomorrow morning.”
“That’s cutting it close,” said Wolfe. “You’re sure?”
“I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.”
“Tomorrow morning it is.” Wolfe moved to a table at the end of the conference room and poured glasses of sparkling apple cider. Beltway bubbly, he called it as he offered round the glasses.
“To Titan,” said Wolfe.
“To Titan,” the others chimed in.
Ian touched glasses with each man in turn and drank his cider.
–
Afterward Peter Briggs took Ian aside and offered a handshake. “The king is dead,” he whispered. “Long live the king.”
“You mean the Emperor,” said Ian.
35
Mary called Randy Bell at eight on the dot. He answered on the first ring, sounding chipper and alert. So much for her plan of catching him hungover and with his defenses down. Her career as an investigator was not off to a promising start.
“Randy,” she said. “It’s Mary Grant.”
“Gee, Mary, I’m so sorry about Joe. Did you get my message?” Bell had a high, youthful voice. He was in his midfifties, with hair white as snow, but on the phone he sounded like a twenty-year-old.
“E-mail? I haven’t had time to look through them all, but thanks all the same. Sorry if I woke you.”
“It’s nine o’clock,” said Bell. “I’ve been up two hours.”
“In Sacramento?”
“I’m in D.C.” Bell paused, then added, “Just visiting the old crew. Gosh, Mary, I don’t know what to say. I’m crushed. I can’t believe what happened. None of us can. How you holding up?”
She told him that she was fine and that the kids were going to make it through. She took a breath, suddenly nervous, not sure how to begin. “Randy, I know you and Joe were buddies,” she said. “When was the last time you talked?”
“June. Right after the playoffs.”
“How’d he sound?”
“Like Joe. A little crazy ’cause the Celtics lost. But he sounded good.”
“And work? You guys talk shop?”
“I’m retired six months now,” said Bell. “I’m out of the loop.”
“Still, Joe thought a lot of you.”
“He was a good kid.”
That’s twice he’s avoided the question, thought Mary. She walked into Joe’s office. The yellow legal pad was on the desk where she’d left it. She stared at her husband’s writing, at the funny little flags all over the page, wondering how she was supposed to lead Randy Bell subtly to the question of Joe’s trips to San Jose.
“What was that case you two were working-the one he was always going on about, about the Asian syndicate pirating those jet designs?”
“Pricks were hacking into Boeing’s mainframe, downloading designs for the new wing it’s building, and selling them to China.”
“And the other case,” she went on. “You know, the one where you guys were always flying down to San Jose. I forget who Joe said you were seeing.”