He called back, and she picked up. “Mr. Quinnborne, thank you for returning my call. Please call me on a landline; your number may be compromised.”
Quinn jerked the phone from his ear and held it at arm's length like a biting snake. He powered off and considered the trashcan. Never get rid of an asset unless you have to — advice learned from his father, good advice. He slipped the device into his pocket and headed for the blue payphone attached to the side of the gas station. At least they still had payphones in Israel. After three failed tries, he figured out what codes to enter and finally got connected.
Keisha answered. “Abdul contacted us,” she said. “The terrorists intend to use him as a courier. They have stolen something of value to Mr. Eudon and wish to sell it back to him. Mr. Eudon wants you to act as our intermediary in the transaction. You would be compensated for your services. Perhaps you can help us and at the same time find Abdul.”
“Where and when will the exchange happen?”
“We do not have specifics yet, but you need to be in Tel Aviv by tomorrow, July 23rd.”
“I’ll be there.”
“Excellent. Please call me on a landline when you arrive.”
Back on the road, Quinn spoke, through Lana, to her father and explained that he needed to get to Tel Aviv. She translated her father’s reply.
“Father has to return the car to his brother-in-law, Hassan, in Jaffa, which is near Tel Aviv. You will be welcome to stay the night in Hassan’s home, if you wish.”
Quinn smiled. He couldn’t imagine turning up with a foreigner on his brother-in-law’s doorstep and expecting him to provide a bed for the stranger. “Thank your father for me.” This killed two birds because he couldn’t check into a hotel; they would want his passport, and the Israeli police would love to be the first to find the missing English detective.
Hold on Abdul, I’m coming.
Chapter 26
Late afternoon, Mountain Standard Time, Nazar Eudon’s helicopter landed outside the prototype building in Arizona. Two days before, this had been the scene of great excitement as Nazar’s team had demonstrated their extraordinary energy breakthrough.
This time, Mason Phillips, head of security, drove the golf cart. Mason escorted Nazar along a hallway and into a large open laboratory. The professor stood with three white-coated technicians in the center of the room. They stared at a plastic cube, murmuring in low nervous voices. The cube reminded Nazar of a popcorn machine.
“Mr. Eudon, welcome.” The professor used the technique of speaking inside an exhalation of breath. It made the conversation strangely discontinuous, but Nazar preferred it to the damn stammering. The professor offered his hand, and Nazar glared at it as though it were a piece of dog shit. The three colleagues averted their eyes, and the academic turned bright red. He took a deep breath and spoke. “I decided to show you the problem rather than trying to explain.”
“An excellent idea,” Nazar said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
The professor nodded to a short, plump woman who stood at the computer keyboard. After a few keystrokes, the computer monitor sprang to life.
Nazar studied the display:
Target — C2H5OH (Ethanol)
Inhibitor — C2H5OH*30 % (Ethanol)
Feedstock — Bio
Catalyst — Photon
ss: mm:hh: dd:mm
Activate — 00:00:00:00:00
Terminate — 59:59:23:31:07
The woman pointed to the screen. “This is the nanobot programming interface. Under normal operating procedures, we place a sample of virginbots into the induction chamber.” She indicated a small glass vial at the center of the glove box. “Then we raise the temperature.” When she depressed a key on the computer, four red strip lights came on, one inside each corner of the cube. “Once the temperature reaches twenty-one Celsius, we modify these parameters and imprint the constraints on the virginbots in the induction vessel. The imprinted cells are removed and grown to make larger quantities, clones of themselves with the same imprinted parameters, which go to the production facility.”
“I understand. So what’s the problem?” Nazar, relieved, wondered whether the professor’s crisis was nothing of the sort. After all, scientists and businessmen had different ideas of what constituted a problem.
“David imprinted all of our virginbots the day he left. The problem lies here.” The woman pointed to the last line on the screen. “This parameter dictates that the virginbots will stop converting feedstock on July 31st.”
Nazar smiled. These idiots! “Why don’t you put in a later date?” he said.
“We can’t.”
The statement hit him like a punch to the gut.
“I don’t understand. If this is normal procedure, why not?”
The woman pressed the ‘Tab’ key. The cursor jumped to each field in turn, but then skipped past the last one.
“The Terminate field is not accessible,” the woman said.
“How did this happen?”
Mason, the security chief, spoke. “The surveillance video from January tenth shows David removing one vial of virginbots from the containment vessel before placing the remaining stock into this device and modifying their programming.”
One of the lab technicians spoke up. “The computer saves a log of every keystroke entered by an operator, a failsafe device so we can track an erroneous parameter. The log shows the date you see in the Terminate field being input by David.”
Mason pointed at the date. “The video shows that David Baker made more key depressions than we have recorded on the log file.”
“He entered additional data we have no record of?” Nazar said.
The professor spoke for the first time since he greeted Nazar. “Exactly.”
Nazar studied the man. He had always been thin, but he had lost weight. His face was gaunt and pale, eyes bloodshot with purple rings beneath. Nazar thought he detected makeup.
“How is this possible?” Nazar still did not understand why these eggheads couldn’t change the programming.
“David sabotaged the virginbots,” Mason said. “He must have built a backdoor into the control program, enabling him to change and lock the final date sequence without the computer logging his keystrokes.”
“Can’t you patch the program? Change it back again?”
“That is only possible if we have the program’s source code,” Mason replied. “And we don’t.”
“You knew this at the opening ceremony. Why the fuck didn’t you tell me?”
“We’ve been t… trying to f… f… fix the problem since we discovered it in January.”
“And you didn’t think it was important to share that information?”
His question was met with silence.
Finally, Mason spoke. “Put plainly, Mr. Eudon,” the security chief said, “we don’t know how he made the change and we can’t reverse it. Our ability to generate nanobots, and consequently our ability to generate ethanol will cease at midnight on July 31st. We don’t know why he picked that date.”
Nazar turned away, heart racing, temper teetered on the verge of exploding. He spat out his words, encapsulating the disgust he harbored for these incompetent, overpaid idiots. “Dawud’s religious fervor is well known to us, yes?”
“Yes, sir,” Mason said.
Nazar spun and faced the group, fists clenched and face flushed with anger. Only Mason maintained eye contact; the others stared at the computer screen as if through pure willpower they could change the termination date. “July 31st is the end of Ramadan,” Nazar spat out the words. “August 1st, Eid-al-Fitr, is the day all Muslims feast after a month of fasting. These nanobots won’t be breaking their fast.” He couldn’t afford to unleash his fury on these scientists. Their lax protocols had placed in jeopardy two years of careful planning, his fortune, and his place in history. But if Abdul delivered new virginbots, he would need the professor and his staff.