“On October twelfth, the jig is up. Chinese military personnel storm the island and — we assume — take all the Americans into captivity. In the confusion, David Manning and Henry Glickstein escape from the island on a small Chinese watercraft. A few days later, the two men are picked up by an Australian fishing trawler. They spend fourteen days at sea and arrive in Darwin, Australia, on October twenty-fourth.
“This is the same day that two other events occurred. First, the Iranian politician, Ahmad Gorji, was killed, along with his wife, on the highway outside Bandar Abbas, Iran.”
The screen changed to show an overhead drone’s video feed of a highway near the ocean. A freighter truck was parked at an odd angle, blocking the highway. Three black cars stopped in front of it. A gunfight erupted. Then the screen went bright green as an explosion flattened the whole scene.
Susan continued to speak as the video played.
“The attack was extremely well-executed. Our own analysis corroborates the Iranian claims that US and Israeli-made weapons were used. About a dozen armed men emerged from the truck here and began attacking the politician’s convoy of cars. We think that these men were a diversion. Hired Iranians who didn’t know too much about their target. Once the firefight ensued, claymore mines and a very talented sniper finished everyone off.
“The former CIA employee, Tom Connolly, was found dead near the beach, one mile away. This is the same man who had worked at In-Q-Tel and convinced several members of the Red Cell to attend a few weeks earlier. Also, Lisa Parker — aka Lena Chou — sent an unclassified email to several CIA employees indicating that she was a part of the mission.
“It was an obvious framing. But because of these US connections, the Iranians think that we really were responsible for the assassination. Our analysts also stress the personal connection between the Iranian leadership and the people who were killed. Emotional responses are not usually rational ones.”
The lights were dimmed, but David could see a few people were shaking their heads.
The director said, “Tell me about this Parker woman.”
“Lisa Parker, aka Lena Chou. Graduated from the University of Maryland. Division 1 track athlete there. The Agency recruited her out of college. She’s been with the CIA for almost fourteen years. Started out in Central America. Spent a few years there working anti-narco-terrorism operations. Top evaluations got her a slot in Iraq in 2007. She’s done some work in Japan for us, but most of her time has been in either the US or the Middle East. She’s a political action group officer, but she’s also reportedly an expert at unarmed combat. Her file says that she spends a lot of her personal time training in martial arts.”
“Married?”
“No significant others or kids.”
“Family in the US? I’m assuming that she’s US-born?”
“She was raised by an aunt in the San Francisco Bay area. Her birth certificate says she was born there. And records show that the people that were supposed to be her parents were killed in a car crash in 1997. In San Fran. That’s what the file says, anyway. And that’s what all the background checks have stated, but… a recent investigation indicates otherwise.”
He cocked his head. “Please elaborate.”
“We now think she arrived in the US as a teenager right around the time the people she claims were her parents died in the car crash. Our analysts have been evaluating pictures of Lena Chou both before and after her parents’ death. They don’t match. Immediately after the car crash, the daughter went to live with an aunt in the suburbs of Baltimore. But no one who knew the daughter in San Francisco could identify Lena Chou when we showed them pictures. Granted that it would be fifteen years later — but still.”
“Meaning what?”
David couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“Meaning that we think Lena Chou was swapped for this daughter of the car crash victims,” Susan said. “The aunt took her and God knows what happened to the real daughter after that. But then the aunt picks up Lena Chou and takes her to Maryland. Then she starts working for the Agency, and her cover name becomes Lisa Parker. But the big news is that we now think she took the girl’s identity as a teenager.”
“How sure are you of this?”
“We’re still investigating. We should know more by next week.”
David watched as video on the screen changed to an image of Lena Chou looking up at the sky. The camera was overhead, so it was easy to make out her features. An official CIA photograph of her was displayed on the screen.
Susan said, “Lena Chou/Lisa Parker was involved in the Iranian assassination. We know that from this drone feed. Only weeks earlier, she was a CIA employee with a sterling record, working in Dubai. When word of a mole in Dubai Station was received, a counterespionage team was sent over to investigate. The team flagged Miss Parker for inconsistencies and asked her to fly back to Washington. She was told that she had been cleared of any suspicion, and that the flight back to D.C. was for training purposes. Apparently she knew better.”
“Why was she allowed to travel back to the States by herself?” the director said.
Susan squirmed. “Sir, this is obviously not standard procedure, and we’ve reprimanded the counterespionage team member who made that decision. Apparently, he had a prior relationship with—”
The director’s hand went up. “Alright. Please see me about that detail later. Continue.”
“The second big event on October twenty-fourth, none of you need reminding about. The Blackout Attack. We have with us Mr. Diaz from the NSA to go over what happened.”
A squat man in a V-neck sweater took the small microphone in his fingers. “Thank you, Susan.” The screen changed to a map of the US. “The Blackout Attack, as people call it, was actually two distinct attacks. Each was executed simultaneously on October twenty-fourth. The first, we now know, came from the ARES cyberweapon. The transmissions emanated from several locations in Southeast Asia and affected approximately seventy-five percent of all satellites in orbit. I can’t emphasize enough how complex an attack this was. The GPS satellites are beyond repair. This alone has caused massive problems. Estimates on getting replacements launched are at six to twelve months.”
Chase whispered, “That’s insane.”
The NSA man continued, “What’s worse — Internet and telecommunications have been greatly damaged by attacks on data centers and root servers.”
“What are root servers?” the director asked.
The NSA man cleared his throat. “Yes, sir… uh… think of root servers as the decoder keys for the Internet. Instead of typing in a sixteen-digit number into your browser to take you to a website, you can type Walmart dot com, for instance. But in actuality, the website is really identified by a sixteen-digit number. Thanks to the root servers, when you type Walmart dot com, it automatically syncs those letters to the correct number identifier and takes you to the correct website. But with these root servers down, there is no longer a decoder key. So technically, the Internet still works. But it’s rendered useless to ninety-nine point nine nine percent of the population.”
“Anyone but people like you?”
Nervous chuckles.
“Yes, sir, I’m afraid so.”
The director said, “So why are we able to use Internet now? It went down for, what, thirty-six hours? It’s slower, but it’s back up. What happened?”
“Director, it appears that the ARES cyberweapon was effective in bringing down several of these data centers and root servers, but the Internet has just become too big and strong. It’s developed immunities, if you will. Technology companies have built so many redundancies into the network that, unless the attack was perfectly coordinated with the physical destruction of undersea cables and other backup data centers, it was only going to be a partially successful attack. What we’re living through now is a damaged Internet. But the tech companies are working hard each day to get it back to full strength. Effectively, we’re going to have another one or two months at low performance before we get back to where we were.”