CIA HEADQUARTERS, LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
Have you gotten any sleep?” asked Dr. Bill McCreary as he entered the small workroom.
“Not really,” replied Califano. He was still seated in front of the computer monitor where he’d been all night, fingers tapping furiously at the keyboard. It was 4:12 A.M.
“That’s what I figured.” McCreary approached and placed a mug of fresh coffee on the desk in front of Califano. “Here, I thought you might need this.” The mug was emblazoned with the official CIA seal: the head of a bald eagle above an argent shield inscribed with a sixteen-point compass rose. The compass rose represented the agency’s endless quest for information; the shield represented defense. Information as defense.
Califano took a sip—black and unsweetened, just the way he liked it. “Thanks.”
“So, whatcha got?”
Califano resumed typing as he talked. “As you know, my program crawls the entire worldwide digisphere looking for relational hits. Everything from credit card transactions, travel reservations, online searches, news stories, blogs, e-mails, police reports, SEC filings, you name it. The more data you feed it, the better it gets at finding statistically significant relationships between what I call ‘independent informational entities’ or IIEs.”
“Right,” said McCreary. He sipped from his own mug as he watched Califano expertly navigating screen after screen of complex statistical data. The master at work.
Califano continued. “I’ve been feeding it raw data all night, but it wasn’t until a couple of hours ago that it started kicking back good hits.” He performed a final, exaggerated keystroke and sat back as the screen suddenly changed to a colorful graph of squiggly lines and corresponding color-coded labels. The lines changed shape every few seconds as the program continuously updated the underlying statistical information. The result looked like a wriggling tangle of multicolored spaghetti.
McCreary understood it, though. He leaned forward, acutely interested in what he was seeing.
“Each of these lines,” said Califano, “represents a time-based statistical quantification of the relationship between two IIEs. It could be the relationship between a person and a particular place, for instance. Or between a particular place and a specific date. Or it could be the relationship between two people. Or anything else under the sun. You get the picture, right?”
McCreary nodded.
“Now obviously there are an infinite number of IIEs in the world and an infinite number of relationships among them. But we’re only interested in those relationships that have a strong statistical correlation to the data that we’ve fed the system, right?”
“Sure. Our program works the same way,” said McCreary.
Of course it does. “Now, what you’re seeing here,” Califano said, pointing to the screen, “are several dozen IIE relationships that have a statistically significant correlation to the data set I’ve provided, which includes everything from Dr. Holzberg’s hat size and preferred brand of underwear to the geographic coordinates of Thurmond and Fire Creek, and everything in between.”
“So, what are these relationships?” asked McCreary, anxious to get to the point.
“I’ll get to that in a second. A more interesting question is when are these relationships?” Califano tapped a few keys, and the graph on the screen suddenly changed scale. “Check this out. I did a retroactive analysis to see what these same relationships looked like for the past six months. See that?” He pointed with his index finger to a slow ramp up and then a sudden spike that occurred in the middle of the graph, about three months before, followed by another spike near the end of the graph. “That second spike was yesterday morning. Just about the time our friend Holzberg wandered into the diner in Fire Creek.”
“What the—” McCreary straightened his posture, and an expression of concern suddenly flashed across his face. “But those could be our activities, right?”
“Nope. I already filtered those out. These relationships are all independent of our activities.” Califano tapped a few more keys on the keyboard and brought up another screen on the monitor. “Now, to answer your previous question, here are the independent relationships whose relevancy scores suddenly hit the roof yesterday morning. This screen shows the first five in order of relevance.”
McCreary leaned forward and began reading the list to himself. “What the hell?” he whispered.
|
No. |
IIE1 |
IIE2 |
|
1 |
Vladamir Krupnov |
Krupnov Energy, ZAO |
|
2 |
Vladamir Krupnov |
Severodvinsk, Russia |
|
3 |
Vladamir Krupnov |
Skolkovo Innovation Center |
|
4 |
Vladamir Krupnov |
Arkhangelsk, Russia |
|
5 |
Arkhangelsk, Russia |
Stephen Haroldson |
McCreary appeared stunned. “You sure about this?”
“I’m positive. The relevancy scores for these relationships tower far above the noise and are actually on par with the relevancy scores of our own activities. In other words, either these guys in Russia know everything we know . . . or some weird shit is happening over there, too.”
“Jesus,” said McCreary, shaking his head. “Who are these people?”
Califano rolled his chair to the other side of the room and grabbed a stack of about twenty pages off the ink-jet printer. “Here, I prepared a report for you.”
McCreary took the stack of papers and gave Califano a look that showed he was impressed.
“Vladamir Krupnov is a Russian businessman with ties to the Russian government and the Russian mob.”
“Kind of the same thing these days, isn’t it?” said McCreary.
“Uh-huh. He made a ton of money a few years ago brokering natural gas rights in Siberia to European venture funds. Of course, you can’t do something like that in Russia unless you have close ties to the Russian government, which he does. He was the director of the Skolkovo Innovation Center for several years, which the Russian government has been trying to develop for years into a Russian Silicon Valley.”
“And Krupnov Energy is his company?”
“Yep. It appears to be a start-up company, although there’s not much info about it. No website, no press releases, or anything like that. I did find a registration with the Russian Federal Tax Service about a year ago for Krupnov’s ‘ZAO’ status—the Russian equivalent of an LLC.”
“Any indication of what type of energy they’re involved in?”
“From the looks of things, nuclear. But that’s just a guess.”
“And what about Stephen Haroldson?”
“Yeah, that’s an odd one. As far as I can tell, he works for the British Civil Service, some sort of assistant manager in the Department of Work and Pension. Lives with his wife in a small row house in northwest London. He’s booked travel to Arkhangelsk, which is what landed him on this list. But I’m not sure what his relationship is with Krupnov, if any. I’ll keep looking, though.”
McCreary dragged his hand over his face. “Christ,” he mumbled. “The Russians. I’m gonna have to get the director involved.” After that, he was quiet for a very long time.
Califano finally broke the silence. “Hey, Doc, something else just popped up.”
“Hmm?”
“Take a look.” Califano rolled his chair out of the way to make room for McCreary.
McCreary stepped forward and quickly read the document on the screen. It appeared to be an excerpt from a police log, documenting a radio broadcast sent by a West Virginia state trooper last night. Two of Califano’s relevancy terms were highlighted in bold type.
Broadcast Time: 2134
Responding Unit(s): 312
Event: Carjacking (Code 215)
Occurred: 40 minutes ago
Location: State Road 15, approx. 2 miles east of Beury Mtn. Rd.
Direction: Suspect fled east on State Road 15
Suspect(s): Caucasian male, 55–65 years old, long gray hair, full beard (gray), long fingernails, black leather coat
Weapon: Heavy object
Property Stolen: 2010 Chevy Impala 4dr sedan, dark blue. Tag no.: WV/YHD–522
Ambulance requested
EOT
“What do you think?” asked Califano.
McCreary shrugged. “What, just because he had long hair and fingernails?”
“No, man. Look at the location. Route 15 and Beury Mountain Road. That’s less than ten miles from the Thurmond lab.”
McCreary stared at the screen for several seconds, rubbing his temples. It was almost as if he didn’t want to see the connection.
Califano interrupted his concentration. “Hey, you can think what you want. But it looks to me like we’ve got another crazy Santa Claus out there with long fingernails . . . and a car.”
“Shit,” McCreary muttered. “Where’s Ana?”
“I’m right here,” said Ana Thorne, entering the room at that moment. She was still in her yoga pants and sweatshirt. Her hair was in disarray from sleeping on a cot. “What’s going on?” she asked, rubbing her eyes.
“Michael can fill you in. There are recent events in Russia that look very concerning. And we may have another boomerang from Thurmond out there. He’s mobile . . . and potentially violent. We need to bring him in right away. Understand?”
“Uh, sure,” said Thorne stoically. “But what events in Russia? I haven’t seen—”
McCreary cut her off. “Michael will fill you in.” He turned to Califano. “Michael, call Admiral Armstrong and ask him to meet us before our flight this morning. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”
“Will do,” said Califano. He was still puzzling over the odd word McCreary had used to describe the carjacker: a “boomerang.”
“Meanwhile,” said McCreary glumly, “I’ve got to go brief the director about all of this. And I’m sure he won’t be pleased.” He opened the door to leave but stopped short. “Oh, and, Michael . . .”
“Hmm?”
“Good job with this.” McCreary held up the twenty-page report. “Please give copies to Ana and Admiral Armstrong.” He turned and left the room, closing the door behind him.
Ana was still standing in the middle of the room with messy hair and sleepy eyes. She gawked incredulously at Califano. “I lie down for three hours . . .”
Califano shrugged. “What can I say? Things move fast around here.”