Yang-do Island, North Korea
Rafiq stood up from his command chair and stretched. His nervous energy was fading. Fatigue cloaked his body like a blanket. Sleep. He needed sleep.
“I’m going to rest,” he said to So-won.
She nodded, her eyes still on the screen.
“Monitoring only. No more offensive actions for now.”
She nodded again without looking up at him.
Rafiq wondered about her at times like this. Lost in the code, marveling at her creation, but seemingly unaware of the effect her actions were having in the real world. He hadn’t even needed to deceive her. From the moment he conceived of the idea for a self-learning computer virus, she was in—just to see if it could be done. As his plans grew in scale, her excitement matched it, heedless of the potential global devastation they could cause.
“Do you understand, So-won?”
She looked at him, finally. Her eyes were red from staring at the screen but alive with energy. “Yes, Chul, I understand. Get some sleep.” She patted the side of the workstation. “Our pet doesn’t need sleep and neither do I.”
Their pet. When they’d first started the program, Rafiq had called the cyberweapon an artificial intelligence, or AI. So-won corrected him time and again, insisting that he was misusing the term. What they were really building was a virtual pet, a machine they could train to follow their commands.
But they needed to make sure it had the right training, and in Rafiq’s view that was a slow but steady buildup of small skirmishes designed to confuse everyone. Rafiq wanted maximum confusion, best achieved by a series of seemingly random, small-scale events. Shooting down a patrol plane and blocking the outgoing Mayday call. Sinking an isolated destroyer under the cover of heavy clouds to shield their actions from the prying eyes of American satellites. Launching a pair of cruise missiles at a carrier and watching the Chinese sub get destroyed.
And that was just his warm-up act for the Chinese command and control network. It astonished him how simple it was to order these small attacks. All these ships and planes from the opposing forces were armed to the teeth and operating in close proximity to one another. Meanwhile, politicians from both sides spouted angry rhetoric across the twenty-four-hour news cycle. When Rafiq intervened in this already tense situation, all he had to do was give a single command and watch the weapons fly.
And with each event, his pet learned a new lesson in cause and effect.
The Chinese were the easiest to manipulate; that was why he’d started there first. Between the Americans, the Japanese, and the Chinese, the Chinese military machine was the most centrally commanded force of the three. Beijing liked to hold all the cards, delivering orders directly to individual units rather than delegate power.
The Japanese had modeled themselves after the United States, giving their theater commanders more latitude to operate but restricting them from any sort of first strike. Rafiq smiled to himself. The strikes he’d launched via the Chinese military, especially against the US Navy aircraft carrier, would soon loosen those bureaucratic shackles.
He splashed water on his face in his private bathroom, then inspected himself in the mirror. If his Nadine were still alive, would she recognize him? Would she care that his jawline was heavier, that his cheekbones were softer? The cosmetic surgeons had done a respectable job, but even after all this time, he still felt like he was seeing a stranger every time he saw his own reflection.
He lay down on his narrow bed, trying to will himself to sleep. Despite the ache of tiredness in his muscles, his mind raced.
They would begin teaching the Japanese network next. The virus they had uploaded had distributed itself across the network, hiding itself as code fragments amid actual programs, spreading its tentacles into every program and platform across the extensive network. A hacker’s version of hiding in plain sight.
But the American system … this was a puzzle. He’d expected a similar architecture to the other two countries, but they had found a vast number of communications nodes in their command and control network, reaching far beyond the western Pacific.
What were the Americans doing with this unknown capacity? The processing of so many sites had all but overwhelmed Rafiq’s computer resources, but the prize was too tempting to ignore. Controlling the Japanese and Chinese networks gave him access to Asia, but the American network promised so much more.
Enough, he thought. Get some sleep.
He pictured his old home in Estancia Refugio Seguro, imagined walking up to the front door, seeing each flagstone and tree in intricate, loving detail. From the direction of the stables, he could hear little Javi shouting and smell the heavy odor of horses in the afternoon heat. The front door opened, and Nadine was there, her dark hair spilling over her shoulders, her dark eyes flashing with the passion he knew so well—
His satellite phone rang. Rafiq’s eyes flew open.
“Anyoung haseyo?” he said.
“What have you done, Rafiq?” Pak’s voice had a hysterical edge, and his Korean spilled out so fast Rafiq struggled to process the words. “Too much!”
“How so, old friend?”
“Don’t ‘old friend’ me, you bastard! You were supposed to create tensions, not start a war.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“The Chinese launched an attack against an American aircraft carrier! You were behind it, I know it.”
“You give me far too much credit, Pak.”
Pak gained some semblance of control. “You’re sure you had nothing to do with this?”
“Nothing.”
“No matter. Kim has decided to end your operation. He wants to see you in Pyongyang immediately.”
“I can’t do that, Pak,” Rafiq said. “I’m needed here.”
“Didn’t you hear what I said? The Supreme Leader himself wants to see you. The operation is over. Shut it down. Now.”
“No.”
Pak’s voice tightened again. “No? What do you mean, no?” The line went silent. “It was you, wasn’t it?”
“It’s all part of the plan, Pak. You’ve been very helpful, by the way.”
“Whose plan? Rafiq, I beg of you, don’t do this. Stop now, come back to Pyongyang, we can smooth this over with the Supreme Leader.”
“Goodbye, Pak. If you have an escape plan, I suggest you use it now.”
“Wait, I—”
Rafiq ended the call. He stooped to pull on his shoes. When Pak reported his disobedience to the Supreme Leader, their first course of action would be to cut off his communications with the mainland.
When he entered the watch floor, So-won looked up in surprise. “Couldn’t sleep?”
Rafiq smiled. “No rest for the wicked. Switch from landline to satellite uplinks.”
“So soon?” she said.
Rafiq ignored her. “Then bring the Japanese network online.”