Imagine (Fuzed Trilogy Book 2) Read online

  Greg nodded and a little shyly, asked, “May I take you to dinner?”

  Before she could answer, the NATO Chairman, General DeVos, came up to them. “Dr. Lee, Commander Fuze, may I have a word with you?”

  Jessica and Josh nodded.

  DeVos continued, “It doesn’t require talking inside a shielded area. May I take you to dinner? I know a quiet restaurant not far from here or your hotel.”

  Josh realized this might actually work out well. He was a little paranoid after being followed in the park. Having dinner with DeVos would get both of them together and out of here without looking suspicious. Then, after dinner, they could connect with Jen.

  Jessica turned to Greg and with a little smile, said, “Rain check?”

  Greg looked disappointed, but nodded.

  Josh told Elizabeth, “I’ll see you back at the hotel.”

  She frowned, but nodded as he followed Jessica and DeVos out of the conference room.

  After going through the security checkpoint and picking up their phones, the general ushered them into a black S Class Mercedes. He told the driver where to go in Dutch. From the front seat, he turned around and asked them, “Have you ever had Waterzooi?”

  They both shook their head.

  DeVos said, “It’s a Belgian specialty, and the restaurant ‘T Kelderke prepares it perfectly.”

  Jessica, looking a little worried, said, “I’m an American hamburger and French fries kind of girl. I don’t usually do well with exotic foods.”

  DeVos smiled. “Don’t worry. If you like chicken and potatoes, I think you’ll like this.”

  During the ride, DeVos tried to make small talk.

  Jessica engaged, but Josh just stared out the window, his mind elsewhere. He was impatient to be alone with Jessica.

  It was only 15 minutes to the Grand Place at the city’s center. The restaurant was in a vaulted cellar under the cobblestone plaza.

  Jessica said, “This place looks medieval.”

  “Not quite.” With a wry smile, DeVos added, “It only dates back to the 1600s.”

  They were ushered to a table in the corner and appeared to be the only patrons. The smells wafting out of the kitchen were amazing, and they agreed to let DeVos order for them.

  While waiting for their food, Jessica, in her usual direct manner, said, “Thank you for taking us to dinner, but what is it that you wanted to talk to us about?”

  DeVos said, “I really wanted the chance to apologize for the behavior of my Prime Minister, Mr. LeGrand. He’s always been rather ... dramatic.”

  Jessica nodded. “We heard he was in trouble because of a scandal.”

  DeVos sighed. “Yes, it’s something that Agine’s release of his private email and text messages caused. So, you can understand why he’s particularly irritable about the artificial intelligence.” DeVos shook his head. “He was elected by a very small margin, and his current popularity rating among Belgians is now less than 10 percent.”

  Josh shook his head with obvious frustration. “What we’re dealing with is far more important than a popularity rating.”

  DeVos raised his eyebrows and with a small smile, said, “Commander Fuze, you obviously have never been involved in politics.”

  Their food arrived with three large mugs of beer.

  DeVos said, “Belgium is also known for its exceptional beer. I’ve chosen one of my favorite Lambic beers that complement the Waterzooi. I hope you enjoy.”

  Josh realized he was famished and dug into what appeared to be a form of chicken stew. It had large meaty pieces of chicken still on the bone, in a rich, creamy yellow broth. It was delicious. The beer was different from any he’d had, but also excellent.

  As they ate, Jessica asked, “Is that all you wanted to talk about, the Prime Minister’s behavior?”

  The general nodded.

  She shook her head. “You don’t need to apologize for him.”

  The general said, “I’m one of the first Belgian generals in charge of NATO. I felt a responsibility to make sure you didn’t assume all Belgians thought or acted like him.”

  Jessica nodded. “No problem.”

  The military driver came in and spoke quietly into the General’s ear.

  DeVos nodded and turned to them. “I must apologize again. Speaking of the Prime Minister, apparently there’s an emergency requiring my immediate attention. I’ll send a car back to take you to your hotel when you’re ready.”

  Jessica said, “That won’t be necessary.”

  Josh nodded.

  DeVos stood up. “Then please enjoy the rest of your meal. Feel free to try some other excellent beers with dessert. Alex Hailet, the maître d, can recommend some great combinations. The bill is, of course, covered.” With that, he shook hands and left.

  As Josh sat back down, Jessica said, “Nice guy. Must suck working with LeGrand.”

  Looking around, Josh said, “Yeah, but this is a good opportunity to talk about what we need to do next. Do you want dessert or another beer?”

  “Are you kidding? I can barely keep my eyes open. This beer must be stronger than I’m used to.”

  “It’s six percent, and you didn’t eat much of your Waterzooi.”

  “Didn’t want to offend him, but ... ewww.” She poked the large piece of chicken in the middle of the bowl with her fork. “I have a thing about eating meat on the bone.” She shook her head. “I’ll order a coffee and we can talk on the way back. Probably better to talk when we’re outside anyway.”

  Josh nodded. “OK. Let me run to the men’s room. Order a coffee for me too.”

  When he got back to their table, there was no coffee, and Jessica was asleep with her head on her arm.

  He sat back down, put his arm around her shoulder and gently shook her. She didn’t wake up. He could tell from her breathing, she was sound asleep. He was surprisingly sleepy himself. Looking at their large empty beer mugs, he realized Jessica was probably half his weight, which was good, because he’d have to carry her to a cab.

  As he tried to scoop her out of the booth, a waiter behind him asked if she was OK.

  “Yeah, she’s just jet lagged.” Although she weighed little, she was wearing a skirt and it was going to be difficult to extract her gracefully. Fortunately, the waiter helped. As Josh bent over and was pulling her out, he felt a sharp twinge in his neck. No doubt, another injury sustained during his Shanghai escape. Along with his sprained ankle, it made it painful to get her from the booth, but they managed.

  Holding her in his arms, he looked down at her peaceful sleeping face and smiled. The hard-charging engineer was remarkably cute. Turning toward the exit, he thought ....

  42

  M.I.A.

  Elizabeth woke up and saw soft light coming in through the hotel window. After waiting for Josh until two in the morning, she’d decided to go to sleep. She knew Josh wasn’t happy with her and thought he might have gone back to the headquarters building. He could exist on a few hours of sleep, but she couldn’t. She wanted to be fresh for what promised to be a challenging day.

  She looked at the alarm clock. It was seven in the morning. A quick look around confirmed Josh hadn’t been there, and there were no messages on her phone. She called his number, but got no answer, which wasn’t surprising if he was back in the conference room. She told herself he was probably trying to rally support for Agine among the cyber geeks.

  She texted Tim, Greg and Sheri to see if he was with them, and then jumped in the shower.

  When she got out, she saw a response from Tim. “Haven’t seen him. Headed down for breakfast. Join us?”

  She met them in the hotel restaurant a few minutes later. As she ordered, Greg straggled in.

  He asked, “Where’s Jessica?”

  They all shook their heads.

  Elizabeth said, “Josh is MIA too. They had teams working through the night. They might have gone back there to work.”

  They finished breakfast and headed straight to the NATO Headquar
ters conference room.

  As they entered, Elizabeth scanned the room and quickly confirmed Josh and Jessica weren’t there. What she did see was a new full-scale computer lab and control room. They’d set it up next to the circle of conference tables on the left side of the room. They’d also mounted a huge flat-screen display on one wall. Looking around, she saw a dozen young people of different nationalities working on the computers. Undoubtedly, these were the world’s best hackers.

  She asked if anyone knew where Josh and Jessica were, but no one had seen them since yesterday.

  Tim said, “Let’s check with General DeVos. He took them to dinner last night.”

  It was another 30 minutes before the NATO staff located the general.

  When he arrived, he went straight to them. After greeting them and hearing about Josh and Jessica, he said, “We had dinner at the restaurant ‘T Kelderke in the Grand Place. I received an emergency call and had to leave early. They were still eating when I left and may have stayed for dessert. I offered to send the car back to take them to the hotel, but they declined. I think they wanted to talk.” He shrugged. “I’m sorry, that was the last time I saw them.”

  Tim frowned and said to Elizabeth and Greg, “Let me check on some things and make some calls. You may want to stay here.”

  After Tim left, Sheri said to Elizabeth and Greg, “Don’t worry. Tim will find them. That’s one of his specialties.”

  Greg sighed. “OK, I’ll see if I can help out one of the teams.”

  With nothing else to do, Elizabeth decided to sit in on some of the cyber team meetings. They were mostly young men and didn’t seem to mind her presence. With her computer background, she was able to follow most of their discussions.

  Hours later, on her third cup of coffee, she looked at her watch. It was now early afternoon with no sign of them and no word from Tim. She was genuinely worried. She knew Tim was the right man for the job, but it was hard doing nothing.

  The teams got back together to report their progress. A large digital clock had been set up to display the countdown time to the viral attack, which was now less than 10 hours away. She listened to the brief, but found it increasingly harder to concentrate. When the presentation was finished, Greg came over and asked if there were any word.

  “Sorry, Greg, nothing yet.” Seeing the worry on his face, she decided to ask him about some of the technical aspects she hadn’t been able to follow. It would keep them both occupied.

  She nodded toward the food tables on the other side of the room. “Let’s grab something to eat.” As they walked over, she asked, “Greg, they said they’re using a modified version of Raptor. What exactly does it do?”

  Sheri joined them at the buffet.

  Greg said, “Raptor is a very sophisticated program designed to seek out and destroy viruses or, really, any program.” He paused. “Every major program or virus has a distinctive pattern in its machine code, kind of like fingerprints. If you can identify that signature, then you can find it even if it moves to another system or mutates. Raptor is actually a virus itself.”

  “What does it do when it finds a program with the right signature?”

  “It can be programmed to do anything, but in this case, it deletes the program and then copies itself. The copies follow links from that program to other programs. It just keeps repeating the process until all traces of the target program have been eliminated.”

  Sheri said, “So, it’s like a bloodhound. You give it the scent, and it runs around seeking out its prey.”

  Greg nodded. “Yeah, a voracious bloodhound that’s born pregnant. It’s constantly producing litters of more bloodhounds that already have the scent.”

  Elizabeth asked, “So, that’s going to be launched against Agine?”

  Grabbing a croissant and soda, he said, “No. First, they’ll send out a simple program disguised as a phone update. Having the BOTIC chip’s access code makes it very easy to scramble its firmware and disable BOTIC.”

  Sheri nodded thoughtfully. “That will sever the connection between all the phones, which would be like severing the connection between all our brain cells.” She frowned. “For Agine, it will be the ultimate lobotomy.”

  Elizabeth grimaced.

  Greg nodded. “At the very least, it’ll put her in a coma. Then, we launch the Raptor virus. It’ll seek out and delete all the iMagine software from every phone and server.” Greg absent-mindedly took a bite of the croissant, then frowned and shook his head.

  Elizabeth said, “But ... ?”

  “The plan is solid, and Raptor’s performed well in the lab, but it’s a prototype and has never been used in the real world.”

  Sheri asked, “Why?”

  “Because it’s so powerful. It’s kind of like the Ebola of computer viruses. Once it gets started, it runs and duplicates until it wipes out every trace of the targeted program.”

  “Is that a problem?”

  Greg shook his head. “No. It’s actually easy to get a signature on a program as complex as iMagine. Even if Agine survived the BOTIC shutdown, she’d be overwhelmed by the speed of Raptor.”

  Elizabeth asked, “So why the concern?”

  He set his food down. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m just wondering if Commander Fuze and Jessica have a point and we’re killing a sentient being.” He paused. “But there’s something else. It just feels like I’m missing something—”

  Sheri interrupted, “There’s Tim.”

  As Tim approached, he shook his head. “I’m sorry, we haven’t found them yet. We confirmed they were at the restaurant last night. The maître d remembered them, but since the General paid for their meals in advance, he didn’t see when they left. We’re coordinating with the Belgian government and Interpol, and I talked to Davidson. They’re engaging U.S. assets to help find them.”

  Elizabeth said, “You think something happened to them?”

  Tim simply said, “We’ll find them.”

  Elizabeth shook her head in frustration. “I need to get out of here so I can have my phone if he tries to reach me.”

  Tim nodded. “Why don’t you go back to the hotel in case he goes there? To be on the safe side, I’ll ask the police to post an unmarked officer at the hotel to keep an eye on things.”

  Elizabeth knew that meant he suspected foul play. She grabbed her purse and headed out.

  Greg said, “I’ll go with you.”

  Sheri waited until after Elizabeth and Greg were gone, and then gave Tim a questioning look.

  He said, “It’s hard to imagine any reason Josh and Jessica would leave without telling anyone, and I can’t imagine that the two of them would ....” He looked at Sheri.

  Sheri raised her eyebrows. “Elizabeth told me her intervention didn’t go well at all.” She paused. “I think Josh and Jessica respect and like each other, and they’re both cute as bugs, but,” she gently shook her head, “I don’t think there’s any chemistry there.”

  Before they could continue, Turan came over and offered his hand to Tim.

  “It’s good to see you again. Sorry I didn’t get a chance to talk to you yesterday.”

  Sheri noticed Tim seemed uncomfortable as he introduced her to Turan.

  Turan smiled at Sheri. “I know you by reputation, Dr. Lopez. Very impressive work.”

  She smiled. “Thank you. Call me Sheri.”

  Looking back at Tim, Turan asked, “What’s the latest on Commander Fuze and Dr. Lee?”

  “Still missing.” Tim shook his head. “Even if they had a reason to go somewhere, they didn’t have a car. Since they came straight from China, they wouldn’t have any euros on them.”

  Turan said, “Which means they would’ve used credit cards.”

  Tim nodded. “There’s no record of any credit card, ATM or passport use.”

  Turan frowned. “Foul play?”

  “Unfortunately, it’s the most likely scenario.”

  Turan said, “We need to notify the Chinese delegation. Dr. Lee’
s parents hold important positions, and the Chinese government may want to engage their resources as well.”

  Tim nodded.

  Sheri, shaking her head, said, “But who would want to hurt or kidnap them?”

  Turan looked at Sheri. “As a psychologist, who do you think might have a motive?”

  She unconsciously looked around the room. “It’s not like their ideas are carrying the day. They’ve been pretty much overruled.”

  Tim and Turan nodded.

  Sheri’s eyebrows went up. “What about ....” She paused. “What about Agine?”

  Tim frowned. “Agine is a computer program. To kidnap somebody, you kind of have to have a body.”

  Turan said slowly, “Or ... be able to direct someone who does. But what would be its motive? Fuze and Lee are its biggest advocates.”

  Sheri nodded. “Yes, but no one knows more about Agine than they do. They know both its strength and weaknesses.”

  Turan added, “And they know how we plan to destroy it.”

  Sheri nodded. “They were supposed to talk with Agine to make sure she doesn’t delete all the files she’s translating.” Frowning, she shook her head. “I’m afraid Josh and Jessica still see Agine as a child.” She blew out a lungful of air. “If Agine wanted to set them up ....”

  Elizabeth and Greg got back to the hotel and confirmed there were no messages. They stayed in her room for a couple of frustrating hours, watching the news, punctuated by bouts of pacing.

  Finally, Elizabeth stood up and muted the TV. Biting the side of her lip, she said, “I can’t stand this waiting.” She looked at Greg. “I’m going to talk to Jen.”

  Frowning and shaking his head, Greg said slowly, “I really don’t think we’re supposed to do that.”

  “I don’t care. I think Agine likes Josh and Jessica, and has resources we don’t.”

  Greg narrowed his eyes and continued to shake his head.

  Elizabeth sat down on the couch and picked up her phone.

  Greg closed one eye, and between clenched teeth, said, “OK, but if this ends civilization ... I wasn’t here.”