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Caldwell blinked in the subdued light of the limo. They’d stopped somewhere familiar. He reized the buildings but his brain was too befuddled by what he had just seen to figure it out. His migraine was back with a vengea his adrenalin was doing a respectable job of keeping it at bay. He couldn’t believe what he had just seen. He had a strong desire to see more. He o find out who did this to him.“What you just saw are highlights of your previous life. Not a full-blown recall but ss of events and images that have made an impression in your mind. Clichés, if you like.”
“Who did this to me?” Caldwell asked, bile rising in him like mercury in a thermometer.
“You did this to yourself. You disobeyed orders.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Look, I a<s></s>m going to cut to the chase. We are running out of time. I work for an anization called HYDRA. Think of us as an off shoot of Union Security Agency, the outfit that absorbed all the secret agencies of the Union member tries. We get a small part of the agency’s budget even though very few people know we exist. Think of us as the guys who do the Union Security Agency’s dirty digital laundry, the anization to which they outsource certain activities that are not worth their while or that are too sensitive politically for them to get involved in directly. I’ve already told you more than I’ve told any non-agency person and I’ve spent all my waking life w for the agend maintaining that sacred vow of silence. Some years ago I hired you to work for HYDRA in our Eleic ter Intelligence Department. You were our you recruit ever. You were seventeen. We hired you because despite ye you were one of the most notorious hackers in the world. You had a knack, a natural gift if you like, for breaking into puter systems.”
“Me a hacker? Unbelievable,” Caldwell exclaimed in mock disbelief. Everything was starting to clito plaow. The affinity for puters and hag. Hag was simply an unscious tinuation of the cloak and dagger modus operandi that he had been aced to in his previous life with this HYDRA anization. And there was his inexplicable ability to find what he wanted in cyberspace, which had felt purely instinctive but was obviously much more than that. It was all starting to make some kind of sense now.
“How e I have no recolle of all these things you are telling me?” Caldwell asked. Fouler looked pained when he replied but it could have been just for show.
“For your own safety the agency decided to block parts of your memory. You were threatening to out the agency. You had bee unstable. The other option was death so you sider yourself lucky.”
“What did I do to deserve the lesser of the two evils?” Caldwell demanded with bitter sarcasm.
“You were the agencies golden boy, our you and probably most brilliant hacker. We did the right thing in the circumstances.”
“So what does this HYDRA do exactly?”
“We are an offshoot of the Union’s first umbrella security agency. Our focus though is purely on threats faced by the Union in cyberspace. Our remit is information warfare if you wish to use the inal terminology. We started out as a unit of MI6 in what used to be the United Kingdom, where we developed a reputation as one of the best cyber warfare units in the world. When Europe merged into the Union, we were the best out of a dozen anti-cyber terrorism units and so we were allowed to absorb the rest. That made us the largest eleic warfare unit in the world. HYDRA was something that naturally came out of that, an offshoot, the agency’s bastard child.”
“Spare me the history. What do you do?”
“We seek out aroy fn systems used for eleic crimes, eleic spying aronic warfare. We infiltrate them and then we destroy them from the inside. Any system that poses a threat to the Union is not safe.”
“And I was hired to do what?”
“You were the lin in our most proactive subdivision called S&D or Seard Destroy.”
“And I koo much?”
“You objected to some of our targets, saying that we were setting their eic development back fifty years. roof that their systems were harb rogue viruses aronibs and that they could be used by our eo mount attacks against our systems. Those systems posed multiple threats to the security of the Union. You said that if we brought down their systems you would leave the anization a all of cyberspaow what we did for a living.”
“But everyone knows that these anizatio and what they do is so what was the big deal?”
“The public making educated guesses about these things is ohing. spiracy theories are exactly that – fodder for mindless rants in cyberspace. Our ows spilliailed information on our operations is quite another. We couldn’t let that happen.”
“And for my troubles you erased my memory.”
“Not erased. Blocked. Locked. The agency thought you had bee unstable. You took the death of your parents too badly.”
“You mean they are dead?” Caldwell asked. He already khe ao that question, his posing of it was just a knee-jerk rea, an automatic respoo the firmation of his worst fears. For a long time now he’d thought they were dead. That was the only explanation he could muster for their absence from his life. And it allowed him to get on with his idiosyncratic existence.
“I’m afraid so. They died in a car crash iy of Xian. puter failure. The car went off a mountain road into a ravine and burst into flames. You had just turned sixteen at the time and were at school in Hong Kong.”
Caldwell was surprised at the fact that he hadn’t shed any tears upon hearing the firmation of his worst fears. He had grieved enough in his nightmares. He felt >藏书网</a>like a huge weight had been lifted off his shoulders. He thought about all the years spent searg for meaning, trawling through the vast expanses of gover archives and genealogy databases in cyberspace. He recalled the heart-rending occasions when he’d stumbled upon couples surnamed Caldwell, either to find out they didn’t have a son or they couldn’t possible have been his parents. Until today, he hadn’t even been sure that Caldwell was his real surname.
Caldwell had searched relentlessly for a single needle in a million interected haystacks. He had dispatched hundreds of software robots on thousands of runs, aillions of sites, parsed billions of lines of text. Aill hadn’t gotten any closer to log his parents. It was as if all trace of them had evaporated. Just like he had tried to disappear from the Union’s far-reag radar. His only e to the monolithic system was his ID chip with a two-year almost eronic trail. The irony was that he had had several successful runs sniffing the footprints others left in cyberspace.
“So tell me Fouler, is Cad Caldwell my real name?”
“Absolutely. The agency wao leave you without identification. They removed your subdermal ID implants. I made sure you got your basic ID chip though so that you could make a fresh start oside.”
“An ID chip with most of the data erased? I had it checked. There are data ghosts.”
“Well, it would have defeated the object if you knew your place of birth, UIRS tax number and so on. You would have just gohere and attempted to trace your parents or your life and ohing would have lead to another. But your birth date is correct. In fact, it is today if I am not mistaken.”
“So where was I born then? I guess from those flashbacks that it was in the Far East somewhere.”
“Yes, in what was then Hong Kong. Hong Kong is now part of the huge swath of Asia they call New a. I guess they accelerated the ‘one try, two systems’ policy over there. Anyway, it turned out to be a boon for the SAR. The ey went from flat to actually chugging along with the rest of New a.”
“That explains why I couldn’t find my parents. I was looking in the wrong place all the time. Did you know my parents?” Caldwell asked.
“Yes. They were both in the business. That’s why you ing to work for HYDRA was shtforward, an easy sell to the superiors. Your father was half English, on his father’s side, and half Egyptian. Your paternal grandfather was el Caldwell who married a distant member of the Egyptian royal family. Your father built language processing software fCHQ based on algorithms developed in a. His day job or cover was as a visiting professor in information systems at Xian Uy. Your mother was fluent in ese, being half ese herself. Her father, your maternal grandfather, was Japanese, a writer and Sinophile who spent most of his adult life in New a. Your mother seemed to have followed in his footsteps. She wrote books about New a and worked part time as a researalyst for the Union Security Agency. I think the old word they used to use for them is they were spies. Just as you were a well-paid eleic spy before you cocked things up. Their cover was never blown. You oher hand threateo blow your own cover and the anization. I got a lot of flack for being a bad judge of character.”
“Why did you get flack?”
“In hindsight I should have seen it ing. You were only seventeen; your parents had just died less than a year previously. You had barely started rec from that ahrew yht in at the deep end. Because of ye and the special nature of what you were doing, we bypassed a lot of the training and psychological profiling, except for a bit of self defense, ammunitions training and so on. You already had a black belt in karate and knew wushu from a young age in Hong Kong. I took a bet on you and I was wrong.”
“Now you are tellihat I use guns and know martial arts?” Caldwell asked with genuine disbelief.
“Better believe it. Your father made sure of it. He aranoid to the point of schizophrenia. But obviously after we locked up your memory you could not access any of those capabilities. We give those back to you but it will take a long time to get to the level you were before, especially in light of the fact that you were only a teenager back then.”
“And what do I o do to get my memory back? All of it.”
“plete a mission,” Fouler said matter-of-factly. Caldwell looked at him suspiciously.
“What mission?”
“Related to what you are carrying in that bag you are white-knug as we speak. We know why those Yakuza want you killed. We’ve been trag Kenzo Yamamoto for a long time. We were surprised whearted w with you and other hackers in the Union. Most of them are dead. You were lucky. The other recipient of a sole, Ameri professor at MIT, is dead too.”
“Really?”
“Go ahead and fake ignorance all you want. We know everything you o know. We know why Yamamoto sent you the sole and we also know that you don’t know that.”
What Fouler was saying was so scary that it took Caldwell a while to digest it all. Fouler held the key to yet another perti question. Why had Kenzo Yamamoto sent him the puter sole?
“You seem to know a hell of a lot.”
“That’s our job. In this business, what you don’t know hurt you. We also know that you don’t really know what it is you are carrying. That is no ordinary puter. The Yakuza want it back. It’s one of only two ience. Our analysts believe they open the door to something much bigger.”
“So where is the other ht now?” Caldwell asked, as much to test the breadth of HYDRA’s knowledge as to reassure himself that if this one was to somehow go missing, there was another out there somewhere.
“We don’t know. We only need ht noant you to use it to do what it was inteo do. Find this work. Find out what it is for. Find its location so we infiltrate it. Why would Yamamoto send you, an ordinary hacker, su expensive sole? And why would he send ao an Ameri artificial intelligence professor at MIT. Kenzo was on to something big and he was willing to make a substantial iment to get it. Both he and the Ameri professor are dead. You are the only one alive who has e in tact with this sole outside of Japan. If you don’t help us find and infiltrate the work that Kenzo was after, you ’t blame me if HYDRA ot help you.”
“Surely with all your eavesdropping capabilities you must have some clues.”
“Unfortunately not. He was very crypti his unications with both you and Professor Joplin. Of course tured those. As far as we know, you are the only tere sent soles. Joplin’s daughter is missing. Their house was searched. When the FBI got there, they discovered that someone had gohrough it with a fiooth b. Our analysts believe, from the extent of the damage they caused to the house, whoever was in the house did not find what they we are looking for. This led the sario analysis to only one clusion. Joplin’s daughter has the sole. We are trag her down as we speak. As I am sure are the Yakuza. They are keen to get to the bottom of this. It’s a matter of face for them, damage trol. The FBI also ran an analysis on DNA samples collected in the house. The freshest samples indicated the intruders were of Japara. That firmed some of our other fears and spurred us to take this case much more seriously.”
“What fears?”
Fouler leant ba the leather seat and pursed his thin colorless lips. Caldwell could see him shift between his thoughts and the sensations created by the probe of the shiatsu massager within the leather of the seats. Caldwell’s were activated as well and he believed Fouler had remotely activated the massager in a bid to get him to relax.
“OK,” he said at length. “We believe the sole is a gateway to some secret ese work, something that uses protocols totally different from world standards. This in itself is not the problem as many jurisdis have their own secure works based on proprietary protocols. This makes them impossible to hack by all but the most eically and teically gifted hag outfits. Our analysis suggests that somehow Yamamoto got wind of this, through some of his tacts in the ese underworld, and his calcu<dfn></dfn>lating mind quickly figured that he could sell this information to the highest bidder. The most likely ers are the gover of the Uates, the Union or some megacorp bent on trolling those govers. We think information on such a system, were it to exist, could be worth billions of Euros.”
“So he probably secretly bought the blueprints to soles used to access this ese system, had two made a oo this professor and oo me? Why would he do that?”
“We believe that his guys tried previously to break the work but did not succeed. Over the last year there have been several stories about hackers found dead in Tokyo under mysterious circumstahose deaths are probably related directly to attempts to crato the ese system. He decided to try his hand abroad with experts in the field. His choosing Dr. Joplin, a world renowned expert in Artificial Intelligent is instructive. This ese work is probably protected by a ring of proactive security AIs. Dete by the AIs results ih as our hacker friends in Tokyo found out. Eventually, they traced it all to Yamamoto and wiped him out. Yamamoto probably figured that the security and terattack AIs owork might not be as effective as trag intruders outside of Asia. The ese may not yet know about the soles. That would explain why there has been no activity in that regard but it’s just a matter of time. Then you have another problem to deal with.”
“And you wao find the work so HYDRA destroy it? Why me?”
“New a is a politically-sensitive area right now. It’s a powerful try. The Union ot risk any political disagreements with New a. Your job is to locate the work and infiltrate it. Set up Trojans, backdoors, whatever you like to call it. We’ll go in and take a look. If it is against our is we’ll shut it down.”
“And you think I do all this with Kenzo’s sole?”
“Affirmative.”
“As far as I see, the sole is just a jazzed up version of any of the more expensive decks out there with some additional VR capabilities.”
“It is much more than that, believe me. These soles were built by a master craftsman who is, vely, in a a in a closely guarded hospital in Tokyo. You see the builder of these maes is one of the leading nanoteology processor designers in the world. Muamoto’s chagrin, the old ma and had a stroke just after pleting the sed one. Everything, points to this system using reprogrammable logic arrays and heuristic software that is refigured on the fly to emulate awork. Only a has been able to successfully build oh loy so far and that is rumor. Most prototypes elsewhere reprogram themselves into deadlock sooner or later with voluted designs that the engineers o lure out.”
“OK, but the AIs on this work ’t be all that great. So why me? Why not send ygest and brightest out there?”
“The ese have their works locked up pretty tight. They have installed some of the best security AIs out there. Trust me we’ve had a sniff at some of their most destine systems, anonymously of course, and it’s not pretty. This suggests that this system is something that gives them a huge petitive advantage globally. Not that they . The plication is that this system is almost certainly going to be coded entirely in ese. Having somebody who speaks ese and used to be one of the best hackers in the world is a big advantage. Someone who has an instinctual feel for promising systems. Besides, you already have a reputation as a hacker. If things go bad it would seem as though you were w on your own. HYDRA and the Union won’t be implicated.” Caldwell ighe otations of Fouler’s last sentence.
“Why are you looking at me like that? I don’t speak ese. I ’t even curse in the language and that’s saying something.”
“You do and you . Believe me I was at the receiving end of it many years ago. You spoke, read and wrote Mandarin and tonese fluently when you were at Hong Kong Iional School. Not to mention the private tutors in Hong Kong and your Ayi’s Anhui dialect. We isolate and reopen those memories very easily. It’s all in our system.”
“No way yoing to mess with my head. You’ve done enough of that already. I just want my memory back.”
“We have to tag you for the trip to Hong Kong anyway. While we are in there, why not reopen some of what’s in there anyway?”
“Hong Kong? And if I find this system I get everything back.”
“Yes, and maybe even a job with HYDRA if you want it. I think if you do this, you would have more than proven yourself. We might be willing tive and fet.”
“And if I fail.”
“We’ll give you specific parts of your memory ba the flight to Hong Kong. If you fail aurn to the Union without the support system to put your past in text, a proper job, a full identity, your memories will simply drive you insane. You’ll end up more fucked up than you are now. Besides, partial memory recall is not a sd over the long term, without total recall, who knows what will happen.”
“I’ll take my ces.”
“Up to you.”
“How do I know you are not just bullshitting about being able to restore my memory?”
“I’ll give you back just enough to put this versation we’ve had in text, then we o get back to business. We are sending you out to Hong Kong tomorrow”
Fouler sifted through his deck of cards again. Caldwell braced himself for the ing maelstrom.
***
puter code. Millions of lines of puter code etched in pixels scrolled down a black terminal s. The image was crystal clear and burned intensely in Caldwell’s mind. He felt a sharp twinge bolt through his head. He closed his eyes and opehem again, trying desperately to get rid of the paiempted to recall what had previously been blank memories. The dark recesses of his mind filled up with lumi color and an image scaled across his retina like a tiled background. He recalled a huge gray faceless building and leaning out of an automated car to have his eyes sed. He remembered vividly a puterized voice saying:
“M, Mr. Caldwell.”
Fast-forward. Huge banks of puter systems filled aire room. Wires stacked round the back like snakes writhing in a viper pit. Hundreds of soles, servers, parallel processing server blades blinked and purred from their metal racks. Caldwell was sitting in the middle of all these puters, the ductuiding this orchestra of bits and bytes. He caught his refle in one of the ss. He was much youhen. Pimples.
A well-dressed middle-aged woman came in aed him in a stern voice. She muttered something about it all being for the good of The Union. Caldwell couldn’t help but notice that varicose veins burned fluorest in her yellowing calves. How did I get to Waterle?
He was ba the puter room uploading bogus data to a heavily encrypted sector of cyberspace. He looked angry. In the blaess of one of the monitor ss in front of him, he caught the refle of two men approag him from behind. It was the two heavies in Fouler’s limo. They looked exactly the same as they did now. They dragged him down tless nondescript corridors, the sound of his screams boung emptily off the white brick walls. Caldwell dragged his feet and writhed like a wild bush hog caught in a forest trap but the men tighteheir grips pulling him into the depths of HYDRA, the parts of the building to which he didn’t have clearance.
He was dragged through a white door with the word “Out” written in it in black paint. He wondered whether somewhere along these myriad corridors there was an “In”. The light in the room was so white it burned his eyes. He was strapped into <dfn>..</dfn>a white leather chair. Everything in there was so white. The floor, the walls and the ceiling were a blinding white that reflected nothing. He was shackled with leather straps. A pretty young girl in white uniform, wearing plimsolls, frameless glasses perched matron-like on a pert nose, leaned in towards him. He could smell her perfume. It was an acrid fragrahat reminded him of hospital disiant. A syringe came up in a wide arc, spitting mis of transparent liquid iill air.
***
Caldwell agreed to Fouler’s Faustian bargain. The HYDRA man informed him that all the necessary procedures to give him the bloemory he needed would be taken care of on the flight to Hong Kong the following day. He also told Caldwell that they would tag him to a GPS system so he wouldn’t do a runner. He agreed to it all, his pulsion tain his memory overshadowing any doubts he was harb. It wasn’t like he had a choice.
Caldwell asked Fouler to drop him off near Waterle so he could say goodbye to Kat.
“I bet you know about her too?” Caldwell asked with some bitterness.
“Sure. We had you watched after you were reied into the system. ut you up in a hotel tonight if you wish. Get yourself ed up, get some good food in you,” Fouler offered.
The agency man seemed to be having sed thoughts about letting Caldwell out of his sight but then he figured that Caldwell’s desire tain his memory would get the better of any idea to make a run for it or search for this ese system by himself. The agency man was right. Besides, Fouler had the run of the CCTV grid and who knew what else. He could track him down at any time.
“No thanks,” Caldwell deed.
The black limousine cruised to a standstill just outside Waterloo station. It was almost as though Fouler khey would be dropping him off here. They’d been cruising in the viity. Caldwell stepped out into a black puddle and London rain. The damp air tasted of the River Thames, industrial pollution ah.
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