Wired Read online

  A self-satisfied smile flashed across Smith’s face. “That’s right,” he said. “We had a shot at the girl and we took it. Sorry we surprised you. Given what you’ve just gone through you’re reacting the way any smart soldier would. But we’re on the same side you and I. Really.”

  “Why was I under surveillance then, if we’re on the same side?”

  “I would be happy to explain that and much more, Mr. Desh. I’m the one who authorized putting you on this Op in the first place. I trust that Colonel Connelly gave you a number to call when you found the girl?”

  Desh didn’t respond.

  “I’m going to lend you a cell phone,” said Smith. “I have two of them. I’m going to reach in my pocket for the phone but remain facing the road. I’ll throw it back to you. If I begin to pull out a gun, shoot me,” he added.

  Desh knew that at their current speed any hostile exchange would cause them to crash, killing them both. Mutually assured destruction. Smith would realize this as well.

  “Okay,” said Desh, nodding warily. “But very slowly.”

  The man reached into his pocket and carefully inched out the phone, lifting it with his hand facing backward so Desh could see. Still facing the road, he flipped the phone over his shoulder. Desh caught it with his left hand while he continued to train the tranquilizer gun on Smith with his right.

  “Dial the number that the colonel gave you,” instructed Smith.

  Desh flipped open the phone and dialed the number he had memorized. As the call went through, a ringtone melody issued from Smith’s shirt pocket. He looked at Desh in the rear-view mirror and raised his eyebrows. “Mind if I get that,” he said smugly.

  Smith reached into his shirt pocket and flipped open the phone. “Hello, Mr. Desh,” he said, his voice arriving in stereo from both the front seat and through the phone in Desh’s hand. “I think it’s time we had a little talk.”

  18

  David Desh still wasn’t sure who to trust, but Smith had established his authenticity, even if Connelly hadn’t been aware of his activities. Even so, Desh had an uneasy feeling in his gut that wouldn’t seem to go away.

  “Okay then,” said Desh. “Let’s talk.” He continued to point the gun at the Black Ops agent.

  “I’ll tell you what, Mr. Desh. How about I pull off to the side of the road and we have a disarming ceremony first.”

  Desh remained silent.

  “What do you say?” pressed Smith. “You can keep your gun on me while I toss all of my weapons into a bag in my trunk—including the gun strapped to my ankle You can frisk me to be sure.” He paused. “In return, you can hang on to your weapon. Just don’t point it at me.”

  Desh gazed at the scarred man thoughtfully, but said nothing.

  “And while we have a little discussion and get to know each other,” pressed Smith, “I’ll even drive you home. As long as you sit in the front seat. Be easier to talk that way, and I refuse to be your chauffeur.”

  Desh thought through all the angles and finally agreed. Five minutes later two guns and a combat knife were tucked in a bag and locked safely away in the trunk, and Desh was satisfied that Smith was now unarmed. After allowing the wiry man to contact his men to give them a quick situation report, Desh settled into the passenger seat, safely restrained in a seat belt, but angling his body so he was facing Smith rather than the road and was out of the man’s easy reach.

  “All right,” said Desh, as Smith accelerated back onto the road, his left hand on the steering wheel and his right arm resting on the storage console between them. “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on.”

  “I’m afraid that isn’t how this needs to work,” said Smith evenly. “I will tell you everything. Make no mistake about that. I do understand how confused this woman can make someone and that we surveilled you without your knowledge. So I’m willing to cut you some slack. But we’re going to do this my way,” he insisted. “First you answer my questions. Then I’ll answer yours. Despite heading a Black Ops agency that doesn’t formally exist and using an alias, I am still your superior officer. I’m sure Connelly told you that.”

  Desh raised his eyebrows. “Superior officer?” he said, unimpressed. “Come off it, Smith. You’ve been calling me Mr. Desh. You know I’m a civilian. Connelly did tell me to follow your instructions, but Mr. Desh can tell you to go to hell anytime he wants.”

  Smith sighed. “All right, Mr. Desh. Let’s try this another way, then. If you want to know what’s going on, you’ll have to answer my questions first. Period. Otherwise, I’ll leave you completely in the dark.” He glanced sideways at Desh. “Well?”

  Desh glared at him for several long seconds but finally nodded irritably.

  “Good,” said Smith. “So tell me how Kira Miller got the drop on you.”

  Desh told him about receiving the fake message from Griffin and what had happened at the hacker’s apartment. Smith interrupted occasionally for clarification but said very little otherwise. When Desh described how Kira had stripped him and had him dress in sweats, Smith glanced at his gray outfit, considerably worse for wear since Kira had pulled it from her duffel, and an amused smile came over his face.

  Smith listened intently as Desh described the precautions Kira had taken at the motel. Smith was well aware that they had worked to great effect on his men. Desh ended his narrative at the point at which Kira had exited through the adjoining motel room, leaving out any mention of her claims of having invented material that could hide her heat signature.

  “Damn she’s slippery,” commented Smith when Desh was finished. “It’s uncanny how she manages to stay at large. And then, to risk kidnapping the elite soldier coming after her practically in the middle of the nation’s capital—and get away with it. She has balls the size of Texas,” he said, partly in frustration and partly in admiration.

  Smith paused in thought as they shot along the dark highway, nearly abandoned at this early hour except for the occasional trucker hauling cargo through the night. The car’s ride was smooth and its well-tuned engine issued only the softest of roars to interrupt what would have otherwise been a cocoon of silence. Desh’s entire universe had been reduced to the luxury interior of an expensive sedan, the twenty-foot swath made by its headlights as they cut through the enveloping darkness, and a stranger using an alias whose motives were currently just as hidden as the stretch of road beyond the headlights.

  “Okay,” began Smith, having finally plotted his interrogation. “You said she talked with you for an hour or so. What did she talk about?”

  “She claimed she was innocent,” said Desh. “She wanted to convince me.”

  “Did she say why this was important to her?”

  “No,” said Desh. He considered telling the Black Ops officer that she had told him her goal was to recruit him to her side, but immediately decided against it.

  “Did she explain away all the bizarre deaths and disappearances that occurred around her when she was growing up? Or the death of her boss? Or the murder of her brother?”

  “She insisted she didn’t kill her parents. The other incidents didn’t come up at all. Neither did any mention of Ebola or bio-weapons. She mentioned terrorists only in the context of denying that she had any connection to them.”

  “I see. Then on what grounds did she claim to be innocent if she made no effort to refute the airtight evidence against her?”

  Desh shrugged. “I don’t know. Your men interrupted before she got that far.”

  “Let me understand. She wanted to prove her innocence. Yet after an hour of discussion she had not addressed even a single thing she was accused of?”

  “That’s right,” responded Desh.

  Smith took both eyes off the ruler-straight road and studied Desh for several seconds. Finally, apparently unable to find any signs of deceit, he returned his attention to the road. “So what did she talk about in that time?”

  Desh sighed. “About experiments she conducted to increase her own intelligence
. The theory behind it, the results of the experiments; that sort of thing.”

  Smith raised his eyebrows. “Did she say she was successful?”

  Desh nodded. “She claims to be able to enhance her intelligence to immeasurable levels.”

  “I see,” said Smith, noncommittally. “And did she tell you how she applied this newfound brilliance of hers?” he asked.

  “Not a word,” said Desh.

  “Did she offer you anything?” asked Smith.

  “Like what? Money?”

  Smith studied him carefully once again, as if this would enable him to precisely judge the sincerity of Desh’s response. “Like anything. Money. Power. Enhanced intelligence of your own.” He raised his eyebrows. “Other considerations that might be appealing.”

  Desh furrowed his brow in confusion. “Other considerations? You can’t mean sex,” he said in disbelief.

  Smith shook his head irritably. “Of course not,” he replied.

  Desh shrugged. “Then I’m afraid you’ve lost me. But regardless of what you’re trying to hint at, she didn’t offer me a single thing. Period. Not a thin dime. Not that I could be bought in any case,” he added pointedly.

  Smith paused for a long time in thought. “Did you believe her story?” he asked finally, taking a new tack.

  “What, about her ability to elevate her IQ, or that she was innocent?”

  “Both,” said Smith.

  “With respect to enhanced intellect—I don’t know,” said Desh, shrugging. His eyes narrowed in thought. “She’s an extraordinary scientist, that’s beyond dispute. And she weaved a very convincing scientific rationale around the concept. Autistic savants do exist and do demonstrate what one hundred billion neurons can do when wired slightly differently than normal. As farfetched as it is, she made optimizing her own brain seem possible, even reasonable, for someone with her talents.” He paused. “Is she innocent? That one is easier. Of course not. Other than claiming she was innocent, she didn’t provide a shred of evidence, as we’ve discussed.”

  The corners of Smith’s mouth turned up in a knowing smile. “But she still got to you a little, didn’t she? Even without providing any evidence, you half wanted to believe her, didn’t you?”

  “What I might have wanted to believe and what I actually do believe are two different things,” snapped Desh defensively.

  “I’ve never met her,” said Smith. “But she’s brilliant and I’m told she has a way about her. She can suck you in, dazzle you with logic that seems irrefutable, and do it in a way that’s absolutely sincere. Not to mention that she has a wholesome, doe-eyed beauty that some men find hard to resist. You must have felt her pull.”

  Desh frowned. “A little,” he admitted. “But I know what she is and my guard was up. She may have intended to provide evidence of her innocence. Maybe she would eventually have even tried to bribe me, but we’ll never know. Your men crashed the party and all she talked about was her ability to make herself smarter.” He paused and added sharply, “You can believe anything you want. That’s what happened. That’s all that happened.”

  Smith was silent for several long moments as they continued hurtling down the dark highway. Traffic was still sparse but had begun picking up, ever so slightly, with the gradual approach of dawn. “I believe you,” he said at last. “I conducted a number of interrogations in a past life and I think you’re telling the truth. On the important things at any rate,” he added.

  “Good,” said Desh. “So are you ready to take your turn in this little information exchange of ours?”

  Smith considered. “All right,” he replied. “First of all, we believe Kira Miller really has found a way to turn herself into the ultimate savant. And our experts seem to agree that, properly organized, there’s almost no level of intelligence the one hundred billion neurons you spoke of can’t reach.”

  “Do you have actual evidence of this optimization?”

  “Yes. Most of it circumstantial, but enough that we’re convinced. What you say she told you fits right in with what we know. It’s interesting that she told you she gave herself this immeasurable IQ,” continued Smith, “but she didn’t say a word about how she applied this intelligence.” He eyed Desh meaningfully. “If you had supreme intellect, what problem would you tackle?”

  Desh shook his head tiredly. “Look … Smith … usually I’m up for riddles and guessing games. Really. But I haven’t slept in almost twenty-four hours and it’s been a tough day, so why don’t you just tell me.”

  “Immortality,” said Smith simply.

  19

  David Desh sat in stunned silence, replaying the word in his head to be sure he had heard correctly. A flying insect slammed into the windshield like a tiny missile and became an instant smear. “Immortality,” he repeated finally, shaking his head dubiously. “Impossible.”

  “Yeah, so is amping up your own IQ,” shot back Smith. “And no, she hasn’t achieved it. Yet. But it’s only a matter of time. She has managed to double the span of human life, though. Not immortality, but certainly good enough to win the high school science fair,” he added wryly.

  “You’re sure about this?”

  Smith nodded. “You can never be positive until the first person treated lives to be 160, but I understand the animal and early human evidence is pretty strong.”

  “How does she do it?”

  “Hell if I know. It takes an injection, repeated once a year. I have no idea what it does. All I know is that it slows aging to a crawl, so that a man of seventy will have all the physical characteristics and abilities of a man of thirty-five.”

  “Remarkable,” said Desh in wonder.

  “We believe she sees immortality as a three stage process. She’s already completed the first stage. The second stage would be to design microscopic nanorobots that would be injected into the bloodstream, patrolling and repairing the body and replicating themselves as necessary. A vast army of tiny MDs. This could theoretically extend the lifespan five hundred years or more.” He paused. “The third stage, her ultimate goal, would be set up an artificial matrix into which she can transfer her intellect. She could repeat this process any number of times. That would be closer to true immortality.”

  “What do you mean by an artificial matrix to transfer her intellect? Are you saying she plans to transfer her consciousness someday into an artificial body? Turn herself into some kind of cyborg?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe she’ll just clone herself every fifty years and transfer her consciousness into a younger version of herself. And what we think she’s trying to do may never be possible. Even for her. But that’s beside the point. The key for our discussion now is that she has already managed to do the impossible: doubling human life expectancy.”

  Incredible, thought Desh, as he allowed himself to truly consider the earth shattering implications of this discovery. More than incredible—surreal. But as he thought about it, it all made perfectly logical sense. If he assumed Kira Miller really could optimize her mind and become autistic-savant-like in every area of thought, she wouldn’t focus these transcendent abilities on solving pedestrian problems. No, she would go after the ultimate prize: conquering death. The ultimate Holy Grail of the species. And she was a genius in gene therapy even before any enhancements.

  Now the journals Kira had been receiving at home made perfect sense. Human Brain Mapping. The Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. Both would be quite useful in her efforts to rewire her own brain. But she had also subscribed to a journal having to do with gerontology, the branch of science that dealt with the aging process. Desh had found this odd at the time, but hadn’t thought any more of it. But now the pieces of the puzzle seemed to be fitting together quite nicely.

  Desh pulled himself from his reverie. “But if she was able to accomplish something like this,” he said, “why didn’t she announce it? She’d be recognized as the greatest scientist in history. She’d be an instant billionaire as well.”

  “You don’t re
ally get her yet, do you?” said Smith in frustration. “She doesn’t get off on extending life or bringing joy to the world. She gets off on the opposite. Think Adolph Hitler, not Florence Nightingale.” He paused. “Kira Miller has discovered the ultimate leverage. She can amass wealth and power beyond imagining. Every person on the planet wants to delay their aging. And she’s the only game in town. If she takes her treatment public, anyone who pays for it can have extended life. But if she keeps it and only doles it out to a select few, she can acquire a level of power that goes far beyond mere money.”

  Desh nodded grimly. People had gone to extraordinary lengths throughout history in the pursuit of money alone, but that would pale to the lengths to which they would go for the fountain of youth.

  “By using her treatment as currency, we’re convinced she has a number of powerful people in her pocket already,” said Smith. “Including a mole in USASOC.” He shook his head in frustration. “Although it isn’t as if anyone she’s treating is announcing themselves. She controls supply, so if they do anything to cross her, she cuts them off. Bye-bye fountain of youth.”

  “Has anyone come forward?”

  “Only one. And not willingly. A billionaire industrialist who helped finance her early on.”

  Desh pursed his lips in thought. “What about intelligence enhancement? Is she leveraging this in the same way?”

  “Doesn’t have to. Extending life gives her all the power she needs. As far as we know she’s keeping enhanced IQ all to herself. Right now she’s the goose that lays the golden eggs. The only such goose in existence. She can leverage the fruits of her enhanced genius, but why give up her golden-egg laying monopoly?”

  “Makes sense,” allowed Desh.

  “Besides,” added Smith, “she’d have far fewer takers for this therapy. People tend to get nervous about a treatment that screws with their brain chemistry. You can’t make dramatic changes to the brain without risking irreversible changes in personality.” He shook his head in disgust. “Others might not be as eager as she is to transform themselves into something not quite human.”