Mount Lago Complex

  Monday. 8:16 PM

  “What the hell is this?” Sam Katsuyama tossed a folder down on oDNI Department Chief Arthur Kale's desk.

  Beside her, Nariko Yoshida stood with her ams on her hips. The display of frustration was the equivalent of outrage for the quiet scientist.

  Arthur leaned over the desk, opening the folder and peering down over the top of his glasses, his manner equal parts disinterested and ignorant.

  Sam folded her arms and stared coolly down at the man.

  Kale was technically her partner -or at least, the government signing authority on this particular USA/Katsuyama corporation joint venture- but since the second he'd stepped off the elevator into Mount Lago Complex, the man seemed to be doing anything and everything he could to make her life more difficult.

  Then, before they'd even unpacked their bags, an airman delivered her a sealed notice that the oDNI was activating a security clause buried in the 'Project Tanjō' contract and moving up the launch by four full days.

  The oDNI -the Office of the Director of National Intelligence- was a shadow organization. Sam always knew they’d play a layered game of bullshit, but she should have paid more attention to her internal alarm bells and released Kastsuyama Corporation’s lawyers long before this.

  First, Uncle Sam paid the asking price.

  Project Tanjō was a multi-billion dollar project, and America’s bean-counters hadn’t even asked for a discount.

  Next, they’d signed the contract too quicky.

  Uncle Sam’s lawyers always demanded changes to contract language, if for no other reason than to let whichever Senator on the appropriations committee brag that he was ‘governing effectively’ by insisting Katsuyama Corp buy American paint, or hire domestic coders in support roles, or at least funnel cafeteria catering to a company in their constituency.

  This time, there was none of that.

  Then -just six weeks before launch- they moved Project Tanjō from a sensible server center in Silicon Valley to Mount Lago – a dilapidated cold war era bunker hidden in the mountains of Oregon, a bear’s-fart away from the Canadian border.

  They used a standard security clause in the contract and and cited National Security to punt the operation to Mount Lago, but Sam thought their argument smelled like a bear’s fart too.

  Mount Lago also smelled pretty bad: it reeked of bleach, diesel and forty years years of neglect.

  “This appears to be computer code, Miss Katsuyama.” He answered vaguely.

  “How observant of you, Mr. Kale.” She placed her fingertips onto the top page, and slowly fanned the pages open. “On this particular paper, Doctor Yoshida has printed out a couple thousand lines of code.

  Kale looked over the code. “Why bring it to me? I’m not a programmer.”

  “That code that was uploaded into my footballs half an hour ago!” Doctor Nariko Yoshida hissed behind her. “By one of your techs!”

  Sam waved a hand at Nari to shut her up.

  “You co-own the array, but the footballs are Katsuyama property.”

  Arthur waved his hands in the air over the papers. “If this is operational material you really should be talking to Doctor Morales' team,” he said affably, playing the incompetent bureaucrat perfectly.

  Sam shook her head. “Nice try, but we cornered the analyst who uploaded this code and he told me you ordered him to do it!”

  Arthur leaned back and sighed. “Ah.”

  Nariko walked around the table. “What is the meaning of this!”

  Art smiled placatingly. “Our contract clearly states your corporation and my government are both free to submit modifications up to twelve hours before initialization.”

  Sam's smile was all teeth and anger. She stabbed the air between her and Art. “Both sides may submit mods to the array code, not the footballs!”

  Nariko said, her voice tight with anger. “You injected an entire subroutine into the footballs the night before launch without even telling us!”

  “What is it, ‘Art’?” Sam demanded. “Some senator got nervous so you slipped us a little Stuxnet?”

  Stuxnet was infamous in the security world. Coder or not, Arthur Kale would get the reference.

  Stuxnet was a computer virus-precisely, a worm- released by the US and Israel. It spread for years, infecting devices across the internet. It was harmless code, unless an infected device included one specif ic system: the supervisory control and data acqusition -SCADA- system, used by just one country: Iran. Years later the worm paid off, delaying Iranian nuclear weapons development by decades.

  Art's smile was cold and malicious. “I'm sure there was a simple miscommunication.”

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  “You lying prick!” Nariko snarled.

  Sam blinked. She hadn't heard Nariko Yoshida _this_ pissed in years--not since Nari caught her shacking up in her godmother’s mansion with Nate Findlay one spring break.

  And her godmother wasn't done. “You pushed thousands of lines of code into irreplaceable property without even telling me!”

  “You’re a guest here, Doctor!” Art stood abruptly, pushing his body close to the table. Sam recognized the predictable male posturing and interrupted him before he could work up a full head of toxically masculine steam.

  Sam leaned over the table and shoved the pages of code off to rain down around Art, surprising him half-way through his power play.

  “Don't pull that shit with me,” Sam growled. “We’re equal partners! You provide the facility and funds, we provide the proprietary tech and research, and access to her brain. Without Doctor Nariko Yoshida, there is no Project Tanjō. I approved every clause, every word in that contract, 'Art', and trust me: you just opened a can of whoop-ass!”

  “Oh, I’m sure your lawyers will get your pound of flesh, but that will take years. In the meantime, read your contract. Our government has purview over national security. Think of this code as…insurance.”

  He knew a lot more than he was saying. Sam narrowed her eyes at him.

  “You materially changed the parameters of a multi-billion project without permission or negotiation,” she told him. “We have cause to put a hold on the entire launch. You just cost oDNI and Uncle Sam massive cost overruns--something the senate appropriations committee does not want in the media in an election year!”

  The threatening curl of his lip evaporated. A coldly calculating expression replaced the feigned outrage. To Sam, that was far more chilling than any attempt at intimidation.

  “Again, Ms. Katsuyama: National Security. There will be no hold on the project, our code will stay in the footballs as long as they remain on US soil and you will not be delaying the launch.” Art took a breath, and let a small smile play on his lips. “To ensure Katsuyama’s representatives don’t leak any _other_ aspects of this project, the secure lines to the surface have been shut off.”

  Leak? Negligence?

  Sam straightened up off the table, replaying their conversation in her head.

  Kale had switched gears too fast. Neither the threat of financial consequences -millions of dollars of consequences- or of revealing government shenanigans had slowed him down at all.

  She'd missed something.

  Sam and her godmother had caught the code injection in real time. Sam alway s included real time programming alerts in the contracts her godmother pursued, and that healthy suspicion frequently caught their contract partners pulling something funny...but never anything as serious or expansive as clandestinely inserting entire new sub-programs behind her back.

  “You planned this all along,” Sam told him. It wasn't a question. “This is the reason for pushing up the launch.”

  The confident, shrewd expression that had replaced Art's threatening posture did not waver. “It’s one reason.”

  Sam recognized the equivocation and knew instantly there were others factors at play. A competitor in the AI space? A threat to the program? She didn’t have enough information to know how to play it with Kale.

  “What's in this code?” Nari demanded.

  “I believe that discussion,” he told them, adopting a brittle tone, “is now above your security clearance.”

  Nari's chest shook a little as she drew a huge breath. Sam could feel her godmother closing in on a full-blown meltdown. She turned and put a hand on her shoulder. They shared a quiet look, and Nari nodded. She took another breath and walked over to the door.

  Sam turned back to their project partner. “You took four days off the countdown, and you're blaming Katsuyama corporation for it?”

  Sam took her job seriously: Nariko Yoshida had spent her career creating tools that made the world a better place. They also made Katsuyama corporation one of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful. Every contract Sam and her team negotiated for her godmother’s work served those twin goals.

  AI research started in the billions. Not even the mighty Katsuyama Corporation could bear those costs alone. Sam's godmother's insistence on a set of core values that would guide any collaborations further restricted potential partners to a handful of nations with public commitments to human rights and policies in keeping with Nari's moral code.

  Sam had learned long ago that when Uncle Sam was involved, there was always a catch, so she and her team had spent months on contract language and contingency clauses to prevent bullshit like this. Sam had gotten very good at protecting Nariko's vision.

  But she had missed something, and Art Kale knew it. Sam could read it on his smug face.

  Kale reached under his desk for his shoulder bag and drew out a tablet. He powered it on, tapped in a password, then held the white card on a lanyard around his neck to the screen.

  He swiped the screen a few times and dropped the tablet onto the table. “I assume you recognize Dr. Polter?”

  Nari edged up to stand beside Sam, and the two women stared down at an image of Polter, the most senior member of Nari's research team, standing at an airport coffee kiosk. 'Gate D' was painted on the wall behind him.

  Sam recognized the gate. It was the one she had led the Katsuyama delegation out of when they arrived at Seattle International seven days ago.

  Art reached over and tapped the screen. The image flowed into motion. She watched Polter pour cream into a cardboard co ffee cup, and press the lid on top. Then she watched him withdraw a slim hard drive from his jacket and slip it between the whole milk and soy on the kiosk counter.

  “Daniel?” Nariko asked, her voice incredulous.

  “Doctor Daniel Polter has been charged under the espionage act,” Kale informed them. “This morning he was taken to Seattle and arraigned in a closed FISA court.”

  Sam felt the air leave her lungs. “This happened the day before we were helo'd to Mount Lago,” she ground out.

  Art smiled. “Yes, Ms. Katsuyama.”

  “You sat on this for a week,” she realized.

  Art's smile grew. “Yes we did, Ms. Katsuyama.”

  “What will happen to him?” Nari asked.

  “He will spend years in prison if he tells us who he is working for, Doctor.” He picked up his tablet and turned it off. “He won't see daylight for a decade if he does not.”

  Nari shrank in on herself. She turned away and covered her mouth with a hand.

  Nariko Yoshida was a two-time Nobel nominated physicist and artificial intelligence researcher. Katsuyama corporation had invested years in half a dozen obscure fields or research, and now that research and its resulting patents were about to usher in a _literal_ quantum leap in Artificial Intelligence.

  But that was before the oDNI caught a Katsuyama employee committing treason. It was a potentially actionable failure and it utterly destroyed Sam's threat to give oDNI a black eye in public.

  This was a takeover attempt, Sam realized, a chill.

  They want the project for themselves.

  “You let him work on this project knowing he was…compromised ,” Sam realized.

  “We suspected it two months ago. It’s one of the reasons we moved the project to this facility.” Art shrugged. “We could only prove it after you vetted him and flew him here. After he walked in Mount Lago Complex it didn't matter when we grabbed him: this entire facility is air-gapped. We could take our time.”

  “You left him in play in case we caught you pulling this shit with the code?”

  Art tossed the tablet in his bag and slung it over his shoulder. “No, Ms. Katsuyama, we left him in play in hopes he would lead us to any other traitors _you_ had foolishly employed.” He smiled, showing a lot of teeth. “Though I'm sure the blowback from hiring and vetting a traitor will incentivize you to...see your way to accepting the new code injection.”

  “Don't count on it!” Sam told him. She realized the oDNI had no intention of informing them about tr ue purpose of the new subroutine.

  This was a takeover attempt.

  Art walked around the desk and shrugged. “I'm sure you'll have a change of heart when you meet with the Deputy Director.”

  Sam turned. “Brewster's here?” oDNI’s Deputy Director had the ear of the President, who had personally signed off on the use of intelligence ‘black budget’ funds to build Nari’s creation.

  Her day was getting better and better.

  “He arrived early this morning.” Art's smile widened as he opened the door.

  “More games!” Sam snapped. “Why was I not notified a senior official was coming to observe the launch?”

  “I was as surprised as you are, ladies,” Kale mocked, abandoning sincerity. “But you know how slowly government bureaucracies crawl. I'm sure his office will reach out in...”

  Kale looked at his watch. “Oh, sometime in the next eleven hours.”

  He dropped his hand, dropped his smile and dropped the pretense of caring.

  “You can let yourselves out, ladies. I need my beauty sleep.” He disappeared through the door, his voice trailing behind. “We make history in twelve hours!”