“We have nothing to do with their internal disputes,” Seymour says.
“That’s true,” Brutran says. “But the Cradle’s program is clever. It knows how to take advantage of this blind spot. By flooding the various agencies with false information about us, it has created a hysterical wave of paranoia that no single agency—and no single person—can stand up and dispute. Remember Hitler’s famous line, ‘The bigger the lie, the more people will believe it.’ It’s only been twenty-four hours since the explosion and already this lie has tremendous momentum.”
“What you’re describing is all smoke and mirrors,” Seymour says.
“Yes. But it’s rooted in the hard cold fact that hundreds of kids have been murdered. You keep forgetting that. Someone has to pay for that evil deed, and, once again, the authorities are under tremendous pressure to produce suspects. Imagine how pleased they must be that, seemingly out of nowhere, they are receiving all kinds of intel on us.”
“Receiving it from whom?” Seymour demands. “It makes no sense they should believe a torrent of information being fed to them by some wild program.”
“You haven’t been listening,” Brutran says. “The FBI doesn’t think this information is coming from a computer program. To them, it appears to be coming from local police. In the same way, Homeland doesn’t think it’s getting this intel from a foreign source. They probably believe it’s coming from the CIA or the NSA. That’s why I stressed the problem with these agencies not talking to each other.”
“You’re saying the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing,” Matt interjects.
“Exactly,” Brutran says.
“But eventually the truth has to come out,” Seymour insists.
“Probably,” Brutran says. “But that will take time. The Cradle’s program has its tentacles wrapped around every computer in practically every government agency. From what I can tell, even the White House is being fed a stream of false updates. If we’re lucky, and the president eventually realizes that his people have been duped, then he will still be left with the fact that these children died and we were seen leaving the area of the crime.”
“This is ridiculous,” Seymour says. “What are we supposed to do? Sit here and rot and wait until the storm blows over?”
“Funny you should say that,” Brutran says. “That was going to be my final piece of advice—”
“We cannot sit here and do nothing,” I interrupt.
“Why not?” Brutran asks.
Matt holds up his hand. “We’ll get to that in a minute. For now I want to finish discussing this program. Cindy, exactly when did it become active?”
I have never heard Matt call Brutran by her first name before. The woman appears to respond well to his questions, to his command. With me, she has always been a little snide.
“Yesterday morning. The instant we blew up IIC’s headquarters and wiped out the Cradle,” Brutran says. “That act immediately triggered the program’s attack on us.”
“So there must be someone left alive who is controlling the program,” Matt says.
Brutran shakes her head. “It may be on automatic.”
“That’s a freaky thought,” Seymour says.
Brutran disagrees. “In a way it doesn’t matter if there’s still a living hand at the helm. The program is awake and it’s intelligent. The instant we leave this motel, we’ll be exposed and it will begin searching for us again. Think of the resources at its command. It just has to give the word and hundreds of thousands of police and government agents will try to converge on us. Why, I wouldn’t be surprised if the program goes so far as to use the military’s satellites to hunt us down. With power like that, it won’t be long before we’re caught.”
“What if we continue to live off the grid?” Seymour asks.
“It will help,” Brutran says. “But it won’t save us.”
“I disagree,” I say.
“With which part?” Brutran asks.
“The last part. I’m not as fatalistic as you.” I say.
“I’m being pragmatic,” Brutran relies.
“You’re giving up. I believe if we’re smart and careful we can avoid being caught. Plus I think it’s vital that we discover if there’s a living hand behind this program. If there is, we kill it. And then, and only then, do we try to erase the program.”
“Why wait?” Seymour asks.
I shrug. “If we manage to erase it, but haven’t taken down whoever’s behind it, they’ll just reload it on the Internet and we’ll be back to square one.”
Brutran stares at me. “Long before you moved into IIC’s headquarters, I assigned our best minds to study this program. They got nowhere and we’re talking about some of the keenest computer people of our time. They told me they couldn’t get within a light year of figuring out how to disable it.”
“Why?” Seymour asks.
Brutran leans toward us as she answers. “Because the intelligence that created the program had an IQ of at least a thousand.”
“You’re suggesting it’s being controlled by subtle beings,” Matt says. “Nonphysical beings.”
“There’s a strong possibility that’s true, I can’t be sure. However, I do believe it was created by something nonhuman.”
“We can’t kill it if it ain’t alive,” Seymour mutters, expressing my lingering fear. “What are our choices?”
“Wait it out,” Brutran says. “Wait until the government realizes it’s chasing a ghost. Eventually they’ll see that the bulk of the data they’re being fed is false. Plus they can’t keep their agents running all over the country looking for us. There are a thousand other threats they have to worry about every day. If we’re patient, they’ll get weary of the chase. At the same time they’ll probably discover the program on their own. Then it will be their problem to figure out how to pull its plug.”
Matt glances at me and I nod. “I wish waiting and doing nothing were an option,” he says.
Brutran notices our exchange. “Is there somewhere else we have to be?” she asks.
“Yes,” Matt says, and proceeds to describe the photograph I found hidden in Shanti’s suitcase. Brutran and Seymour listen closely. Indeed, Jolie lowers the volume on the TV and cocks her head in our direction, and I remind myself to keep an eye on her. Even though she looks innocent, she was part of the Cradle, which specialized in remote assassinations.