The Babel Tower Read online

  Katarina shrugged. “Same as you.”

  “Just doing our part.” Owen smiled. “Do you know why Liz decided to go back to Nebraska so soon?”

  “I’m not sure,” Katarina said. “She seemed tired this morning and said she’d been out late for a dinner last night. I tried to talk to her about the IPO, but she just wanted to know if I’d learned anything about that farmer.”

  “And?”

  “Nope, haven’t learned a thing. It’s not a big deal though. Their farm slowed down construction a bit because the crews had to re-route the access road around them, but now things are moving along fine.”

  Owen laughed. “Liz just can’t stand that the farmer wouldn’t sell. And I get it. I tried too. He’s very frustrating.”

  “How so?”

  “He doesn’t talk much. He wouldn’t even engage with me. I could have offered him a billion dollars and I bet it wouldn’t have made a difference.”

  “Very odd.”

  “Yeah, the only interesting thing I found after some digging is that the farmer’s grandfather had a reputation for being the same way during the Vietnam War. He had a long military career.”

  Katarina was suddenly intrigued. Her agent had warned her to be on the look out for former military involved in any way with the tower. There was some intelligence about government interest, especially if they moved the data servers. “What’s the grandfather’s name?” she asked.

  “Isaiah Conrad.”

  She made a mental note to look into it. “Okay, well, anything else you came by to discuss?”

  “Yeah, just one thing. I saw that the Dubai Sovereign Wealth Fund arranged to buy more shares. It seems odd. Know what it’s about?”

  Nosy Owen. He needed to stay focused on his own issues. “No clue,” Katarina said. “Why is it surprising though? They have more cash than they know what to do with, and our valuation keeps going up.”

  “You’re probably right. I just need to keep an eye on this for reporting purposes. With the IPO coming up, we have to inform the government of any major foreign acquisition.”

  “Got it. I’ll keep you posted.” Katarina would do no such thing. But maybe she’d keep a closer eye on this Conrad family. She could have cameras installed. It could even give her an excuse to test how far Dylan would go to help her. He still seemed like the best tool for prying into Liz’s secret method for accessing the data. Jax certainly wasn’t going to help. Or Owen. She suddenly remembered he was still standing there. She caught his eyes. “Anything else?”

  “Nope, that’s it. Thanks for talking, and sorry for holding you up so late.” He gave a friendly wave. “See you tomorrow?”

  Katarina smiled. “Another day in paradise.”

  23

  The dead tree needed only a few more good hits. Jake wiped the sweat off his brow and let the afternoon breeze cool his skin. He glanced up at the branches against the sky. They were barren, but the nearby trees were full of leaves and ripe apples. A good harvest.

  But not this tree. He aimed the axe at the trunk and steadied himself. He swung hard. Five swings later he heard the crack deep in the wood. He stepped back as the tree began to lean and fall. It crashed with a thud.

  All went quiet. Jake stood still, axe in hand.

  “Ever heard of a chainsaw?”

  Jake jerked toward the voice.

  Liz. Hand on her hip, smiling.

  His already quickened pulse raced faster. How long had she been watching?

  “I work with my hands,” he said.

  “It looks more like an axe to me.”

  “Is there something I can help you with?”

  “I think you know why I’m here. Please, take your time.”

  He knelt down and picked up a shovel. He began digging a circle around the thick stump, wide enough to get to the deeper roots.

  He dug for ten minutes, then paused for a drink of water. He glanced to Liz. She was still watching.

  He picked up his pickaxe and started in on the roots. He felt her gaze on him, but he managed to work a while longer before turning to Liz again.

  This time, when their eyes met, she approached him. “Mind if I help?” she asked.

  He couldn’t resist a look of surprise. This would be interesting. He nodded to a second shovel on the ground. “There’s plenty of dirt to move.”

  She picked up the shovel and started digging. Jake watched in disbelief as she shoveled scoop after scoop of black earth from the growing hole. Then he went back to it.

  They worked on opposite sides at first. They came closer and closer as they removed the last of the dirt by the underground trunk. The sun was setting.

  “That should be enough,” he said.

  He smiled as Liz climbed out of the small pit. Her jeans and sweater were filthy. Her face showed streaks of sweat through the dirt.

  “Thanks for the help.”

  “I can work with my hands, too.” She handed him the shovel. “What’s next?”

  He pointed to his tractor. “Drag it out and burn it.”

  The sky darkened as he tied a chain around the stump, climbed on the tractor, and pulled away, yanking the last of the roots out of the ground. Liz followed him on foot to a pile of wood by the river.

  He added the stump to the pile and lit it, wondering how long Liz planned to stay. They stood beside each other as the flames licked up the edges of the wood.

  Minute by minutes the fire spread and rose into a red and orange blaze as tall as they were. The warmth of it wrapped around them, as if separating them from the world outside this conflagration.

  “This night,” Liz said, her head tilted to the stars above. “It’s so quiet. It’s beautiful.”

  “It is,” Jake said. “I’m glad you came.”

  Liz faced the fire again and rubbed her hands together.

  “How are your hands?” he asked.

  “They’ll be fine. Maybe a few blisters.”

  “You know, you’re not so bad,” he said, “for someone from Silicon Valley.”

  “I was born near here.”

  He looked to her, surprised. Her face was aglow in firelight, and it held his gaze like a magnet. He’d never been so transfixed by anyone.

  “So I guess we’re stuck with each other,” she said, meeting his gaze evenly.

  “Is that so bad?” he asked.

  She smiled, revealing nothing, and slowly walked off into the night.

  24

  Veruca knelt beside the fire hydrant, gleaming under the bright Palo Alto sun. She ran her hands over the iron surface. It showed no damage. No reason for the camera to go out.

  This wasn’t her normal job, but she needed fresh air. She’d worked three straight nights for Jax after he had returned from some meeting and said they’d picked the engineer who would lead the construction. He had set the final deadline for the contest with Roger and Beck, the FireSpy group. They had four more hours before they would each present their best ideas for the tower. One million dollars for the winner.

  Veruca had come up with plans for stronger steel, a deeper foundation, and other little improvements. But nothing seemed like a million dollar idea. She knew her competition. Beck and Roger were brilliant in their own ways; they’d have something good. She needed to do something better. Not for her, but for Jax.

  Her blood rose at the irony of it. Jax was diverting his own company’s time and money for Liz Trammell’s pet project. Veruca had seen it over and over. Everything Jax did was for Liz. All his software, all his fortune, all his brains—he’d sacrifice all of it on the altar of Liz.

  It had been a year since she met Jax, just a block away from this hydrant. When she’d shown up for her first interview, she’d been surprised by how short he was. With a reputation as big as his, she figured he’d be six feet tall or more. He was almost a foot shorter than that. And his thinning black hair was no match to Veruca’s flame red curls. But Veruca didn’t care much about how he looked. It was his mind that attracted her.r />
  In the interview, he’d sat perched on his stool, studying her across the table. His eyes had shown their ever-playful amusement. His first words: “I don’t hire redheads.”

  “I think you’ll make an exception for me,” she replied.

  “What’s seventeen squared?”

  She answered instantly: “Two hundred eighty-nine.”

  “When did you write your first code?”

  “I was nine.”

  “How long before that code changed the physical world?”

  “Is there any difference between physical and digital?”

  He had paused then. She’d felt his stare prying into her. It had been the longest twenty seconds of her life. “Come here,” he’d finally said, turning to the thin computer screens on his desk.

  She’d walked around the desk and stood beside his stool. Complicated code filled the screens. He slid a keyboard over to her. “Follow my lead.”

  The next hour had changed her life. Jax had led her through a few simple coding patterns. She hung with him. Then he added a dimension, then another. Each step blew her mind, but she managed to keep up. By the time they finished, the two of them, working side by side, minds melded, had reverse engineered the security algorithm at the heart of Jax’s new company.

  Jax had smiled at her and said, “That was good.”

  They had produced amazing work together in the year since that interview. Veruca’s feelings had only grown, but Jax treated her as nothing but a business partner—a very efficient and sharp engineer, but nothing more.

  Maybe that would change when Liz moved to Nebraska, away from Jax. Veruca needed to help with the tower for that reason alone. The million dollar prize would be icing on the cake.

  Her attention turned again to the hydrant and its faulty camera. The lens was almost impossible to see at a glance. She had to lean close to the thick bolt screwed in at the top of the hydrant. It was solid steel, connected to the valve stem below, running from the underground pipes. The lens seemed fine. The problem had to be inside.

  Veruca pulled out her heavy wrench. With her red hair cascading over the operation, she began to loosen the bolt. Each turn was careful and practiced. A stray twist could break the lens. Finally the bolt slipped off, and she studied it in her hand. The little camera that would forever change national security.

  But this one still wasn’t working. She found a new bolt with an embedded lens in her bag. She tried it on the hydrant. Still no activity. It had to be the power source.

  She wiggled the whole hydrant in its place. It was too loose, as if disconnected from its base. And something was rattling inside. The force of the water line underneath powered the camera, so if anything wasn’t connected, that would explain the problem.

  She lifted the casing at the top of the hydrant. Inside there should have been a smooth metal connection running from the ground to the cap, but instead there was corrosion and a few loose bits. She tilted the fire hydrant from one side to the other, and the parts shifted with it. They should have stayed steady, centered. They should have counterbalanced the motion.

  Veruca dropped the wrench and stood.

  Counterbalance.

  That was the key, the million-dollar idea. A tower that was a mile tall would sway too much in the wind, regardless of the foundation. It needed a counterweight high in the tower—something that would shift the opposite direction when the wind blew the tower one way or another. It would have to be huge, with enough mass to pull the building back toward equilibrium when it leaned.

  She dashed off a note for someone to replace the pipe inside the fire hydrant and hurried back to the FireSpy office. The idea poured out of her into a design—immense weights of steel plates suspended from the ceiling of a high tower floor by a series of cables. And like the hydrant, a connection to pipes deep underneath the tower, stabilizing it from top to bottom. It would require a few exterior changes, but it would work.

  She scanned several studies of counterbalances. She found examples in other skyscrapers, the largest in Taipei 101. But this would have to be far bigger, over 1,000 metric tons, like 1,000 cars strung on cables a mile above ground. Poles would have to extend out from the tower at steep angles to suspend all the weight, to balance how much the tower might sway in a Nebraska wind, even a tornado.

  She sat back and admired her sketch. She couldn’t wait to show Jax.

  25

  “I can’t believe this pollution.” Dylan eyed the overflowing trashcan beside him. It was foul stuff. Empty food containers, a few used needles, and even a prophylactic used by someone in a recent escapade. A needle had fallen out on the ground in front of a fire hydrant under a streetlight. Certain parts of San Francisco just weren’t worth visiting anymore. It was freedom gone bad.

  “You should move to Nebraska,” Katarina said, her Russian accent thick. She could hardly be seen in the night, wearing all black, snug yoga clothes, with the hood of her sweatshirt up.

  Dylan laughed. He’d take the worst of San Francisco over empty cornfields any day. “I’ll visit,” he said. “But this is home. How about you?”

  “I’ll move there if the title is right.”

  “You think Liz will be okay with you as CEO?”

  “Why not? What do you Americans say? Better the devil you know?”

  “I guess so…”

  “I’m already doing most of the job. I make sure the company stays on track for the IPO. I manage our teams, analyze our inventory, approve our suppliers. It all keeps stock prices high so she can build her tower.”

  “Sounds like a win-win.” Dylan paused, feeling a bit awkward. This was the first time he’d seen Katarina since their night together. “So, why did you want to meet?”

  Katarina waited before answering, as a group passed in front of them on the sidewalk, talking and laughing and obviously drunk. “I need your help.”

  “Is it about the data?”

  “That’s part of it.”

  “You still want to make it public?”

  “Yes, and we’re getting closer to that. Liz has agreed to move the servers out of their desert stronghold and into the tower.”

  “But you know she’ll keep it locked away there, too.”

  “That’s fine for now,” Katarina said. “What I’m worried about is the transition. Hundreds of engineers and workers are involved in the tower’s construction. They’re building a whole new security system for the servers, but that creates risks. Who exactly will set up the system? What if someone tries to get access to exploit the data? Imagine what they could do—sell the data, blackmail, you name it.”

  The word blackmail sounded odd in her accent. Dylan had worried about that exact thing. That’s why it was better to just make the data available to everyone. But it wasn’t his decision. “Have you talked to Liz?”

  “Of course. She says she trusts the new chief engineer. His name is Hunter Black. Jax helped her pick him, but I have reasons to believe Mr. Black is a risk.”

  “Why?”

  “He used to work in the government. His resume said it was the State Department, but you know that’s often a cover for the CIA. And his engineering work was in places like Tehran and Moscow. I think he might still be an agent. You know how much the government would like to get its hands on Babel’s data.”

  Dylan leaned back, considering the conspiracy theory. “I guess it’s possible. Why are you telling me all this?”

  “Wouldn’t you want to protect Liz?”

  “Yes, but I’m not really involved with the data. I’m just helping design the research contest. Why not talk to Jax or Owen? They talk to Liz more than I do.”

  “I’ve tried. Jax said he picked the engineer, and he’s not worried about it. Owen said he understood the risk, but he defers to Liz. You know he’d never challenge her.”

  “If they’re not worried, why should I be?” Dylan knew Liz wasn’t going to let her guard down about the data, and he doubted the government would really try to hack its w
ay in.

  “The government has lots of surveillance, like phone call recordings and emails. But we have recordings of almost every conversation in the developed world. The Feds can’t stand it when someone has information they don’t have. You know how many times we’ve turned down their requests for Babel data?”

  “I saw the story earlier this year about the murder investigation.”

  “Yeah, and remember the headline: Killer Goes Free After Babel Refuses To Turn Over Data.”

  “That looked pretty bad,” Dylan said.

  “The prosecutor talked to the press. He probably would have lost the case anyway, but he blamed us. People got over it. They want their own data private, too. But the government didn’t get over it, because that’s just the tip of the iceberg. They want the data for lots of noble things: stopping terrorism, money-laundering, and…anyone who’s against the party in power.”

  “I see.”

  “We turned the FBI down seven times in just the past month.”

  “If they really want the data, can’t they find a way to get it? Issue a warrant or something?”

  “It would be a PR nightmare. They might do it if they had to, but I think they’re trying to find another way to access it. Some way that nobody knows about.”

  Dylan shook his head. She was probably right. If any group had exclusive access to the data, it gave too much power. Better to spread the knowledge. Make everyone equal. “This is why Liz should just make the information public.”

  “Which she won’t, but I’ll be able to do it if I become the CEO.”

  “You get access just by being CEO?”

  “Yes, through the board of directors. The company’s data encryption can be bypassed by nine of the twelve directors. We set that up a year ago. I suggested it, because otherwise what happens if Liz or Jax die? They were the only ones who can access it. So if they were gone…?”

  A chill coursed down Dylan’s spine. Katarina sounded so casual about it. “How does the board get access?”

  “They all show up at the data center, and nine retina scans later, the CEO and the board can access it. Liz agreed with it as a backup plan to let the board override the system and get to the data.”