The growling of Nicholas’s two dogs, Argos and Draco, ceased as soon as they saw who it was. Both of them stood up from their beds and trotted over to see Harvath.
“Hello, boys,” he said, patting them on the head. “Hello, Nicholas.”
The little man was typing away at his keyboard. He quickly raised his left index finger, indicating he’d be with Harvath in a second, and then returned to typing.
In the eerie lighting of the SCIF, Harvath studied Nicholas’s face. He had been attacked over the summer with a razor. It had happened in a remote mountainous region of Spain. There wasn’t a hospital, or even a clinic, for over a hundred miles. One of the monks who found him had some medical experience and had sewn him up. All things considered, Nicholas was lucky to have received any stitches at all. In fact, he was just lucky to be alive.
He had since undergone two procedures to help improve his appearance and reduce scarring. From what Harvath could see, Nicholas was almost back to normal.
As soon as the little man was finished with what he was typing, he hit the Enter key, saying, “And a Dolly for Sue.”
Nicholas needed an extraordinary amount of computing power to do what the Carlton Group had brought him on board to do. When the NSA categorically denied him access to their massive data centers, he turned to the next best thing and hacked into Google’s.
Google had dozens of data centers around the world and more than a million servers, from right there in Reston, to places like Sao Paulo, Moscow, Milan, Tokyo, and Hong Kong. Nicholas had given the ones he used most often nicknames-Spotted Elephant, Bird Fish, Charlie-in-the-Box, Ostrich Cowboy, Scooter for Jimmy, and a Dolly for Sue.
Harvath had chalked it up to eccentricity until someone in the Group had asked him if he knew the significance of Nicholas’s code name. The little man had chosen it for himself and it had been approved. Harvath figured it had some poetic meaning for him until he learned that Moonracer was the name of the winged lion that ruled the Island of Misfit Toys. He was responsible for flying around the world each night in search of unwanted toys. It was a fitting moniker.
When it became obvious that Nicholas was not going to grow any bigger, his godless Soviet Georgian parents had decided he was an embarrassment and would forever be like a stone around their necks. They no longer wanted their son and decided to get rid of him.
They made no attempt to find him a suitable, loving home. They didn’t even try to place him in an orphanage. Instead, they abandoned the boy, selling him to a brothel on the outskirts of the Black Sea resort of Sochi. There, Nicholas was starved, beaten, and made to participate in unutterable acts no child should ever be subjected to.
It was there that Nicholas learned the true value of information. Pillow talk from the alcohol-loosened lips of the brothel’s powerful clients proved to be a gold mine, once he knew what to listen for and how to turn it to his advantage.
The women who worked in the brothel were society’s castoffs, just like Nicholas, and they took pity on him. Those ladies of the night were the first to ever treat Nicholas with respect. They became the only family he had ever known, and he repaid their kindness one day by securing their freedom. He had the madam who ran the brothel, along with her husband, dispatched for the inhuman cruelty he had suffered at their hands.
Though he moved beyond the horrors of his youth, he never forgot them. He carried with him a tremendous burden of shame. He was no angel. He had done many bad things since leaving the brothel in Sochi. He had done many good things as well, particularly with the vast amount of money he had made and lost over the years. He wanted to cleanse himself. Whether that was possible, only time would tell. Agreeing to come to work with Harvath was a step in that direction.
Pushing his chair back from the desk, he reached his tiny arms into the air and arched his back. Lowering them, he turned to face his friend. “I’m sorry about Uppsala,” he said.
“Me, too,” replied Harvath, nodding toward the minifridge on the opposite wall.
Nicholas nodded. “Help yourself.”
Crossing over to it, he opened the door and peered inside. “Does the Old Man know you’ve got a bottle of wine in here?”
“What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him. Besides, with the hours I’ve been putting in, I deserve a drink now and again.”
“Do you have any beer?” asked Harvath.
“Do I look like I’ve suddenly turned into a beer drinker?”
Though a man of diminutive stature, Nicholas had perhaps the best taste of anyone Harvath had ever met. From clothes to wine and food, Nicholas was a connoisseur of all the good things life had to offer-and that included beer. Harvath had sat and drunk with him before. “Seriously, you don’t have any beer?” Harvath asked.
“It was hard enough getting the wine in here without Carlton knowing. Five percent per volume versus twelve. You do the math.”
Wine packed a stronger punch than beer. Harvath got it. He settled on a Red Bull instead and closed the fridge door.
“I thought you didn’t drink that stuff anymore,” said Nicholas.
“Only in emergencies,” he said, popping the lid and rolling a chair over. “Like when there’s no beer.”
Nicholas smiled and made room for him. “How’s Chase? I heard he got shot in the shoulder.”
“Bicep,” Harvath corrected, pointing at his own. “I think it hit the bone. He’ll be riding the bench for a while. So,” he continued, changing the subject, “the Old Man says you’ve made some progress?”
“I have,” replied Nicholas, as he pulled up an instant message screen and typed a note to the Old Man that Harvath had arrived.
“Is he still in the office?”
“Yeah. He wanted me to let him know when you got here so we could go over everything together.”
“While we’re waiting for him, why don’t you give me the thirty-thousand-foot view of the situation?”
Nicholas nodded and turned back to his computers. Moving his little fingers across the keyboard, he brought up a series of images on the screens around the SCIF. “In the early 1990s, the Chinese watched in utter fascination at how rapidly the United States defeated Saddam Hussein in the first Gulf War.
“They realized that there was absolutely no way they could ever meet the technologically advanced American military on the conventional battlefield and win. They also realized something else. As they studied how the United States had waged its wars, they saw that leaps in technological innovation drove innovation in American military tactics. Not the other way around.
“The Chinese considered this quite a profound discovery and began to embrace the idea that in a China-versus-America conflict, the inferior China could beat the superior United States. In fact, China’s defense minister, General Chi Haotian, even stated that war with the U.S. was inevitable and that China would not be able to avoid it. He posited that the key issue for the Chinese armed forces was going to be controlling the initiative, or how the war would be fought. It would all come down to how each side approached waging war. China knew exactly what their plan would be. Their blueprint became known as unrestricted warfare.
“The first and most important rule of unrestricted warfare is that there are no rules. Nothing is forbidden. The plan calls for merciless, unconventional out-of-the-box thinking. The key is asymmetrical attacks on every sphere of American life-political, economic, and social.
“Using the ancient martial doctrines of leaders like Sun Tzu, they focused on the time-proven methods of surprise and deception, particularly by weaponizing civilian technologies and employing them without morality, mercy, or limit in order to crush American society.”
“What do you mean by weaponizing civilian technologies?” asked Harvath.
“What is one of the most important technologies that touches every single home and business in America?” said Nicholas.
Harvath thought about it for a moment and replied, “The Internet.”
“You are correct, but the Internet is the second most important. The first is electricity. If electricity were weaponized, meaning an opponent had found a way to use it against the United States, America would be devastated. Without electricity, fuel doesn’t get pumped, trucks don’t move, food and drugs don’t get delivered, the economy comes to a grinding halt. As the economy grinds to a halt, society starts to break apart. Fires don’t get extinguished, looting and crime doesn’t get stopped, you pick up the phone to dial 911 and there is no dial tone. Soon there are no police, there are no firemen. All there is, is chaos.
“With power grids and power stations so dependent on the Internet, I would argue that losing the Internet to an army of hackers would have the same effect as an enemy turning off our electricity, either through widespread sabotage or with an electromagnetic pulse weapon.
“The Chinese military leaders who developed the unrestricted warfare plan explained that in the realm of low-intensity conflict, the vulnerabilities of the United States actually become exponentially more pronounced. In essence, there are multitudes of things that U.S. citizens believe are harmless that a clever enemy could turn against them and use to cripple them in a heartbeat.
“The blackout of 2003 hit eight U.S. states and parts of Canada. Not only was power generation and delivery affected, but so were the water supply, transportation, communication, industry, and the overall economy. There was also looting. The overall cost was estimated at between seven and ten billion dollars.
“The outage affected more than fifty-five million people and was the second most-widespread electrical blackout in history. And I’ll give you one guess who was behind it.”
“The Chinese,” said Harvath.
Nicholas nodded. “Forensic investigations showed that PLA-sponsored Chinese hackers, or crackers as they’re referred to, had hacked into a U.S. electrical power system network that controlled distribution to the Northeast and were mapping it. It has been privately alleged that they were leaving behind hidden, malicious software, known as Trojan horses, that could be activated at a later date, specifically in a time of unrestricted warfare, in order to knock American power systems offline. Where it went wrong, supposedly, was that while leaving the Trojans, some cracker or group of crackers accidentally activated theirs, causing the blackout.”
“You don’t believe that?”
“It’s possible that the crackers made a mistake. Subsequent investigations of networks across the United States showed widespread compromise of the nationwide electrical system by the Chinese. Trojans had been planted everywhere.”
“If that’s true, why didn’t the U.S. confront China over it?”
“These kinds of things are very difficult to prove. Senior government and intelligence officials didn’t want to rock the boat with China unless they could prove it beyond a doubt.”
Harvath shook his head. “People have no idea how dangerous that country is-our politicians included.”
“I agree,” replied Nicholas. “At least eleven people died because of the blackout, and it contributed to the fall of the Ontario government in a provincial election. And it only lasted a couple of days.
“The impact on national security was just as serious. Without power, critical systems used by the United States to detect illegal border crossings, port landings, and breaches of sensitive sites were all compromised. Even more disturbing was that the blackout was a neon sign for terrorists, if you will, pointing right at one of America’s greatest Achilles’ heels.”
“Makes me wonder if it really was a mistake by the Chinese, or a dry run.”
“Indeed. The only way to be sure of your hypothesis is to test it. If the 2003 blackout was a test, it was successful, but it exposed all the Trojans they had planted throughout the U.S. electrical system.”
“Unless that was intentional,” said Harvath. “If they triggered the 2003 blackout on purpose to see what would happen and how we would respond, they had to have known we’d do a comprehensive analysis of all of our networks to see how badly we’d been penetrated. Maybe they intended for us to find all of those other Trojans. We find them, clean them out, and thank God we got them before they could be activated as well.”
Nicholas smiled. “Only what the U.S. discovered and cleaned out was exactly what the Chinese wanted them to discover and clean out. The United States pats itself on the back, stopping its search right there.”
“You think there are more?”
“Deeper Trojans in the U.S. electrical network? I think it’s a virtual guarantee,” said the little man. “In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Chinese had actually written programs intended to piggyback off American efforts to rid their power networks of the surface Trojans. The U.S. may very well have unwittingly helped the Chinese burrow deeper, providing China greater access than they could have ever achieved on their own.
“That’s the driving philosophy behind unrestricted warfare. It is all about positioning yourself for victory. Why meet your enemy sword to sword, where he is strongest, when you can force him to expose his side, where he is weakest, and strike at him there?”
“Besides weaponizing civilian technologies, what else does the plan call for?” asked Harvath.
Nicholas ran his hand through his short, dark hair. “Slowly influencing the culture with their values via cultural warfare. Influencing American media. Cornering and rigging the markets for things America needs, such as oil and rare earth minerals, through resource warfare. Joining international bodies like the U.N. Security Council and voting against American resolutions and interests as part of international law warfare. Manipulating the value of the dollar and subverting the banking and stock markets via financial warfare. The list is multifaceted and it goes on and on.”
“And it includes terrorism.”
“Most definitely. You see, while they watched America’s mighty military deal with Saddam in the first Gulf War, they also noted the severe difficulties that the same mighty military had in dealing with a low-intensity conflict like Somalia. They noted how effective the U.S. embassy bombings were in Beirut, Kenya, and Tanzania. They noted as well the havoc caused by terrorists in the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993. They noted how Chechen terrorists were able to plague the Russians as Northern Ireland guerillas had done to the British.
“For the Chinese, terrorism became seen as an exceptional weapon to wield against the United States. It can not only cause great physical and economic damage, but it delivers a severe psychological shock to the citizens of the country it is visited upon. If you could somehow harness and focus Islamic terrorism, it would give you a great battlefield advantage. It would also provide camouflage, as you would be using foreign nationals to do your bidding.
“There’s an interesting tidbit many people aren’t aware of. When the 9/11 attacks happened, we all saw dancing in the streets of the Muslim world. What we didn’t see, though, was the sheer exuberance displayed by state-controlled Chinese media. They produced video games, books, and documentaries glorifying the violence and calling it a ‘humbling’ blow against an arrogant nation.
“Many people also don’t know that the Chinese predicted that bin Laden would hit the World Trade Center and that they predicted it three years before it happened. U.S. intelligence also learned that before 9/11, the Chinese military had been providing training to the Afghan Taliban and al Qaeda. The American intelligence apparatus was stunned by this revelation and couldn’t figure out why the Chinese were mixing with Islamic terrorists. It all had to do with unrestricted warfare.
“The Chinese wanted to build their own worldwide Islamic terror network that they could unleash against their enemies, particularly the United States, at will. They developed deep ties with the Taliban in order to develop even deeper ties with al Qaeda. Much as they had mapped U.S. electrical networks, they wanted to map existing Islamic terror networks, particularly AQ.
“The Chinese are brilliant students. They have an almost superhuman ability to sublimate their arrogance and approach subjects with a completely open mind. They assume nothing and feel no embarrassment at their lack of knowledge. Not that it would make too much difference if they did. It wouldn’t last long. The Chinese are incredibly fast learners.
“Taking their new knowledge, they compare it against what they know of the world and what they have learned from thousands of years of history. Then they slowly begin to put it into play. This is how the Chinese were able to build a terrorism network rivaling al Qaeda.”
“Which was headed by Aazim Aleem,” said Harvath. “Correct?”
“Exactly. Aazim headed the entire network, but he had no idea that he was working for the Chinese. He believed he was running a branch of al Qaeda, with al Qaeda’s full knowledge and support. He had no idea that he was a tool in the unrestricted warfare toolbox.”
“But the Chinese lost control of the network.”
Nicholas held up his tiny index finger to make a point. “Technically, they didn’t lose it. It was stolen from them. This is the big mystery we’ve been dealing with. Who stole the network, and why?”
Harvath was about to pose a new question, when a chime rang and the green light at the SCIF door illuminated. A fraction of a second later there was the hiss of air as the locks released, the door was opened, and in stepped the Old Man.