Cold Vengeance by Douglas Preston; Lincoln Child

Author:Douglas Preston; Lincoln Child
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: FIC031000
Publisher: Hachette Book Group USA
Published: 2011-08-02T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 38

Fort Meade, Maryland

ALOYSIUS PENDERGAST STROLLED INTO THE LOBBY of an unremarkable building on the campus of the National Security Agency. He checked his weapon and shield with a waiting soldier, walked through a metal detector, stepped up to the reception desk. “The name is Pendergast. I have an appointment to see General Galusha at ten thirty.”

“Just a moment.” The secretary made a call, then filled out a temporary ID badge. She nodded and another soldier with a sidearm came over.

“Follow me, sir.”

Pinning the ID to the breast pocket of his jacket, Pendergast followed the soldier to a bank of elevators, where they descended a number of levels. The doors opened into a bleak maze of cinder-block corridors that eventually brought them to a nondescript door marked only GEN. GALUSHA.

The guard knocked politely and a voice within said, “Enter.”

The guard opened the door and Pendergast went in, the guard closing the door after him, prepared to wait outside until the appointment was over.

Galusha was a neat, soldierly looking man in casual military fatigues, the single black star Velcroed to his chest patch the only evidence of rank. “Please sit down,” he said. His demeanor was cool.

Pendergast seated himself.

“I have to tell you up front, Agent Pendergast, that I can’t respond to your request until you and your FBI superiors go through the usual channels. And I don’t see how, exactly, I could be of help to you in any case.”

For a moment, Pendergast did not respond. Then he cleared his throat. “As one of the, ah, gatekeepers of M-LOGOS, you could be a great deal of help to me, General.”

Galusha went very still. “And just what do you know of M-LOGOS, Agent Pendergast… assuming such a thing exists?”

“I know quite a bit about it. For example, I know that it is the most powerful computer yet built by humankind—and that it is located in a hardened bunker beneath this building. I know that it is a massively parallel processing system, running a special AI known as Stutter-Logic, and that it has been designed for a single purpose: to data-mine information on potential threats to national security. The threats could be of any kind: terrorism, industrial espionage, domestic hate group activity, market manipulation, tax evasion, even the emergence of pandemics.”

He crossed one leg delicately over the other. “In pursuit of this objective, M-LOGOS maintains a database containing all kinds of information: from cell phone records and e-mails to the tracking of highway tolls, medical and legal records, social networking sites, and university research databases. The database is said to contain names and information on virtually one hundred percent of all individuals within U.S. borders, all cross-referenced and cross-linked. I don’t know what the percentage is for individuals outside America, but I think it’s safe to say that M-LOGOS possesses all the information that exists in digital form about most human beings in the industrialized world.”

Throughout this, the general had remained silent and motionless. Now he spoke. “That was quite a little speech, Agent Pendergast.

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