Sheldon Redux
Sheldon listened to the whole story without interruption until I got to the part about the emails that Dr. Malenkov was going to send me. "What's the encryption key?" he wanted to know.
I had anticipated that question, and I had already decided that I wasn't going to answer it. I assumed that Sheldon would start intercepting my emails, and if he could decrypt the notes from Dr. Malenkov, he could cut me out of the loop entirely by pretending to be me and responding to her himself. While I suppose this procedure would have made sense from the viewpoint of national security, it would also mean that I would never find out what was going on, as it would eliminate my "need to know." And I really, really wanted to find out what was going on.
"What if something happens to you?" Sheldon asked, reasonably. "If Dr. Malenkov's story checks out," he added, in a tone that implied that he didn't expect that to happen, "and if you're the only one who knows the encryption key, millions of Americans could die in a nuclear attack if something bad were to happen to you."
"Then I guess you'd better make sure that nothing bad happens to me," I suggested.
And nothing bad did happen to me. In fact, for a while, nothing much happened to me at all. Dr. Malenkov did send me a few encrypted emails shortly after I got home, but rather than containing any of what Sheldon called "actionable information," they just fleshed out a little more of Nicholas Vanderoo's plans for the Ajax project.
One thing I learned from her notes was that Nicholas Vanderoo's name was actually Nikolas van der Rohe. I also learned that he had no plans to turn American cities into radioactive cinders until New Year's Eve, which effectively gave Sheldon a couple of months to figure out what to do about it.
Dr. Malenkov told me that Mr. Van der Rohe had not exactly been able to reprogram Ajax to do anything he wanted it to do. I was relieved to learn that he could not direct a nuclear missile to any destination whenever he felt like it. I was, however, less relieved when I learned that he had already targeted four cities for destruction. And because his access to Ajax was much more limited now than it had been while he was engaged in the reprogramming effort, he would not be able to swap those cities for different locations. Unfortunately, Dr. Malenkov had no idea which cities were in his sights. I remember thinking that Dallas was bound to be much lower on the probability list than, say Washington. I wondered if Sheldon was based in the D.C. area, if he had a family there, and whether he had already decided to send them on a surprise winter vacation.
Ajax also required some kind of special target (or a "TARGET EVENT," whatever that meant) in place on the ground for its guidance system to lock on to. And Van der Rohe had not been able to program Ajax to deliver its missiles on a prearranged schedule. Instead he actually had to send Ajax some kind of signal when he wanted to initiate its firing sequence – which meant that if Sheldon could locate Mr. Van der Rohe before the end of the year, the problem might be eliminated (along, I suspected, with Mr. Van der Rohe).
Small comfort, I know. But I guess when you're staring into the face of nuclear annihilation, you have to be grateful for small favors.
By mid-October, I guess that Dr. Malenkov had told me everything she knew – or, perhaps, everything she thought I needed to know. The chatty emails were replaced by a terrifying silence that lasted a very long couple of months.
And then all hell broke loose.
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©2007 Henry Charles Mishkoff