Replicate: Beneath the Steel City: Book 2 Page 2
Chapter 2
I turned my attention to the government procurement databases. I looked up both industrial replication companies, then scrolled through their orders. Governments never use one word where ten paragraphs of densely-worded text will do, and love to use acronyms, so working out what each of them meant would have taken me more years than I had left on the planet. A sensible plan of attack, I decided, would be to focus on the most expensive projects. I ordered them by total procurement value and studied the first one, dated almost a year ago.
Contract number: MOD/FRF/55/87289903091211258
Summary description: FRF NFSOR
CPI: Cr150,000
Quantity: 50
TCV: Cr7,500,000
Collection address:
RAF Northolt, West End Road Ruislip, Middlesex, HA4 6NG, England
Delivery address:
Various as per schedule
I had no idea what ‘FRF’ stood for, nor the whole of ’NFSOR,’ but I did – thanks to the research for the replication project I’d commissioned – know the meaning of the last three letters: Shell-Only Replica. In other words, only the outer shell of the item would be replicated.
I made a judgement call. The collection address told me that this was a military project, and the military involves people with guns. I don’t like guns. I especially don’t like the thought of lots of people with guns all pointing them in my direction. This wasn’t a project I was going to mess with, at least not personally. But my curiosity was piqued.
The judgement call was that I could afford to have Saira do some research for me. Sometimes – as with the circuit-board – she was a necessary part of plans. I did, though, aim to involve her as little as possible in my … freelance activities.
"Saira wake,” I said. The code-phrase was the only one she would hear when I’d instructed her to enter sleep mode.
“Awake,” she replied.
“I need to know what some acronyms mean. FRF and NFSOR. I believe both are terms relating to large-scale replication projects, and already know that SOR means Shell-Only Replica. I need to fill in the blanks.”
The completely undetectable amount of time it took Saira to scan millions of records meant that she gave the impression of knowing everything, as her responses to such queries were immediate.
“NFSOR means Non-Functioning Shell-Only Replica,” she said. “I can find no match for FRF in the replication field, but there are 35 other meanings. Is there another possible context?”
“Military, perhaps,” I said.
“There are five matches in the military field. Fast Response Fighter, Fatigue Reliability Factor, Finnish Rescue Force, Fire-Resistant Fuel and Flight Records Folder.”
Only one of the five had a shell: the Fast Response Fighter. Why would the government be creating 50 non-functioning replicas of a fighter? I turned in my seat.
“Show me a Fast Response Fighter.”
The holoprojector showed me a three-dimensional image, rotating slowly in mid-air. It was an indistinct colour, somewhere between a pale blue and light grey. It had the oddly angular shape of a craft designed to deflect RADAR. It carried six missiles in three different designs. None of them looked friendly. It also had two different guns on each side. As with most military aircraft, it was clearly an unmanned craft, with no cockpit. On the list of things you wouldn’t want to argue with, it would get a pretty high ranking.
A non-functional aircraft? Decoys, perhaps?
“Where are FRFs housed?” I asked Saira.
“Ground-based ones in standard underground hangers, sea-based ones in the hanger storage area beneath the flight deck.”
“So none of them are kept above ground?” I asked.
“No,” replied Saira. “The reasoning is that underground storage is not only safer for the aircraft, but also makes it impossible for the enemy to know where they are deployed and in what numbers.”
Both arguments made sense. What made no sense at all was to have non-functioning decoys for aircraft that were only ever visible when in the air.
“Does the military have any dummy FRFs?”
“None are revealed in publicly-accessible records.”
I made a mental note to conduct my own search of records not matching that description, but I would be surprised if it revealed a different answer.
“Any record of any kind of replica FRFs?”
“None,” she said.
“Hypothesise,” I told Saira. “Reasons for the government having non-functioning replicas of FRFs. Eliminate decoys.”
“I have no hypotheses,” she replied.
I raised an eyebrow. Saira always had hypotheses. The apparent pleasure she took in enumerating possibilities sometimes made one question the idea that robots were incapable of emotion.
Saira correctly interpreted the look, and expanded on her response.
“That is to say, I can think of only two other theoretical possibilities, but neither bears scrutiny. One, display or PR purposes. Two, training.”
I agreed with her that neither held water, but wanted Saira to check my reasoning.
“Go on.”
“Display or PR must be rejected for two reasons,” replied Saira. “First, a total spend of 7.5 million credits is disproportionate for such purposes. Second, if the explanation were as innocent as displays, there would be a public record of them. This had to be some reason kept secret from the public.”
“Agreed.”
“Training also makes no sense. These are unmanned craft, so have no pilots to train, even if there were any value in sitting them inside a non-functional replica. They are shell-only replicas, so there is no possibility of practicing any kind of maintenance on them.”
“Agreed again,” I said. “So we can think of no possible reason for shell-only replicas of FRFs to exist.”
“No plausible one, no,” she said.
“Interesting.”
Searching non-public records took two hours and many different databases. I wasn’t very much wiser at the end of it, but I did know where the replicas had been sent.
I made a call to a journalist acquaintance. I used the name he knew me by. I was fairly sure he knew it was a pseudonym, but I occasionally passed him interesting leads and he knew better than to enquire too deeply who I was or how I came by the information.
“It’s Jason Moore,” I said.
“Long time. How’s things?”
“Good,” I said. “I have a little mystery for you.”
“You know I can’t resist a good mystery.”
“I do,” I replied. “This particular one is why the government created fifty non-functional, shell-only replicas of the Fast Response Fighter and had them delivered to five different military airbases.”
“Intriguing.”
“I thought you’d find it so. I’ve sent you an encrypted email with the paper-trail. None of it comes from public records,” I added.
“You know that’s problematic,” he said. He meant that there would be no means for him to independently verify the information unless he could find a source with access to the same information.
“And you know I’ve never fed you misinformation,” I replied.
“I do.”
“Have fun with it.”
I’d like to pretend my primary motivation was to expose wrong-doing and shine the light of public scrutiny upon shady-looking behaviour. Mostly, however, it was that I don’t like mysteries, and as there appeared to be no profit in this one, it seemed efficient to delegate the task of solving it.
Which left me free to examine the second-most expensive project on the list.
Contract number: TSY/BOE/SGR/04/6580284918
Summary description: RMR Kiloton WBSOR
CPI: Cr5,150
Quantity: 100 per calendar month (open-ended)
TCV: NAV Cr6,180,000 (Cr515,000 per calendar month (open-ended))
What was interesting – very interesting – was the collection and delivery address shown immediately
beneath the value. This project appeared to have profit potential; I would do my own acronym research.
Chapter 3
The addresses were very interesting. Very, very interesting.
Collection address:
Bank of England, Threadneedle St, London EC2R 8AH
Delivery address:
1. Replicas: Bank of England, Threadneedle St, London EC2R 8AH
2. Originals: Consignment 9151, Swissport Cargo Warehouse, Heathrow Airport, TW6
I instructed Saira to shut herself down: I didn’t need her over-hearing me when checking out the acronyms.
“Computer, acronym, RMR, context word Kiloton, context place Bank of England.”
“In that context, the acronym most likely refers to gold bars: Royal Mint Refinery. This is gold refined by the Royal Mint, and is considered by the gold market to represent the very highest standard in high-purity gold bars.”
“The gold standard of gold, you might say.”
“That would be an accurate colloquial description.”
Computers have no appreciation of the high art-form of punning.
WBSOR I already knew from my replication of the Gold State Coach: Weight-Balanced Shell-Only Replica. A Shell-Only Replica is one whose exterior is indistinguishable from the real thing, but whose interior is very far from real. Weight-Balanced means that the replica weighs exactly the same as the original.
Clearly the government was replicating gold bars stored in the Bank of England vault.
“Acronym, CPI, context industrial replication company.”
“Cost Per Item,” replied the computer.
So, each replica gold bar was costing 5,150 credits.
“Today’s market value, one kiloton of RMR gold.”
“Mid-market rate currently 52,044 credits.”
So. Each replica was worth around 10% of the value of the real thing. That meant that about the outer 10% of the bar was real gold, and the rest would be tungsten – the only material with the exact same density and therefore giving replica bars that were an exact match in both size and weight. Unless you started cutting them in two, there would be absolutely no way to distinguish a replicated fake from the real thing.
The fake bars were being returned to the Bank of England, presumably to sit there in the vault as if nothing had happened, while the real gold – worth ten times as much – was being shipped off to a Heathrow warehouse. From there, a hypersonic flight could put it anywhere on the planet in less than an hour, and a space freighter could see it end up literally anywhere.
100 kiloton bars per month. That was, in round numbers, 5.2 million credits. Deduct the 10% cost of the replicas and someone was making a tidy profit of 4.7 million per month. Nice work if you can get it.
“Acronym TCV and NAV in same context of industrial replication.”
“Total Contract Value and Nominal Annual Value,” replied the computer. “The latter is normally used for open-ended contracts where the contract term is unknown.”
Right. So the government was raking off 4.7 million credits per month, on an open-ended basis, perhaps stopping only when all the gold in the vault had been replaced with replicas.
Was it corruption? One or more government employees with larceny in their hearts? Or was it the government itself, finding a way to sell off the country’s gold reserves without anyone finding out?
Not much can shock me where governments are concerned. If you expect them to be oppressive, underhand, duplicitous and greedy, you will rarely be disappointed. My guess was that it was the government. I’d done my good deed by exposing the fake fighters. If someone was illicitly getting their hands on the real gold, I could see no reason why that someone shouldn’t be me.
A little more digging through the procurement records and I had the date of the next shipment. Getting my hands on the gold shouldn't be too difficult, and given that the government was up to something shady, it was unlikely to go running to the police.
But the government had many … less public ways of tracking down and dealing with those who cross it, and I suspected that the department assigned to the task would wish to be certain that there was no risk of the matter even becoming public. If caught, the government’s preferred solution to the risk I posed to its nefarious plans would likely be as simple as it was permanent. I would prefer not to be caught.
Fortunately, I had a tried-and-trusted strategy here: the best way not to be caught for committing a crime was to ensure that no-one ever found out that it had happened in the first place. And I knew exactly how to do that. I started putting the necessary steps into place.
Chapter 4
The arrangements in place, there was nothing left to do now but wait for the next shipment, six days away. In the meantime, I couldn’t afford to neglect the pressing matter of the mystery person who knew more about me and my arrangements than anyone should.
Saira had made me appreciate that I needed to be cold-blooded in my approach. Philippa was a logical possibility, and I couldn’t let emotion get in the way of thoroughly investigating it. I still believed I could trust her, but I had to approach it assuming that I couldn’t.
“Computer, isolate all occasions on which Philippa accessed you for anything other than routine control of the domestic systems.”
“Done.”
“Did she at any time access any of my private data? Data to which her login should not have permitted?”
“Negative.”
I realised the answer meant little. If Philippa had been capable of accessing my private data repositories, she would also be capable of covering her tracks.
“Assume that she did so and erased all record of this fact.”
“So assumed.”
“Examine the logs, looking for anything suspicious. Any sign that any of the logs have been modified in any way.”
“Checking.”
If I carried out a manual check myself, it could take many hours; the computer would be able to do it in seconds.
“There is no indication that any of the access logs have been in any way modified.”
That also meant little, I realised. Philippa was good; very good. Just because the computer couldn’t detect any anomalies didn’t mean that they weren’t there, only that they had been doctored sufficiently well to pass an automated check. There was nothing else for it – I was going to have to review all of the logs manually.
“Display all of the logs for the times when Philippa accessed non-domestic systems when I was not present.”
An index of log entries was displayed. I quickly scrolled down to the bottom and back up again. It was long – and my evening was going to be likewise.
Some four hours later, I’d reviewed all of the logs and found no indication of anything untoward. I asked myself: if the positions were reversed and I wanted to cover my tracks, how would I do it? The answer came quickly enough: the first thing I’d do is guard against both the automated and manual checks I’d done. I could, for example, go in through one of the domestic systems, and then hop my way through the system to the data I actually wanted to reach. By instructing the computer to exclude those occasions Philippa had accessed the domestic controls, I’d eliminated those occasions.
Another approach would be to modify the monitoring logs so that I would appear to have been present in the apartment while she was in the system. Those occasions, too, I’d eliminated.
It was hopeless. Short of reviewing every single log for all the time she’d been here, I couldn’t trust any of my conclusions. Which left me with a dilemma.
Did I get in touch with her? If she was indeed behind it all, I’d prefer to confront her now – find out what she wanted from me – than leave it hanging over me for some unknown period of time. Since it appeared that her motive was to have power over me rather than simple theft, there would be little reason for her to deny it.
But if she’s not the one behind it, then turning up on her doorstep and accusing her wasn’t going to end well.
Chapter 5
I’d had nine days to put the arrangements in place; more than enough time.
My first step, of course, had been to amend the next purchase order in the system to instruct the replication company to create two replicas of the next batch of gold, rather than just one.
I didn’t need to make any changes to the existing delivery arrangements. The normal security company would still do the pickup for the Bank of England, and would still take the replica bars there. The first set. The company would also take its consignment of gold to Heathrow.
I had one small change to the despatch instructions for the replication company, however. Instead of handing over the real gold to the Heathrow pickup, it would instead hand over the second replica set. The security company would be unaware of the change, of course.
I’d originally planned to book my own security company to pick up the real gold, to be delivered to an address of my choosing. A temporary address, of course, from which I would arrange my own transfer later.
But it’s the little touches I find satisfying, so I instead opted to add that delivery to the government’s own purchase order, so that the government picked up the tab. I’d adjust the purchase order after it had been paid, and if anyone did happen to glance at it in the meantime, it was unimportant. I’d used a prepaid card to pay for the serviced office, and would of course be wearing a disguise and using latex gloves with fake fingerprints on the day, so there would be nothing to tie the location to me.
Once all three deliveries were complete, all I had to do was wait until both purchase orders had been paid before restoring them to their original versions. The records would then show that what happened this month was exactly what should have happened: just one replica set of gold, and just two deliveries.
The plan was a thing of beauty, because absolutely everyone involved would be happy. The replication company would be happy because it had been paid for the extra set. Whoever was behind this in the government would be happy because the records would show that everything had taken place just as it should. Whoever received the ‘real’ gold would be happy because, short of cutting the bars in half, they would never know that they hadn’t received the real thing. And, most importantly of all, I would be happy because I’d be in possession of 100 kiloton bars of gold worth 5.2 million credits.