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“VERA likely had mapped out a way of hacking into NASA long before any of us were aware it was in the works,” I reassure Lex but not too much. “Consider yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Ha ha,” he says hollowly as I realize the pun.
“Neva, Vera, yes, the Rong sisters. They wanted access to our campus to take unfair advantage, and you got caught in the middle of it,” I summarize, watching the engineer in the cherry picker reconnect the test model to the hefty shackle hook on the end of the crane’s thick steel cable.
“What if nobody stops her?” Lex means Neva. “Someone put that phone in my backpack, and she was in the same room with me! She wanted me to get in trouble!”
“Well, she certainly gets away with it if she can hang everything around your neck, right?” baiting him, I keep an eye on the black Suburban parked as close to the splash basin as one could safely get.
Its headlights and others of the parked vehicles shine on the spacecraft as it’s slowly hoisted from the pool, water splashing, engines rumbling, hydraulics straining.
“I’ve been led to believe you spent time with Neva before you were together in the VIP room at the rocket launch,” I set up Lex some more, testing his basic honesty while lying through my teeth to him.
“I don’t know who told you that because it’s not true,” he replies. “We weren’t together, and I didn’t spend any time with her.”
“What about when you were introduced?”
“We weren’t. We never talked, were in the same room and that’s it,” he says what I know to be true.
“At any time in the past have you had contact with her in emails, texts, messages? Maybe talked on the phone?” I keep probing.
“No. I’ve never said a word to her,” he answers indignantly, and I believe him.
“Look, I know how smart you are. I’m well aware of all the grades you’ve skipped, of your many gifts,” I’m blunt, not messing around. “I know what people at NASA say about the bright future of our youngest intern . . .”
“That’s a joke!” he blurts.
“It’s not.”
“What future do I have anymore?”
“I certainly hope you have one,” I reply. “But unfortunately, if you’re found guilty of a crime, it will greatly diminish any opportunities you might have had. Deservedly so if you did something bad.”
“I didn’t! Except I’m sorry about the game.”
“This was no game. For now, the more important question is whether you’ve been set up, framed.”
“I have!”
“If you’re innocent, then we’ll fix it,” I offer what I’m not sure I can deliver. “But you’re not naive. You understand what hacking is. And I’m pretty sure you know about espionage since we only have warning posters in every building on campus,” and I sound a lot like my mom right now.
“I haven’t spied. Even if someone wanted me to, I didn’t.”
“Did Vera ask you to do favors for her? Because that’s what it’s sounding like.”
“Kind of,” he shrugs, watching the crane set down the test model on a specialized flatbed trailer.
“What exactly did she ask of you, Lex?”
“Information. She would ask me all kinds of stuff about what your dad and I have been working on. And what I know about your family.”
“Who specifically?”
“You and your sister.”
“What did you tell Vera about us?” and as ART and I record the conversation, I’m mindful that it’s also being transmitted.
Or I suspect as much, considering the electronics inside and all around me. The displays and audio might be off inside my truck but that doesn’t mean we’re not talking into an open microphone. And I wonder who might be listening as I continue to watch for Dick.
“I told her hardly anything,” Lex replies. “I said I know what you do at Langley but we’d never been around each other. And that your sister’s a fighter pilot overseas, some kind of special ops legend to hear George talk,” and of course Dad would brag about Carme like that.
“What about my mom?”
“Vera asked me all kinds of stuff, really personal stuff, but I never went along with it,” his eyes are wide with fear again. “I always pretended I didn’t know much.”
“And the special computer chip my dad’s been involved in developing,” I go ahead and bring it up, “what did you tell Vera Young about that?”
“I swear I never said a word.”
“How did you know about it?” I have a depressing feeling I can guess the answer.
“George,” Lex confirms my fear. “He told me about it one time when we were working on the PONGs in the barn.”
“Did he show it to you?”
“Just a picture of it next to a match head so you could see how small it is. A quantum computer on a chip, the first one ever,” he adds to my growing dismay. “He called it the GOD chip.”
“Did he tell you what that means?”
“Well . . . ,” he hesitates as if wary of getting Dad into trouble. “He said it meant Gemini Original Directive. All I know is it’s got to do with a top secret project, and the chip is locked up in the big gun safe in the barn where no one would think to look for it,” he adds, and I’m getting no indication that he knows the chip is missing but he shouldn’t know about it at all.
“Why do you think my father would share such confidential information with you?” I act as if I doubt what Lex has told me when I absolutely don’t.
“Because it’s awesome. I’d be proud of it too,” he says. “And he trusts me. Well, he did, I guess.”
“When did he show you the picture of the GOD chip?” and as I think of the tracking device placed on my police truck, I have to wonder if something similar might have been done to him.