The Looming Threat
Bauer arrived at the office early in the morning and called out to Biden, who was already hunched over his monitor. “Hey, Biden.”
“What is it, Bauer?” Biden glanced up briefly before returning his attention to the screen. His indifferent tone made it clear Bauer had been dismissed, but that was simply how things were between them.
They had joined the agency together at twenty-eight, their skills and personalities closely matched, so they had become fast friends. Though their universities and backgrounds differed completely, such things held no weight here. Only results mattered—results were the ultimate virtue. Among the new recruits, Biden and Bauer had traded first and second place, so a bond was inevitable.
“Anything come up?”
“No.” Biden shook his head at Bauer’s question.
The monitors on their desks were no ordinary screens—thirty-inch cinema displays, two of them in a dual-monitor setup that offered an expansive workspace. Across those vast screens, countless monitoring windows displayed parameters and streams of messages. They were the results of background tasks left running when they had clocked out the previous evening.
Bauer powered on his own computer, entered his ID and password, then swiped his badge across the reader. The locked screen came to life, revealing an interface nearly identical to Biden’s. Since they handled the same assignments, their workspaces naturally mirrored each other.
Their job was to serve as monitoring agents for the CIA’s secretly operated Prism system. The displays were not separate programs but remote-access client windows for Prism itself; their role was to remotely control the system according to directives from their team leader.
“Some results came back, but nothing meaningful.”
“Haah, this is bad. Deadline’s tomorrow, right?”
“Yeah. How about yours?”
The monitoring agents’ usual work involved analyzing the data Prism pulled in. A few days ago, however, their task had reversed: they were now feeding keywords into Prism to search for information. Their team leader had brought the urgent assignment—a single photograph and a tip that “an Islamic extremist armed group in Afghanistan is plotting something major.”
To Biden and Bauer, the phrase “Islamic extremist armed group plotting something” carried the same weight as “tomorrow the sun will rise.” The words “extremist group in Afghanistan” were synonymous with the Taliban, and the implication of a major plot reeked of large-scale terrorism. The accompanying photograph made the matter far worse: a blurry Polaroid showing the interior of an aircraft crudely assembled from plywood and car seats salvaged from junkyards.
Combined with the Taliban, that single image took on grave significance. The CIA had therefore set out to verify the intelligence’s credibility, meticulously examining the Polaroid and its contents. Tracing the source came first. When the results arrived, both men were stunned—the informant was none other than President-elect Al Gore. The person who had given Al Gore the information was the famous chairman of ID Group, Yoo Jae-won.
Yoo Jae-won had entered the United States to attend the inauguration of the 45th President on January 20. He claimed to have received the intelligence from a Russian contact and judged it credible enough to pass along, complete with the photograph. Because Yoo Jae-won had played the largest role in Al Gore’s election victory, Al Gore had not dismissed the report. On his first day of work at the White House after the inauguration, he convened an unofficial security meeting and shared the information with America’s intelligence agencies.
The United States did not rely solely on the CIA or NSA. Every department maintained its own intelligence apparatus: the Department of Defense alone fielded the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, the Marine Corps Intelligence Activity, and the Office of Naval Intelligence. The Department of Homeland Security had its own intelligence analysis division, and the State Department maintained its Bureau of Intelligence and Research. America operated more intelligence organizations than any other nation on earth.
Yoo Jae-won’s tip had reached every one of them, sparking a frenzy as each agency raced to extract the most accurate picture from the intelligence—an internal competition. Every director believed that being the first to uncover the truth would prove their organization’s superiority and secure larger budgets and greater authority. Naturally, the Prism team at the CIA carried the heaviest expectations. Billions of dollars had been poured into building Prism, and true to Yoo Jae-won’s guarantee, its search performance exceeded existing systems by more than two hundred times. Satisfaction was high, and field evaluations were excellent. The team was therefore determined to deliver results once again.
Yet even with Biden and Bauer working overtime and pushing Prism to its limits, nothing had surfaced.
“A hijacking seems most likely,” Bauer said.
“I agree.”
The problem was that they had uncovered nothing about who among the Taliban would act, when, where, or what the ultimate objective might be.
“Time to stretch our imaginations again?”
“Biden, you take the first shot this time.”
While their hands worked the Prism interface, their mouths never stopped.
“Hostage exchange is the most probable motive, isn’t it?”
The intelligence clearly pointed to a hijacking plot. They needed to consider the reason for such an act, and hostage exchange appeared the most plausible. Biden immediately pulled up a list of captured senior Taliban figures from Prism and found several prominent names—wealthy scions from Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia who had embraced radical Islamist fundamentalism and joined the Taliban.
“Not bad,” Bauer remarked. The theory sounded reasonable, so he began searching for Taliban organizations connected to the individuals Biden had flagged.
In reality, the terrorism being prepared was far more extreme and shocking, but Biden and Bauer were ordinary men bound by the limits of common sense. The notion of hijacked airliners being flown into buildings was simply beyond their imagination.
“Let’s move the relevant keywords to the top of the monitoring priority list for now.”
The most immediate action they could take was to dramatically elevate the names of senior Taliban figures and hijacking-related terms in Prism’s continuous monitoring queue.
“OK! You’re writing the report for the team leader, right?”
“Everyone handles their own work.”
After their usual squabble over the tedious paperwork, they settled the matter with a quick round of Tetris. A few minutes later, the loser—Biden—grumbled as he began drafting the document.
The next day, Yoo Jae-won was once again on his way to ID Electronics. The decision to mass-produce the Android Phone—now facing a direct showdown with the iPhone S—had to be finalized. Once production began, hardware changes would become nearly impossible, so his task was to raise the device’s completeness to the highest possible level.
“Hmm. I wonder how things are going over there.”
Inside the moving car, Yoo Jae-won thought about the chaos that must be unfolding inside America’s intelligence agencies. At Al Gore’s inauguration, he had delivered a warning about the 9/11 attacks through a photograph and a clue. Thanks to the enormous contribution he had made to the election victory, Yoo Jae-won had been granted a private meeting with Al Gore, where he passed along the 9/11 intelligence. Unable to reveal that he was a regressor, he had used Russia as a plausible cover story. Russia had learned its lesson the hard way in the Afghan War and possessed deep knowledge of Afghanistan. More importantly, Russia had recognized the danger posed by the Taliban early on, making the excuse convenient.
The photograph itself was a fabrication created by ID Group’s intelligence team. It had not been made with simple editing tools like Photoshop. The CIA maintained a department highly skilled at analyzing photographs; a crude fake would only have drawn suspicion back onto Yoo Jae-won. Instead, a set had been constructed deep in the mountains of Pakistan, Afghanistan’s neighbor, and photographed with a Polaroid camera. The plywood forming the crude fuselage could be obtained anywhere, and the seats arranged like aircraft seating had come from a junkyard. Once the Polaroid was taken, the makeshift set was dismantled, burned, and destroyed. The intelligence team had carried out the operation, and those who endured the hardship received a generous bonus.
Taliban. Airplane terrorism.
“Is this enough?”
Yoo Jae-won believed the keywords should be sufficient to prepare for 9/11, yet he could not be certain. He could not simply tell Al Gore that Osama bin Laden was planning to hijack airliners on September 11 and that the targets were the Pentagon, the Capitol, and the World Trade Center. Even with their close relationship, Al Gore would never believe such a claim outright. Moreover, if the attacks occurred as scheduled, further questioning might follow. That was why, when crafting his master plan before regressing, Yoo Jae-won had devised the Russia-sourced intelligence route. Even if the U.S. government inquired with Russia about the tip, there would be no contradiction—during the final leg of his honeymoon, he had discussed Afghanistan in depth with Putin.
Yoo Jae-won’s hope was that heightened awareness of aircraft terrorism would lead to stricter aviation security protocols. The most desirable outcome would be a requirement that cockpit doors remain locked after takeoff, rendering hijackings impossible.
“If all else fails, I can always tamper with the raw data going into Prism.”
If no changes occurred by September, Yoo Jae-won resolved to take artificial measures. With that, he set the matter of 9/11 aside and returned his focus to his primary duty—running ID Group.
“Is this the final version?”
“Yes, Mr. Chairman!”
Yoo Jae-won accepted the Android Phone that President Hwang Chan-kyu of ID Electronics had carried in a secured briefcase. Because the device carried the highest security classification, the case had been handcuffed to Hwang’s wrist. The first impression the phone conveyed was still one of weight. The battery accounted for most of it; this model used an 1800 mAh lithium-ion cell. Compared with the T-Touch Phone, the increased capacity added roughly twenty grams, yet despite the larger screen, operating time had actually improved thanks to the larger battery and the more power-efficient 120-nanometer processor.
The design was flawless. The rounded rectangular corners and minimized seams left nothing to catch the hand. The home button, volume controls, and power button all offered crisp, precise feedback. Although the integrated battery was a drawback, it had allowed the design to reach the pinnacle of refinement. The addition of water resistance further protected the expensive device from accidental damage. It was not fully waterproof, but far stronger than mere splash resistance—dropping it into a toilet and retrieving it within ten minutes would cause no issues.
Still, water resistance was not the feature they intended to highlight. In a litigious country like the United States, advertising water resistance only to fall short of expectations could invite massive lawsuits.
The true significance of the Android Phone lay in the fact that it was ID Group’s first true smartphone, boasting specifications that would overwhelm both last year’s iPhone and the upcoming iPhone S. While Yoo Jae-won examined the final prototype, President Hwang Chan-kyu watched with a slightly bitter taste in his mouth. Every critical component and the overall design had been led by ID Group’s U.S. subsidiary. Korean researchers at ID Electronics had been eager to participate and confident they could deliver results, yet the development of core technologies—mobile application processors and the operating system—had remained the responsibility of the American team. The Korean division’s role was limited to production. Though that task was far from trivial, the disappointment was real.
After thoroughly testing the final prototype, Yoo Jae-won spoke.
“It’s good. Proceed with mass production as is.”
“Yes, Mr. Chairman!”
With Yoo Jae-won’s approval, ID Electronics immediately shifted into full-scale production. The official launch was scheduled for IDDC 2001 in August—six months earlier than originally planned. For President Hwang, even that timeline felt tight. Simultaneous global release required rapid production of qualification units, followed by regulatory certifications in the United States and Europe, as well as the construction of distribution networks. Six months was not a generous window.
As President Hwang had feared, time passed swiftly. In the blink of an eye, August arrived.