Chapter 15: Out of the Frying Pan

“It’s an honor to meet you, sir. Thank you for taking the time to meet with us,” I said as I shook Senator Dixon’s hand. Jim had arranged the meeting after sending both of our senators and our congressman letters explaining the pattern of harassment the FBI seemed to be pursuing.

“It’s my pleasure,” the senator said. “You are an impressive young man, Mr. Taylor, and the incidents you reference are troubling in their own right.”

We all sat down and he pulled out a thick file folder. “I’ve had my staff in D.C. inquire with the FBI about these incidents. The official statement from the director is that you are not part of any ongoing investigation and that the agents involved will receive a letter in their service jackets cautioning them against wasting agency time and resources.”

Jim nodded. “That is nice, but what drove this behavior? I find it hard to believe that Paul is singled out by three different field offices in less than a calendar year, in three widely separated locales, without those agents having some sort of reason.”

“I agree. Unfortunately, I doubt we will ever know what was on their minds. Your letter told me the last two incidents involved research you are funding on battery technology, correct?”

“Yes sir. I’ve wracked my brain trying to figure out why the FBI would want early access to my research. It makes no sense. The only idea that fits would be if some other agency was using them as a front.”

The senator frowned. “Such as?”

“NSA or CIA.”

“Why would our intelligence branches be interested in battery technology?”

“If my ideas pan out, they could have relatively lightweight and compact power sources for use in electronics. I don’t know what else they could be interested in. I mean, better field radios would not drive this kind of harassment.”

“Harassment is a very hard word.” The senator said.

“I don’t know how else to describe it, sir.”

“Well, hopefully this has been put to rest with the reply from the director. I have relayed your willingness to meet with any government agency to discuss your inventions and research, so hopefully, if they want to learn more they will pursue such a meeting. In the meantime, thank you for stopping in and giving me the chance to help you clear this up.”

Jim and I stood, the dismissal clear. We left the Senator’s office and headed back down to the car. I was surprised to see Alison in the front seat next to Sanford who had driven us today.

“Alison, what a pleasant surprise,” Jim said as we climbed in.

She did not smile. “I thought I would catch you while you were in town.” The Senator kept his office in Chicago where we had visited him. “I turned up a little information since Salt Lake. It appears your national intelligence agency is interested in you, Paul.”

“Which one?”

“NSA. They also don’t appreciate questions from their friends in MI-6.”

“Oh?” I was not surprised Alison had contacts in MI-6, the British version of the CIA.

“My friend was told in no uncertain terms to stay away from you. The term used was that you were a U.S.-only asset.”

“I don’t know how to feel about that.”

“Well, I don’t like it,” Jim said. “Something is going on and I’d like to know what.”

“I’d rather it just stop.”

I was quiet for the drive home after we dropped Alison off at her hotel. I was thinking hard about what I remembered of the NSA. The “No Such Agency” in 1982 was very much a secret to most of the US. They were charged with both the protection of electronic communications for the US government and the eavesdropping on our enemy’s communications. I knew that in the future, they would trample the rights of US citizens in the name of protecting them, but I had never paid too much attention to their methods or politics. Now, I was going to have to do something.

We were still about an hour from home when I pulled out my notebook and began jotting down some ideas. DES was the current cryptography standard. I knew it would fall from brute force attacks in the future as processing power improved. I thought the term triple DES was used to address these brute force attacks, but could not recall any specifics. I had no idea what the transforms applied by the algorithm were. I needed to think about this some more.

The following week found me in the ISU library in the evening reading up on DES in government publications. I paid for copies of the sections I needed and then headed home. Jeryl was put off by my intensity, but understood I was working on something that I felt was important. She did insist I put it aside for my birthday celebration. Eighteen for the second time was interesting. Jeryl’s passion was incendiary. The following week, the week before finals, I had a working implementation of the DES algorithm running in Pascal on one of the Apple II Pluses in my office.

Instead of studying for my junior finals, I was busy hacking code to automatically apply the algorithm to data files on the floppy disks we stored our typed notes on.

“Is this really necessary, Paul?” Jeryl asked as I explained the extra steps she would need to take each day on my transcribed notes and her spreadsheets.

“I don’t know. It bugs me that the feds want access to my work without actually talking to me. We’ve improved the security here, but what if they just show up with some bogus warrant and take the contents of our safes? I’d like to know that critical information is still protected.”

“I can’t imagine that happening, but I guess it’s just like having security around, better safe than sorry.”

I gave her a quick kiss and hug. “It also means we’ll have a few minutes at the end of each day together as we wait for the computer to do its magic.”

She smiled and kissed me back. “I like that silver lining.”

“They are both impressive,” Jeryl said as we looked at the matched pair of four-door Range Rovers I had spent the past three months tearing apart and rebuilding. Their bodies looked stock, aside from the metallic black paint job I had given them, but their interiors were redone. I had enlisted both Jims’ help to get the work finished before the end of school, but was happy with the results.

“Why did you use Range Rovers?”

“I wanted the truck chassis but wanted to keep a stock body as much as possible. They have the same drive-by-wire system and electrical drive system as my car, however. I’m hoping I can show them to Ford or GM and get them to build me something similar. I thought about starting with a Bronco, but they only have two door models.”

Jeryl opened the door and ran her hand over the leather seats. “I see you used the same color scheme as in your car.” She moved to the open the back door. “And kept lots of room in the back,” she added with a grin.

I moved up behind her and gave her a hug. “I made them with you in mind, kitten.”

“That explains the bench seat in the front,” she said with a laugh. “How do they drive?”

I handed her a set of keys. “Let’s find out.”

She grabbed them and gave me a quick kiss before stepping up on the running board and climbing behind the wheel. I went around to the passenger side and climbed in as she started it up. Soon we were accelerating down the road.

“Wow, Paul, it handles almost as well as your car.”

“It will handle as well once I finish tuning the software. On the road, it should have an even smoother ride, since I’ve incorporated the dynamic suspension into this as well.”

“Why’d you make two the same this time?”

“Remember during Alison’s interview when she said she liked having a second car in case something happened?” Jeryl nodded. “With two, we have a second car available if we need it. I thought making two at the same time would double the effort, but it didn’t really since I just fabricated extra parts and mounts.”

“What else have you done that’s special in these?”

“Well, I used some of our new materials as an overlay on the body parts.”

“What’s that do?”

“Think of it as a partially armored car. I did it for impact protection, but it should easily stop a bullet as well.”

“Anything else?”

“It’s got a reinforced battery compartment built in so that once we finish a batch of batteries, we can add them to the system. That should give us mileage in the sixty to seventy miles per gallon range.”

“I feel so safe in this car,” Jeryl said as she pulled back into the driveway. “Do I get one?”

I laughed. “If you play your cards right, that could happen,” I said with a waggle of my eyebrows. “But we have to agree that this one does not get shown on TV.”

Jeryl pulled back into the shop, turned it off, unbuckled her seatbelt and slid across the seat to kiss me. A few minutes later, I showed her the recline button. She definitely played her cards right.

“Paul, how would you feel about doing some additional Range Rover conversions?” Jim asked as I came into the shop the following week.

“I’d rather not.” Jim gave me a surprised look. I hurried on. “I don’t want to waste my summer doing more, but I thought we might want some. I made detailed plans.”

Jim smiled. “You want to contract it out?”

I nodded. “I documented everything as I disassembled and modified the second one. A good shop should be able to convert one in a week or so.”

“Wow. What about the overlays on the body parts?”

“That, too. I’ll have to make the overlay for them, unless we want to sell that process and have someone produce it for us.”

“Why wouldn’t we? DuPont seems pretty happy with your last idea.”

I thought about the FBI and the uneasy feeling I still had. “I think I’d like to keep it in-house for a little longer. I’ve not even done a full assessment of its properties yet.”

“Well, you’ll need to do that for the patent application anyway to fully document the process and properties. Do you think you can bump that up your priority list?”

“What’s the hurry?”

“Well, I’d like Jeryl to help get it typed up. Her doing the first pass through your notes has really helped our filing process. Kelly could do it, but even she says it’s almost like Jeryl reads your mind, not just your notes.”

“And she’ll be leaving for her family vacation in three weeks. I get it. I can start the experiments and measurements this afternoon. I should be able to get everything written up in two weeks, especially since Uncle Ben doesn’t need my help so much anymore.”

Uncle Ben had a hired helper now to fill in on the field work while his sons and I were focused on school. I would bale some hay this summer, and continue to take care of our few head of cattle, but that was the extent of my chores now that he had full-time help. Of course, my buying an adjoining 400 acres of land had made it necessary to get help anyway, so I did not really feel bad about it.

I got busy setting up the workbench to make a new batch of car coating. The process I had come up with created a thin-coat material with carbon nanotubes in suspension. It was thin enough that I could apply it with a paint gun. The unique steps came after spraying when I needed to apply an electric charge to the part that was coated to orient the nanotubes. The coating was viscous enough to keep the nanotubes aligned as it dried. The alignment of those tubes is what gave the coating its strength.

Jeryl came in and came over to give me a quick kiss before heading into the office. An hour or so later, I had finished coating a set of thin steel plates. I had a matching set of additional plates to use as controls in my tests. It looked like tomorrow would be lab day for me.

“Hey, I can help you,” Jeryl said. “It will almost be like we had a class together.” I laughed and we began discussing the various measurements we would need to make once the coating was fully dried.

“Speaking of tests,” Jeryl said. “Would your coating do anything to a radar detector?”

“I don’t know. Why do you ask?”

Jeryl blushed. “I was going a bit fast coming out of town this afternoon. Kyle was sitting out by the elevator and had his radar gun pointed right at me as I came over that little rise just before the elevator. I thought he had me dead to rights, but nothing happened. I slowed down some as soon as I saw him, but he seemed more interested in his radar gun than me when I went past. It was odd.”

“Shit,” I said.

Kelly looked up from the desk she was working at. “What’s wrong?”

How do I explain the importance of stealth when it was still very secret to the world at large? No one had yet lived through the revelations or witnessed what a force multiplier it was in military conflict. We were still fifteen years away from the first public disclosures during the first Gulf War.

“We need to talk to some folks for full testing of the coating. Theoretically, the mix of nanotubes in the coating could attenuate radar reflections.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Radar waves don’t reflect off it.”

“Cool, no more worries about speed traps.”

“Not cool. This is the sort of thing the military will instantly classify and confiscate.”

Jeryl and Kelly looked at each other. “Shit,” they said together.

It took a week to arrange, but we finally got something resembling a scientific test on the radar reflective properties of the coating. I had made two one-meter square sheets of plate aluminum. One was coated, the other was not. I made a mounting bracket on the front of my Range Rover to hold the plate. Jim had arranged through a contact at State Farm to use a radar gun which he decided he would run. We were using the blacktop in front of the farm as our test range. Sixty runs were made at various speeds; twenty with just the Range Rover, twenty with the plain plate, and twenty with the coated plate. It was a far cry from a full absorption and reflectivity test, but it was the best we could do on short notice.

I finished the last run and came back to the farm where Jim had stationed himself. “Well,” he said as I climbed out of the car. “It looks like you’ve made a radar-absorbing coating alright. The only time I got any accurate speed readings was with the uncoated plate.”

“Damn. What now?”

“What did your other tests show?”

“It will stop a bullet. A 30.06 round put a pretty good dent in the panel, but did not penetrate. It helps thinner panels resist torsion forces, but that’s about it. Oh, I’m pretty sure it will prevent rust and other deterioration of the metal.”

Jim focused on dismantling the stand for the radar gun for a few minutes.

“If we go to the government, they are going to classify this and you’ll be prohibited from using it or selling it for commercial use. If you publish your results, they will try to suppress them. I can see things getting dirty pretty quick. Any chance you can play with the formulation to make it more reflective to radar without losing the strengthening properties?”

I thought about it as I helped him finish boxing equipment up to return to Bloomington. “It’s possible, but it might take some time. I’d need a real lab to test in, and I don’t even know where one with everything I would need is at.”

“Candace can help with that.”

“So hold off filing?”

“I think that’s the smart move. Once we have a filing on the modified formulation and application process, we can talk to the government about the original formula.”

“What if we didn’t talk directly to the government?”

“What are you thinking?”

“Lockheed.”

“Why them?”

I knew they were already building the F-117 stealth fighter, but could not tell Jim that. “They did a lot of work on spy planes. U-2 and SR-71 are the two we know about. Who knows what else they’ve done. I bet they have a materials team and lab to work with this.”

“And Candace definitely has contacts with them,” he added.

“Jim, I’m a little worried about this,” I admitted.

“Why?”

“You always tell me I look further ahead. This coating has military application. The more I think about it, the work in Utah would be of interest to a lot of the military industrial complex as well. I was fixated on batteries, but this research in material sciences is probably what the FBI or whoever was really interested in.”

“Do you want me to contact Alison?”

“She’s British. Should we tell her what we’ve found?”

“We don’t need to. I’ll let her know we have reason to believe we need to step up security. We can decide what details to share once she is here in person.”

“We need to give her a copy of the encryption program I wrote so we can send her things securely. In fact, we need all our research teams to start using it.”

“Kelly can get copies and instructions sent out. I’ll do a cover letter for it. How will you tell them what the code is to encrypt and decrypt things?”

I didn’t want to get into the key-exchange problem. I had added public/private key certificate generation to the program, but making sure they followed the steps correctly the first time might be a problem.

“I think we’ll need more than instructions. Someone will need to visit each researcher and instruct him to make sure things are set up correctly. I tried to make the program idiot proof, but you still have to follow the directions or you can introduce weak passwords. Maybe I should visit the six teams while Jeryl is away.”

“Not alone.”

“Alison will send someone.”

Jim shook his head. “Paul, if the Soviets learned about these capabilities, do you think one security operative is going to be enough to protect you?”

I had a sinking feeling in my stomach. “We can’t talk about this to anyone. Right now, nobody knows. Until we get some of this research secured and handed off to the experts, we need to keep our lips sealed.”

“I’ll make sure Kelly and Candace understand.”

“And Mom. She’ll worry.”

Jim nodded. “I’ll talk to her as well. You need to talk to Jeryl.”

“And possibly her parents.”

“Why?”

“Jim, she’s only seventeen. I love her, but her parents need to know the risks. They need to decide if they want extra security for Jeryl. Especially while they are traveling on their family vacation.”

“I don’t want to go to Michigan while you’re doing all this,” Jeryl said as we sat in the office and discussed what I would be doing while she was gone and why. Jim and Candace were there as well. Jim and I had decided to not discuss this with Kelly yet.

“It will be fine. I’m sure my imagination is running away from me, but you know the old saying, ‘Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.’ I think being safe is better than being sorry.”

“Okay, but if they are watching you for some reason, won’t just spending a couple hours with each team look suspicious?”

“Oh, I’m planning on spending a couple of days with each team.”

“Then won’t you need me?”

I gave her a quick kiss. “I always need you, but I can visit the researchers this time without you.” I kissed her again.

“Who will go with you?”

“Jim’s asked Alison to come visit. She said she would be here Tuesday. We’ll sort out travel after we talk to her. I’m guessing it will be Candace and me travelling with two security, knowing Alison.”

“And you’re not giving her details on what this coating can do?”

“Only that we realized it had military applications that we feel warrant extra protection until we can hand some things over.”

“Then why are you visiting the researchers?”

“To improve their security in case they have breakthroughs with similar applications.”

“Ok. She’ll agree to that. Why Candace for a travel partner?”

“She heads up our research grant process. It makes sense for her to visit them all with me.” Jeryl nodded. “Also, we need to find a research facility I can use to modify the coating. Something better than a radar gun on a country road.”

“Speaking of that,” Candace said. “The U of I has a great research facility including an electromagnetic radiation research lab. I’ve got a contact down there that I need to call. Since it’s summer, I think we can get you some lab time without too much trouble.”

“Good. Any chance of starting it next week? I’ve got two ideas for changing the formulation that should work.”

Jim raised an eyebrow in question.

“I’m thinking the addition of powdered aluminum or iron will boost reflectivity without impacting the structural properties. What I’m not sure of is how to explain why I’m testing radio reflectivity of this coating.”

“Microwaves,” Jeryl said.

“What?”

“Protective coating for microwave ovens.”

I kissed her. “You are a genius. Microwave ovens use a magnetron just like radar does. It’s a perfect cover.”

“Okay, I’ll go make some calls and see if we can get some test time. Will you need anything else down there?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Okay, then let’s get your travel itinerary lined out. Any thoughts on what order you want to visit the six sites in?”

“Texas first and Montreal last.”

“You need to do Montreal first,” Jim said.

“Why?”

“Your encryption program might be a problem. I want you to visit your one out-of-country research site first so no one has a chance to find out what you’re doing on these visits. If Uncle Sam has a problem with it, let’s make it a ‘fait accompli’ by the time they learn what you are doing.”

“Okay. McGill first.”

“Then let’s do Syracuse, then Austin, Cal Tech, Utah and finish up at Northwestern.”

I thought about it for a minute. “A big circle?” Candace nodded. “Sounds good. We should plan two full days at each location with a travel day between each.”

“Okay. I’ll let the researchers know. What about Alison?”

“What about her?”

“Are you giving her a copy of the encryption program before or after you deliver it to everyone else?”

I started to say before, and then caught myself. “After. I want the research protected before we let anyone with any government ties know what we are doing. She worked for the British intelligence community. I don’t want to create any conflict of interest for her.”

“Fair enough.”

“In the meantime, I want to get four more Range Rovers and find a shop to convert them.”

“With your original coating?” Candace asked.

“Of course. I know it will stop a bullet, and that is enough reason to use it for now.”

Montreal in the spring is a wonderful place. I wished Jeryl were able to be with Candace and me as we strolled from our hotel to the Rutherford Physics Building to meet with Dr. Ellen McTavish. She was contracted to do foundational research on magnetic fields under the guise of improving induction motors for use in cars. Alison and Sanford were nearby. We had decided they could observe us rather than escort us since we did not think there was too much risk.

Dr. McTavish was a middle-aged lady with a nondescript face and graying hair. She did have a ready smile and warm laugh as she greeted us and offered us coffee in her office. “It’s a delight to finally meet you, Mr. Taylor,” she said as we settled into comfortable chairs and she sat behind her desk.

“Please, call me Paul.”

“Very well, Paul, it’s a pleasure to meet you. I feel like you should be sitting in one of my undergraduate lectures rather than reviewing my research, but then your accomplishments are what make my research possible.”

“I’m glad your interests align with my own needs. How are things going?”

“Very well. Most people don’t think there is much left to learn about magnetic fields, but I think our papers, once published will change that perception.”

“How so?”

“I think we can improve the power factor of an induction motor by nearly a factor of two with the modifications to rotor and stator losses we’re achieving.”

“That’s great progress. Can you show me how you’ve done that?” Soon we were deep into a technical discussion. Candace excused herself when we got up and headed to the lab. I waved her away and followed Dr. McTavish.

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