January

“Can’t we just kill her?”

“Sir, she’s… she’s just a little girl.”

“Little people die all the time, Kamphuis. Besides, she’s not an American citizen. Also, she’s a terrorist.”

“Sir, I don’t think it’s fair to label her as a …”

“It’s not your job to think what’s fair. All I’m saying is … if she were, hypothetically speaking, to have an unfortunate accident, would that solve our problem?”

“I highly doubt it, sir. You saw what happens when she is merely in a bad mood. And being killed might put her in a really bad mood. The damage could be permanent, sir.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, then just find out what she wants. Just deal with it. Deal with it now.”

1

Usadala woke up early on the day of her birthday. The sun was just rising, at the same time it did all year long. She stretched and climbed down from her bunk on the second floor of Amani Children’s Home in Moshi, Tanzania, just on the foothills of Kilimanjaro. The room was mostly empty. It was holiday season and the children who had family they could visit were spending time with them. Usadala didn’t have any relatives left, and the thought of that made her long for her grandmother, who had been with her from her birth, the only family she ever knew. Her Bibi nursed her when her mother died while giving birth, she guided her through the early years and was not just Usadala’s only family, but also her best friend. And then Bibi was gone, too, and Usadala was left alone. She moved from her village to the streets of Moshi, where she somehow survived for two years until a social worker found her last March and offered her a place at Amani.

She liked it here. It was safe, there were other children, and there was food and a nice playground. She had to obey the rules, which was new to her after two years of roaming the streets, but the rules weren’t that bad. She had to go to the classes and wash her own clothes. But for that she had her own bed. That sounded like a good deal to her. And she was doing really well in school, enrolled in a two-for-one program, where she could complete two academic years in one calendar year, to make up for the missed time. She was turning ten today and there was a lot of catching up to do.

It was not only Usadala’s birthday today, but everyone else’s, too.

None of the children had a birth certificate or knew the exact day they were born. Most of the caregivers couldn’t name theirs, either. So, every January 1st everybody turned one year older. The community dining room was lined up with plates, each one with a slice of banana bread and a candle on it. As Usadala prepared to blow out hers, she realized she had never made a wish in her life, that this was the first time she celebrated a birthday without her Bibi and that the thing she wanted the most was to hear her voice just one more time. She knew it was impossible, yet she still murmured her name, took a deep breath and blew out the candle. As she did, she noticed how strong winds brought clouds out of nowhere and covered the sun.

At the end of the corridor, in the small office room, the only phone at Amani began ringing.

2

Jonathan Kamphuis was on his way home from the New Year’s celebration at the house of his girlfriend’s parents, when his pager went off. The evening went well enough, he thought. He’s been with Eileen for five years now, having met her on a pub quiz night briefly after he moved to Langley. They hit it off right away, both screaming “Dreamt!” at the same time, barely letting the host finish his question about the only word in English ending in “MT”. He was two years out of Cornell at that point, and his Summa Cum Laude in math and computer science netted him a job with the Agency as a junior data analyst. By now he was a senior data analyst in the cyber-security division, his promotion earning him a modest pay raise and an obligation to always be reachable.

He logged on his encrypted phone and checked for the message. As he forced his eyes to focus, he re-read it over and over again, the message stubbornly staying the same. Finally, he tapped the cab driver on the shoulder and said softly, “Change of plans, sorry. Please take me to the Headquarters.”

This was not a drill. There was a terrorist cyberattack on the United States of America and it was happening right now.

When they gathered in the conference room, the severity of the situation dawned on him. It was not yet 6 AM, yet all four department heads were there, including his boss, Lisa Styles, deputy director of Science and Technology branch. The CIA director, Jeremy Diggs, sat at the head, still dressed in a tuxedo. Places around the table reserved for bigger fish than him, Jonathan sat on one of the folding chairs next to the wall.

Diggs spoke up, and all the chatter died instantly.

“Ladies and gentlemen, can I have your attention, please. This morning, at 01:33, our country was subjected to a successful cyberattack. The target was our currency on the international exchange markets. Our computer systems show that, beyond any doubt, the course changes that appeared since then cannot be attributed to any market effects. It is clear that this was a deliberate act aimed at destabilizing our currency. It was carried out very sophisticatedly and left no trace we could identify so far.”

A zig-zag chart appeared on the screen behind the Director.

“What you can see here is what happened after the enemy breached the currency exchange rates. For roughly ten minutes, the value of the dollar went up and down intermittently. We believe that period was meant for us to understand that our currency’s value is now in the terrorists’ hands. They want us to know they control it and can do whatever they want to do with it. Afterwards, we saw a steady decline that continues as we speak. All in all, in last four hours the dollar lost about 0.03% of its value against the Yen and the Euro in unaccounted-for effects. In other words, the terrorists are very slowly lowering the value of our nation’s money.

“I don’t have to explain the ramifications of this. If the enemy manages to sufficiently lower the value of the dollar, our entire financial power will be rendered useless. It would have catastrophic consequences.”

Jonathan made quick calculations in his head. If the dollar kept losing 0.03% every four hours, that would be about 0.2% a day and a stunning 6% in a month. With the USA total assets being worth roughly 300 trillion dollars, his country was losing around six million dollars… every second! As always, plunging in the sea of numbers calmed him and made him more focused.

“The timing of the attack is no coincidence,” Diggs continued, “The enemy wanted to catch us while we sleep. But, America never sleeps, ladies and gentlemen, and America never ceases to defend itself. I just got off the call with the President and the Secretary of State. All our country’s resources are being used to combat this attack. And while everybody is working on it, I am confident that it will be the fine men and women of the CIA who will defend our country and bring justice to our enemies.

“Go and do what you do best. Leave no stone unturned. The smart money is on the Russians, but it could just as well be North Korea, Iran or China. FBI Is looking into domestic terrorism, but we know how capable they are, so let’s cover that as well. Text your loved ones. Nobody is leaving until we solve this. Let’s get to work.”

3

One of the best things about living in Amani was the visitors, the ones who came with wild and vivid stories about a world far away, so different from anything Usadala ever saw or imagined. There was a man who told them about the trains so fast that no cheetah could keep pace with them. There was a woman who showed them the pictures of faraway stars. But what Usadala liked the most was when they talked about the animals she never knew even existed. She learned about the bears and the kangaroos, filling her notebook with a drawing after drawing of her new friends, thinking how she would like to meet them and what she would like to say to them.

The man who came to her classroom today had warm eyes and in them she could see that he liked the animals just as much as she did. He came from Europe – she had just learned where to find it on the map – but it wasn’t Europe he was talking to them about. No, he was describing a place that was so magical that Usadala’s heart almost stopped from all the yearning for the pristine beauty she could not only picture, but also feel. He showed them huge blocks of ice just floating in the sea, shaped in every imaginable form. He showed them the pictures of whales and seals and she loved them on first sight. But then he showed them the most beautiful little creatures Usadala had ever seen in her life, and it was more than love. In that moment Usadala just knew that they bonded, she and the penguins, that their lives became connected, and they would forever be family. Penguins, penguins, penguins. She kept murmuring their name, each breath filling her heart with love. It didn’t matter that they lived so far away, it didn’t even matter that they would probably never meet. She now knew they were there for her, that she was there for them and that was all Usadala needed.

But then the man said something else. He said that the little penguins could all lose their homes, because they needed ice to live and ice can only be there if it’s not too warm, and that it was always getting warmer, and that there could be something done about it, but that people who decide don’t care enough and that it is all very sad for the little penguins. She couldn’t really understand why people who decide on everything wouldn’t decide on helping penguins, so she asked the man about it. He said he couldn’t understand it either, but that it was how it was. She burst in tears and ran out, feeling that she would lose her new family before she even got to properly meet them, her joy replaced with desolate sadness.

4

“They struck again! But it’s kind of a good thing.”

Lenny sat at an elongated desk with about two dozen large screens scattered on its surface and on the wall behind it. Jonathan worked alongside him for more than two years now, yet he would be hard pressed to recall any meaningful fact about him. In fact, he wasn’t even sure of his last name. Lenny was Lenny, and he was always there when Jonathan came to work, and he was always there when he left. In a room full of nerds, he made everyone else feel like the captain of a varsity football team. He was always the one to see things first, and it was of course him, who raised the initial alert, having spent the New Year’s Eve at the office.

It was four days in which the US currency defied the market trends, slowly declining, but with no sudden jumps either way. Until now.

They all gathered as Lenny dragged the “Delta Chart” and dropped it on the biggest screen in the room. What it showed was the difference between what the dollar should cost on the international market and what it did, starting with the moment the terrorists took control of it. The zig-zag line of the first quarter hour was followed with a downward line that just scratched the -1% tick. The dollar had lost one percent, the US had lost a neat 3 trillion of its assets. But now, there was sharp turn upwards, and they watched in silence as the losses of previous days started getting erased, as the line inched back to zero.

“Perhaps they will leave it as it was, detach the virus and start negotiating? By now they should have figured out they gave us enough proof that they are in control.”

It made some sense. Or at least it did until the currency line crossed zero and kept climbing. It was now already at +0.3% and showed no signs of stopping.

“Get Lisa, she should see this.”

By the time Lisa Styles entered the observation room on the third floor, the dollar had already gained 1.2%. She was on a line to Diggs who himself was briefing the President’s chief of staff live.

“They are making a move sir, but we can’t make much sense out of it. Yes, I’m in the observation room right now. One and a half percent up! Perhaps it is not the terrorists, Sir, but rather just someone betting on the markets and making a tidy profit. We have watched for any new positions in the market, but there are no suspicious movements, nothing in the amount that would warrant such a breach. Yes Sir, all the markets. Nothing there that we could…”

She stopped mid-sentence as did everybody else in the room. Just as the dollar was about to cross the +2% tick, it briefly halted and took what looked like a straight downwards line, ending at -7.8% a second later. Within that one second the United States had lost one tenth of their value.

5

“You have nothing! NOTHING! We are supposed to be the finest intelligence agency on the planet, and you have presented me with exactly zero, ZERO, usable leads. NOT ONE. IN FOUR DAYS!!!

“The president is furious. He is making it extremely clear to the Director, who is making it extremely clear to me, and I hope to God I am making it extremely clear to you. By now everybody has noticed, and we just have no explanation why. And the worst thing is, we can’t do anything about it. We can buy gold, sell gold, raise interest rates, lower them, nothing matters – the dollar is immune to all the factors that normally influence it, the terrorists obviously have the viruses in all the currency exchange systems, and they just override the exchange rate in real time.

“Our teams are scouring all the systems, but the virus is seemingly like nothing we have seen before. They say it seems to be untraceable, but we will find it. It has to be there. In the meanwhile, the Federal Reserve System is preparing a statement in which it will somehow seem we did this on purpose to help our exports. We can never allow any of this to become public. And we have to find whoever is behind this and stop them by any means.

“The Intelligence Department is after all the usual suspects. Their sources have come up with nothing so far. Nobody knows anything or they just won’t say. They are increasing the pressure. But, people, this is the digital age. No matter how good they are, somebody will have slipped. There will be an e-mail to a friend in Moscow. A phone call to a brother in Pyongyang. Somebody will have said something next to a laptop microphone we control in Teheran. Let’s go! Whatever you are doing, do more. And better. And faster!”

Kamphuis knew Styles’ speech was meant for them all, but he couldn’t help but feel he was singled out. He was in charge of communication surveillance, his hands able to get on every single email, chat message, microphone recording, or a phone call placed anywhere around the world, with a Cray/HPE Frontier supercomputer and its one million teraflops per second easing through whatever encryptions it found in its way. Even so, it took time. He made his scanners search for multiple keywords in more than two hundred languages, starting with the countries that were known players in cyberattacks against the US. But Lisa was right, he came up with nothing. He was expanding the search to the secondary suspects, basically the rest of the world. He didn’t have high hopes. An attack this well planned had to be done by a major actor, not by a few beer-drinking students in Croatia. Nevertheless, he dedicated 30% of the scanner’s resources to the rest of the world, keeping the 70% on the renewed iterations of the original suspects.

6

When Bibi was born, everybody saw that she would be special, and not in a good way. Unlike her twin sister, who was perfectly black, Bibi’s skin was paler, some of its patches completely white, as were the puffs of hair on her head. Her eyes were green, yet another mark of her misfortune. She was not a pretty child, but it wasn’t her lack of beauty that concerned her parents. She bore clear marks of the devil, everybody said, and she would be a curse on her family and the whole village, the elders warned. When her sister turned four, got ill and died, nobody had a doubt whose fault it was. But it was when violent torrents of rain destroyed the harvest the following year that the villagers had enough. She had to go, or they would make sure she and her curse were dealt with.

Just like her grandchild years later, she took to the city streets to survive. Unlike Usadala, she was never offered help and it was nothing short of a miracle that she made it through all these years, moving from the alleys of Moshi to the bigger ones in Arusha. The rumors had it that she made it all the way to Dar es Salaam and that when she had a fatherless daughter it was indeed with a very important man who fell under the spells of a white-haired witch. For that was what she was to anyone and everyone she ever met, a supernatural being they well equal parts scared of and fascinated by.

She was relieved that her daughter looked nothing like her. After her birth she moved back to central Tanzania, settling down in an old hut on the outskirts of a small village. She would rarely venture outside, for she feared her stigma would get attached to her daughter, but also because her eyes hurt when exposed to light. She instead stayed home, cooked and took care of her girl. Nobody ever knew how, but Bibi not only learned to read, but she also had what seemed like an endless and ever-expanding collection of books. She read all the time, sometimes sharing a story or two with her daughter, sometimes commenting without anyone around her to hear her. Talking to the spirits, they called it and steered clear of her.

Usadala’s birth was a difficult one and Bibi knew long before the baby’s first cries echoed through the hut that the ending was already written in the short story of her daughter’s life. But she also knew that something special was happening, and when the little girl squeezed her finger, she felt that she was no ordinary being, that she was strong and magical, that she was born to do great things.

Each night, she would kiss her dark curls and run her patched hand down the Usadala’s soft cheeks. And each morning she rose knowing that she made sure her little grandchild would grow to be the strongest woman this world has ever seen.

Bibi died not having seen Usadala grow. But what she saw made her leave with a smile, a smile so etched in her face that the villagers again murmured that only a witch could be so happy to die. But Bibi smiled for she had seen that her little girl was growing to be as strong as she made sure she would be, and that great things would happen. And she knew that although her body was no more, that she would always be there, if Usadala ever needed her.

7

“This is funny.”

“What’s funny, Lenny? Because, if you’re talking about smashing Oreos and rolling them in a pizza slice, it’s not. It’s disgusting.”

“Sure, but when you eat your sweet and sour, you’re a man of the world.”

“It’s not, it’s not even remotely… Anyway, what’s funny?”

“I’m going through the hits you got on your worldwide search for the keywords. This is a phone call where someone said ‘US Dollar’ just seconds before the breach. It’s the closest one, timewise, that we have.”

“Where was it?”

“On a landline in Tanzania. Yeah, I know, but bear with me. Two female voices; the system pegs one at around ten, the other one at around – wait for it – seven-hundred-fifty. Hahaha, seven hundred! That’s pretty funny, wouldn’t you say? You know what’s even funnier? You wrote that part of the code, age-recognition part. Hahaha, Jonathan Kamphuis, ladies and gentlemen, Mister Ivy League himself. You are such a beacon of inspiration for us, poor community college bastards, haha.”

“Oh, eat me, I’m sure you have the wrong settings. What does it say?”

“I’m running it right now, both through the language translation and through NERD. I didn’t understand a word, naturally, it’s all in African.”

“It’s Swahili, Lenny. But, hey, you got the right continent, I’m proud of you. What’s NERD, again?”

“It’s my new baby. Neurological Expressions Research Database – NERD. I came up with the name myself. Pretty cool, ha? It works best with classic sensory stuff, pulse, blood pressure, skin dilatation, but it can analyze anything – a sound of someone’s voice or a video of their facial expressions. It can tell me if a person is agitated, happy, angry, sad, whatever. You know, like if someone is discussing dropping a financial nuke on the good old US of A, they probably won’t be that calm about it. And the best part about NERD is…”

“Let me guess? That it works, because you programmed it?”

Lenny just grinned as they both watched a lengthy transcript, both in Swahili and English, appear on one of the screens. On two other monitors, NERD displayed charts with the emotional state of each one of the two people on the call. Lenny flipped through various tabs on the chart, eager to talk about his own greatness.

“This one is the level of aggression, I always check that first. Here you can see the general agitation, this one shows you the overall well-being of a person, here you can…”

“Wait a second”, Kamphuis said, “Go back one tab. That looks somehow familiar.”

The red line on the black background, labeled “Person 1, Female, Age 9-12, Overall State”, climbed and descended in an erratic motion forming a familiar zig-zag pattern they have seen an endless number of times over the past few days. They both stared in silence, each afraid to speak and acknowledge what they were looking at. When Kamphuis finally spoke, his voice was barely audible.

“Run an overlay on it with the exchange course rates after the attack. And make sure you synchronize the timestamps.”

Lenny did, and two lines morphed into one, covering each other in a perfect harmony.

“This is impossible. It’s just... No, this is impossible. Are you pulling a practical joke on me, Lenny? Because, may I remind you, this is no time for jokes.”

But one look at Lenny’s face was enough to know that this was not a joke.

“What sampling rate do you have on NERD, Lenny?”

“I… I… Sorry, what did you say? Sampling. I… I have 0.2 Hertz here.”

“OK, let’s think about this. We have about nine minutes of an overlap here. There’s a data point every five seconds. This means we have a set of more than 100 identical points. Her emotional state and the dollar, same. Hundred times. Just considering if each one either rose or dived compared to a predecessor, not even considering the correct amplitude each one has, just that would mean that the probability that this is a pure coincidence is less than 1 in 2^100.”

“1 in 1,267,650,600,228,229,401,496,703,205,376”, Lenny recited absent-mindedly, accentuating each number with a tap of the pencil on the desk.

“We have to go to Lisa.”

“We? No, buddy, we don’t have to do anything. You have to go to Lisa. I’m not touching this with a ten-foot pole. Do you have any idea how idiotic you will sound? That it’s some little girl in Africa holding our currency hostage with the… power of her mind?! No, no, no. Technically, you are my supervisor and today I thank the stars for the age-old custom of creating the company hierarchy based on reverse order of intellectual capabilities. I have informed my superior, you go inform yours. Good luck with that!”

8

One of the perks of having the word “Senior” in his job title was that Jonathan had an office of his own. Small one, but nevertheless one with a door that could close and temporarily separate him from the world that just didn’t make any sense anymore. Having a foreign power mess with the US financials made all the sense in the world. It made perfect sense. Even though he had to admit that finding absolutely no clues and no traces was a bit odd, it just meant that they were caught sleeping. That the enemy secretly developed better digital swords than Jonathan’s digital shields were.

But this? This was phantasmagorical, it was Dungeons and Dragons stuff, not something that could ever happen in a real world. And even if he could ever accept that the two charts were linked not only with correlation, but also with causation, even if he could except the how of it, where and what was the why of it? Why would a little Tanzanian girl want to attack American financial stability?

He sat down and started reading the transcript of the phone call. With every word he read, he sank deeper into disbelief, a story forming before his eyes, yet a story too magical to accept, much less to present to his boss. He was screwed. If he buried this and they found out, he would be fired. If he reported it, he would be laughed out of the building, forever labeled Crazy Kamphuis. He would never find a job again.

He called Eileen. He reassured her that he was fine and that he was hoping to be able to see her soon. No, he of course couldn’t discuss his work, but she needn’t worry, everything was under control. Of course, nothing was, yet he felt better after hearing her voice. He got up, walked out of his office and took the elevator to the fifth floor.

Styles waved him in without raising her eyes from the bunch of the folders scattered on her desk.

“Got something for me, Kamphuis?”

“I might, ma’am.”

She raised her head and stopped sifting through the papers. With a nod of her head, she instructed him to a chair in front of her desk.

“Russians?”

“Um, no ma’am, it’s not them.”

“Chinese, then?”

“It’s not the Chinese either.”

“C’mon, I don’t have a whole day. Spit it out.”

Kamphuis crossed his legs. Then uncrossed them. He scratched a forearm.

“We analyzed a lead from Tanzania, ma’am. Lenny found it.” He hoped that would make his boss’s inevitable wrath be split evenly.

“Tanzania?! How in the world? We didn’t have their government on the radar, did we?”

“It’s not the government, ma’am.”

“A new terrorist organization, then? There was nothing in East Africa with even remotely the capabilities to pull this off, we would have known about it.”

“Um, it’s not the terrorists either, ma’am.”

“I swear to God, Kamphuis, if I have to pull it out of you word by word, I’ll get the tongs and I’ll start doing it. For heaven’s sake, talk to me!”

“It’s just that I don’t know where to start, ma’am. It’s all so very, very strange.”

Kamphuis buried his face in his hands and exhaled deeply. More to himself than to anyone else he sighed, “OK. All right. Let’s go.”

“Well ma’am, and please do bear in mind that I’m only the messenger here, there is this little girl. She was called on a landline at what we located to be Amani Children’s home in Moshi, Tanzania. The caller seemed to be identifying herself as her grandmother, although our records show that she died two years ago. We are still working on identifying the individual. The call was placed at 09:27 AM local time, just six minutes before the attack started, and lasted for 14 minutes, 29 seconds.

“The conversation was filled with lots of standard missing of each other and loving each other and such. However, exactly at the time of the breach, the individual identifying herself as the child’s deceased grandmother says… wait, let me quote her directly… well, as well as I can, the translations from Swahili are notoriously difficult… here we go…

“She said ‘When you were born, my dear Usadala, I wanted the best for you. I wanted to make sure you would be a strong and a fortunate girl. I gave you your name, for I wished upon the stars and the moon that you would be as strong and as mighty as the US Dollar. Looking down on you now, I see you are all that and much more. It is not you who should be looking up to the dollar and wishing to have its strength and well-being, it is the other way around. From now on, the dollar will wish to be like my Usadala’

”And then there are some more minutes of general chit-chat, lots of crying and laughing, and then the phone call ends at 09:39”

Kamphuis exhaled and felt a great burden come off him. His career was over, but at least he was not tormented by choice anymore.

“So that’s it? That’s your pitch, your great discovery? Our working theory now should be that, let me recap this, a dead woman called a child named after our currency, and then decided to turn the tables on us and now our financial might is tied to how a little girl in Tanzania feels? This is what you want me to report to the Director? To the President?”

“I am as skeptical about this as you are, ma’am.”

“Obviously, you’re not! Otherwise, you wouldn’t be sitting in my office now, but you’d rather be investigating the bloody Russians!”

“Believe me, ma’am, I take absolutely no joy in being here right now. But there’s data.”

“What data?”

“Well, Lenny ran NERD on this call. Are you familiar with NERD?”

“I bloody well better be. I paid seven million for it. What about it?”

“Well, see her, ma’am”, Kamphuis said as he extended a sheet of paper across the desk. “These two lines are the currency fluctuations since the, um, the grandmother’s proclamation, and the child’s well-being markers taken from NERD.”

“No, I don’t see it, Kamphuis, there is only one line on this chart.”

“Exactly, ma’am.”

Half an hour after he was unceremoniously dismissed, Jonathan Kamphuis was ordered back to Styles’ office.

“All right, Jonathan, I’ll bite. But let’s just make a few things clear. One, nobody believes in this ludicrous theory, we are just performing due diligence here. No stone unturned. Two, this is on a strictly need to know basis. And that basis includes you, me and, well, Lenny.”

He was not being fired. The thought that he would be taken seriously had never occurred to him. Now what?

“’Now what, you must be asking yourself. You were right, data is the key. The data we have could have easily been, and probably is, corrupted. I will work under an assumption that it was planted by the real enemy in order to either delay us in our investigation or just laugh at us, and I will work under that assumption until proven otherwise. I don’t want to have anyone else involved for reasons you might imagine, but we need boots on the ground. So, it will be your boots on the ground.”

He could perfectly understand why she didn’t want anyone else involved. The absurdness of it all was harder to explain with each step up the chain of command. If Styles ever decided to report on this, she had to be far more certain than she was by now.

1 in 1,267,650,600,228,229,401,496,703,205,376 didn’t cut it, if your story also involved dead witches and ten-year-old terrorists.

But he didn’t really understand what she meant with his boots on the ground. He was an analyst, not a field agent. Although he highly doubted field agents had much more training in interrogating little children than he did. Well, he at least hoped so. But, whatever it meant, she couldn’t want him to go to Tanzania, could she?

“I want you to go to Tanzania. The guys from Digital Footprint have already set up everything. Your company is called Corentis, you deal in advanced consumer electronics and you are a great humanitarian, Mr. Poyer. Your website is up, its blog is filled for the last five years, your products are set up on Amazon, and I’m happy to report that your customer satisfaction is humming to the tune of 4.7 stars.

“Your secretary has arranged for you to visit the Children’s home tomorrow. You will present a handsome check, pledge long term support and, on a personal note, deliver some presents. As the Home’s policy prohibits presents to individual children, you will bring them to all children. Namely, these.”

Styles reached into a drawer and took out a bright green plastic watch.

“This is basically a smartwatch. Only with more sensors, a battery that lasts a year and an uplink to our satellite. Your job is to make sure Usadala gets one and that she wears it. I suggest asking the staff for a group photo with all the kids wearing the donated watches, so that your marketing department can use it in their campaign. Something like this. I don’t care. Wing it. Get her to wear the watch. Lenny will be NERD-ing in real time and we will have reliable data.”

“And then?”

“I don’t know Kamphuis, I honestly don’t know. We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. Get going, your plane leaves in an hour.”

9

The heat struck him like a hammer. When he had boarded the plane 15 hours earlier, the temperature at Dulles was just below freezing. He was wearing long cargo pants, shirt, sweater, and down jacket. Now, as he exited into equatorial hotness, he wished he could take it all off. He settled for the sweater and the jacket and thanked the benevolent providence for the bottle of water his cab driver had ready for him.

For all the trivial facts he knew about, well, everything, he was surprised to be surprised about what Tanzania looked like. For some reason he was expecting ardent and bared landscape, but what was passing by his car window was green and lush. Twenty minutes later, he settled in a lodge occupied almost exclusively by western tourists.

“Up or down?”

The question came from a table next to him. He was in a garden, where he was being served lunch, fried chicken and Coke. Just like home, he thought. There were some dozen tables on the paved patio, about half of them occupied. Behind them, a spacious lawn, with sprinklers scattered through it and small monkeys playing with them. Nothing like home, Jonathan thought again.

“We’re obviously not going up”, the man continued, while nodding towards majestic contours of Kilimanjaro behind him and simultaneously patting his equally impressive pouch. “But, between you and me, it’s not worth it. You can get best pictures from down here, anyway.”

Jonathan quickly realized that the opening question was not a question at all.

“And boy, did I get the pictures down here. All the big five, of course. Rhino, lion, elephant, buffalo, leopard. Leopard was the most difficult one, the suckers hide in the trees, would you believe it? But look, is that a National Geographic shot or what?”

He turned his laptop to face Jonathan. “And this one? And the lions, we were this close to them. We did it all, Serengeti, Ngoro Ngoro, best agency, I can hook you up.”

“I’m so sorry, my husband sometimes gets too enthusiastic,” a freckled redhead in her mid-forties interrupted. “So, what does bring you to Tanzania, are you a climber or a wildlife admirer?”

Jonathan had spent his flight prepping for what he would say at Amani, learning about his newly founded company, their products, his own role in it and the desire to help the less fortunate. He wasn’t ready for this. He was no James Bond, he wasn’t made to make up a lie on the spot. He wiped the sweat off his forehead, and hoped it was normal for a tourist to sweat in the shade.

“Hi, nice to meet you. My name is Josh Poyer and I come in the name of all the employees of Corentis and it is an honor for me to be here.”

“Dear God, did I just actually say this,” he thought. The couple exchanged a quizzical look, and the woman responded. “Well, nice to meet you, mister Poyer. We hope you have a great stay.”

He finished his chicken and quickly retreated to his room. The world of international espionage was much more enjoyable from behind his desk at Langley.

10

An hour later he was dropped by another cab at the gates of the Children’s Home. It was an L-shaped building, with the long side containing the offices, the classrooms and the bedrooms, and the adjacent wing comprised of a communal dining room, a kitchen and a workshop. Among them, the soccer field stretched all the way to the fence. The children were skipping rope, drawing, playing drums and generally milling around, early afternoon offering time for leisurely activities. One of those kids is holding the United States hostage, thought Kamphuis, and again shook his head at the ridiculousness of that idea.

The meeting with the home director went well. Kamphuis, no, Poyer explained how he was there in the name of all the employees of Corentis and how it was an honor for him to be there. He said how one of his employees spoke enthusiastically about great things being done for the kids here. No, he couldn’t divulge his or her name, unfortunately, data privacy laws, you know. But his company was driven to do good around the world and it would be his honor to contribute $20,000 annually for the next five years, and he knew that a lot could be done with such funds. He also brought presents, and yes this was what his company was doing, had the people at Amani never heard of them? He had to fire some people in the marketing department, ha-ha. But on a serious note, would it be too much to ask to distribute the watches among the kids, and the staff of course, and take a picture his marketing department could use? Do good things and talk about them, that’s how the world works, right? It wouldn’t be too much hassle, really? Oh, they were such lifesavers! And they could do it right away? That was really very nice of them.

Back in his room at the lodge, he opened a metal briefcase which morphed into a sturdy laptop and a satellite phone. On a split screen, the dollar value fluctuated lazily on the left. On the right, 117 signals from Amani kept ticking. He pressed a button, and then only one signal was left on the right side of his screen, words “Match found” flashing beneath it. There was no doubt about it anymore. Whoever was wearing a watch marked “0xF3-P” was their man. Or, more probably, their little girl.

11

“Can’t we just kill her?”

Those were the first words Jonathan heard Jeremey Diggs, the Director of CIA, ever address to him personally. He was pretty sure that until today, the big man had never even heard of him.

After the continuous flow of data confirmed that Usadala was indeed controlling the dollar value, Styles had no choice but to continue pushing the findings up the ladder. Diggs was a pragmatic man, a career intelligence officer who had spent 37 years in the agency, the last 16 of those at its helm. He long stopped caring about how probable or improbable something was. In his world there were problems, and then there were solutions. His job was to find the ones that best served his country, while also not hurting his own career. If he had to topple a government or two to achieve that, then that was what needed to be done.

The current crisis was one of the biggest ones he had ever faced, and he was under enormous pressure. Not that he could really be pressured. Presidents were interchangeable, yet he towered over the security of American citizens as the politicians came and went. He was ready to offer a substantial carrot or an equally substantial stick to solve this. But first he had to find out which one was needed.

Diggs left the conference call, and Styles already had a plan in place for her new field agent.

“Good news for us is that there are only a handful of girls in Amani. Girls are much less likely to go to the streets, so as a consequence, most of the children in the home are boys. We have already put up a page on your corporate website with your visit and the picture. You will see in the comment section that it was wonderfully received and that a spontaneous new initiative is forming – you want to pledge additional funds for girls’ education.

“Your secretary has already informed the Amani staff of this great new development. She also informed them that you would be delaying your return flight by a day, and how you would love the opportunity to interview one of the girls for a featured article. After they gave the background stories on the eight girls, your secretary suggested that the story of a 10-year-old Usadala would possibly resonate best with the community in your hometown.

“You have a meeting at 10 AM tomorrow. There will be a social worker present to help you, and of course, we will be there, too. Make sure you don’t forget the earpiece.”

And with that, the blossoming career of Josh Poyer, an international spy, was prolonged for another day.

12

When Jonathan was dropped off next morning at Amani by yet another cab, he managed a confident “Asante sana”, a thank-you-very-much in his now 34th language. He knew he wouldn't be able to share any of this with Eileen, yet he desperately hoped he would find a good occasion to casually drop his new favorite word in a conversation. Integrated Anglicisms were nothing new to him, yet there was something simplistically beautiful about calling a roundabout kiplefti. He wondered how long it would be before he could cozy up with his girlfriend, the world no longer in imminent danger of a financial collapse. He remembered that it depended mostly on him, sighed, and entered Amani anew.

“Mr. Poyer! So great to see you again! We heard the good news. Please extend our thanks to your employees. It is so reassuring when people want to help just out of their good hearts.”

Yes, nothing but humanity at work here, he thought.

After some friendly chit-chat, he found himself in a room with Usadala and George, the social worker who was there mostly for the girl’s benefit, although Kamphuis somehow felt relieved not to be left alone to do his first interrogation. Was it what this was? An interrogation? And if so, why was it him who was terrified, when the one opposite him was a ten-year-old girl?

He realized the child was immensely beautiful. George took a photo of them, for the company website, and Kamphuis for a second wished that page were real and not only visible for connections made from the limited range of Tanzanian IP addresses. He wanted to be this girl’s friend, to be there for her, to help her. Then he remembered, that in a strange way, that was exactly his job.

“Usadala is one of our best students and a hard worker. She is just feeling a little sad today”, said George almost apologetically, after the girl failed to make any attempt at smiling for the photograph.

“George, you are a life-saver”, Lisa shouted over at Langley. It would have taken Kamphuis a better part of the decade to ask the right questions, she feared, and here, the good old social worker unknowingly led them right to it. Perhaps she should hire him.

“Ask them why she is sad,” she whispered into Jonathan’s earpiece. He did.

It was George who answered.

“Usadala is very nature-bound, she loves animals. We had a great visit the other day, and a friend of the Home came and talked to the children about the animals he saw around the world. Among others he talked about penguins…”

Styles signaled over to Lenny who was listening in on the conversation next to her.

“We’re looking for a male entering and leaving the Home two days ago. Get in their agenda, their emails, somebody must have planned it. I need a name, and I need to know everything about him now. Also, find out where he is and have a team ready to pick him up.”

“And Usadala loved the penguins, didn’t you? But she is a little sad, because the man said that the ice was melting and that it would keep melting until the penguins lost their homes and it could only be stopped if all the governments were to do something about it. He might have actually mentioned that the USA had not signed the Climate Agreement, as well.”

Back in the country that had indeed signed the Climate Agreement, but then backed out of it, Lisa Styles sighed. “Oh, Lenny, don’t you just miss the days when the climate warriors simply chained themselves to things? Or set themselves on fire? But no, now they have to put ideas in the heads of little girls with superpowers, and they have to do it on my watch.”

She guided Jonathan through some half hour of pointed questions, but it became increasingly clear that Usadala would not be happy unless a serious effort was mounted to preserve the ice sheets of Antarctica. Lenny had meanwhile identified the visitor as a harmless Danish backpacker with no known affiliations to any sinister movements. Styles nevertheless decided to have him picked up and scared shitless because, well, because she could, and she wasn’t having a grand day herself.

She had Jonathan tell Usadala that he knew some very important people and that he would put in a good word for climate preservation activities. The promise itself immediately shaved off 1.6% off the losses the dollar had incurred, but they all knew it would take action, not just promises, to put their currency back in the green. It was time to talk to Diggs, again.

13

“She likes penguins?” Under other circumstances the latest twist would have made the whole story weirder, but with where they started from, Diggs was almost amused. “So does my granddaughter, perhaps we should organize a playdate.

“So, you think if we do this, it would lift her spirits?”

“You saw what just the idea that it could happen did, sir. More than one percent instantly.”

“I see your point. Well, under the circumstances, it could have been worse. It could have been far worse.”

“So, you will brief the president?”

“That idiot? Dear God, no.”

They sat in silence for a while.

“This is what we are going to do, Styles. Draft me a report about how you found the source of the disruption in Russia. Be vague enough so that it could be state sponsored, a new KGB offshoot, something along these lines. Bottom line is we found it. We would have found it even sooner with better funding. We are working on disabling it and expect results very soon.

“In the meanwhile, I need four independent polls showing abysmal approval rankings of the president. Have them published tomorrow, across the spectrum, from Washington Post to New York Post. Make climate concerns one of the hottest topics that led to the public opinion. Then I need a study that was published, let’s say two days ago, to be referenced tomorrow on main news channels, showing that moving to clean energy would generate plethora of middle-class jobs right here, in the US.

“Do whatever it takes, Styles, all this needs to be done by tomorrow morning. I’ll set up a meeting with the president for the afternoon. And then I’ll listen when he comes to his brilliant idea how to make himself more likable.”

“Consider it done, Sir.”

“I mean, we did find it, Styles. So, good job, I guess. Send your kid back home.”

14

Josh Poyer was having one last breakfast in the lodge. The monkeys were again playing with the sprinklers, the tourists were again seated at the tables on the patio. He looked at the mighty contours of Kilimanjaro and thought how one day he would like to go there with Eileen.

He thought about Usadala and how there was some poetic justice in the fact that the well-being of mighty financial institutions was tied to her own. He thought she had used her immense power to the benefit of all mankind, and remembered Bibi’s words from the transcript, in which she reminded the little girl how she was born to do great things. She indeed had.

What would have he asked for? A lifetime supply of beer and pizza? A house for Eileen and himself to settle in? It would have never occurred to him to ask for something so significant, and he was both happy that she did, and that her wish would work out. The world will never know that it owed it prolonged existence to a beautiful little girl with the deepest eyes he had ever seen and her dead grandmother witch.

But he knew. Field agent Josh Poyer knew. He wondered if he had done well on his first mission and had to chuckle about even thinking about the word mission in the context of his life. Now that the pressure was gone, he was starting to enjoy it. He looked around, took one last sip of the coffee, and then turned to the neighboring table, where a young couple was reading a tourist guide. He nodded friendly and asked, “Up or down?”