CyberStorm Read Online Free PDF Page B

him.”
    “Didn’t he have three boats?”
    “My point is that before we’d even managed to paddle out of Europe in little buckets, China was already sailing the globe with thirty thousand troops on fleets of aircraft-carrier-sized warships.”
    We’d stopped eating by then.
    “What’s your point? I’m not following.”
    “Just that society goes backwards sometimes, and all this stuff with China—I get the feeling we’re fooling ourselves.”
    “They’re not the enemy?”
    “Just the wrong perspective,” he explained. “We’re squaring them up to be the enemy, but mostly because we need an enemy. They’re not trying to control the world. That was never their goal, even when they were unimaginably more powerful than us.”
    “So you’re saying you’re wrong about the cyber threat?”
    “No, but—”
    Chuck picked up another shrimp.
    “But what?”
    “Maybe we’re blinding ourselves to the real enemy.”
    “What enemy is that, my conspiracy-loving friend?” I asked, rolling my eyes, expecting some rhetoric about the CIA or NSA.
    Chuck finished shelling his shrimp and pointed it at me.
    “Fear. Fear is the real enemy,” he said thoughtfully, looking toward the ceiling. After a moment he added, “Fear and ignorance.”
    I laughed. “With all this stuff you’re stockpiling, aren’t you the one that’s afraid?”
    “Not afraid,” he said deliberately, looking down from the ceiling to stare into my eyes. “Prepared.”
     

D ay 1 - December 23

8:55 a . m .
     
     
    “IT’S TWO DAYS before Christmas. Isn’t it time to give it a rest?”
    Lauren looked at me and shrugged. “I have to make this meeting. Richard really went out on a limb to get this guy to talk to me.”
    We had the bedroom door shut, but the screech of Luke crying through the baby monitor on the kitchen counter cut her short. She reached down and shut it off, just like she’d been shutting me off for the past month.
    I threw my hands in the air. “Well, if Richard set it up, then of course, abandon your family for another day.”
    “Don’t get started,” she replied angrily, shaking her head. “At least Richard’s trying to help me.”
    Closing my eyes and taking a deep breath, I mentally began to count to ten. It was almost Christmas, and there was no sense in escalating. I ran a hand through my hair while Lauren stood and stared at me.
    I sighed.
    “I don’t think Luke’s feeling well,” I said slowly. “We need to go food shopping for the holidays, and like I said, I need to finish delivering those client gifts.”
    My new administrative assistant had forgotten to deliver a dozen of the personalized gifts that we’d created for our clients.
    She’d omitted the ones in Manhattan because they weren’t on the long-distance mailing list. When we’d discovered the error, she’d been in a rush to get off to her family for the holidays, and with FedEx and UPS down, I’d stupidly offered to my partners that I’d deliver them myself.
    Of course, now it was the last minute. Yesterday Luke and I had delivered half of them, running all around Little Italy and Chinatown to some of our smaller start-up partners, but I still had a few left for our bigger clients. Luke had really enjoyed the outing. He was a social butterfly and would step right up and start jabbering to everyone we met.
    “Is delivering a couple of engraved pen holders really going to make or break your business?”
    “That’s not the point.”
    She took a deep breath, and her expression softened. “I forgot. I’m sorry. But this is really important to me.”
    Obviously more important than we are, I thought, but I held my tongue and tried to strike the thought from my head. Negative thoughts had a way of festering.
    Lauren looked toward the ceiling. “Can’t you get Susie—”
    “They’re out all day.”
    “Then what about the Borodins?”
    She wasn’t going to give in. A pause while I inspected the tiny plastic Christmas tree we’d stuck