Page 110 of Mastermind

“I looked into the miracle cases,” I tell Theo. “Everyone claims they were healed. Experts say Heywood’s treatments worked. As I said before, I even checked if he was calling his shots after the fact, looking for spontaneous remissions and then claiming them as successes.”

“That’s because he knew that’s the first thing people would look for. Heywood is too smart for that. He found treatments that do help, but he’s been lying about how he actually found the ones that worked.”

“Okay, how?” asks Gerald.

“The miracle-cure patients weren’t the first ones he tested these treatments on. Nor was the Chernobyl group. Those were the cases in which he tested the most promising therapies. What Heywood’s hiding is that he tested all his results from Lifeline, including therapies that killed people and displaced more effective treatments. He presented us with only the ones that worked and hid all the deadly test cases.”

“Who, Theo? Who are these test cases?” Gerald asks.

“Everyone. Or near about. Hundreds of millions of people. What Heywood is hiding is how he learned which treatments worked. It wasn’t Lifeline. It was his willingness to sacrifice tens of thousands of people in the largest secret medical research project ever, by changing up prescriptions without anyone knowing.” Theo turns to me. “Remember the list of companies that he’d acquired? The ones that Warden Weir invested in? One of them went right under our radar because they got bought up by a Chinese conglomerate: Autopharmix. They made medical equipment that automated medication formulation. What we didn’t appreciate is that Autopharmix was acquired for its software—the code that tells the machines how much of a dose or what ingredient to put into a pill or a solution. Having bought the company, Heywood controlled the software and installed back doors, which means the machines could be overridden to change doses or substitute compounds. Many of those machines were used in factories where medications are manufactured. Because they’re produced in batches, with individual doses given batch numbers, Heywood could monitor which hospitals or pharmacies they went to. He was able to mess with the prescriptions of millions of people.”

Gerald is shaking his head. “We would have noticed something like that.”

“Would you? The same prescription software’s used throughout China, South America, and parts of Europe. All he had to do was test a tiny fraction of people and measure outcomes. He could do that by tracking patient IDs as they were used to generate prescriptions or through the software the physicians used.”

The implications of what Theo is saying are dawning on me. Dad’s medications are prepared in the clinic by a machine that the pharmacist types instructions into and then lets do the rest. I’ve given him pills without questioning if they were the right ones. His condition got worse for a while. Was this the natural course of the disease, or was he part of Heywood’s secret testing? The thought makes my blood boil, and—if true—it would enrage millions of people around the world. It was one thing for us to believe Heywood hacked pharma software to suggest new treatments that all worked. It’s another to think that his cures came at the cost of tens of thousands of people dying.

“Okay, I’m not saying I completely buy it,” says Gerald. “But if I did, how would we manage to convince half the government that Heywood’s lying?”

“The data centers,” replies Theo. “Heywood wasn’t breaking into them to retrieve the rest of his neural network data. He was covering the tracks of his massive experiment.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“I think he had to cover up for Autopharmix . . . or rather, the software. He built back doors into all those medication manufacturing machines, which would leave digital footprints. He sent in his teams to cover them up.”

“He used the Voids just for that?” asks Gerald.

“The Voids were also a convenient excuse to erase whatever other data he needed to,” Theo replies.

“All right. So how do we proceed?” I ask.

“I have some thoughts. But this comes down to you, Jessica. We’re going to need a miracle of our own.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

RAW DATA

“How’s it look?” I ask Theo as I make sure my blonde wig doesn’t look like a wig.

We’re sitting inside an SUV down the street from CenterOps, the Manhattan data center that we learned Heywood’s team broke into disguised as fire department officials.

“Great. May I?” He tucks a loose strand of hair over my ear. “The glasses look good. You’re probably an outlier on the attractiveness scale of New York City Fire Department inspectors.”

“Have you seen some of the guys who fight fires?” I reply.

“Um, point taken. I guess I was grading on a different scale.”

“Let’s check in with Gerald.” I put my phone on speaker and place it on the dashboard.

“What’s up?”

“We’re about to go in,” I reply.

“Okay. But remember, since we don’t have a warrant, this is on you. If anything happens, it’s your asses, not mine.”

I think he’s overdoing it with the “asses” comment, an uncharacteristic swear for Gerald, but the point is made. “We understand. Get in. Get out. Get caught, we’re screwed. Theo, you okay with that? This would ruin your FBI protective custody.”

“I know what I’m getting into. Get the data on the IMT device and get out,” he replies.