The Kuga organization was vast. It was like an octopus with a thousand tentacles that stretched across oceans, across borders, and into so many sections of world governments, the private research and development sector, and criminal organizations. Kuga was also rich enough to hire the very best black hat computer pirates. Some gray hats, too, and, Bug suspected, some white hats who did some dirty work when no one was looking.

“Two can play at that game,” he said aloud.

They had the numbers, and they had some radical tech. That was the challenge. Kuga not only hired some of the very best, he gave them money and other incentives to encourage innovative thinking.

Bug was able to see some of this rippling across the entire internet. New software, reports of impossible intrusions into systems guaranteed to be unbeatable, all manner of cybercrimes. A lot of it appeared random, but Nikki Bloom, the head of the pattern search team, had already built a case to the contrary.

“If it were just one or two, or even six or ten, random big-profile hacks, I’d say it was just … random,” Nikki had told him the other day. “But then there have been some serious intrusions to government computers, university labs at MIT and Princeton, and even a military base in Germany. Radically different targets when viewed from one perspective, but when you look closer and see how their cybersecurity was configured and how it was bypassed, well … it’s obvious.”

Obvious to Nikki or to Bug was not obvious to most. Even some of the members of the computer team needed some handholding through the explanation. As did Scott Wilson, who was more diplomat than operative at heart, despite some years pulling triggers for the SAS and MI6. Church, of course, grasped it at once.

When that briefing had concluded, Church took Bug aside.

“I think it’s fair to say that Kuga has a bunch of real hitters on his bench,” he said when they were alone.