Take the Fourth (38 page)
Authors: Jeffrey Walton
Her mind was still stuck on every third word, until she came to the word grace again. This time it was the second word in the sentence. She quickly picked out each second word and came up with:
Target
grace
care
son
senator
wife
time
to
be
determined
order
shoot
quality
pictures
of
subject
.
She went to the first email she had read, this one had every third word, she looked at the subject line… . “tree of life,” she looked at the subject of this one “to each their own,” and just like that she broke the code. She went to the second email entitled “go forth my friend” and read every fourth word.
blessings
for
this
evening
at
her
home
after
eleventh
before
twelve.
This was sent on the day of the murders just before 2 pm.
It seemed this jreynolds had someone working for him, call it an agent or spy but someone was on the other end of the strings. She had three emails from the puppeteer, jreynolds, one was the prime directive, one with the actual time, the last one was asking what went wrong and requested the location of the marionette.
Was this what Scott was after? Was he trying to help or cover up his own tracks, his own mistake, was the President really involved? There were a seemingly a million more questions that followed but she had to focus on just one. She chose to focus on the “who were these emails going to.”
. . .
W
hen Reynolds finally sobered up from his internet intoxication he opened up his email. In there was an email from
[email protected]
. He knew right away who it was from—it was from the man with the answers, it was from Lieutenant Colonel John Smith. He immediately clicked it open.
From:
[email protected]
To:
[email protected]
Subject:
first down and goal to go
Now
it’s
late
in
the
game
with
the
skins
down
by
6.
What
they
cannot
do
is
lose
or
they’ll
be
out
of
the
playoffs
for
sure.
How
many
chances
do
they
get
this
late
in
the
game?
Long
yardage
is
never
good
on
first
down,
especially
being
so
close
to
the
goal
and
they
are
now
back
beyond
the
red
zone
due
to
the
holding
call.
Should
they
pass
or
run?
I
would
pass;
running
for
that
many
yards
late
in
the
game
is
risky
at
best.
Stay
in
the
pocket,
relax,
look
down
field
for
all
your
receivers,
and
only
pull
the
trigger
when
the
coast
is
clear.
Here
and
now
baby,
here
and
now.
He deciphered the email and wrote his response. Reynolds was quick with his bible talk; growing up a strict Baptist did have its advantages although after the sights and sounds of life in the marine corps he was now a strict atheist. He hit send and waited patiently for the response which never came. Usually within minutes his emails were answered. John could churn out sports talk like grinding meat into sausage links. It was going on thirty minutes and still no response. He waited another thirty, then called Scott.
“I hope you have answers Reynolds, if not…”
“About an hour ago I received an email from my handler.”
“You mean John Smith.”
“Yes”
“I thought he was dead?”
“What? I never said that, I said I never got in touch with him.”
“Sorry, go on.”
“Like I said, I just got an email from him, basically asking what’s next, and how long should he stay at the safe house.”
“Where’s the safe house?’
“I don’t know, I was never in contact with him, hold on, back up a bit, well I was, I told him the target and the course of action, but I never told him where or when.”
“Maybe he was in surveillance mode and took it upon himself.”
“Never, he’s one of the best I have ever worked with, he would never go against a direct order or take it upon himself to act unless permitted to do so.”
“We need to find him and find him fast.”
“I already sent an email, I’m waiting for his response.”
“What did the email say?’
“I asked him to explain why she was dead, and to find out where he was.”
“Send me the email.”
“It’s in code.”
“I don’t care about that, I want to view it.”
“Okay on its way.”
“Now the second he gets back to you…”
“I know, I’ll call.”
Reynolds went back to staring at his inbox while Scott dialed back into the system to see if John Smith was back online. When he entered in his password he got a Permission Denied message. “Son-of-a-fucking-bitch, that cocksucker. First he lies to me, now he locks me out of the fucking system.” He knew in an instant that his friend and foe had locked him out. He didn’t want to get into a pissing contest but he was going to have to contact his boss sooner than later, for now he elected to review the email Reynolds had sent him.
With little surprise he saw the same IP address as earlier. The log files that were sent to him were pretty useless only because he had no idea what he was looking at or for but at least now he had a clue. He wanted to find exactly where Reynolds’ email was being sent; maybe that way he could deduce the whereabouts of the lieutenant. He got back on the horn to Samantha Green.
“Hey Sam, I need you to do me the same favor again, but narrow the search to only the last two hours.”
“I have to warn you, Jorja Carson from the DST was talking to me about this very same thing, she knows that I pulled the log files for you.”
“Jorja Carson?”
“That’s right.”
“How did she find out?”
“Seems we turned up on some report in their system when I dialed in to retrieve the files.”
“That was fast.”
“I’d say, do you still want me to get them?”
“No, looks like I’ll have to go through the proper channels this time. Thanks, and if I need anything else, I’ll call.”
“Jorja Carson,” he said to himself and then it clicked like a bullet entering the chamber. Jorja Carson, niece of one Senator Floyd Carson, niece of the now deceased Grace Carson, Jorja Carson Deputy Director of the DS&T. “Son-of-a-fucking-bitch!” He was going to have to make a call, a call in which he didn’t want to make in any way shape or form.
. . .
J
orja toyed with the idea of getting a hold of Reynolds but he didn’t know where his rogue agent was hiding based on his last email. Since his email was never forwarded requesting the rogue agent’s location because it was still sitting in the inbox of
[email protected]
, Jorja had the upper hand but there was still plenty of risk involved. She was going to try and make contact with the person who possibly murdered her aunt.
Jorja needed to construct an email. She wanted the “from” email to look as though it was from
[email protected]
but she wanted it to appear in her inbox during the reply. A few years ago she confiscated, from an employee, a handy little program that spoofed a sender’s email address. This little program is widely used by spammers and jokesters alike. Her employee played little pranks around the office by sending emails to various colleagues from the likes of George W. Bush thanking them personally for a job well done, the human resource department telling them to take a shower because people are starting to complain of the odor, or doctor so and so stating their test came back positive. It was a good laugh but like all good things in the office world, if it made people laugh, it needs to stop, work should be serious at all times. She never once wanted to use this program, until now. It was straight forward and she ran a few tests to make sure it worked as planned. The only problem was if the person receiving the email reviewed the complete header information they could theoretically find the true sender. She took that chance and sent jreynolds original email entitled “tree of life” to
[email protected]
, if he replied without noticing a thing it would be forwarded to her gmail account email address plain and simple.
While she waited, more like hoped and prayed for a reply, she had work to do. If she could figure out the next sequence of the agent’s hotmail account she could literally become Reynolds. She deleted the message from its inbox on her server and forwarded it to herself along with the rest of the previously sent emails. There had to be some sort of connection in the sequence numbers and given time she could probably figure it out but time was of the essence. She called Greg.
“Hello, you have reached the voicemail of Greg, please leave a detailed message and I will return your call as soon as possible, if you need immediate assistance, please contact Jorja Carson at extension 1134.”
“Greg, Jorja, give me a buzz as soon as you can.”
She dialed his cell and received a similar response. He was not answering. This was a rarity for Greg, even if he was on the john, that boy answered. She decided to take a crack at it herself
83683, 123794, 174001, 234318, 304741
Each number was greater than the last. Each number alternated between odd and even and she was almost sure the next one would be even. She plugged in all the numbers both separately and as a complete string into Google and did a search. She was hoping they were a sequence within pi or the mathematical constant e or something along those lines. No such luck. When she did them separately she found all sorts of hits ranging from gene sequence numbers to Amazon product codes but nothing was consistent across the board. Off the top of her head she did some quick calculations and found the next number increased by a factor of ten thousand each time. The second number was approximately forty thousand more than the first, the third was approximately fifty thousand more than the second, so on and so forth. She did the actual difference between each number and found the exact increase from one number to the next.
40111, 50207, 60317, 70423
Nothing stood out except each one of these numbers was five digits long. “Maybe zip codes,” and she went back to the web. 40111, Cloverport, Kentucky, 50207, New Sharon, Indiana, 60317, didn’t exist, and neither did 70423. “That wasn’t it.” She then searched for these numbers within Google and received the same results as before; there was no string tying them together. She looked at the numbers again and noticed each of these numbers was odd and smiled when she remembered Doug’s earlier comment. “Odd, number, odd numbers,” she kept repeating to herself, “odd but how about prime, prime being a number only divisible by 1 and itself.” She remembered one of her college proofs in one of her mathematics class stating 2 can be the only even prime number. She entered 40111 and the word “prime” into her favorite search engine. About the fourth or fifth hit within the page was a reference to 40111 and a list of prime numbers between 2 and 100,000. She opened the list. She searched for 50207. She found it. She searched for 60317. She found it. She searched for 70432. She did not find it. Then she noticed she transposed the numbers and then found 70423 was also on the list and thus a prime number. “Each one of these numbers was prime, coincidence, I think not.” She assumed the next number in the sequence was going to be prime as well, “but just what was the next prime number?” She examined them even more. Each of these prime numbers was roughly ten thousand more than the first, well closer to ten thousand one hundred. If she were to add ten thousand one hundred to the next number she needed a prime number close to 80523. She looked at the list—there were two, 80513 and 80527. 80513 wasn’t closer but without going over like as in bidders row on The Price is Right she thought. Then in her head she heard, “80513 come on down you are the next contestant on the number is right.” She added this number to the last email and came up with the new email address of
[email protected]
. “But what if I’m wrong?” Before she did anything with the email address, she deduced that she had a fifty-fifty chance in picking the right prime given the fact adding ten thousand one hundred, give or take, gives the next prime number in the sequence. “Ah, hell, send both, what’s it gonna hurt.” So Jorja now had two email addresses, the other one being
[email protected]
.
She came this far, now the only thing left to do was construct the email to the person who murdered her aunt. Her phone rang.
“Hey Greg, never mind.”
“What?”
“I had a little problem on my hands but my math skills solved them.”
“Do you care to share?”
“Nah, too long to explain, maybe later.”
“Alright, call me if you need me”
She was going to ask him where he was but left it to her imagination, besides if she really wanted to know she had god’s eyes for that. After her brief conversation she noticed her gmail account said, ‘1 new message.” Her heart was pounding in her chest as she saw an incoming message from
[email protected]
.
From:
[email protected]
To:
[email protected]
Subject:
great teams have character
The
boys
are
back
at
home
but
still
have
not
scored
in
front
of
their
fans
in
their
last
three
outings
here.
When
it
comes
down
to
winning,
digging
in
deep
along
the
boards
is
essential
to
scoring
goals
in
front
of
the
net.
Pucks,
sticks,
and
pads,
are
all
the
same
it’s
the
players
that
determine
the
outcome
of
each
game.
So
it
really
does
not
matter
which
location
these
professional
players
skate,
it
comes
down
to
heart.
Both
the
captain
and
the
team’s
coach
need
to
communicate
both
on
the
ice
and
on
the
bench.
Remember
each
and
every
team
can
call
time
only
once
per
game
so
it
is
critical
to
use
it
wisely.
If
this
game
goes
into
overtime,
they
cannot
call
another
timeout
if
they
already
used
one,
thus
forcing
a
penalty
and
be
down
a
man.
We
had
to
ask
the
coach
“Please
explain
why
you
called
time
in
the
first
period,”
when
the
game
was
still
tied
at
one.
“Old
and
young
hockey
players
must
play
through
pain
of
losing”
was
his
reply,
which
did
not
answer
the
question.
There
is
a
specific
conduct
or
strict
code
to
adhere
by
when
you
adorn
the
jersey
and
following
it
to
the
letter
will
help
a
team
rise
to
the
top
a
coach
must
also
follow
these
rules.