The Cipher (14 page)

83

MELANIE DIDN'T WANT
to open it.

She'd gotten through Rose's email account without finding any new messages about Tarasov or Alice's letter. But then, double-checking the “sent items” folder, she spotted another message to [email protected]. Melanie had sent hundreds of emails to that address. It was her dad's.

The email had a blank subject line. Melanie ate the last spoonful of her blueberry yogurt, which she'd only ordered because the guy behind the counter had been giving her the hairy eyeball. She scraped the bottom of the plastic cup and set it down.

“Please be nothing,” she whispered to no one, and clicked open the message.

Rose Carlisle

To: Marshall Hunt Bcc: Henry Worth

Thursday, May 12 9:38:03 AM

Re:

 

Marshall,

You didn't return my call yesterday—I hope you don't think I'm going to drop this. Something needs to be done. I have verified Andrei's material, and it completely checks out. We need to make this right.

Call me. Let's figure this out.

Rose

For a moment, Melanie couldn't move. Rose had died not a month after sending that email. Her brakes had failed on a drive in the country. Rose always drove too fast, and she hadn't been able to make a raised turn. They found her in a ditch twenty feet below the road, dead on impact. It was accepted as a tragic accident—but it was the kind of thing that could have been engineered as well, couldn't it?

She slammed her computer shut, drawing another stare from the guy behind the counter. He was around her age, with thick blond hair, dark eyes, and amazing skin. He was the kind of put-together guy she fantasized about when Smiles got on her nerves. He kept staring.

“What!?”
Melanie shouted, surprising herself.

The guy edged toward the back—probably getting a manager to deal with the psycho chick with the yogurt. She gathered up her stuff and got out of there before she could make it any worse.

She blazed back on the Pike the way she had come, although she knew she couldn't go back to Weston tonight. Her palms were slick against the steering wheel as she moved through the weekend traffic. She was going too fast and didn't care.

Planning would calm her down a bit. First, she needed somewhere to sleep. The answer came to her instantly: Mr. Smylie's cabin at Squam Lake. She'd been up there a million times with Smiles, and she knew they kept the key hidden in a fake rock by the back door. Nobody would know she'd been there.

It was going to take a long time to drive to Squam Lake, way up in New Hampshire, but she could use the time to think. Her pulse slackened as she settled in behind a sports car cruising down the passing lane. If anybody got a speeding ticket, it was going to be him.

She reviewed what she knew: Rose had come upon some important information about Andrei Tarasov. Information that she had “verified”—whatever that meant—and that her dad apparently didn't want to deal with. In the email, Rose told her dad that they needed to “make this right.” Within a month, Rose had died in a car accident.

Melanie tried to blink away the thought that her dad could have somehow orchestrated Rose's death. But she couldn't ignore it: Both Andrei Tarasov and Rose were dead, and her dad was mixed up in their secrets somehow. If Melanie could find that letter from Smiles's birth mom, Alice, she was sure it would explain everything.

She cracked the window, drying the sweat beading on her forehead.

The strangest part of the email was the bcc line, to [email protected]. Melanie didn't recognize the name associated with the address—Henry Worth—but at the moment he was her only lead. She had to find out what he knew and why Rose had copied him secretly on her email.

The sports car darted ahead and Melanie pulled into the right-hand lane, less frantic now that she had the semblance of a plan. She picked up her cell and dialed Smiles. It didn't matter anymore that they had broken up; he deserved to know this information.

No answer. She held the cell to her mouth and launched into a message. About halfway through she realized she was rambling and probably sounded hysterical. Melanie cringed and said, “I'm just stressed out about this, and, well, I guess this Henry Worth guy is all I have to go on right now. His email address is from Northeastern, so that's a start. I hope I can find out what was in that letter from your mother. I think that letter has all the answers to everything. I . . . I . . .”

Melanie wanted to tell Smiles that she missed him. It was hard to say if she actually missed him or if it was just that reflex she had—the reflex to make him feel special and wanted.

“I . . . I m—Just call. It's important. Okay? Okay.”

Melanie made herself hang up.

She was about to toss the phone aside, but on impulse she flipped through the address book again. Melanie had stored Jenna Brooke's phone number there months ago. She'd never actually dialed it before, but Jenna was the only person who knew anything about Andrei Tarasov.

“Hey, Melanie!” Jenna's voice crackled over the line.

“Jenna? Hey. What are you up to today?”

“I don't know. Bobby Teague's having people over tonight. Might be lame, though. You know Bobby and those lacrosse guys. I don't think they got the memo that the metrosexual look is—”

“Jenna?”

“Yeah?”

“Sorry to cut you off. It's sort of a long story, but I'm on my way to Squam Lake for the night. It'd be nice to have a friend along if you want to come.”

“Seriously?” Jenna's voice rang with excitement—and below it, a note of worry. “Are you okay?”

“I don't know—I'll tell you about it when I see you. You're the only one I
can
tell, actually. You're the only one this would make sense to.”

The line went silent for a moment. “I'm packing now,” Jenna said. She was all business, and Melanie sensed her unquestioning eagerness to help. Would Melanie have acted the same way if Jenna called out of the blue with a strange emotional emergency? “Whatever it is, it'll be all right. Just come get me.”

“Thanks, Jenna.”

Melanie couldn't be sure, but she thought she might like the girl.

89

THE ELEVATOR CHIMED,
the doors parted, and Smiles stepped out onto the seventh floor.

He'd left Ben and Erin back in the room a minute ago. Now he followed a sign to his left, toward the second room he'd reserved using Erin's ID. That's where he would perform the demonstration. Smiles would call Ben with numbers from the NSA agents—they would be too long for a text message this time—and Ben would use the cipher again to generate the private keys. It would prove definitively that they had the key to every online secret in the world.

And then, they would get $75 million two hours later.

This is it
, Smiles told himself.

He made another turn and found room 781 just past a stairwell. He was reaching for the card key in his back pocket when a door cracked open, puncturing the silence of the hall. Smiles flinched violently, but it was just a maid, three rooms down, wheeling out a room-service tray. Smiles stilled himself, recovering from the shock. He didn't know exactly what he'd been afraid of.

It's gonna be cool. It's gonna be cool
.

He sunk the card key into the door. The light of the cloudless day was streaming down the corridor, but once Smiles stepped inside the room it felt like dusk. Comforters were drawn tight over the beds, pristine as glass on Squam Lake. The heavy curtains blotted out the sunlight. The utter calm of the space felt eerie, but Smiles knew it was only the nerves whirling through his chest.

The alarm clock on the nightstand read 10:51.
Nine minutes.
Focus, Smiles
.

He stared into the mirror over the dresser, aiming for a pose of confidence and power. Instead, he looked like a kid refusing to smile for his class portrait. Smiles was good at lying to himself, though, and this was just the time for it. He kept staring and thought,
You're ready for this. You're a badass. You're going to get that money for Ben . . . and yourself. This is
your thing
, and you're ready for it
.

As he stared at himself, gearing himself up, somehow his own voice transformed into his mom's. It came to him every once in a while, a little bird in his ear:

You can do it. You can do anything, and doing this will help your friend in a major way. I mean, that's why you're doing it, right? To help Ben? Not because it's a harebrained scheme to earn a false sense of worth and get over your daddy issues, I would hope. Right? Right? Hello?

The opening bars of “I'm Shipping Up to Boston” rocketed through the room. Just his ringtone. Just Melanie. Smiles pushed his heart back down from his throat and sent the call to voice mail. He really could have used a Xanax or something.

Smiles cracked the curtains and a splinter of light cut across the carpet. It didn't do much to dispel the haunted feeling of the room. He flicked the television on for background noise, but the financial news channel that came up was teasing a report about the Alyce Systems IPO. Smiles muted it.

Sizing up the brightened space, he figured he would sit behind the desk. If the agent wanted to sit across from him, he would have to settle for a seat on the edge of the bed. It would be uncomfortable. That's the kind of thing Mr. Hunt would think about—a little curveball to give you a psychological edge in a negotiation. Smiles was beginning to suspect he was a natural at it.

10:54. Six minutes to go.

Smiles pulled out his cell and dialed Ben. “I'm about to call them. You ready?”

“Yeah yeah,” Ben said, but his voice wavered. “Smiles, I've had a bad feeling about this since last night.”

“Stop with the negative vibes, okay? We're gonna get you that money.” He thought about bringing up the matter of his cut (a fifty-fifty split sounded about right), but decided this might not be the best time.

“Yeah, okay,” Ben said, and then his voice got low. “You really think it's a good idea to keep Erin here? What if something happens?”

“Nothing's going to happen. Just keep it together.” Smiles heard a mumble of assent that didn't instill much confidence. “All right, then. The next time I call you, the agents are going to be here. Have that computer humming.”

He clicked off and checked the clock: 10:56.

Screw it. Smiles pulled the agent's number from his pocket and dialed from the desk phone, figuring that calling early was actually a smart idea—another way to keep him off balance.

A voice answered on the first ring. “Yeah.”

“Room 781,” Smiles said. “Cedar Tower. Be here in ten minutes.” He hung up before the guy could respond.

First step over
, Smiles thought.

Ten minutes, tops, until the guy arrived.
In a couple hours, you'll have the money
.

Psyching himself up, he ran his palms over the smooth expanse of the desk. It made him think of the desk in his dad's office—a huge glass thing he kept obsessively clean of papers. Smiles had never seen a speck of clutter on it, just his clean-lined computer monitor and a glass tray underneath for stowing his keyboard. That desk had a way of freaking Smiles out. When you sat across from him, there was nothing to draw his attention from you, no buffer from his glare—which, in Smiles's case, was usually a disappointed one.

Modern Boston
had done a puff piece on his dad once, and they made a huge deal out of the desk.
CLEAN DESK, CLEAR MIND
, it had said on the front of the magazine. The cover was a loving photograph of his dad with his feet propped up on the huge plane of glass.

Smiles rarely visited his dad at the office. The only time he'd been there in the last few years was the awful day he had to tell him about getting kicked out of Kingsley. Sitting in the too-bright light of the office, nothing but that sterile sheet of glass between them, he felt like a patient about to enter a ten-hour surgery.

Smiles spit out his story about Darby Fisher's weed and waited for a reaction. He expected anger. Possibly shouting. Best-case scenario, there'd be talk of a lawsuit over Kingsley's strict no-tolerance policy. What he got was much worse. His dad just lowered his head, nodding. He looked like he was about to laugh.

That's when Smiles realized his dad had written him off. Seeing the acceptance in his eyes, not even the slightest distress . . . it couldn't have hurt more.

Smiles felt the sting of it all over again. He jabbed at the remote, unmuting the station, but now they were knee-deep in the Alyce Systems report. He couldn't get away from it. “Even from his hospital bed,” said a deep-voiced anchor standing pointlessly before the Alyce Systems logo, “the famously micromanagerial Robert Smylie is exercising tight control over the run-up to his company's IPO. It's a highly orchestrated process, and as we've seen with other tech players, a bad first-day performance can set a negative tone and have a huge effect on—”

The knock came then. Smiles shut the station off and walked to the door, wishing he'd stuck to his pep talk in front of the mirror.

The man he saw in the peephole wasn't the agent from the day before. He had cropped blond hair and a dark suit with a pocket square peeking out. Nothing fancy, but a contrast to the copier salesman. They'd gone up the food chain for this one.

Smiles opened the door, and the guy waddled in without a word. He was maybe in his forties, and somewhere along the way he'd gone soft around the middle. He had the kind of pale skin that verged on transparent. A blue vein ran visibly down his temple like something buried under ice. He might not get raves from the doctor's office, but there was something authoritative in the guy's manner. Yeah, they'd brought in the heavyweight to do the deal.

“Cole,” he said, flashing an NSA ID. He stepped forward, still holding out his credential, glancing about the room to ensure they were alone.

It seemed like Smiles should check the ID, so he did. It said
EDWA
RD COLE
, with his picture in the corner opposite an NSA seal. A bar code ran along the bottom.

“Thanks for coming.” Smiles released the ID and shook the guy's hand. To his surprise, he felt himself growing cool and poised, the way Melanie looked before her cross-country races.

“Let's do this at the desk,” he said, and walked to his prearranged spot behind it. As Smiles hoped, the guy looked around uncertainly before taking a seat on the bed. He tried to sit up straight, but kept sinking into the mattress. Smiles was eating it up.

“I've been briefed,” Cole said, struggling to maintain his dignity on the flowery comforter. “But I'll tell you right off, I'm skeptical.”

“That's fine. I would be, too.” Smiles toyed with a pen on the desk, just to put on a little show. He figured he should give the guy his money's worth. “But you've brought your own public keys. There's no way for us to rig this. There shouldn't be any doubt after that.”

Cole allowed a nod. “No, not if it works.” He'd brought a thin leather folder with him. He moved the folder to his lap and rested his hands on it with a light touch.

“So . . . should we get to it?” Smiles said.

“Just one thing first,” Cole said with a raised finger. “Who's the partner?”

Smiles wondered if they'd ask. But he reminded himself that they didn't know anything about Ben. As far as the agents knew, Smiles was the math genius and Ben was just his assistant.

“Not important,” Smiles said dismissively. “He's helping with the demonstration, that's it.”

Cole eyed Smiles closely. Before he could snoop any further about Ben, Smiles decided to cut him off. “And
your
partner?” Smiles said. “Where's he?”

Cole cracked a smile. “Seventy-five mil doesn't come from petty cash. He's taking care of the financial arrangements, in the unlikely event that we need to act on them.”

“That's what I like to hear,” Smiles said. “Now . . . shall we dance?”

Cheesy, perhaps, but Smiles couldn't help it—he was feeling awfully good. The guy rolled his eyes, pulled a sheet from the folder, and handed it across the desk. The page had five typewritten numbers on it, all but one so long they spilled onto multiple lines.

Smiles held the sheet up. “We said you could bring ten numbers.”

“Appreciated,” Cole said in a condescending way. “But if you can produce the prime factors to those, that will be more than ample proof.” He twisted a cough drop from its wrapper, plopped it in his mouth, and sucked at it like a fish. Smiles got hit with a blast of cherry-scented vapors.

He picked up the phone, making sure Cole wasn't watching his hands as he dialed the room below. Ben picked up on the first ring.

“He's there already?” he said without any introduction. Ben was using his freaked-out voice, which Smiles was getting pretty familiar with by now.

Smiles didn't let any reaction cross his face. “Yes, we're ready,” he said calmly. “I have five numbers in total. If you're set, I'll begin.”

“Fine, okay, go ahead,” Ben said.

Even though the cipher had worked the day before, Smiles felt a brush of nerves. Maybe it wouldn't work with bigger numbers. Smiles wondered what kind of trouble he could be in if this blew up in their faces. Was there some kind of federal law you broke when you tried to get $75 million out of the government with a bogus cipher?

Smiles held the page before him, aware of the agent's watchful eyes. He cleared his throat and read the first five digits of the first number.

“Eight, nine, six, zero, four . . .” Smiles paused for breath, and across the phone line Ben repeated the numbers back to him. It established a rhythm, making the tedious work of reading the number easier. Smiles marked his place with the pen and paused every five digits for Ben to confirm them. Finally, after what seemed like ten minutes of work, he had only two digits left.

“. . . three, nine.” Smiles sighed.

“Three, nine,” Ben said. “That's it?”

“That's the complete first number, yes.” Smiles heard the tiniest click of a computer key across the line.

“Okay, ready for the private keys?”

Smiles clenched a fist in celebration beneath the desk. Ben had taken less than a second to produce the private keys. Smiles made sure Cole saw the pleasure on his face and said, “Yes, please go ahead with the results.”

They repeated the process in reverse, with Ben reading two numbers back to Smiles in five-digit chunks. Thankfully they were relatively short.

They went through the next three numbers the same way. It took a while, but they got into a groove, and for minutes at a time Smiles forgot Cole was even in the room. Every once in a while, his eye caught the guy shifting on the bed. At some point, Smiles saw him get up and commandeer a bottle of water from the mini fridge.

“Make it two,” Smiles said with a smile. He enjoyed watching Cole come back and serve him, like he was his personal waiter or something.

The water cooled his throat, which had been getting dry from the constant reading of numbers. By that point they had reached the final one, which was shorter than the others. Smiles breezed through it like a victory lap.

“. . . seven, three, one, one. And that's all she wrote,” Smiles said. He cracked his knuckles with satisfaction—another little show for Cole in anticipation of getting the last two private keys. Ben wasn't saying anything back, though.

“Seven, three, one, one, did you get that?”

“
Yes I got it.
But . . . I don't know . . . It's not . . .” Smiles could hear a pronounced clatter at Ben's keyboard.

His heart skipped a few beats. Ben kept murmuring in frustration, and Smiles felt like he was staring into a canyon, about to get pushed off the ledge. He suddenly realized how much of himself he'd put into this project.

Cole circled over to the desk, vulturelike.

“Repeat the number, please,” Smiles said to Ben. It was a stalling device; he knew Ben had copied the number right.