The Cipher (25 page)

233

MELANIE ALMOST CRASHED
into Smiles. He was bursting from Professor Worth's office just as she was arriving, and he looked dangerously pale. Melanie felt an awkward smile on her face as they backed away from each other in the hallway.

“Hey. I thought I might as well come down,” she said. “See what all this is about.”

“Yeah, uh, thanks.” Melanie had wondered if it would be weird between them, but it felt sort of good. It was like seeing her best friend from grade school. “Can you walk with me?” Smiles said. “I think I'm about to find out.”

“Yeah,” Melanie said, but she didn't even know if he was listening anymore. He was race-walking down the hallway and then out of the small building that held Professor Worth's office, a three-story outpost on Northeastern's campus in the South End. Melanie had a little laugh to herself when she saw his Infiniti parked illegally right in front of the entrance. Nobody got more parking tickets than Smiles.

“I've got to find my mother,” Smiles said.

“Your . . . mother?” It took her back to that terrible conversation at the kabob place. The conversation that had started everything.

“Alice, yeah. She has the notebook I was supposed to get, and it's the reason all of this happened.”

“Oh, okay.” Melanie didn't want to touch the topic of his biological mother—it would be safer to douse herself in water and tap dance on the third rail of the T. “No offense, but you look sorta worn out. Want me to drive?” She used to drive them everywhere.

Smiles balled up the parking ticket and stuffed it in his pocket. “Thanks, but this is kind of my thing. Come with me, though, if you want.”

Melanie spotted her right away—she looked just like him. Or he looked just like her. They had the same features: the spread of their eyes, the wide mouth. At the same time, they didn't look like each other at all. His hair was floppy and wild, hers short and neat. The traits she liked about Smiles—the openness of his face, the calm of his eyes—were different on his mom. It wasn't quite a scowl that she wore, but it was in the neighborhood.

The security guard had been standing at the front entrance as they came in, waiting out the last minutes before he could lock up. They had slipped in just in time, swimming against a current of exiting bank customers. And then, down the length of the bank, right in front of the safe deposit area, they saw her standing in a tailored red jacket.

“Oh, wow,” Melanie said, jarred by the resemblance.

“C'mon,” Smiles said, and they walked down the grand room to his mother. The formality of the place felt appropriate somehow—like some kind of sacred ceremony was about to take place. Melanie stayed half a step back from Smiles. This
was
his thing, and she was going to have to fight her instinct to protect him every step of the way. His mom watched them coming, freakishly composed—her posture rigid, her clothes immaculate, her face stoic.

When they reached her, Melanie saw the tiniest fracture in her composure. Her face relaxed by a single degree, and her lips dropped from their fixed position on her face. It was the saddest smile Melanie had ever seen.

“Hello.” The odd detachment of her voice wasn't a surprise. She didn't offer as much as a handshake. This woman made icebergs look warm.

“This is Melanie,” Smiles said with a hollow voice.

“Not Melanie Hunt?” Melanie nodded, and she saw the fracture deepen another bit. “I knew you once,” she said. “As a baby.”

They were almost alone in the bank now. In a few minutes they would get kicked out. “I need to know something,” Smiles began, and just then the door that said
SAFE DEPOSITS
opened up behind them. A man emerged—the name tag on his lapel said
PERRY
.

“Shall we, Alice?” the man said, before noticing Smiles and Melanie. “Oh my, Mr. Smylie.
Smiles
, that is. What a delight. You didn't have to get that signature so quickly.”

“It's not that,” Smiles said, then turned to his mom. “Just tell me. Do you have this notebook, whatever it is?”

Mr. Perry leaned farther out the door in his eagerness to serve. “Everything okay there, folks?”

“Give us a moment,” Melanie said, hanging on the exchange in front of her. She had to see this notebook, too. Somehow, she knew, it would explain everything that had been going on all weekend.

“Are you sure you want to—” his mother started.

“I
need
to know.” Smiles's voice was hot.

His mother drew her jacket tight against her trim body. She sniffed and said, “Yes, well, I have the notebook. I've kept it in a safe deposit box here for years. The letter I left for your eighteenth birthday, it told you that you're authorized to access it.”

“I never got the letter,” Smiles said harshly.

His mother's mouth twitched, and Melanie sensed that it was taking great effort now to maintain her rigorous self-control. “Well, let's go then,” she said softly.

She nodded to Mr. Perry, and they followed him down a corridor to a series of caged areas. The size of walk-in closets, each was ringed with safe deposit boxes and had a block in the center like a kitchen island. “We're all very excited about the IPO tomorrow,” Mr. Perry said breezily as they went, somehow oblivious to the unbearable waves of stress crashing between Smiles and his mother. One last time Melanie had to resist holding Smiles's hand, stepping ahead, doing whatever she could to shield him from the damage his mom inflicted on him.

Mr. Perry opened one of the cages and escorted them inside—Smiles and his mother first, then Melanie, then another bank guard who had appeared at the rear of the group. With a large ring of keys in his hand, Mr. Perry scanned a row of boxes at the back of the claustrophobic cage.

“Where are you now?” he mumbled to himself as he went along. “Ahh, there.” Alice joined him at the box he'd singled out, and they both inserted keys into the wide, shallow safe deposit box. It was just like Melanie's dad had explained Alyce's encryption system to her when she was little—how you needed the two keys to unlock the code.

Mr. Perry left the box on the island, gave a short bow, and left wordlessly. The guard pulled a curtain across the opening of the cage to give them privacy. Melanie could see the backs of his shoes below the curtain, standing watch in the hallway.

“There it is,” his mother said. She held a palm up toward the safe deposit box. Removed from the wall, it was less a box than a tray, open at the top. The thing lying inside looked like a parcel you might get in the mail. Smiles walked up to the box, keeping his hands carefully away from the package for the moment. His face was bloodless.

He looked to Melanie. She gave him a nod of encouragement, stepping forward to look on with him. Finally, Smiles grasped the package. As he pulled it out of the box, they could see that one end of it was open. Melanie inched right up to the island as Smiles reached in and pulled out another parcel-looking package.

This one had an address and postmark on it. It had been sent to Andrei Eltsin, at a Boston address. “Smiles, that . . .”

“Yeah?”

She remembered plugging it into her GPS, driving down the sad little street with the market at the end.

“That's where he lived.”

“He mailed that package to himself,” his mom said. “He did it to prove that the idea in there was his. The postmark establishes the date.”

Smiles turned the package, and in the faded black ink of the postmark they could see that it had been mailed on a December day almost twenty years ago.

The gummy flap at the top of the package was loose. This was it—he was going to find out everything in a second. Melanie took a long breath to slow her beating heart.

Smiles peeled away the flap.

Inside was a thin spiral notebook, still new-looking. The red cover wasn't scratched at all. When Smiles flicked the pages, they appeared empty. But then he turned back to the front, and Melanie saw what was written on the top line of the first page:

A SYSTEM FOR ASYMMETRICAL ENCRYPTION

Melanie held fast to the table. She knew enough about Alyce to understand what it meant, and now she wished that she
had
held Smiles's hand, that she
had
taken charge, that she
had
protected him. She wished that she had pulled him out of the bank ten minutes ago, because she didn't want him seeing this.

No one said a word. Slowly, Smiles ran a finger across the mathematical process etched onto the page in the hand of Andrei Tarasov. He knew, too.

It was his dad's breakthrough. His special encryption system. The entire foundation for Alyce Systems, and all the wealth that followed.

“Your father stole it,” his mother said.

239

SMILES HAD GONE
numb.

It was like hearing the doctors tell him about his dad's cancer. It was worse than that. It was like hearing his mom had died.

Across the island, Melanie spun the notebook to her, disbelieving. “Tarasov . . . My dad said he made everything up.”

“He didn't,” Smiles's mother said in that clinical way. “This is the proof. This is the basis for the technology Alyce Systems uses. It
is
the technology.”

A shadow moved under the curtain, and the guard's voice said, “Folks, we can give you about five more minutes there, that's it.”

“Yes, thank you,” Melanie called behind her.

His mother took the notebook and the packaging and placed them all in Smiles's hands. “You know the truth now.”

Smiles's brain fought it like an infection. “How did you even get this?”

“The night that man killed himself, he left this package at our front door. I was alone with you at the house. I was the one who received it.”

“And . . . what? You knew what this meant somehow?”

His mother smoothed her jacket, attempting patience. “Of course I knew what it meant. I'm a mathematician, a very good one. I was involved in your dad's company from the start. It's named after me. So yes, as soon as I opened it, I knew that it meant your father had stolen that man's work.”

Her eyes challenged his, and Smiles felt a flame inside himself. “And so you left? That was your solution?”

Her head bowed, and Smiles enjoyed the feeling of breaking her down. Suddenly, he wanted to punish this woman for everything she'd ever done.

“I did a terrible thing in leaving you,” she said. Her voice had lost its polish. She was all cracks and shards, broken pieces of herself. “I did an absolutely unforgivable thing, and it haunts me every single day. But when I found out what your father had done, it changed everything for me. I couldn't stay with him, couldn't live off a stolen fortune. But I wasn't strong enough to take you with me, not then. Your father is a resourceful man—he would have made it very difficult for us to leave together.”

“You have no idea what he would have done.”

“Yes I do. And I knew that if I was going to leave, I had to shut the door completely. It would have been too painful any other way. Staying away from you has been the hardest thing in my life.” She raised her chin, resisting tears. “But it's made me very . . . tough. I think you'll find that your greatest sources of pain in life also show you your greatest strengths.”

“Glad it worked out for you,” Smiles said.

She closed her eyes against his sneer.

“Smylies?” It was Mr. Perry, outside the curtain. Melanie slipped outside and began whispering to him, buying them time.

Smiles still had stores of anger to burn. “But you didn't stay away, did you? You tried to get my mom involved—the one who was actually there for me.”

Smiles took pleasure in the mud puddles of mascara on her face, the bloodshot stains on her eyes. She dabbed at them, collecting herself. “A year ago I heard about your father's cancer,” she said. “I didn't know what to do, honestly—I'd always wanted you to get this information after you turned eighteen, when you were an adult and could handle it. But I felt it important that someone close to your father know before the end. In case there was a chance for amends. So I informed Rose. She didn't believe me, naturally. And that's when we went together to Professor Worth, to confirm for her that your father had stolen Mr. Eltsin's work.”

Smiles refused to believe it. He fanned the fire inside himself—that's what he would hold on to, not his mother's accusations. “You don't know what he did. This doesn't mean anything.” Smiles swept the notebook off the table. It fluttered and smacked against the wall.

His mother watched it fall. Something snapped, and when her eyes bored into him again, they were clear and white. “I know
exactly
what he did. He ruined all of us.”

She was nearly yelling. Melanie had stepped back into the room. She looked on, her head retreating on her neck, a scared bystander. Smiles's mother took a stride toward him, closing the space between them. Her stiffened spine made her three inches taller. She angled over the table. “You want to know? This is what your father did. He took the trust of a beautiful young man and destroyed him. When Andrei Eltsin was doing work for your father, he was approached by the Russian intelligence service. They wanted him to inform on the advanced work being done here. They wanted him to spy. Andrei wanted nothing to do with it, but he made the mistake of going to your father for guidance.

“Unfortunately for him, he had also just gone to your father with his brilliant idea for making asymmetrical encryption viable over the Internet. He trusted your father. He looked up to him as a mentor. And do you know what your father did?” She leaned farther over the table, and Smiles felt himself retreat.
“Do you know what he did?”

Smiles waited for it.

“He set him up. He told Andrei to meet with the Russian spies again, so they could get more information before going to the authorities. Then he called the State Department and told them he suspected Andrei of spying. They arrested him a few days later, at the meeting your father had told him to arrange. All so he could steal Andrei's idea and call it his own.”

She backed down to her heels, her chest heaving under her blouse. Smiles felt as though he'd been cored out, as if some essential part of himself no longer existed.

“That's what your father did,” she said as the calm returned to her voice. “He might as well have killed that man. He ruined his life, and mine, too. I wanted to be his wife. I wanted to run Alyce Systems with him.” Her fingers clawed at the island. And she whispered, “I wanted, more than anything, to be your mother.”

“I got the mom I wanted,” Smiles said.

But when she turned and left the room, he felt abandoned again.