Encrypted: An Action-Packed Techno-Thriller Page 6

  Muzak. Who put Muzak on their hold anymore? Obviously, the United States Government. While waiting for ever-so-Special Agent Hunt to come onto the line, Ronnie watched yet another plague report. Something about squirrels being a natural carrier, or something. And of course, the Tivo’s light was bright red. Quirk must have put “bubonic” into his wish list. She was so preoccupied with making fun of her assistant that she failed to hear him reenter the cold room.

  “Ha! I knew it!” he shouted. “You have hunk-itis.”

  How could Quirk have known? Not about the hunk-itis, that was pretty darn evident, but that she had called Zach tonight? Then Ronnie spotted another “brain child” that her assistant had developed—a small, perfectly proportioned helicopter nick-named, Helo. And the worst thing about Helo? He ran silent. Well that and had enough surveillance equipment on it to make the Pentagon drool. That little punk had used the mini-chopper to spy on her.

  “Shh…” Ronnie scolded as she put her hand over the phone’s receiver.

  “Shh, my ass. You’ve got it bad,” Quirk countered as he sat down at a keyboard and started double-checking her scrambling and making sure the signal was ping-ponging off dozens of satellites.

  Ronnie was about to scold him, but those damn symbols reappeared. How? She had logged on under a completely different account and accessed a new site. How could her stalker find her again?

  Working quickly, she tried to shut them down before Quirk noticed. He was a little bit fussy about the whole unauthorized access into his sacred silicon village.

  “Oh, you are so in trouble!” Quirk exclaimed. “I told you, no more Limp Bizkit!”

  Obviously, he noticed.

  “Don’t worry. I’ve got it.”

  That declaration might have been a bit premature. The ancient symbols pulsed and swirled across the entire screen. The sight was both beautiful and eerie. An otherworldly effect.

  “Are we being possessed?” Quirk asked, seeming to only half kid.

  “No,” Ronnie answered, still trying to purge the message. “The symbols are a modified form of Hebrew.”

  “Modified by whom?”

  “Angels,” she stated. “It’s angelic script.”

  Quirk looked at the scrolling letters with new respect. “What mailing list did you get on?”

  For just a moment, they both stared at the screen with near reverence. As the lettering sparkled, they could almost truly believe that angels handed down the writing to Isaiah.

  That moment of amazement was clearly over, though, as Quirk exclaimed, “That’s it!”

  Before Ronnie could stop him, her assistant disconnected the call.

  * * *

  Zach rushed into the tech room, with Danner not far behind.

  “Line two,” Warp said, pointing to the blinking light.

  He picked up the phone. “Hello?”

  But there was nothing. Just a dial tone.

  “Wrong line?”

  Warp frantically checked and double-checked. “No way. She was on line two. I swear.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t even her,” Danner postulated to the freaked-out tech.

  “It was either her or God…” Warp must have realized that he stepped over the line. Way over the line. “Sir.”

  Zach paced as Danner hounded the poor techie. “I’m not convinced.”

  “Look at this,” Warp said as he showed the signal bouncing around satellites like a pinball.

  “So?” Danner scoffed. “There are several dozen hackers who can hide their carrier signals that well.”

  “Who else could do this?”

  Warp artificially slowed the sequence of the bouncing, so that each leg of the journey became the segment of a line. Then the techie broke it down chronologically. Not even Zach could believe what he saw. Each segment of the signal’s travel was part of a letter. Which spelled out the Robin Hood hacker’s catchphrase, “Better Luck Next Time.”

  Danner sighed. “It was her.”

  Zach had known that, but now that they were all on the same page, he finally spoke up. “Why did she hang up? Did she detect your trace?”

  “Of course she did,” Warp said, and then rushed on. “But she’s never given a shit about me tracking her…” He glanced at Danner. “Sorry, sir, but she usually gets off on kicking my ass.”

  “True,” Zach jumped in, maybe a little too quickly. “Then why hang up?”

  Warp looked over all his screens again. “I don’t know. Maybe something went wrong on her end.”

  * * *

  The symbols now invaded all of their screens. Even the Tivo’s light blinked erratically. This was bad.

  “Seriously, why in the hell would someone spend this much time and energy sending you angel-speak?” Quirk demanded.

  Ronnie didn’t want to answer him. She was going to get enough grief over this incident as it was.

  “Well?” Quirk pushed.

  She shrugged, trying to downplay her words. “It’s considered the Holy Grail of code breaking.”

  “Come again?”

  “There is intense debate amongst encryption scholars—”

  Quirk glared over his keyboard at her. “That is to say, people with way too much time on their hands.”

  “Cipher specialists are still wrangling over how angelic script should be read. Right to left, as Hebrew? Yet there is some indication that diagonal is the true form, and—”

  “So this is some stupid-ass prank?” Quirk sounded indignant. “Some guy living at home with his mother, challenging you to a code-cracking contest?”

  Her assistant was far too perceptive for Ronnie’s own good. She had to fess up. “More than likely.”

  To make matters worse, the symbols accelerated their pace, far outstripping her and Quirk’s efforts.

  “That’s it! No more chat rooms for you,” he said. Quirk paused, and then looked over at her. “For an entire month.”

  Normally, she would balk at such parental treatment, but the damn symbols just kept coming.

  “It’s just breached our secondary firewall,” Quirk announced, his tone dripping with blame.

  Unfortunately, Ronnie could not argue. Someone was seriously kicking them around the yard. But who could it be? No one from the government. This hack was too freestyle. Too bold. Too flamboyant for salaried work. Then who? She knew or knew of every hacker of this caliber, and none could even come close to penetrating Quirk’s insanely layered defenses.

  But that left her with the same question.

  Then who?

  * * *

  After hours at the crime scene, another hour of being raked over the coals, and then another chunk of time brainstorming with Warp about why the Robin Hood hacker had bailed, Danner had finally sent him home to “cool his heels.” Zach wasn’t even sure what that meant exactly, but he was happy to leave. Get out of the stifling office and clear his thoughts.

  Making his way toward the door, Zach gave the holding cell a wide berth. The old man was another unsettling aspect of an extraordinarily unsettled day. But the elderly man was turned with his back to the bars, sitting quietly. Too quietly.

  Despite his desire to go home and get out of his G-man suit, Zach drifted toward the holding cell. “Hey.” No response. “Turn around.”

  Still, the old man wouldn’t move. And he was mumbling again.

  Grant, of course, didn’t miss an opportunity to hurl a barb. “Want me to grab the Taser gun?”

  Zach ignored the jab. Something was wrong here. “Just watch my back.” He put the key in the door. “Mr. Loubom?” Still, no response—just an increase in muttering. “Francois?”

  Zach just wanted to go home. But, no. This old guy had to be doing some kind of freaky meditation. Zach placed his hand on the man’s shoulder. “Turn around, nice and slow.”

  Finally, Francois complied, tears in his eyes. Then the old man extended a bloody arm. What in the hell did somebody do to him? Then Zach realized that Loubom had used a pen cap to gouge more symbols into
his arm.

  “Can’t you see?” he asked, obviously feeling that his red-soaked arm held some kind of answer. “I must burn the painting.”

  But all Zach could see was blood—and more blood. He yelled over his shoulder, “Call an ambulance! Get me the first-aid kit!”

  Despite the potential danger, he pulled the man’s sleeve back down and clamped his bare hands over the wound to stop the bleeding. For the love of God, what had made the man mutilate himself like that?

  “They speak to me, you know,” Francois said, sounding the most sane he had yet.

  But Zach was still concerned that he had really lost it. “Who?”

  The old man locked Zach’s gaze with his crystal-blue eyes.

  “The angels.”

  * * *

  Angels sucked, or at least whoever was busy cramming angel-speak down their throats, sucked big time. Quirk was running the defensive, while she was trying to counter-hack and break into the intruder’s server. That was the theory, anyway. The reality was that things were not going well. Not at all.

  Sweat, actual sweat, poured off Quirk’s brow. He was never going to forgive her if his hair gel failed because of perspiration.

  “Quirk…” She couldn’t believe what she was about to say. “Maybe it’s time to admit defeat.”

  “Never,” he hissed though bleach-whitened teeth. “I am lord of the geeks.”

  Overall, he might be. But right now, someone was seriously out-hacking both of them. Yet, Quirk was taking this much harder. The system defenses were his babies. His domain. Someone, somewhere, was outgunning him. Simply put, their opponents had cooler stuff.

  “Look, I promise never to divulge tonight’s momentary, freakish coup.”

  Quirk breathed out sharply through his nose. What she suggested ran counter to his über-computer geek ego, but the reality was that they were beat.

  “Or even tease me about it?” he asked.

  “Not even a pun.”

  For a moment she thought her assistant would shake his head “no,” but Quirk showed her how much he had grown over the last two years when he gave a sharp nod. “Pull the input cables.”

  Ronnie abandoned her post and dug around behind the towers.

  “Holy Batman!” Quirk said as the symbols accelerated to lightning speeds. “It’s a self-propagating program, and it’s got a foothold. We can’t let it get into the core.”

  “And you would suggest?” she asked, pulling cords as fast as she could.

  He sounded downright panicked. “I don’t know, but put the pedal to the metal.”

  The processor lights blinked faster and faster. They had dozens of interlinking cables—each one screwed in as if its life depended on it. She would never make it in time. There was only one thing left to do. Taking a knife out of her boot, she sliced away. Sparks showered and smoke billowed from the secondary towers, but the main processor went down and stayed down—safe from prying eyes.

  Crawling out from under the equipment, Ronnie looked up. All the screens had stopped their incessant scrolling, but each blazed with a single symbol. But how could that be? She had just cut the wiring. The screens should be blank.

  Before she could investigate further, Quirk recovered from his shock. “Okay, seriously, I am taking away your hacker’s membership card.”

  “It worked, didn’t it?” She nodded toward the angelic symbols. “Get a screenshot of that, would you?”

  With great showmanship, Quirk hammered away at his now-defunct keyboard. Oh, yeah. She’d cut those cables as well.

  “Maybe we should just pack up for tonight,” she conceded.

  “Ya think?”

  Contrite, Ronnie tugged on the free ends of the cables to see what they attached to, but Quirk slapped her shoulder as hard as a card-carrying member of the Rainbow Alliance could. “Just go home.”

  “But I—”

  “You’ve done enough damage. Go!” That tone was about as close to blowing his top as Quirk ever came, so Ronnie obeyed, grabbing her Hello Kitty bag and hitting the road.

  Time to go home and soak out the intellectual defeat with a nice, long, bubbly, bubbly, bubbly bath. Anything to wash away the sight of all those symbols.

  * * *

  Francois ignored the medic cleaning his wounds. They fretted and lectured. What would they know of his duty to God? They thought him mad. Most did. Yet, being graced with the language of the angels, Francois did not bother with what others thought.

  Each symbol, fresh to his flesh, sang to him. The script burned in his blood reminding him of his duty. A duty to stop the Hidden Hand at any cost. They had already targeted Europe. That continent was more than likely lost. Just like the last time, the Hidden Hand decided to make the world over in their hideous image.

  That was why, upon hearing of the first case of the Black Death in Venice, Francois left his homeland and trekked to the Americas. He had failed to predict the Hidden Hand’s bold move. Now his last hope was to stop the spread across the Atlantic Ocean.

  Which was why he sought the Picasso. Yet, even in that, he was thwarted. How he wished to see the script of the angels. To have them talk to him in their purity. Then, he could mark the occasion upon his flesh. Dug in there to forever be at his avail.

  If only the agent had listened to him. If only he could have broken through the man’s stubborn denial. He could see the compassion in the man’s eyes. He could feel the worry through his grip. How many other agents had passed by the cell, not even giving Francois the least regard?

  But now, the agent was gone. Off to live his life, not knowing how incredibly short lived it was going to be.

  * * *

  Jennifer nudged her again. Amanda had shut out the endless interdepartmental bickering and gone back into the only safe place she knew. Numbers. Facts. Science.

  So clean. So neat. So precise. So unlike human nature.

  She looked at Jennifer. Why had she disturbed her? Why had her assistant reminded her that she was in a room full of her betters?

  Henderson cleared his throat, and then Amanda knew why her assistant had given her a heads-up. The director looked ready to make a call. How to handle the current situation given this new, potentially devastating information?

  “Unless we have anything else, I am going to brief the president.”

  Attendees answered with a quiet rumbling, signaling that they were unwilling to commit to anything yet. Amanda squirmed in her seat, trying to keep her feet out from under Jennifer’s abusive heel.

  “Yes, Dr. Rolph?”

  She was on the spot. No sense in missing this opportunity. “What is your recommendation going to be, sir?”

  Henderson rattled them off. “In addition to the current measures, we should step up surveillance on incoming international flights. We’ll do postflight temperature checks, and quarantine all those with elevated temps.” Amanda didn’t even realize that she was shaking her head until the director responded.

  “You disagree?” he asked.

  She fidgeted under his cool gaze. He wasn’t necessarily challenging. But he wasn’t exactly being supportive, either.

  Finally, Amanda let out her breath and straightened her shoulders. “Sir, we need to discontinue all incoming European flights and ships.”

  It was Henderson’s turn to shake his head. However, Devlin spoke first. “We don’t want to create a panic.”

  Thank God it was Devlin. She could snap back at him. “Um, with all due respect, yes, I think we do.”

  The director looked at his assistant. “She is a member of my staff, right?”

  “Sir,” Amanda said, beginning to feel her face flush. “The risk is—”

  This time, Henderson wasn’t joking at all. “As I said, we will quarantine anyone, and I mean anyone, with a ninety-eight point nine degree temperature.”

  “But—”

  MacVetti overrode her. “Fever is the first and best indicator for the early contagious phase.”

  While Amanda apprecia
ted her supervisor trying to protect her, even from herself, in this she could hold her own. Well, at least she hoped so.

  “In a sick patient, yes.” She paused before she really shook the room. What if she were wrong? But this was too important. More important than even her nearly paralyzing social phobia.

  “But in a carrier?” Amanda pressed. “No. In a carrier state, temperature monitoring is useless.”

  The room held a quizzical breath. What she spoke of was beyond unreasonable. It was unheard of.

  Devlin just seemed confused, though. “Um, it was my impression that there was no carrier state with the plague.”

  “Naturally? There isn’t.”

  It was clear by his tone that MacVetti was tiring of her theories. “Then why—?”

  Amanda hurried on. “But someone who is vaccinated and physically carrying the virus on their person? On their clothes? That person will walk right through your screening.”

  Devlin snorted loudly, seeming to convey the entire room’s disdain. Yet, somehow Henderson kept his tone civil.

  “That would require someone to actually have a vaccine for the Black Plague.”

  Amanda shrugged, trying not to reveal her innards quivering. “It’s bacterial. It can be done.”

  MacVetti looked her square in the eye. Each glance told her to sit down and shut up. “Do you have any idea of the resources it would take to develop a human-quality vaccine? And do it under our radar?”

  Amanda couldn’t stand the mix of disappointment and anger brewing in MacVetti’s eyes. She looked down at her hands to keep from crying—right there in front of everyone. Why couldn’t someone with a backbone think of this? Why did it have to be her?

  Henderson stood. “My recommendations stand.”

  The director was almost out of the room when Amanda finally spoke up. “They already have it.”

  MacVetti’s head snapped around to face her. “What are you talking about?”