The Cassandra Conspiracy (8 page)

“The Lucy ring added the period and slash–for punctuation. Once you have the basic table, all letters other than the baseline eight are encrypted using a two-digit sequence taken from the table. For example
D
  becomes 52 and
P
  is 60. Once the message is enciphered, it’s collapsed into five-figure groupings.”

“Then the message I got is a set of five figure groups taken from the table?”

“It would have been, but someone decided to complicate matters. Watch.”

Janet turned and wrote the phrase “Dog is lost” on the marking board. “Let’s go through the example of encrypting this.” Using the matrix, Janet wrote the following sequence of numbers: 52554 21585 14680.

“This...” she said pointing to the three groupings, “...represents the first encryption stage. The originator then added a common number, in the case of your message, 12345, to each grouping, and thus created a second stage of encryption. If he had really wanted to screw things up, he’d have used a one-time pad. That’s where a different number is added to each successive grouping. Unless you have the exact one-time pad, it’s impossible to decrypt the message.”

Payton was more than impressed with Janet and her ability to fight her way through the
maze he had dropped her in. “So where does all this leave us?”

“Right here,” Janet said handing him a sheet of quadrille paper. The plain
-text message appeared below.

PROCEED WITH CONTRACT AT AGREED UPON FIVE MILLION. TARGET/SHANGRI LA/NOV. 1ST. HAVE CRITICAL INFO. MEET HERE TUES AT NINE. RENDEZVOUS IN PINE LAKES. C.

Payton looked at the sheet of paper, slowly letting the significance of the letters on it sink in. “Jesus Christ!”

“Exactly,” Janet replied. “Exactly.”

CHAPTER 4

“Now you understand why I was so upset,” Janet said, as Steve regained his equilibrium.

Payton gently placed the sheet of paper on the coffee table, handling it as if it were a vial of nitroglycerine. “You know, this still could be someone’s idea of a practical joke.”

“The only problem with that logic is that someone really knew what they were doing. Even though I managed to crack it, the encryption’s too sophisticated. Why would anyone bother going to all that trouble when they intended the message to be read?” Janet thought for a moment, then added, “Even I wouldn’t have had a snowball’s chance in hell of decrypting it either if it hadn’t been for the fact that the initiator included the common number as part of the number groupings. No, I think it’s real. The problem is What are we going to do about it?”

“We could call the police,” Steve suggested.

“And what? Tell them that you got a mysterious E-mail message on your computer, which when it’s decoded, is about some sort of contract killing. They’ll hang up on you. Besides, with millions of users on UniNet, we can’t guarantee that this murder, if there’s going to be one, will take place in their jurisdiction.”

Janet was right. They had so little to go on. “You’re the computer expert. What do you suggest?”

“I need to look into this some more. Maybe I can do a network trace and get some idea who originated the message or maybe where it originated. UniNet probably keeps track of all file transfers, uploads, downloads, and E-mail by assigning a network message number to each one. If I can pinpoint the account, then at least we’ll be able to give that information to the police.”

“Has that been done before?”

Janet nodded her head. “Remember when that college student inserted a virus that spread like wildfire throughout one of the government-run computer systems?”

Payton vaguely recalled the case. The hacker hadn’t intended to cause serious damage, just have each computer tied into the network display a funny message. But things got out of hand, and some of the users lost considerable amounts of the data on their disks.

“The guy at Cornell?”

“That’s the one. When the FBI and the folks in my department-called CERT for Computer Emergency Response Team-started on his trail, we did a network map, then went after the computer usage records in the host. By following the trail, the authorities were able to zero in on the hacker and effect an arrest.”

“So all you have to do is follow the message.”

“Which, of course, is easier said than done. I’ll give it a shot, and we’ll go from there. I know a few of the security folks at UniNet who can help. Give me a call tomorrow late afternoon–better yet, why don’t we have dinner here tomorrow evening. Say about six.”

Janet was a very attractive woman, and Payton wasn’t foolish enough to turn down her invitation–either to follow up on the encrypted message or the one for dinner.

“That sounds fine,” Steve said getting up. “See you then.”

.   .   .   .   .   .

The next day Payton's mind often departed from the law books and court filings only to dwell upon the E
-mail message he had received. No matter how hard he tried, Payton couldn’t force himself to put the message and its mysterious origin away in some mental compartment to be opened at a later time. Frequently, he found himself taking furtive glances at his watch, waiting until it was time to leave the office and head over to Janet’s apartment. The message had definitely complicated his life; equally so did Janet, to whom Payton found himself surprisingly attracted. She possessed a pit-bull attitude in her approach to problems rather than the bloodhound one Evanston had attributed to her. He’d make it a point to correct Matt Evanston’s simile.

Promptly at six o’clock, Payton knocked on the apartment door. As Janet let him in, the aroma of Chinese food reminded Payton that he had forgotten about lunch.

“Smells great. I’m starving. By the way, I’m also damned impressed. It’s not every woman who can cook Chinese.”

“Cook? There’s a carry
-out right down the street,” she said with a smile.

As Janet ladled out the combination vegetables, egg rolls, and
pork-fried rice, she brought Payton up to date. “I spent the morning on the phone with my friends at UniNet. Of course, I didn’t give them all the details, just that you had gotten E-mail across UniNet and I was interested in tracing the source.”

“What’d they say?”

“As of yet nothing, but I expect to hear from them soon. Apparently things have changed since I left government service. New anti-virus safeguards have been put into the system, and tracing a message–even one without an assigned message number–is easier than it was a few years ago. Of course, it’s still no cakewalk. So until we hear from the folks over at UniNet, we’re stuck. Therefore you might as well enjoy dinner.”

“And the company,” Payton added.

Janet smiled.

All of a sudden Payton realized that with all the talk ab
out the e-mail mystery on hold, that it was incumbent upon him to keep the conversation going. Not that Janet was hard to talk to; she wasn’t. But Payton wasn’t big on baring his soul.

Since his divorce, Payton had shied away from any relationship no matter how innocuous. Most of his friends were married and had families, so he was often invited over for dinner or to a party. On each occasion, he made it clear that he was not accepting the invitation in order to meet someone new. Although from time to time Payton took out one of the women that he had met, as soon as the relationship grew into anything more than a casual date, Payton was gone. He was content to practice law during the day, and spend quiet evenings at home watching the cable channels.

Before Payton could open his mouth, Janet asked, “So tell me, have you always lived in Baltimore?”

“Born and raised here–except for a couple of years in the service.”

“The service,” Janet repeated carefully. “Vietnam?”

Payton nodded his head. “By the time I was a year out of high school, the war was going on hot and heavy. So I enlisted–Marines.”

“How long were you over there?”

“Too long,” Steve said wistfully. “But then, a day was too long.”

Janet impulsively laid her hand on Payton's. Quickly, her warmth transcended the emotional barrier Payton had worked so hard to erect. Just as suddenly he decided that he liked it.

Nonetheless, the look in Steve’s eyes told Janet that she needed to change the subject. “So I guess you got your law degree after you got out of the service?”

“Law has always been the trunk of the Payton family tree. My old man was a lawyer as was my grandfather, so it seemed only natural that I’d follow in the footsteps of my great forefathers. At least that’s what my father expected.”

“He must have been proud.”

“Yes and no. When I got out of the service, I really had nothing on my plate. You know, no commitments, no plans. So it was kind of hard to put up a rational argument why I should become a garbage collector, fireman, or for that matter anything else. I took a four-year liberal arts course at the U of M, and then got accepted to the University of Baltimore’s law curriculum. I couldn’t get enough of the law courses.”

“Well that certainly should have made your father happy.”

“Not quite. He wanted me to attend one of the ‘name’ law schools. But admission to one of the premier schools required superior grades, and my undergraduate grades weren’t sufficient. So there had to be a slight compromise there, and my father wasn’t one to compromise, at least not when it came to my sister or me.”

“Only one sibling?” Janet asked.

“Yup, just one–Sheryl–and she was the lucky one. She didn’t have the pressures my parents bestowed upon their only son. They seemed to have fewer aspirations for their daughter. They were happy she wanted to go to college, and would have been equally happy had she decided to get a job.”

“Do you see much of her?”

“Sheryl lives in Oregon with her husband and two children. Other than an occasional card or phone call, we have little contact.”

“You finished law school, got admitted to the Maryland bar, and were off and running.”

“Except I ran a different race than the one my father had cut out for me. After he died, I found out that he was disappointed that I turned down the name law firms in Baltimore and began my own practice.”

“What’s wrong with having your own firm? Isn’t that how the big guys started?”

Payton shrugged. “I guess he envisioned me ensconced in an oak-paneled office, on the fortieth floor of some skyscraper. Meanwhile, I was tickled to be able to take on those cases that posed a real challenge without getting the permission of some high and mighty senior partner whose eyes were firmly glued to the number of billable hours.”

They ate quietly for a few minutes.

“Enough about me. Tell me about Janet Phillips, computer expert extraordinaire,” Steve said with a tender smile.

“There’s not much to tell. I’m the product of a small town in eastern Washington state, an only child. My father was a factory foreman for an appliance manufacturer, and he didn’t have enough money to be able to foot the bill for any four
-year college, much less one of the better ones. My grades were good, so I decided to try for a scholarship, and was lucky enough to receive a full one from Caltech.”

Payton knew that Caltech was one of the premier engineering and science schools in the world. They didn’t admit many of the hundreds of applicants the school got every year. And if Janet not only got in,
but also did so with a full scholarship, it warranted his respect.

“After graduation, I took a job with the government. I figured it was a good place to start, and that I’d pick up enough experience to be a valuable asset to private industry.”

“That’s when you were working computer security?” Payton asked between mouthfuls of egg roll.

“Right. Of course in those days, there weren’t the big networks that abound today. Most of the systems were stand
-alone computers with half dozen or dozen remote terminals. The problem was always one of some hacker dialing into the system a la
War Games
.”

Payton remembered the movie where Matthew Broderick played the part of a teenage hacker who somehow penetrates the Pentagon’s missile control computer, nearly starting World War Three.

“Private industry was dogging our work since they were faced with the same problem. Companies were computerizing their operations left and right, and what good is a computer system if you can’t call in from Timbuktu and use it? After a while the Pentagon decided that our methods were good enough to put out there in the commercial sector, and we started sharing. You can imagine how hard that is for an organization so cloaked in secrecy.”

Payton nodded.

“As the years went by, the networks grew–both those in the government as well as those in the private sector. And the security problems went beyond smart modems that wouldn’t give you direct access, but called you back at whatever phone number had been programmed into them. Software problems sprang up like dandelions in spring, and we were off and running again. Another marathon, with all new problems. “Challenges” we were told to call them. Finally, last year, I had enough. I figured that I had learned most of what I needed to be able to offer my services to the private sector, and here I am. Of course, I didn’t count on you, Mr. Payton,” Janet said laughingly.

Payton was planning his retort when Janet’s phone rang. After a few minutes’ discussion, Janet hung up.

“There’s good news and not so good news.”

Payton waited for both shoes to fall.

“UniNet was able to do an area trace on our little E-mail message. They’ve pinpointed the general area, but not the source.”

“Where is it? The general area, I mean. West coast, southern states?” Payton asked.

“In our backyard, literally. The message originated somewhere near Pine Lakes, Maryland, south of the Pennsylvania border–a scant forty-five minute drive. Now what?”

“That’s a damned good question. I’d like to turn this whole mess over to the police, but even with the UniNet info, there’s nothing substantial–no hard, tangible evidence.”

“If you want to hand this off, we can. God knows we’ve done more than anyone would have expected us to do. No one could fault us for dumping this whole mess into the laps of whatever law enforcement agency is responsible for such crimes.” Janet thought for a minute, and then added, “Of course, that’s one of the hang-ups. There haven’t been any laws broken, no crime committed.”

“Let’s drop back a second and take a look at what we’ve got. We know the message originated in northern Baltimore
County. We also know that if this is for real, someone’s prepared to pay five million dollars to have someone else killed. Five million dollars. My guess is, even allowing for inflation, you could wipe out half of Baltimore for less than that. So who’s worth that kind of money? Then there’s Shangri-La. That makes no sense at all. Finally the schedule calls for the killing to be done by the first of November.”

“Certainly not enough to go to the police,” Janet added.