by John C. Ford
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 EDWARD 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.
“Something’s screwed up here.” Ben’s voice was hovering on the edge of sanity. “I don’t know what’s happening. I can’t explain it, but I’m not getting anything here. I’m sorry, Smiles, I don’t know what’s going on, but—”
“Yes, I see,” Smiles said firmly. “Thank you. I’ll call if we need anything else.” He hung the phone up peacefully and turned his eyes to Cole, still circling over the desk. “If you’ll have a seat, I have the results.”
Cole sat down on the bed and Smiles passed the page across. He had written the private keys beneath each number, leaving the space under the last number blank.
“Something’s missing here,” Cole said with some relish. He un-twirled another cough drop and popped it into his mouth.
“Yes. There’s a problem with your number. Perhaps you copied it incorrectly.”
Cole chuckled. “Okay then. Let’s see about the others.”
He pulled a second page from his folder, no doubt containing the private keys for each of the five numbers. Withdrawing a pen from his suit, he methodically compared the numbers Smiles had provided to the true private keys. The cough drop made little clicking sounds in his mouth as he went.
He didn’t know why Cole was even going through the exercise. Smiles had made a show of staying calm, trying to pass off the screw-up with the final number on the NSA. The fact was, though, they hadn’t come up with anything. There was no way the government was forking over millions of dollars for a half-working cipher. Maybe Cole was just torturing him, putting him in his place for making such an outrageous demand. Or maybe he was buying time, trying to figure out whether to arrest him.
Cole closed the folder and stuffed the pen back in his suit. His hand came back out with a mobile phone in it.
Smiles felt a jolt of panic as the guy tapped away. “Who are you calling?” he said as Cole returned the device to his jacket pocket.
Cole ignored the question.
“Impressive,” he said. “Now, where would you like the money delivered?”
97
COLE SHOOK SMILES’S hand on his way out. He had the Swiss account information tucked away in his leather folder. In exactly one hour, he was coming back. Smiles would confirm the money was in the account, and then hand over the cipher.
“The last number was just a test,” Cole said, halfway out the door. “We wanted to see what would happen if we gave you a number that wasn’t the product of two primes.”
Just a head game by the feds, that’s all it was. If that’s what they needed to do to make themselves feel better about handing over $75 million, Smiles was all for it. He watched Cole leave and let himself exhale. He pushed the door closed, leaned his back against it, and slunk to the floor in a state of utter bliss.
A laugh bubbled up from his insides. Ben had done it after all. Smiles had done it.
After an extended internal celebration, he raised up and looked at himself in the mirror. Standing taller now, a glow on his face. “You did it,” he said.
It wasn’t Melanie he wanted to talk to now, or his father. It was his mom, and not the one at the conference. “I did it, Mom,” he said to the mirror, and waited for her imagined reply.
Congrats, baby. That’s a crapload of money you just made. For doing . . . what again? Selling Ben’s work? And wanting a big slice of it for yourself? Almost sounds like one of those shortcuts to success your dad has always warned you against. You know what feels better than a crapload of money? Devoting yourself to something, using the talents God gave you. You’ve got a lot of them, Smiles, you’re gonna find that out someday.
Sometimes she could be kinda blunt. “You’re harshing my high, Mom.”
Oh fine. I’m happy for you, baby, I am. Go on and celebrate—Ben’s waiting for you down there.
She didn’t have to tell him twice. He let his joy carry him out of the room.
He took the stairs down to the fifth floor, burst into the hallway, and jogged down to their room.
“Yo, Ben!” he said, knocking on the door. “Good news, my friend!”
Smiles didn’t have to worry about keeping anything from Erin. They’d been pretty much forced to fill her in on the basics that morning, telling her everything except the amount of money they were getting from the government. It was the only way they could get her to stick around without seeming too creepy. Smiles bounced on the balls of his feet, waiting for one of them to get the door.
No one came. Maybe they turned on the TV and can’t hear me, Smiles thought as he hopped outside the door, looking like a fool and not caring one bit.
“Yo, Ben, c’mon man!”
He pounded on the door some more, until he realized he had his own key. The light at the doorknob turned green as he pressed the card key down and barged into the room.
“Hey, man, we did it!”
Smiles stopped. Before the door closed behind him, his heart had sunk to the floor. All of Ben’s stuff was gone. His clothes, his netbook, his army bag with the combination lock. Most of Smiles’s things were still there, but someone had rifled through them pretty good. The few clothes he’d brought—a pair of jeans, his Red Sox boxers, and a couple of T-shirts—had been dumped out on a bed. His duffel bag had been turned inside out and thrown on the floor.
Ben was really nervous about something bad happening. Maybe he decided to clear out of the room early.
Smiles couldn’t fool himself, though. Ben would have called if he’d left the room for some reason. He checked his phone to be sure, but saw only the missed call from Melanie.
Smiles backed away from the bed, feeling an instinct that he shouldn’t touch anything. Still, he had to press a hand to the wallpaper for balance. He felt like he had a few months before, when he’d signed up for a one-year gym membership and spent five minutes on a treadmill—dizzy and hot and clammy with sweat.
Smiles checked the closet at the front of the room, just to make sure Ben hadn’t stowed his stuff in there. The metal hangers clanged against one another as he yanked the door open, finding nothing. Next he checked the bathroom, which had been emptied out and wiped clean. Anything that wasn’t nailed down was gone—all of the shampoo bottles, the towels, the little glass by the sink. Smiles could smell something more powerful than your average bathroom cleaner, and from the stinging in his eyes he suspected it was bleach.
Between the fumes and the fear building inside him, Smiles almost blacked out. He stepped out of the bathroom, put his hands on his knees, and tried to breathe. He could only get so much air into his lungs. On the far side of the room, the air conditioner blew into the curtains.
His phone rang in his hand, and Smiles answered it almost before “I’m Shipping Up to Boston” could start. The line was ragged with static. “Smiles! Look out the win—”
Ben’s voice trailed away, and then a terrible scratching sound came across the line. Smiles was already yanking the curtains apart. Below in the parking lot, he saw Cole stomping on Ben’s phone. Somehow, Ben had grabbed it and made the call. It must have been difficult, because Cole and the other NSA agent, Gary, were carrying him roughly by the armpits.
They were taking him away.
101
BEN HAD NO chance.
His feet pinwheeled above the asphalt as the two agents whisked him from the casino. They flanked him tightly, handling him with ease. In his free hand, Gary held a sagging black trash bag, which from the angle of his shoulders appeared heavier than Ben. It probably contained Ben’s stuff and the items from the bathroom. Even with the lumpy Cole at one side, the agents were plenty strong enough to carry Ben a clear foot off the ground.
Smiles could see now that they were headed for a black minivan. Ben’s hands had been bound behind him. He jerked his neck around, shouting a call for help that Smiles couldn’t hear.
Smiles pulled at the window latch but knew it was welded shut. He banged on the glass but knew the sound wouldn’t reach them. He prayed someone would intervene, but there were no witnesses in the lot.
“Hey!” Smiles shouted into the glass. It barely vibrated as he pounded on the window. He kept at it, but it was only making his fists sore and his arms burn. The agents were about to get away. Smiles had never felt so helpless.
Gary slid open the minivan door, let Cole toss Ben inside, then slammed the door shut. The agents glanced briefly around the lot and got inside. Cole fixed a pair of dark glasses over his eyes and spoke harshly into the rearview mirror.
Smiles hoped that somehow Ben would string the conversation out.
He charged out of the room, heading downstairs.
He took the stairs two at a time. The stairwell was positioned at the end of the hallway, so now he had to backtrack toward the casino lobby to get out to the parking lot. He ran down the row of retail stores for people itching to blow money on overpriced sunglasses and celebrity-endorsed jeans. He took the length of it in full stride, darting right and left to avoid sixty-year-old women in plastic sandals and velour warm-ups, window-shopping for Prada and Gucci. Husbands and wives saw him coming and scooted out of his path.