“I think the cavalry is here,” she informed them.
Quinlan picked up the gun that had fallen from Kahsan’s hand and turned to face the door. “Listen,” he told her. “They’re probably going to take you into custody until they get this mess straightened out. But I’ll make sure Krueger understands what you did here today.”
“I don’t think that’s going to be a problem.”
He squinted at her, but she wasn’t sure if that was because there was blood running down his eye, or because he was truly confused. A few seconds later, three agents came through the door in perfect formation. Two low, one high.
“The place is secure,” Quinlan told them. He set both guns down on the workstation and held his hands up. Because he did, Sabrina did, too.
“We’re cool. The bad guy is dead.”
Immediately, the agents rushed to Kahsan’s body. One checked for vitals, the other had already removed a kit from his waist pack and was taking fingerprints. The fingerprints would provide concrete identification along with the DNA they would no doubt extract.
A moment later, a large figure was framed in the doorway. Sabrina would have recognized him by the bulldog expression, if she hadn’t been expecting him.
“Assistant Director Krueger,” she announced. “Good to see you again.”
“Ms. Masters,” Kruger replied, his face lifting a little with what she imagined was anticipation. “Tell me it’s him.”
“It’s him.”
Krueger walked by them, ignoring Quinlan’s rather pointed glare and stared down at the body. “Can I say now that I really never thought this would work?”
“So little faith,” Sabrina admonished.
Quinlan focused on her. “They contacted you first. This was a setup. And I was the patsy,” he finished, his voice tight.
She shrugged. There was no point in stating what he’d already figured out. And at the end of the day, the idea that she had one up on him was sort of appealing. “They used you because they knew you wouldn’t stop until he was dead. And now he is. You did good, Q. Don’t lose sight of that.”
Quinlan emitted a low bark. “They didn’t send me because of Kahsan. They sent me because…”
He didn’t finish his statement and it made her curious. But then the agents were removing Kahsan’s body and Krueger was standing in front of them demanding their attention. His head nodded toward Kevin who was still fussing over his minicomputer.
“Who is this?”
“Kevin, come here and meet Assistant Director Krueger. AD Krueger, meet Kevin Pollard, aka the mighty and legendary Sal Ploxm.”
“Yeah, not anymore,” Kevin mumbled. “You broke my computer. You know how hard it’s going to be to get parts for this?”
Fascinating, Sabrina thought. Gone was the terrified kid with the gun down his pants. In his place was all the ego and the arrogance of Sal Ploxm she’d been expecting. In a way, it was a relief. She didn’t see an ego like his suffering from any long-term effects of Kahsan’s terror.
But she wasn’t going to coddle the boy. “Kid, do you understand how much trouble you’re in?”
His eyes widened at that. “What did I do? He kidnapped me from my house. He made me bring my stuff. I didn’t have a choice.”
“Not for this. For the hacking,” she reminded him. “For the viruses. I know a bartender who lost some love e-mails who would like to nail your skinny little hide to a wall. Trust me, if he’d been here instead of me, your ‘pecker’ would already be gone and he’d have moved on to kneecap number two.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, oh. If I was you, I would stop complaining and start sucking up big-time. If I decide I like you, I might put in a good word for you with some people I know. You see, there is this program…I think it might be right for you. You came pretty close with the rotating passwords. Speaking of which…”
Sabrina walked over to the keyboard and carefully hit the backspace key over the keys she’d typed in an attempt to purposefully blow the machine.
Krueger and Quinlan came up behind her. “How many attempts did the kid make?”
“Two.”
“Only one more,” Quinlan stated. “His hands. I remember he told me that he’d been forced to go to the standard three attempt approach to protect against his shaky fingers.”
“It’s okay. I only need one,” she told them.
She felt Kevin peek around the two taller men. “If you want to wait,” he offered. “I think I can get this working again. You can use it to…”
She sent him a baleful glance that shut him up. “Thanks, but I got it covered.”
“Quick, what’s the significance of the number three?”
“It’s between two and four.”
“Excellent. Always start with the obvious. You’ll do, Girl Genius. You’ll do fine.”
The conversation played back in her head and caused a feeling of warm nostalgia. Arnold was a good man for all of his idiosyncrasies. He truly was.
“He contacted me,” she explained. “I didn’t lie about that, Q.”
“Just about everything else,” he replied.
“Uh…well…yes. But not about that. He found me. He wanted me to come home. He would have left the back door open.”
Sabrina typed the keys slowly and watched as the asterisks appeared on the screen to make up one long word.
G.I.R.L.G.E.N.I.U.S.
“Always start with the obvious. That’s what he would have told me to do. But just in case…you guys might want to back up.”
The three didn’t need any further encouragement. They all took several steps away from the workstation and held their collective breaths as she hit the enter key.
The screen went black and then the speakers blazed out a trumpet sound. A computer-modulated voice spoke as the words “Access Granted” flashed on the screen.
Hello, Sabrina. Welcome home. I made this first part easy for you, but the next stage is up to you. Your brain against mine. I only wish I was there to know what the outcome will be. I would say good luck. But truly, I hope you fail.
“Old crank,” Krueger cursed. “He doesn’t even care what this is possibly costing the United States.”
Sabrina shook her head. “No, he doesn’t. He just wants to play. Einstein better watch out.”
“What?” Krueger prodded.
“Never mind. But hey, don’t rule me out. I got the bad guy, didn’t I?”
“I got the bad guy,” Quinlan corrected her.
“Semantics,” she dismissed. “I’m going to need a chair.”
Kevin was the one to push up a desk chair that had been left in the corner of the room. He wheeled it over the uneven floor of the cabin and offered it to her as courteously as a sixteen-year-old kid knew how to do. Then he stood at her shoulder as she opened the folders of data she would need in an attempt to decipher his encryption code.
A screen full of symbols that would have looked like garbage to anyone else appeared on the monitor.
“Whoa,” he muttered. “Check it out. That’s not PGP encryption.”
“I told you, he didn’t like to use other people’s software,” Sabrina explained. She watched the signs, letters and numbers scroll across the screen. Stream after stream of running data hid behind a pattern that Arnold was pretty confident no computer and certainly no human would ever be able to read.
“Your brain against mine, Arnold,” she whispered to the monitor. “I think I’m going to be here for a while.”
“How long?” Krueger wanted to know.
Sabrina shook her head. “No idea. You should take Q to the hospital. He’s bleeding through the towels and I don’t need the distraction of him fainting on me.”
“I’m fine. I’ll stay.”
Her chair swiveled and it brought a smile to her lips. Arnold loved to swivel. “Seriously, this could take days. Even weeks. If I ever break it. You should go and take care of yourself. That’s a nasty-looking wound I gave you.”
“The other agents will stay with her,” Krueger added. “She’s right. You need to have it stitched. And we have to get the boy back to his parents.”
“They’re going to be so completely peeved when they find out,” Kevin lamented. “My dad’s office was, like, the first network I hit.”
Krueger took the kid by one arm and pushed him toward the door even as the kid cradled his precious machine in his other hand. “So, Kevin. Have you ever considered using your talents for the greater good…?”
Sabrina smiled as she watched them leave and then stood so she could focus her attention on Quinlan. He was planted in the center of the cabin.
It was an odd moment. For the first time since they had been reunited, there was no pretense between them. No hidden agendas or suspicions. She wasn’t sure what to say. Apparently, he didn’t know what to say, either, because he only stared at her. His expression was blank.
A sad thought occurred to her. What if it was too late? What if he hated her now? Forgiveness wasn’t a word either of them liked to use. Somehow she’d managed it. She was really hoping he would, too.
“You should go,” she said finally, when the not speaking got to her. “I have work.”
He glanced at the monitor over her shoulder, then looked back at her. All he said was, “Do good.”
“I’ll try.”
With that, he turned and left the cabin, careful to shut the door on his way out.
“See you, Q.” She said it only because she didn’t know if it was the last time she ever would.
With a deep sigh she shook off her melancholy and sat back down in Arnold’s chair, her eyes pinned to the screen. After a while, she didn’t know how much time had passed, one of the agents came back inside the cabin carrying wood for the stove.
She’d almost forgotten that it was still winter and freezing inside the primitive abode. She’d forgotten because she was still wearing Quinlan’s coat. And it was warm.
“We’ve been instructed to give you anything you need,” the agent told her.
“Right now the only thing I need is a pack of cigarettes and some space.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Oh,” she said as another thought occurred to her. “There are two others, right?”
“There are three of us on the island,” the agent who had brought the wood answered. “Our mission is to protect you at all costs while you work.”
“Got it. But here is the thing. I’m going to need to take a break every once in a while. You guys don’t happen to play poker, do you?”
Chapter 23
Ten years ago
“You understand we need this code broken as soon as-”
“Possible,” Sabrina finished. “I get it.”
She was back in the Comm center. Her home away from home for the past six months. The players changed, but their roles were always the same. An urgent and edgy CIA manager. Two tech geeks who liked to fuss with the sophisticated computer. Logically, she knew they couldn’t be the same two every time, but it was impossible to tell. They all wore bad clothes, had bad hair and mumbled incoherently in Java. Sabrina wondered if there was a special school that trained them how to dress and act like complete losers.
And tonight there was a group of very serious-looking men, in very serious suits, with very serious expressions on their faces. She was told they were from a congressional intelligence subcommittee, here to study her and evaluate her progress.
She didn’t care.
The only thing missing was Quinlan. He was back in the field last she’d heard. Bitterly, she wondered if Caroline was missing her precious Jack. Maybe crying perfect tears into her pillow every night.
His replacement was her direct superior at the agency. A buffoon who was currently trying to show off in front of the politicos and another man, who she knew was the CIA director himself. Big crowd tonight.
Sabrina glanced at the wall already filled with numbers and thought about her role in this drama. She was just a tool, like any other satellite or computer or weapon they had in their arsenal.
“Do you see anything, Sabrina?”
This from her nervous boss. He was nothing like Q. She’d figured that out the second she met him. He was all spit and polish. An Ivy League ladder climber. She wondered if he’d spent any time at all out in the field, or if his rise in the agency had come purely from kissing ass.
Idiot. “Not yet,” she answered.
Stubbornly, she refused to focus in on the numbers in front of her. She thought about what Quinlan would say if he was here. He would tell her to forget about the boss she didn’t respect. Forget the higher-ups who had come to watch her perform like a trained monkey, and concentrate only on getting the job done.
Well, screw him.
Since her graduation she’d grown bored with the endless puzzles she’d been asked to solve. The point of doing any of this was lost on her. She cracked one code; there was another to take its place. There always would be.
Arnold had tried to convince her to come work with him, but her boss wouldn’t have it. He claimed that she was needed in other areas, which was bullshit. She just made him look good. She was his secret weapon, a code breaker who could perform even faster than some of the most sophisticated software programs the government had ever written.
She was sick of it. Sick of the manipulation, the politics involved at the agency, and sick to death of the expectations that were being heaped on her shoulders.
“Do you need another page?”
One of the geeks was getting antsy. Her reputation preceded her. After forty some minutes and no answer, it was clear they were worried that something was wrong.
Something was wrong.
“Hey,” she snarled. “If you think you can do this faster, by all means.”
No one bothered to reply.
Why had she come to this place? Why had she agreed to become their weapon? Answers that had come so easily a year ago, now stumped her. This was supposed to be her grand purpose, stuck in some dark room performing tricks for congressmen-the kind that didn’t involve sex?
Her father wanted her to use her brainpower for good. Well, where the hell was he? What had he ever done for her that what he wanted should even matter to her? He certainly didn’t love her as a father should.
Then there was Quinlan. He expected her to use her gifts to benefit the United States of America. How honorable. How noble. Ironic, considering he’d screwed her when he was almost engaged to someone else. In her mind that was as dishonorable a thing as a man could do.
No, nobody gave a damn about her. Nobody ever had. It was time for her to start taking her cue from them. It was time for her to stop giving a damn about anyone else. About anything else.
She needed to help herself. She had to be her first priority. Otherwise the world as she understood it would walk all over her. She was tired of being stepped on, exhausted to her bones of being used for the benefit of everyone else…but her.
“I can’t see anything,” she told them, even as the pattern formed in front of her eyes. What did it matter if she told them what it was? What would it get her, but another chance to do this all over again? And again.
“Are you sure?” her boss whined. “I don’t understand. She’s never had trouble before,” he told his superior. “Maybe you can give it another try.”
“Maybe you can shove these pictures up your ass,” she volleyed. She turned then and left the Comm center for the last time.
The next day she was called before a panel to talk about her behavior. When she failed to give them the answers they wanted to hear, she was fired.
Willful insubordination. And they weren’t wrong.
She left the CIA. Left her life as she knew it and promised herself that she would never look back.
Present
It wasn’t her record best time. It took her three weeks, two days, seven hours, fifty-six minutes and five seconds. But finally she saw it-a pattern in the seemingly endless waves of r
andom symbols. It was like a thread that had been left loose after the final stitch was sewn.
Once she found it all she needed to do was pull. And pull. And pull. When she had a solid grasp on it, she was able to give it one final tug. The data came spilling forth from the computer like a one-armed bandit in Vegas gave forth quarters once the magic figures were aligned in the window.
Part of her, the sentimental part, couldn’t help but be sorry for Arnold. She hoped that he was in a far nicer place than the cabin she had called home for several weeks. But she envisioned him looking down on her right now and cursing like a drunken sailor that he’d been beaten. Defeated soundly in three weeks, two days, seven hours, fifty-six minutes and five seconds when it had taken him more than a decade to write the code.
Her brain against his.
It had been quite a challenge. A challenge that had left her with a severe headache, an empty belly and cramps in her fingers and arms for several days running as she began to test the limits of what she could do both mentally and physically. But she’d won. And the world would be a safer place for it. Or at least America would be. For now.
She felt really good about that.
Her first and only call was to Krueger. She rattled off the coordinates of every tagged terrorist in the system, pinpointing their current location. From there it wasn’t hard to find those who were residing in the western hemisphere. The few that had been allowed to infiltrate homeland security in order to identify their compatriots, four in total, were the first to be picked up.
It turned out they were in Florida. Orlando of all places, which led Sabrina to secretly suspect that some cartoon character might be a turncoat and a terrorist. Or it could have had something to do with the climate and the bulk of foreign tourists in that part of the country year round. That seemed more sensible.
She left Arnold’s cabin with a weary but satisfied smile. The agents had driven her the three and a half hours north back to her sleepy small town in central Pennsylvania. Her house, battered and bruised from all the recent activity, waited for her. Inexplicably, when she saw it, she felt tears spring to her eyes. Such a girly thing to do.
Calculated Risk Page 21