"Do you think he made the code so complex, we won't be able to discover what his message says?"
She swung back to the screen. "It does look complicated, but I’ll see what I can do. Why don't you two make yourselves comfortable. This might take some time."
"How about a walk?" Sandra suggested and she followed him, putting her coat back on and leaving Brooke seated at the console screen. She was already into the work, oblivious of them. There was nothing they could do anyway.
They didn't go any farther than the porch. The wind whipped at them as it had done last night when they were digging around the rocks on Route 95. Wyatt put his arm around her and pulled her close.
"I've been thinking a lot about President Horton's request that we work with him. I want to know what you think about it."
Everett's question had been at the top of her mind, too. She hadn't come to a decision yet. "I think we need another alternative," Sandra said. "I've been racking my brain trying to come up with something that will be workable and not harm anyone now or in the future, but I can't think of a thing. This might be a problem which has no solution and certainly no winner."
Wyatt turned her face to him and kissed her forehead. She'd come to the same conclusion he had. God, he loved her. He couldn't imagine what he'd have done if he'd never found her. If nothing good came out of this mess over Project Eagle, at least he'd met the woman of his dreams. He couldn't ask for a better partner.
"I think we'd better let him know we've agreed to his plan," Wyatt said.
"But we haven't," Sandra corrected.
"He won't know that. We need to play his game, let him think he's making the rules. At least until we can find another alternative."
"I'll ask Brooke if we can use her phone."
***
Brooke had been cloistered in her office most of the day. Sandra and Wyatt had paced the floor, looked through all the windows and speculated on what Jeff could have given them until finally they lapsed into silence. Only the incessant wind could be heard in the quiet house.
A maid had prepared a light meal at lunchtime and taken a tray into Brooke. Wyatt and Sandra had eaten silently, and finally he'd fallen asleep on the sofa. Sandra knew how little sleeping he'd done the night before. She pulled off his shoes and covered him with an afghan from the back of the sofa. Then she put another log in the fireplace and sat reading a magazine.
She couldn't remember a word of what she read. Finally, she put it aside and stared at Wyatt. She wondered all sorts of things about him: what was it like where he grew up; were his parents still alive; did he have brothers and sisters? They had been on the run virtually since they met. They'd had no time to exchange the facts of background or tell stories of their pasts. Now she was in love with him.
It felt like the first time. He was her first thought in the morning and her last at night. She loved sleeping in the warmth of his arms and finding herself cradled like a baby when she awoke. She liked the newness of discovering things about his body, where he was ticklish and what turned him on. She liked the feel of his skin and the smell that was only his. She liked the way he could make her hot by only looking at her and that she could become aroused just thinking of him.
Their morning in bed had been a powerful experience for her. She thought their first time was the best it would ever get, but each time something new and exciting happened to let her know that Wyatt Randolph would surprise her every day of her life. She wanted those surprises, longed for them. She wanted to anticipate what he could do and how she could help him. She didn't mind being in the limelight if it bathed the two of them. He was a good senator. He believed he could make a difference, and if he believed he could do it, then she believed too.
"Sandra?" The voice calling her was so soft she almost didn't think it came from outside her head She was staring at Wyatt. "Sandra?" It came again. Suddenly, she realized Brooke was standing in the doorway. She stood up quickly but didn't wake Wyatt.
Going to me office, both women went inside and closed the door.
"Have you found out what's on it?"
She nodded.
Sandra tried to read her face, but saw no change of expression.
"It's a schematic." Brooke sat down at the computer screen and pulled the image up.
Sandra looked at it, but only saw a convergence of lines.
"There are fifteen diamonds," Brooke said.
"How did you know that?" Neither Sandra nor Wyatt had mentioned anything about the stones.
"The message on the disks talks about them. There are fifteen. They have to have a particular and specific arrangement in order for the system to work." She glanced at Sandra. "Jeff didn't mention what the system does, so I don't know."
"It's a communications system," she said, feeling compelled to say something. She couldn't give her a full explanation, but this was as close to the truth as she would go.
"The stones have specific shapes." She pulled one stone up on the screen. It grew larger and larger. "Even though the sides might look the same, they are minutely different. These differences allow light to pass through and be refracted. The refraction along with the computer system activates the system."
"So that's why," Sandra said. That's the real reason the chips are encased in stones. It has to do with light bouncing off the cut surfaces. Fifteen diamonds all with different cuts. It would take years to re-create what Chip Jackson had done. Even with two systems ready and waiting for the stones, only one set of stones in the world would work. And he's sent them to Wyatt.
"Why what?" Brooke asked.
"Nothing important," she said. "Is there anything else?"
"Yes," she said. She pulled the connecting lines back onto the screen. Then she superimposed the jewels over the lines at specific points. What Sandra saw on the screen reminded her of a necklace.
"It's beautiful," Sandra whispered.
"Beautiful and deadly." Brooke pointed to the screen. "Each of the stones has a symbol on one side. Seven of them have it on the right, seven on the left, and the fifteenth stone has it on the bottom tip. The symbols are both mathematic and musical. You need an electron microscope to see them."
"What are these symbols?" Sandra thought she recognized some of them when she'd first seen them.
Brooke pulled them up on the screen. As she'd done with overlaying the stones on the lines, next to each stone appeared a symbol. The mathematical symbols went down the left and the musical notations down the right.
"They seem to have no order. Did Jeff say they have a meaning?"
"I couldn't find that anywhere."
Sandra looked at them. Did Chip use them for something special, or merely identification? On the left she saw the mathematical symbols for pi, delta, summation, function, square root, greater than and equal. On the right the musical symbol for a whole rest topped the first stone, followed by the G clef, F clef, pianoforte, a quarter note, the time signature for a waltz, and the staff. The symbol for the final fifteenth stone was infinity.
"Do you think they mean anything?"
"In programming nothing is done for cosmetic reasons. Everything has a purpose or it would be a waste of the programmer's time to put in unnecessary information. These symbols could be for identification only. Whatever the program, it doesn't necessarily have to have anything to do with the symbol."
"Then why didn't he just number them one through fifteen?"
Brooke shrugged. "You got me there."
"Math and music?" Sandra walked to the windows and looked at the bare branches blowing in the high winds. "I don't know about the music, but the math symbols are incomplete. For example, function alone doesn't mean anything. It needs to be a function of something. And square root? Square root of what?"
"The musical symbols don't give much, either. All of these symbols would be used in various pieces of music. The three-quarter-time signature indicates a waltz, but there are hundreds, thousands of waltzes."
"Do you think th
e light refraction has to bounce off these symbols?"
Brooke hunched her shoulders. "They are on the stones and the light isn't going to know if its a facet or a symbol. I can't even offer an educated guess to their purpose."
Brooke suddenly looked through the window over Sandra's shoulder. "There's my daughter's bus. I have to go meet her."
"Sure," Sandra said, seeing the yellow school bus making a complete turn in the circular space outside the stone wall. Sandra was glad they hadn't blocked it.
"One more thing. I said the jewels were deadly."
"Yes."
"The fifteenth stone is necessary to the system, but it serves a dual purpose."
"What is it? Of the other stones, the one is larger than any of the others."
"That one," Brooke cautioned, "is a bomb."
***
"Absolutely not!" Grant stared at his wife. He stepped back from the embrace of a moment ago and wondered what could be going on in her head. Very likely, a hormonal imbalance.
"Grant, I can do it."
"Have you lost your mind? You're carrying twins, sweetheart. If you're not thinking of yourself, think of them."
Her dark eyes pleaded with him and he melted in the love he saw reflected there. Usually he denied her nothing, but he'd lost her once. It had been five years before he found her again. No way was he letting her work with a bomb.
"They can call the bomb squad. You are not doing it. What do you know about bombs anyway?"
"It isn't the bomb as much as programming it to do something else."
"And suppose something goes wrong? Robyn . . . B." He slipped back into the use of her real name when he was truly angry. "I'd the without you. You know that."
He put his arms around her engorged body. Brooke only had two more months to full term. He'd missed the birth of his daughter, Kari. Brooke had been Robyn then, and in the Witness Protection Program. When he'd found her, hiding behind an alias, he'd sworn he'd protect her and never let her out of his sight. When the twins made their entrance, he didn't want to be anywhere but at her side.
They had had a rocky couple of years while the federal Witness Protection Program put their lives back in place. Since it had settled into a normal routine he didn't want it ' disturbed. His own connection as a pilot with the government on a part-time basis and Brooke's consulting on government projects was enough excitement.
"Grant, look at them." She pulled him around until he could see Wyatt and Sandra through me office door. They were standing by me fireplace in the next room. Wyatt had his arm around Sandra. Grant could see how much in love they were. They were both in love and in danger. He remembered his own life just two years ago when he'd flown into Brooke's life and couldn't stop himself from seeing her again and again. (, Despite the danger she was in and the threats to her life, she'd ! risked everything for him.
He knew the couple he was looking at would do the same thing. Brooke was soft-hearted. She'd always been like that. She hired people at her restaurant who needed a second chance. She was always willing to give them that chance to turn their lives around. She was asking the for Senator Randolph and Sandra Rutledge.
Grant had read the accounts in the newspaper and he knew from personal experience the there was more to the story between the couple in his family room, a lot more. He ran his fingers under Brooked hair and massaged her neck. She leaned into him.
"They need us, Grant. We have to help them."
Grant sighed and gave in.
***
Wyatt hugged Sandra to him. He could feel the warmth of the fireplace behind her, but the heat she generated in him was no match for a there fire. They'd been there long enough. Brooke Richards had helped them with the information on the disk. It was time for them to go. He'd become too used to moving around to stay any longer. Grant and Brooke Richards and their daughter Kari were a wonderful family. He no longer wanted to disrupt their lives.
"It's time we left," he said into her hair. It smelled like shampoo, and he could have gone on smelling it all night.
"What are we going to do now?"
"I suppose we should report to the President what we've found."
"I think he already knows how the system works. He probably knows the significance of the symbols."
"I'm not sure. For some reason I feel Chip was riding solo by the end of the project. When he decided he didn't want to be part of a system this enormously powerful, he'd have deliberately built traps in it."
Sandra had told him everything Brooke found on the disk, including the secret of the fifteenth stone.
The bomb needed a trigger mechanism and there didn't appear to be one, according to anything Jeff had left on the disk. Sandra assumed the trigger had to be on the connector board. If she was right activation of the system would cause it to self-destruct. But there were two systems. Did both of them have the same trigger? Had the stolen system been taken before Chip made the decision to set the trap?
Chip was the only person who knew the answer to that and he couldn't answer. Her guess was, only one of them had it, and she didn't know which one. For Chip it wouldn't have mattered. If the one system was destroyed, the other would be inoperable. It needed these stones and these only. The opportunity for another programmer to develop the fifteen exact stones would take a millennium. She wondered if he'd thought that some other enterprising systems analyst could configure the system to accept another set of stones.
Grant and Brooke came in. Sandra and Wyatt separated.
"Sandra, I talked to Grant and we agree I can take a further look at that last stone."
Sandra knew exactly what she meant. She could either try to disarm the stone or reconfigure it.
"Absolutely not!" Sandra and Wyatt said in unison.
***
"Mr. President," Lance acknowledged as he walked into the Oval Office. The room was full of people and he felt as if he was late for a meeting. He hated being late. Why hadn't he been invited to attend when the meeting was convened?
"Lance, you know everybody here." Horton looked at him. He nodded. The room was full of advisors, the FBI director, secretary of defense, Melanie West, Senator Rutledge, and several other members of Congress. Even the Vice President was in attendance. Lance took a seat next to Senator Rutledge.
He didn't like this. He felt his blood rush in his head and forced himself to relax. He didn't want anyone to see him sweat. Didn't want them to know that he was not in complete control.
"Lance, let me bring you up to date," Everett sat down and stretched his long legs in front of him. The man didn't look like a president. He was overly tall and clumsy. The only thing he had going for him was charisma and Casey Horton. The First Lady was absent from this congregation, and Lance wondered where she was. The two of them ran the country as a team, unfortunately leaving the Vice President out.
When he was elected, he'd refused to be kept out of policy making decisions. He'd already felt Senator Whittaker out. The man was another extremely popular personality. If he played his cards right he'd be on the ticket for the next election.
"We've discovered someone hacked into the DOD computers last night," Everett was saying when Lance looked up.
"Was there a violation of any sensitive information?"
"Any time there's a break-in, there's that possibility, but the hacker wasn't interested in taking anything, just using it.
"I don't understand, sir."
"The hacker wanted to use the encryption-decoding data banks."
Lance forced his features to remain in place. There were only a few people in the country who had enough savvy to hack into the DOD. Their names were known to the FBI's computer theft division. They were also known to him. There were few of them in the Washington, DC, area and only a couple whom Senator Randolph would be able to locate.
"Were they successful, sir?"
"Very. We let them take everything they wanted and we kept track of the data."
Lance hated Ho
rton. He wanted to make him sweat. He liked seeing him squirm. Why didn't he just come out and tell him what they'd found out? Why were they doing this asinine dance? Lance smiled. Horton wasn't as smart as he thought. He already knew about Mrs. Brooke Richards's invasion into an unauthorized area of the DOD computers. The report had been put on his desk almost as she'd gone in. He granted her his respect. She was good. Better than good, she was one of the best. She'd bypassed most of the bells and whistles that would have caught nine out of ten of the others on the list. He knew everything she knew.
The urge to take Horton down a peg by revealing he already knew the facts of Horton's explanation was so strong he almost couldn't resist making a fool of the President in front of an audience. But he held his tongue, thinking better of it. Let him think he had command. It was a false illusion and soon everyone would know it. He had time.
Lance knew where Randolph was. He'd have him in a matter of hours. Then Horton's world would fall apart brick by brick and Lance would stand as the level headed-leader. The television cameras would roll with his decisions. He'd stand as a pillar of strength as everyone around him scrambled to blame someone else for the mess Horton had created.
"I talked to the senator this morning."
Lance's head came up with a snap.
"He has the stones. He's coming in."
This was a change. Randolph couldn't turn himself in. Not to Horton. That wasn't part of Lance's plan. He wouldn't allow Horton to tear down everything he'd planned. He needed to get to Randolph first.
***
Jordon looked through the lens of his Leica. It was a battered old camera. He'd bought it used from a retiring photographer when he was a younger man getting started in photography. It had been around the world more than once and served him well.
He had many cameras, newer models, but he loved this one better than any of the newer ones. Today he was playing, not really intending to take a picture, just looking through the lens. The woman on the other end of his viewfinder was Annie. She lazed on the bed where they'd made love. The room was full of them. Her hair was mussed from his hands threading through it. She had no clothes on under the satin sheets, that made her look more sexy than if she'd been naked to his view.
Under the Sheets (Capitol Chronicles Book 1) Page 59