A Clean Kill in Tokyo

or many copies, I’m not sure, but the point is you can’t make copies of copies. No grandchildren in this family.”
    “And there’s no way to send the contents of the disk over the Internet, upload to a secure site, anything like that?”
    “No. If you try, the data will get randomized. You won’t be able to read it.”
    “Well, that explains a few things,” I said.
    “Like what?”
    “Like why they were messing with disks in the first place. Like why they’re so eager to get this one back. They know it hasn’t been copied or uploaded, so they know their potential damage is still limited to this one disk.”
    “That’s right.”
    “Now tell me this. Why would whoever controls the data permit even a single copy? Why not no copies? Wouldn’t that be more secure?”
    “Probably more secure, but risky, too. If something happened to the master, all your records would be gone. You’d want some kind of backup.”
    I considered. “What else is there?”
    “Well, as you know, it’s encrypted.”
    “Yes.”
    “The encryption is strange.”
    “You keep saying that.”
    “Ever hear of a lattice reduction?”
    “I don’t think so.”
    “It’s a kind of code. The cryptographer encodes a message in a pattern, a pattern like the flowers in a symmetrical wallpaper design. But wallpaper patterns are simple—only one image in two dimensions. A more complex code uses a pattern that repeats itself at various levels of detail, in multiple mathematical dimensions. To break the code, you have to find the most basic way the lattice repeats itself—the origin of the pattern, in a way.”
    “So…”
    “I did some work with lattice reductions at Fort Meade, but this one is strange.”
    “Harry, if you say that one more time…”
    “Sorry, sorry. It’s strange because the lattice seems to be a musical pattern, not a physical one.”
    “I’m not following you.”
    “There’s an overlay of what looks like musical notes—in fact, my optical drive recognized it as a music disk, not a data disk. The pattern is bizarre, but highly symmetrical.”
    “Can you crack it?”
    “I’ve been trying to, so far without luck. I’ve got to tell you, I’m a little out of my element on this one.”
    “Out of your element? All those years with the NSA, what could be out of your element?”
    He blushed. “It’s not the encryption. It’s the music. I need a musician to walk me through it.”
    “A musician,” I said.
    “Yeah, a musician. You know, someone who reads music, preferably someone who writes it.”
    I didn’t say anything.
    “I could really use her help on this,” he said.
    “Let me think about it,” I told him, uncomfortable.
    “Okay.”
    “What about the mobile phones? Anything there?”
    He smiled. “I was hoping you would ask. Ever hear of the
Shinnento?”
    “Not sure,” I said, trying to place the name. “New Year something?”
    “‘Shinnen’
like ‘faith’ or ‘conviction,’ not ‘New Year,’” he said, drawing the appropriate kanji in the air with a finger to distinguish one of the homonyms that pervade the language. “It’s a political party. The last call the
kendoka
made was to their headquarters in Shibakoen, and the number was speed-coded into both the phones’ memories.” He smiled, obviously relishing what he was about to say next. “And just in case that’s not enough to establish the connection,
Conviction
was paying the phone bill for the
kendoka
.”
    “Harry, you never cease to amaze. Tell me more.”
    “Okay.
Conviction
was established in 1978 by a fellow named Yamaoto Toshi, who is still the head of the party. Yamaoto was born in 1949. He’s the only son of a prominent family that traces its lines back to the samurai clans. His father was an officer in the Imperial Army, military occupational specialty communications, who after the war started a company that made portable communications devices. The father got started in business by trading on his family’s connections with the remnants of the
zaibatsu,
and then got rich during the Korean War, when the American army bought his company’s equipment.”
    Zaibatsu
were the prewar industrial conglomerates, run by Japan’s most powerful families. After the war, MacArthur cut down the tree, but he couldn’t dig out the roots.
    “Yamaoto started out in the arts—he spent some years as a teenager in Europe for classical piano training, I think at his mother’s insistence. Apparently he was a bit of a