The Devil's Code

reason. You’reassuming he went because he was scared because he was on the list, like Mason. But what if he’s running because he is with Firewall?”
    “I mentioned that,” LuEllen said. “Kidd didn’t buy it. He’s got a theory.”
    “What’s the theory?”
    “There is no Firewall,” I said. “It’s bullshit, made up out of whole cloth.”
    T hen we launched into one of those circular arguments in which you almost feel as though you can grasp what’s going on, but there’s always one critical piece missing from every possible logical construction. Lane started it.
    “Exactly what would that do?” Lane asked. “If somebody made up Firewall, why would they do it?”
    “To cover some other reason for killing Lighter?” I suggested.
    “They didn’t have anything to cover. The police thought it was a mugging. They weren’t happy, but I’ve never heard there was any other big investigation going on, before the Firewall thing came up.”
    “Clipper II was dying. Is dying. Maybe they thought if one of the Clipper II people was killed by hackers, there’d be some kind of groundswell . . .”
    “There’s not going to be any groundswell,” Lane said. “The feds might want Clipper II, but it’s too late. Everybody knows it’s too late. It doesn’t have anything to do with preferences or laws. Trying to get rid of strong encryption and replace it with the Clipper IIwould be like trying to get rid of pi or the Round Earth Theory. It’s too fucking late. ”
    “Then how did all of those names come up all of a sudden? Mine and Bobby’s and Jack’s and omeomi and the others,” I asked. “We are linked. If you look at it from the right direction, we are a conspiracy, because a lot of us sure as shit have conspired with each other . . .”
    “I don’t know; I don’t know why Firewall came up. I don’t know how it ties in. But it seems to. There’s something out there, and it’s not totally made up. Something is happening. And Jack is dead and Lighter is dead . . .”
    “But it might just be coincidence . . .”
    “How could it possibly be?” She ticked it off on her fingers. “Jack is connected with Clipper II and AmMath and Firewall. Firewall kills Lighter who is connected with Clipper II and AmMath.”
    “But we can’t find a single person who is really connected with Firewall,” I said. “Not a single one.”
    Green asked, “Did Jack know Lighter?”
    I shook my head. “Not as far as we know.”
    “Might be something to check.”
    I turned to LuEllen, who’d kept her mouth shut during the argument. “What do you think?”
    “Three choices,” she said.
    “Yeah?”
    “Look at AmMath. Keeping digging at Firewall. Get the fuck out.”
    L ane wanted to go after AmMath because of her brother. Green didn’t much care; his job was to takecare of Lane, which he would do one way or the other. LuEllen was edging toward the door. “You can’t fight a bureaucracy,” she said. “You just become a goal. They put the goal in memos. It’s like trying to argue with the IRS.”
    But I couldn’t quit, not yet. The names were out there, and once the cops started unraveling a few identities, they would probably get them all—and we could get hurt without ever knowing why, or what was happening.
    “I have to find out more about Firewall,” I said. “Just for self-protection. If AmMath’s involved, then I’ll look into AmMath.”
    “You’re giving up on Jack?” Lane asked. “It sounds like you’re giving up.”
    “No, but we’ve got to be careful. From what it looks like, AmMath may be more than some mean-ass private company. Jack may have been messing with something serious—big-time trouble, of the kind we really don’t want to know about.”
    “What does that mean?”
    “That means that the only way to get at them would be politics. We find some paper, we sic your senator on them, they do an internal investigation and cough somebody up and disown him. But if Jack was killed by some kind of operation . . . that’s gonna be tough.”
    T he best thing we could do, I thought, was to run down the Monger information in Maryland. Maybe, with luck, we’d find some fourteen-year-old computer hack at the bottom of the Firewall conspiracy.We could dump him in the lap of the local sheriff, get a good laugh out of the press, and go home.
    “Fat chance,” LuEllen said.
    “It could happen,” I said. “It’s better than trying to crawl through AmMath’s