The Devil's Code

said, “So now you’re on a revenge trip. Forget Jack, you’re going to get them because they killed Lane.”
    “No. If I could, I’d go home right now. But I need to get loose; I can’t get loose. The feds have a list of names, they’ve got murder and evidence of a conspiracy and the IRS attack and maybe what looks like an attack on a major encryption company. They’ll eventually start peeling back the names. I’ve got to figure out what’s going on, and get them running that way, or I’m fucked.”
    She didn’t say anything, so eventually I said, “I’m not sure you really need to stay around. From here on out, it’s gonna be mostly computer stuff.”
    “Oh, shit, Kidd. You know I’m not going anyplace,” she said irritably.
    “Maybe if you . . .”
    “Shut up.”
    So I shut up: I wanted her around.
    W e stayed the night in Dallas. Given the time the shooting took place, it was too late to make the regular television news. If the papers bothered with it, they wouldn’t get more than a few basic facts from the cops. We decided to stay over, and to leave at the peak check-out time in the morning. That’s what we did: there’d been nothing on the late-night news and nothing in the morning papers. At eight o’clock, we were headed down I-35 to Austin.
    “Hope Bobby got somebody to Green,” LuEllen said, partway down. Neither of us was talking much. The images from the motel were too clear, the kind of images that push you back into your own head.
    “He said he would, and he’s got good contacts,” I said.
    “I hope.”
    A ustin used to be a small-town pretty place. Take away the heat, and it’s more like Minnesota than the rest of Texas. Twenty years ago, I could have imagined living there, except that the landscape colors weren’t mine. Now, there’re too many people, and the city has gone from a Great Place to a Pain in the Ass.
    Somebody else’s problem. We checked into a Holiday Inn and started making phone calls.
W HAT HAPPENED ?
    A TTORNEY TALKED TO G REEN THIS MORNING . G REEN ’ S IN INTENSIVE CARE / WOUNDED LEGS / THIGHS / WILL BE OKAY . G REEN KNOWS FELONY LAW , TELLS COPS HE DIDN ’ T KNOW WHAT WAS GOING ON EXCEPT CLIENT HAD BEEN ATTACKED SEVERAL TIMES , HAD BEEN BURGLARIZED , BROTHER SHOT . H E WAS HIRED TO DO BODYGUARD WORK . G REEN SAYS HE WAS IN BATHROOM WHEN DOOR KNOCK CAME , SHE SAID THEY ’ RE BACK AND HE SAID STAY AWAY BUT SHE OPENED DOOR AND SHOOTING STARTED . H E SAYS HE HIT ONE , COPS FIND BLOOD TRAIL .
    H E DID GOOD . M UST PLAY DUMB .
    H E DOES THAT . C OPS PUSH HIM HARD BUT ALL HE HAS IS HIRING ON RECOMMENDATION OF FRIEND — FRIEND WILL COVER . T ELLS COPS HE DOESN ’ T KNOW LW, DOESN ’ T KNOW COMPUTERS , SAW NO TROUBLE UNTIL SHOOTING STARTED .
    OK.
    Y OU STILL WORKING ?
    Y ES . IRS ATTACK CONTINUES ?
    C ONTINUES , BUT CLOSING DOWN NOW . R UMORS : FEDS HUNTING F IREWALL NAMES , MAKE SOME BUSTS ; NOTHING IN PAPERS . W ASH P OST : FBI, NSA IN CONFLICT OVER F IREWALL . R UMORS : G ERMAN CALLED C OPERNI X DOES I T .
    OK. Y OU MONITOR , WE WILL CALL DAILY .
    Y ES . O NE MORE THING . T HE FIVE DATA STRINGS WITH THE PICTURES INCLUDE VARIOUS 125–200 ( APPROX .) BYTE FILES FOLLOWED BY DISTINCT 512- BYTE /4096- BITFILES FOLLOWED BY VARIOUS 350–600 BYTE FILES . 4096- BIT FILES ARE LIKELY ULTRASTRONG KEYS , BUT DON ’ T KNOW LOCK . P OSSIBLE PHOTOS ENCRYPTED / DECRYPTED WITH KEYS ?
    W ILL LOOK .
    G OOD. B YE.
    “What?” LuEllen wanted to know.
    “Those goddamned files. As soon as we got them, we should have gone to Mexico or someplace and hid out, and figured them out. If they’re killing for them, there’s got to be a reason; they must think we can figure them out.”
    “Why don’t you just mail them to the NSA and let them figure them out?”
    “Not until I know what they are. If they’re important enough to kill for, then they might be important enough that the NSA or the CIA or somebody else would just keep coming after them. Anyway, I’ve got a new theory.”
    “Lane had a theory.”
    “But I have another one. The theory is that AmMath screwed something up so badly that they figured they had to cover it, and the whole thing got out of control when Jack was killed. Now they’re killing to cover up the killing.”
    “Sounds like a bad movie.”
    “That’s what I got,” I said.
    That afternoon, we got something else. After looking gloomily through the files—I saw how Bobby isolated the 4096-bit file, and there wasn’t any question that