False Witness (12 page)

“Are you a professional thief?” the professor asked.

“I don't know where you got that idea,” Clark said, pulling away from the curb.

Clark tried to ignore the stares of the professor as he followed the directions back toward the main road.
“What?”
he finally asked, exasperated.

“You kept the cell phone,” Kumari noted.

“I'm going to call them with it.”

“Write down their number and use your other phone. Discard the leash.”

“I can't risk that. They might take it out on Jessica.”

“If you keep the phone, they will know where to find you. When they locate you, what is your plan?”

Who knows?
Clark hadn't gotten that far yet. He was following a make-it-up-as-you-go plan. “I guess I'll put a gun to your head and demand that they free Jessica before I give you up.”

Kumari didn't flinch, as if this were all just one huge math problem. “What if they do not bring Jessica?”

“I'll figure that out when the time comes.”

“What if the triad shoots you, takes me, and kills Jessica?”

“That would be a very bad day.”

“Maybe I should have taken my chances with Mr. Hargrove.”

Clark ignored the comment and turned left onto Green Valley Parkway, conscious that the area was crawling with the Henderson police force and possibly a few triad members as well. He had placed the mob's cell phone in the center console, where it now seemed to pump out evil sound waves like the throb of a telltale heart, revealing Clark's every turn. Until he called them, they probably wouldn't know that he had found Kumari. But once he told them he had the professor . . .

“Let us assume something for the sake of an illustration,” Kumari said. “Let us assume the triad brings your wife—I believe you say her name is Jessica—to a place you select for an exchange of prisoners, so to speak. How, Mr. Doe, do you and Jessica escape alive? Even if you put a gun to my head, as you say, once I become a prisoner of the triad, what prevents them from shooting you and Mrs. Doe?”

“I haven't figured that out yet, but improvising is my strong point.”

“Improvising?” The professor shifted in the front seat so he was facing more toward Clark. For a moment, Clark thought he didn't recognize the word. Turns out it was the concept Kumari was struggling with. “With foes like Huang Xu,” the professor said, “we need a plan.”

Clark checked the mirrors. He saw at least three dark sedans, possibly full of murderous Chinese mobsters. Possibly full of federal agents. Possibly full of Vegas vacationers. The pressure was making him crazy. “With respect, Professor, so far your advance planning has not exactly paid off.”

“You have a point,” the professor said softly.

Something about the answer made the professor seem more like an ally than an adversary. Maybe it was the matter-of-fact way the man acknowledged his failures. Or possibly Clark felt like he owed Kumari because the professor had helped him earlier. More likely it was the small man's quiet dignity, the humble way he accepted these circumstances yet still maintained the voice of gentle authority.

Or maybe Clark had no other choice.

“What do
you
suggest, Professor?”

Kumari closed his eyes and took a deep breath, like Yoda in
Star Wars
preparing to offer profound insights about the Force. “Pull into the McDonald's parking lot up there on the right. Next to the Dumpster. We start by throwing away the triad cell phone. Afterward, we head to my apartment. I have some tools there that may help level the playing field, as you say.”

“That cell phone has Huang Xu's number. It's the phone he told me to use.” And for Clark, it was also something more. He had heard Jessica's voice on that phone—the last fragile strand connecting them. He dreaded to think what Xu's reaction might be if he threw it out.

“If you want to rescue your wife, Mr. Shealy, you must change how you think. You must begin first by trusting me. Also, you must take charge with Huang Xu. No longer should you blindly follow what your wife's captors have suggested. With me, you now have what
they
want.
You
should issue the orders, not Huang Xu.”

Clark thought about this for a moment. Kumari had gone from calling him
Doe
to
Shealy
, undoubtedly the old man's way of signaling a new partnership, a willingness to work together. But Clark hadn't made his reputation as a bounty hunter by trusting others. He lived by the law of the jungle. And the very first precept of that law was to trust nobody. He wouldn't be in this spot to begin with if he had applied the law of the jungle to Dr. Anthony Silvoso.

He drove past the McDonald's and noticed Kumari slouch a little lower in the seat. “Do it your way, Mr. Shealy.”

Two blocks later, Clark pulled into a Wendy's parking lot and stopped next to its Dumpster. He recorded Huang Xu's phone number and stepped out of the car. He tossed the phone into the Dumpster, listening as it clanged against the far wall before it nestled among the food scraps and debris. The stench of garbage drifted over the car roof.

It smelled like Clark felt.

When Clark climbed back into the car, Kumari gave him a satisfied nod. “Would you like to hear the rest of my plan, Mr. Shealy?”

Until he had actually captured Kumari, Clark hadn't thought twice about the ethics of exchanging Kumari for Jessica. The only question had been how to do it.

But now, with the realization that Kumari might actually be a good and decent human being, shame joined the other emotions wreaking havoc with Clark's tired psyche. He would still trade this man's life for Jessica's if he had no other choice. But if he had an alternative?

“What have I got to lose?” Clark asked as he pulled away from the Dumpster and headed out to the main road. “And while you're at it, why don't you fill me in on what you have that belongs to Huang Xu. If I'm going to risk my life over it, I might as well know what it is.”

The professor closed his eyes again as if collecting his thoughts, breathing in deeply. “It is a long story, Mr. Shealy. I do not suppose you would be open to discussing this over lunch someplace?”

“Don't push your luck, Professor.”

21

“What do you know about the men who have your wife?” Kumari asked.

“Not much,” Clark said. For the most part, Huang Xu and the members of his triad remained a mystery. “Chinese mafia. They're probably involved in heroin or cocaine trafficking. They hire professional hit men. The leader's name is Huang Xu.”

“At the next light, you turn left,” Kumari said. “I've done a fair amount of research in the past few days. These men are not like the American mafia. The triads, as they are so called, are not generally violent, using instead fear and intimidation to get their way. Turn left, Mr. Shealy. Stay on this road for one mile. But if you cross them, they become brutally violent, sometimes using ancient torture rituals on triad victims.”

The matter-of-fact way Kumari described it made Clark shiver. Though he hadn't talked to Jessica in hours, she was still part of every conscious thought. The picture of her—head shaved, shoulders exposed, eyes frightened but determined—had seared itself into his mind. He checked his watch: 25:18:43. Less than eleven hours before they started the torture.

If they hadn't done so already.

“The Manchurian Triad is linked to ancient religious practices and rituals. They detest your Western influence for creeping into their country, and they especially detest Western-style Christianity. Their leader, Li Gwah, has become a cult hero. Huang Xu is one of Li's most promising lieutenants.”

As Kumari talked, Clark stole a sideways glance at his captive.
Can I trust this man?
The cut over Kumari's left eye had wedged further open, outlined by a crusty border of dried blood. The eye puffed out like a balloon, matching the purple coloring of the bruise on his right cheek. Sympathy pangs kept poking at Clark's conscience, though he tried to keep them at bay.

Clark could imagine this energetic man pacing the front of a classroom, scribbling on the board, getting all fired up about advanced mathematical concepts while his students yawned. Now he was trapped in this mess just like Clark.

“Why do they want you?” Clark asked. “What do you have?”

Kumari shook his head ruefully. “It is my bad fortune to possess the world's most valuable algorithm. I came to America for the purpose, so I thought, of executing a deal with a—what would you call it?” Kumari stared at the ceiling for a moment, but Clark couldn't help him. “A combination . . . a conglomeration—yes, that is the word—a conglomeration of Internet security companies.” Kumari paused and a tone of sorrow seeped into his voice. “It was instead the Manchurian Triad posing as a deal brokerage company.”

“All this over a math formula?”

“Not just a math formula, Mr. Shealy.” He perked up again, warming to the subject of his beloved mathematics. “An algorithm that rapidly factors numbers into prime components. A process that for years most mathematicians thought was impossible.” He paused and looked at the street sign as they passed it. “You should have taken a left turn there.”

“Thanks for the warning.”
A math formula.
Clark was having a hard time wrapping his mind around the fact that his entire life had been turned upside down, his wife kidnapped and possibly tortured, over a
math
formula. “So you discovered how to do this factoring stuff, and now the triads want you working for them?”

“Something like that.”

Clark pulled a U-turn, cutting off an oncoming driver who leaned on the horn. “Jessica's life is in danger over a math formula.” Repeating the fact made it no more comprehensible.

“This formula, Mr. Shealy, would allow someone to break most encryption codes in use today on the Internet,” Kumari said, his voice conspiratorially quiet. “It is the key to every lock.”

Clark gave him a sideways look requesting further explanation.

“Internet encryption mostly uses public-key cryptography based upon what is called the RSA protocol,” Kumari said, his tone switching to lecture mode. “And the security of this protocol is based upon the mathematical assumption that there exists no fast way to factor large numbers into prime components.”

Kumari rambled on about the ancient problem of key exchange—the challenge of somehow communicating an encryption key from one person to another without having it stolen or compromised—interspersing his lecture with directions to his apartment. The public-key encryption system used today on the Internet, Kumari explained, was like being able to telepathically pass the key back and forth so that messages could be encrypted without fear of some third party discovering the key.

It was based, he said, on the unique complexities of one-way mathematical functions, and at that point he totally lost Clark. Even when math teachers wrote stuff on the blackboard, Clark struggled. But when a math whiz of Kumari's caliber talked about algorithms without writing anything down—Clark had no chance.

“A prime number,” Clark interrupted. “That's a number that can't be divided by any other number except itself and one. Is that right?”

“Of course,” Kumari responded, as if Clark had just pronounced that one plus one equals two. “And they have unique . . . what is the word? Personalities? Um, characteristics . . . that computer encoders have used to secure almost every one of the political, financial, diplomatic, and criminal justice secrets on the Internet. With a regular computer, you can multiply two huge prime numbers together in seconds. But if I give you the
same
computer and a number which is the
product
of two huge prime numbers, you could not calculate what two prime numbers were multiplied together to get that number. Not in your lifetime, Mr. Shealy. Not in one thousand lifetimes. Not unless—” and here Kumari donned a self-satisfied smile as if he had just cured cancer—“you use my algorithm.”

Ever since Clark had used his head as a battering ram on Bones McGinley, he had nursed a dull headache. Kumari's lecture sharpened the pain.

“For example, a more recent effort to locate prime factors of a two-hundred-digit number took three months with many computers operating together. Altogether, Mr. Shealy—more than
thirty years
of computer time. And two hundred digits are nothing in comparison to the length of the numbers encoded today using PGP technology. Without my formula, if all personal computers in the world were put on the same network, you would still require twelve times the age of the universe to factor such a huge number.”

Kumari paused for a moment as if awed by the power of his own accomplishment. Even Clark's mathematically challenged brain was starting to seize the possibilities. “So you could hack into bank accounts . . .”

“Of course.”

“. . . criminal records, medical documents, school records.”

“Yes, yes. All secrets would be exposed.”

“You could steal millions before anybody would know.”

“With a coordinated attack, you could steal billions.”

“And once people found out that the Internet encryption systems didn't work . . .”

“Ah . . . now you understand, Mr. Shealy. Chaos. The Internet, and the world, would be in chaos.”

Clark let out a low whistle. “Who else has this algorithm?”

“Turn right at the next street. We are almost there.”

“Who else knows?”

Kumari waited a few seconds before answering, perhaps so the impact could sink in. “Only me.”

This was bigger than Clark had imagined. Way bigger. “Why didn't you just sell it to the government? They would have paid a fortune.”