False Witness (13 page)

“Until this year, my government was dominated by the BJP, a party supported by Hindu nationalists who will do everything in their power to preserve the caste system that has oppressed millions of my Dalit brothers and sisters. The BJP is still strong at the national level and controls many of our states. Violence against Christians, of which I am one, has become commonplace in Orissa, Karnataka, and Gujarat. Pastors are thrown in jail for supposedly violating anticonversion laws. Houses are burned. Daughters are carried away and never seen again. And your government, Mr. Shealy, stands by and accepts the myth of ‘India shining,' choosing to believe that our human rights laws actually mean something. Besides, your government hardly needs one more tool for world domination.”

“And the mob does?” Clark took a right onto a side street and checked his watch. He pondered the fact that his hostage might be one of the planet's smartest men. And still Clark would trade Kumari's life for Jessica's without thinking twice.

Kumari remained silent, apparently too smart to be drawn into an argument.

“Do you have a name for this formula?” Clark asked.

“I label it the Abacus Algorithm, Mr. Shealy. Or rather, my former partner called it that.” Kumari paused for a beat as if he had stepped on sacred ground. “Such a name provides a mental picture of the power of my algorithm. As the abacus transformed multiplication, so my algorithm transforms the process of prime factoring.”

A few minutes later, they were driving through a run-down neighborhood on the east side of Vegas where Kumari's apartment was located. The information about the algorithm had certainly given Clark a new perspective about the stakes involved in his predicament, but it hadn't solved the fundamental problem of hostage exchange. Not surprisingly, the same man who had studied and mastered secure exchanges of encryption keys had some ideas about the hostage-exchange issue as well.

“To have any chance of rescuing your wife, Mr. Shealy . . . and hopefully saving also myself in this process, we must use the same concept that prevented nuclear holocaust between your United States and the Soviet Union for so many years. You call it mutually assured destruction.” The small professor paused, clearing his throat. “Yet there is one problem.

“For this to work with success, we will need someone who looks exactly like me to act as a potential suicide bomber.” He turned to Clark, and Clark noticed that Kumari's somber demeanor had been replaced by a hint of teasing in the swollen eyes. “Do you happen to have any suggestions?”

22

When they arrived at the stucco building that served as Kumari's apartment, Clark grabbed a knife from his tools and cut the tape at Kumari's ankles. Both men climbed out of the vehicle.

“I'll need my hands in front of me,” Kumari said. Without waiting for Clark's approval, he blithely looped his wrists under each leg and brought his hands to the front.

Kumari wrenched his wrists a little, trying to wiggle some slack into the duct tape, then looked pleadingly at Clark. “Could we not just use conventional handcuffs, sir?”

Clark shrugged. He kept the little man at gunpoint as he slapped a pair of metal handcuffs on his wrists and cut off the duct tape. He noticed the lines on Kumari's wrists where the edge of the tape had bitten into the skin.

“Thank you,” the professor said, wiggling his hands around. “Much better.”

The professor was unfailingly polite. But watching him, even with a gun pointed at him, Clark couldn't shake the foreboding thought that he had somehow just let a lion out of its cage.

Kumari's tiny apartment reminded Clark of a school computer lab. He counted twenty-four desktop computers and one laptop, all hooked together with black cables and powered by a maze of cords that snaked to various outlets around the room. The only furniture was a small card table, two folding chairs, and a beanbag.

“Nice place,” Clark lied.

Without responding, Kumari immediately walked to something that looked like an alarm panel and punched in a bunch of numbers.

“Security alarm?” Clark asked.

“Yes.”

“Since you're in hiding, I'm guessing it doesn't actually call the police.”

“That is correct, Mr. Shealy. It dials my cell phone.”

“Clever.” Clark wandered around a little, checking out the various computers.

“And if I do not dial a certain number within three minutes, it triggers an explosive device.”

Clark stopped in his tracks. “Explosives?”

“Yes, Semtex explosives. The blast would take out this entire building.”

“And you disarmed it, right?”

For the first time, the professor smiled. “Yes, Mr. Shealy. I believe I remembered the code correctly.”

Before they called Huang Xu, Kumari scurried around and fired up the computers, plugging in some information that looked like Greek to Clark. After about five minutes, Kumari looked up and pronounced the machines “almost ready,” then headed to the refrigerator in the small adjoining kitchen.

Clark followed, glancing at the nearly empty refrigerator shelves—a half-drained gallon of milk, half a cold pizza, a jar of pickles, and several twelve-ounce cans of Coke.

“Pizza?” Kumari asked as if he had invited Clark over for dinner.

Clark's face must have registered his surprise.

“Perhaps you were expecting curry?” Kumari asked.

Clark smiled at the little man. In truth, Clark was starving. He hadn't stopped to eat one thing all day. It took Kumari and him no more than five minutes to devour the leftover pizza and chase it down by chugging milk straight from the half-empty jug.

When they finished, it was time to make the call.

Kumari took his post in front of the laptop computer on the card table. Clark needed to pace, stepping over and around the tangle of cords and machines. “Ready,” Kumari said, and Clark felt his hands go cold.

Clark pulled the cell number out and began dialing. His stopwatch registered 25:42:12. He had captured Kumari with more than ten hours to spare. He could only hope it was enough time to save Jessica.

The number rang four times without an answer. Finally a recorded voice kicked in—instructing Clark to leave a message at the tone.

“I've got Professor Kumari,” he said. “Call me back immediately. I want to speak with Jessica.”

Clark hung up and tried to control a cauldron of emotions. “Voice mail,” he said, more to himself than Kumari. He stared at his phone as if it had betrayed him. “What does that mean?”

“He will call back,” the professor said. Clark noticed the professor had opened some type of e-mail program.

“What are you doing?” Clark asked.

“Getting ready.”

“For what?”

At that second, the phone rang. Clark nearly dropped it as he fumbled to answer.

“Hello.”

“Nice work, Mr. Shealy.” It was the grating voice of Huang Xu. “But why did you discard the phone I told you to use?”

“I was tired of being tracked with it.”

As was his custom, Xu paused. These conversations drove Clark mad, but he supposed that was the whole point. “Very well, Mr. Shealy. Let us see if you truly have the professor. Write down this number . . .”

Clark nodded at the professor, letting him know the plan was on track. “Ready,” Clark said.

“4-9-2-7-9-5-4-2-8-7-9-8-2-9-1.” Xu repeated the number twice and had Clark read it back to him. “That number is the product of two prime numbers, Mr. Shealy. Professor Kumari should be able to factor that number in a matter of seconds and tell us the primes. Call us back when he does. And, Mr. Shealy?”

“Yes.”

“The next time you take unilateral action, like tossing away my phone, you might want to consider the effect such actions have on your wife.”

“Keep your hands off her,” Clark warned, but he was speaking to dead air. Incensed, he restrained himself from calling back until he had the answer. The professor hunched in front of his computer, formulas scrolling back and forth on the screen.

“We do not need the network for this one,” Kumari bragged. “A fifteen-digit number?” He scoffed, as if Xu had insulted his intelligence.

“How long?” Clark asked.

“Would this very minute be soon enough?” Kumari wrote the numbers down and handed the paper to Clark.
10245751
and
48097541
.

“You sure?” Clark asked.

Kumari nodded.

“This is my wife's life on the line. You don't want to double-check your math?”

Kumari looked insulted.

“Okay,” Clark said. He dialed Xu.

This time, the triad leader answered immediately, and Clark read the numbers. “That's a good start,” Xu said.

“Let me talk with Jessica,” Clark said firmly.

“You don't make the demands,” Xu replied, his voice low but threatening. “But just for your information, even after the way you treated Johnny Chin, I have chosen not to retaliate against your wife. However, if you insist on making demands and acting against my instructions, I will.”

The reference to Chin momentarily threw Clark. How did Xu know these things? His words were not empty threats; Clark could feel that much in his bones. Worse, his mind pictured it vividly. He couldn't afford to say or do
anything
that might set this man off. “Okay,” Clark said reassuringly, “give me the next number.”

“You want to hear from your wife?”

“No, no. Just tell me the number.”

Without warning, Clark heard Jessica shriek in the background. His blood turned to ice. “Stop,” he insisted. “Just give me the number.”

There was another scream, louder than the first. He closed his eyes, balled his fist, and ground his teeth. He felt like he might literally explode from the tension. He had never hated anyone,
anything
, as much as he hated this man on the phone right now. Clark would kill him with his bare hands, spitting in his face as he died, or Clark would die trying.

“Make it stop,” Clark begged, his voice despondent.

The response was silence. No screaming, no answer from Xu. Nothing.

“Please!”
Oh, God, please!

More silence. A few seconds stretched into a minute. Clark hardly dared to breathe, much less talk. What had they done to her? Where had they taken her? What were they doing to her still?

“I will not let them hurt her, Mr. Shealy. But you must play by
my
rules, not yours. Now . . . are you ready for the next number?”

23

The phone calls changed the mood in the cramped apartment. Kumari apparently divined what was happening from listening to Clark's side of the conversation and didn't say a word other than to offer a sincere apology. In silence, the professor put his machines to work processing the second number that Huang Xu had provided, over three hundred digits long. Clark paced the apartment, lost in introspection as the professor plugged numbers and letters into some kind of formula. At one point, Clark glanced at the screen and thought he saw a digital Bible open, one with English and some other language side-by-side. But Kumari quickly shrank that window. As long as the formula worked, Clark didn't care.

But even if the formula
did
work, the harsh realities were almost unbearable, though Clark needed to face them. Denial would serve no purpose; it sure wouldn't save Jessica. No matter how well things went from here on out—and he had serious doubts about Kumari's plan—it was already too late to keep Jessica from harm.

Jessica was young and strikingly attractive, though she would be the last to admit it. When Clark called her beautiful, she would correct him. “I'm cute. Maybe attractive,” she would say. “But you're the only one who says I'm beautiful.” She thought her nose was a bit too broad, her lips a little too thin.

She was wrong about that, Clark knew. He had always been pleased when men swiveled their heads as Jessica passed. But now, the thought of those leers made him sick. Since the triad members undoubtedly planned to kill both her and Clark anyway, there was little chance they would resist molesting her in the meantime.

Jessica.
He might get her back, though even that was a long shot. But she would never be the same. Emotional scars would replace the innocence. Clark had always heard that women needed security more than anything else from their husbands. He had failed her at her deepest point of need. He felt a crucial part of himself dying along with her. He was quickly losing hope.

It took nearly ten minutes for Kumari to generate the answer. When he was sure he had the right factors, he gave his seat in front of the laptop screen to Clark. During the ensuing call, both Clark and Xu were all business. Clark swallowed the words he wanted to say and instead recited with precision the digits in each of the prime factors. Xu congratulated him on the correct answers, then said, “It is time for us to exchange prisoners, would you agree?”