No Way to Die (16 page)

“You got it,” I said. “Say, Brit,” I called out as he started to get into his car. He paused and looked back at me. “Give my best to your bosses at Madoc, will ya’?”

He stared at me for a moment, and then got inside and closed his door. Doc and I stepped out of the way just as the driver threw the car into gear and lit up his tires as he charged off down the parking lot. The bald-headed man gave me the finger as they passed by.

We watched as they left the lot and turned north on Westlake.

After a few seconds had passed, I said, “That was interesting.”

Doc nodded. “Yeah, it was. I thought we were about to mix it up.”

“You do like to stir the shit, don’t you?” Toni asked, still staring up Westlake.

“Me?” I said. “Who was it who said, ‘I don’t want to miss this?’” I did my best imitation of Toni’s voice. Admittedly, I suck at it.

“Mr. Macho—that’s you, right?”

“You know me,” I said, grinning. “Doesn’t pay for them to think we’re a bunch of pussies.”

WHILE WE WERE outside, Holly Kenworth sent us an e-mail list of the ACS employees. It was a short list—just five names. When we came back in, I saw the e-mail and called the first name on the list—Adams, Jonas R. He sounded eager to meet us for lunch at the Claim Jumper restaurant in Redmond Town Center at noon, but only on the condition that he be allowed to bring another of the ACS employees, Stella Pace, with him. She was number three on the list anyway, and since I felt that talking to the two of them together wouldn’t compromise our investigation, I agreed. Two hours later, Toni and I jumped into the Jeep for the ride to Redmond.

I love my Jeep. I bought it because it’s ideal for bouncing around the back roads of the Olympic Mountains, where I like to go camping. The fact that it reminds me of the many good times I had in the army is a bonus. I spent many hours driving around in a military vehicle in the backwoods of Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Of course, my Jeep has things like leather seats and a decent sound system. I had music playing on the Jeep’s MP3 player, but low enough so that I could still hear the road.I’ll always associate the noise of the off-road tires on the pavement with my time in the infantry.

“Is that Adele?” Toni asked, interrupting my daydream.

I looked over at her. “What?”

“I said ‘is that Adele?’ I can barely hear it.”

“Sorry, I’ll turn it up.” “Someone Like You” from Adele’s album
21
had just started playing.

Shortly after Adele reached the chorus, Toni said, “Turn it off.”

I glanced over at her. “Off?”

“Please, Danny,” she said, staring straight ahead. “Turn it off.”

I did.

I drove for a minute, and then looked over at her again. “You okay?”

She nodded. “I don’t like that song.”

We drove in silence the rest of the way, the only noise the sound of my tires on the pavement. When I finished parking, I turned to her. “Better?”

She nodded. “Sorry. I’m okay now.”

“Maybe we should talk later?” I asked.

She looked at me. “Maybe.”

* * * *

Dr. Jonas Adams was waiting for us in the restaurant lobby when we walked in. He was a short, stocky man in his late thirties, maybe early forties. He had dark-brown hair and a neatly trimmed short beard. He wore a plain black T-shirt and blue jeans. We introduced ourselves just as Dr. Stella Pace entered the restaurant. She was nearly as tall as Jonas—perhaps five eight or so. She was pretty—thin, with shoulder-length blond hair. She surprised us by walking over to Jonas and greeting him with a kiss.

After introductions, the hostess took us to a table. The table wasn’t very private, but the restaurant was noisy, so I figured we’d be able to talk without being overheard.

“Thanks for agreeing to talk to us,” I said, after we’d placed our orders. “Especially on such short notice.”

“No problem,” Jonas said.

“We’re actually grateful to be able to talk to someone,” Stella added.

“Really?How’s that?” Toni asked.

“Well,” Stella said, “The police never came around, which I thought was pretty odd. We were hoping
somebody
would want to talk to us about Thomas and ACS and what’s happened around here.”

“You mean what’s happened relating to Thomas’s death?” Toni asked.

“Yeah—that and everything else that’s been happening around here—around ACS, I mean.”

“Well, here we are,” I said as I put my napkin in my lap. “We’re here to listen, and we’d like to hear the whole story. We like to have people start by telling us about themselves—your background, what you do with ACS, how long you’ve been there, that sort of thing.”

“Okay,” Jonas said. “I’m the head of the Product Division at Applied Cryptographic Solutions—what we call Division 1.” He turned to Stella.

“And I’m the head of the Decryption Research Division at ACS—Division 2,” Stella said.

“Jonas,” Toni asked, “how long have you been with ACS?”

“I started in early 2009—just over three years now.”

“And, as I understand it,” she said, “you have a PhD in mathematics?”

“That’s right,” he said. “We both do. I got my doctorate right here from U-Dub. Stella got hers at Harvard.”

“Stella,” Toni said, “how long have you been with ACS?”

“Since September 2009,” Stella said, “Two and a half years now.”

“What’s it like there now, with Thomas gone? It must be tough.”

“It’s like limbo-land,” Stella said. “We’re drifting. Thomas was our leader, without doubt. Without him, we don’t know what’s going to happen.”

“Was Thomas the person you reported to?” Toni asked. “Was he the one you worked with most often?”

She nodded. “Yes,” she said. “I worked with him every day.”

Toni turned to Jonas. “How about you, Jonas?”

“Same,” he said. “Every day.”

“What was he like to work with?”

Jonas laughed. “Thomas was incredible. We have a whole office full of math PhDs at ACS. But we’re all pretty much what I’d call normal. Maybe a little higher IQs than average, but still pretty normal people. Thomas, on the other hand—Thomas wasn’t normal.”

“How do you mean?” Toni asked, puzzled.

“He wasn’t weird or anything,” Stella added. “But Jonas is right—Thomas was special. He could see things—hard, complex things—that other people couldn’t. Then, he’d turn around and explain it to you in such a manner that you sort of kicked yourself and wondered why you never saw it in the first place.”

“Kind of like Einstein and the theory of relativity,” Jonas said. “E equals M C squared: profound, yet profoundly simple. True genius.”

“Exactly,” Stella said. “That was Thomas’s true gift. Never mind that he could go mentally where hardly anyone else could follow. You couldn’t help but basically be in awe of the guy.”

“That’s right,” Jonas said. “I’ve worked with a lot of very smart people in my time . . .”

“Me, too,” Stella interrupted. “You sort of get used to it in the postgrad world.”

“But I think it’s safe to say we’ve never seen anyone remotely like Thomas. He was truly a genius,” Jonas said.

Guy sounded like a real saint to me. “And he was good to work for?” I asked.

“The best,” Stella said. “He was kind, honest, even-tempered.” She paused, and then finished, “I never saw him when he wasn’t in a good mood.”

“Does that include the time before he died?”

She thought for a second and said, “Yeah, it does. Thomas was excited about selling the Starfire Protocol.”

“I assume that you’re aware of what happened concerning Madoc Secured Technologies?” I asked.

“Yeah, definitely. Starfire was a project from my division. I was totally involved with it.”

“After you guys heard that you’d not be allowed to sell to MST, Thomas was still alright?” Toni asked.

“He was fine. He didn’t want to sell to them anyway,” Stella said.

“Really?” I asked.

“That’s right. He wanted to sell Starfire to a domestic biggie like Microsoft, or someone like that. MST turned out to be a foreign group, even though they’re registered here.”

“You wouldn’t say that he was depressed or somehow put off by this?” I asked.

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “If anything, I think it energized him. He seemed excited that there was a market for it. We really didn’t expect that there’d be much of a commercial market for Starfire.”

“Why’s that?” I asked.

“It wasn’t the purpose of Starfire.” She paused and thought for a second. “Starfire was really intended as a tool—a tool to help drive customers over to the new encryption technology that Thomas was working on with Holly.”

“Do you know anything about that?” I asked. “About the new encryption technology?”

Stella nodded and looked at Jonas, as if for approval.

“Go ahead,” he said.

Stella cleared her throat. “It’s called LILLYPAD,” she said. “It’s top secret—even more so than Starfire. Apparently, Thomas had solved one of the big problems found in single-pad encryption technology. He’d discovered a mathematical formula to generate completely true random numbers. By itself, this is a profound mathematical breakthrough. But Thomas wasn’t satisfied with that. He wanted to apply that breakthrough to a new single-pad encryption technology that would be truly immune to computational solutions—even attacks made possible by Starfire. In fact, LILLYPAD would be what we cryptographers call
informationally
secure—no amount of computational power could ever solve the code, no matter how long it grinds away.”

“There’s such a thing?” Toni asked.

“Absolutely,” Jonas said, “but only on a tiny scale—at least up ’til now. Single-pad encryption has been around since the late 1800s. Done properly, it’s completely 100 percent unbreakable. But,” he added, “the devil’s in the details. What’s more, it’s very difficult to administer and put to wide use. That’s why it hasn’t been used up to now. And that’s where Thomas was heading.”

“With LILLYPAD?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“And was he there yet?” I asked. “How close was it?”

They were both quiet for a moment. Then, Stella said, “I’m not certain, but I think they were close.”

“‘They’ meaning Thomas and Holly?” I asked.

“Right. His random number generator was done. It was a huge step forward. But he still needed to solve distribution issues, and I know they were working hard on that.”

“If they got there—” I started to say.

“If they got there, then they’d be very wealthy people,” Jonas said.

* * * *

Lunch came, and we switched topics while we ate.

“Do either of you work with Holly?” Toni asked.

“Yes and no,” Stella said. “We’re a small office, so I guess you can say we all work together. But Holly heads up Division 3. She works almost exclusively on LILLYPAD.”

“Does she oversee any of your work?”

They both shook their heads. “No,” Jonas said. “I worked with Thomas.”

“Same for me,” Stella said. “I mean, Holly knows all about Starfire, but she didn’t work on it. That was just Thomas and me.” She paused. “I guess I give myself too much credit there. How it actually worked was, Thomas figured out incredibly hard stuff, and then he explained it to me and told me what to do. That was my contribution.”

“I understand,” I said. “That’s kind of the same way it is around our office. I figure the hard stuff out and explain—”

Wham!
Toni slugged me in the arm. “In your dreams, dude,” she said.

Stella and Jonas laughed while I rubbed my shoulder.

“If I may continue,” Toni said, looking at me. “As for Starfire, it’s ready to go now? It could be used in its present state?”

“I suppose it could be,” Stella said, “but I don’t know what it could be used for—legally anyway—except maybe by the military. That’s why we were all so surprised to find that there’s a current existing market.”

“What if someone with bad intent got their hands on Starfire?” I asked.

“That would be bad. Really bad. They’d be able to cause some serious damage in the world’s financial systems if they could figure out how to work it,” Stella said. “International banking transactions, currency exchanges, stock trades, Internet commerce—in fact, the whole financial system as we know it relies on the encryption technology that Starfire can break. Starfire turned loose could mean chaos—at least for a while. Hardly anything would be secure.”

“But fortunately, the U.S. Commerce Department regulates this and has turned down MST,” I said.

They both nodded.

“Question—how many copies of Starfire are there now?”

“That’s the good news,” Stella said. “We made two copies, but so far, only one key. It takes a USB key to work the actual device. It plugs into the Starfire device and you control it that way.”

“That’s good. Has either of you seen any evidence that MST has been around recently?”