Abuse of Power - Michael Savage [104]
It didn’t look as though their lovemaking had bothered him. Jack and Sara shared a secret smile.
That felt good, too.
“There’s another level of encryption,” Faisal said. He was still half asleep and yawning, staring at the computer screen with bleary eyes. “Whoever sent these e-mails didn’t want people like us getting nosy.”
“So Alain was right,” Sara said to Jack. “This could be significant information.”
There were five open e-mails stacked on the screen, each sent to tdl@alliedharborassoc.net, and each with a single line of text. The lines, however, were a jumble of letters and numbers that made no sense:
EFDH3054383
gjvaf
Nhthfg gjragl
Gjragl Uhaqerq UEF
uggc://ovg.yl/umfLZ3
Jack looked from the hash to Faisal. “I thought that program was supposed to translate all this stuff.”
“That was the second level of encryption,” Faisal said. “The difficult one. But not to worry, these all look like simple ROT-13 cyphers.”
Jack was clueless. “What’s that?”
“It’s a rudimentary form of code based on the old Caesar cypher. A lot of gamers use it to hide cheat codes and spoilers on Internet forums. They’re extremely easy to crack, which is why the sender used that second level of encryption.”
“So how does it work?” Jack asked.
“You replace each letter by the one located thirteen letters after it in the alphabet. For example, an A becomes an N. I have the lookup table here.”
He punched a key and a small window popped up, showing:
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
NOPQRSTUVWXYZABCDEFGHIJKLM nopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklm
“Decryption is a fairly mindless task at this point,” he went on. “The numbers will remain the same. All we need do is transpose the letters and we’ll know what these messages say.”
Faisal had already gone to work, using another computer application to quickly translate the lines. When it was done, he stacked the decryptions on the screen:
RSQU3054383
twins
August twenty
Twenty Hundred HRS
http://bit.ly/hzsYM3
Nobody spoke for a long moment. Jack felt his heart begin to race. “I think we’ve just hit pay dirt,” he said to Sara. “You realize what this is, don’t you?”
“I’m not sure what the first two lines are all about,” Sara said, “but that last one’s an Internet address. So I’m guessing these are the date, time, and target of an attack.”
Jack nodded. “The first one looks like a serial number of some kind. Or maybe the ISO number for a shipping container.”
“Could be a shipment from Chilikov, if Haddad was successful.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” Jack said. “But what about this ‘twins’ line? You think it’s a reference to the twin towers? A reminder of their last big hit?”
“The infidels will soon see destruction that will make 9/11 seem like child’s play.”
“It could be that,” Sara said. “It could also be two prongs of an attack, two cells, matching automobiles being used for smuggling—anything. But whatever it means, August twentieth is only three days from now. Saturday night.”
Jack gestured to Faisal. “Can you paste that URL into a browser? I want to see what they have in mind.” He added as an afterthought, “Please?”
Faisal did as he was asked. When he clicked the address, Google Maps came to life on screen, showing a satellite image of San Francisco. Flagged in the middle of it by a big letter A, was one of the city’s best-known landmarks.
The California Palace of the Legion of Honor.
Jack’s mind suddenly flashed on that afternoon at Pagliaci’s, when Danny Pescatori gave Tony a VIP invitation to the museum gala. He’d forgotten about it until now.
And it was scheduled for this Saturday night.
“My God,” he said, his heart kicking up a notch as the realization sank in like a depth charge to the brain. “They’re going after the President.”
PART THREE
Countdown
30
San Francisco, California
Talia “Tally” Griffin was convinced that this time she’d struck gold.
After years of dating all the wrong guys, winding up in relationships that went absolutely nowhere, she was certain that she had finally found her Prince Charming.
His name was Victor Massri.
Tall.