The Cassandra Complex - Brian Stableford [50]
“How good is your security, Dr. Goldfarb?” Smith asked, abruptly changing the subject.
“Oh, the very best,” Goldfarb assured him, seemingly glad that the subject had been changed. “Our founder was a systems expert, thoroughly versed in methods of encryption, and he knew as well as anyone what damage can be done when confidential information becomes available to people who want to use it for their own ends.”
Such as precipitating stock-market crashes, Lisa thought.
“So nobody outside your organization could possibly have obtained a copy of the text on the wafer you’ve just given my colleague?” Smith followed up. “Even though it’s been to New York and back, and even though you’ve recently produced a decrypted version?” Unless, of course, Lisa added silently, it was deliberately leaked, here or across the pond.
“Nothing’s absolutely certain,” Goldfarb admitted cautiously, “but I have to say that it’s very unlikely. At the very least, we’d surely have some indication if our systems had been hacked. We have very good alarm bells.”
As if on cue, a bell began to sound. Goldfarb spun around as if he’d been burned, but he relaxed almost immediately when he realized that it wasn’t an alarm at all. It was Peter Grimmett Smith’s phone.
Smith scowled, turning his back to take the call.
“I thought for a moment that something had crashed downstairs,” Goldfarb said to Lisa, as if to establish the fact that he was not listening in to Smith’s conversation. “It seems to happen more frequently with every week that passes. It’s all that newspaper talk about ‘slaves of the machine’—nobody with half a brain wants to do basic inputting and negotiation anymore in case they get stuck with a reputation as an idiot, so we get stuck with actual idiots minding reception and the parking facilities. They’re always pressing the wrong buttons and getting flustered because they can’t work their way out of the error maze. Believe me, Dr. Friemann, our alarms never ring, and nobody in this office has ever been accused of contributory negligence. If Morgan Miller was kidnapped because of anything he told me—which I find very difficult to believe, in view of its vagueness and negative tenor—the kidnappers must have picked it up somewhere else. You might try the Algenlsts in Swindon; I believe Professor Miller was also checking them out, although I can’t imagine why.”
The words “pot,” “kettle,” and “black” floated unbidden into Lisa’s mind, but she resisted the temptation to extend the thought. Ever since Judith Kenna had begun to hunt for evidence of the twentieth-century habits Lisa had allegedly failed to transcend, she had been trying to update her stock of cliches.
Smith turned around again. “It’s Ginny,” he said. “Chan Kwai Keung’s at the booth outside the lot. He must have followed us out from the Renaissance. He wants to talk to you, Lisa. He says it’s a private matter that he’s not prepared to discuss with anyone else until he’s cleared it with you.”
Lisa could hardly help but infer that whatever Chan had to say, it must have an urgent bearing on Morgan Miller’s kidnapping—but she had no more idea than Smith of why Chan couldn’t have told the police, or the MOD man Smith had instructed to talk to him.
“I’d better go down,” she said.
Smith obviously resented being dragged away from an interview he didn’t consider to be complete, but it was equally obvious that he wasn’t about to let Lisa talk to Chan without being there to hear what was said. He turned away again, although all he said into the mouthpiece of the phone was: “Tell the guard to let him in. We’re on our way—we’ll be there in five minutes.”
“I’m sorry,” said Goldfarb, “but I really don’t think there’s anything else I can tell you.”
“That’s okay,” Smith said insincerely. “We’ll take a look at the transcript while we’re on the road to Swindon, and if there’s anything we need to come back for, we’ll contact you by phone.”
“I’ll