The Prisoner - Carlos J. Cortes [118]
“And?”
“It’s Seth’s move. My guess is Onuris will lead the charge and …” She bit her lower lip, unsure if her emotions had altered her capacity for perception.
“Yes?”
“I may be mistaken, but I fear Seth thinks Ritter knows more than he does,” she said.
“And how much is that?”
“Nothing.”
“You reckon she’ll send her goons after him?”
“Could be.”
“Good.”
Her stomach clenched. Somehow she’d guessed Palmer’s reaction, a logical one.
“Can’t be bad to have the enemy busy chasing illusions.”
Silence.
“Unless …”
She closed her eyes.
“Unless the possibility disturbs you.”
“He’s a fine man, and an excellent professional.”
Ra’s metallic voice was preceded by a sound that could have been a sigh. “It does matter. I’m sorry, but if he’s the professional you think he is, he’ll know how to take care of himself.”
Genia doubted it. If Odelle sent her shadier operatives to gauge the extent of Lawrence Ritter’s knowledge, they would damage the man, perhaps irreparably. She was about to sever the connection when she remembered. “Thank you for the warning about The Post.“
Silence.
“What warning?”
The task light over her desk seemed to flicker and dim as the atmosphere suddenly thickened. Genia stared at the tiny sliver of polymer protruding from her communications pad’s edge: the foolproof security device that no hacker could bypass and no cryptologist could unravel. Their communications were secure; it was a byword in the business that paired boards could not be broken into. Only the NSA held the codes, supposedly guarded under far safer measures than nuclear weapons. Not safe enough. She drew in a long breath to calm her racing heart and had an insane urge to sever communications as the logic crashed in on her. Someone other than Ra had sent the message.
“Tell me about it.”
When she finished, the line remained silent for a long time before the metallic voice echoed again. “What an interesting development.”
“Interesting is not the adjective I would use. Forgive me, but you don’t seem concerned. Your boards aren’t as foolproof as we thought.”
“Oh, they are. Whoever has managed to send the message is undoubtedly listening to our exchange now. Very clever. An old English aphorism is most fitting. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.”
“I don’t follow.”
“It’s simple. Our friend has found out who we are from the government-issue signatures of these boards; otherwise, he couldn’t hack into our setup to beat the system. To do that, he must have access to the highest reaches of the NSA. Yet that in itself wouldn’t explain how he could be listening. I suppose he’s obtained one or several of these boards and tinkered with them to slip a line of code to join in. Now our conversations are three-way.”
“You mean he can listen to all government-encrypted traffic?”
“I don’t think so. He must have obtained the code signatures of our boards from the NSA. These he can track, listen to traffic, and, if he chooses, join in the conversation.”
“Who?”
“That’s the question. Someone with resources, access to NSA software, who’s a computer genius and willing to help, no doubt for his or her own agenda.”
“Help us?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“As sure as I can be. Otherwise, we’d both be a foot under thick liquid, attached to a tube.”
“And now?”
“A riddle. We could stop using our little setup, but I fear it would be like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. Our friend out there knows who we are and what we’re after. On the other hand, we could continue as if nothing had happened and insure that our silent partner knows exactly what we’re doing.”
“And dig ourselves a deeper grave?”
“Not at all. Tanks are a standard eight feet. We couldn’t go any deeper.”
Palmer’s humor could be unnerving at times, but Genia’s anxiety had subsided. It would be like walking on thin ice, but that’s what they had been doing for months now.
Before the line went dead, Ra, the