The Secret Meaning of Blossom: a fast-moving spy thriller set in Japan

by T. M. Parris

  It was around then that Fairchild called. “Zack just came in to the bar,” he said.

  “Zack? He’s in Tokyo?”

  “Yes. He’s been assigned to this now. They’re bringing in a special FBI team focused on international hackers.” Fairchild explained the purpose of the team and Zack’s role.

  “So they think our Japanese people are part of a bigger group?”

  “They’re hoping so.”

  “Hoping so? It’s not very good news for James if they are.”

  “No, but this team desperately wants a way in to this group. The agent in charge has something of a reputation. Alice Rapp, her name is. Zack wasn’t complimentary.”

  “Yes, well.” Zack wasn’t exactly complimentary about Rose, either. Maybe he had a problem with women in positions of power, like so many men did.

  “It’s just a heads-up,” said Fairchild. “Can you get here first thing tomorrow? That’s when the whole gang will arrive and we’ll get some idea of the lie of the land.”

  “Sure. And thanks.”

  “No problem.”

  All very understated, but it was decent of Fairchild to warn her. She hadn’t heard anything about this yet from Gardner or Walter. Being on Fairchild’s inside track certainly paid off sometimes. It should be good news having the FBI on the case, but somehow it wasn’t, exactly.

  Eventually, too tired to think or even walk straight, she went back to the hotel and tried to sleep. But then of course the jet lag set in and she couldn’t. The manga store, the pachinko parlour, FBI suits showing up en masse, they all danced around inside her head. Then her phone dinged. Someone had emailed, to her personal email address. Not many people did that.

  She reached out for her phone, and when she saw the screen she sat bolt upright. It was from James. But what a weird email. The subject and the content were made up entirely of numbers. Was it genuine? She had to assume so. The guy was a mathematician after all.

  She called Walter, checking the time as she did so. One in the morning. Mid-evening in the UK.

  “How’s it going with GCHQ? Is there anyone who can help?” she asked.

  “I’ve made some progress. What’s the hurry?”

  “I’ve just had a really odd-looking email from James. Strings of numbers everywhere. If it’s really him, he could have managed to get a message out somehow, but I can’t make sense of it. Any chance of pushing this through urgently? It could be a lead.”

  “Forward it to me and I’ll get onto them straight away. I’ll tell the analyst to contact you directly. It shouldn’t be a problem now this has been prioritised. I take it Tim has updated you about the involvement of our FBI colleagues?”

  “I’ve heard something about it.”

  “Yes, well,” Walter was choosing his words carefully. “This is good news, of course. A joined-up international response to global hacking makes sense. And the additional resources and urgency are very timely.”

  “Of course.” All very political and on message. “Walter, that analyst will come straight to me, won’t they? Nobody else first?”

  “Absolutely. Of course we will be sharing everything with our FBI colleagues. But you’ll know first. You have my word.”

  At about five am, her phone rang. She was asked for some protocols to establish a secure line, then a woman come on introducing herself as Amy. She sounded very young. She started straight in with an explanation of the email.

  “It was sent using code, not via a web browser. Quite clever actually. He’s included the IP address in the email header. He wasn’t trying to hide where it was coming from.”

  “No, he wants us to know where he is. Can you get that from the IP address?”

  “That takes us to the general area. Somewhere in central Honshu, outside of Tokyo.”

  “That’s as close as we can get?”

  “From the IP address, yes. What I’m more intrigued by is the long string of numbers in the body of the email itself. It looks like a one-way function to me. I think it’s a number he’s got by multiplying together two prime numbers, one of which at least we’re supposed to know.”

  This was perplexing. “Why would he do such a thing?”

  “Well, he’s a mathematician, isn’t he? Into encryption. This is the fundamental principle behind standard RSA encryption which is used, basically, everywhere on the internet.”

  “Right.”

  Amy sounded like she thought she was talking to an idiot. Clearly GCHQ officers were used to working in a rarefied atmosphere.

  “It’s easy to multiply two numbers together, but not that easy to divide them again. Like mixing red and yellow paint to make orange. It’s irreversible. But obviously an encryption no one can decrypt is useless. You want something that can be decrypted, but only by someone who has the right information. In this case the private key. The function is the public key, but you need a private key to unlock it.”

  Public keys, private keys. Rose remembered James’ enthusiasm about it last time they met – and how she’d cut him short.

  “And how are we supposed to know what it is?”

  “Well, I suppose he thinks you’ll figure it out. I reckon it’s an eight-digit number we’re after.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Well, firstly because if you divide this number by an eight-digit number, you’ll get something that’s about the right length to be a set of map co-ordinates. He’s trying to tell us where he is, right?”

  “Well, why didn’t he just email me the address of the place?”

  “That’s outside of my remit, but what would happen if his captors knew he’d disclosed the address?”

  The penny dropped. “They’d move him. So by the time anyone got there they’d be gone.”

  “It’s a long shot, but if he’s managed to hide this message or just keep them guessing for a few hours, they may stay put long enough for you to find them.”

  “Okay. That works.” Rose had no idea James was so devious. “But how sure are you about the eight digits?”

  “I think the subject of the email is a clue. The number is 16,777,216. That’s eight to the power of eight. Eight multiplied by itself eight times.”

  “Woah. This is complicated.”

  “Not to a mathematician. It’s kind of like a times table, one to the power of one, two to the power of two, and so on.”

  “Whatever you say. So how do we figure out this eight-digit number?”

  “I was hoping you could tell me.”

  “Really?”

  “Is there a memorable number that would mean something to you and him but no one else?”

  “A secret number? We didn’t play number games. He was the mathmo, not me.”

  Amy sounded like she was trying really hard to be patient. “Eight digits could well be a date. Two digits for the day, two for the month, four for the year. That’s a standard UK date format. Can you think of a date that has a special meaning?”

  A long pause. “No.”

  “Oh.” Amy sounded disappointed.

  “I really can’t think of anything. We didn’t really…” We didn’t have private jokes, or shared experiences or things that only meant something to us, she could have said. James was a geek, and Rose spent most of their time growing up just ignoring him, basically. She was starting to have a little more respect for him now.

  “Couldn’t it just be something really simple like his date of birth?” Rose asked.

  “What’s his date of birth? I’ll try it.”

  Rose told her. Amy typed it in and waited. “No, that’s miles off. We know the latitude and longitude have to be within a certain range to correspond with the IP address.”

  “What about my date of birth?”

  “Go on, then.”

  Rose told her. She came back straight away. “No, that won’t work.”

  “You haven’t even tried it.”

  “It’s not a prime number.”

  “Why does it have to be a prime number?�
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  “Well, strictly speaking it doesn’t, if I’m right and we’re only trying to find one number by dividing the big number by another one. But, the whole principle of one-way functions and factoring is based on prime numbers. I just think he’ll be in that mindset.”

  Multiplying prime numbers together. James had said something about that.

  “So, I’m looking for a date that means something to us both and is also a prime number?”

  “Yeah.” As if it was obvious.

  “And how am I supposed to know if it’s a prime number or not?”

  “There are loads of places on the internet where you can type it in and it will tell you. But for starters it has to end with a one, three, seven or nine.”

  “Oh, right. That narrows down the field.”

  “Yes. You still can’t think of anything?”

  “Sorry. I mean, if it was his wife…” There were loads of possibilities there, surely, first dates, anniversaries, anything to do with the kids. “I’ll get Walter to send someone round there. They may come up with something, especially if they’re at the house.”

  “Get them to pass any possibilities straight to me and I’ll check them. But he sent this email to you, didn’t he?”

  “Amy, honestly, I can’t think what he had in mind. Can’t you just check every possibility? Put in every eight-digit number and try them all until something bites?”

  “That would take a very long time. I mean if it were all eight-digit primes, of which there are over five million… but of course it isn’t every prime, it’s only the ones that work as a date, and if it’s personal it’ll probably be within his living memory which dramatically reduces the years…” She was thinking out loud. “But we’re assuming he’s using the standard UK date format and he might not be. Also, we could get multiple hits. And it would still take a very long time. But I could set up a program. It’s better than nothing. It would be a lot easier to start with suggestions, though.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  After the call Rose phoned Walter, who undertook to get someone local to go to her brother’s home and quiz Fiona directly about dates. Then she sat and reviewed her life as far back as she could remember, at least all the events that fell within years ending with a one, three, seven or nine. What a weird way of thinking. Had he always been like this? Probably, and she’d never noticed. The most uncomfortable idea circling in her head was that James might have memories of them that he held more dear than she did. She’d always assumed that they shared a common indifference to each other. Two very distinct people leading very different lives who happened to be brother and sister, she’d always thought. And it wasn’t as if they argued, exactly. They just weren’t close. So what was this thing she was supposed to guess?

  Of course it could be that Amy was on completely the wrong tack. The woman was certainly reading a lot into some strings of numbers. Running the whole thing by someone else wouldn’t do any harm. Someone who’d bring a fresh perspective, with a cryptic mind that saw connections between things, a puzzle-solver.

  Oh, hell.

  She phoned Fairchild. He picked up. She’d never known him not to, in fact. She described the situation as briefly as she could.

  “Maths isn’t really my forte,” she said.

  “Nor mine. But I know about factoring and one-way functions and how a lot of encryption is based on it.”

  Of course he did. Fairchild’s ability to absorb information from so many eclectic sources was impressive, though annoying. The reason behind it was poignant; he’d spent most of his life studying everything he could to equip himself to resolve the puzzle of his parents’ disappearance. Which he’d done, at least in part, but old habits died hard.

  “What she’s saying makes sense to me,” he said. “They have some powerful processers at GCHQ and entering all those parameters should reduce the task considerably.”

  Rose wondered exactly how much Fairchild knew about the strength of the processors at GCHQ.

  “How much does your brother know about your role?” Fairchild asked her.

  “Nothing. At least I thought nothing. I’ve certainly never said anything. You know how much of a no-no that is. But he did drop a few hints when we met, like he suspected something.”

  “It may be that there is no significant date, and he’s assuming you have access to code-breakers. He might just have the idea you can click your fingers and do any kind of hacking job you want.”

  “Well, to be fair, people are working on it as we speak.”

  “But do you think they would be if the FBI hadn’t got involved and upped the stakes?”

  Rose didn’t want to think about that. “I don’t know what else to do,” she said, sounding rather helpless.

  “I don’t think there’s anything else you can do. Try to think about something else. Empty your mind. How much sleep have you had?”

  Not enough. “I can’t even think about sleep right now.”

  There was a pause, quite a long one. “Well. Don’t think about it then. Take a step back somehow. It might just come to you. It’s only a few hours until we meet with the cousins anyway.”

  “Cousins? You spend more time in the pay of the Americans than anyone else. You are a cousin, Fairchild.”

  He laughed softly. “That’s true of me and Zack, maybe. I’m not sure about the rest of them.”

  She thanked him and hung up. His endorsement of the whole GCHQ approach was useful, but the rest sounded like platitudes. She went back to bed and spent some time lying there wondering what Fairchild was going to say during that long pause. Whatever it was, he’d thought better of it. Was he going to suggest something? And if he had, would she have taken him up on it?

  That one was still spinning around somewhere in her head when she did, unexpectedly in the end, fall asleep.

  Chapter 25

  Fairchild thought Rose looked tired when she arrived at Trade Winds, but she was still early for the meeting, as was everyone else. Earliest of them all was Agent Alice Rapp, who’d walked in half an hour before the agreed start time and wasn’t prone to small talk. She brought a guy with her and they sat at a table in the empty restaurant, closed at that time in the morning. After a brief introduction, they both worked their mobile phones in silence. They were dressed in standard issue FBI uniform: suit and tie, skirt and jacket. Rapp’s long dark hair and heavy-rimmed glasses took the edge off her muscularity a little, but she could handle herself, Fairchild could see that. He wondered if she was carrying, even here on foreign soil. It wouldn’t surprise him.

  Zack came separately. That lifted the mood a little. At least they could sustain a conversation, if only small talk about hotels and traffic. Next to arrive was Barclay, the booming CIA head who came to the opening.

  “Fairchild! Hey! Didn’t expect to be back here so soon. Great party. Any chance of one of those cocktails? Only joking, it’s a little early even for me.”

  Then came Tim Gardner – more greetings and introductions – then finally Rose. Fairchild didn’t have the chance to ask her about the conversation they’d had last night but she gave no indication things had moved forward. He remembered with some self-consciousness a long pause, during which he’d toyed with the idea of suggesting that they get together to discuss the matter face to face. He was glad he hadn’t in the end, and hoped that Rose hadn’t read too much into that awkward silence.

  Not being privy to the full invite list, Fairchild wasn’t expecting to host such a large group, and they had to engage in some table-moving to accommodate everyone. Rapp stood with her arms folded and watched.

  “How secure is this place?” she said to Zack, who’d suggested it.

  “It’s clean,” said Fairchild. “I sweep it for bugs regularly.”

  “Yeah,” said Zack. “If anyone’s going to be listening in here, it’ll be Fairchild.”

  Rapp was unimpressed. “Well, if you can vouch for it.”

  “Sure.” Zack met her gaze.
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br />   As soon as they were seated, Rapp got started. “Right. It seems we all know each other now, so let’s get to business.” No one questioned her authority to lead. “You all have the background, but let me tell you more about these scumbags and why we want them. You know that ransomware attacks are surging. Over two thousand organisations reported an attack to the FBI last year but that’s a gross understatement because most firms simply pay the ransom. It’s quick, it’s low-profile, they get an insurance pay-out and it’s becoming seen more and more as just another cost of doing business. But that just sets it up as a successful activity, puts money into the pockets of cyber-criminals and encourages more of it. The criminals will go wherever the pay-outs are bigger and come easier. That’s why they target organisations, not individuals. More recently we’re seeing a surge in attacks on public sector bodies, government of different levels, and in particular healthcare.”

  “Because their defences are less up to date?” asked Rose.

  Rapp gave her a hostile look. “No. Because there’s more at stake. A hospital that has patients on life support or being prepped for vital operations can’t just stop. If they do, people will die. In one twenty-four hour period, six US hospitals were targeted by the same group. This group. Some of those places were out of commission for weeks with patients having to move elsewhere. Others just paid the ransom, despite the FBI directing them otherwise.”

  “What can you tell us about this group in particular?” asked Gardner.

  “Fire Sappers are all over the dark web. They appear on industry advisory lists worldwide now. They’re getting more and more daring, and they’re clever. The striking thing about those hospital attacks is that all the hospitals were in the same area. That’s a lot more serious because you could have a situation where no emergency room for hundreds of miles is able to take patients. Online, their branding is aggressive and triumphalist. They just love what they do.” She drew out the word love – lurve. “They big themselves up like wrestlers or prize fighters. It’s part of the intimidation process. The message that comes up on screen when they’ve broken in is kind of like, look what we did, stupid!”