The Lights of Tenth Street

by Shaunti Feldhahn

  “Okay, fine! But if they can’t help, I’m coming back. It’s an urgent matter.”

  The secretary just kept typing. Doug made an exasperated noise and went back down the hall.

  “Mary?” He stopped by his assistant’s desk. “Who else, other than Jordan, is really good at encryption stuff?”

  “Well, there’s a couple of guys down on three—” Her eyes brightened. “And that new kid—the intern down there—he was able to decrypt our computers when the new security software went haywire.”

  “Good! Thanks!” Doug hurried down to the third floor and went looking for the resident boy genius. He was a college kid—sophomore at Georgia Tech—but seemed to know more about information technology than half the tech staff.

  He found the kid in his cubicle, playing a computer game.

  “Hard at work, are you?”

  The intern jerked to his feet, stunned to see the chief financial officer staring at him.

  “Uh—uh—sorry, sir!”

  “No problem. I was just thinking we needed to lighten up today since it’s a holiday.”

  “Uh, yes, sir!”

  “At ease, boy.” Doug chuckled, looking at the young man with his military buzz cut. The kid reminded him of himself at that age. Doug held out the Palm Pilot. “I have a sensitive problem I’m wondering if you can help me with. There’s something on this device that we need to see, but we can’t get in. And once we get in, I don’t know if we’ll be able to see the file. It would be the last file that was downloaded, if you can figure that out.”

  “How many layers of encryption?”

  “I don’t know. But it’s pretty urgent. Can you work on it and bring it right up when you’re done?”

  “Yes, sir!” The kid took the Palm Pilot out of his hand. “Give me an hour or two and I’ll see what’s what.”

  “Thanks. And don’t pass it around, please. If you can’t get in, come tell me directly.”

  The intern nodded, already fiddling with the device and mumbling to himself.

  Doug took the elevator back up to his office. Might as well try the FBI again; he’d waited long enough for a call back.

  This time he got a more willing listener—someone with the title of “Special Agent”—but no more movement. The man seemed interested in his third-hand account of a possible undercover agent working in a strip club, but Doug could hear the skepticism in his voice when he relayed Maris’s comment about national security. Doug finished his story and sighed.

  “Listen, I know you probably think this is a hoax, but I’m just passing along what the woman said.”

  “Yes, sir—what the woman told the stripper, you mean. You didn’t actually hear her yourself.”

  “Of course. But—”

  “And where is this possible agent, now?”

  “We don’t know. But Ronnie said she thought her life was in danger.”

  “Uh, huh.” There was a pause, and Doug could practically hear the sigh over the telephone. “Tell you what. I see in the record that you’ve called four times now. I can tell you think this is important, sir—”

  “I do.”

  “—and we always appreciate the tips provided by the general public.”

  Doug tried to keep the wry sound out of his voice. “I’m sure you do.”

  “So let me fast-track this and ask around. But it’s too preliminary for you to come in for a meeting.”

  “You don’t even want me to bring the Palm Pilot?”

  “Well, sir, you’re always welcome to bring in any item you think might be of interest. But that’s your choice. I can’t promise that someone will get to it right away.”

  Doug kept his mouth shut. He’d rather keep control of the device and see if he could crack it. Then maybe he’d have something concrete to get their attention.

  The man was still talking. “If you still had that numeric code you said the strippers dropped, focusing this search wouldn’t be a problem. But the FBI is a large organization, and I don’t know who might’ve been dealing with this matter—if indeed someone was. It could’ve been an op run out of Washington, or even a completely different field office, for all I know.”

  “I understand, sir.”

  “We have your numbers, Mr. Turner—work, cell and home. Be assured, we’ll get back to you if something comes up.”

  “Okay.”

  Doug put down the phone, looked at the clock and grimaced. He had three or four business-related things that had to be done today—financial things that had to be cleared before midnight at the end of the year—but all this other stuff kept getting in the way.

  He promised himself he’d return to the mystery as soon as the tech-wizard intern showed up with the Palm Pilot, and closed his door. Maybe he could get some of these other things cleared off his desk in the meantime.

  Behind his own closed door, Jordan was almost continually on the secure cell phone he’d gotten just for this purpose. He called Tyson for the third time that hour.

  “I forgot to ask—any sign of the girl?”

  “No.” Tyson sounded frustrated. “We’ve made some progress, but haven’t turned anything up yet. There is one bouncer, Brian, who Marco had drafted early on. Since he’s loyal to us—he doesn’t know the full story, obviously—he agreed to join the search. They’ve visited all the coworkers, but no one has seen the girls. And they tried calling their cell phones, but no dice. One of the dancers said Sasha left her purse and cell phone behind at the club. But the police confiscated it. And Ronnie’s evidently not answering hers.”

  “She’s smart.”

  “That’s why she was in the group, after all.”

  Jordan swore. “Family? Any luck?”

  “Not yet. None of the other dancers know much about where they were from. The only thing they do know is that the girls were best friends growing up. So, we find one, we find the other.”

  “All I want is that Palm Pilot!” Jordan slammed his fist on the desk. “The client was not pleased that the code had been compromised. If we get the thing, we should be able to tell whether anyone has looked at it or whether all this worry is for nothing.”

  “We’re moving ahead with the preparations for tonight, though, Chief. You can reassure the client that, barring any last-minute problems, it should come off as planned.”

  “No problems with the ad time?”

  “No, that was purchased months ago. We’ve added a few secondary networks, of course. And there were a few that wanted to run the commercial too late. But we paid big enough premiums that none of them minded bumping whichever other ads were slated for that time slot.”

  “What’s our expected impact? Any numbers yet?”

  “Not as big a splash as Super Bowl Sunday, of course. Probably about a million hits.”

  Jordan picked up a pen. “Give me the breakdown.”

  “With almost 8 percent market penetration of over one-hundred million households, that’s at least eight million devices.”

  Jordan was scribbling, smiling. “Right. Go on.”

  “From our research, it appears that at least half of those households are in the Eastern time zone.”

  “Excellent.”

  “So assume—we’re being rough, here—that about four million devices are in that time zone, and maybe 25 percent of those will be watching the ball drop live on New Year’s Eve.”

  “Hence, one million hits.”

  “Well, we might actually get more, as presumably there will be more than one person watching in each household. In some households, there’ll be parties of dozens of people.”

  “All sitting in front of their nice little television sets, one minute after midnight when the networks cut to their commercial breaks.”

  The satisfaction was clear in Tyson’s voice. “So we might get two million or more.”

  “Two million.” Jordan rolled his tongue around the words. “Ten times more than Hiroshima and Nagasaki together.”

  “And in such a simple way, t
oo. No nukes to hide, no protected materials to steal, no massive money layouts. The victims even pay for the instrument of their destruction. Even if it’s not Super Bowl Sunday, the clients are still getting their money’s worth, boss.”

  “I can’t wait to tell them.”

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  Doug heard a tentative knock on his office door. “Come on in!” The tech-wizard poked his head around the door. “Uh—sir?” “Come in. Any progress?”

  “Well, sir,” the kid said, laying the Palm Pilot on Doug’s desk. “Good news and bad news. The good news is that I got into the device—”

  “Great! Good work!”

  “Uh, thanks. But the bad news is that I can’t get into the file.”

  “You found it?” Doug’s face was eager.

  “Yeah—well, you said it was the last file in, right? Easy enough. It’s an audio file of some kind, but it was encrypted when it was downloaded. And that encryption is something I’ve never seen before. I don’t know how to crack it.”

  “Well—thanks.” Doug looked down at the face of the Palm Pilot, now lit up as if ready to bare its secrets. “Which file is it, by the way?”

  “Let me show you. This is one sophisticated device, by the way. All the bells and whistles, and more. Fascinating.” He looked up, curious. “Where’d you get it?”

  “Long story.”

  The kid used a stylus to navigate a few steps. “Here you go—this file, right here.”

  Doug looked at it, reading aloud. “ ‘Speedcode.mp3.’ What does that mean?”

  “No idea. Except it’s an audio file in MP3 format. But like I said—can’t open it.”

  “Can I download it?”

  “Yeah, you might be able to.” A grin crossed his face. “Well, I might be able to. I can try a few tricks to get around the system. You want me to try?”

  “Please. But on my computer only.”

  The intern nodded. “I’ll be back in a jiffy Let me get a hard-link cable.”

  In minutes he was back, fiddling with the Palm Pilot and Doug’s computer, linking one to the other, working his magic on the keyboard. Doug stood and watched quietly.

  “Okay … did it.” The kid looked up. “I put it in this document folder, see? You still can’t open it, but at least you have it on your hard drive.”

  “Great. Thanks.” Doug peered at the screen. “Anyone else at the company you think might be able to break into the file?”

  “Well … I probably shouldn’t say this, but there’s no one in my department that could do it better than me.”

  “I see.” Doug could feel his lips twitching.

  “But—say. You know who might be able to manage it is Jordan. He rocks.”

  “Really? I guess it makes sense. He’s been doing computer security stuff since before you were born.”

  “Yeah. But, I mean, I talked to him once in the cafeteria. I was fiddling with a laptop, trying to get something to work, and he walked right over and showed me how. He said I was the company’s rising star, and he had his eye on me. What a gas!”

  “Well, I’d agree with him there.” Doug clapped him on the shoulder. “Please keep this between us. I’ll call you if I need anything more.”

  When the intern left, Doug stood staring at his computer. Then he copied the file onto a disk and headed down the hall. Might as well make one more try.

  He approached the secretary carefully. “Sorry, I’m back.”

  She gave him a slight smile. “Sorry I was rude earlier.”

  “Hard to be polite in the middle of a stampede, isn’t it?”

  “You can say that again. But Jordan has cheered up a bit in the last half hour. He’s no less busy, though. You still need help?”

  “I do.” Doug showed her the disk. “We did break into the Palm Pilot and retrieved the file we need, but that’s where we got stuck.”

  The secretary took the disk from him. “And you want …?”

  “Jordan’s probably the only person in the company who can break the encryption and get into that file—if anyone can, that is. We urgently need to see the contents. Actually, hear the contents, as it’s apparently an audio file.” Doug considered explaining, and then decided it would raise too many questions. “Please just ask him, if you can.”

  “I’ll try.” She laid the disk in an inbox on her desk. “I’ll buzz you if he can take a minute.”

  “Thanks.”

  Doug headed back to his office, briefly stopping by Mary’s desk. She, too, was unusually stressed, her temper a bit frayed by all the last-minute work she had laid on Doug’s desk for review that he hadn’t gotten to yet.

  “Mary, I promise I’ll get to all those files in the next hour.”

  “Okay.” She looked like she was forcing a smile, her normally sweet nature set on edge. “I’d really like to get out of here before it gets too late.”

  “Sorry.” Doug gave her a contrite smile. “Tell you what, keep everyone away for an hour. I’ll turn off my cell phone, and punch out all this stuff.” He thought. “Unless it’s Jordan, they can all wait one hour.”

  She smiled in relief. “Deal.”

  An hour later, the secretary looked up as Jordan emerged from his office, tension jangling in his body like an electric wire. He picked up the few things from his inbox.

  “What’s this?” He held up the disk.

  “Doug dropped it off. He said there’s some encrypted file on there that they need to see, and he was wondering if you could break into it.”

  Jordan dropped the disk back into the inbox. “I don’t have time for that today.”

  “I know … I told Doug. But he said it was urgent. He’s come by twice.”

  Jordan seemed hardly to be listening. “Too bad. Can’t do it.”

  “I told him.” She shrugged. “He tried first with this Palm Pilot that he couldn’t get into, but then he must’ve gotten someone—”

  “The what? What Palm Pilot?”

  The secretary looked up, surprised. “I don’t know … just some encrypted Palm Pilot he wanted to get into. He must’ve gotten someone else to help because he was back an hour ago with that disk, saying he’d gotten into the device but couldn’t open the file. He was wondering if you could.”

  Jordan picked up the disk, his eyes narrowed. “What sort of file?” His voice was slow, almost disbelieving.

  “I don’t know, boss. Some type of audio file—”

  Jordan darted back into the office and slammed the door. She made a rude noise under her breath and turned back to her work. That man could be so exasperating at times!

  The phone rang at Mary’s desk. She answered, her voice rushed. “Doug Turner’s office.”

  She listened for a moment, then picked up a pen. “I’m sorry, sir, but he’s asked me to hold all calls.” She winced and held the phone away from her ear. “Well, sir, he’s got some big deadlines today, that’s why he has his cell phone turned off. But I’ll get him the message and—”

  She sighed in exasperation as the caller interrupted her again.

  “Okay, FBI, I understand.” As she scribbled the message, another line rang on the phone. “Sir, I promise I’ll get him this as soon as I can … okay … okay.” The man finally hung up and she punched in the next call, moving on to the next emergency.

  Jordan hurried to his computer and slotted the disk in, muttering under his breath as he waited for the computer to bring up Windows Explorer, an internal debate raging.

  It couldn’t be anything … could it? How on earth could it have any connection to what they were looking for?

  Windows Explorer popped up, and he clicked on the A: drive to check the file name. His mouth dropped open. He looked at the file name and blinked his eyes. Speedcode.mp3.

  His eyes went wild with fury, with haste. How had one of his own people come into possession of the code? He dialed a number with shaking fingers, got Tyson, and left him speechless.

  They conferred in quiet, urgent sentences, Tyson dispatch
ing his henchmen even as they talked.

  Jordan buzzed his secretary, keeping his voice pleasant, level. “Could you buzz Mary and tell her that I’d like to see Doug down here?”

  “Will do, Chief.”

  Caliel listened to the call come over Mary’s intercom, listened to her ask Doug down to Jordan’s office.

  Lots of others were listening, too. The building looked as if light and dark, good and evil were split down the middle.

  A shining cadre of great beings flanked Doug’s office. His whole end of the hallway was bathed in crystal light, luminescent with the fierce presence of stern-faced warriors.

  Beyond Mary’s desk, the office grew dark, shadowy. Great dark beings hissed at the shining interlopers. The whole rest of the hallway was nearly black in shadow, only a thin no-man’s-land separating deepest dark from shining white.

  And they all listened as Mary told Doug of Jordan’s summons.

  As Doug emerged from the office, Caliel swept a giant hand over the contents of Mary’s desk. She brushed her elbow over the stack of messages, and they fell to the floor. Doug passed her desk and had taken two steps down the hall when Mary saw the message slip.

  “Doug!”

  Doug turned, irritated. He had way too much to do—he couldn’t keep jumping from task to task.

  Mary held out a slip of paper, and Doug retraced his steps to take it.

  “I figured I should tell you … this guy from the FBI called. He wouldn’t say what about, just asked you to call him immediately. He seemed to think it was critical.”

  Doug wavered, then hurried back into his office. Over his shoulder he called back to Mary.

  “If Jordan calls, tell him I’m on the phone and I’ll be right there.”

  The dark creatures hissed and spat at the angels, now completely prevented from seeing or hearing what was delaying Doug. Even their unearthly sight could not penetrate the zone of painful light. Their eyes were red with fury. So close—so close! Well, they were still so close. Several of them sped off to take a look and came back with the report. Tyson’s men were only a few minutes away. They would make quick work of this measly person who insisted on throwing a wrench in the works. They whispered the news among themselves, their eyes gleaming with expectation.