“Of course. I’ve only got an email address, but I’ll reach out to her as soon as you want. What else will you be doing?”
“Well, there’s this strange text message I got from your father – a running invitation. It’s obviously supposed to be telling me something, and I’ve got somebody working on that now. Hopefully I’ll be able to let you know soon what it means. And on that note, I’d better be going.”
He gave her a hug.
“How bad do you think this is, George?”
“I’d like to say you don’t have to worry. But I can’t, because I just don’t know.”
* * *
42
Now Go to Your Room!
Frank was sitting in the same room he’d occupied ever since his blindfold had been removed the night before. It hadn’t taken him long to conclude that no remotely feasible escape strategy was available to him. There just wasn’t much to work with, and most of what the drab space did contain was problematic.
For example, there was that very large and rather thuggish looking person sitting in the chair by the door, reading a tabloid newspaper. He never left the room unless an equally evolutionarily challenged guard took his place. Each wore an impressively equipped shoulder holster.
Then there were the facts that the room had no windows, the door was locked from the outside as well as the inside, and that the only objects in the room were two chairs, the table at which he was sitting, a cot, and a small night table supporting a pile of old magazines. No, that wasn’t quite accurate. He should probably include the guard in the list of inanimate objects. But at any rate, he didn’t see that anything in the room could be used to help him make his escape other than the gun in the guard’s holster. And he didn’t seem like the kind of guy who was likely to share nicely.
So there Frank sat, with nothing to do except complete page after page in an elementary Sudoku book he’d found among the magazines. He’d tried staring at the guard with his hands folded in front of him and a goofy grin on his face, hoping to bug him, but the man never looked up. Frank thought his head would explode from boredom if he didn’t get out soon.
He heard the door being unlocked from the outside, and looked at his watch; it seemed to be too early for the guard shift to change.
Two men entered the room. One was the other guard, but the taller of the two was someone Frank hadn’t seen before. Judging by the body language of the guard, he was obviously the head beaver on this operation. How many more captors might he have? Frank mentally filed these two away as Boss Man and Robin.
Boss Man walked up to Frank, while Robin stood behind and to the side, holding a laptop. Frank noticed that the laptop Robin was carrying looked a lot like his own.
“Alright, Adversego. Time to get to work,” Boss Man said. Robin placed the laptop on the table and then resumed his former position, with arms crossed.
“What do you mean, get to work? What do you expect me to do?”
“Not much. We’re just going to answer your email so no one wonders why you suddenly went dark.”
“Why would I want to help you do that?”
“You’re not exactly in a position to negotiate, are you Adversego?” He gestured, and the large guard by the door now (“Guard Man,” Frank decided) stepped forward to stand at Boss Man’s other elbow, arms crossed. Together, the three of them looked like a bad parody of a movie poster based on comic book superheroes. Frank noticed with annoyance that Guard Man was now staring at him with a goofy smile on his face.
“Do I get to know who you are, and why you’re holding me?”
“Actually, you don’t. And while we’re on the subject, you don’t get to ask any more questions, either.”
“Okay, but I’ll have to call you something, so I’m going with ‘Boss Man.’”
Boss Man scowled at that, but let it go.
“Whatever. Now open up your laptop and log on to your email account at the agency site.”
The agency site! This was the first bit of useful information Frank had been able to glean so far. Whoever it was that had grabbed him knew about Voldemort. If these were the hackers, he wondered how they’d figured that out.
In any event, being asked to answer his email on the Voldemort site had to be good news. He didn’t know how, but simply having access to his email and the agency’s system had to offer some potential for sneaking a covert message through.
“Okay.” He pushed the power button on his laptop and folded his hands in his lap.
“I said log on to that site!”
“How do you expect me to do that?”
Boss Man looked annoyed. “We’ve got Wi-Fi.”
“Nice! But I can’t just dial in to a super secure government network by typing ‘please.’ I need my security token to get through the firewall.”
Boss Man turned to Robin. “Bring in everything you took from him when you brought him in.”
Frank looked down at his laptop and noticed that almost all of the icons had disappeared from his desktop. He wondered whether any of the deleted programs might still be recoverable. While he waited, he casually moused over the browser box. Judging by the names of the sites that displayed in the dropdown list, whoever had deleted the programs had rather exotic tastes in pornography.
The door opened again, and this time Robin was carrying a plastic shopping bag. He held it open, but when Frank reached in and pulled out his mobile phone, Boss Man grabbed it.
“Damn it, Adversego!”
But Frank was feeling cocky now. If they wanted him to report in to the office on a daily basis, they needed to keep him alive and cooperating on a daily basis as well.
“Don’t you guys talk to each other? I already explained to my chauffeur that I need my phone to log on. Or maybe you’ve wiped all the apps off my phone as well?”
Boss Man looked to Robin, and to Frank’s relief he shook his head no.
“What does an app have to do with logging on?”
“That’s where my token software is. I type in my PIN, and the app shows me a random number that gets replaced every twenty seconds with a new one. I type my password and that number into the log-on window at the agency site and it lets me in. If I get the number wrong, it doesn’t. Simple.”
Boss Man frowned. “Okay, but we’re going to do this my way.” He pointed the phone at Frank. “Just stick your thumb on your mobile phone and then stop.”
Frank did, and Boss Man looked at the phone. “Okay, what does the app look like?”
Frank told him how to recognize the icon, and after squinting and poking at the touch screen for a bit, Boss Man held the phone out to him again.
“That it?”
“You’re a natural.” Guard Man took a half step forward at that, but Boss Man waved him away. Guard Man looked disappointed, and he wasn’t smiling now. Frank decided not to push his luck, and typed in his PIN without further comment.
Moments later, he was logged on to the system after typing his user name, password and the random number on his laptop.
“Now what?”
“Now you’re going to give the laptop back to me so I can answer your email.”
Frank’s first impulse was to let him try. Typing styles were like fingerprints or voices – everyone’s was just a little bit different. The nanosecond differences between when an individual struck different key combinations could be compiled into a unique profile that was like no one else’s. He knew the agency ran a keystroke recognition program all the time, and would be able to tell immediately if anyone else answered his email. But that wouldn’t help him get a message through.
Now what? If he told Boss Man why he’d be smarter to let Frank reply to his own email, he’d be suspicious – why would Frank tip him off to something like that?
He handed the computer
over. “Great idea! Here – make yourself comfortable and I’ll show you how to log on.” Boss Man gave him a strange look, but sat down.
“Okay – so what you’re looking at here is my remote desktop. See that icon there? That’s for my email – just tap on that.”
Boss Man did.
“Good job. Now you’re looking at my email client. It’s a little confusing, so let me walk you through everything.”
Frank nattered along, describing more than Boss Man needed to know to simply answer his email. Finally, Boss Man pushed the laptop back and stood up.
“Okay, I’ve heard enough. I don’t know what you’re up to, but you’re going to sit back down and answer your email, not me. I’m not touching that computer anymore.”
Frank tried to look as abashed as possible without over acting.
“Oh, alright. Suit yourself.”
Boss Man smirked. “Don’t worry − I’ll make it easy for you. I’ll tell you exactly what to type.”
Frank sat down and grumbled through twenty minutes of deleting some emails, answering others, and foldering the remainder as instructed by Boss Man. When they were done and he’d logged off the Voldemort site, he started to close the laptop. But Boss Man stopped him.
“Not so fast. Now open up your personal email account.”
Frank did as he was told, thankful that another potential door had just opened.
“Okay. Now open a message and address it to your daughter.”
Frank’s heart skipped a beat. They knew about Marla! But again, he did as he was told. Instead of dictating this time, Boss Man took a firm hold on the laptop and pulled it his way.
“Sorry, Frankie. I don’t trust you with this one.”
Frank surrendered the laptop and watched as Boss Man two-finger typed a brief message and then re-read it carefully.
“Do I get to know what I’m about to send my own daughter?”
“Not in so many words. Just that you need to go off-line for a while. You don’t want her worrying, do you?”
* * *
George picked up the phone to hear a breathless Marla.
“George! I just got an email message from my father!”
“What did it say?”
“Not much – just that he needs to be out of touch while he follows up on something. I’m sure someone told him what he had to type, but at least he’s alive!”
George wasn’t ready to jump to that conclusion on such flimsy evidence, but there was no reason to tell Marla that.
“That’s great news. And I’ve got some, too. We think we know where your father is.”
“That’s wonderful! Tell me everything!”
“It was that text message he sent me. We took a look at the app that sent it, and it turns out it’s a running program that also tracks your distance, speed, and most importantly, your route and current whereabouts, using the phone’s location capability. And luckily it’s a cloud app, so you can share your details with your friends.”
“Excuse me?”
“Sorry. It’s an app that keeps all its information on a host server, not on the phone. So all we had to do was accept your father’s invitation to become a running partner and we could see his running information. It looks like he ‘ran’ about 38 miles out of town the other day. Assuming he’s where his phone is, he’s inside an old office complex scheduled for demolition.”
Marla felt almost faint. “That’s wonderful! Will you rescue him today?”
“Well, that takes us to the harder part. I can’t share all of the details with you, but suffice it to say that I’m not able to bring the police into this.”
“Well, how about your CIA people?”
“No can do; they can only act abroad.”
“Then the FBI!”
“I’m sorry, Marla. I know this sounds totally wrong, but I can’t bring them in, either. And anyway, from the building plans I’ve been able to get hold of, our best guess is that your father is locked up somewhere in the middle of the building – we can’t say precisely where, because GPS isn’t that accurate. If we have to engage while we go hunting for him, he could be killed before we can reach him.”
“But you’ve got to do something!”
“Of course we do, and don’t worry, I’ve got a plan together to do just that. It may take me a couple of days to pull things together, but it should work when everything is in place. To pull it off, I’ll need your help, and maybe Josette’s as well.”
* * *
It was now day three, and Frank was climbing the walls. He’d already played all of the Sudoku puzzles, and was now occupying his mind by trying to make one up himself. It was a real pain in the ass.
The locks turned in the door, and Boss Man entered. How pitiful was this? Frank realized that he had been looking forward to taking dictation from a moron just to maintain sanity. Was this what they meant by the Stockholm Syndrome?
“Morning, Frankie. Ready to get to work?”
Frank said nothing, but accepted his laptop when it was offered to him.
“No tricks. I’ll be watching.”
Boss Man held out Frank’s phone as usual. Frank tapped in his PIN, and a six digit number, two groups of three digits, obediently materialized. The phone was a bit far away, though, so he had to lean forward and squint to make the digits out. It was a line of six zeroes! Sure, any number was as possible as any other number, but still, the odds against a perfect string of any digit were astonishing.
“What’s the problem?”
“Nothing. You need to hold the phone closer. It’s hard to see.”
Boss Man set the phone on the table next to Frank. “Okay, there you are. Now get typing.”
Frank took his time typing his log-in address in on the laptop, curious to see what number would display next. He looked up just in time to see the number refresh – and be replaced by a string of zeroes once again. Okay, the odds against that were astronomical – it couldn’t just happen. Had his access been canceled?
“I’m not going to ask you again, Adversego.”
Well, okay, Frank thought, and typed in a string of zeroes. To his astonishment, the log-in worked.
“Okay, I’m in.”
“Good boy. Now let’s get to work.” Boss Man moved to Frank’s elbow and turned the laptop halfway in his own direction so he could be sure Frank wouldn’t ad lib. “Open your email.”
Frank opened his email, but his real attention was on his phone, waiting to see what the next number would display. This time it was 123456.
He tried not to show his elation, but he was sure someone must be trying to communicate with him. But who? And how?
He opened an email and pretended to read it, closed it, and pretended to read another while Boss Man read over his shoulder. Occasionally Boss Man would dictate a short non-committal response or tell him to delete or folder it. But all the while, Frank’s mind was racing. For some time now, his phone had been alternating between two new sets of six digits. It had to be a code, but which one?
He guessed it would be one the sender thought he knew, and would also be likely to guess. But there were so many possible codes to choose from – ones that matched numbers to letters of famous sayings or the first lines of a poem, or to the frequency with which letters appeared in the English language. How would he be able to tell which one it was from just twelve numbers?
He searched for a clue in what little information was available to him. Which was what?
Well, if someone was trying to contact him, they knew he was in trouble. That meant that the phone message to George had reached him and allowed him to hear enough to tell that Frank was being kidnapped. Marchand had both the skills and the access to mess around with the token software, so he would be the sender.
But George wouldn’t have any idea what simple code he might know, so he’d probably contact Marla, right? And Marla could suggest a code to him. They’d used a code to communicate with each other during his last exploit, but if George was using that one now, Frank was in trouble – it was simple to use with a pencil and paper, but complicated to work out in his head in real time while simultaneously answering his email. Had he and Marla ever played with simpler codes?
Then he remembered. When Marla was very young, they had enjoyed playing number games together, so he had introduced her to a simple code or two. The first was the simplest of all − 1 meant A, 2 meant B, and so on. It was cumbersome to use, but it was a system a six-year-old could easily handle, as long as she had a cheat-sheet to work from. He could try that one out.
He looked at the phone out of the corner of his eye and watched the two numbers cycle again: 715 209/200 000, over and over again, first one pair of three digit numbers, and then the other.
Without more spaces, how could he tell whether numbers next to each other were supposed to be one letter or two? 123 could be grouped as 1,2,3 to yield ABC, or as 1,23 to give AW, or as 12,3 to mean LC. He looked again at the first number. 715 could be either 7,1,5 or 7,15, but not 71,5, since there were only 26 letters in the alphabet. Did George mean GAE or GO? Which was it?
“Pay attention, Adversego.”
He jerked back to attention. “Come again?”
“I said, reply and type ‘Got it’ to that one.”
He did, and opened the next message. If he had a piece of paper and a pen – and wasn’t doing two things at once – he’d know what the message said in a matter of seconds. All he’d have to do would be to write down the letters of the alphabet in one line and the numbers 1 – 26 below them. But now he had to count them out in his head, remember them, figure out which numbers were meant to be single digits and which double, and finally pick the winning combination before he ran out of email, which wouldn’t be long now. He began to sweat heavily in the stale air of the small room.
The Lafayette Campaign: a Tale of Deception and Elections (Frank Adversego Thrillers Book 2) Page 31
