Case of Lies

by Perri O'shaughnessy

  “I’m not really looking-”

  “People as accomplished as you rarely are. We have to talk to knowledgeable people, like the professor, and find you rather than the other way around.”

  “What kind of business is this?”

  “Internet security,” Patty Hightower said.

  “Like RSA?” RSA was a well-known Internet-security firm.

  “Right. We handle financial encryption for some customers you have definitely heard of.”

  “What does the name ‘XYC’ come from?”

  Patty smiled. “From the x,y axis. Plus ‘Corporation.’ We thought the abbreviation XYC would look good when the stock went public.”

  “I mentioned your work regarding factoring large numbers to Patty,” Professor Braun said. “Not in any detail, Elliott. Just the general direction you’re heading in.”

  Patty Hightower said, “We’d like to hire you to help us keep the Web safe for credit transactions, Elliott. And for many other purposes.”

  “I don’t know a thing about that stuff,” Elliott said. “I do pure math. Combinatorics. Analysis. Number theory. I don’t even have a doctorate.”

  “But you have some very promising results, don’t you? An algorithm that efficiently factors large numbers? That predicts the primes? I can hardly believe I’m saying this. It’s been a Holy Grail for mathematics for so long-my field is information technology. But my B.S. is in math. Princeton. I have to congratulate you, Elliott.”

  “I haven’t even published any of my work. How do you know so much about it? Professor, what have you said about my work?”

  “Just that I think it’s going to be ground-breaking, and that XYC would be smart to help you find the means to continue.”

  “And we have a friend of yours consulting for us. She mentioned you independently of the professor. Carleen Flint.”

  Carleen knew a lot about Elliott’s work, unlike the professor. She knew all about the blackjack, about Silke, about the function. She also knew about Elliott’s notebook. Elliott’s fright was increasing.

  “I feel like you’ve been watching me,” he said. “Strange things have been happening lately.”

  Patty looked at the lawyer, at the professor. “I’m not sure what you mean. You’ve come to our attention and we’d like to have you on board along with the many other very talented mathematicians who work for us. I’m not trying to overwhelm you, Elliott. As a matter of fact, I wish we hadn’t met in a big office, in such a formal way. Would you like to go down to the Market and have a little lunch? Just you and me? My treat.”

  The professor was nodding, but Elliott said, “I’m sorry, but I have to get back across the bay soon. My father’s not well. Why don’t you finish saying whatever you came to say right here.” Patty looked disappointed for a moment, but she leaned forward so she was very close to Elliott and he felt suddenly hot.

  “A million dollars for signing with us, Elliott,” she breathed. “And a million dollars per year salary for the next three years. Work under our umbrella, that’s all we ask.”

  Elliott, stunned, said, “That’s a lot of money. I don’t understand.” Then he said, “You mean you would own my work?” He remembered Silke talking to him the afternoon of the shooting two years before. What had she said? That companies like XYC would want to suppress his work.

  He recoiled, and Patty saw it; a pearly tooth bit into her glossy lower lip.

  “Would I still be able to publish?” he asked.

  “After our legal department has had a look. Perhaps not everything.”

  “Would you want all my work to date?”

  “That would be part of the signing bonus, yes. Payment for your work to date on prime number theory.”

  “Your company would own my work? Have control over my work?”

  “In a manner of speaking. And you would be free, in just a few years, financially secure, able to spend your life working without worries, your father taken care of…”

  “Professor, you know I’m not worth that kind of money.”

  “But you are, Elliott. You are working in precisely the most crucial field of applied mathematics right now. You are ahead of everyone else. I believe in you. I want you to succeed. Your work will be of enormous importance in keeping the Internet safe. The use of large primes for encryption is the basis of the whole emerging global economic system. There is no mathematician in the world today who has come as close to you to being able to decrypt our system by factoring the products of enormous primes. Frankly, I’m in awe. The Internet has come to depend on-”

  “On keeping my work a secret,” Elliott blurted.

  “Not at all. The focus of your work would change for a few years, to preventing attacks on public-key code systems. It’s a very laudable way of using your expertise. I’d enjoy working with you, and Carleen is looking forward to a collegial relationship. You’d have every resource imaginable. You’ll love being a part of XYC. Many MIT graduates have decided to join us. You’re a very lucky young man. And a very gifted one. We’d be proud to have you.”

  It was a heck of a speech. Elliott looked at the professor, at the ascetic face with the high cheekbones and the long fingers that he had watched, mesmerized, through several seminars, performing magic with chalk. Braun was the only professor at MIT who had shown any interest in his work. He had tried to help Elliott when he was sick.

  He imagined it, working through some of the problems he was having with the help of Professor Braun, having his full attention. He believed in Elliott, and had arranged for him to join him.

  “I am grateful,” he said. “Professor, your interest means a lot to me.”

  The professor breathed out and said, “You had me worried there for a minute.”

  “I’m grateful, but I can’t join you, Professor.”

  Braun said, frowning, “I don’t quite know how to respond to that, Elliott. Are you sure you appreciate what Patty has come all this way to offer you?”

  “All she’s offering is money,” Elliott said. “I want to expand human knowledge. So this would include buying up all my mathematical work to date?”

  “Only work related to prime numbers. The work summarized in the notebook you keep. Carleen mentioned it.”

  Now he was fighting full panic. His notebook! Years of his blood!

  “N-no way,” Elliott said.

  “I beg your pardon?” Patty Hightower said.

  “I’m going home. Please don’t contact me again.”

  Patty Hightower held up a hand, and the professor sat back in his chair. She said, “Nobody else will make you a better offer, if that’s what you’re thinking. We could actually go higher. A two-million-dollar signing bonus. How’s that sound?” The atmosphere of the room had changed. Now Elliott saw the three of them very differently, as though they were shape-shifters who had suddenly become predatory, malign. He jumped up and grabbed his backpack.

  “So I’m Hippasus,” he said.

  “Hippasus?” Professor Braun looked startled. Then he let out an incredulous laugh.

  “Your days as a card counter are numbered. How are you going to take care of your father?” Phelps said from the door, which he was blocking.

  Red fog clouded Elliott’s eyes. He said, “Did you arrange the robbery? The one at Tahoe? Was it to get my notebook? Did you hire the man with the gun? He’s looking for me.” A new flood of images made him shout, “Did you kill that girl at Tahoe last week? Try to kill my friends?”

  “Take it easy!” Professor Braun said. “What are all these accusations? This isn’t the Mafia! We’re a business!”

  “You didn’t answer my questions. Did you? Did you?”

  “Of course not,” Patty Hightower said. “Wait! Don’t go yet. We have to… Stop him!”

  But when he pushed Phelps, the lawyer shrugged and stepped aside, and no one ran after him, no burly security guard chased him down the fourteen flights of stairs, no one stopped him as he rushed breathless from the building into the rati
onal coffee-scented Seattle morning.

  Leaning one hand against the granite wall of a building to support himself, he reached inside his jacket and felt the reassuring bulk of his notebook over his heart. He felt shaky. The people walking by on the street paid no attention to him.

  Was he thinking straight, though? Confusion overwhelmed him.

  Hippasus. The Pythagoreans had murdered Hippasus for telling a secret that undermined their system.

  He covered his eyes with his hands and rocked a little. The professor must know how many nights Elliott had lain awake in bed, imagining the joy, the acclaim, when his proof was finished. His work didn’t just belong to him, it was a permanent advance in human understanding. Knowing all this had allowed Elliott to work endlessly, to give it everything. How many times had he fantasized about Professor Braun reading his proof in the Journal of Mathematics, appreciating it, thrilled that his student had come so far!

  His work was all he had. What trick was the universe playing on him now, that such a hard-won discovery had become such a threat to the powerful?

  Silke would never love him, and his work would be stolen and destroyed. His father was dying. Wherever he looked, he saw failure and disappointment.

  He was rocking a little as he stood against the building, getting some glances now.

  Have to get out of here, he thought. Can’t go home. But-Pop! He started walking blindly up the busy street.

  As he turned a corner, he pulled out his cell phone to call Silke and tell her everything, get her advice.

  No answer. She was in some tiny town on the Rhine more than six thousand miles away. She couldn’t help.

  I’ll hide it, he thought. The notebook came first. Silke had told him the night before that he should stay home and keep his guard up. Was it all he could do, stay home knowing they would have to come for him, like Hippasus?

  “Hallo?”

  “Hello? Is this Silke Kilmer?”

  “Who’s calling?” the voice responded in English.

  “Ms. Kilmer, this is Nina Reilly, calling from California.”

  A pause. “Sorry, I don’t want to talk to you.”

  “Are you represented by counsel?”

  “A lawyer? Not anymore, since we came here.”

  “Then please, give me a moment of your time.”

  “How did you get my number?”

  “You told me you came from Heddesheim. You’re staying with your parents, I take it.” It was eleven at night, and Nina lay on her bed in her kimono, practicing law. Germany was nine hours ahead.

  Silke Kilmer said in a voice so low Nina almost couldn’t catch it over the transatlantic static, “Do you know what happened to us? Why we left the U.S.?”

  “Yes. An explosion. You weren’t hurt?”

  “A miracle. The car smelled wrong. Like a bad aftershave. I don’t know. I said, ‘Raj, someone’s been in here.’ He panicked, thank God, and dragged me out and we went running. It must have been set off with a remote trigger. The man was waiting not far away. I suppose he watched us get in and he was looking down or something, and didn’t see us run from the passenger side, and set it off. We shouldn’t be alive.”

  “I’m very glad you’re all right.”

  “So. You can understand, this lawsuit of yours-so long as the man is at large, we cannot help.”

  “He’ll stay at large unless you do help. Another person has died. One of the people who helped bring this lawsuit.”

  “Why are you pushing this?” Silke said. “I don’t understand people like you. This thing is ruining my life. I had to leave school.”

  Nina said, “You don’t have to understand. There is a court order requiring your presence at a deposition in ten days here at Lake Tahoe. I am calling to offer you and Mr. Das traveling funds.”

  “You make me laugh. We’re not going anywhere. We’ll be killed. Your police are letting this man run amok.”

  “Then help us get him.”

  “You have the head of a mule, Miss Reilly. I admire you for staying there yourself. But I’m not brave like that.”

  “Elliott’s been served too,” Nina said. “Are you going to let him travel here all alone?”

  “He won’t come.”

  “Then I’ll get a judgment against him and you and Raj that will compromise your futures for years to come,” Nina said. She wasn’t too sure she could do that, but it wasn’t completely impossible.

  Another pause. The faint crackling continued. Nina imagined phone cables laid across the still, freezing floor of the Atlantic, her words flung like pellets toward the woman in Germany.

  It was probably all done by satellite anyway. Who could keep up with technology?

  “Elliott isn’t well,” Silke said finally. “He has had some psychiatric problems. He doesn’t deal with stress very well. Please don’t harass him.”

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  “I’d rather not go into it.”

  “If you don’t come, what can I do?”

  “We aren’t coming! Our lives are in danger!” Yet she was still talking. Nina thought, She’s torn, she’s looking for a way to help.

  She thought, What if I do drag them here and something happens? For a moment, the whole effort of overcoming the obstacles in the case seemed insuperable.

  “I’m getting off the line now,” Silke said.

  “What if I come to you?” Nina said. “I might be able to persuade the court to allow me to take your depositions in Germany, where you feel safer. Don’t say no without thinking, Ms. Kilmer. This may be the only way out for both of us.”

  “You would come to Heddesheim?”

  “If I can work out the legal details.” It would be expensive. Nina tried not to think about that. It was, in fact, highly irregular. But it had been done, in cases where people were too sick to travel, for instance.

  “What about Elliott?”

  “I have to depose him, too. He may have seen something you and Raj didn’t see.”

  “What if Elliott comes to Germany, too? Could you take all of our statements the same day?”

  “It’s a possibility,” Nina said.

  “He’s in danger in the States.”

  “What do you all know that is causing you to live in fear? The sooner it’s known to everyone, the sooner you’ll be safe.”

  “I don’t know what we know! We had money, he wanted it. What else is there to say? He killed a bystander, now he has to kill us so we can’t testify about him.”

  Nina said, “You were very close to him. You saw some identifying feature.”

  “Then come here and help us figure it out. I’m going to call Elliott and tell him not to say anything until he is with us.”

  “You seem to care a lot about him.”

  “He’s my friend, okay? I watch out for him. You don’t understand. Elliott is brilliant. Brilliant, but very fragile.”

  “You won’t be safe in Germany, either, until you have been deposed. From that point forward, I can’t see what use it would be to hurt you and your friends. The deposition transcript could still be used in court, if you were… unavailable.”

  “You make me feel so much better.” Sarcasm, in one so young.

  “Anyone can get on a plane to Europe. I’ll call you tomorrow, Silke.”

  A sigh. “If you have to.”

  When Nina came downstairs, she found Bob sitting at the kitchen desk, text on his computer screen.

  “I hope that’s your homework,” Nina said.

  “Me and Dad are instant-messaging.” Some new words popped up on the screen and Bob started typing back.

  “Dad says hi,” he reported shortly.

  “You know, Bob, sometimes I think someone up there is rooting for us,” Nina said. “Could I, uh, type to your dad for a couple of minutes?”

  “Sure. It’s easy.” Bob showed her, then left for the kitchen.

  Hi, Kurt. It’s Nina.

  Hey there! You!

  Sorry to interrupt.


  No problem. How are you?

  Frazzled. You?

  Hands still bad. Otherwise can’t complain.

  Sorry. How’s the weather in central Germany?

  Rainy. It’ll be better when the snow comes in December.

  Same here. Rainy.

  So. Is this about Bob?

  Actually no. It’s about a case.

  Okay.

  I need to come to Germany.

  No kidding! When?

  Quickly. Some paperwork first. I have to do some depositions with witnesses in a place called Heddesheim.

  That’s not far from Heidelberg. It’s only about an hour, hour and a half from here.

  Problem is, I don’t speak German and I’m worried about getting around.

  Don’t worry. They all speak English. Anyway-

  It’s just tha-

  – you’ll be with me.

  Don’t get that.

  I’ll help you, Nina.

  I could use help.

  Please bring Bob. Can you?

  It’s business.

  I’d love to see him. Thanksgiving holiday for him soon?

  Coming up.

  It’s a deal then? You’ll love my car.

  What is it?

  A surprise.

  He had added a smiley face. Nina stared at it, shook her head, smiled back at it.

  Now all she had to do was wade through red tape even Kafka had never imagined.

  21

  SERGEANT CHENEY NOW JOINED THE SMALL group of Nina’s allies in the Hanna case: a select and counterintuitive group that did not, for instance, include her client. Cheney submitted a declaration to Judge Flaherty alleging that the new defendants had relevant information and that the interests of justice would be advanced. This impressed Flaherty more than all of Nina’s other arguments.

  Flaherty came through with the necessary orders for deposing witnesses in a foreign jurisdiction. He was interested in the case, and made no more reference to a discretionary dismissal. He, too, was becoming an ally.