The Phoenix Egg

by Richard Bamberg

  Caitlin tried to return his smile, but she didn’t feel much like smiling. It was her fault he’d been shot. She shouldn’t have involved him. She should have found someone else to help her.

  “Caitlin, it’s what you’re paying me to do, protect you. I knew the risks before I agreed to help you.”

  “That doesn’t make me feel any better. I didn’t have to bring this to you.”

  “You wanted someone you could trust. You can trust me.” He grimaced as Louie expanded the forceps.

  Caitlin stared into John’s eyes. They had softened. Earlier they had seemed so cold, so distant. Now they were soft and warm just as she remembered them. It brought a real smile to her face.

  Another grimace went across his features, and the warmth fell away from his eyes.

  Louie slowly drew the forceps from the wound. As he did, a small bloody, copper covered bullet appeared.

  “Well, that wasn’t so bad. Must have been a short. A higher power bullet would have passed on through,” Louie said as he held the bullet up for them to see.

  “You want it?” he asked John.

  “No thanks, I don’t need a reminder.”

  “How ‘bout you?”

  Caitlin stared at it for a second, and then slowly shook her head.

  “Oh well.” He carried it to a trashcan that stood in the corner. He dropped the bullet into it and went back to John’s bag.

  When he returned, he was opening a small package that Caitlin saw contained a fishhook-like needle and sutures.

  She forced herself to watch as Louie put three stitches into the wound to close it. He cleaned the outside of the wound one more time, then covered it with a small bandage.

  He took one more package from John’s bag. It contained a syringe and a two-cell bottle.

  “What’s that?” Caitlin asked.

  He opened the package and held up the bottle. It had a powder in one side and a clear liquid in the other. He pressed the end of the bottle, and the liquid flowed into the powder.

  He shook it, mixing the liquid, and powder. “Antibiotics. They’re freeze dried and have to be moistened before injection.”

  After a minute, he filled the syringe and injected the contents into an already cleaned area of John’s upper arm.

  “There, you’ll be as good as new in a week.”

  “Yeah, good as new,” John agreed.

  Caitlin got the impression that there was some private joke passing between them.

  “Caitlin, there’s a clean shirt in my bag.”

  “What? Oh, I’ll get it.”

  Reluctantly, she released his hand and went for his shirt. She helped him into it and then buttoned it up for him. When she started to tuck the tail into his pants, he stopped her.

  “I can do that myself. Let’s show Louie why we came here.”

  “Yes, I’m very curious.”

  “We’ll need your computer,” John said.

  “Well, you know where it is,” Louie said, then led them from his kitchen.

  They followed him to his office, which like the rest of his house appeared cluttered and unattended. On every surface, magazines and books lay open, held that way mostly by computer printouts and here and there by a few open containers of cookies. Louie apparently had a sweet tooth.

  “What do you have for me?” Louie asked as he sat in the worn swivel chair in front of his monitor.

  John motioned to her. Caitlin popped her bag open and took out the memory stick.

  Louie held out his hand, and Caitlin laid it on his palm.

  He held it up between his fingers and watched the light reflect off its shiny white surface. “All right. Do you want to tell me what I’m looking for?”

  Caitlin said, “There’s an encrypted file in it.”

  “And you’ve forgotten the encryption code?” Louie asked.

  “No. I never had it. It was sent to me as is, with no other data.”

  Behind his beard, Louie frowned. “Okay, let’s see what we’re dealing with.”

  He swiveled the chair around and inserted the thumb drive into a USB port in his computer. He slipped a wand over his index finger and pointed at his screen. The monitor gave a brief view of what he’d been working on before the interruption. A second later, the screen shifted in three quick displays as he called up another program. The monitor displayed the general contents of the thumb drive.

  Caitlin moved to Louie’s left shoulder while John looked over his right.

  “One file,” Louie said. “It’s a large file all right. The last modification on it was three days ago.”

  He touched the wand again. The screen shifted to show the hex code for the file.

  “This appears to be a self-extracting file.” He eyed Caitlin. “Have you tried running it?”

  “Yes. It wants a password before it will decompress.”

  “Really?” Louie pointed, the screen shifted, went black, and then a single line appeared with a group of eight asterisks above it. Louie’s fingers went to the keyboard, and he typed in something Caitlin couldn’t read. Each time his fingers hit a key one of the asterisks disappeared. When they were all gone, he hit the enter key.

  The asterisks reappeared.

  “Not even a comment. Usually, these are done with a few statements to tell the user that you screwed the password up. That would seem to indicate that the file was not meant for general consumption.”

  “Oh?” John asked.

  “Sure, if it was meant for others to use the programmers would have added bells and whistles. Since they didn’t, it stands to reason that they never intended anyone but themselves to call it up.”

  Caitlin nodded in understanding.

  “What else can you tell me about the file?” Louie asked.

  Caitlin gave him a brief rundown on how she received it and who sent it to her. Louie listened carefully without interruption.

  When she finished, Louie said, “You say he was leaving Los Alamos when he was killed?”

  “That’s right.”

  “As in Los Alamos National Laboratory?”

  “I’d guess. He could have been in town to see someone who didn’t work out at the Lab, but I can’t imagine whom. It’s practically a one-industry town.”

  “Yes, I know. Los Alamos is operated by the University of California for the Department of Energy. That’s big money and the best encryption programs available. I’ll look into it, but I can’t make any guarantees. If your husband didn’t want anyone else to get into this, then no one will.”

  “He must have wanted me to be able to open the file or why else would he have bothered to send it to me?” Caitlin asked.

  Louie shrugged his shoulders and turned back to the monitor. Moving the wand around too fast for her to keep up with his selections, Louie called up first one and then another program.

  “Well, at least he didn’t use one of the 128-bit encryption schemes like Rijndael or Twofish. Either of those would have made this practically impossible.”

  “We used Serpent at the office, but I’ve already tried our office passwords. None of them worked,” Caitlin said.

  “I don’t think he’s used Serpent either. I thought it might have been RC6, but that program isn’t often used since Charlie Levins broke its mathematical structure a few years ago. Give me a little time.”

  A few minutes passed in silence as they watched him work. Then he turned around in his chair. He stood, walked across the room to another computer and powered it up. A minute later, he removed the stick and handed it back to Caitlin. She stared at it for a second.

  “All right. That’s all I can do for now,” Louie said.

  “What? That’s it?” Caitlin asked. “You’re giving up?”

  “Giving up?” Louie repeated. “No, no. Of course not. I’ve started my decryption programs, now we have to wait.”

  Caitlin watched the monitor’s display for a second.

  “It’s counting up,” she said.

  “Right,” Louie resp
onded.

  “You’re not going to just try every possible password are you?” she asked.

  “Just?” Louie repeated. “My dear, lady. Nothing I do is just anything.”

  “Then what?” she asked, her tone exasperated.

  Louie’s grin split his face nearly in two. She noticed a trace of a smile on John’s face also. “I’ve isolated the section of the code that reads the password and copied it. You can’t do that with fully encrypted files, but when the password decryption sequence is in the file, it leaves it vulnerable. While this computer,” he indicated the first one, “goes in one direction, the other is running backward. That way I’ve halved the time, it’ll take to try all the combinations.”

  “But the possible combinations are in the millions,” Caitlin said.

  “Quite,” Louie agreed.

  “What is it? Something like ten to the twenty-sixth?” John asked.

  “Modern passwords also use the extended ASCII character set. It’s more like ten to the one hundred and twenty-sixth.”

  “Good God, that could take months,” Caitlin moaned.

  “Probably not. I’ve set a mini-program to try the basic alphanumerics. If those don’t fit then, it will farm out portions of the task to some of my contacts on the Web. If we don’t have immediate success, then we’ll have at least twenty computers working on the task by midnight. I’d say we’ll have the password by early tomorrow afternoon at the latest.”

  “And no one else will realize what the password is for?” John asked.

  Louie nodded. “Right. By separating off the password identifying the portion of the code no one will have any idea what the program itself does.”

  “We’d better be going now. You know how to reach me when you learn something,” John said.

  “Sure thing,” Louie responded.

  He led them out and followed them to their car.

  “Be careful with this one Louie,” John said as he opened the car door. “There are too many parties involved, and I have a bad feeling in my gut.”

  “Anything you say. I’ll play it tight.”

  “Goodbye and thanks, Louie,” Caitlin said.

  “Glad I could help. You take care of her, John,” Louie added with a nod of his head.

  John returned the nod and got into the car.

  Louie waited until they pulled out of the drive, then gave a final wave, and turned back toward his house.

  As they accelerated toward highway 101, Caitlin looked at him. “What now?”

  “Now we find another motel and hole up for the night. By tomorrow, we should have something on this disk, and you can decide what you want to do with it.”

  “What I want to do with it?”

  John nodded. “Yeah, are you going to turn it over to the Feds, sell it to the Japanese, or what?”

  Caitlin turned toward the windshield and for a moment watched the headlights on southbound one oh one flash by. “You know, I haven’t really thought about it. I mean, what do I do with it? Do you think giving it to the NCIX will stop this killer?”

  “It could. Unless it’s one of those situations where they want everyone dead who’s seen the information. In that case, we’re both going to need to disappear.”

  Caitlin looked at him. After a couple of seconds, he turned to face her. In the constant glare of oncoming headlights, she could see his face was nearly expressionless.

  “Tell me you’re joking,” she said.

  “I wish I could.”

  “But that’s so –”

  “Cold hearted?”

  “I was going to say Oliver Stone-ish. I never thought you’d be an Ollie. The government doesn’t really bump people off just because they accidentally learn something.”

  “Oh? And your belief is based on what?”

  “Everything. I mean, look around you. This country is built on openness and freedom of information. Sure, there are secrets, but those are military or commercial secrets. There are legal methods to silence anyone who has access to them. There are no secret agendas, no gunman on the grassy knoll, no X-Files cover-up.”

  “Yeah?”

  “What’s that look for?” she asked.

  “What look?”

  “That superior look that says: ‘Oh you poor naive young thing. You’re just a woman who’s been protected from the evils of the world. There’s no way you’d really know just what people are capable of.’“

  “Really? You got all that from one look?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, maybe you’re right. Maybe I was thinking of how naive you sounded. I can’t help it. You sound almost like I remembered you.”

  That was a surprise. It was the first indication he had remembered anything about her.

  Caitlin felt the car moving and noticed John exiting the freeway. She was silent for a minute. “You remember me that well?”

  “Sometimes, it depends on what you’re saying. It’s like little flashbacks, little bits keep surfacing.”

  “After a dozen years, I’m surprised you remember anything about me. I know it sounds trite, but it seems like it was a lifetime ago. I look at the college kids now, and I can’t believe I’ve changed. I still feel the same now as I did twelve years ago. Sure, my taste in some things have changed, but they’re just incidentals. My id, ego, or whatever is the same now as it was then.”

  They turned right onto Del Mar. The car accelerated smoothly and joined the flow of traffic.

  “How can everything feel the same and yet feel like a lifetime ago?” John asked.

  “Are you making fun of me?”

  “No. I’m just curious.”

  “I don’t know if I have an answer to that. I just know it seems so very long ago.”

  “Yeah.”

  A moment passed. “John, I need to contact my parents.”

  “Out of the question.”

  “Why?”

  “If the government is involved in this then they have the manpower to cover all eventualities. They’re sure to have a wiretap on your parent’s phone and any calls to them would be traced back.”

  “But I wouldn’t have to stay on long enough for a trace.”

  John gave her a sideways smile.

  “What?”

  “You really think you can hang up before they can trace the call?”

  “Well, sure, they do it all the time.”

  “Yeah, in the movies. Caitlin, do you have caller ID?”

  “Sure, everyone has it nowadays. What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “How long does it take to identify the caller?”

  “One ring ... oh.”

  “Right, the information is automatically transferred between the first and second ring. Anyone tapping the phone can receive the same information and cross-check the phone number location anywhere in the country within seconds.”

  “But it’ll still take them time to send someone to intercept us. We can move again before they can reach us.”

  “That’s taking chances. I have a better idea.”

  Caitlin waited.

  When it became obvious that he wasn’t going to finish, she asked, “And that is?”

  “They still go to church regularly, Lutheran wasn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “You can give their pastor a call. Let him call your parents.”

  The car slowed, and Caitlin caught sight of the Best Western sign as they pulled up to the entrance.

  John killed the engine. “Wait here. I don’t want anyone seeing your face.”

  “Why? What’s wrong with it?”

  “Now who’s making fun? Just wait here. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  It was more like five.

  They drove around to the backside of the motel and John backed in next to the building. Caitlin got out and stretched. The night was cool and pleasant with just a touch of the moisture, which would probably turn to fog by sunrise. John popped the trunk and pulled out his overnight bag and her suitcase.

&n
bsp; He grunted softly as he did.

  “Let me help you with that,” she said and took the one from his left hand. “Thanks for getting them, I’d forgotten to ask.”

  He nodded and grunted something. He shut the trunk and walked to the door marked 108. Unlocking the door, he pushed it open, flicked on the lights, and went inside.

  Caitlin took one last look around the quiet parking lot and followed him in.

  The room was plain but clean and had a newness that suggested a recent carpeting and painting. John laid her suitcase on the far bed and then dropped his smaller bag onto the nearer bed.

  John took the alarm from his bag, hung it over the door handle, and activated it.

  “You can have the bathroom first,” he said.

  Caitlin nodded, removed some things from her bags, and went to shower.

  When she came out, she saw John napping in the easy chair, facing the door. His arms hung loosely to either side of the chair. She went over to him, wondering if she should wake him.

  His face had relaxed some of its hard lines in sleep, and his appearance was considerably closer to what she remembered. Asleep, he looked almost innocent. On an impulse, she bent to kiss his forehead. He jerked awake, and before she could step back, Caitlin found herself staring down the wide bore of a handgun.

  “For Christ’s sakes, John,” she said without moving.

  He lowered the gun immediately. “Sorry, I guess I fell asleep. You through in the bath?”

  “Yes, I....”

  He stood up and holstered the gun beneath his left shoulder. Without another word, he picked up his bag, went into the bath, and pulled the door shut behind him.

  Caitlin moved her suitcase, and then pulled down the covers on the bed nearest the bathroom. The small alarm clock on the nightstand read just after two. It felt more like five. God, but she was tired. She crawled between the sheets and was asleep when her head hit the pillow.

  ***

  Holdren was sipping Darjeeling when his cell phone vibrated against his chest. He set the cup in the saucer and took out the phone. Across the table, Romax’s eyes followed him over a cup of decaf Kona blend.

  “Holdren here.”

  It was the watch officer back at the barn. “Mr. Holdren, we have a hit on one of your inquiries.”