The Sword of Cyrus: A Thriller (A Rossler Foundation Mystery Book 4)

by JC Ryan

  The pair crept back to Boulder by the back roads to avoid arrest for humiliating an officer of the law, and went to Daniel to tell him what Roy had accomplished. It was a bright spot in a time of stress for Daniel.

  “Roy, tell me you’ll ask CalTech for an extended leave of absence. What you’re doing is nothing short of remarkable,” said Daniel, looking up from his desk before standing up to face his brother and Roy. Craning his neck up at JR had never been comfortable.

  “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” Roy said, with all due modesty. He winked at Daniel before leaving, giving JR and his brother something to laugh about. Both of them wondered why he couldn’t do that with women, since his unhealthy fear was now a topic of frequent gossip.

  Roy had seen something that interested him in another section of the library while researching what he might do with his flying toys. It was amazing what the 10th Cyclers could do with laser technology. Just for fun, he built a hand-held laser that could theoretically cut a diamond in half in seconds. Of course, he had no diamonds to test it on, but it made short work of a piece of granite that he picked up in the hills. The practical limit to the power of a laser had always been the size of the power source. Now that he’d perfected the science to create nano batteries, he had batteries that could power an extremely powerful laser beam in a very small package. He had to rig his invention with a series of safety switches, to keep people from accidentally cutting off their own legs with the device in their pocket, but that was easily done.

  Satisfied with the prototype, he showed the lipstick-sized contraption to Daniel and suggested they go outside for a demonstration. They were on their way out when Nicholas passed them, and Daniel invited him along. Moments later, the two were standing in open-mouthed wonder as Roy cleaved a granite boulder ten feet or more across with the tiny laser. Nicholas looked at Daniel.

  “This is how…,” he started.

  “They cut those blocks for the Pyramid!” Daniel finished. The two shared a high-five, with a bewildered Roy looking on. He was just glad he wasn’t in trouble for splitting part of the landscaping.

  “I’ve tested it under water, too,” he remarked, causing the Rosslers to stare at him in confusion. What possible use could that be? Neither had the background to realize that having to cut steel and rock under water is a daily task for underwater construction workers.

  Encoded with Fibonacci numbers

  Late April, 2020

  Daniel and Sarah were talking about the security breach after work one night. As he and Raj had been doing for several days, he once again said he just couldn’t figure out where the information was going. They had eyes on the Foundation computers’ outside communications, and had found nothing. They’d even called in favors from government agencies to locate and hack into the employee’s private computers and cell phones with no success. Daniel was beyond frustrated. Both Luke and Raj had recommended letting it go on until they could find where the data wound up and what the recipient could do with it, fragmented as it was. He had been nearly ranting about it all through dinner when Sarah had a brainstorm.

  “Daniel, would any of those searches have turned up the method we used back when we were cracking the pyramid code? The one Raj told us about?” She’d been feeding Nick, with the toddler trying to help a little more than she wanted. Now she turned her eyes to Daniel and searched his face.

  A speculative expression stole across the still-handsome countenance of her beloved as he considered it. “Surely Raj would have checked that, wouldn’t he?”

  Sarah had turned back to Nick and was trying to wipe his face, to which he was objecting strenuously. “Why don’t you call and ask him?”

  Daniel got up. “I think I will. Need any help there?”

  “I’ve got it.”

  Daniel strolled into his home office, closed the door against Nick’s increasingly vocal objections to being cleaned up, and dialed Raj.

  “Raj, Sarah asked a question about our problem with how the spies are communicating with whoever they’re sending the stolen info to. You’re probably on top of it, but you have checked those guys’ draft folders, right?”

  Raj sounded tired when he answered. Daniel wondered how much sleep he’d been getting since he discovered the photo-taking. “We have for the company computers. They’ve only got access to one email on our network. We block attempts to establish web-based email accounts as part of our normal IT policy. But we can’t access their email accounts at home unless they’re stupid and keep a list of passwords somewhere on their hard drive here at work.”

  “Hmmm. Could they be using that?”

  “Sure. It’s a well-known ploy.”

  “The government has caught people doing it, haven’t they?” Daniel was pacing, his nimble mind looking for a loophole.

  “Sure, but they had to have a reasonable idea of who to look at, and the cooperation of the email services. They’ve got a finer net than we do, Daniel.”

  “I understand. Still, I think I can make a pretty good case for this being a matter of national security. Do you have an objection to my bringing in the big guns?” Raj was an old and valued friend. Daniel didn’t want to step on his toes - not in the least bit.

  “Of course not, Daniel. I’m as worried about this as you are. What they’re accessing could mean real trouble if they can put it together.”

  “Good man, Raj. Thanks for the chat and the explanation. I’ll see what help we can get first thing tomorrow. Try to get some sleep.”

  Daniel opened his door and drank in the quiet. Nick must have finally worn Sarah down, or fallen asleep. He went in search of them and found Sarah rocking a sleepy Nicholas. He was getting so big that she wouldn’t be able to do that much longer. His feet dangled halfway to the floor already, and he’d soon object to being treated like a baby. Sarah was making it last as long as she could. They’d have to think about having another one, if only they could find some peace in the world.

  “Raj checked our servers, but the rest is going to take government help,” Daniel whispered.

  Sarah nodded, without changing the rhythm of her rocking or answering aloud, which would have broken Nick’s trance. Daniel walked quietly away and cleared the table, wishing again that Sarah would hear of hiring help. Maybe if they had a second child, she’d see reason.

  A few minutes later, she appeared in the kitchen, where Daniel was loading the last of the dishes into the dishwasher.

  “Wouldn’t it be funny if they were using Fibonacci skip sequences to code their messages?” she said, taking a few things out of the machine and rearranging them.

  Daniel straightened from his task and stared at her.

  “Sweetheart, did I ever tell you that you’re brilliant?” He put his arm around her and steered her toward the living room.

  “Frequently, my love. Are you almost finished? I think we could both enjoy a glass of tawny port,” Sarah said, catching Daniel’s intention.

  Daniel followed Sarah to the dining room where she poured each of them a cordial glass of the sweet beverage, and then to the living room. They sat close together, enjoying their port, and after a few minutes started to speak at the same time. Both laughed.

  “Go ahead,” Daniel said.

  “No, you,” responded Sarah.

  “I was just wondering…” he started. Sarah’s head tucked into the hollow of his neck was a sweet heaviness that sent a sudden flash of tenderness through him. “Are you ready?”

  Sarah giggled. “It’s been a while since we used that little code, remember Daniel? R U R?”

  “I remember,” he said. “I almost had a heart attack that first time I thought you were going to have phone sex with me.” Daniel smiled into her eyes, remembering the excitement.

  ~~~

  First thing the next morning, Daniel was at his desk early, leaving an internal message for Raj to see him as soon as he came in. He also sent Luke a similar message. Luke arrived first.

  “You wanted to see me?”
r />   “Yes, thanks for getting right back to me. Have a seat.”

  Luke questioned Daniel with his eyes as he looked around for a straight-backed chair and pulled it next to the overstuffed guest chairs in front of Daniel’s desk. When he was seated, Daniel started by explaining that Sarah had asked some pertinent questions. There were holes in their investigation, it seemed, and Daniel wanted to know if Luke had the contacts who could plug them.

  Luke considered the question carefully. There were two ways to go about it. Hack into the records of the most common web-based email services, Yahoo, Google and a few others. Or take their request to the feds, who’d shown little compunction in doing that, had the resources to do it quickly and in all likelihood were doing it already. The latter might require a search warrant, but Daniel’s idea about national security had merit. After the Patriot Act was enacted, government agencies had broad powers that some said went too far in the direction of violating privacy in the name of national security. Luke didn’t care to debate it. The question was, would they find anything useful?

  “I may, Daniel. I need to make some calls,” he said, rising from his chair and putting it back where he’d found it.

  “Come back here as soon as you’ve got any info, please,” Daniel said. “Raj should be here any minute. I’d like you to be in on at least part of the conversation, so I don’t have to repeat myself. We’ve let this go on too long already.”

  “You got it. Be right back.”

  Raj arrived a few minutes later. After bringing him up to speed on what Luke had gone to do, Daniel brought up Sarah’s other idea, that the messages could be coded and that maybe they used Fibonacci numbers as skip sequences, just as the original Rosslerites discovered when deciphering the pyramid code.

  “Those sneaky bastards!” Raj exclaimed. “I’ll bet that’s exactly what they’re doing! I need to check it out.”

  Before Daniel could stop him, Raj ran out of the office and back to his own, where he methodically gathered all the emails that remained on the servers, both those that were still in the sent folder and those that had been deleted but not yet eradicated from the system. Beginning with those belonging to the first person they’d caught photographing his screen, Raj applied the first reasonable Fibonacci number for a skip sequence to it. Three was a bit too small, but in the name of being thorough, he would do it. Especially since he still had the little program that would parse a text automatically within a few seconds. Three wasn’t it. Patiently, Raj programmed the routine with the next number.

  On thirteen, he had it. The message was terse: ‘Important. Part of plan for nanopoison production.’

  Half an hour had passed and Raj’s eyes were beginning to fatigue from scanning gibberish. He almost missed it when those first sensible words came up on the screen from the decoding routine. A subconscious signal alerted him to stop the routine and back up. Reading the terse message, which was surrounded by more gibberish, he rocked back in his chair and half-yelled, “What?” He read it a second time.

  “Oh, good lord,” he groaned out loud.

  Quickly, he queued up another message, and another, decoding and saving the messages. This was a disaster! When he’d run all of them through the correct skip sequence and saved them to a single document, he printed it and literally ran down the hall with it, leaving startled employees in his wake. Arriving breathlessly at Daniel’s door, he threw the printout down in front of his old friend.

  “Daniel, we’re in deep shit!”

  They could have everything

  Daniel scanned down the decoded messages, noting the subjects here and there. He was puzzled, though. The messages spoke of information on a wide range of subjects, but the information itself wasn’t there.

  “Raj, did you expurgate these messages for some reason? Leave out the meat?”

  Raj shook his head. “No, Daniel. They’ve been very clever. They’ve somehow separated the 10th Cycle data from the messages saying what they’re sending. I can run the rest of the message through more Fib numbers, but I suspect that the data file is actually somewhere else.” He spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “Where, I cannot say.”

  At that moment, Luke came back as well. Daniel had almost forgotten he’d sent Luke on an errand, one that was all the more important now.

  Luke glanced at the two men in the room, both staring at him as he entered. “What?”

  “Raj found it. He’s decoded some of the messages.” Daniel handed the stack of paper over and waited while Luke scanned the first page.

  “Where’s the actual information they’re talking about?” Luke asked.

  “That’s the problem. We don’t know. Raj thinks it’s in a different message, but what he has here is only what’s on our servers. I’m sure there’s much more information out there on their private computers and cloud storage such as Google Docs, Dropbox, iCloud and others - we don’t know where.” Daniel shrugged. “It’s something, at least.”

  “We only keep messages from a few weeks back,” Raj explained. “There’s no telling how long this has been going on. Would Sinclair have records of what these guys were working on? Could we synch up the coded messages with their assignments?” He looked from Daniel to Luke, and back at Daniel.

  “That’s a good idea. I’ll get Sinclair in here in a minute. Luke, what did you find out?” asked Daniel.

  “They didn’t want to tell me much. I get the idea they’re still doing whatever they do, and they don’t want the general public to know. That’s NSA stuff, so my contacts weren’t a lot of help. But I did find out that Hotmail, Yahoo and Gmail are the biggest free services. If I were going to do something like you guys did, I’d pick one of them.”

  “Why’s that?” Daniel asked, absentmindedly holding out his hand for the stack of paper with the decoded messages.

  Luke handed over the papers. “Because it’s tougher to find a needle in a haystack,” he said.

  “So, what’s our next move? I take it Big Brother won’t help us?” said Raj.

  “Could you hack into those services?” Luke asked Raj, knowing the answer already but maintaining the polite fiction that he knew nothing of Raj’s underground contacts.

  “I could, if I wanted to spend time in jail,” was the answer.

  “I guess we need some hackers, then,” Luke said. Daniel did a double take and peered at Luke’s face. Flat expression - he wasn’t kidding.

  Daniel made an executive decision. “Look, I’m going to play the national security card. Don’t do anything yet. I’ll try to get us help to get this stuff legally. Raj, we’re okay on what you’ve got so far, right?”

  Luke held up his hand. “I can answer that. We have policies in place that warn our employees that their work email is not considered private. They all signed off on that when they came on board. It’s pretty standard. As long as Raj hasn’t hacked into their personal computers, he’s golden.”

  “I would never do that!” exclaimed Raj. Turning his head toward Daniel, he mouthed, ‘But I know some people who would.’ He winked, and Daniel chuckled.

  Luke looked back and forth between them.

  “Try to stay out of trouble,” he warned. “I’ll go talk to Sinclair.”

  “Thanks, Luke. Send him up here, will you?”

  When Luke was out of earshot, Daniel asked Raj if he was seriously going to activate his conspiracy theory network.

  “What better time?” Raj answered. He winked again and left as well. Daniel was alone to ponder whether the end justified the means. Looking again at everything the messages claimed to have been sent to the spies’ employers, he decided it had to. The bad guys could have everything that had been translated so far, about nanotechnology, especially. That was the main subject that the Middle Easterners were translating. This was bad, very bad; or it could be.

  Sinclair arrived as Daniel was wrestling with his conscience.

  “Hi, Daniel. Luke said you wanted to see me?” He stood just inside the door, as if h
e were ready to escape. Daniel wondered if he was feeling responsible for the leaks somehow, though there was no reason he should. He hadn’t screened those Middle Easterners, it wasn’t his job.

  “Come in, Sinclair. I have a question for you.” He indicated a chair, and Sinclair sank into it, sighing.

  “Tired?” Daniel asked.

  “Worried.”

  “About?” Daniel didn’t want to assume anything, but Sinclair was a valued colleague. He needed to be heard.

  “Why haven’t we rounded up those ringers in my department and deported them all?”

  “We’re hoping they’ll lead us back to whoever they’re sending the information to. But, that’s the reason I asked you to come up. Do you have a records for who was assigned to what, and an idea of when?” Daniel watched Sinclair intently, unconscious that anxiety was written all over his own face. Tell me yes, he willed, waiting for what seemed like an hour for Sinclair’s answer.

  “Yes, I think I do have what you want,” Sinclair said, drawing out his words. “But…”

  “But what?” Daniel interrupted, unable to contain himself any longer.

  “They may not have done the assignments in the order they were assigned,” Sinclair clarified. “I may not have the dates exact.”

  Daniel didn’t ask for an explanation of why the employees would have done the assignments out of order. Whooping, he seized Sinclair by the shoulders and planted a kiss soundly on his cheek.

  “How soon can you get a report to Raj?”

  “Soon as you want it, I guess. What’s got into you Daniel?”

  “Relief. Old man, you’ve made me very happy.”

  “Now see here,” Sinclair started, mock angry. But he broke out into his normal mischievous grin when Daniel started dancing around his desk. What the devil was the boy so delighted for? They still had a huge problem. He got a better idea when Daniel pressed the intercom button on his desk phone.