Conspiracy

55

Thao Duong’s hard drive, downloaded by Tommy Karr to the Art Room the previous eve ning, contained an unremarkable assortment of agricultural reports and bureaucratic memos, each laboriously worked over: Robert Gallo, who was in charge of examining the drive, found at least nine drafts of most of the reports.

There was one file, however, different from all the rest.

Not only were there no other versions; it was encrypted, albeit in a simple encryption performed by the word pro cessor that had created the file. Gallo used a software tool to “break” the encryption. The result was a solid block of numbers, which Gallo at first assumed was another encryption.

He applied a range of software tools to try to parse the block without getting anything that the translator could recognize.

Giving up, he forwarded the file to the cryptology section; the people working there had better tools and worked with encryptions all the time, unlike him. He also posted it on an internal intranet “blog” or continually updating log used by the Deep Black team to communicate their progress and problems. A few minutes later, Johnny Bib turned up in Gallo’s office, hovering over his shoulder.

“Call home,” said Johnny.

“Huh?”

“Ding-a-ling,” said Johnny Bib.

Gallo couldn’t figure out what he meant.

And then he did.

“They’re phone numbers?”

“Ha!!!!”

Rubens rubbed his eyes, trying to clear away some of the fa-tigue making them blur.

“There are contacts in New York, Washington, LA, all cities where the senator has been,” Gallo told him. “None of these numbers are red sheeted. FBI has nothing on them, and neither does the CIA. If there’s a network there, we have zero data on it.”

Money and a network of connections in most major American cities — this looked a hell of a lot like what they were looking for, Rubens realized.

“Have you built call lists for these numbers?” Rubens asked.

“Didn’t want to do that without your OK. ’Cause it’s, like, in the States.”

“Go ahead and do so,” Rubens told him. “I’ll forward this information to Ambassador Jackson and see if we can get additional information from the FBI. Keep me informed.”