House of the Sun (18 page)

Okay. Now the question was, how "robust" was the encryption? There are thousands of ways of encrypting a file; maybe a dozen are in widespread use. Of this dozen, they range from theoretically unbreakable (practically speaking, there's no such thing as totally unbreakable encryption) all the way down to as insecure as a safe door sealed with nothing but masking tape. My next step would depend entirely on the kind of encryption Barnard had selected for his message.

(Now hold the phone a tick. Didn't the fact that there
was
a message at all tell me something? If the whole "message delivery" scam was just camouflage, why bother . . . But no, that didn't hang together. Barnard had no guarantee that I wouldn't scan the chip before delivering it. There had to be
something
there to set the mind of the Trojan horse at ease.)

I scrolled back up to the beginning of the encrypted file and examined the header—that string of bytes that basically tells decryption/display software, "This is a message encrypted
so,
and here's where it begins," I connected my persoriai 'puter to the telecom's dataport, and let another one of Quincy's busy-beaver programs loose on the header.

The results showed up on the portable 'puter's small screen, and I cursed. Public-key encryption, with a 70-bit key code. It could have been worse . . . but not much.

I don't know how' much you savvy public-key encryption, but it's a slick little system that's been around for nigh on eighty years now. Everyone who uses the system has two key codes (both 70 bits long, in this implementation, equivalent to a 22-digit number): a private key that he tells no one and a public key that he can tell all and sundry, or even publicize. The way the system is most commonly used today in 2056, if Adolf wants to send a secret message to Barney, Adolf encrypts the message using two keys: his own private key and Barney's public key. To decrypt the message, Barney uses two keys: his private key and Adolf's public key. Theoretically, only Barney can read the message, since only Barney knows his private key. (Well, duh.) As an added bonus, he
knows
it had to come from Adolf—or, at least, that it had to have been encrypted using Adolf's private key—otherwise it wouldn't have decrypted properly. Clear as mud? Good, then we'll continue.

The point is that, according to the cryptographic theories in fashion when die public-key system was developed and for thirty-odd years thereafter, it was theoretically impossible to crack a public-key system within the projected life span of the universe. Theories have changed, though—they tend to do that. Today, some bright sparks claim that using Eiji recursion and other bits of black art, it's possible to crack a 70-bit code in a couple of days of churning on a fast enough computer. Which is why few people bother with anything less than an 85-bit code as of 2056. (Should the fact that Barnard plumped for a less secure system tell me something? Or was I still reaching ... ?)

The upshot? It
should
be possible for a nova-hot cryptographer to bash through Barnard's security in somewhere between twenty-four and seventy-two hours. The problem?

I was fresh out of nova-hot cryptographers at the moment. With a sigh, I remembered some of the resources I had access to back in Seattle. Rosebud the dwarf, a quasi-legal technomancer with computing power equivalent to a MultiVAX installed right in her braincase. And, for bigger challenges, the ex-decker called Agarwal . . . no, he was dead now, wasn't he? Deeper sigh.

Here, out in the middle of the fragging Pacific? Nobody, chummer.
Still
deeper sigh. (Okay, okay, don't say it, I know: I could do it all virtually, spew it all through the matrix to whatever decrypt artist struck my fancy, all without leaving my doss, yattata yattata yattata. In principle, true. But when your life's on the line, chummer, sometimes you
really
want the hands-on control that only a face-to-face can give you. You scan? So get off my back.)

Moral of the story? I had to
find
the nova-hot cryptographer I needed, using the limited resources I had. Which meant, sad to say, Te Purewa, and that was about it.
Deepest
sigh.

The pseudo-Maori was better than nothing, but he definitely wasn't the drek-hot resource I'd hoped for. From the way Scott had introduced him, I'd figured him for a part-time fixer. What did they call them around here?—
kalepa,
that was it—with a stable of contacts. No banana on that one, chummerino. He was SIN-less, true, surviving by doing odd jobs and getting paid under the table ... so by some people's measure, that made him a shadowrunner. He
did
know a few fixers, but only socially—or so I gathered. Translation? He was
in
the shadows, but not
of
them, if you see the distinction. He might have met some people with the skill-sets I was looking for, but he might not have known it.

Still, he was the only entree into the Honolulu shadow community I had at the moment. If I could figure a way of getting him to put the word out—while keeping it from the various and assorted hard-men who wanted to see me dead—I'd have to do so. That was going to take some thought . .. which, in turn, was going to require some sleep. My brain was soya-paste. I reached out to power down the telecom . . .

Then stopped. What the hell, I might as well check my blind maildrop while I was at the keyboard. It didn't seem particularly likely that Argent or Sharon Young had gotten back to me already, but it was worth a look. Using the nicely hidden back door that Quincy's gofer had installed in HTC's system, I accessed my datamail box and requested a directory listing.

Wonder of wonders, there was a message there: voice, not just text. No name—predictably, and the originator address was one of the many anonymous remailer services that thrive in the Carib League. Curious, I keyed playback.

"Mr. Montgomery, we need to talk."

My left hand flashed out and hit the Pause key almost hard enough to crack the macroplast enclosure. Ah, drek . . . how the frag had he tracked me down already?

The voice was Jacques Barnard's, of course, the slag who'd gotten me into this nasty mess and who no doubt now wanted me out of it . . . permanently and terminally. For a moment I stared at the telecom with real fear.

Then I fought back that emotion and snorted with absolute disgust at my reaction. What the frag did I think? that Barnard was going to crawl out of the fragging telecom if I played back the rest of the message? Get a fragging
grip,
Montgomery. (More evidence that my reactions were fragging
shot,
part of my mind nagged. Shut the frag up, another part of my mind told the carping mental voice.) I reached out again and keyed Rewind, then Play.

"Mr. Montgomery, we need to talk." The recording was as crystal clear as if Barnard were in the same room—no static, no sound degradation. One of the advantages of being able to afford the best corp-class datalines, no doubt. "I'm very concerned with events, and with your response to them, Mr. Montgomery," he went on coldly. "I need you to make contact
now
. I need you to tell me the exact details regarding the demise of . .. of our mutual friend. I'm disappointed that you have not seen fit to get in touch with me and wonder whether I should interpret your actions as evidence of complicity in the . .. the
events
. You may contact me at your earliest convenience using the provisions already established. We have things to discuss and further actions to schedule." Barnard's voice paused, then continued icily. "I do expect to hear from you soon, Mr. Montgomery. Do I make myself clear?" With a click the recording ended.

I glanced at the telecom's blank screen. What the fragging hell was I supposed to make of
that!
If I were to take Barnard's message at face value, he didn't know the whys and the wherefores of the hit on Tokudaiji any more than I did. If I were to believe him, his impulse—and a very natural one it was, too—was to wonder if I hadn't pulped Tokudaiji myself, for my own reasons. If I were to believe him, he was asking me to come back into the light so he could debrief me on Tokudaiji's death and so we could plot out our logical next move.

If
. That was the operative word, wasn't it? If I believed him, he wanted me to come into the light so he could do damage control. If I
didn't
believe him, he
still
wanted me to come into the light so he could do damage control ... by blowing my brains out. Why were these things never easy and clear-cut?

Well, at least I didn't have to make a decision at the moment. Mr. Jacques Barnard, Yamatetsu veep, wouldn't be going anywhere, would he? I could take some time and think through the consequences. I could also try and get his message to Tokudaiji decrypted and see if that led me anywhere. For the moment, though ...

I slumped back on the bed and tried to sleep.

* * *

There was more to this Barnard message than I'd considered, wasn't there?

The air in my face was refreshing as hell as I rode "my" Suzuki Custom toward Cheeseburger in Paradise, and it helped blow away the mental cobwebs and lingering remnants of nightmares. Cruising at sixty klicks, the air temperature was almost bearable. When I stopped for lights or traffic, though, the streets of Ewa felt like radiators, or maybe sophisticated cooking surfaces dedicated to the preparation of grilled
haole
. The bike's little petrochem engine sang and hauled hoop when I cracked the throttle. (Somebody told me that as little as sixty years ago, there was no way you could crank 100 horsepower out of a 250cc engine. Maybe
some
things have improved with time after all.)

As I weaved through the slow midafternoon traffic, I frowned. Barnard had gotten a message to me . . . and the fact that it was in my secured datamail box was a message in itself, wasn't it? I'd only given that address to two people: Argent and Sharon Young. Argent would rather chew his own leg off than help Yamatetsu Corporation with
anything,
I knew that, That left Young ...

... Who, now that I thought about it, had been on Barnard's fragging payroll back in Cheyenne.
Frag!
I'd
known
that; Barnard had told me so himself, indirectly: The contract Young offered me was related to this whole Hawai'ian cluster-frag. And I had given my secure datamail box address to Young .. . and thus, indirectly, to Barnard. If I made it out of this thing in one piece, without fragging something up so badly I got myself geeked, I'd dance a fragging jig, I swear it.

I parked the little Suzuki in the alley behind Cheeseburger in Paradise and jandered into the tavern. I guess my two visits qualified me as a regular, because the chip-tusked bartender started to draw me a half-liter of dog the moment he saw me. As I took what had become my regular table, Maletina brought the frosty glass over and put it down in front of me. For a wonder, she didn't look as though she wanted to kick me in the pills today. Hell, she even talked to me: "Te Purewa say he be by later. Got some people you wanna meet, maybe."

I thanked her and smiled sweetly . . . even though I really wanted to swear a blue streak. So Te Purewa was coming in later with some people I wanted to meet, huh? I'd asked him over the phone if he could put out some feelers—
very
subtly—to see if he could track down a decrypt artist who could handle a 70-bit public-key job. Apparently he'd gotten busy on it right away . . .

. . . And then he'd
told
the
fragging
waitress
about
it
. Slot! Who
else
had he told? His girlfriend? The slag who cut his hair? The yak soldier who lives down the street ... ?

My first instinct was to cut and run, to bail out of Cheeseburger in Paradise and never come back. Short-term survival-wise, it probably was the smartest thing I could do ... but I had to take the long view as well. I needed the decrypt artist. And, more important, I needed who the decrypt artist
knew
. Any code-slicer capable of handling a 70-bit would
have
to have better contacts with the real shadow community than Te fragging Purewa. Thus I needed to hang chill at the tavern. So my logic went at the moment, at least.

That didn't mean I had to make myself a big, glowing
haole
target, of course. I gave the place the once-over, a closer visual scan than I had to this point. Keeping in mind that this was a watering hole in one of the badder parts of town, and that it had a rep as a borderline shadow hang-out.

Yes, there it was, I was sure of it. The security camera whose fish-eye lens could cover the entire floorspace, mounted in the (apparently nonfunctional) smoke/dust precipitator over the bar itself. Like the cameras in most places like this, it was out of obvious view, to remove a very real temptation. When gutterpunks get into their cups, obvious security cameras often seem to be interpreted as an invitation to small-arms target practice.

A surveillance camera, of course, implied someplace to view the surveillance data. Taking my half-liter of dog with me, I made my way over toward the bartender.

* * *

Have you ever spent two hours watching a tavern through a distorting fish-eye lens while drinking Black Dog beer in a windowless room with no ventilation or air-conditioning on a hot tropical day? Let me save you the trouble. You can get exactly the same effect by driving twenty-centimeter nails into your temples, and you won't even have to pay for the beer.

I rubbed at my eyes and massaged my throbbing temples. The bartender had been incredibly understanding when I'd asked to use his office—after I'd shown him the balance on my credstick, of course—and I
did
feel a frag of a lot safer watching for Te Purewa via electronic intermediaries. But at the moment, if a yak had come in and prepared to blow my head off, I'd have thanked him, since I was out of aspirins.