No Way to Die (12 page)

“And this was when?” Toni asked.

“Early 2008,” she said. “I was an original ground-floor employee when Thomas opened the doors here at ACS almost four years ago.”

“About the same time we opened,” I said. “Was it just the two of you, then?”

“Yes—plus Sharon. She’s our receptionist you met when you came in.”

“And today?How many people today?”

“We’ve added three more people over the years—one accountant and two more technical people. There were six of us before Thomas—”she paused, her eyes starting to tear up, “—before Thomas died.”

The room was quiet for a few seconds, and then Toni said, “Are you going to be okay?”

Holly nodded. “I will.” She pulled a tissue from a box on the table. “I haven’t come to grips with this yet, though. Talking about it makes me this way.”

Toni nodded. “I understand,” she said. “It’s going to be a tough thing to work through. It’ll probably take a while.”

Holly nodded.

“If you’re okay, I’ll keep going,” Toni asked.

Holly nodded again.

“Tell us about your role here.”

“Okay,” Holly said. “I guess you could say I was Thomas’s right-hand man. I worked directly with him on whatever he was working on. Our work bridged the gap between the two basic math disciplines—purely theoretical mathematics on the one side, and applied mathematics on the other. My strength is in theory.”

“And Thomas?” Toni asked.

“Thomas was unique in our field in that he was not only gifted in both areas, he also had the rare ability to bridge the two. He could do it all. We’d hoped to parlay this ability into a series of cutting-edge commercial products—that was the basis of the company.”

“John told us about the Starfire Protocol. Is Starfire an example of this?” I said.

“Yes and no,” Holly said, shaking her head. “Actually, Starfire was something Thomas dreamed up to demonstrate the vulnerability in PK methods—PK is an abbreviation for private key.” She paused for a moment. “I should probably ask,”she said, “should I give you a little background on private key technology and how it basically works?”

“Kenny already filled us in on that,” I said. “He told us about asymmetric key technology. That’s part of it?”

“Exactly,” Holly said. “So to continue, we didn’t think there’d be much of a demand for a product that basically renders a widely used existing technology like PK obsolete. We figured that as soon as people found out about it, they’d get scared and switch to another cryptology key management method. Then, Starfire would have effectively destroyed its own market and made itself worthless. This could happen very quickly.”She paused for a moment before continuing. “Actually, we thought our most viable customer for Starfire might be the U.S.government—something like the NSA, if you can get over the moral implications of handing the decoder ring over to the Feds.”

“That’s scary,” I said. “The government would be able to break everyone’s codes—even private transactions.”

“Trust me, they’d love to be able to do that,” Holly said. “Every few years, the NSA or some other arm of the Feds tries to get Congress to tilt the rules in their favor. They basically had a complete monopoly on advanced cryptology technology until Diffie and Hellman published the basis for PK technology in the ’70s. Overnight, the game changed, and the Feds weren’t in control anymore. Things actually happened without them being able to snoop around anymore. They didn’t like this, of course, and they’ve been trying to get back in control ever since. They’re always trying to impose back doors on cryptology—they always want to be able to get in. Fortunately, Congress has done a good, consistent job in keeping them shut out. That’s why the notion of giving Starfire to the Feds kind of rubbed us the wrong way, too. We didn’t want to shift the game again and be the ones who put the Feds back in control. That’s why we didn’t want to reveal Starfire until we had a strong alternative ready to replace PK. That was next for us. Unfortunately, word leaked out anyway. A couple of people put two and two together, so to speak, and they filled in the blanks by speculating. Since an algorithm to factor complex private keys is kind of a cryptological Holy Grail, and Thomas’s reputation being what it is—was—they made a pretty good guess.”

“But you guys weren’t ready yet—you hadn’t got to the new technology yet, right?” Toni asked.

Holly nodded. “That’s correct.”

“I get it,” I said. “Let me change direction for a minute. Give me a little background on the company—what it does, what it sells, that sort of thing.”

“Okay. Our work breaks down into three main areas,” she said. “What we call Division 1 is commercial cryptology products. Dr. Jonas Adams runs this division for us. In fact, Division 1 is how the company started—it’s where our first products came from. Most of these products are pretty easy little software applications that are embedded into HTML code for websites. It’s what enables online shopping to take place securely. It comes close to paying the bills around here. We have six or seven products we sell to software developers. The other two divisions are more research-oriented—they don’t pay yet, but they’re where our real interests lie.”

She paused and waited while the receptionist brought in a tray of bottled water.

“Division 2 of our company is our decryption division,” she continued. “Dr. Stella Pace heads this division for us. The Starfire Protocol, which you are familiar with, is a result of our Division 2 work. Like I said, we’ve tried to keep Starfire quiet,” she said, “but it’s not easy. Starfire is the ultimate decryption key—at least for PK technology as we know it today. We ran an attack on a 2048-bit key—that's a single number composed of 2,048 digits. Starfire answered in three days.”

“Wow,” Kenny said. “That’s unbelievable.”

Holly smiled. “We’re very proud of Starfire.”

“I’m not too technical,” I said, “but where is Starfire now? I mean, what form does it exist in? Is it on a computer somewhere?”

“No,” she said. “As soon as he finished it, Thomas burned the code into a couple of memory chips called flash chips and installed them in a generic case. He did that partly to prevent copying and partly so that they wouldn’t draw attention. He made two devices, but only one key.”

“And where are these now?” I asked.

“We have one of the devices here. Thomas kept the other one at his home. He also kept the key.” She thought for a second. “I suppose his wife must have them now.”

“Actually, she gave them to us for safekeeping,” I said. “But I wasn't sure if what she gave us is all that there is to Starfire."

"That's all there is - the box and the key," Holly said.

"Our plan is to return the items to Katherine at the end of the case, or whenever she asks.” Toni glanced at me, probably wondering why I’d told her this when we’d previously said we were going to keep this information secret. I had my reasons, which I’d explain to her later.

“That makes sense,” she said. “Don’t lose the key. It’s the only way to unlock Starfire. Now that Thomas is gone, it would be impossible to re-create the algorithm.”

“Got it,” I said. “You said your work breaks down into three areas. What’s the third area?”

“Division 3 is—or would have been—our encryption division. It’s where we hoped to develop new cryptography technologies. Since Starfire has the ability to pretty much make the current forms of PK encryption obsolete overnight, the next commercially viable encryption technology will likely be very valuable.”

“Who ran Division 3?” I asked.

“Since we weren’t doing anything there yet, no one ran it. Or maybe you could say I ran it, depending on how you look at it. But it didn’t take much of my time,” she said. “We’ve been so focused on knocking out Starfire that we haven’t done much at all in Division 3 except to have some theoretical talks.”

“Okay,” I said. “On to something else. Would you be able to get us a list of your employees?”

“No problem. We’re down to five.”

I nodded. “Understood. Would you mind if we talked to the other four separately?”

“Not at all,” she said. “I’ll let them know to expect you.”

“Thanks.” I studied my notes for a moment, and then asked, “In all the work you described, is my understanding correct that Thomas was integral to all of it?”

“Absolutely,” she answered immediately. “Our little company has four math PhDs—well, three now. The fact is, all of us were able to understand what Thomas was doing—but usually only after he did it. I guess you could say that we were in the unique position of being the first ones to be blown away by what Thomas could do. We had a front-row seat. Oh sure, we sometimes contributed a little around the edges. But none of us have anywhere near the capacity Thomas had when it came to developing new concepts that can be turned into practical solutions. Thomas was in a league by himself there.”

“What will you do now that he’s gone?” I asked. “What’s your plan?”

She shrugged. “That’s a really good question,” she said. “I don’t have the answers. I suppose we can muddle on with Division 1 work. Starfire is basically ready to market. But I’m afraid the ongoing research is going to stop immediately. This particularly affects our Division 3 work. It’s suspended now, and it will probably have to be abandoned. Basically, the company goes from being on the verge of being incredibly valuable to the point of having next to no value almost overnight.”

“There was an offer to buy Starfire,” Toni said. “Don’t you think you can still find a buyer for that?”

“Maybe,” she said. “But I’m no business person. I don’t know anything about how to even start going about that.”

“Talk to John Ogden,” I said. “I imagine he’ll have some advice.”

“Probably so,” she answered. "I suppose I should talk to him and to Katherine."

“Tell me what you can about the people who wanted to buy Starfire,” I said.

“Okay,” she said, “but I don’t know too much about them. Apparently, a company called Madoc Secured Technologies made an offer—or at least they submitted a letter of intent. We called them MST. They wanted to pay ten million dollars for Starfire. Thomas had John Ogden check them out for compliance—the U.S. government is very twitchy about releasing sensitive technology to people overseas. Apparently, the Feds didn’t know the owner of MST—they’d never approved him before. Thomas told me that we weren’t allowed to sell to them until they were approved.”

“When was that?” I asked.

“Let me think,” she said. “Around the first of February, I guess—maybe a week or so before Thomas died.”

“And you’ve heard nothing from MST since?” Toni asked.

“Nope,” Holly said, shaking her head. “Not a word.”

“Do you know who Thomas spoke to at MST?

“Yes. I was with Thomas on one of the meetings. We met them here. We spoke with two guys. Cameron Patel was one—he was the guy in charge. He’s the chief operating officer of MST,” she said. “The other guy was some sort of operations guy. I think his last name was Warner—something like that. They both spoke with British accents.”

“And no word from them recently?”

“No,” she said. “John Ogden told Thomas that the Feds wouldn’t approve MST. I guess John sent MST a letter to that effect, and we haven’t heard from them since.”

“After this happened, did Thomas seem all right to you? Was he depressed or despondent?”

She thought about this for a few moments. “I wouldn’t say depressed,” she said slowly. “I’d say disappointed was a better description. Like I said, we didn’t expect much from Starfire in the way of commercial value—at least not at first. So to suddenly find that it not only has value but gets an offer for ten million dollars was really big for us. And then, just as suddenly, to have it yanked out from under us by the Feds was, yeah, it was pretty damn disappointing. We could have used the money. I know Thomas wanted to sell Starfire to them.”

“Was money a problem, then?” Toni asked.

“Of course,” Holly said. “We weren’t profitable. Thomas had to try to get the money from Katherine every quarter or so just to keep us going. She didn’t like having to write the checks, and Thomas hated having to ask her for them. I think it may have caused some friction between the two of them.”

This was interesting. “Did Thomas ever talk to you about friction between him and Katherine over money—particularly, money related to ACS?” Toni asked.

“Not in so many words,” Holly said. “But take a look around. You can see from our glamorous furnishings that someone’s pretty tight with the purse strings around here. I know for a fact that Thomas hoped that by selling Starfire, he’d have been able to stop having to go to Katherine every quarter for money. He was very disappointed that the sale fell through.”

“Are you aware of any personal problems Thomas may have had with Katherine?” I asked. “If you’re not comfortable answering this, you can just say so.”

“I’m okay with it,” she said. “Let’s just say that I worked with Thomas ten or twelve hours a day, five or six days a week. I know him—knew him—very well. If you want my opinion, I think the two of them had issues.”

“Care to elaborate?” I asked.

She started to speak but then hesitated. “I don’t want you to get the wrong impression,” she said. “I’m not saying anything bad about Katherine, you know? It’s just that Thomas confided in me, and he’d say things occasionally that led me to believe the two of them might not have gotten along as well as most people thought they did.”