“But he didn’t, probably because it was too easy. By randomizing the alphabetical and numerical correspondents… leaving them up for grabs… he ensured that whoever got to the clear would have to do exactly what you talked about before, Ricci. Run all the possible matches through a computer until it came up with ones that enabled the person to compose intelligible sentences. Either that, or work it out on paper, and that would take forever. And again, this presupposes that the would-be code breaker could recognize the bigrams, the nulls, the pattern in general.”
Michelle was nodding. “He must have felt that was unlikely. Felt that we’d have the know-how and experience to swing it, but the laptop thief wouldn’t.”
“So I’m guessing what Palardy did was grab himself a sheet of paper and something like a draftsman’s template, draw a circle, and then draw thirty intersecting lines across its diameter. Then he’d write a bigram on one side and pick a number out of his hat to be its diametric opposite, as you can see from the rough table on our graph. And there you are with—”
Nimec checked his watch, exchanged glances with Ricci. Almost five minutes had passed since they’d entered the office. He decided that was long enough.
“Carmichael,” he said. “You’re coming close to that whump across the head.”
Silence. Carmichael looked embarrassed.
“Shit,” he said. “I didn’t mean to—”
“Don’t worry about it,” Nimec said. “But we need the clear. Right now.”
Carmichael nodded, went over to his computer console, and tapped at the keyboard.
“I’ve got it in a separate text file, it’ll just take a second to open it,” he said half to himself. “The lines you’ll see on top of the screen show the plaintext as it appears when first deciphered. In the bottom of the panel, I’ve capitalized letters and inserted spaces and punctuation to make it legible to you….”
Nimec and Ricci looked up at the wall.
The uppermost version of the clear read:
enriquequirosgavemethediseaseigavehimrogergordiantherearemenbeyondeitherofuswhoordereditinevermeantforthistohappenforgiveme
The one below it read:
Enrique Quiros gave me the disease. I gave him Roger Gordian. There are men beyond either of us who ordered it. I never meant for this to happen.
Forgive me.
Nimec and Ricci stared at each other.
“Enrique Quiros,” Ricci said. “Pete, that name rings a bell.”
“Sure it does,” Nimec said. “Quiros heads that drug crew down in San Diego.”
“What would he want with the boss? How the hell could he—?”
“I don’t know,” Nimec said. “But we’d damn well better find out.”
TWENTY-ONE
“There it is. About three blocks up ahead of us. That tall office building, see?” Ricci’s contact took a hand off the steering wheel and motioned to his right. “Quiros’s front company’s on the third floor. Golden Triangle Services.”
Ricci glanced out the passenger window.
“Guess it tickles his funny bone,” he said.
The driver crawled the car through rush-hour traffic. He was a guy in his early thirties named Derek Glenn with skin the color of roasted chestnuts, a close-cropped nap of black hair, and a toned, broad-shouldered physique.
“His outfit’s title, you mean?”
Ricci nodded.
“Golden Triangle. The heroin production and trafficking center of the world,” he said. “Thailand, Laos, Burma—”
“Myanmar,” Glenn said.
Ricci gave him a look.
“Is what Burma calls itself these days,” Glenn said. “Anyway, sure, it’s smirky of Quiros. But that’s how developers talk about the area north of the city where all the new Web shops have gone up, you know. Including ours.”
Ricci made a dismissive sound in his throat. Glenn was with a contingent of Sword personnel assigned to a locally based UpLink division specializing in the development of secure corporate and government intranet sites. He knew the territory and was trying to be helpful. But the lightning run of events that had swept Ricci from Palardy’s death room in Sunnydale to this strange city hundreds of miles down the coast within a span of ten hours had left him in an unpleasant and critical mood. He didn’t care whether the dope capital’s name was Burma, Myanmar, or Brigadoon. He didn’t care what sort of pitch the civil boosters were throwing prospective real-estate buyers about the neighborhood. He thought the smoked glass tower where Enrique Quiros was sitting pretty looked like a glassine envelope of heroin blown up to outrageous dimensions.
“Listen,” Glenn said. “My point’s that Enrique isn’t just some slick. Smooth, yeah. But there’s a difference. You have to respect him. He’s got an Ivy League business degree. He’s grounded in his family. And his main thing is to watch out for them. If it wasn’t for his old man asking him to take over the rackets before he died, he might have gone legit. But once that happened, he probably felt obliged—”
“I read his make on the flight over,” Ricci said.
Glenn was looking straight out the front window.
“The company Learjet doesn’t seem like a shoddy way to travel,” he said. “One of these days maybe I’ll get to check it out firsthand. Fly outside coach on a passenger jet. No screeching infant with diaper rash behind me. No bratty older brother popping chewing gum bubbles in my ear.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Glenn shrugged.
“I’ve been in San Diego a long time and figured you’d want to hear what I know,” he said. “You don’t, no problem. I meet your team at the airport, bring you here, job’s done. I can go have a beer someplace nice and quiet. That’s the best part of being an enlisted man.”
“And the worst?”
“Not anything worth a complaint. But it might be sensible for you to remember I went through the same training program as the San Jose glory boys.” He paused. “And maybe some other stuff before it.”
Ricci turned to him, then hesitated.
“Sorry I bit,” Ricci said. “I’m on the wrong side of lousy. Nothing to do with you.”
Glenn kept looking out the windshield.
“There’s been talk the skipper’s pretty bad off,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“He going to make it?”
“I don’t know. I’m hoping to dig up something that can assist the docs.”
Glenn shook his head and inched forward in silence.
“What’s Quiros been up to since I called?” Ricci asked after a minute.
“Not much,” Glenn said. “He left the building maybe three hours ago. Alone. Took a walk around. Then he went back inside and hasn’t gone anywhere since. It’s like he was clearing his head.”
“Think he smells you’ve got him covered?”
“Maybe, maybe not. We’re pretty good at it. Either way, he hasn’t tried to book.”
Ricci considered that. After pulling Quiros’s file out of the Sword database in San Jose, he’d gotten the phone number of the Golden Triangle front operation and decided to phone him directly. The call had been brief, and Ricci had done most of what little talking there was. It hadn’t crossed his mind for an instant to state his reasons or ask any questions. He had identified himself, told Quiros straight out that he was flying down to see him that afternoon, and strongly advised him to be waiting in his office. Though he’d had awful doubts about putting him on alert, it had seemed better than the alternative of making the hour-long trip by air only to miss him and have to hunt for him around town. Ricci had gambled Quiros would understand it was in his interest to know how much he had on him and what he wanted to say. That he would cooperate at least as far as agreeing to meet. And his thinking proved to be right on.