Kneeling over the body of the one he'd dropped, the Malay lifted his motionless hand off the asphalt.
"You see kris tattoo?" he said, glancing up at Nimec.
Nimec nodded. "Guy I cuffed has exactly the same marking on him. What the hell is it, some kind of cult sign?"
Osmar shook his head.
"Is more like what you Americans call…" He made a low sound of concentration in his throat, as if groping hard for words. Then he snapped his fingers. "Ah," he said. "Colors"
"Gang colors, you mean," Nimec said. "As in the Crips and Bloods."
Osmar nodded, and placed his finger on the tattooed skin. "The kris, many pirate gangs have such marks. But you see designs on blade?"
Nimec squatted beside him for a closer look. He did indeed see them — grotesque anthropomorphic figures that reminded him a little of the paintings on Egyptian tombs.
"They are rakasa," Osmar said. "Demons. Different for each brotherhood."
Sudden understanding spread across Nimec's features.
'These two punks… someone familiar with regional gang crime would be able tell their affiliation from the markings," he said
Osmar nodded again. "And this one, I know well from when I was with police," he said. "The men work for Khao Luan. He is Kuomintang."
The word rang a vague bell. Nimec searched his memory a few seconds.
"A heroin trader?" he said finally.
Another nod. "None are more powerful. The Thai army, they make him to flee during pacification program. Ten years ago, maybe more. Since then, he is in Indonesia."
Nimec gave him an imperative look. "Where? Does anybody know where?"
"Everyone knows, and everyone fears to touch him," Osmar said. "In parts of Banjarmasin, the Thai has longer arms than the government."
Nimec was quiet, letting it all sink in. What connection could a man like that have to Monolith? What on earth had Max stumbled onto?
After a moment he clapped a hand on Osmar's arm and nodded firmly.
"My friend, we're about to do some more island-hopping," he said. "And I promise you, if this guy's involved in Blackburn's disappearance, I'll cut his fucking arms off myself"
Chapter Twenty-five
The surviving member of the pair that got into the Sacramento vault hadn't talked — not to the Sword detail that apprehended him, not to the Feds after he'd been given into their custody. And it was anybody's guess whether he was going to talk.
Gordian, however, wasn't sure that was essential to determining who had been behind the act.
The main question for him, then, was of motive.
Back in San Jose now — he had booked reservations aboard a commuter flight while the A&P mechs continued their inspection of the Learjet in Washington — Gordian sat at his desk opposite Chuck Kirby, trying to put the pieces of a complex and profoundly troubling puzzle into place. They had already run through the whole thing a couple of times, but neither man felt it would hurt to bounce it around once more.
"Let's try it back to front," Gordian said. "Starting with the break-in at the Sacramento facility."
"Sure, why not," Kirby said. "Doing it the other way hasn't nailed it."
"I don't know whether it can be nailed, not with the fragmentary information we have," Gordian said. "But we can get closer, make some more important connections."
Kirby nodded. "The disc they took off the dead man, then," he said.
"The disc," Gordian repeated, sighing. "The key-codes are used in communications systems UpLink has designed for a wide range of naval vessels. Obviously they would be of enormous value to any number of interests, both foreign and domestic."
"Allies and enemies, for that matter," Kirby said. "Everybody spies on everybody else. It's wide open until you look at how the thieves penetrated the vault."
"Exactly." Gordian's face was sober. "And if not for the surveillance videos capturing what happened after they killed poor Turner, the techies might've taken weeks, even months to find out. The wicked beauty of it is that the system defeated itself."
"And that's still the part I can't quite grasp," Kirby said.
"It probably isn't vital that you do.. although the concept isn't really that difficult," Gordian said. "It involves basic computer file architecture, the way hard drives are set up. There's a minimum amount of space allocated for every file on a hard drive… the larger the drive, the larger the allocation. Regardless of how much data you have in a file, the computer reserves that minimum space." He thought a moment. "Imagine a department store that only has gift boxes of a single size for their merchandise, no matter whether you're buying a ten-gallon hat or a gold forget-me-not for your wife's necklace. Since the box needs to be pretty big to contain the hat, that tiny charm's not going to be too visible when it's placed inside. In fact, it may even get lost."
Kirby nodded. "The data-strings that let the thieves through the system's backdoor… you're saying they were too small to be noticed. Like the charm. And they slipped past your whiz kids when the software employed by the biometric scanner system was examined for backdoors prior to installation."
"And the techs can't even be held at fault," Gordian said, nodding. "Do a careful diagnostic of any hard drive, and you'll find the percentage of file-space being utilized out of whack with the actual number of stored bytes. You store one word-processing file with a couple of words on it, another with several pages of text, and it's probable both are grabbing the same amount of space. When the technicians are looking for Trojan horses, they typically sniff around for long, complex algorithms such as the type needed to match fingerprint or voice characteristics. In this case, the backdoor key was short and sweet… a basic geometric pattern… a small item in a big box."
"The star on the sapphire," Kirby said. "Incredible."
"To me, what's more incredible is that our security system's primary biometric software was produced by— and acquired from — Monolith Technologies, of all goddamn outfits under the sun," Gordian said. He shook his head. "Talk about an incomprehensible oversight…"
"Don't beat yourself over the head with it, Gord," Kirby said. "Their stuff's the best being made. And the system was implemented a while before the problems between you and Caine started brewing. Viewed as an isolated incident, the break-in wouldn't even necessarily place Caine under suspicion. There could be rogue hackers within his company—"
Gordian's face tightened.
"It isn't hackers who tried to steal UpLink out from under me. Nor was it hackers who used Reynold Armitage as a point man in advance of the raid, or had my plane's landing-gear system sabotaged, or made Max Blackburn vanish into thin air."
Kirby released a breath. "We can't prove Caine's direct involvement with any of that"
"It's just the two of us here, Chuck. This isn't about what I can prove, but what I know," Gordian said. "Over the past seventy-two hours, the A&P team in D. C. has traced the plane's entire hydraulic circuit for leaks a half-dozen times. And found nothing. Also, the mechs here at home have paper checklists verifying they conducted the full preflight a day before we left, including eyeball inspections of the system's gauges and connections." He paused. "Somebody tampered with that plane after it was prepped. And the guard at the airport, a man named Jack McRea, fessed up to having left his post for several hours a couple nights ago."
"And has since been released from your employ, I hope," Kirby said.
Gordian nodded. "Far as he's been willing to admit, he was lured off to a motel by long legs and a miniskirt. Suckered into leaving the hangars wide open."