“Inupiat?”
“No. Shakespeare. Hamlet, to be precise. Act one, scene five.” Nelson’s eyes were on an approaching DeHavilland Beaver as the single-engine floatplane flared and merged ever so smoothly with the glassy surface of the lake, the resulting spray kicking up from both pontoons as it settled in and slowed. He was shaking his head. “Ben, you’re still looking for answers, and that’s the right thing to do, because you’re not a quitter. So don’t tell yourself to quit. There is an answer right in front of you somewhere, and even if you can’t find it, you can’t give up, because it will eventually find you.”
“Good words, Nelson, but…”
“There is always an answer, Ben. Keep looking. You’re the software master. You can create something that can unlock anything the program locks up, no matter how critical the moment.”
Ben nodded, his mind racing around the problem again, looking for a new perspective and finding nothing.
Nelson picked up an oar. “Time for you to get back to work.”
“Now, how do you know that?”
Nelson Oolokvit widened his eyes until they were about to pop out and raised both hands above his shoulders, flexing his fingers in a cartoonish attempt to look scary. “Ancient Eskimo wisdom!”
Ben chuckled. “I thought you weren’t licensed or Eskimo.”
“I’m not. It’s bootleg advice. And it’s worth exactly what you paid for it.”
It was past eight when Ben reached his front door, which had an etched-glass center panel. He stopped cold. The porch light was on, but he had no memory of throwing the switch before he’d left.
He tried the door and found it locked.
There was a back door and a side entrance through the garage, both alarmed with the security system he’d installed a year before, and inside, reflecting in a hall mirror, he could see a little red light indicating the system was still armed.
Ben looked around, spotting no one. Maybe, he thought, he’d actually thrown the switch before he’d left and forgotten. After all, he’d been very distracted. But just to be sure, he circled around the back of the house, stopping at the sight of what appeared to be a set of footprints just off the concrete walk.
Once again, small sparkles of fear began climbing his back as he knelt down to touch the muddy indentations. The ridges were soft, but that could mean anything. He could find no other tracks and no muddy traces on the walkway.
The back door and side doors were secure, and a search of the ground beneath every window turned up nothing. Ben returned to the front door and entered the hallway, canceling the alarm system and querying it for previous entries or alarms. The last reported event had been the time he’d left and armed the system.
So much for that, he concluded. Maybe I’m just getting paranoid.
He gave Schroedinger a quick pat on the head and went directly to his computer to upload the programs he’d hidden, suppressing another flash of anxiety as he waited to see if the renegade computer files were still there.
Thank God! The endless lines of computer code popped onto the screen, just as he had saved it. Mute evidence that he hadn’t imagined it.
Right in front of me, huh? Ben thought, recalling Nelson’s words. He could be right. I didn’t have time to fully examine this stuff. He thought for a few minutes before sketching out in his mind a methodical way of searching the thousands of lines of arcane code. First he’d look for lists, and then patterns, and if that failed, there were a host of other things he could try in an effort to decipher precisely what the author was trying to accomplish.
Ben entered the first of the search routines and pressed the “enter” key, matching the flurry of activity on the screen as the search routines began. He started to get to his feet when a message flashed into prominence: “Requested list found.”
A numbered list appeared on the screen, coalescing slowly as the computer translated the code into English, presenting him at last with a comprehensive listing of most of the airlines in North America, complete with their two-letter identification codes and what appeared to be the registration and serial numbers of each airplane in the respective airline fleets.
What the heck is this? Ben thought as he paged through the listings. This was a military program. Why were commercial airlines being referenced in a military computer program? He reminded himself that he was exploring an unauthorized addition to the main program.
Ben suppressed thoughts of more sinister possibilities and got to his feet, forcing himself to go to the kitchen and calmly fix a pot of coffee, while the search routines continued.
He was in the process of grinding the coffee beans when a snippet of the conversation in Nelson’s inflatable boat suddenly popped into his mind, and he lifted his hand from the grinder switch, restoring silence to the kitchen. Ben could hear the soft whirring sounds of the computer’s hard drive in the den as his thoughts rose to a dull roar in his head. Wait a minute. Wait just a minute! Nelson said something about the computer locking up… something about the program locking up. How on earth could he have guessed that? How could he know I was dealing with a program glitch that had locked up the computer in flight?
Ben felt the room undulating slightly. First the commercial airliner list, and now this. Had he said something, anything, that might have clued the affable Alaskan in to what had taken place two nights before? Of course, computers locked up all the time. But…
No! Ben concluded. There’s no way he could legitimately know that. He must have surmised it from something else I said.
EIGHTEEN
THURSDAY, DAY 4 SEQUIM, WASHINGTON 8:40 A.M.
April glanced at the clock as a plume of dust caught her attention a quarter mile to the south at the entrance to their road. The outline of a postal service jeep was bouncing toward the house.
She turned back toward the cliff side of her parents’ home, toward the Strait of Juan de Fuca separating Vancouver Island from the Olympic Peninsula, taking solace in the magnificent view for a few more moments. A large freighter was passing in the distance, perhaps five miles out in the main channel, headed toward the open Pacific forty miles to the west. She thought about picking up the omnipresent binoculars for a better look, but the mail truck was already crunching gravel in the driveway, and she turned instead toward the front door.
“I have a certified letter for Arlie Rosen,” the postman told her, straining to read the print on the small green card taped to an official-looking letter.
“Can I sign for it?”
“No, ma’am. Only Mr. Rosen.”
“Captain Rosen. Wait here,” April said, closing the door and walking around the corner into the spacious kitchen, where she looked at the letter with a sinking feeling. It was from the Federal Aviation Administration.
Better I sign for it than show it to Dad just yet, she decided, faking his signature and returning the card to the postman. She took the letter back to the kitchen and sat on one of the stools, thankful her parents were still in bed. She started to open it, then decided to grab her cell phone instead, punching in Gracie’s cell number.
“I’m scared, Gracie. It’s from the FAA and it was certified.”
“Oh shit, in the vernacular,” Gracie said. “Have you opened it?”
“No.”
“Open it.”
“Do I have to?”
“Yes, you have to. Somebody has to. It’s probably an invitation to some sort of check ride or evaluation or a notice of potential violation.”