“You’re saying it could be done,” Chapel said. “But how would he remember all those combinations?”
“Just by practice,” Angel replied. “You do anything long enough and it becomes second nature. Do you remember exactly where, on a standard keyboard, the H key is? But I imagine you could type the word ‘hello’ without having to think about it.”
“And let me guess, he doesn’t need a screen, because—”
“The headphones!” Angel actually laughed in excitement. “This guy’s brilliant! He probably just used a normal text-to-speech module, the kind that blind people use. They can’t see a screen, so the computer just reads everything on the screen aloud for them. Those headphones tell him where he is on the net, and he uses the keys to move from page to page, to enter form data, to—”
“This is all guesswork,” Chapel said.
“True,” Angel said, disappointed. “Except… maybe we can find out for sure.”
“You have some way to scan for computers?” Chapel asked, incredulous. “By satellite?”
“No. But the tablet you’re using now does. It has a Wi-Fi transponder built into it. It can scan for wireless networks. That’s just standard equipment on any wireless device. I can use it to triangulate a specific network. Let me ping it… there. There are a couple of dozen wireless networks in your local area right now.”
“Really? In the middle of rural Uzbekistan?”
Angel laughed. “Don’t start expecting to freeload off somebody else’s wireless so you can download a bunch of YouTube videos. The signals I’m getting are way too weak for you to access — they might be miles away — but I can still detect them. They get stronger the closer you get to them. Go back to your seat now but leave your tablet turned on. When you’re sitting next to Vlaicu, touch the screen so I know you’re close. If one of the signals ramps up superhigh at that moment, I’ll know it’s his.”
“And you’ll be able to tell me what he’s looking at on the Internet?”
Angel sounded apologetic when she answered. “Well… no. The signal will still be locked and encrypted, and even I can’t beat 256-bit encryption. But at least you’ll know your hunch was right. What will you do then? Confront him? Confront Nadia?”
He thought about that. “Telling her I know about Bogdan’s computer won’t get me very far. Even if she admits she’s had him hacking away this whole time, so what? I’ve had you doing the same thing. It’s not like she’ll give me Bogdan’s password and we all get to share information, especially since I’m not letting her know about you. If you had enough time, do you think there’s any way you could break through his encryption? Maybe figure out his password?”
“Not directly. Not with a brute force hack. But maybe I can do something. I don’t know. Let me think about it. For now, let’s just find out if you’re right. If he even has a working computer.”
“Okay. Talk to you soon.”
Chapel slipped the tablet into his pocket, his earphones still in place, and stepped out of the lavatory. When he got back to his seat, he climbed over Bogdan’s long legs and sat back down, not even looking at the hacker, just watching the world blur past the windows. He settled himself in, then reached into his pocket and tapped the screen of the tablet.
For a second nothing happened. But then, in a very quiet voice, Angel whispered in his ear: “Gotcha.”
The train only stopped for a minute in the town of Vobkent, as if it were in a hurry to finish the last leg of its voyage to Bukhara. They had to rush to get their bags down and struggle through all the people standing in the aisle, but they managed to get down to the platform before the train chugged away again, leaving them behind.
On the map Vobkent had looked like little more than a flyspeck, but from the ground it was a vibrant, if sleepy little place, full of shops selling chicken feed and textiles. There was even a bit of tourist business — they saw a couple of European backpackers headed toward a minaret in the center of town. Its main attraction for Nadia, however, was that it was far enough away from Tashkent that it didn’t merit a significant SNB presence.
“Varvara said the truck and the supplies would be waiting on the north edge of town, in an abandoned battery farm,” she told Chapel.
Chapel nodded and folded up the map he’d been staring at, trying to get some sense of where they were headed. He scanned the street for taxis but found none. “I guess we’re walking,” he said.
“It’s only about a mile,” Nadia said, and started off at a brisk pace, her bag swinging from her arm.
It had been a hot day, and the late afternoon was showing no signs of cooling off. Before long Chapel had to wipe his brow. The streets of Vobkent were wide and open to the sun, and the smell of the desert was everywhere — everywhere, at least, that didn’t smell of chickens. They passed through the center of the town, through a zone of little shops selling phone cards and soft drinks, and then into a more residential neighborhood where old women sat in the shade of their doorways, fanning themselves with beautiful little pieces of cloth. Chapel tried to smile a lot and look at the architecture so he would seem like a lost tourist, though he supposed he wasn’t dressed for the part. He’d taken off his suit jacket and rolled up his sleeves, but he still looked like American energy executive Jeff Chambers. He’d brought clothes more appropriate for the desert, but he hadn’t had a chance to change since they left Tashkent that morning.
As they headed up a dusty avenue where the only shade came from the occasional tree, Nadia dropped back to walk alongside him. He didn’t move away from her, but he didn’t glance her way, either.
“We will not speak of what happened last night, apparently,” she said, her voice low. She didn’t look at him when she spoke, as if they were trading vital secrets. “I understand that you need some time to think.”
“Yeah,” Chapel said. He considered adding something, then decided against it. If he didn’t talk about what had happened, he didn’t need to think about it either. Instead he could focus on wondering what Bogdan was doing with his makeshift computer. The hacker was walking ahead of them, his long legs barely shuffling along but still managing to eat up the distance. As he walked he tapped at his MP3 player, as he always did.
“You will not even look at me now, it seems,” Nadia said.
Chapel shrugged. He adjusted his bag on his shoulder and made a point of turning to face her, still walking the whole time. He forced himself to look at her eyes.
What he saw there made him turn away again.
She didn’t look angry. She wasn’t winking or throwing suggestive looks his way either. She just looked sad. Like she understood, perfectly, how complex things were for him but she just wished they were… different. Simpler.
He imagined he probably looked much the same way.
“I’m not sure,” she said, when they were safely looking in different directions again, “what you thought was going to happen between us. We’re not the kind of people whose lives move toward oaths and ceremonies in little white churches. I wasn’t looking for a golden ring.”
Chapel had to squeeze his eyes shut for a second when he thought of the little jewelry box that was probably still sitting on the hall table back in Brooklyn.