Saskia Brandt: Deja Vu Part 13

'And what form might the key take?'

'It would be a series of random numbers approximately one terabyte in size, in this case - based on my guesses about the format and frame rate of the transmission.'

'Paul, is it impossible to discover the contents of Proctor's communication?'

Jago's arm reached between them and took one of the coffees. 'You can forget you heard that name. I mean it.'

'Oh dear,' said Besson. 'Somebody point out the irony of spilling the beans to a crypta.n.a.lyst.'

Saskia frowned at Jago. 'Scotty, I have made it clear that I do not agree with your superiors' policy of restricting information.'

Besson nodded seriously. 'I like your att.i.tude, Agent Brandt.'

'It's Kommissarin,' said Jago. He looked at Saskia. 'All the same, we should keep this on a need-to-know basis.'

'Did you manage to find a heater?' asked Besson.

'That depends. Will you manage to forget the name?'

After a pause, Besson said, 'Kommissarin Brandt, you were asking about the possibility of cracking an OTP. Well, it has been done. The Signal Security Agency of the US Army managed to crack the OTP of the German Foreign Office in 1944. It turned out the Germans were using a machine whose numbers weren't completely random. That gave the breakers a foothold. But Proctor's code? We have no foothold.'

'Well, looks like you can go back to Cheltenham,' said Jago, somewhat triumphantly. 'Sorry to have wasted your time.'

'Scotty,' said Saskia, 'the transmission is critical.'

Jago took her elbow and walked her away from Besson.

'It's important, OK, but why critical?'

'Proctor got this call moments before he walked into the West Lothian Centre with a bomb. Did he receive instructions at that point? Or was it the last message of a man about to lose his freedom? In either case, we must discover to whom he was talking. There is a chance that the second party was involved in his escape. Perhaps they are waiting for him.'

'That "gut instinct" of yours?'

'I suppose.'

'Alright, hen.'

Saskia stepped into Besson's personal s.p.a.ce and waited for his smile to answer hers. 'You say it is unbreakable. Break it for me.'

Chapter Eighteen.

Jago led Saskia through the foyer, where a crowd of uniformed police had gathered. 'Waiting for news about the service merger,' said Jago, not stopping. Saskia smiled at a young officer. He winked back in the habit of her boyfriend-who-never-was, Simon. The gesture knocked her eyeline to the linoleum floor and recalled her arrival at the FIB building in flip-flops, irritable with heat and curious about a case. Her secretary. The fridge. Beckmann's b.u.t.ton hole.

Only variations on a fictional theme, Kommissarin Brandt. Whom do you hunt? Yourself or Proctor?

'Here'll do,' Jago said, when they were outside. They had stopped beneath a blue lantern. Shoppers forced by, heads pressed into the breeze.

'Do you have a spare cigarette?'

'I do. Could you not buy your own?'

'No. It would shatter the illusion that I do not smoke.'

He knocked two examples into his hand. He gave one to her and produced his lighter.

The lighter.

The feeling that returned.

She saw a long thread, glistening as though oiled. She saw a pair of scissors yawn around the thread and stop. She felt a deep longing to protect it. The thread was too precious to cut.

She saw a hawk.

The hawk that returned.

Her eyes closed. The scissors and thread vanished.

Laughter. The flick of a playing card dealt on a table. The smoke transformed from wisps (cigarettes) to plumes (furniture, wood, the office, the mannequins, my gift).

'Revenge should have no bounds.'

'Saskia?'

She opened her eyes. Jago was holding her shoulders. A cigarette dangled from his lower lip. 'Are you all right?'

'I felt dizzy.'

'Migraine?'

'No. It is not that.'

'Do you want something to eat?'

'Eat? No, I'm fine. Light me.'

Jago seemed to think about that. Then he put his lighter to the cigarette. She glanced at it, but it was just a lighter again. Its mnemonic power was spent.

They watched people walk in and out of the building. She took a drag and held it.

'You muttered something, Saskia. It sounded German: ootah.'

Ute.

'A woman's name.'

'Mean anything to you?'

She looked away. 'No, Scotty.'

Jago nodded, his eyes narrow against the smoke. 'But you know she's a woman.'

Saskia sat down at the head of the conference table. Opposite her, Jago leaned against a portable heater. Besson was tapping a pen on his teeth while Garland continued her research in the realm of her gla.s.ses.

'OK,' said Saskia. She pressed her cold feet against the floor, stilling them. 'Let us hypothesise that Proctor did not intend to encrypt this transmission.'

'Why that?' asked Jago.

'Tell me: who sent the transmission?'

'Who? Proctor.'

'Fine, Scotty. Why do you say that?'

'Well a'

Besson pointed at Saskia with his pen.

'You're right. We grabbed the transmission on the basis of a surveillance tape of Proctor talking in his car. We don't know who initiated the call. We know nothing. We just have a terabyte of scrambled c.r.a.p that was received and transmitted by Proctor at that time.'

Jago looked at both of them. 'What are you saying? Someone sent a message to Proctor?'

Saskia nodded. 'My gut feeling, Scotty, is that Proctor would not have waited until he reached the West Lothian Centre a'

Jago groaned. 'Besson, you can forget you heard that, too.'

'Naturally.'

'My point,' continued Saskia, 'is that he knew he would be under surveillance. Why would he encrypt a transmission and then allow people to see him making it? This would counteract the purpose of encryption: concealment.'

'OK,' said Jago. 'I'll go for that.'

'So, we need to determine the names of any individuals, perhaps of a mathematical persuasion, who may have contacted David Proctor, an Oxford professor. Charlotte?'

'Heard you,' she said. 'I'm on it.'

'Paul,' Saskia prompted, 'you said that the one-time pad would be a large list of numbers.'

'If we were talking about a text message it would be large. But we're talking about a broadband audio-video transmission: a good quality visual image changing up to thirty times a second, plus two sound tracks.'

'So the list of numbers for the pad would be very large. What if Proctor used...a telephone book?'

Besson pouted. 'A directory? That would be a start. But telephone directories are systematic and have a limited range of numbers. When you limit the range, you limit the complexity, and you make it easier for a cracker. Remember that the pad needs to be the same size as the plaintext. You'd need to widen the net of the telephone directory to a country, perhaps a continent. That's not an easy job.'

'Listen, people,' Jago said, 'we're not talking about n.a.z.i High Command sending out the order to fire torpedoes. He's just one man.'

'Is he?' asked Saskia. 'He was aided in his escape. Charlotte, what do you have on his family?'

'One minute.' The red-haired woman's eyes roamed. 'His parents are dead. He has an uncle living in Israel who turned up after a fairly invasive search. I'd bet that they don't know of each other's existence. His daughter, Jennifer, left for America four years ago, aged sixteen. She attended a school for gifted children in New York and graduated, aged eighteen, with a double degree in mathematics and physics. Her current whereabouts are unknown.'

Jago stirred. 'What do you mean, unknown? I couldn't wipe my a.r.s.e without a computer somewhere going "beep".'

'Exactly that, Detective Inspector. She has no bank account, no pa.s.sport, no social security number, and no insurance of any kind. She has no bonds or shares. Her records would lead anyone to the conclusion that she died aged eighteen. But there is no death registration.'

Saskia nodded. It made perfect sense. 'Think of Proctor's life from 2001 to 2003. Are there any similarities with his daughter's situation?'

Charlotte frowned, blinked, and nodded. 'Yes. During that period Proctor's comings-and-goings are blank, just like his daughter.'

'In that time,' said Saskia. 'Proctor was an employee of a high security research facility known as the West Lothian Centre.'

Jago sighed pointedly. 'Alright. You think we have a daughter who entered her father's profession. Did she come back to England to aid his escape?'

'If this alley is blind,' said Saskia, 'then we can retrace our footsteps. Proctor is moving. I am certain that this transmission is critical to his movements, and we need to move quickly.'

Jago shrugged. 'Fair enough.'

'The ident.i.ty of the caller is the key. Can we see the surveillance footage of Proctor's arrival at the West Lothian Centre?'

'It's cla.s.sified,' said Besson sadly.

Saskia lifted the phone handset and dialled a number whose digits she had not thought of until this moment, and waited, a wink for Jago, as a phone rang in Berlin.

The headache burst not long after she hung up on Beckmann. She waved away the concerned hand - Jago or Besson, she could not tell through her narrowed eyes - and groped for the gla.s.s door of X Section. She walked the corridor by memory. The metronomic click-clack of her shoes spoke to deep memories, and her nausea grew.

The toilet was arctic. She opened the tap and let her cupped hands full of water, seething but chill, and she dropped her face into the swirls.

Do I get migraines? she asked her chip. Is this normal?

It was silent.

She pressed her temples. If she pushed hard enough, could she override this pain with another?

Well?

Whom do you ask? Me or you?

Saskia looked at her reflection. 'Who said that?'