[Steven Lyle Jordan]

6: Selling the Trojan

When I walked in the front door, Barry was there at his desk, and this time he wasn’t rooting around in a drawer. He saw me and started to crack a smile, but it faded quickly. Good: He hadn’t expected me. So far, so good. “Hi… Mike, right?”

“Yup,” I said, smiling easily back. “I came by to see Lou… is she here?”

“Yeah,” Barry said, his eyes drifting to his computer screen, “but she’s kind of busy today… she didn’t ask me to set up an appointment…”

“I know,” I said, “I wasn’t expecting to be here, myself. But she’ll want to see me.”

Barry raised an eyebrow. “She will?”

“Oh, yeah,” I said confidently. “Tell her…” I paused dramatically, stepped a bit closer to Barry’s desk, and leaned forward (and down) a bit. “Tell her I have a fractalmonic recognizer program that can’t be spoofed. Ever.”

Barry looked at me, clearly doubtful. In fact, I doubted he knew what I’d just said. Finally, he picked up his phone and reached for the intercom.

“Waitwaitwait!” I blurted, and he froze. “Don’t call her… this is too sensitive!” I looked around conspiratorially, and to his credit, so did Barry. “She’s in her office back there, right? Or maybe she has a blackberry?”

“Uh…” Barry gamely tried to follow what was happening. “She’s got a blackberry.”

“Just e-mail her, then,” I said. “That way no one else will hear it.”

Barry continued to look at me dubiously. But a few seconds later, he opened up his e-mail app, and started typing. Which was perfect. Sure, no one would hear the exchange… but e-mails were easy to tap into, especially in an office with a few smart programmers. If, as I suspected, the bad guys were accessing company e-mails, they’d be getting a clue to my Trojan in short order. After a few seconds, he stopped, and looked at me for clarification. “Fracta—?”

“Fractal—monic,” I repeated. “Fractalmonic recognizer program.”

Barry finished typing, and hit the send button. Then he shrugged, and said, “Take a seat.”

“Thanks.”

I turned and started for one of the chairs. Before I could actually sit down, the phone on Barry’s desk rang. I waited while Barry spoke to the other end of the line. Then he hung up, and looked up at me. “She’s waiting in the conference room for you.”

“Thanks again,” I said, and started back. Barry gave me one last wondering glance as I passed, but I just flashed him a confident smile, and after a moment, he turned back to his work.

I worked my way past the desks of hardbodies again, and a number of them took significant notice of me, and presumably, the fact that I wasn’t being escorted by anyone else. More than one of the girls gave me a particularly hard look. I grinned amiably as I passed, and kept going until I reached the glass-walled conference room in the back. Lou and Phil were in there, just as they’d been the other day, and I walked right in.

“Hello again,” I started as I closed the door. “Bet you didn’t expect to see me come by, did you?”

Lou and Phil exchanged glances, before Lou replied, “Um, no, we didn’t.”

“Good,” I said. “I’m sorry if I sort of sneaked in, but I didn’t want Gail to think I was playing her just so I could get to you. First of all, so we all know who we really are, my card.” I removed a card from my pocket, and slid it forward across the table. It was my standard business card, which established my IT credentials. Then I flipped it over and left it on the table.

On the back of the card, I’d written: “Play along, in case we’re bugged.”

Lou and Phil stared at the card for a few seconds, and for those same few seconds, I was afraid they weren’t going to be able to play along convincingly. I had no way of knowing at this point whether anyone was listening in… or, for that matter, reading our lips through the glass walls of the conference room… but I had to assume so. If these guys turned out to be lousy actors, though, this whole scam would go right down the toilet.

Finally Lou raised her head. While Phil looked to Lou, she said, “Okay, look. Is this just some elaborate way to apply for a job or something?”

She was doing it. Aces! “Well, you could say that,” I replied. “See, I’d heard about Coyote Chow, and I know something about the contracts you have. I have some buddies in the Navy. Anyway, what I have is something I’m having a hard time selling… but I think, through you, we can both come out smelling like roses.”

Lou faux-considered my words, and turned to Phil, who just nodded. “Go on,” she said.

On cue, I removed a flash key from my pocket, and held it up… then put it on the table. “Last year, I developed an encryption system based on fingerprint reading, for a gaming start-up.” Which had a ring of truth: The games industry was highly focused on security, so their games wouldn’t be copied and disseminated among every prepubescent on the planet without paying for each and every one of them. “The problem I was working on was that people were figuring out ways to spoof standard fingerprint reading algorithms, at the transmission stage. In other words, they can send an electronic signal obtained from a fingerprint back into the system at anytime, with or without a fingerprint reading, and fool the security.

“I came up with a new encryption system, based on the back-and-forth handoff of remote car door unlocking systems,” I continued. “As you probably know, cars and keyfobs are preprogrammed with a random-number generator that creates a new passcode every time it is used. My system also creates a random number sequence, to confirm that the print is coming from the reading scanner instead of being tapped into the line. The sequence is not only based on fractals, but it is derived from the print itself, making it double-secured!”

Now, I won’t get into the holes involved in that scenario, of which there are only a few, but they are healthy. All that was important is that I sounded convincing. Phil actually looked like he was buying into it, and Lou was nodding like she was impressed with the idea. If anyone was watching, the body language would sell it.

“So,” Lou finally said, “why can’t you sell this?”

“I had some… issues at my old job,” I explained, also inserting a kernel of truth for verisimilitude. “I’m on everyone’s s**t-list right now. But if I can sell this to you, you can sell it to your contracts, and we both get what we want. Makes sense?”

Phil and Lou exchanged glances, and this time, Phil said, “Makes sense to me. What do you think, Lou?”

Lou hesitated for a convincing number of seconds, before she said, “We’ll check this out. If it looks good… we’re going for it!”

“Excellent!” I said, rubbing my hands together in anticipation. “All the details are on that key. Go ahead and plug it into your stuff and see how it works. I’d advise you to keep it on you, though, so it doesn’t grow legs, y’know?”

“You’re leaving it with us?” Phil asked.

“Hey, I trust you,” I said. “Just be careful with it… that’s valuable stuff. ‘Kay?”

“Sure,” Lou replied, smiling. “We’ll be careful.”

“Good. Then call me… and we’ll be in business!” I started for the door, opened it, and spoke loud enough that anyone outside could clearly hear me. “I’ve gotta get back into town, but if you need any more info on that (I nodded significantly at the key), just give me a call, and if I have to, I can come back today.”

“No problem,” Lou said, all smiles now. Phil followed her, and the two of them walked me to the front door. Again, everyone looked me up and down as we passed… this place was beginning to make me feel like a virgin at a Vampire’s picnic... though now, at least someone here had to realize that there was more to my visit than a social call.

When we got to the door, Lou said, “Say ‘hi’ to Gail, then. Next time you’ll have to join us.”

“Join you for what?”

There was maybe a split-second before Lou replied, “For a nightcap. We missed you last night.”

I nodded and said, “Sure. Next time.” And I headed out the door with a wave.

On the way back to Pete’s apartment, I reflected on two things. First of all, on the fact that the Trojan Horse plan seemed to be working. I could look forward to step two, hopefully soon.

And second, Lou’s mention of a nightcap: The way she’d said it, was the way you’d say it if a friend of yours had been there, and you weren’t. She could only mean Gail, since she was our only mutual friend. But Gail had told me she was exercising last night. Sure, she could have had the nightcap early, and exercised afterward… or the other way ‘round, for that matter. If she’d already been, there was no reason she had to mention it to me when I called her. There wasn’t necessarily anything odd in that.

So why was this tiny voice in my head doing the “Danger Will Robinson!” chant?