Part 44 (1/2)

”Then I have some disquieting information to impart. I saw somebody come in here one day after shopping at Tower Records, and a CD he'd bought tripped the metal detector out there in Yamada's anteroom like he was wearing sleigh bells. Down inside this s.h.i.+ny plastic must be aluminum or something. We can't take it out.” I turned it in my hand.

”And besides, what would we do with it anyway? Stick it in a Walkman and listen to all the little digits spin by? In hi-fi?”

”I've got a reader at home . . . but wait, there's a better way.” She lifted it from my grasp and headed out onto the floor. ”Ever hear of computer crime?”

”In pa.s.sing.”

”Good. Then what you're about to witness won't shock you.”

I watched as she kicked on one of the NEC desk stations and loaded in a program. Next she walked over, flipped a switch on a little box, and a drawer glided out. In went Mori's s.h.i.+ny disk. Another b.u.t.ton was pushed, the drawer receded, and the disk was spinning silently.

Well, I thought. You want peaches, you shake the tree, right? Maybe she's about to kick h.e.l.l out of the orchard.

”I'm going to dump this into the memory of the mother s.h.i.+p downstairs.”

She did some fiddling, then typed in her pa.s.sword to sign on the mainframe on eleven. ”Beam us down, Scottie.” In moments she and all those silicon cells below us were beeping away at each other. She didn't look up, just kept typing away, the hollow click-clack that's become the signature sound of our computer age. Finally she leaned back and breathed. ”Okay, it's reading the disk. After it's in memory down there, we can pull up the contents here on the screen and see what we've got.”

I don't know how long it took to read the thing. Probably no more than a minute or so, though it seemed forever. Finally something flashed on the screen and told us the disk had been dumped. Tam took it out of its little player and pa.s.sed it to me.

”Here, put this back in her case. While I start pulling up the file.”

I'd just finished snapping it shut when I heard an expletive from out on the floor that would not be judged suitable for family audiences.

”Watch your language.”

She was sitting there staring at the screen. Finally she turned and looked at me. ”So close, yet so far. It's encrypted'.”

”It's what?”

”Come and look.”

I did. On the screen was a ma.s.s of numeric garbage. What was this all about?

”Matt, when this disk was written, whatever went on it was scrambled using some key, probably the DES system, the 'data-encryption standard.' It keeps unauthorized intruders like us from snooping.”

”How does anybody read it?”

”A decrypting key must be in the hardware down on eleven. But we can't get through to that level of the machine without an 'access code.'

Which we don't have.”

”Very smart. The electronic keys to the kingdom.” I watched, wondering all the while what Yamada was doing out there. Should I blunder out and chat him up with my Berlitz j.a.panese, just to keep him occupied? The clock above the door was ticking away.

”Tam, why not just try activating the key using your own pa.s.sword as the access code? Maybe it'll get you into that level on the mainframe.”

She gave it a go, without much enthusiasm. Predictably the message came back, 'ACCESS CODE NOT RECOGNIZED.'

”Well, try some others.” I was grasping. ”Hit it with 'NODA' or 'MORI.'”

She did, but after both were rejected the workstation suddenly signed off. Click, out of the system.

”What's happened now?”