on the keyboard and raced out of the room. A few seconds later they heard a door slam. An instant later the woman Sean had seen sleeping on the couch the night before entered the room.
Alicia said, “I’ll be back in a few minutes to check on her, Mrs. Graham.” Alicia led Sean from the house.
“Okay, I see your problem with Viggie,” he said, scratching his head.
“I think she knows, deep down, that there’s something wrong with her father. Anytime anyone starts nibbling around that subject she just shuts down.”
He caught sight of Viggie staring at them from her bedroom window and then, like a thought he’d lost in his head, she was gone.
Sean turned to Alicia. “Those numbers she told you. Couldn’t she have figured it out on a calculator?”
“Yes, but it would have taken her about a full day to do it. 18,313 is the 2,000th prime number, meaning she would have to have gone through all those that preceded it to see if it divided into 408,508,091 without leaving a remainder. She just saw it in her head, like she said.”
“And tell me why this is so important?”
“Sean-”
“Damn it, Alicia, people are dying here. I’ve agreed to protect Viggie because you think she’s in danger. The least you can do is start telling me why.”
“All right. The world runs on information sent electronically. How to move it from A to B safely is the key to civilization. Using your credit card to buy things, getting cash from an ATM, sending an e-mail, paying bills or purchasing things online. Encryption these days is strictly about numbers and their length. The strongest system is based on asymmetric public key cryptography. It’s the only thing that makes electronic transmissions, from government to commercial to private citizens safe and thus viable.”
“I think I’ve heard of it. RSA or something?”
“Right. Now, the standard public key is typically a very large prime number hundreds of digits long that would take a hundred million PCs, working in parallel several thousand years, to figure out the two factors. However, while everyone knows the public key number, or at least your computer does, the only way to read what’s being sent is by unlocking the public key using the two
“Like the numbers that Viggie gave you?”
“Yes. With computers getting faster all the time and the practice of running hundreds of millions of computers in massive parallel assaults the encryption standards keep getting ratcheted upward. But, still, all you have to do is add a few more digits to the public key and the time required to break it goes up thousands, if not millions of years.”
“But your research might just throw a monkey wrench in all that.”
“The encryption community is betting on the fact that there is no shortcut to factoring because in 2,000 years of searching no one’s found one. And yet Viggie is able to do it from time to time. Can she do it for bigger numbers? If so, as I said, no electronic transmis-sion is safe and the world as we know it would be drastically different.”
“Back to typewriters, couriers and tin cans strung with wire?”
“It would shut down business and government; the poor consumer would have no idea how to function. And generals could no longer safely communicate with their armies. I doubt most people realize that as late as the Seventies, before public key cryptography was invented, private businesses and governments had to send thousands of couriers out constantly with new codebooks and passwords. No one wants to go back to those days.”
He said, “It’s incredible how our entire civilization is based on not being able to factor huge numbers quickly.”
“We made the bed, now we have to lie in it.”
“Obviously the public isn’t aware of any of this?”
“It would scare the public to death.”
“So do you think there’s a shortcut?”
“Viggie makes me think there might be one. But despite that, my biggest worry right now isn’t about numbers, it’s about Viggie. I can’t let anything happen to her.”
“You think someone knows Viggie might be the key to stopping the world in its tracks?”
“You said Len thought there were spies here. Her father knew about her ability and he’s dead. I don’t know. I just don’t know.”
Sean once more put a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Nothing’s going to happen to her. The FBI and police are around; the place is crawling with guards.”
“That was true
“But now I’m on the case.”
“And how exactly do you propose to protect Viggie?”
“How many bedrooms do you have in your bungalow?”
“Four. Why?”
“One for Viggie, one for you and one for me and one left over.”
“You, moving in with
“If I stay in the main house, there’s no way I could get to her in time in case something happened.”
“I’ll have to get Champ’s approval and talk to Viggie. I get off duty tomorrow around six in the evening. How about then?”
“Why don’t you just move into Viggie’s cottage?”
“There are too many reminders of Monk there for her. I thought taking her away from that would be best.”
“How will you explain it to Viggie?”
“I’ll think of something.”
Alicia walked off.
Sean stood staring after her when his cell phone buzzed. He looked at the number and groaned. It was Joan Dillinger. How was he going to explain taking on not one, but two new assignments? The answer was clear. He just wasn’t going to answer the damn phone.
He trudged back to his room and wondered how he was managing to dig the hole he was in ever deeper.
CHAPTER 31
WHEN HORATIO BARNES RETURNED to Linda Sue Buchanan’s house that evening her man, Daryl, didn’t look too happy about what his little lady was planning. He was a big, sloppy fellow, his greasy T-shirt stretched wide over both chest and belly. He held the baby in one beefy paw and a can of Michelob in the other.
Daryl bellowed, “You don’t even know this little dude, Lindy. He might be some damn sex rapist for all you know.”
“Well, if you think about it, most rapists are
“See, what’d I tell you? Dude’s been in the joint,” Daryl declared.
“No, I
Linda Sue checked her purse and pulled out her keys. “We’re going in separate cars, Daryl, and I got my Mace and this.” She held out a compact revolver.
Daryl looked relieved at the sight of the firearm. “Well if he tries anything you just shoot his ass.”
“That’s the plan,” Linda Sue said, matter-of-factly checking the ammo in her gun.
“Hold on a minute, folks,” Horatio said. “First, no one’s shooting anybody. And by the way do you have a permit for that thing?”
Daryl snorted. “Hell this is Tennessee, man, ain’t need no permit to carry a gun in good old Tennessee.”
“You might want to check that again,” Horatio said. “And I’m here only to talk to Linda Sue’s grandmother. I
