“Think, Harper. What’s the essential difference between chat mode and e-mail?”
“Well… I don’t know.”
“Sure you do. Think real estate. Location, location, location.”
Suddenly I have it. “In chat mode, each person is sending his side of the conversation to one of our servers in New York. In essence, each is viewing the conversation by long distance.”
“Whereas e-mail?”
“Is an actual file that the user downloads from our computer into his own. Usually, anyway.”
He grants me a smile patronizing enough to make me feel I’m back in the third grade. “That’s how I’m going to get him.”
I try to see farther down the logical track. “How? You’re going to give his computer a virus? Destroy all his files? What will that accomplish?”
“I’m not going to do either.”
“What, then?”
“A Trojan Horse.”
I sit back and ponder this. A Trojan Horse is a program that a hacker plants inside someone else’s computer, usually to facilitate the burglary of passwords. It resides in some neutral area of the host computer’s memory, waiting patiently until a legitimate user logs on and enters his or her password. When that happens, the Trojan Horse copies the user’s password into a secret file before allowing him access to the computer. After a day or a week or a month, the hacker dials back into the computer, opens his Trojan Horse program, and removes a hefty new file filled with legitimate passwords. Then he deletes his Trojan Horse so that no one will ever know it was there. After that, he can gain illegal access to that system whenever he wishes by using the legitimate passwords. The Trojan Horse, true to its name, has opened the gates to the city.
“I don’t see your reasoning,” I tell Miles. “You’re not trying to break into Brahma’s computer.”
“This isn’t going to be a traditional Trojan Horse.
“I don’t understand.”
“You remember how the Trojan Horse got inside the walls of Troy?”
“Sure. The Greeks built it, pulled it up to the gates of Troy, and pretended to sail away. The Trojans thought the horse was a gift and pulled it inside their walls.”
Miles nods. “Which is exactly what Brahma is going to do.”
“Why should he do that?”
“Trust me. He will. What happened after the Trojans pulled the horse into the city?”
“The Greek soldiers hidden inside climbed out that night and killed them all.”
Miles chuckles softly. “My plan is slightly different from that. But the result will be the same.”
“But you can’t even roll your Trojan Horse up to the city walls. You don’t know where it is.”
“I’m not going to,” he says calmly. “You are.”
And then I see it. Miles has arrived at the same conclusion I did at the Indian mound this afternoon, only he probably did it three days ago. “You want me to do what Lenz is doing. Pretend to be a woman. Engage Brahma on-line.”
He smiles. “Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it. And I know you can do it, Harper. Much better than Lenz. You’re a songwriter, for God sake. A fucking pied piper with words.”
“Not exactly a successful one.”
“For reasons wholly unrelated to your talent. And you have more empathy with women than anyone I know. Every girl we ever knew confessed her darkest secrets to you at some time in her life. Am I wrong?”
He’s right, but I’m in no mood to admit it. “I’m not saying I haven’t thought about it. But Lenz has some advantages we don’t. Like a SWAT team to take Brahma out if he shows up.”
“We don’t need that! We’re not trying to lure him here. We have three simple goals, all based around the Trojan Horse. One, get Brahma to believe in you. Two, keep up the relationship until he switches from live chat to e-mail. Three, get him excited enough that he doesn’t examine every bit of information flowing down the pipe from you to him.”
“You’re going to bury your Trojan Horse program in my e-mail and hope he downloads it into his computer?”
“That’s one possibility.”
“But won’t he see the program? An executable file piggybacked with e-mail?”
“I don’t know. I’m not sure I can do what I want to do with e-mail. But I have an advantage. I designed EROS’s e-mail system. We want a situation where the two of you are exchanging long letters, sexual fantasies, anything that requires a lot of bits. If I can’t do it with e-mail, you’ll have to convince him to download some program you say you’re wild about. Some sexual thing I could kluge up fast. Maybe with a video file or something.”
“What if Brahma doesn’t switch to e-mail?”
“Then
I consider the plan, searching for faults. “Exactly what kind of special Trojan Horse is this going to be?”
The serene smile of a Zen master smooths Miles’s face. “A masterpiece. Almost invisible, but deadly in its own way. A study in elegance.”
I want to press him, but I know it would be useless. “How long will it take?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know. I never know that. Bumming code isn’t linear work. I mean, I might hack through it line by line, but more likely I’ll stare at the TV for two days, then cop to the right thing when I’m not thinking about it.”
Reaching across the twin bed, he pulls down one of my old Martins. He studies the guitar’s scarred face, then cradles it under his arm and puts his fingers to the strings. A halting rendition of Neil Young’s “The Needle and the Damage Done” tinkles from the sound hole. I taught him to pick that tune sometime around 1974. At fourteen Miles was growing his own marijuana, and he drove me crazy to teach him the song. As far as I know, it’s the only thing he can play.
“How long since you played that?” I ask.
“I’ve picked it out on every guitar I ever found leaning against a wall in someone’s apartment.”
I laugh with him. The bonds of friendship are strange, and the moment emboldens me to be painfully honest. “Miles, what we’re talking about could take a while. You know as well as I do that one of those sheriff’s cars could pull up outside with a search warrant any time. And we’d both be arrested.”
He nods soberly. “If that happens, I’ll go back out through the tunnel, just like I came in. And I won’t come back.”
“Drewe isn’t going to like this.”
“I know. But I don’t think she wants me in jail, either.”
“She’d rather it be you than me.”
He hangs the guitar back on its pegs and unfolds his long frame on the bed. Sighing deeply, he turns his head to face me. Exhaustion clouds his eyes like smudges on a camera lens.
“We could go two different ways,” he says, as if I’ve already agreed to his scheme. “Use the identity of a real EROS client, a woman with a blind-draft account. Or we can create a fictional woman, totally from scratch.”
After a useless moment of internal resistance, I ask, “Which is better?”
“A real woman is easier from a technical standpoint. But there are disadvantages. You won’t know much about her. Brahma might discover real information that conflicted with what you were telling him. Also, if Brahma’s selection criteria
“No,” I say, cutting him off. Miles’s manipulative tendencies are never far from the surface. As I consider his words, an image of Agent Margie Ressler’s gamin face comes into my mind. “What about a fictional woman?”
“The plus is that she can be whatever you want. The negative is that she won’t really exist. Which means I’ll have to create her.”
“What do you mean?”
