“There are only two computers. One was compromised by the French several months ago. The other is off- line and has been for the last day. Nothing of note.”
Rubens pulled over one of the two laptops on the table and tapped into the team’s dedicated computer. The NSA had used a special program to infiltrate computers used as servers in a network. The program could read what was stored on the disk arrays that fed into the computer and in fact could reveal just about everything on any drives accessible from the local network. The trick was to do it without being noticed, which at times could be complicated.
“The computer that’s off-line — where is it physically?” asked Rubens.
“We’re not sure,” said Johnny Bib. “Clearly, it’s part of another network.”
“And you can’t trace it?”
“We are working on it. It doesn’t appear to have been used in a while. We think they swapped computers every three to six months. It fits other patterns.”
“This model here. What does it do?”
“Predicts ocean wave patterns,” said Johnny Bib. “It had been erased. Most likely it was put there by a geology student. They say it relates to earthquakes and tsunamis. I doubt that was used.”
“But it’s in the area of the computer that was hidden from the local user.”
Johnny Bib looked at his boss. Rubens could be so linear at times. Just because the program was there
Of course it would. If you could come up with the right formula.
The drives had been accessed remotely and used for several purposes. One was to store programs and information that had mostly been erased and overwritten; the simulation was among the few things that remained more or less intact. There was a collection of photographs and a fractal generating engine that were probably both part of an encryption program. The computers had also been used to redirect requests on the Internet, making it difficult to trace where a particular query or e-mail, say, had come from.
Johnny Bib’s team had been able to recover a list of Web sites that the two computers were used to access, looking for similarities. Statistically, the most common hits were of a weather site. Though this was perhaps to be expected, the analysts had nonetheless checked the weather site carefully in case it was being used to pass messages. One of Johnny’s team members believed the forecasting systems might be a sophisticated means for encrypting data; so far, they hadn’t been able to come up with a plausible model on how this could be true.
“Why was the page with the Paris weather updated ninety-seven times on the seventh and the twelfth?” Rubens asked. “Every other day is ninety-six times.”
Johnny Bib looked up from his desk. “The actual site?”
“Yes, the site. Not the computer that accessed it. The actual Web site.”
How he had missed that? And with a prime number as a clue, no less.
He all but grabbed the file out of Rubens’ hands. “We’re trying to figure that out now,” he told his boss. “Right now.”
It was some measure of Rubens’ dread of the process that he showed up at the attorney’s office a full half hour before the appointed time. The lawyer, a specialist in elder care law, had been recommended by Rubens’ personal attorney, whose own expertise did not extend to that area. Used to law offices that were nothing short of palatial, Rubens had been shocked the first time he came here. Located in a two-story building that had only recently been converted from a house, the lawyer’s office consisted of two rooms. The waiting room featured an L- shaped couch covered in corduroy so worn that the couch’s support springs showed through. Across from it sat a desk that Rubens supposed a receptionist was meant to use, except that he had yet to see or speak to one.
The door between the reception area and the lawyer’s office was as thin as it was flimsy. Even if she’d had a quieter voice, it would have been impossible not to overhear her talking with the people inside — clearly a violation of lawyerly ethics as well as common sense, thought Rubens as he sat down.
And yet his personal attorney called Ellen McGovern one of the best elder law practitioners in the state.
McGovern certainly had a steady stream of clients. The couch sagged with three middle-aged women, each wide enough to fill a cushion by herself. A young man in his early twenties hovered by the door. Rubens folded his arms protectively and tried to smile as he declined an offer from one of the women to share her bit of the couch.
Rubens tried very hard not to overhear the story unfolding inside, but he would have had to stuff his ears with wax not to. A woman in her sixties had been granted custody — it sounded more as if she had been stuck with it — of her two grandchildren when they were two and three. She’d raised them for ten years, then had a stroke that left her paralyzed. Who should take care of them now? A foster family appointed by the court? A nephew and niece who had volunteered? The grandmother?
As dire as the circumstances seemed, Rubens realized they weren’t all that far from the tangled arrangements that had governed his own childhood — albeit with the great difference money might make. He pretended not to have heard anything as the people left. Everyone seemed to be engaged in a similar conspiracy, the women on the couch casting their eyes on the carpet as each one was called in and exited in her turn.
“So, Mr. Rubens, how are we this evening?” asked McGovern when it was finally his turn. He checked his watch as he sat; amazingly enough, it was only five minutes past the appointed time.
McGovern pushed a small box of cough drops toward him as she pulled out the file. “Want one?”
“No thank you.”
“Diet?”
“Hardly.”
McGovern laughed, then reached for the cough drops.
“How is the General?” she asked, turning to him.
“As poor as he’s been,” admitted Rubens.
McGovern nodded. She swung around in the chair, facing him. “Do you mind if I speak, well, still as a lawyer, but maybe one who’s taking a broad look at things?”
“Don’t you always?”
She smiled and reached to her head, poking a strand of her long hair back behind her ear. Rubens decided that she had been pretty in her youth. There were glimmers of it left in her forty-something-year-old face. But it had to poke through considerable fatigue. The brown knit sweater and gray pants she wore did little to define her body, and she gave no evidence that she cared to have it defined. Her desktop was covered with photos beneath a layer of glass; Rubens surmised that the children there were hers, though there were no photos of a husband and she did not wear a wedding ring.
“Alzheimer’s is a very difficult disease,” she told him. “It’s very hard for a patient’s family to deal with, extremely frustrating. People want to make their peace with someone and they’re prevented from doing so. That’s not easy to bear.”
“Rebecca had her chance a long time ago.”
“I meant you.”
“Me?”
“When someone we’re close to — someone we love and respect — is sick, our judgment clouds. This case, the whole procedure really, when it goes to court it’s going to seem very… antiseptic at best.”
“I realize that. I’m doing what I have to because the General asked me to. I’m doing what’s right.”
“If the court disagrees, can you deal with it emotionally?”
“I don’t know,” answered Rubens, surprised by the question and by his honesty. Not many people had ever bothered to inquire about his feelings.
“That’s an honest answer.” McGovern slid back in the chair. “What do you think Rebecca’s motives are?”
“Greed.”
“Not guilt?”
“Perhaps a little guilt at neglecting him. And causing him so much trouble when she was younger. Guilt, I suppose, yes. But mostly greed. She wants the cousin’s money. And may even think, despite the fact that I’ve given
