Payback

indicated that, election or no, he would retire in a month. Ortez would assume the presidency and most likely cancel the election completely.

Desk Three had been tasked with verifying that the cards had been hacked. If that proved to be the case, the NSA’s covert action team would then clandestinely replace the bad cards with good ones — assuming the U.S. president gave the final OK.

The cards were stored temporarily in the large vault before being shipped to the regional election centers just before voters went to the polls. They were packed three to a tamper-evident envelope and stacked in narrow, shoe box-size boxes inside. Even though the envelopes could be identified by numbered bar codes on the outside, the odds against picking all twelve cards out of the thousands and thousands of envelopes were greater than one in 15 million.

Fortunately, Deep Black had a way to beat the odds. The cards had been placed into the envelopes by a random sorting machine, ostensibly to further decrease the possibility of fraud, since no one on the production line would know where the cards were going. But like many supposedly random number generators, the sorting program was not really random. It used only two variables, and since the NSA analysts already knew one — it was a set permutation of the time the program was initiated — they could easily solve for the other. All they needed were the IDs of the cards in two envelopes; from that, they could map the entire collection. They would know where each card was without opening the envelopes. (Technically, they only needed the serial numbers from one card in one envelope to find the solution. But they would use two envelopes and test the full set to be sure.)

Lia’s first priority today was to map the location of the cards in the envelopes. Then she would locate one of the suspect cards and swap it with the duplicate that had been fitted to the back of her belt buckle. The card would be taken out and tested; if it was hacked, the team would proceed to replace the rest of the cards. They had developed several different plans to do this and would choose the best depending on the specific circumstances at the time. Unlike many Deep Black missions, which involved weeks and even months of planning, the Peru operation had been mounted in only a few days. Its success — for Lia, there was no option other than success — depended to a large degree on the ability of the field ops to adapt to the situation.

One option would be for Lia to return the next day to swap out the rest of the cards. Her cover gave her carte blanche to randomly test the cards as well as the machines, so she was guaranteed all the access she needed; all she had to do was wait for her opportunity. She could also opt to swap all twelve cards if the opportunity presented itself inside, using the complete set of twelve cards hidden in the lining of the bag. Lia had suggested that option herself, arguing that it might prove simpler to simply replace all of the suspect cards on her first visit if she wasn’t being watched too carefully.

The setup outside the vault argued that wasn’t likely. Even though she’d already passed through a metal detector and an explosive sniffer at the door, Lia had to run a similar gamut at the base of the steps leading down to the vault room. The sniffer could detect common explosives such as HMX and RDX, the major components in plastic explosives, as well as old standbys like nitroglycerin and TNT. Lia’s shoes, handbag, and briefcase were put through a separate X-ray machine and then hand-inspected, with each item in the bag and case closely examined.

She watched as the detective laid out the items in the briefcase, beginning with the laptop and its related equipment. He checked the pages of her two bound marble composition notebooks, which were blank. He turned on her phone, which wouldn’t work because of the thick metal and concrete surrounding them. He even tested her pens. Finally satisfied, he handed the case back.

“And my pocketbook,” said Lia.

The man began to explain that unnecessary personal items were kept outside the safe.

“I have female stuff in there,” she said sharply, first in Spanish, then in English. The man’s face turned red, and he quickly handed over the bag.

It worked every time.

Lia’s “female stuff ” amounted to two lipstick cases and a compact. She wasn’t likely to need the compact, which was actually a retina scanner, but the lipstick might come in handy — one shade concealed a solvent to unstick the bottom of the voter card envelopes without visible trace and the other a glue to reseal them. But what she really wanted were the voter cards. They’d been fitted precisely so that their outlines merged with the zipper and rivet design on the bag’s exterior and wouldn’t show up on the X-ray machine. The bag’s design was so elaborate that it had cost more to make than the cards it held.

Shouldering her bag, Lia walked to the vault with Fernandez and the bank president, who was bursting with pride about his vault and the honor of helping his country preserve its democracy. The massive safe door, with its locking arms and gear work, sat to the right, folded back on its hinges against the wall. It looked like it would take two or three people simply to open or shut, but as the bank president explained, it was so carefully balanced that even a child could move it.

Two UN observers — frail-looking black women from Uganda — sat on stiff-backed chairs inside the vault. According to the Art Room, they would stay the entire time until the vault was closed with the rest of the bank. One of the women held out a clipboard with a form on it, asking Lia to sign in. She did so as illegibly as possible.

“I need a card table or something,” Lia told Femandez. “I don’t want to set up the laptop computer on the floor.”

“Oh, right.”

“A chair would be nice, too.”

“Come with me,” said the bank president. “I’ll find something suitable.”

Lia put down her bags and then ran her hands over her face, as if rubbing some of the fatigue from the flight away. “Charlie, are you here?” she whispered.

“At the check desk, waiting to open an account,” said Dean. “How you doing?”

“Just setting up.”

One of the local election officials came inside, introducing himself and going on in Spanish about how important the election was — and, Lia gathered, how important he was since he was connected with it.

“You will ensure a fair election by checking all the cards?” he asked.

“Just a few.”

“Such a lovely tester,” said the man. “I would wager the machines will all be at their best to please you.”

Lia bit the inside of her cheek to keep from smacking the sexist slob.

7

Rubens looked at the large screen at the front of the Art Room, where a diagram of the bank’s interior gave Lia’s and Dean’s locations inside the bank. To the right of this were four small panels showing video feeds from the surveillance cameras.

“The election official who asked Lia what she was doing — do we know who he is?”

“Schoolteacher from Tarapoto, north of the country.”

“Does he have a link to Ortez?”

“No.”

“You’re positive?”

“Everybody in the bank has been checked pretty carefully, Mr. Rubens.”

“Check him again,” said Rubens, walking toward the screen. “Is Lia out of direct communication inside the vault?” Rubens asked.

“The vault walls and ceiling interfere,” said Rockman. “It’s like being deep inside a bunker. We can hear her through the directional booster Dean brought in, but we can’t talk to her directly. We needed the bandwidth to transmit the data into her laptop.”

Rubens folded his arms in front of his chest.

“Did you want me to pass something along?” Rockman asked Rubens.

“That won’t be necessary,” said Rubens. “Mr. Karr is outside the bank?”