“You’re so blind!” Hale yelled. “Can’t you see I’m not involved? Untie me! Before Security gets here!”
“Security’s not coming,” she snapped flatly.
Hale turned white. “What?”
“Strathmore faked the phone call.”
Hale’s eyes went wide. He seemed momentarily paralyzed. Then he began writhing fiercely. “Strathmore’ll kill me! I know he will! I know too much!”
“Easy, Greg.”
The sirens blared as Hale yelled out, “But I’m innocent!”
“You’re lying! And I have proof!” Susan strode around the ring of terminals. “Remember that tracer you aborted?” she asked, arriving at her own terminal. “I sent it again! Shall we see if it’s back yet?”
Sure enough, on Susan’s screen, a blinking icon alerted her that her tracer had returned. She palmed her mouse and opened the message. This data will seal Hale’s fate, she thought. Hale is North Dakota. The databox opened. Hale is– Susan stopped. The tracer materialized, and Susan stood in stunned silence. There had to be some mistake; the tracer had fingered someone else‑a most unlikely person.
Susan steadied herself on the terminal and reread the databox before her. It was the same information Strathmore said he’d received when he ran the tracer! Susan had figured Strathmore had made a mistake, but she knew she’d configured the tracer perfectly.
And yet the information on the screen was unthinkable:
NDAKOTA = ET@DOSHISHA.EDU
“ET?” Susan demanded, her head swimming. “Ensei Tankado is North Dakota?”
It was inconceivable. If the data was correct, Tankado and his partner were the same person. Susan’s thoughts were suddenly disconnected. She wished the blaring horn would stop. Why doesn’t Strathmore turn that damn thing off?
Hale twisted on the floor, straining to see Susan. “What does it say? Tell me!”
Susan blocked out Hale and the chaos around her. Ensei Tankado is North Dakota . . .
She reshuffled the pieces trying to make them fit. If Tankado was North Dakota, then he was sending E‑mail to himself . . . which meant North Dakota didn’t exist. Tankado’s partner was a hoax.
North Dakota is a ghost, she said to herself. Smoke and mirrors.
The ploy was a brilliant one. Apparently Strathmore had been watching only one side of a tennis match. Since the ball kept coming back, he assumed there was someone on the other side of the net. But Tankado had been playing against a wall. He had been proclaiming the virtues of Digital Fortress in E‑mail he’d sent to himself. He had written letters, sent them to an anonymous remailer, and a few hours later, the remailer had sent them right back to him.
Now, Susan realized, it was all so obvious. Tankado had wanted the commander to snoop him . . . he’d wanted him to read the E‑mail. Ensei Tankado had created an imaginary insurance policy without ever having to trust another soul with his pass‑key. Of course, to make the whole farce seem authentic, Tankado had used a secret account . . . just secret enough to allay any suspicions that the whole thing was a setup. Tankado was his own partner. North Dakota did not exist. Ensei Tankado was a one‑man show.
A one‑man show.
A terrifying thought gripped Susan. Tankado could have used his fake correspondence to convince Strathmore of just about anything.
She remembered her first reaction when Strathmore told her about the unbreakable algorithm. She’d sworn it was impossible. The unsettling potential of the situation settled hard in Susan’s stomach. What proof did they actually have that Tankado had really created Digital Fortress? Only a lot of hype in his E‑mail. And of course . . . TRANSLTR. The computer had been locked in an endless loop for almost twenty hours. Susan knew, however, that there were other programs that could keep TRANSLTR busy that long, programs far easier to create than an unbreakable algorithm.
Viruses.
The chill swept across her body.
But how could a virus get into TRANSLTR?
Like a voice from the grave, Phil Chartrukian gave the answer. Strathmore bypassed Gauntlet!
In a sickening revelation, Susan grasped the truth. Strathmore had downloaded Tankado’s Digital Fortress file and tried to send it into TRANSLTR to break it. But Gauntlet had rejected the file because it contained dangerous mutation strings. Normally Strathmore would have been concerned, but he had seen Tankado’s E‑mail‑Mutation strings are the trick! Convinced Digital Fortress was safe to load, Strathmore bypassed Gauntlet’s filters and sent the file into TRANSLTR.
Susan could barely speak. “There is no Digital Fortress,” she choked as the sirens blared on. Slowly, weakly, she leaned against her terminal. Tankado had gone fishing for fools . . . and the NSA had taken the bait.
Then, from upstairs, came a long cry of anguish. It was Strathmore.
CHAPTER 86
Trevor Strathmore was hunched at his desk when Susan arrived breathless at his door. His head was down, his sweaty head glistening in the light of his monitor. The horns on the sublevels blared.
Susan raced over to his desk. “Commander?”
Strathmore didn’t move.
“Commander! We’ve got to shut down TRANSLTR! We’ve got a—”
“He got us,” Strathmore said without looking up. “Tankado fooled us all . . .”
She could tell by the tone of his voice he understood. All of Tankado’s hype about the unbreakable algorithm . . . auctioning off the pass‑key‑it was all an act, a charade. Tankado had tricked the NSA into snooping his mail, tricked them into believing he had a partner, and tricked them into downloading a very dangerous file.
“The mutation strings—” Strathmore faltered.
“I know.”
The commander looked up slowly. “The file I downloaded off the Internet . . . it was a . . .”
Susan tried to stay calm. All the pieces in the game had shifted. There had never been any unbreakable algorithm‑never any Digital Fortress. The file Tankado had posted on the Internet was an encrypted virus, probably sealed with some generic, mass‑market encryption algorithm, strong enough to keep everyone out of harm’s way‑everyone except the NSA. TRANSLTR had cracked the protective seal and released the virus.
“The mutation strings,” the commander croaked. “Tankado said they were just part of the algorithm.” Strathmore collapsed back onto his desk.
Susan understood the commander’s pain. He had been completely taken in. Tankado had never intended to let any computer company buy his algorithm. There was no algorithm. The whole thing was a charade. Digital Fortress was a ghost, a farce, a piece of bait created to tempt the NSA. Every move Strathmore had made, Tankado had been behind the scenes, pulling the strings.
“I bypassed Gauntlet.” The commander groaned.
“You didn’t know.”
Strathmore pounded his fist on his desk. “I should have known! His screen name, for Christ’s sake! NDAKOTA! Look at it!”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s laughing at us! It’s a goddamn anagram!”
Susan puzzled a moment. NDAKOTA is an anagram? She pictured the letters and began reshuffling them in her mind. Ndakota . . . Kadotan . . . Oktadan . . . Tandoka . . . Her knees went weak. Strathmore was right. It was as plain as day. How could they have missed it? North Dakota wasn’t a reference to the U.S. state at all‑it was Tankado rubbing salt in the wound! He’d even sent the NSA a warning, a blatant clue that he himself was NDAKOTA. The letters spelled TANKADO. But the best code‑breakers in the world had missed it, just as he had planned.
“Tankado was mocking us,” Strathmore said.
“You’ve got to abort TRANSLTR,” Susan declared.