“It doesn’t look very difficult to take the cameras out of commission,” I said.
“No, it’s not. But you do have to know where they all are. Which your standard bad guy infiltrating the school wouldn’t—unless someone inside the school had told him.”
Erica knew the location of every camera on campus. All 1,672 of them. We had to jack sixty-three to get through the Hale Building and up to the principal’s office, as well as doing a bit of zigzagging and shimmying to avoid fifty-eight others. Even moving at a good clip, it still took us well over an hour to get there, during which time Erica forced me to be absolutely silent.
The computerized keypad by the principal’s office door that I’d fried with the Taser during my SACSAs had been replaced by a shiny new one, but Erica already knew the entry code.
It was 12345678.
“The principal isn’t very good at remembering codes,” she explained once we were inside, after jacking both cameras in his office. “He’s also an idiot.”
“So wouldn’t the code to access the mainframe be the same?” I suggested.
“Sadly, no. Though I did try it. The CIA itself runs the mainframe, not the school. And they’re a little more protective of it than the principal is of his office. As you know, there’s a sixteen-bit daisy-chain encryption on it.”
“Yes. But I still have no idea what that means.”
Erica sighed. “Haven’t you read Basics of Cryptography yet?”
“I keep trying to. But that book is mind-numbing. Reading it is like inhaling chloroform.”
“Spoken like someone who’s never inhaled chloroform,” Erica groused. “A sixteen-bit daisy chain is a sixteen-character entry code that is randomly selected by the CIA mainframe every day. It’s impossible to crack. The code is e-mailed to everyone’s secure account the day before, so the only way you can know the code is to have access to the mainframe in the first place. Then, in theory, you’re supposed to commit each day’s code to memory.”
“But the principal doesn’t,” I concluded.
Erica rewarded me with one of her rare smiles. “Exactly. Remembering it requires too much brainpower.”
“You know that for a fact?”
“It’s more of an extremely well-informed assumption. The principal is lucky he can remember which foot to put forward when he walks across a room. Now, this is where you come in. Think back to this afternoon. What did the principal do before he logged on to the mainframe?”
Understanding suddenly dawned on me. “That’s why you had me insult him? To get him to log on and e-mail everyone?”
“Exactly.”
“Wasn’t there a way to do that that didn’t involve him getting furious at me?”
“Possibly. But this way worked. So tell me: What happened in here?”
I did my best to reconstruct the events of the afternoon. “He threatened me with probation.”
“And then . . . ?”
“You told me to make him go through with it. So I did. Then he went to the computer, but he blanked at first.”
“Because he couldn’t remember his log-in code. Perfect.” Erica approached me, her eyes alive with excitement. “What did he do next?”
Now I blanked. Her eyes were dazzling and her breath smelled like cinnamon Trident. I didn’t want to disappoint her, so, of course, my brain shut down completely. I strained to remember what had happened, but it seemed that the harder I tried, the blurrier everything got.
“I’m sorry,” I apologized. “I can’t remember.”
Erica came even closer, until she was only a few inches away, looking right into my eyes. “If you tell me, I’ll give you a hug.”
“He opened the dictionary,” I said immediately. It was automatic. Some part of my reptile brain had triggered, desperate for contact from her.
Erica smiled, pleased with herself. “That’s my boy.” Then, instead of giving me my reward, she went to the bookshelf and grabbed the dictionary.
“Um . . . ,” I said. “Didn’t you say you would give me a hug?”
“Yes. But I didn’t say when.”
“Oh. I kind of assumed it’d be now.”
“Which was a mistake. Not very good negotiating on your part.” Erica flipped the dictionary open on the desk and found what she was looking for right inside the front cover. “Ah! Here we go!”
A three-by-five-inch index card was taped there. Thirty-two previous sixteen-character entry codes had already been written on it and crossed out. The card was almost full. When it was, the principal would probably shred it and then tape a new card into the cover; there were plenty of Scotch tape remnants indicating this card was one of hundreds that had been taped there over the years.
The last entry code was h$Kp8*&cc:
[email protected]?x.
Erica booted up the principal’s computer, brought up the log-in page for the mainframe, and entered the code.
Mainframe access granted, the computer told us.
“We’re in!” Erica crowed.
She was smiling broadly now, in her element. She seemed to forget about me as her fingers danced across the keyboard. Giving her access to the CIA’s secret files was like giving a normal kid the keys to Disneyland. Every once in a while, she would pause momentarily, say “Wow” or “That’s interesting,” and then go right back to searching the files again.
I tried to watch what she was doing over her shoulder, but the pages flew past too quickly, one every few seconds. Maybe she was speed-reading them; maybe she was only scanning the first sentences and moving on. There was never time to ask.
Finally, Erica gave a triumphant laugh. She’d found what she was looking for. “Here we go, Ben. Everyone who received a hard copy of your personal file. See if anyone there rings a bell.”
She printed out the page and handed it to me. There were thirteen names on it.
The first was the director of the CIA.
The next five were names I didn’t recognize: Percy Thigpen, Eustace McCrae, Robert Friggoletto, Eleanor Haskett, Xavier Gonzalez. “Who are these people?” I asked.
“High-ranking muckety-mucks at the CIA. The folks who approved your recruitment.” Erica was already back on the computer again, now typing something. “They all keep a pretty low profile. I didn’t expect you to know them. But still, couldn’t hurt to ask.”
The next name on the list was Alexander Hale.
The one after that made me laugh.
“Who on earth is Barnabus Sidebottom?” I asked.
“You’re in his office right now,” Erica replied.
“The principal’s name is Barnabus Sidebottom?”
“Yes.”
“I can see why he prefers to keep that a secret,” I said.
I thought I heard Erica laugh, though when I looked over at her, she was wiping her nose. Or at least pretending to wipe her nose so that I wouldn’t think I’d made her laugh.
I returned my attention to the list. The next four names were professors at spy school. I knew a bit about all of them; Murray, Zoe, and Warren had given me the lowdown on the entire faculty so I’d know whose classes to take and whose to avoid like the plague.
Joseph Crouch was a professor of cryptology, the only one of the four I’d had a class with so far; he’d substituted one day when my regular cryptography teacher had the flu. (At least, the school claimed he had the flu. Zoe suspected he’d actually been called away on a top secret mission.) Crouch was an old-timer, though he’d kept his wits about him and could deliver a riveting lecture. However, he was also so smart that he could be tremendously difficult to follow.
“Is Crouch the one who developed my ‘cryptography skills’ for me?” I asked.
“I’d assume so.” Erica was so engrossed in whatever she was typing on the computer, she didn’t even look up.
Kieran Murphy taught the intricacies of going undercover for years at a time. His was an extremely advanced class, reserved for only sixth-year students, with the extremely rare and talented fifth year making the cut.
Professor Murphy was one of the finest undercover agents the CIA had ever had, having served several multiyear tours of duty that were completely classified, though there was a rumor that he’d done so well passing himself off as a loyal agent in a terrorist cell that the cell’s leader had asked him to serve as best man at his wedding.
Harlan Kelly taught disguise. I thought I’d seen him only once or twice, though I wasn’t sure. No one really knew how many times they’d seen Harlan, as he had a habit of showing up on campus as a completely different person every day. And not always a male person. Murray claimed the principal had once hit on a visiting female professor for half an hour before discovering she was actually Harlan.
Lydia Greenwald-Smith taught counterespionage. She was a good instructor, but that was all anyone knew about her. She was all business in class and kept her life outside of school as private as possible. According to my friends, there were slime molds with more personality.
The final name on the list was the only one that really surprised me.
Tina Cuevo.
“Tina’s on here,” I said.
“Yeah, I saw that.” Erica still didn’t look up from her typing. Her fingers were flying furiously across the keyboard, as though a manifesto were pouring out of her.
“Does that seem strange to you?” I asked.
“Why?”
“She’s the only student.”
“Yes, but she was also supposed to be your resident adviser, until you got put in the Box. Since you were a potential target for enemy operatives, it probably made sense to notify her so she could monitor your safety.”
I thought back to the first time I encountered Tina, the night the assassin had come to my room. She’d had a gun in the pocket of her pajamas. And she’d reacted very quickly to my claim that there was an assassin down the hall. She hadn’t even questioned it, but had immediately gone off to deal with the situation. In retrospect, that all made more sense if she already knew I was mole bait. And yet . . .
“She still might be worth investigating,” I said. “Chip was one of the first people to know about my crypto skills.”
“No, he was one of the first people to admit that he knew about your crypto skills.”
“Even so, he’s a student. What seems more likely—that he got that information from Tina or from one of his professors?”
“I can’t imagine Tina ever sharing classified information with Chip,” Erica said. “She’s ranked third in her class. They don’t let just anyone be a resident adviser.”
“Well, maybe Chip broke into her room, then.”
“Tina’s not dumb enough to leave a classified file out in the open where a yahoo like Chip could find it.”
“Well, someone had to. And I doubt it was the head of the CIA.”
Erica glanced up from the computer. “Just because a person has risen to a position of prominence doesn’t mean they don’t screw up now and then. I’d say any one of those professors could have just as easily leaked your info as Tina. With the possible exception of Kieran Murphy. You don’t last very long as an undercover agent if you’re prone to mistakes.”
“But he did spend the most time among the enemy out of anyone. Maybe someone turned him along the way.”
Erica frowned at the thought of this, but she didn’t deny it was possible either. “We can always come back to the names on that list. But if phase two of our plan works out, we won’t even need to investigate them. The enemy’s going to come right to us.”
Erica finished typing with a flourish, then pressed the enter button. The computer whirred into action.
I suddenly grew very worried. “Um . . . what’s phase two?”
“The e-mail I just sent. Though I used the principal’s e-mail account, so everyone will think he sent it.”
“To whom?”
“A very select group of recipients, including but not limited to the twelve other people on your list.”
All the warmth I’d ever felt toward Erica began to evaporate. “Erica? What have you done?”
“Me?” she asked coyly. “I haven’t done anything. You have. In fact, you’ve just developed something even more important than Pinwheel. Congratulations.”
“That’s not funny.”
Erica erased her search history and logged out of the mainframe. “Pinwheel was merely supposed to be an advancement in encrypting messages,” she explained. “Pretty cool and all, but now the administration has learned you have something even bigger up your sleeve: Jackhammer. The ultimate code breaker. Able to demolish any encryption. A total game changer. The administration has arranged for you to give a highly classified presentation of it to them tomorrow night. Until then, they’ve put you on lockdown to protect you.”
I winced, seeing where this was going. “Because if word of this leaks out, anyone who wants Jackhammer is going to come after me.”
“Exactly.” Erica flicked off the computer and began to clean up any evidence that we’d been in the room. She was maddeningly nonchalant for someone who’d just deliberately put my life in jeopardy.
“You turned me into bait!” I exclaimed.
“You were already bait,” Erica informed me.
“Well, bigger bait, then,” I said. “Like shark chum. You know this is going to be leaked again.”
“Of course it will. The mole won’t be able to resist. But don’t freak out. I also requested a complete security upgrade for you from CIA headquarters. They’ll come through.”
“If the enemy doesn’t find some way to catch everyone with their pants down again!”
Erica took a packet of antiseptic wipes from her pocket and began to clean her fingerprints off the principal’s desk. “Look, we can play this game one of two ways. You can sit around, waiting for the bad guys to come after you whenever they feel like it, or you can make them come to you on your own schedule. I chose option two. This way, we’re prepared for them.”
I steamed over that for a minute. As much as I hated to admit it, there was a good amount of logic to Erica’s argument. But I was still annoyed. “You could have at least told me you were going to do this.”
“I just did.”
“I meant before you did it.”
“If it’s any consolation, I also cancelled your probation,” Erica said. “As far as anyone knows, that order is directly from the principal. And as far as the principal knows, well . . . he’s probably forgotten he ever put you on probation in the first place. If you want, you’re free to move out of the Box and back into a real dorm room.”
My anger at Erica began to dissipate, though I wasn’t ready to be enamored of her again. She was using me just as much as the administration was, putting me in danger to advance her own agenda. “It’d probably be best to stay there one more night,” I said. “At least until the CIA shows up tomorrow.”
“I think that’d be wise.” Erica cased the principal’s office, decided it looked exactly as it had when we’d entered, then ushered me toward the door.
“What if the enemy suspects this is a ruse?” I asked.
“They probably will. But even then, they won’t be able to fully discount it.”
“Which means they’re coming after me no matter what.”
“Yes, it does.” Erica flashed the biggest smile I’d ever seen her give. “Exciting, isn’t it?”
EVIDENCE
The Mess
February 9
1310 hours
“I have one word of advice for you,” Murray told me the next day at lunch. “Run.”
“Run?” I repeated. “Run where?”
“Anywhere. Back home. The Lincoln Memorial. Las Vegas. I don’t care. As long as you get away from here. Because if you stay here, you’re going to die.” Murray dug into a stack of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches he’d made himself. That wasn’t a bad idea, given that the mess was serving sloppy joes that day.
“He can’t run,” Zoe countered. “That’ll put him in more danger. Check out all the security.”
She waved around the mess.
“Yeah,” Warren chimed in. “This place is locked down tighter than Fort Knox.”
There were, in fact, a dozen CIA agents in the room, all there to protect me. Some were actively stationed at the doors to the room, on alert, while others were more covert, pretending to be visiting faculty. Everyone knew they were really there to guard me, however; the academy would never have allowed visiting faculty to eat lunch in the mess for fear of poisoning them.
Erica’s ploy had worked amazingly well. Everyone at the CIA she’d e-mailed about Jackhammer had bought it hook, line, and sinker, which was a little disturbing given that many of them were the top spies in the country. They’d believed the message had actually been sent by the principal—after all, his account was on the mainframe and the mainframe was supposed to be impenetrable. Thus, they’d also believed Jackhammer existed and had to be protected at all costs. Security was arranged immediately. I’d been awakened at six a.m. that morning by a knock on my cell door. It was Alexander Hale, who’d been called in from another assignment (classified, of course) to oversee the operation. He’d come in so fast, he was still wearing a dashiki.
Unfortunately, the story had spread even faster than Erica had predicted. The Academy’s information security was leakier than the Titanic. I hadn’t told my friends anything about Jackhammer, but they’d found out anyhow. The entire school had. Everyone knew everything before breakfast: that I’d invented the ultimate code breaker, that I was presenting it to the academy administration that evening . . . and that I was a marked man.
Alexander wasn’t currently in the mess himself. He was out checking on his troops, who were posted all along the perimeter of the property, as at well as at various points of tactical significance on campus. In all, he’d informed me, there were fifty-two CIA agents on duty that day, all charged exclusively with keeping me safe.
There was also Erica. She’d faded into the background, but she hadn’t let me out of her sight all day. (Even when I’d had to use the bathroom, which was a bit uncomfortable.) At the moment she was two tables away, theoretically reading Driscoll’s User’s Guide to Southeast Asian Artillery while eating a salad, but I knew she was even more finely tuned in to the goings on of the room than usual. Erica hadn’t set up Jackhammer just to let the CIA swoop in and steal her thunder; when the heat came down, she intended to be in the thick of it.