CHAPTER SEVENTEENAs we rode, I tried to get into mental fighting trim. It wasn't easy. Walton, I kept telling myself, you're too old for this kind of intrigue. And why drag this innocent woman in. You're not shuffling paper and cutting deals and then going out for a drink with the other side's counsel after you've both finished impressing your clients by shoving each other against the wall. You're about to start fooling around with guys who carry submachine guns. When you wouldn't know what to do with an Uzi if somebody handed you one. If these boys start shooting, there won't be a lot of polite inquiries concerning due process.Tam was leaning against my shoulder, still perfumed from the bubble bath, and totally relaxed. She seemed to know what she was doing. Or maybe she didn't want to think about the risk we were taking. As for me, this Sam Spade number was definitely not part of my legal arsenal.My thoughts, however, kept coming back to her. TamRichardsonwas the first woman I'd felt this comfortable with for a long, long time. She was a mixture of tough and soft, and she was smart. What I'd always been looking for. Exit Donna, enter Tam. Maybe life was going to give me another inning.If we both lived that long.We'd headed uptown onSixth Avenue, rutted with slush; atFourteenth Streetwe hung a right, east toward Third. The snowplows were out, together with the salt machines, while abandoned cars were lodged in furrows of ice all along the curb. This was definitely shaping up as the storm of the year. Since most of Tanaka's staff lived in the Japanese "ghetto" up in Hartsdale and Eastchester (where there's even a Japanese PTA these days), they surely must have caught the "Orient Express" out of Grand Central before the trains got stopped dead by the weather. Certainly tonight of all nights the DNI offices would be empty. This had to be our shot. So shape up, Walton, and go for it.While we listened to the sleet bounce off the back window, our Jamaican driver proceeded to compare New York City unfavorably with every armpit he'd ever known, as well as a few arctic locales he doubtless was acquainted with only by reputation. I finally tuned him out and began asking myself one question over and over. What exactly are we going to do if we figure out there's some kind of skullduggery afoot? Is there any way to stop them, even if we wanted to?Probably nothing short of Congress's cracking down could keep Noda's money out of the country, and who's going to support that kind of legislation? Most solons, in fact, were hailing DNI and its Japanese billions as the salvation ofAmerica. No lawmaker was staring at the cameras and "viewing with concern" this new godsend of cash. Ditto the stock exchange. They were nervous downtown, sure, but given the avowed purpose of Wall Street—attracting money—there wasn't exactly a groundswell of sentiment against Dai Nippon's massive investments. Noda had come into the market at its darkest moment and begun shoveling in capital. How could this be anything but positive? So every time another Japanese billion rolled in and prices ticked up some more, everybody merely leapt for joy. The Japanese were coming to rejuvenate our land, cheered the Journal. Billions from the cash-rich Japanese capital markets were voting with their feet to be part ofAmerica's resurgence.Maybe they're right, I told myself. About the only discordant voices in this chorus of hesitant hallelujahs belonged to a few op-ed sour-grape academics. I recalled one piece in particular from late last week. Who was it: Robert Reich, Lester Thurow, "Adam Smith"?This must be how it felt all those years inEuropeas they helplessly watched the invasion of American money. Has theU.S.now joined theThird World, capitalized by rich "Yankees" from the East? Now at last we realize that setting up plants here for "co-production" was merely the foot in the door. Does it matter ifU.S.industry is owned by American pension funds or Japanese insurance companies? Guess not, unless you happen to care whether we still control our own destiny.America, soon to be the wholly owned subsidiary . . .The writer was just blowing smoke and knew it. These days a harangue in the Times and a token will get you on the subway. EvenHendersonwas taking a new look at Noda— astounded by his market savvy. The Georgia po' boy who once summarized his own trading style as the four F's ("find 'em, fleece 'em, fuck 'em, and forget 'em") had met his match. What a play Noda had made! To Bill, my new client had acquired the aura of some omnipotent invader from the depths of space—The Creature That Ate Wall Street. His eyes glazed over whenever he reflected on Noda's masterful one-two punch. Billions skimmed inside a week."Tam, take a good, long look." I was pointing up into the night as we emerged onto the slippery sidewalk. "The house that Noda built. Did all of this happen since only late September?""Time flies when you're having fun." She slammed the door and headed for the lobby, calm as could be. Okay, Walton, you'd better toughen up too.I rewarded our grumbling cabbie with a vulgar tip and watched the vehicle slowly roll off into the sleet, tires crunching, to end another of those passingNew Yorkintimacies so vivid yet so forgettable.As it turned out, lobby security was a breeze, since yours truly had approved the application of the night guard personally right after DNI took over. Eddie Mazzola, blue uniform and grasping a Styrofoam cup of coffee, glanced up from the Sunday Daily News, his face genericStaten Island."What brings you out on a night like this, Mr. Walton? Nothing wrong, I hope?""Do me a favor, Eddie. Burn this place down. We'll split the insurance and both retire toMiami Beach. Who needsNew York?"He concurred the idea had merit. I then went on to mention that we'd just come from uptown; Dr. Richardson here had forgotten some kind of gobbledygook up on twelve, and we wouldn't be a minute."Tell you the truth, Eddie, my fingers are too damned numb to bother signing the visitor's book."He saluted and returned his concentration to the Knicks' perennial slump.We took the night elevator up, and somewhere around the time we passed the ninth floor, we managed to settle on a story. Noda, we would say, had called Tam and asked her to hurry up a special report on one of the firms for Monday. We'd just left a dinner party on theEast Side, thought we'd drop by and pick up some printouts since she wanted to work at home tomorrow. Shouldn't be more than a minute.As the number above the door hit twelve, I tried to remember how to pray.In the hallway we waved at the TV eye and the steel door opened. Standing there was Shiro Yamada: cropped hair, trifle burly, gray uniform. One of the regulars. He shifted his Uzi as we came through. Then he recognized Tam and bowed low.By the wildest of good fortune Yamada only spoke Japanese, a linguistic limitation that turned out to be crucial. Tam began by observing the niceties: she commiserated with him about the weather, the late hour, would the next shift be able to get through and relieve him. He was all bows and deference andhai, hai.Finally she worked around to why we were there, almost as though that were a nuisance and the real reason had been to drop by for a chat. By the way, she added, there were a couple of things she needed from her office. She gave him the story.Yamada listened, bowing,hai, hai, then sucked in his breath to demonstrate we'd presented him with a serious conflict of obligations—which for a Japanese is the most disturbing prospect imaginable. This situation entails great difficulty, he said, drawing in more air through his front teeth.Honto ni muzukashii desu.Muzukashii deshoo ka? Enquired Tam. Difficulty?Hai, so desu. Yes, and he was deeply apologetic. Lots ofsumimasen, very sorry.At first I thought he just hadn't bought the story. But then it turned out that there were these rules, you see. No one was allowed on the floor weekends without a pass signed personally by Tanaka-san. He glanced at his watch. It was nearlytwo A.M.More heavy intakes of air andmuzukashii’s. Of course the honorable Dr. Richardson-san, being an honorable director herself, should be able to come and go as she pleased, but the rules . . .He seemed to be pleading withTarnto help him find a resolution for this towering dilemma."What's the problem, Tam?" I enquired, sotto voce."No fucking pass."After an extremely awkward pause a light bulb clicked on in my simple mind. With great theatrics I suddenly slapped my own forehead, gave Tam a tip-off in English, and began rummaging my pockets. When we left the house I'd grabbed an old topcoat, not worn since that rainy night I met Noda, and in it somewhere was . . .She started explaining that Walton-san may have brought the pass with him and merely let that fact slip his mind.Then I felt what I was looking for, in the bottom of the inside pocket. Noda'smeishi, his business card, complete with the English note scribbled across the back."How stupid of me," I apologized. "Had it all along. Noda- san's 'top priority' pass. He gave it to me only yesterday."Yamada took the business card and studied it with a puzzled look. What did this have to do with anything?That's when I impatiently turned it over and pointed to the English scribbling on the back. Noda's initials, I groused, right there at the bottom."Hai, wakarimasu." He understood that Noda-sama surely had written this, but so what? It wasn't the official form that the rules specified. Moremuzukashii.Noda-san was in a rush, I apologized again. Didn't have time to locate the regular form. Tam passed that along in better Japanese."Soo desu . . ." Yamada thoughtfully agreed that such oversights sometimes happened. Everybody knew the bigdaimyohad a tendency to override official channels. He shifted his Uzi uncertainly."Noda-sama insisted I finish this report by Monday," Tam stressed. "We should only be a minute."Yamada scrutinized the back of the card a moment longer, holding it up to the light. What was he going to do?Finally he handed it back, bowed reluctantly, and looked the other way. It was a go."God, that was close." Tam closed the door behind us and clicked on the lights. "You don't know how lucky we were. If Morikawa had been on duty tonight, forget it. He'd never have bought that cock-and-bull routine."About a dozen computer workstations had been installedon twelve to link up with the mainframe and data center on eleven. As we moved quickly past the sleeping screens, blind eyes staring vacantly into space, there was an eerie, ghostlike abandonment to the place, all the more so because of its hectic motion during regular hours. The phantoms of regimented analysts seemed to haunt the rows of empty desks. Tam remarked she'd never seen it like this: the nerve center off duty. Only the storm of the decade, together withtwo A.M.Sunday morning, could create such solitude. It took God to shut down Dai Nippon."Okay, time to move fast. Let's hit Mori's lair." I was whispering as we neared the corner office. Ahead was the closed door, solid oak. I took a deep breath and reached for the knob.It was locked."No dice." I looked around at Tam, who was still wearing her lamb coat, gray against her dark hair, sleet melting on the shoulders."Let me try." She gave it a twist. Nothing. "I don't suppose we'd be very smart just to kick it in. Though that's what I feel like right now, after all our trouble." She turned to me. "Maybe there's a key somewhere in Noda's office? Think there's a chance?""Could be." I was rummaging my pockets. "First, though, let me check something."I pulled out a ring and began to flip through it. "I ended up with a master, courtesy of the RM&S floor manager that day they turned in their keys. Now, if this internal door lock hasn't been changed yet, maybe . . ."I selected one and kissed it for luck. "Here goes."The key, a large silver model, was resistant, the way masters always are. Undeterred, I wiggled it forcefully, and slowly it slipped into the knob. A couple of jiggles more and the thing began to revolve under my hand.We emitted matching sighs of relief as Tam shoved the door wide and reached for the light switch. "Now I've got to regress into the past. A lot of their reports are in Japanese." She went on to explain that although she could read thekanasyllabaries easily enough, she'd forgotten a lot of thekanjiideograms. She could piece together enough to work through a simple newspaper story, but heavy technical prose was always tough.She quickly sorted through the papers piled in neat stacksatop Mori's desk, but who knew what most of them said? Nothing looked like my stolen list. Next she checked the drawers of the desk. One contained a heavily marked printout; the others, nothing.Time was ticking. If Yamada decided to make the rounds, no quantity of creative fiction would save us.She quickly grabbed the printout. At least we had one item that might give us something. What, though, we still weren't sure. Nothing resembled the page I'd lifted, but locating that document now appeared increasingly like a long shot anyhow. Guess everything seems easy till you actually try doing it.Where else to look?I glanced around the room, wondering about the file cabinet. Probably locked, and besides . . .That's when I saw it. On a side table next to some technical books was an item we'd both failed entirely to notice. A large leather attache case."Tam, I think we've hit pay dirt. Check that out. Do you suppose she could have forgotten it last night when they shut the place down?""Maybe she didn't need it. Anything's possible. I remember seeing her carrying it around yesterday afternoon.""Well, could be this is our find." I lifted it . . . and realized it was empty."Shit." I slammed it down, and just then detected a faint rattle inside. Hold on a minute.I carefully shook it again and listened. "Tam, there's something in here.""I vote we take a peek."Which is what we did. No harm, right? I mean, the darned thing was just lying there. No "break and entry."Guess what was inside. Not paper. Not a MITI report. Not lunch. Nothing in fact except for a shiny little compact disk, a CD."What the hell is this doing in here? Did she bring along some Beach Boys?""Matt, that's an optical disk, a CD-ROM." She suddenly seemed very pleased."Huh?""Compact disk, read-only memory. Except this one looks to be erasable and writable. This is the latest thing in computer storage technology." She held it up to the light, which reflected a rainbow of colors off its iridescent surface. "Maybe we've found what we came for. Let's take it and go.""Is this like the CDs in record stores? The ones you play back using some kind of laser gizmo?""Same technology, only this is for text and data, not music. These can hold five-hundred megabytes, about one hundred and fifty thousand pages.""Then I have some disquieting information to impart. I saw somebody come in here one day after shopping at Tower Records, and a CD he'd bought tripped the metal detector out there in Yamada's anteroom like he was wearing sleigh bells. Down inside this shiny plastic must be aluminum or something. We can't take it out." I turned it in my hand. "And besides, what would we do with it anyway? Stick it in a Walkman and listen to all the little digits spin by? In hi-fi?""I've got a reader at home . . . but wait, there's a better way." She lifted it from my grasp and headed out onto the floor. "Ever hear of computer crime?""In passing.""Good. Then what you're about to witness won't shock you."I watched as she kicked on one of the NEC desk stations and loaded in a program. Next she walked over, flipped a switch on a little box, and a drawer glided out. In went Mori's shiny disk. Another button was pushed, the drawer receded, and the disk was spinning silently.Well, I thought. You want peaches, you shake the tree, right? Maybe she's about to kick hell out of the orchard."I'm going to dump this into the memory of the mother ship downstairs." She did some fiddling, then typed in her password to sign on the mainframe on eleven. "Beam us down, Scottie." In moments she and all those silicon cells below us were beeping away at each other. She didn't look up, just kept typing away, the hollow click-clack that's become the signature sound of our computer age. Finally she leaned back and breathed. "Okay, it's reading the disk. After it's in memory down there, we can pull up the contents here on the screen and see what we've got."I don't know how long it took to read the thing. Probably no more than a minute or so, though it seemed forever. Finally something flashed on the screen and told us the disk had been dumped. Tam took it out of its little player and passed it to me."Here, put this back in her case. While I start pulling up the file."I'd just finished snapping it shut when I heard an expletive from out on the floor that would not be judged suitable for family audiences."Watch your language."She was sitting there staring at the screen. Finally she turned and looked at me. "So close, yet so far. It's encrypted'.""It's what?""Come and look."I did. On the screen was a mass of numeric garbage. What was this all about?"Matt, when this disk was written, whatever went on it was scrambled using some key, probably the DES system, the 'data-encryption standard.' It keeps unauthorized intruders like us from snooping.""How does anybody read it?""A decrypting key must be in the hardware down on eleven. But we can't get through to that level of the machine without an 'access code.' Which we don't have.""Very smart. The electronic keys to the kingdom." I watched, wondering all the while what Yamada was doing out there. Should I blunder out and chat him up with my Berlitz Japanese, just to keep him occupied? The clock above the door was ticking away."Tam, why not just try activating the key using your own password as the access code? Maybe it'll get you into that level on the mainframe."She gave it a go, without much enthusiasm. Predictably the message came back, 'ACCESS CODE NOT RECOGNIZED.'"Well, try some others." I was grasping. "Hit it with 'NODA' or 'MORI.'"She did, but after both were rejected the workstation suddenly signed off. Click, out of the system."What's happened now?""More bad news. I forgot the mainframe is programmed so that you get three tries at a protected code and then it breaks the connection. That's to keep crackers like us from sitting here all day and running passwords at random. Another security precaution.""Three chances to guess the secret word and then you'reout. Sounds like a game show." I just stood there and scratched my head. Seemed we were, to be blunt, shit out of luck. "What now, Professor? I assume there are about a hundred million alphanumeric combinations they could use.""Close." She was clicking away at the keyboard. "So let's think a minute." She glanced back at me. "Why don't we assume for a minute that this is a MITI disk.""Safe bet.""So the decryptor key in the machine here would be from MITI, right, since Mori obviously brought the disk to be read?""Sounds good.""You know, I was in Ken's office once, and I recall watching some of his staff playing around with the information on one of these disks. Don't know why I still remember this, but the password they used was ... I think MX something, three letters, followed by six digits. The digits were always changing, but the prefix was the same.""So if your wild guess about this being a MITI disk is right, and the first two letters of the three-letter alpha part are still MX, that means there are exactly, what—twenty-six letters in the alphabet times a million numbers—twenty-six million combinations. We're looking for one number in twenty-six million? So if it takes, say, five seconds to type one in and try it, we're talking roughly a hundred and thirty million seconds to go the course." I glanced again at the door. "Besides which, we get kicked off after every third try. Working around the clock, we ought to have it sometime about, what, 2001?"She glanced back at the screen, then suddenly whirled around, a funny look on her face. "What do you have in your office?""What do you mean?""Don't you have a PC downtown?""Just a little IBM AT, 512K. And also a Mac, a toy I use to draw cutsey-poo pictures now and then and do covers for reports.""How about a telephone modem?""Built in. How else could I handle all that trading?""And it's up?""The IBM? Never turn it off. Little twitch left over from playing theHong Kongexchanges. Habits die hard.""Okay, I'm going to try and use it to crack the code in DNI's mainframe."Honestly, for a second there I thought my hearing had gone. "My little IBM against that monster? How, forchrissake? There're twenty-six million—""We'll have to do something not very nice. Since the Japanese aren't used to hackers, those bearded malcontents in firms who screw up business computers for spite, these workstations aren't buffered off sensitive parts of the system. We are now going to exploit that trust in Japanese culture. We're going to organize these terminals, hook them to your computer, and then direct that network against the mainframe downstairs. Something no Japanese would ever dream of doing." She got up and went down the row clicking on machines. "There's a list of names in my office, there by the phone. Can you bring it?""Coming up." I fetched it. It was a temporary "phone book" of the staff on the floor. She took the list and went back down the line of stations, typing something on each keyboard."What are you doing, Tam? This is crazy.""It'll just take a second. Everybody here has a password to sign on to the mainframe, but it's just the name of the person." She came back to the first workstation. "Now the mainframe thinks ten people just signed on to the system. We'll use these terminals to try access codes on the main computer. Your PC will control them so that each terminal hits it with two codes and then the next one goes on line. That way we'll never get kicked off. It should get around the 'three times and you're out' filter downstairs." She began frantically typing again."What are you doing now?""We could try alphanumerics sequentially or randomly. I think randomly is probably better. It'll be faster. So I'm writing a little program for the mainframe, a random-number generator. It'll start making up random access codes of MX followed by a letter and six digits and sending them to your PC downtown, which will immediately feed them back in pairs to these terminals. Out one door, in another. Maybe that will fool it.""Christ, woman, you've got a criminal mind. Is this the kind of stuff you teach at NYU?""What's your number downtown?" She was typing away again.I wrote it down and handed it to her. "I don't have the foggiest idea how you're going to be able to swing this.""That's all right. I do. Just let me get your IBM networked into these terminals here. Fortunately it's compatible, and all it's going to be doing for now is bouncing back numbers generated by the mainframe." She flipped some switches, then typed my number onto the screen. I momentarily wondered if the sleet had knocked out the phone system. It hadn't.Again the seconds crawled by, but as soon as she'd finished her chat with my IBM downtown, the row of terminals suddenly started beeping away. Two shots, beep, the next one came alive; two shots, beep, right down the row."Okay, your computer is running the show now. Sooner or later maybe something will click." She punched a couple more keys, then got up."It's done?""Ready to rock and roll." She was putting on her coat. "We'll be running millions of numbers.""Isn't anybody going to know you've pulled this?" I was, I confess, totally dumbfounded."Not unless they discover my little program in the mainframe downstairs. But it's just a random-number generator, something any sophomore could write. The trick is, we're hitting it with so many terminals it won't be programmed to keep track of all these little elves trying to sneak in. And when we're through we'll turn them all off using your modem downtown.""Good God, whatever happened to pen and pencil?" I was still dazed. She'd done it all so fast. "If you can find the decryptor key and get into the files, then what? You going to dump all the info on Mori's sexy little CD down at my place?""I hope you've got lots of paper. Who knows what's on it." She was shutting off the lights. "Come on, let's get out of here.""Aye, aye, Professor." I walked back, clicked off the light in Mori's office, then paused to double-check the lock."We came for printouts, remember. We only have Mori's." I was joining her. She glanced at the stack on her desk, then grabbed a pile and handed them to me."You'd better carry these. And don't be put off by my 'ugly American' routine at the door. It'll be for a purpose."After she'd doused the rest of the overheads, we passedthrough the first security door and greeted Yamada. While I fiddled with Tam's printouts, she proceeded to give him a very Japanese-style dressing down, disguised as a series of pale compliments. She reviewed all her work for Dai Nippon, just happening to mention Noda-sama this and Noda-sama that every other breath. The hapless guy sucked in his breath and bowed a lot andhai, so-ed about once a second and thensumimasen-ed some more. By the time the elevator appeared, she'd destroyed him. He'd lost so much face he'd never dare mention our visit to Noda or anybody.About two minutes later we were out on the sleet-covered sidewalk, looking for a cab. It was a heroic effort, but eventually we were headed back downtown. Secure and holding.Although my upstairs office was freezing, I was mesmerized watching the flashing green numbers spin on my little IBM screen. It was like playing one of those "fruit machines" at the local bars, except we were sitting there witnessing a gigantic intelligence turned against itself, searching for the crack in its own armor. There was something ironic about the fact that the Japanese were such a homogenous, disciplined people they didn't need vast arrays of American-style safeguards to keep crazies off their computers. Unfortunately for them, they weren't expecting a couple of American criminals with no such scruples.Byfour A.M.we had watched three million random numbers tried; by first light we were up to six."Tam, I'm beginning to get this sinking feeling MITI must have changed the prefix." I was bringing a new pot of coffee, half staggering up the carpeted stairs. "Or maybe we should have done it sequentially.""Maybe, but that would mean wasting a lot of time on numbers that are improbable. This is our best chance." She poured another cup of java while I just stretched out on the floor. "Damn. I wish I could remember what the other alpha was. MX what? That could save us days.""We don't have days." I closed my eyes. "Try hypnosis."She sat staring at the screen for a few moments, then slowly wheeled around. "I know why I couldn't remember it. It was a repeat. Matt, it was X.""Go with it.""Hang on." She did some quick typing and hit the playbutton. Her face was showing the strain, but I loved her looks. What a champ. We were together; us against the beast. Unfortunately, though, the beast was still ahead.At seven-thirty Ben roused himself and lumbered expectantly up the stairs. With a silent curse I put on my boots and took him out for a stroll on the ice. He hated it. When we came back, I decided to give up and crash. Come on, this was insane, a billion-to-one shot and we didn't even know what the prize was at the bottom of the box. We were getting nowhere. MITI had changed the code and screwed us. Fortunately, however, I heroically vowed to try and stay awake tilleight A.M.That was it. The end.At exactly7:49the numbers abruptly stopped. "ACCESS CODE MXX909090 CONFIRMED—DECRYPTOR KEY ACTIVATED." Confidential MITI memos started scrolling in orderly green clumps up the screen."My God, Matt, turn on your printer."
As we rode, I tried to get into mental fighting trim. It wasn't easy. Walton, I kept telling myself, you're too old for this kind of intrigue. And why drag this innocent woman in. You're not shuffling paper and cutting deals and then going out for a drink with the other side's counsel after you've both finished impressing your clients by shoving each other against the wall. You're about to start fooling around with guys who carry submachine guns. When you wouldn't know what to do with an Uzi if somebody handed you one. If these boys start shooting, there won't be a lot of polite inquiries concerning due process.
Tam was leaning against my shoulder, still perfumed from the bubble bath, and totally relaxed. She seemed to know what she was doing. Or maybe she didn't want to think about the risk we were taking. As for me, this Sam Spade number was definitely not part of my legal arsenal.
My thoughts, however, kept coming back to her. TamRichardsonwas the first woman I'd felt this comfortable with for a long, long time. She was a mixture of tough and soft, and she was smart. What I'd always been looking for. Exit Donna, enter Tam. Maybe life was going to give me another inning.
If we both lived that long.
We'd headed uptown onSixth Avenue, rutted with slush; atFourteenth Streetwe hung a right, east toward Third. The snowplows were out, together with the salt machines, while abandoned cars were lodged in furrows of ice all along the curb. This was definitely shaping up as the storm of the year. Since most of Tanaka's staff lived in the Japanese "ghetto" up in Hartsdale and Eastchester (where there's even a Japanese PTA these days), they surely must have caught the "Orient Express" out of Grand Central before the trains got stopped dead by the weather. Certainly tonight of all nights the DNI offices would be empty. This had to be our shot. So shape up, Walton, and go for it.
While we listened to the sleet bounce off the back window, our Jamaican driver proceeded to compare New York City unfavorably with every armpit he'd ever known, as well as a few arctic locales he doubtless was acquainted with only by reputation. I finally tuned him out and began asking myself one question over and over. What exactly are we going to do if we figure out there's some kind of skullduggery afoot? Is there any way to stop them, even if we wanted to?
Probably nothing short of Congress's cracking down could keep Noda's money out of the country, and who's going to support that kind of legislation? Most solons, in fact, were hailing DNI and its Japanese billions as the salvation ofAmerica. No lawmaker was staring at the cameras and "viewing with concern" this new godsend of cash. Ditto the stock exchange. They were nervous downtown, sure, but given the avowed purpose of Wall Street—attracting money—there wasn't exactly a groundswell of sentiment against Dai Nippon's massive investments. Noda had come into the market at its darkest moment and begun shoveling in capital. How could this be anything but positive? So every time another Japanese billion rolled in and prices ticked up some more, everybody merely leapt for joy. The Japanese were coming to rejuvenate our land, cheered the Journal. Billions from the cash-rich Japanese capital markets were voting with their feet to be part ofAmerica's resurgence.
Maybe they're right, I told myself. About the only discordant voices in this chorus of hesitant hallelujahs belonged to a few op-ed sour-grape academics. I recalled one piece in particular from late last week. Who was it: Robert Reich, Lester Thurow, "Adam Smith"?
This must be how it felt all those years inEuropeas they helplessly watched the invasion of American money. Has theU.S.now joined theThird World, capitalized by rich "Yankees" from the East? Now at last we realize that setting up plants here for "co-production" was merely the foot in the door. Does it matter ifU.S.industry is owned by American pension funds or Japanese insurance companies? Guess not, unless you happen to care whether we still control our own destiny.America, soon to be the wholly owned subsidiary . . .
The writer was just blowing smoke and knew it. These days a harangue in the Times and a token will get you on the subway. EvenHendersonwas taking a new look at Noda— astounded by his market savvy. The Georgia po' boy who once summarized his own trading style as the four F's ("find 'em, fleece 'em, fuck 'em, and forget 'em") had met his match. What a play Noda had made! To Bill, my new client had acquired the aura of some omnipotent invader from the depths of space—The Creature That Ate Wall Street. His eyes glazed over whenever he reflected on Noda's masterful one-two punch. Billions skimmed inside a week.
"Tam, take a good, long look." I was pointing up into the night as we emerged onto the slippery sidewalk. "The house that Noda built. Did all of this happen since only late September?"
"Time flies when you're having fun." She slammed the door and headed for the lobby, calm as could be. Okay, Walton, you'd better toughen up too.
I rewarded our grumbling cabbie with a vulgar tip and watched the vehicle slowly roll off into the sleet, tires crunching, to end another of those passingNew Yorkintimacies so vivid yet so forgettable.
As it turned out, lobby security was a breeze, since yours truly had approved the application of the night guard personally right after DNI took over. Eddie Mazzola, blue uniform and grasping a Styrofoam cup of coffee, glanced up from the Sunday Daily News, his face genericStaten Island.
"What brings you out on a night like this, Mr. Walton? Nothing wrong, I hope?"
"Do me a favor, Eddie. Burn this place down. We'll split the insurance and both retire toMiami Beach. Who needsNew York?"
He concurred the idea had merit. I then went on to mention that we'd just come from uptown; Dr. Richardson here had forgotten some kind of gobbledygook up on twelve, and we wouldn't be a minute.
"Tell you the truth, Eddie, my fingers are too damned numb to bother signing the visitor's book."
He saluted and returned his concentration to the Knicks' perennial slump.
We took the night elevator up, and somewhere around the time we passed the ninth floor, we managed to settle on a story. Noda, we would say, had called Tam and asked her to hurry up a special report on one of the firms for Monday. We'd just left a dinner party on theEast Side, thought we'd drop by and pick up some printouts since she wanted to work at home tomorrow. Shouldn't be more than a minute.
As the number above the door hit twelve, I tried to remember how to pray.
In the hallway we waved at the TV eye and the steel door opened. Standing there was Shiro Yamada: cropped hair, trifle burly, gray uniform. One of the regulars. He shifted his Uzi as we came through. Then he recognized Tam and bowed low.
By the wildest of good fortune Yamada only spoke Japanese, a linguistic limitation that turned out to be crucial. Tam began by observing the niceties: she commiserated with him about the weather, the late hour, would the next shift be able to get through and relieve him. He was all bows and deference andhai, hai.
Finally she worked around to why we were there, almost as though that were a nuisance and the real reason had been to drop by for a chat. By the way, she added, there were a couple of things she needed from her office. She gave him the story.
Yamada listened, bowing,hai, hai, then sucked in his breath to demonstrate we'd presented him with a serious conflict of obligations—which for a Japanese is the most disturbing prospect imaginable. This situation entails great difficulty, he said, drawing in more air through his front teeth.Honto ni muzukashii desu.
Muzukashii deshoo ka? Enquired Tam. Difficulty?
Hai, so desu. Yes, and he was deeply apologetic. Lots ofsumimasen, very sorry.
At first I thought he just hadn't bought the story. But then it turned out that there were these rules, you see. No one was allowed on the floor weekends without a pass signed personally by Tanaka-san. He glanced at his watch. It was nearlytwo A.M.More heavy intakes of air andmuzukashii’s. Of course the honorable Dr. Richardson-san, being an honorable director herself, should be able to come and go as she pleased, but the rules . . .
He seemed to be pleading withTarnto help him find a resolution for this towering dilemma.
"What's the problem, Tam?" I enquired, sotto voce.
"No fucking pass."
After an extremely awkward pause a light bulb clicked on in my simple mind. With great theatrics I suddenly slapped my own forehead, gave Tam a tip-off in English, and began rummaging my pockets. When we left the house I'd grabbed an old topcoat, not worn since that rainy night I met Noda, and in it somewhere was . . .
She started explaining that Walton-san may have brought the pass with him and merely let that fact slip his mind.
Then I felt what I was looking for, in the bottom of the inside pocket. Noda'smeishi, his business card, complete with the English note scribbled across the back.
"How stupid of me," I apologized. "Had it all along. Noda- san's 'top priority' pass. He gave it to me only yesterday."
Yamada took the business card and studied it with a puzzled look. What did this have to do with anything?
That's when I impatiently turned it over and pointed to the English scribbling on the back. Noda's initials, I groused, right there at the bottom.
"Hai, wakarimasu." He understood that Noda-sama surely had written this, but so what? It wasn't the official form that the rules specified. Moremuzukashii.
Noda-san was in a rush, I apologized again. Didn't have time to locate the regular form. Tam passed that along in better Japanese.
"Soo desu . . ." Yamada thoughtfully agreed that such oversights sometimes happened. Everybody knew the bigdaimyohad a tendency to override official channels. He shifted his Uzi uncertainly.
"Noda-sama insisted I finish this report by Monday," Tam stressed. "We should only be a minute."
Yamada scrutinized the back of the card a moment longer, holding it up to the light. What was he going to do?
Finally he handed it back, bowed reluctantly, and looked the other way. It was a go.
"God, that was close." Tam closed the door behind us and clicked on the lights. "You don't know how lucky we were. If Morikawa had been on duty tonight, forget it. He'd never have bought that cock-and-bull routine."
About a dozen computer workstations had been installed
on twelve to link up with the mainframe and data center on eleven. As we moved quickly past the sleeping screens, blind eyes staring vacantly into space, there was an eerie, ghostlike abandonment to the place, all the more so because of its hectic motion during regular hours. The phantoms of regimented analysts seemed to haunt the rows of empty desks. Tam remarked she'd never seen it like this: the nerve center off duty. Only the storm of the decade, together withtwo A.M.Sunday morning, could create such solitude. It took God to shut down Dai Nippon.
"Okay, time to move fast. Let's hit Mori's lair." I was whispering as we neared the corner office. Ahead was the closed door, solid oak. I took a deep breath and reached for the knob.
It was locked.
"No dice." I looked around at Tam, who was still wearing her lamb coat, gray against her dark hair, sleet melting on the shoulders.
"Let me try." She gave it a twist. Nothing. "I don't suppose we'd be very smart just to kick it in. Though that's what I feel like right now, after all our trouble." She turned to me. "Maybe there's a key somewhere in Noda's office? Think there's a chance?"
"Could be." I was rummaging my pockets. "First, though, let me check something."
I pulled out a ring and began to flip through it. "I ended up with a master, courtesy of the RM&S floor manager that day they turned in their keys. Now, if this internal door lock hasn't been changed yet, maybe . . ."I selected one and kissed it for luck. "Here goes."
The key, a large silver model, was resistant, the way masters always are. Undeterred, I wiggled it forcefully, and slowly it slipped into the knob. A couple of jiggles more and the thing began to revolve under my hand.
We emitted matching sighs of relief as Tam shoved the door wide and reached for the light switch. "Now I've got to regress into the past. A lot of their reports are in Japanese." She went on to explain that although she could read thekanasyllabaries easily enough, she'd forgotten a lot of thekanjiideograms. She could piece together enough to work through a simple newspaper story, but heavy technical prose was always tough.
She quickly sorted through the papers piled in neat stacks
atop Mori's desk, but who knew what most of them said? Nothing looked like my stolen list. Next she checked the drawers of the desk. One contained a heavily marked printout; the others, nothing.
Time was ticking. If Yamada decided to make the rounds, no quantity of creative fiction would save us.
She quickly grabbed the printout. At least we had one item that might give us something. What, though, we still weren't sure. Nothing resembled the page I'd lifted, but locating that document now appeared increasingly like a long shot anyhow. Guess everything seems easy till you actually try doing it.
Where else to look?
I glanced around the room, wondering about the file cabinet. Probably locked, and besides . . .
That's when I saw it. On a side table next to some technical books was an item we'd both failed entirely to notice. A large leather attache case.
"Tam, I think we've hit pay dirt. Check that out. Do you suppose she could have forgotten it last night when they shut the place down?"
"Maybe she didn't need it. Anything's possible. I remember seeing her carrying it around yesterday afternoon."
"Well, could be this is our find." I lifted it . . . and realized it was empty.
"Shit." I slammed it down, and just then detected a faint rattle inside. Hold on a minute.
I carefully shook it again and listened. "Tam, there's something in here."
"I vote we take a peek."
Which is what we did. No harm, right? I mean, the darned thing was just lying there. No "break and entry."
Guess what was inside. Not paper. Not a MITI report. Not lunch. Nothing in fact except for a shiny little compact disk, a CD.
"What the hell is this doing in here? Did she bring along some Beach Boys?"
"Matt, that's an optical disk, a CD-ROM." She suddenly seemed very pleased.
"Huh?"
"Compact disk, read-only memory. Except this one looks to be erasable and writable. This is the latest thing in computer storage technology." She held it up to the light, which reflected a rainbow of colors off its iridescent surface. "Maybe we've found what we came for. Let's take it and go."
"Is this like the CDs in record stores? The ones you play back using some kind of laser gizmo?"
"Same technology, only this is for text and data, not music. These can hold five-hundred megabytes, about one hundred and fifty thousand pages."
"Then I have some disquieting information to impart. I saw somebody come in here one day after shopping at Tower Records, and a CD he'd bought tripped the metal detector out there in Yamada's anteroom like he was wearing sleigh bells. Down inside this shiny plastic must be aluminum or something. We can't take it out." I turned it in my hand. "And besides, what would we do with it anyway? Stick it in a Walkman and listen to all the little digits spin by? In hi-fi?"
"I've got a reader at home . . . but wait, there's a better way." She lifted it from my grasp and headed out onto the floor. "Ever hear of computer crime?"
"In passing."
"Good. Then what you're about to witness won't shock you."
I watched as she kicked on one of the NEC desk stations and loaded in a program. Next she walked over, flipped a switch on a little box, and a drawer glided out. In went Mori's shiny disk. Another button was pushed, the drawer receded, and the disk was spinning silently.
Well, I thought. You want peaches, you shake the tree, right? Maybe she's about to kick hell out of the orchard.
"I'm going to dump this into the memory of the mother ship downstairs." She did some fiddling, then typed in her password to sign on the mainframe on eleven. "Beam us down, Scottie." In moments she and all those silicon cells below us were beeping away at each other. She didn't look up, just kept typing away, the hollow click-clack that's become the signature sound of our computer age. Finally she leaned back and breathed. "Okay, it's reading the disk. After it's in memory down there, we can pull up the contents here on the screen and see what we've got."
I don't know how long it took to read the thing. Probably no more than a minute or so, though it seemed forever. Finally something flashed on the screen and told us the disk had been dumped. Tam took it out of its little player and passed it to me.
"Here, put this back in her case. While I start pulling up the file."
I'd just finished snapping it shut when I heard an expletive from out on the floor that would not be judged suitable for family audiences.
"Watch your language."
She was sitting there staring at the screen. Finally she turned and looked at me. "So close, yet so far. It's encrypted'."
"It's what?"
"Come and look."
I did. On the screen was a mass of numeric garbage. What was this all about?
"Matt, when this disk was written, whatever went on it was scrambled using some key, probably the DES system, the 'data-encryption standard.' It keeps unauthorized intruders like us from snooping."
"How does anybody read it?"
"A decrypting key must be in the hardware down on eleven. But we can't get through to that level of the machine without an 'access code.' Which we don't have."
"Very smart. The electronic keys to the kingdom." I watched, wondering all the while what Yamada was doing out there. Should I blunder out and chat him up with my Berlitz Japanese, just to keep him occupied? The clock above the door was ticking away.
"Tam, why not just try activating the key using your own password as the access code? Maybe it'll get you into that level on the mainframe."
She gave it a go, without much enthusiasm. Predictably the message came back, 'ACCESS CODE NOT RECOGNIZED.'
"Well, try some others." I was grasping. "Hit it with 'NODA' or 'MORI.'"
She did, but after both were rejected the workstation suddenly signed off. Click, out of the system.
"What's happened now?"
"More bad news. I forgot the mainframe is programmed so that you get three tries at a protected code and then it breaks the connection. That's to keep crackers like us from sitting here all day and running passwords at random. Another security precaution."
"Three chances to guess the secret word and then you're
out. Sounds like a game show." I just stood there and scratched my head. Seemed we were, to be blunt, shit out of luck. "What now, Professor? I assume there are about a hundred million alphanumeric combinations they could use."
"Close." She was clicking away at the keyboard. "So let's think a minute." She glanced back at me. "Why don't we assume for a minute that this is a MITI disk."
"Safe bet."
"So the decryptor key in the machine here would be from MITI, right, since Mori obviously brought the disk to be read?"
"Sounds good."
"You know, I was in Ken's office once, and I recall watching some of his staff playing around with the information on one of these disks. Don't know why I still remember this, but the password they used was ... I think MX something, three letters, followed by six digits. The digits were always changing, but the prefix was the same."
"So if your wild guess about this being a MITI disk is right, and the first two letters of the three-letter alpha part are still MX, that means there are exactly, what—twenty-six letters in the alphabet times a million numbers—twenty-six million combinations. We're looking for one number in twenty-six million? So if it takes, say, five seconds to type one in and try it, we're talking roughly a hundred and thirty million seconds to go the course." I glanced again at the door. "Besides which, we get kicked off after every third try. Working around the clock, we ought to have it sometime about, what, 2001?"
She glanced back at the screen, then suddenly whirled around, a funny look on her face. "What do you have in your office?"
"What do you mean?"
"Don't you have a PC downtown?"
"Just a little IBM AT, 512K. And also a Mac, a toy I use to draw cutsey-poo pictures now and then and do covers for reports."
"How about a telephone modem?"
"Built in. How else could I handle all that trading?"
"And it's up?"
"The IBM? Never turn it off. Little twitch left over from playing theHong Kongexchanges. Habits die hard."
"Okay, I'm going to try and use it to crack the code in DNI's mainframe."
Honestly, for a second there I thought my hearing had gone. "My little IBM against that monster? How, forchrissake? There're twenty-six million—"
"We'll have to do something not very nice. Since the Japanese aren't used to hackers, those bearded malcontents in firms who screw up business computers for spite, these workstations aren't buffered off sensitive parts of the system. We are now going to exploit that trust in Japanese culture. We're going to organize these terminals, hook them to your computer, and then direct that network against the mainframe downstairs. Something no Japanese would ever dream of doing." She got up and went down the row clicking on machines. "There's a list of names in my office, there by the phone. Can you bring it?"
"Coming up." I fetched it. It was a temporary "phone book" of the staff on the floor. She took the list and went back down the line of stations, typing something on each keyboard.
"What are you doing, Tam? This is crazy."
"It'll just take a second. Everybody here has a password to sign on to the mainframe, but it's just the name of the person." She came back to the first workstation. "Now the mainframe thinks ten people just signed on to the system. We'll use these terminals to try access codes on the main computer. Your PC will control them so that each terminal hits it with two codes and then the next one goes on line. That way we'll never get kicked off. It should get around the 'three times and you're out' filter downstairs." She began frantically typing again.
"What are you doing now?"
"We could try alphanumerics sequentially or randomly. I think randomly is probably better. It'll be faster. So I'm writing a little program for the mainframe, a random-number generator. It'll start making up random access codes of MX followed by a letter and six digits and sending them to your PC downtown, which will immediately feed them back in pairs to these terminals. Out one door, in another. Maybe that will fool it."
"Christ, woman, you've got a criminal mind. Is this the kind of stuff you teach at NYU?"
"What's your number downtown?" She was typing away again.
I wrote it down and handed it to her. "I don't have the foggiest idea how you're going to be able to swing this."
"That's all right. I do. Just let me get your IBM networked into these terminals here. Fortunately it's compatible, and all it's going to be doing for now is bouncing back numbers generated by the mainframe." She flipped some switches, then typed my number onto the screen. I momentarily wondered if the sleet had knocked out the phone system. It hadn't.
Again the seconds crawled by, but as soon as she'd finished her chat with my IBM downtown, the row of terminals suddenly started beeping away. Two shots, beep, the next one came alive; two shots, beep, right down the row.
"Okay, your computer is running the show now. Sooner or later maybe something will click." She punched a couple more keys, then got up.
"It's done?"
"Ready to rock and roll." She was putting on her coat. "We'll be running millions of numbers."
"Isn't anybody going to know you've pulled this?" I was, I confess, totally dumbfounded.
"Not unless they discover my little program in the mainframe downstairs. But it's just a random-number generator, something any sophomore could write. The trick is, we're hitting it with so many terminals it won't be programmed to keep track of all these little elves trying to sneak in. And when we're through we'll turn them all off using your modem downtown."
"Good God, whatever happened to pen and pencil?" I was still dazed. She'd done it all so fast. "If you can find the decryptor key and get into the files, then what? You going to dump all the info on Mori's sexy little CD down at my place?"
"I hope you've got lots of paper. Who knows what's on it." She was shutting off the lights. "Come on, let's get out of here."
"Aye, aye, Professor." I walked back, clicked off the light in Mori's office, then paused to double-check the lock.
"We came for printouts, remember. We only have Mori's." I was joining her. She glanced at the stack on her desk, then grabbed a pile and handed them to me.
"You'd better carry these. And don't be put off by my 'ugly American' routine at the door. It'll be for a purpose."
After she'd doused the rest of the overheads, we passed
through the first security door and greeted Yamada. While I fiddled with Tam's printouts, she proceeded to give him a very Japanese-style dressing down, disguised as a series of pale compliments. She reviewed all her work for Dai Nippon, just happening to mention Noda-sama this and Noda-sama that every other breath. The hapless guy sucked in his breath and bowed a lot andhai, so-ed about once a second and thensumimasen-ed some more. By the time the elevator appeared, she'd destroyed him. He'd lost so much face he'd never dare mention our visit to Noda or anybody.
About two minutes later we were out on the sleet-covered sidewalk, looking for a cab. It was a heroic effort, but eventually we were headed back downtown. Secure and holding.
Although my upstairs office was freezing, I was mesmerized watching the flashing green numbers spin on my little IBM screen. It was like playing one of those "fruit machines" at the local bars, except we were sitting there witnessing a gigantic intelligence turned against itself, searching for the crack in its own armor. There was something ironic about the fact that the Japanese were such a homogenous, disciplined people they didn't need vast arrays of American-style safeguards to keep crazies off their computers. Unfortunately for them, they weren't expecting a couple of American criminals with no such scruples.
Byfour A.M.we had watched three million random numbers tried; by first light we were up to six.
"Tam, I'm beginning to get this sinking feeling MITI must have changed the prefix." I was bringing a new pot of coffee, half staggering up the carpeted stairs. "Or maybe we should have done it sequentially."
"Maybe, but that would mean wasting a lot of time on numbers that are improbable. This is our best chance." She poured another cup of java while I just stretched out on the floor. "Damn. I wish I could remember what the other alpha was. MX what? That could save us days."
"We don't have days." I closed my eyes. "Try hypnosis."
She sat staring at the screen for a few moments, then slowly wheeled around. "I know why I couldn't remember it. It was a repeat. Matt, it was X."
"Go with it."
"Hang on." She did some quick typing and hit the play
button. Her face was showing the strain, but I loved her looks. What a champ. We were together; us against the beast. Unfortunately, though, the beast was still ahead.
At seven-thirty Ben roused himself and lumbered expectantly up the stairs. With a silent curse I put on my boots and took him out for a stroll on the ice. He hated it. When we came back, I decided to give up and crash. Come on, this was insane, a billion-to-one shot and we didn't even know what the prize was at the bottom of the box. We were getting nowhere. MITI had changed the code and screwed us. Fortunately, however, I heroically vowed to try and stay awake tilleight A.M.That was it. The end.
At exactly7:49the numbers abruptly stopped. "ACCESS CODE MXX909090 CONFIRMED—DECRYPTOR KEY ACTIVATED." Confidential MITI memos started scrolling in orderly green clumps up the screen.
"My God, Matt, turn on your printer."