Digital Fortess - Brown Dan - Страница 32

Susan steadied herself and moved quickly to Hale’s terminal. She reached down and adjusted the brightness controls. The monitor went black.

Her head was pounding. She turned and eyed the conversation now taking place on the Crypto floor. Apparently, Chartrukian had not gone home, after all. The young Sys?Sec was now in a panic, spilling his guts to Greg Hale. Susan knew it didn’t matter?Hale knew everything there was to know.

I’ve got to get to Strathmore, she thought. And fast.

CHAPTER 39

Room 301. Rocio Eva Granada stood naked in front of the bathroom mirror. This was the moment she’d been dreading all day. The German was on the bed waiting for her. He was the biggest man she’d ever been with.

Reluctantly, she took an ice cube from the water bucket and rubbed it across her nipples. They quickly hardened. This was her gift?to make men feel wanted. It’s what kept them coming back. She ran her hands across her supple, well?tanned body and hoped it would survive another four or five more years until she had enough to retire. Senor Roldan took most of her pay, but without him she knew she’d be with the rest of the hookers picking up drunks in Triana. These men at least had money. They never beat her, and they were easy to satisfy. She slipped into her lingerie, took a deep breath, and opened the bathroom door.

As Rocio stepped into the room, the German’s eyes bulged. She was wearing a black negligee. Her chestnut skin radiated in the soft light, and her nipples stood at attention beneath the lacy fabric.

“Komm doch hierher,” he said eagerly, shedding his robe and rolling onto his back.

Rocio forced a smile and approached the bed. She gazed down at the enormous German. She chuckled in relief. The organ between his legs was tiny.

He grabbed at her and impatiently ripped off her negligee. His fat fingers groped at every inch of her body. She fell on top of him and moaned and writhed in false ecstasy. As he rolled her over and climbed on top of her, she thought she would be crushed. She gasped and choked against his puttylike neck. She prayed he would be quick.

“Si! Si!” she gasped in between thrusts. She dug her fingernails into his backside to encourage him.

Random thoughts cascaded through her mind?faces of the countless men she’d satisfied, ceilings she’d stared at for hours in the dark, dreams of having children . . .

Suddenly, without warning, the German’s body arched, stiffened, and almost immediately collapsed on top of her. That’s all? she thought, surprised and relieved.

She tried to slide out from under him. “Darling,” she whispered huskily. “Let me get on top.” But the man did not move.

She reached up and pushed at his massive shoulders. “Darling, I . . . I can’t breathe!” She began feeling faint. She felt her ribs cracking. “?Despiertate!” Her fingers instinctively started pulling at his matted hair. Wake up!

It was then that she felt the warm sticky liquid. It was matted in his hair?flowing onto her cheeks, into her mouth. It was salty. She twisted wildly beneath him. Above her, a strange shaft of light illuminated the German’s contorted face. The bullet hole in his temple was gushing blood all over her. She tried to scream, but there was no air left in her lungs. He was crushing her. Delirious, she clawed toward the shaft of light coming from the doorway. She saw a hand. A gun with a silencer. A flash of light. And then nothing.

CHAPTER 40

Outside Node 3, Chartrukian looked desperate. He was trying to convince Hale that TRANSLTR was in trouble. Susan raced by them with only one thought in mind?to find Strathmore.

The panicked Sys?Sec grabbed Susan’s arm as she passed. “Ms. Fletcher! We have a virus! I’m positive! You have to—”

Susan shook herself free and glared ferociously. “I thought the commander told you to go home.”

“But the Run?Monitor! It’s registering eighteen—”

“Commander Strathmore told you to go home!”

“FUCK STRATHMORE!” Chartrukian screamed, the words resounding throughout the dome.

A deep voice boomed from above. “Mr. Chartrukian?”

The three Crypto employees froze.

High above them, Strathmore stood at the railing outside his office.

For a moment, the only sound inside the dome was the uneven hum of the generators below. Susan tried desperately to catch Strathmore’s eye. Commander! Hale is North Dakota!

But Strathmore was fixated on the young Sys?Sec. He descended the stairs without so much as a blink, keeping his eyes trained on Chartrukian the whole way down. He made his way across the Crypto floor and stopped six inches in front of the trembling technician. “What did you say?”

“Sir,” Chartrukian choked, “TRANSLTR’s in trouble.”

“Commander?” Susan interjected. “If I could—”

Strathmore waved her off. His eyes never left the Sys?Sec.

Phil blurted, “We have an infected file, sir. I’m sure of it!”

Strathmore’s complexion turned a deep red. “Mr. Chartrukian, we’ve been through this. There is no file infecting TRANSLTR!”

“Yes, there is!” he cried. “And if it makes its way to the main databank—”

“Where the hell is this infected file?” Strathmore bellowed. “Show it to me!”

Chartrukian hesitated. “I can’t.”

“Of course you can’t! It doesn’t exist!”

Susan said, “Commander, I must—”

Again Strathmore silenced her with an angry wave.

Susan eyed Hale nervously. He seemed smug and detached. It makes perfect sense, she thought. Hale wouldn’t be worried about a virus; he knows what’s really going on inside TRANSLTR.

Chartrukian was insistent. “The infected file exists, sir. But Gauntlet never picked it up.”

“If Gauntlet never picked it up,” Strathmore fumed, “then how the hell do you know it exists?”

Chartrukian suddenly sounded more confident. “Mutation strings, sir. I ran a full analysis, and the probe turned up mutation strings!”

Susan now understood why the Sys?Sec was so concerned. Mutation strings, she mused. She knew mutation strings were programming sequences that corrupted data in extremely complex ways. They were very common in computer viruses, particularly viruses that altered large blocks of data. Of course, Susan also knew from Tankado’s E?mail that the mutation strings Chartrukian had seen were harmless?simply part of Digital Fortress.

The Sys?Sec went on. “When I first saw the strings, sir, I thought Gauntlet’s filters had failed. But then I ran some tests and found out . . .” He paused, looking suddenly uneasy. “I found out that somebody manually bypassed Gauntlet.”

The statement met with a sudden hush. Strathmore’s face turned an even deeper shade of crimson. There was no doubt whom Chartrukian was accusing; Strathmore’s terminal was the only one in Crypto with clearance to bypass Gauntlet’s filters.

When Strathmore spoke, his voice was like ice. “Mr. Chartrukian, not that it is any concern of yours, but I bypassed Gauntlet.” He went on, his temper hovering near the boiling point. “As I told you earlier, I’m running a very advanced diagnostic. The mutation strings you see in TRANSLTR are part of that diagnostic; they are there because I put them there. Gauntlet refused to let me load the file, so I bypassed its filters.” Strathmore’s eyes narrowed sharply at Chartrukian. “Now, will there be anything else before you go?”

In a flash, it all clicked for Susan. When Strathmore had downloaded the encrypted Digital Fortress algorithm from the Internet and tried to run it through TRANSLTR, the mutation strings had tripped Gauntlet’s filters. Desperate to know whether Digital Fortress was breakable, Strathmore decided to bypass the filters.

Normally, bypassing Gauntlet was unthinkable. In this situation, however, there was no danger in sending Digital Fortress directly into TRANSLTR; the commander knew exactly what the file was and where it came from.