Dream within a Dream Ch. 03

"Hmmm..." I said, thinking about it. "Not necessarily. This woman stated that she was willing to die for her 'Cause'. They might have allowed her death to be as painless as possible because of her loyalty. But just as we saw in the 'Black Badge' case... the penalty for becoming useless or obsolete... is death."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"I cannot understand it." he said. "I cannot understand why none of my otherwise excellent sources cannot get those Jack Burke tapes out of the Police servers."

"It hasn't been for lack of trying." the woman said. "The physical videotapes were destroyed by the Iron Crowbar himself. They were burned, so there is no hope there."

She continued: "I've consulted with a couple of experts on the files. There are three levels of security there. First is access to the two servers, a main and backup, upon which the digitized tapes reside. There is password protection on the files with sixteen required characters, and 128 possible entries in each character slot. Second is password access to the files themselves, which is another full round of encryption."

She continued: "Third, the files themselves are encrypted by something that makes the 'Rijndael AES' look easy by comparison. It's almost like a one-time pad for each videotape. The password has to be applied on the computer or server that also has the decryption key, so even if we copy the file and get the password, without that key we can't decode the videos."

She added: "Commander Brownlee got to the files before his access was restricted, but was fully stymied... and then his computer was infected by one of the nastiest viruses I've ever seen, so the files were destroyed before we could get further copies."

He stood up, then began pacing back and forth. "That is some very high-level data encryption, there. Far beyond any standard Government procedure. Even the Federal Government uses the Rijndael AES system, but Troy went even further. I'm not sure this is within his capabilities; someone helped him with that."

"The CIA?" she asked.

"Oh no, not them." he said. "Someone who is of a very high-ordered mind. Somewhere near the level of my own." The woman was careful not to be seen smirking at his self-confidence to the point of arrogance as he continued: "We should consider the possibility of Professor Marvin Milton, who hold the Sir Isaac Newton Chair of Advanced Mathematics at the University. As you know, his son is a police officer highly favored by Commander Troy."

After a pause, he asked "Are you sure there are no copies of these tapes on CDs?"

"There could be; in fact, there probably are." she replied. "But they'd have to be put into a computer with the decryption key already on the computer, and in the right place on the hard drive or server. Otherwise, it's just 'white noise'."

He nodded, continuing to pace as he drove his great mind towards the solution of this most vexing of problems. "If these files were ordered released to the public, they'd have to be decrypted. So the Iron Crowbar must've put the passwords somewhere, and others would know where to look in the event he was... no longer with us."

"I'm not so sure about that." the woman said. "Troy has said that he'll go to prison before allowing the tapes to be made public. The Chief and Sheriff have also said they'll never release the tapes, as well. So if he is the only one with the passwords, he might not have them written down... and if he dies, the solution goes down with him."

"That would be unfortunate." he said. "We must get those tapes!" He felt as much as saw the woman peering at him.

"Oh yes." he said. "We allowed Brownlee to share the names of the women on the tapes with the SBI as a diversion. But the key is what is actually on those tapes. It is absolutely imperative that we find that information... as well as the identities of every single woman on those tapes. I don't want to have to torture and kill over thirty women and none of them be the right one..."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"It's late, Cindy." said Jenna Stiles, dressed only in a see-through negligee. "Come to bed."

"I'll be there in just a minute." Cindy said, wearing only her light green see-thru teddy and high heel slides. "I've got to research one little thing..." With that she typed in the word she wanted to understand.

"Inert... rare... transition... no, that's not it... oh, capitalize it... ohhhhh, that's it..." she whispered, mostly to herself.

And she understood.

Finis... for now.