Sam was starting to annoy him. He was tired of being controlled and told what to do. He was a grown ass man. He knew that he’d blown it a few times, but enough was enough.
“Who’s taking it to her?” Seth asked. He had one boot on already.
“The address is dead,” Samantha said. “Nobody writes to Eleanor.”
“Then somebody has to drive it to her.”
“Not me,” Samantha said. “But you know that already.”
Marcus looked at his foot on the milk crate. Then he looked at Seth.
He didn’t want to ask him. The last time he’d asked Seth for anything, it was a text at three in the morning.
“Will you take it?” Marcus asked.
Seth put the other boot on.
“She’s at NIST, on Broadway,” Marcus said. “Not at her house. Go to the front desk and ask for Eleanor Voss. Don’t say why. Give the guard your real name. If they ask what it’s about, tell them she’ll know. If they won’t call her, ask for Josh Farris, he runs the room. If they won’t call him either—”
“Marcus.”
“What?”
“I’ve met Eleanor. She scares me. I’ll ask for her.”
Seth stood up and put the page in his shirt pocket and buttoned it.
“The truck,” Samantha said.
“I drove it to Boulder yesterday and back. Nobody looked at me twice.”
“Every police car in Denver has the plate.”
“I’m not going to Denver.” Seth looked at the dog in Doug’s chair. “He stays. If I’m not back by two, I’m in a room on Broadway, and somebody should feed him.”
Cooper didn’t wake up.
Marcus heard the garage door open and the truck go down the road. The microwave said 7:36. He had sent Seth into a federal building with his real name and no phone.
He got the tablet off the floor and typed the page in from the photo Samantha had taken of it, one line at a time, with the dish off. She sat on the arm of the couch and read it over his shoulder.
Then he wrote the email to Hanne Lund. He started with who he was, and why she should care, and how sorry he was about the hour.
“No,” Samantha said.
“It’s one paragraph.”
“She doesn’t need to know who you are. She needs to know what to do with it.”
He took the paragraph out and wrote one line instead. Hanne — this is from the person who measured the sigma. Please give it to the person from the government and to Ostvik’s security people, today.
Then he wrote one to Pittman, at the fbi.gov address on Hanne’s message. He wrote that Vlad wasn’t a criminal, and that none of them were, and that they would have come in themselves if they could have. He looked at it for a while. It was true. He knew Samantha was looking over his shoulder.
He deleted it without her saying anything.
Agent Pittman,
Vlad works with me. You will want this.
He sat with the cursor after Marcus Reed for longer than he meant to. He had been hiding from Pittman and the FBI for two weeks. Signing an email to him was the same as standing up in the woods and waving.
He left his name on it.
He thought about writing to Josh Farris too. Anything sent to NIST with Samantha’s name on it would end up with the people who had Eleanor’s laptop. In the end, he didn’t do anything.
At eight Samantha carried the case out and Marcus went after her, one step at a time, with his hand on the wall. Once again, she set the dish on the rail, on the same spot, which Marcus noticed was a slightly different color than the rest of the rail. He lowered himself onto the top step with his bad foot out in front of him and heard Cooper whining and scratching at the door. He groaned, got up and opened the door to let Cooper out. He slowly sat back down while Cooper squatted in the front yard by a tree and took a shit.
“Four minutes,” she said. “Not four and one second.”
He sent both emails at forty seconds.
He looked up at Samantha and nodded, and she pulled the plug.
She coiled the cable and put the dish in the case, and then she sat down next to him on the step.
“You signed it,” she said.
“Somebody has to. You’re not going to, and Vlad already did.”
Ostvik signed. The Transition Group told Ostvik when. Forty-one companies shipped whatever Ostvik signed, and every one of them reached the devices as an update.
“The thing that teaches everything to want the second signature,” he said. “That’s an update too, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“And the devices only trust the two keys they have right now. PQ1 and R2.”
“Yes.”
“Do the other people need both?”
“One. Anything that took PQ1 believes PQ1. They’ve had it since Monday.”
“So the good update has to be signed with a key they already have,” he said. “And whoever gets an update onto the devices first wins. It’s a land grab.”
“If ours lands first, the devices want both signatures from then on, and nothing gets in without them. Not theirs. Not Ostvik’s either. Nobody gets to undo it.”
“And if theirs lands first?”
“Then the devices want whatever second signature they picked, and ours never gets in.”
Shit. Thursday had been the deadline last night. It wasn’t anymore.
Samantha went back inside to lie down. He stayed on the step and watched the place where the road came out of the trees, where the truck would come back, until his ass was wet through his jeans. Twice a car went by on East Portal Road. Neither of them was red.
Seth had been gone two hours. Boulder was fifty minutes down the canyon. If the guard had called Eleanor, Seth was in the building by now. If the guard hadn’t, Seth was explaining himself to somebody. Marcus was worried about him. Eventually he went back inside.
At ten Samantha carried the case out again. He went with her, faster this time, still with his hand on the wall.
Nothing from Seth.
Hanne had written at 8:09. Forwarded to both. The person from the government asked me who wrote it. I said I did not know, but that it was not kolobok, because kolobok does not write like this.
Marcus laughed out loud. Then he read it again and saw that Hanne had lied to the government for them.
The second was from Pittman, at 9:41. One line.
I read it. I don’t understand it. Who do I give it to?
Marcus knew the answer. Pittman would call NIST. Seth had walked into NIST two hours ago and given them his real name.
“Two minutes,” Samantha said.
Eleanor Voss. NIST Boulder. She will.
He sent it with two seconds left.