Vlad watched Samantha and Marcus sleep, while Seth washed the oatmeal pot. Apparently, when Seth was nervous he cleaned things.
At ten Vlad took the case out to the porch. The sun had come over the ridge and the boards were steaming. Cooper followed him out and lay down in the warm wood.
He set the dish on the rail and waited for the satellites. Ostvik’s page said two million three hundred and thirty-eight thousand, as of noon in New York. They were past Samantha’s number. If she was right, the key was sitting in the log for anybody patient enough to find it.
There was one email. Hanne Lund had sent it at 9:31.
kolobok,
I checked it and you are right. It is the 512 sigma in the 1024 sampler. I merged it, so this is on me as well as you. Tomas and I have the fix ready and we can tag 4.2.2 tonight if we have to.
I called Ostvik. They will not stop signing on my word. They said a pause is a decision for the Transition Group and the Group will not make it on an anonymous report. I was on the phone for about an hour with their security people and one person from the government side, who did not say which part of the government. They checked the number while I waited. They agree it is wrong.
Then they asked me if the author put it there on purpose. They said stopping for a mistake and stopping for a backdoor are different decisions, and if it was on purpose then they need to know what else he wrote. I said I did not know you, which is true, I have only ever seen the name.
They asked me to tell you that anyone with information should go to the FBI.
I am sorry this is not better news. For what it is worth I would also like to know, since my name is on the merge.
Hanne
They would have opened the sampler file by now. The top of it still said what he had typed at seventeen. fast. constant time. you are welcome. And under that, kolobok. Somebody in an office had read this and was now looking for someone who had broken the new root on purpose.
He thought about his mother. Once somebody put a name to kolobok, the Belgrade chats gave them her address. She would be at work by now. He badly wanted to call her before anybody else did.
At four minutes he powered the dish down.
Inside, he put the tablet on top of the notebook on Samantha’s knees. She woke up and read it without moving anything but her eyes.
“They want to know if you did it on purpose,” she said.
Marcus opened his eyes. “Who wants to know?”
“Somebody who would not say which part of the government they are with,” Vlad said.
“Did you?” Seth asked from the sink.
“Seth,” Marcus said.
“They’re going to ask him. I’m asking first.”
“No,” Vlad said. “I was seventeen and it was three in the morning and I was in a hurry. I wrote one file in nib. That one.”
“So write back and tell them,” Marcus said.
“I can write anything. Kolobok is a word. The only thing that proves I wrote that file is the key I signed it with.”
“Under your bed,” Samantha said.
“In a box, next to my go bag.”
“So we go get it,” Marcus said.
“It is four hours to Basalt. If anybody is watching my house, they are waiting for somebody to come home and pick something up.”
Seth put the pot on the shelf. “Then who can go in your house?”
The FBI could take the laptop out of Basalt this afternoon. The government would believe whatever was on it. Nobody in the FBI was looking for him.
He was terrified.
“I go to the FBI,” Vlad said. “Today. I tell them I wrote it and how. I tell them where the laptop is. When they bring it back, I prove I am kolobok in front of them.”
Cooper scratched at the door to come in. Seth let him in.
“Saturday night I said we walk into the field office with our hands up,” Marcus said.
“You did.”
“You said the FBI was slow.”
“It is slow. It can also walk into my house.”
Samantha closed the notebook. “I’m coming with you.”
“No.”
“Nobody moves alone. That’s yours.”
“If you walk in, they keep you,” Vlad said. “Then everybody in that building knows where you are, and some of them talk.”
“And you?”
“Nobody is looking for me.”
She opened the notebook again, found the page with the small key on it, and tore it out along the spiral. It was covered in her numbers. She folded it in half and held it out.
“They’ll ask where two point two came from.”
He put it in the inside pocket of his jacket.
“Don’t walk up to the front desk and tell them you’re a hacker,” Marcus said. “Ask for one person by name. You want somebody who has to come downstairs himself, so it’s his problem and not the desk’s.”
“I do not know anybody in the FBI.”
“I do,” Seth said. He dried his hands on his jeans and got his wallet out of his back pocket. Behind his driver’s license there were two business cards. He held one out.
Special Agent Roy Pittman. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Denver.
“Was that in my door?” Marcus asked.
“I took it. I took the realtor’s too.”
Vlad turned the card over. There was a cell number on the back in blue ballpoint. He didn’t know anything else about Roy Pittman.
“Drive me to Boulder,” Vlad said to Seth. “Not to Denver. By now every police car in Denver has the plate on that truck. Drop me near the bus station. Not in front of it. I take the bus to Union Station and the train out to Central Park, and I walk from there.”
“That’s two hours on a bus,” Marcus said.
“It is two hours nobody knows where the truck is.”
Seth opened his wallet again and counted. “I have sixty-one dollars.” He held it out to Vlad.
“The bus does not cost sixty-one dollars.”
“Take it anyway.”
Vlad took a twenty and gave him the rest back.
Vlad sat down in Doug’s chair, took the notebook from Samantha, and tore out a clean page. He wrote his name on it, the way it was on his passport, and kolobok next to it. Under it he wrote the address in Basalt and laptop — box under the bed, left side, next to the black bag.
He hadn’t typed his mother’s address since he was fifteen. He wrote it at the bottom of the page. Under it he wrote She does not know anything.
A stranger would knock on her door. He hoped whoever Pittman sent would take his shoes off.
He picked up the tablet and wrote the reply to Hanne with the dish off.
No. It was a mistake. It is the only file I wrote. I am going to the FBI today, and I will prove I am kolobok there with the same key I signed it with.
kolobok
He handed Samantha the tablet and the black case.
“Send it at twelve,” he said.
Seth went out to open the garage and Cooper went after him. Vlad put the card and the page into the inside pocket with Samantha’s numbers and zipped it.
“Vlad,” Samantha said. “Lead with the number.”
“Don’t let Marcus touch the dish.”
He went out the door. The yard was full of sun. He looked up at the clear Colorado sky, took a breath, and walked on the grass to the truck and got in. Cooper put his head over the back of the seat and licked his ear.