State of the Union: A Thriller by Brad Thor

Author:Brad Thor [Thor, Brad]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Literature & Fiction, Contemporary, Genre Fiction, Political, United States, Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, Thrillers & Suspense, Spies & Politics, Assassinations, Terrorism, Suspense, Contemporary Fiction, Thrillers
ISBN: 0743436776
Amazon: B000FC0YW2
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2004-01-27T06:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 30

As Harvath engaged the rental car’s onboard navigation system and selected his destination—the Virchow-Klinikum campus of Berlin’s Charité Hospital, located along the banks of Berlin’s Spandau Canal, DeWolfe toyed with Gary’s burst transmitter, trying to find a way into the encryption program.

“You talked about numeric codes,” said Harvath, speeding through an intersection to avoid a changing light. “In the SEALs we’d normally have a four-digit code with a backup in case the first one was ever compromised. For our system to work, we would take whatever the current code was and subtract that day’s date. That was it.”

“That’s essentially how this works. Your missions were probably like the ones we’ve been deployed on. We’d only need to do burst transmissions back to the command and control structure, not to other operatives in the field, so you didn’t need lots of additional codes.”

“Exactly.”

“That’s when it’s easy. As the commo guy, I got to set our encryption codes myself. I wanted something significant that I could always remember, so whenever I could, I liked to use important dates from the Revolutionary War. My favorite was 418.”

“April 18th?” asked Harvath.

“Yup. April 18th, 1775. We’d subtract the 418 from 1775 and then add the date of whatever day we were transmitting on. That was our code. As far as communications are concerned, April 18th, 1775, was one of the most historic.”

“April 19th was when the battles of Lexington and Concord happened,” said Harvath, quiet for several moments as he thought before responding. “Then the night before would have been when Paul Revere was charged with taking the message to Concord that the British were coming.”

“Very good,” replied DeWolfe. “You know your stuff.”

“Yeah, I only wish I knew Gary’s stuff.”

“You seem to know him pretty well. Like I said, it is probably going to be something that was significant for him and easy for his operatives to remember. Do you have any idea what numbers would have been memorable or significant for Gary? They’d need to be numbers that his men could also relate to.”

Harvath racked his head for strings of numbers that would have meant something to Gary, but which also would have held relevance for his operatives. That meant, though, that anything personal to Gary, like his anniversaries or addresses, wouldn’t qualify and so Scot dismissed those right off the bat. The hard thing was that on top of not being a computer guy, Gary wasn’t much of a numbers guy either. In fact, thought Harvath, it would probably be a toss-up over which he hated more—computers or math.

When it came to logistical and organizational competence, Gary had both of those qualities in spades, but like it or not, the old man would have had to have used some sort of math to organize his burst transmissions. Harvath wondered if maybe he was overthinking the problem before him. Keep it simple, stupid, he heard from somewhere in the back of his mind.

He spent the rest of the drive trying to free associate, but without very much luck.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.