Page 41 of In Too Deep

She said, “Sure. All the pages? Or just a sample?”

“All of them.”

Knight worked through, page by page. She checked the images were legible then passed the notebook back to Reacher. She said, “What does it mean? Any idea?”

“It’s a book code. Each group of digits represents a word. The first digit tells you the page number. The second, the line. The third, the word itself.”

“How do you know which book to look in?”

“You don’t. Not unless the person who did the encryption tells you. That’s why it’s so simple, yet so hard to crack. Even if you find out the title of the book you still need to know which edition, and whether it’s the hardcover or paperback.”

“So we can’t read it?”

“Not immediately.” Reacher pointed to the books on the desk and the shelf. “My guess is one of these will be the key.”

“I’ll get pictures. We can identify the right one and order it online.”

Reacher said, “Or we could go to a bookstore.”

Chapter19

Reacher put the notebook backin its spot in the space beneath the floor. He replaced the piece of board, including the hair in case Paris was practicing old-school fieldcraft to reveal if her cache had been discovered, then rolled out the rug and followed Knight downstairs. He found her in what he guessed was originally the dining room. It was a large, rectangular space with a long table in the center, panels on the walls, and a bay window. The drapes were closed and a projection screen was hanging down in front of them. A projector was fixed to the ceiling at the opposite end of the room. There was a rose in the center of the ceiling. Reacher imagined it was designed for an elaborate chandelier but now a low profile LED light was wired into it. Anything hanging lower would get in the way of whatever was being beamed onto the screen.

Knight was sitting at the head of the table. There was a laptop computer in front of her. It was plugged into a power supply and another cable snaked away and disappeared through a grommet at the center of the tabletop. The computer’s screen was filled with apicture of a yacht under full sail. A box had popped up across its spinnaker with a message stating that either a password or a Touch ID was required to proceed.

Knight sighed. “Any ideas?”

Reacher said, “How about the password from the security system?”

“First thing I tried. No luck.”

“Whose computer is it?” Reacher had a pretty good track record at guessing passwords and PIN numbers. He had a technique. But to make it work he needed to understand the individual who had chosen them. To know their tastes and priorities and habits and hobbies. Without that kind of detail he’d be shooting in the dark.

“It’s wired up to the projector so it’s probably shared. Anyone who wants to present anything probably loads up whatever files they need. It’s not networked so they’d need to use a thumb drive. So either they’re behind the curve, technology-wise, or they’ve gone full Battlestar Galactica.”

“Meaning what?”

“It was a TV show. Sci-fi. Bad things happened because of connecting computers together. Anyway, the details don’t matter. I just mean either they’re out-of-date or they’re paranoid about security. Probably paranoid, because this computer is actually pretty new.”

Reacher said, “We don’t need to project anything, so why would we care?”

Knight said, “Think about what kind of things Fletcher or Vidic or whoever would want to present. Probably not vacation photos, right? I’m guessing they use it for briefings. Probably about forthcoming jobs.”

“Makes sense.”

“If I’m right, there’s a good chance they load their presentation files onto the computer itself, rather than run them off the thumbdrive. Now, they might delete them afterward. But they might not. There could be all kinds of details in here. That’s why we need the damn password.”

“It says password or Touch ID. What’s that?”

“Just a fingerprint, basically. The on/off key has a sensor in it. If you have clearance you touch the key, and boom, the computer unlocks.”

“Which of them has clearance?”

“No way to tell.”

“If you don’t have clearance, does it do any harm to try?”

“No. The system would just refuse to unlock.”

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