Page 65 of The Secret of Secrets (Robert Langdon #6)

Night watchman Mark Dole was familiar with nearly everyone who had been granted key card access to Random House Tower, but the two men who had just used a key card to buzz themselves into the towering lobby were strangers to him.

The pair’s arrival, in the middle of the night and on the heels of Faukman’s dramatic entrance, was odd in itself, but the fact that they were both dressed in black military gear sent a jolt of alarm through Dole.

“Gentlemen!” Dole exclaimed, jumping to his feet. “How may I help you?” And how the hell did you unlock my door?!

“You’ve got an emergency,” the muscle-bound man called in a firm voice, striding urgently toward the security desk. He was carrying a bulky backpack. “Your building’s tuned mass damper triggered an alarm with the city—it’s in danger of a structural failure.”

Dole needed a moment to understand what the man had just said.

Indeed, most Manhattan skyscrapers were built with a “tuned mass damper,” a weighted device mounted on a high floor to act as a steadying counterweight that prevented a building from swaying in heavy winds or earthquakes.

In the case of Random House Tower, its tuned mass damper was an eight-hundred-ton tank of water suspended on the fiftieth floor.

A structural malfunction? Why is there no alarm at the desk?

“You need to evacuate, and I need to get upstairs,” the man urged, arriving at the counter.

“But I don’t underst—”

There was a flash of movement, and a fist collided with Dole’s sternum, driving the air from his lungs. The night guard landed hard on his back, gasping on the floor, out of sight behind the counter. An instant later, the large man was kneeling over him, gun barrel pressed into his chest.

“Not one goddamned sound,” the man whispered as he fished the master key card from Dole’s uniform pocket and tossed it over the desk to the other man.

Dole lay motionless on his back, staring up at the lobby ceiling. He could hear rapidly departing footsteps and a familiar series of beeps; the other intruder had just used the key card to pass through the security turnstile and access the elevator.

“Just lie there quietly,” the man above him whispered, “and you won’t get hurt.” He zip-tied Dole’s hands, scooped up the guard’s security cap, donned it himself, and calmly assumed the watchman’s seat at the desk, gun in his lap.

Dole’s chest ached as he tried to catch his breath. Whoever the intruders were, they had needed less than ten seconds to take over Dole’s post and steal a key card that provided access to the entire building.

On the fourth floor, Jonas Faukman stepped off the elevator and headed for the steel door marked Data Security Center . It required a special key card, and he pounded on it loudly until it finally opened, and a familiar face appeared.

Alex Conan looked like he’d been through a war of his own. “Thank God,” the tech said. “You made it back.”

“Any news on Langdon and Katherine?” Faukman pressed, still haunted by the tech’s words on the frantic call earlier: The hackers who deleted your manuscript…I think they might have killed one of your authors.

“I’ll explain everything,” Alex said, “but it’s good news. Nobody was killed. I was wrong.”

Faukman felt a visceral rush of relief, and he bent over, hands on his knees, taking several deep breaths. Thank God.

“Langdon is the one I thought was…dead,” Alex said as he ushered Faukman into the security center.

“But I just spoke to the manager at the Four Seasons. The situation is complicated, but he confirmed Robert Langdon is very much alive…although it sounds like he may be in trouble with the local authorities.”

What kind of trouble? Faukman wondered, although his curiosity was eclipsed by the profound relief of knowing Langdon was all right.

Bolstered by the good news, he followed Alex through a maze of floor-to-ceiling computer racks, all humming loudly.

They emerged into an open area with an expansive workstation housing multiple computer monitors, fanned out in a gentle semicircle.

Several high-backed padded chairs sat before the monitors.

Faukman felt like he had walked into a mini mission control.

On the wall over the workstation was a wide framed illustration depicting an ocean liner in distress…sinking into a sea of ones and zeros. The caption read: Loose Bits Sink Ships . The spoof on the famous World War II slogan was supposed to be a reminder to secure data at its root level.

A little late for that, Faukman thought. The manuscript’s gone.

Alex slid a second swivel chair next to his, and the two men sat down, rotating to face each other. “Okay…a lot happened,” the tech said, his expression dire. “Let me start at the beginning.”

Starting at the beginning, Faukman knew, was the worst way to narrate a story, but he held his tongue.

“I didn’t want to share all of this on the phone,” Alex began, “but after you disappeared, I was scared and felt I should warn Katherine Solomon immediately that her manuscript was under attack—and that she might be in personal danger.”

“Okay.”

“I pulled her employee file, called her cell, and I got no answer. Same thing for Robert Langdon. When I couldn’t reach any of the three of you, I panicked and decided to track your exact locations by hacking into your phones.”

“Wait…you can do that?”

“Not in your case,” the tech said, spinning toward his terminal and beginning to type.

“And not for Dr. Solomon either, but Mr. Langdon was easy. I noticed he had an iCloud email address and also that he had chosen the same exact password for multiple credentials on the PRH server. I have to say, I’m surprised such a smart guy would use a single password, especially one as weak as ‘Dolphin123.’?”

Langdon’s password is Dolphin123? Faukman hung his head.

Why do we even have security protocols? Langdon’s nickname at Harvard was “The Dolphin” because he could still outswim half of the varsity water polo team.

Unfortunately, Langdon was also a self-proclaimed Luddite—a classicist whose expertise in the ancient past made for a reluctant relationship with the future.

He still has a Rolodex and wears a Mickey Mouse watch, for God’s sake.

“I was desperate to locate one of you,” Alex said, “and so I used Langdon’s password to hack into his FindMy app and pinpoint his location.”

The tech typed a few more keys, and a map of Prague materialized.

“According to iCloud,” he continued, “Langdon’s phone was completely offline, which is very unusual.

And if we check his last known location…

we get this disturbing image.” Conan refreshed the screen, zooming in.

“This says Mr. Langdon’s last known location was this morning at 7:02 a.m. local time, and he was exactly…

here. ” He pointed at a tiny blue dot on the map. “And then nothing.”

Faukman squinted at the dot on the map. “I’m sorry? This says he was in the middle of the Vltava River?”

“Yes! Considering we had been attacked by military-level hackers,” Alex said, “and you had disappeared, and Langdon wasn’t answering…”

“You thought he was drowned ? Langdon’s a world-class swimmer! Maybe he just threw his phone away.”

“I wanted to believe that, but if Langdon threw the phone, the phone’s location tracking would have been a straight line.

But his track moves around and even doubles back on itself before it disappears!

It looked like Langdon was taken out onto the river, dumped overboard, and then tried to swim back to shore, before he drowned and took the phone with him to the bottom. ”

Faukman could see it was an alarming scenario, but Alex’s tenuous leap from a cell phone’s “last known location” to Langdon being murdered was missing a few steps in logic.

Then again, it was probably no less logical than the surreal happenstance of both Langdon’s phone and Faukman’s lying on the bottom of rivers on different sides of the planet.

“I know you think I overreacted,” Alex said, “but considering who hacked us…I had a right to be worried. I still am.”

“So who hacked us?” Faukman demanded, leaning forward.

“That’s why I wanted to talk to Katherine—to find out if she could think of anyone who might be targeting her so I could build a proprietary algorithm and search for specific digital artifacts.”

My God, this kid needs an editor. Just tell me who the hell did it?!

“But before I could build the algorithm, my FTK scan returned a hit. One of the IoCs from this hack had a match on MISP associated with known—”

“Alex, I have no idea—”

“All you need to know is that the people who hacked PRH were in a hurry! They saved time by using a piece of their own recycled code—duplicated strings that hackers call copy pasta! It saves time, but it also risks revealing—”

The tech suddenly jumped to his feet and spun around, staring intently back through the rows of rack-mounted gear in the direction of the entrance. “Allison?!” he shouted.

Faukman was already on edge. “Who’s Allison?”

“My boss. Either she’s early or I’m hearing things.” Alex stood up, checking his watch. “Did you hear the door beep open?”

Faukman shook his head. I haven’t heard anything since October 5, 1987. Fourth row, Pink Floyd, Madison Square Garden. Gilmour was sublime.

“Hold on,” Alex said, disappearing into the maze of computers.

Unbelievable, Faukman thought, waiting impatiently.

Ten seconds later, the tech returned with a shrug.

“Sorry, I’ve been totally paranoid tonight.

” He looked shaken as he sat back down. “The people we’re up against are not the kind you screw with.

” Alex rolled his chair to a nearby computer terminal and motioned for Faukman to join him, which he did.

“Let me show you,” the kid said, launching a web browser. “You’re not going to believe—”

Faukman abruptly reached out and seized the tech’s arm, signaling for him to stop talking. Not another word!

“What the hell?!” Alex said, recoiling.

“Sorry,” Faukman said loudly but calmly. “I just want to check one quick thing online.”

Faukman raised a finger to his lips, staring intently at the young tech, urging him to be silent. When Alex nodded his understanding, Faukman took over the computer keyboard. The browser had opened to a standard search page, and Faukman quickly typed his search string all in caps:

You and I are not alone in here…follow my lead.

The tech spun toward Faukman with eyes flashing fear.

Yes, I’m scared too, Faukman thought, having just realized that the entry beep Alex heard was not a paranoid imagination; someone had indeed entered this control room and was now hiding somewhere among the gear racks behind them.

And now they are listening to us. A moment earlier, Faukman had noticed a barely perceptible dot of blue light reflected in the glass of the framed illustration nearby.

Editing spy thrillers just paid off. Some would have assumed the dot was a laser sight from a gun, but this dot was blue, not red, and it was aimed at a sheet of glass.

“This site is interesting,” Faukman said, calmly deleting his first message and typing another.

Who is responsible for hack?

Alex’s face was pale as Faukman pushed the keyboard back to him.

Taking a deep breath, the tech dutifully tapped out his reply.

Faukman studied the bizarre, hyphenated word that Alex had typed. It was unfamiliar to him. He gave the tech a confused shrug and anxiously mouthed, “Who…is…that?”

Alex began typing again—this time a short acronym.

Faukman stared at it in mute shock. No.

On any other morning, Faukman would never have believed what had just appeared on the screen, but considering all that had transpired tonight, the information certainly answered a lot of questions.

Fuck.

The question now was what Faukman was going to do about his current predicament. The answer, he suspected, lay in his skills with dialogue…and also in understanding the subtle difference between two very similar words.

Misinformation and dis information.