Digital Fortress by Dan Brown
Tankado died with the three good fingers of his shrivelled hand pointing heavenward.
Susan Fletcher was woken by the phone. It was David. "I've got to postpone," he said. "Something's come up." The phone rang again. It was Strathmore, deputy head of the NSA. "Something's come up," he said. "Come in."
Few people have heard of the NSA. Fewer still have heard of TRANSLTR, the world's most powerful computer, buried deep underground in NSA headquarters. It can decipher any code.
"It's bad, Susan," he said. "Our ex-employee Tankado has created an algorithmal code TRANSLTR can't decipher. He has a partner called NDAKOTA who has the pass code. That's where you come in. I need you to trace his untraceable email address."
David was having a bad day. He hadn't told Susan that Strathmore had sent him to Spain to get the code from Tankado's ring. Now Tankado was dead, the businessman and the prostitute who had taken the ring were dead, the American punk who had bought the ring off the prostitute was dead, and the assassin was after him. Worse still, the ring was a red herring: there was no code.
Greg Hales entered the NSA inner sanctum. Susan thought he might be NDAKOTA. "It's not right we should be able to spy on ordinary Americans," he said.
"TRANSLTR has already saved America from two terrorist attacks," she replied.
"Then how come we couldn't stop 9/11?"
"Because this book was published in the US in 1998 and it's only getting an outing in the UK to cash in on The Da Vinci Code."
Susan's superfast decryption programme suggested Tankado and NDAKOTA had the same email. Of course, she thought, they're anagrams of one another. She looked up to see Greg Hales kill a security officer.
Strathmore was starting to panic. He would have to tell Susan. "It's not an algorithmal code," he said. "It's a worm. I was trying to add a mutation that would allow us to read every secret in the world. But I've failed and now all America's secrets are going to be available online unless we get this code."
Susan and Strathmore cornered Hales. "It's Strathmore," yelled Hales. "He killed the security officer." But no one believed him and he died a nasty death.
Strathmore loved Susan. He had no regrets about telling the assassin to kill David.
Susan read Strathmore's pager. David was dead and Strathmore was bad. He died a horrible death, too. She called the NSA head. "We've got two minutes to save the world," she said. "The code must be a prime number." She stared at images of Tankado's three fingers.
"Saved with only seconds to spare," said the NSA head.
The phone rang. It was David. "I'm alive. Marry me."
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