The Florentine Deception (31 page)

“No, it wasn't,” I said. “And the more I think about it, the more I think it was never in the cave.”

“But then why did Lister have the video? Why label it Florentine Controller?”

I shook my head. “I wish I knew. Khalimmy has a copy of the video now too, and apparently it hasn't helped him get any closer to the Florentine either.”

“He has a copy?” She looked startled.

“Yeah, he broke in and stole it last night after we left Latigo.”

She paused a moment in thought. “But I don't understand. He obviously thinks the video is important or he wouldn't have stolen it.”

“It doesn't make any sense, does it? The only clue I have is that he kept asking for a password for the video.” I began pacing the room. “But the video wasn't password-protected, so I don't know what he's talking about.”

She looked at me quizzically.

“I know, I'm totally confused too,” I admitted. “Hill, I know you're really angry with me and probably not in the mood, but can I at least run some of my thoughts by you? It'll help me get my head around things, and maybe you'll see something I missed.”

She took a deep breath, then said, “Go ahead.”

“So we thought the video was a digital map to the Florentine Controller, right? But it looks like it's just a video of someone documenting a descent into a cave.”

“And you're sure there wasn't anything hidden down there?”

“No way—we triple-checked. The floors of the cave down there were solid rock. There wasn't anywhere to bury or hide anything.”

“So you went back up,” said Hillary. “And then what happened?”

“When we got back near the entrance to the cave, Khalimmy ambushed us and asked for the password to the video.”

“He didn't ask you for the Florentine?”

“No. That's why I think it wasn't hidden in the cave. If he thought the Florentine was hidden down there and that we'd found it, he would have just asked for it, right? But he asked for a password. He just wanted a password.”

Hillary stared at me a moment, then said, “You're sure the video's not password-protected?”

“We all watched it together. It didn't have a password.”

“So why would he need a password for it?”

I paused a beat. “You know, while I was in the waiting room, something sparked a thought and I had this hunch I was getting close. But then it passed a second later.”

“What brought it on? Maybe we can recreate the moment.”

“This father and his kid were reading a book on dinosaurs.”

“Dinosaurs? What does that have to do with the video?”

“I'm not sure,” I admitted. “But there was definitely something there that got me going.”

“Why don't you review the conversation with me?”

“There wasn't much. The guy was pointing out pictures of dinosaurs in a children's book. Then the kid mentioned something about Tyrannosaurus Rex and something clicked. That was it.”

“Hmmm. Dinosaurs. Fossils. Tyrannosaurus Rex?” She looked at me expectantly—I shook my head. “Extinction? Evolution? Triceratops? Jurassic Park?”

“Velociraptor,” added Steven, joining the conversation.

“Nope.”

“Archaeopteryx? Brontosaurus? Stegosaurus? Allosaurus? Brachiosaurus?” he slurred.

“No …” There it was again—that feeling. “Wait …”

“Say those again, Steven.”

“I don't remember exactly what I said.”

“Brontosaurus, stegosaurus,” Hillary jumped in, “allosaurus, brachi-something and,” she considered for a second, “archaeopteryx.”

I lowered my head and gazed down at the floor, repeating each to myself. And then it hit me.

“Stegosaurus … Stego,” I murmured. “Steganography! That's got to be it!”

“What?” asked Hillary, befuddled.

“They've hidden a secret message in the video file. They're using steganography to hide the Florentine.”

“Stega-what?” asked Hillary. Steven shook his head in medicated puzzlement.

“Steganography. It's when you embed a secret message into digital content—like into an image file, a movie file, or an MP3 music file. Spies use that kind of thing to transmit secrets in plain view.”

“You can do that?” she asked.

“Yes. There's freely available software to do it. Al Qaeda has supposedly been doing this kind of thing for years to hide its communications. You take a standard picture, music file, whatever, and use steganography software to embed your secret data into the file. The picture will look slightly different after the secret data's been embedded inside—the colors change just a small shade from the original picture. But the typical person, at least one without anti-steganography tools, would never be able to detect a thing.”

“So you're saying there's something hidden in that cave video?”

“Yes. For example, if Richard Lister had hidden the Florentine Controller somewhere, he could have embedded the directions to it inside that video. And no one would have a clue.”

“A map inside a map!” said Steven with awe.

“That's got to be it. That would explain Khalimmy's interest in a password. Most of the steganography systems allow you to encode the data with a password before embedding it inside a media file. He must know that the Florentine, or something that helps him find the Florentine, is hidden inside the cave video, but he doesn't know the password.” I paused. “Then again, neither do we.”

“What if Richard Lister used his lip password?” asked Hillary.

“There's only one way to find out.”

Chapter 51

Tom opened the door clad in a pair of boxers, half-asleep.

“Alex?” he said, clearly confused by my midnight arrival. “Uhh. Come on in.”

“Thanks.” I stepped in through the door, closed it, and locked the deadbolt.

Tom gave me a strange look. “What brings you here … so late?” He paused, looking me over. “Jesus, Alex, are those sutures on your scalp? What happened?”

“Does Gennady have another gun?” I asked, ignoring his question.

“I think so. Why? What's going on?”

“Gennady,” I yelled. I heard a sleepy groan from the other room. “Gennady! Wake up now and get your gun.” I paused. “Now!”

“Alex, what's going on?”

“It's a long story. Right now, I need somewhere safe to decode this.” I held up my remaining thumb drive.

“Safe? Slow down. What's going on?”

“I've got Arab and Russian killers after me. That Florentine thing I told you about—it wasn't a diamond. It's almost certainly some type of state secret. Whatever it is, it's on this drive.”

“What's on the drive? I'm totally confused,” said Tom.

“I don't know, but I'm going to find out. I need to use your computer.”

Gennady came down the stairs, bleary-eyed. “Alex? What the hell is going on?”

“I'll tell you in a minute. Just go get a gun.”

“Where's the one I gave you?” he asked, rubbing his eyes.

“It's at the bottom of a cave. I'll explain later. Just go get your gun and make sure it's loaded.”

Gennady focused, took in my disheveled state, and nodded. “I'll be right back.”

“Where's your computer?” I asked. Tom pointed upstairs.

“This drive holds a video,” I said, walking up. “And I'm pretty sure that the video contains a hidden, embedded file. Probably state secrets or schematics for some military system, God only knows. I need to decode it, figure out what it is, and get it to the authorities.”

He considered this for a second, then said, “What can I do to help?”

“Can you get me some caffeine? This might take a while.”

Tom logged me into his computer and went downstairs to put on a pot of coffee.

I pulled up the browser and began googling for steganography software. My search turned up three major packages: StegoSoft, StegoCrypt, and Secrify. StegoSoft and StegoCrypt each offered trial versions, but Secrify only offered a pay version. I'd start with the trials.

While the two freeware versions were downloading, I inserted the thumb drive into Tom's computer and initiated a copy of the large video file down to the hard drive. Windows popped up an hourglass with a countdown timer indicating the copy would take another fifteen seconds.

“What's going on, Alex?” asked Gennady, gun in hand. I briefly repeated the explanation I gave Tom.

“Christ. And you think there's a hint in the video?”

“No, not a hint. Not something visible in the video,” I said. “If I'm not mistaken, this video has a secret file steganographically embedded inside of it.”

“Stego-what embedded inside?” Gennady lowered onto his knees next to me and stared at the screen.

“I think the Florentine is a secret document of some sort. And I'm betting that Richard Lister actually hid that data file inside this video using steganography software.”

Gennady shrugged. Tom walked into the room carrying a coffeepot and three mugs.

“Thanks,” I said. Tom placed the tray on the desk and pulled up a chair for himself.

A few seconds later, the first of the free-trial steganography packages finished downloading. I double-clicked on the icon to install it, then pulled up a picture from Tom's photo folder and pointed to the upper-leftmost pixel in the image. “Each dot in this picture is represented by a number between zero and 16 million. Zero represents the blackest black, and 16 million represents the whitest white, one million might represent a reddish-blue color. Each picture is just a series of rows of numbers, one number for each colored dot. When the computer displays the picture on the screen, it translates each number into a color, and that's what you see.”

“Okay, that makes sense,” said Tom. “But how do you encode a file inside a picture?”

“I'm getting to it, one second. The human eye can only see several thousand different colors. It definitely can't tell the difference between color number 0 and 1, or 1 and 2, for example. All three are so dark, so close to black, they all look identical to the human eye. So the steganography software uses this flaw in the human vision system to encode secret messages.”

I flipped back to the installer and then clicked the “next” button. The first steganography package began copying its files to Tom's hard drive.

“So it does something like this,” I said. I pulled a pad of paper and a pen out of the desk drawer. “It starts by taking every number in an original picture file—the one we want to use to conceal our secret—and it converts each number to the nearest even number.” I wrote the numbers 101, 200, 521, 36, and 95 on the pad. “Imagine these five numbers represent the colors of five consecutive dots in an unprocessed picture file. The software would first convert these five numbers to 100, 200, 520, 36, and 94, leaving each even number alone, and converting each odd number to the even number just below it. This produces a second image made up entirely of even-color numbers. Now if you were to view the two images side by side, you wouldn't notice any difference—your brain can't detect such minor changes in color. So now imagine that the user wants to secretly encode the digits 1, 1, 0, 1, 0 inside of this image.” I drew these five digits under the original numbers:

“All the software needs to do is add these ones and zeros to each of the even-color numbers. This would give us the following numbers.”

“These numbers represent a slightly different series of colors than the original ones in the picture, but again, the human eye can't tell the difference since the numbers are still so close to the originals, so this new image will look identical to the original. Yet there's now a secret message encoded in the picture. Now every odd number in the picture represents a secret 1 value, and every even number represents a secret zero value. The typical image file contains millions of pixels, so you can encode a heck of a lot of ones and zeros in it. You can encode even more data in a video.”

“Unbelievable,” said Tom. “How come we've never heard of this?”

“Most people haven't, but it's pretty prevalent. Spies use this kind of technique to encode messages to their handlers. The terrorist networks are rumored to use it too. You've probably seen dozens of stenographic images and had no idea. Anyway, I believe this video has hidden data encoded inside of it. I'm downloading several of the most popular steganography software packages to see if I can decode it.”

I double-clicked on the newly installed application and selected Richard's cave video file. The software instantly popped up a window stating: “This video file has not been encoded using StegoSoft.”

“Crap. Strike one.” I double-clicked the second installer and followed the prompts to install the second steganography application.

“How many different packages are there?” Gennady asked.

“Dozens, probably. I'm hoping he used one of the more popular ones or we're going to be here all night.” A moment later the second package finished installing. I launched it and, again, asked it to decode the cave video.

The software displayed an hourglass on the computer screen for several seconds, then popped up a window: “This video contains a password-encoded file. Please enter the password to proceed with decoding.”

“That's it!” I yelled. “Okay, cross your fingers. Hopefully Richard Lister was a creature of habit, or else we're back at square one.” I gazed up at the ceiling, conjuring up Lister's inner-lip code from memory: seven, six, nine, five, four, two. I keyed the six digits into the window and hit Enter. After a brief delay, the software popped up a window titled “Decoding …” and displayed a progress bar. Three minutes later, as the bar reached 100%, the software proclaimed “Decoding complete. Please select a folder to hold your decoded file.”