Chapter 4

The man, sitting in his leather chair with his back to the large oak desk, stared impatiently out his office window. As he gazed into the dark night, he wondered whether he had thought of all the contingencies.

Had he worked through every possible scenario that could arise? His fingers slowly rubbed his chin, and a slight smile crossed his face. Yes, he was sure he had thought of everything. Nothing could go wrong. He couldn't fail.

A gentle knock emanated from his office door, but he did not stir. He continued looking out the window. A tall, athletic man, sharply dressed in a black suit, slowly opened the office door, quietly entered, and stepped across the plush, dark brown carpet so as not to disturb his boss. The man stood at attention in front of the desk, but did not speak.

"Have you gotten word?" he asked his subordinate, breaking the silence.

"Yes, it has begun. Right on schedule, sir," the athletic man answered.

"And what method was used?"

"A mugging that appears to have gone wrong, resulting in the man's death. The police seem satisfied not to dig any further," the athletic man replied, a smile appearing on his face.

"Very good. Were there any problems?"

"No problems on that front, but perhaps on another." Upon saying this, the athletic man's smile disappeared, and he fidgeted slightly, knowing that his boss would not be pleased with this news.

"Exactly what other problem might we have?" the boss grilled, his displeasure seeping from his words.

"It seems a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin is researching our communication technique. Specifically, he's researching ways to discover and decipher the hidden messages."

At this, the boss whipped around in his chair and stared angrily at his underling. "It was my impression that no one was working on detecting our way of communicating."

"Sir, when we began this project, there wasn't anyone that we knew about. However, this student hadn't published anything on his work until two weeks ago, and I was only notified of it this morning."

"How far along is his work?"

"His research seems to be in the early stages, his paper mostly details the complexity with detecting this type of communication, but he hints at some possible ways of working around the problems with some heuristics, but his paper doesn't go any further than that."

"So he hasn't figured out a way to detect our communications?" the boss asked, hoping for some good news.

"We aren't sure. He must have written the paper some time ago for it to have already been reviewed and published. Since then, he may have progressed quite a bit on his work or possibly none at all."

This wasn't the news the boss wanted, and his disappointment could be clearly discerned from his facial expression. "So, what you're telling me, is that you have no idea how far along his work is?"

"No idea at all, sir," the subordinate replied as candidly as possible. He knew better than to try to deceive his boss, doing so would only bring out his rage. "However, our communication technique is such that, even if he has discovered a means of detection, it would still be a stroke of luck for him to stumble upon our messages."

"That's just wishful thinking. We need to know exactly how far along he is."

"Yes, sir."

"Is anyone paying attention to his work?"

"At present, the answer is no. From what I've been able to gather, most analysts in the intelligence community believe no one is communicating via this technique. Until they think someone is, they're going to invest their research dollars elsewhere. Most of the current research is in breaking high encryption codes."

"Good. But we must still be very careful."

"Sir, may I speak freely," the athletic man asked.

"Yes. What's on your mind?"

"Do you think this plan is a good idea, especially in light of this new information? After all, it might not be needed, and thus, not worth the risk."

"I've already explained this to you," the boss lectured, "You must always have a backup plan; otherwise failure is just one step closer. And failure is not an option for us in this mission."