The Hunters (Presidential Agent 3)

Castillo looked quesioningly at Kocian.

“You can’t judge a book by its cover, Karlchen.”

Castillo opened the book. It had been carefully hollowed out enough to hold a black leather-and-chrome object a half inch thick, three inches wide, and nine inches long. Castillo knew what it was: a state-of-the-art external hard drive for a computer.

“Eighty gigabytes,” Kocian said. “Those Japanese are really clever, aren’t they, Karlchen?”

“The Japanese are good at making things, but this technology came out of Las Vegas, Nevada,” Castillo said, “not Japan.”

“And how do you know that?”

“Because Aloysius Francis Casey of the AFC Corporation, who came up with the technology, sent me a prototype. I’ve got it in my briefcase. One hundred twenty gigs. Would you like to see it?”

“That won’t be necessary.”

“Everything’s in here?”

“Just about. I have a few tidbits between my ears.”

“Is it encrypted?”

Kocian nodded.

“Microsoft encryption?”

Kocian nodded again.

“Well, see if you can remember the key while I go get my hard drive.”

“You want to see this now?” Kocian asked, surprised.

“I want to copy it to my hard drive and then encrypt it with another little gift from Mr. Casey. There are a lot of people, many of them unfriendly, who know how to get around Mr. Gates’s encryption technology. So far as I know, nobody’s ever been able to crack the AFC encryption logarithm.”

“You’re serious, aren’t you, Karl?”

Castillo picked up on that: I’m not Karlchen right now. The old man is impressed.

“Absolutely,” Castillo said. “Have you got another hard drive?”

“A spare, you mean?”

Castillo nodded.

“Why?”

“Because what I really would like to do just as soon as I get this data off your drive and properly reencrypted is put it on another drive and send that in the diplomatic pouch to the United States. In case something happens to our copies.”

Kocian considered that and nodded.

“There’s a store across the river which sells them,” he said. “They’re expensive.”

“Can we send somebody to buy one?”

Kocian nodded again. “Shall I have it put on my Tages Zeitung American Express card? Or are you going to pay for it?”

“Better yet, we’ll have the Lorimer Charitable and Benevolent Fund pay for it,” Castillo said. “Will this store take dollars?”

“Probably, at a very bad rate of exchange.”