see. And that’s it?’ He was referring to the black box.
‘Yes. Let me show you. Excuse me,’ Binning said politely to Banzi as he shuffled past him.
Banzi was not sure how to take the man who had accosted him from the rainswept shadows with a polite ‘Excuse me’.
Binning cleared away the cups and paperwork from a table and placed the box on it. He unclipped the latches and opened the waterproof seams, dividing the container into two equal halves. ‘This is the G43,’ he said, indicating a robust rubber-coated electronic device.
‘The monitoring system?’ Jordan asked.
‘That’s right,’ Binning confirmed, looking between Jordan and Deacon, still unsure who was in charge. He removed the G43 from its sponge-rubber moulding, laid it down and opened a waterproof panel on its side. ‘This is the battery housing,’ he said. He took a small screwdriver from a pouch on his upper arm and used it to unclip several tiny catches inside the housing. He removed another cover and deftly pulled out what looked like a black ceramic tile. He placed it on the table with a reverent gesture. ‘This is it,’ he announced.
Jordan leaned closer to inspect the device without touching it, paying particular attention to its thin sides where there were several miniature USB-type sockets. He reached inside his pocket and took out a BlackBerry which he turned on, applying a password to start it up. He dug out a cable from the same pocket, plugged one end into the phone and the other into one of the sockets on the side of the tile. ‘You know what I’m doing?’ he asked Binning.
‘Of course. You have a piece of software in your Rim that can input and verify the modulated output.’
Jordan was lost after ‘software’ but carried on doing as he had been instructed.
‘You want to ensure it’s the real McCoy,’ Binning went on. ‘Personally, I don’t see the point. Why would I be coming along if it wasn’t?’
Jordan didn’t know or care.
‘But then, you didn’t know I was coming,’ Binning added.
Jordan knew one thing: he wished the man would shut up. He opened an encrypted file inside his phone’s download folder. It couldn’t read the file. He frowned.
Binning leaned closer to take a look. ‘If you look back inside your downloads folder I suspect you’ll find a new file. It’s the decoded data that your phone just input through the tile.’
Jordan wasn’t the most technical of people but he found the file and clicked on it. The BlackBerry’s screen lit up and a few seconds later the encrypted file opened. Jordan smiled as he looked at the screen. He showed it to Binning. The scientist grinned.
‘Can I see?’ Deacon asked, feeling left out.
Jordan showed it to him. It was a short phrase in quotation marks: ‘By Strength, By Guile.’
‘What do you think that is?’ Jordan asked Deacon.
‘It’s the poxy logo of the SBS.’
‘It’s also the proof that we have the decryption device,’ Jordan explained. ‘We need to call this in.’
Deacon was still highly confused. ‘Am I to understand that all of this, this capturing of the oil platform and everything, was for this?’ He pointed at the small black tile.
Jordan shrugged as if, amazingly, it was.
‘This is no ordinary “this”,’ Binning said.
‘What is it, then?’ Deacon’s patience was starting to wear thin.
‘It’s the vital part of the world’s fastest encryption device.’
Deacon looked at him blankly. He might as well have said it in Albanian.
Binning persevered. ‘The fastest decryption machines anywhere in the world would take between a thousand to a million years to decrypt a hundred and thirty-bit key. The different combin - ations would equal the number of grains of sand in the Sahara Desert. This is still in its development stage but when it’s complete it will have the potential to decrypt the same data in six months to a year.’
Deacon wasn’t remotely impressed. ‘Six months to a year?’
Binning decided that he was talking to an unappreciative moron. He replaced the tile inside the G43 and closed the device. ‘You’re being paid a considerable amount for your efforts, I imagine. Somewhere in the region of a million dollars, or pounds even. Well, that amount of money is a mere drop in the ocean compared to what this is worth in the right hands.’
Deacon understood that much. Still not why, though.
‘Boss,’ Banzi interrupted, talking to Deacon. ‘I was looking for Pirate when I found him.’ He indicated Binning.
‘That’s nice work,’ Deacon replied sarcastically.
‘I couldn’t find Pirate. He’s gone,’ Banzi said, making his