Nina shook her head to get the wet hair out of her eyes. She folded her
leg beneath her as she sat down on the bed, stirring the deep purple liquid
with a thin paintbrush. In the room next door she heard the water shut
off, followed by the sound of footsteps on the tile floor. She adjusted
the paper on the bed sheet and then took the paintbrush out of the pot,
letting any excess liquid run down the side of the cup before she raised it
to the brim and started painting the paper.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw the bathroom door open and Jack pad towards his suitcase. One of the hotel's pristinely white towels was wrapped low on his waist and she had to remind herself not to glance over at him. He walked behind her just as she lowered the brush to the page, and when she'd finished the first stroke he was back in the bathroom, having collected his clothes.
She'd finished painting the entire sheet when Jack settled in front of her on the bed, dressed in a pair of loose pyjama bottoms. "Don't think they packed me a t-shirt..." He muttered as an explanation, without being asked, "...How's it going?"
The oxidising agent was already working away at the paper, leaving the dark green outline of the building on the paper, plans to the building. The purple colour was fading to a pale pink, and the Cobalt was rapidly changing colour. They'd seen drawings of the building before, but they still needed one to reference from whilst making their final plan.
"Shouldn't be much longer, just needs to dry a bit."
Jack nodded, and collected the empty gold foil wrappers that had once contained chocolate. Inside each one were tiny notes on the building, security codes and room codes. Nina had unwrapped the chocolates and set them on a plate on the bed, she'd left the chocolate, which surprised him, as she reached for one before he'd even realised they were there.
He wasn't going to give her time to rethink it, and collected one of the chocolates off the tray and ate it, wiping his hands free of any melted chocolate before he read the inside of the wrappers. "Have you worked the correlation yet?" He asked her.
Nina gave him a veiled look as she stood from the bed, going to the sink to rinse off the paintbrush and mixing tray, "You take four and a half minutes to shower." She gave as her sole response.
Jack ignored her comments and grabbed some of the hotel notepaper from the nightstand. He tore off the top page and turned the notepad over to rest on the leather back, easily impressionable, and easy to place a coaster on and remove any handwriting indentations. He copied the numbers off the wrapper, holding them by the corners as Nina started on the second piece of canvas.
He'd offered her some clothes pegs that were in his case to hang them up with, but she'd waved him off, hanging them up might cause the paint to run. Nina left the second page on the bed and collected the first on a towel, taking it into the bathroom. It wasn't long before he heard a hair dryer, and poked his head round the corner to see her drying the paper with the odd burst of hot air.
The alphanumeric combinations on the chocolate wrappers were entry codes, computer file numbers, and passwords. All of them to the Malero building.
The Malero building was a bit of an odyssey to CTU agents. A pantheon to terrorism experts around the world. Juave Malero was an old man now, but his legacy lived on. He had, at one time or another, been connected to most criminal networks around the globe, either as a supplier or as a member. He'd built his financial empire during the fascist rule of Spain, and his children had survived the rebellious nature of their generation through home schooling and boarding school. His daughter, Esthero Valez, was now in her sixties, and had the distinguished honour of being the first female on the FBI's most wanted list.
The building housed a computer security system; it was where you took information if you never wanted anyone else to get to it, unfortunately, Malero also kept the list of his associates in here. A concrete link between Malero and his criminal colleagues had never been proved, and retrieving these files, together with the other, meager snippets of information would put this man behind bars for good.
He watched as she settled onto the bed, curling a leg up underneath her to begin on the second page. Most the clothing that had been selected for him had been too tight for his taste, and it looked like Nina's were too loose. She was wearing a pair of stripy drawstring trousers and a camisole, both of which were far too big, the trousers had huge bunches on them, from where she'd tightened the cord far more than was expected, and the camisole was adjusted every few seconds, obviously uncomfortable for her.
He looked down at the piece of paper in front of him. They knew that the outer doors required an iris scan, a living one, and it would be logged into the computer system. The inner doors, those nearer the centre of the building, were more complicated, requiring a magnetic key, like the swipe cards they used at CTU, but they had no magnetic scanner or programmer, just huge long streams of numbers. Hidden somewhere inside the streams were the four figure directions they had, three telling them door number, and one odd or even, as a check.
By the time he'd written all the numbers down on the paper, Nina had brought the first sheet back from the bathroom. She touched a finger to the paint, checking to see if it was dry, when she was satisfied she grabbed a hotel pen and made a dot in the corner of the page. "So this is our entrance door, it's furthest from the secure files, and is only guarded during office hours when it's propped open." Jack knelt forward and placed the pen and pad on the bed bedside him, eager to look at something comprehensible.
"Right," agreed Nina, "it's the employee entrance." She remembered this from the briefing. "So we need a guard's iris scan. Which entrance can we pinch a guard from?"
She had a mischievous smile on her face; pinch a guard, like he would be 'right back'. He let out a soft snort of laughter, and leant even further over. The employee entrance was right at the other end of the paper, near Nina's knees. He noticed a second entrance and taped the page. "What about here? As I recall, the satellite photos rarely showed two guards here."
"And it's close to the employee entrance, less distance to get caught in." Jack nodded at her comment. "How are those codes going?" She asked him. "The code is the first step."
He collected the note pad off the bed as she pushed the paper to one side; she took the pages from him, and began to read down the list. "It's nonstop, I can't figure out which parts are codes and which are directions."
Nina nodded as she turned the pages over. "Where does it start?" She asked before she noticed the page numbers in the corner.
Jack didn't point it out to her, waiting for the quiet 'ah' and then for her to turn back to page one. "Well lets think about this...it'll go code for the outside door and from then on room number, then code, and the room number is what?"
"A sequence of three digits, ending in an two even if the room is on the left, and with a fourth to make it divisible by eleven." Jack recited, almost exactly as Walsh had done. He could imagine the greying, older man pacing his office as he spoke.
Nina nodded slowly, scratching the side of her cheek. She pulled the dry map closer, running a finger along the edge of the building. "...Which has to be on the left..." She announced.
Jack scowled. "Why?"
"Stairs to offices, visitors bathroom, break room, ladies, gents..." She continued along the corridor, labeling each room on the right in turn, several had two doors, until she reached the end of the building."
"So we're looking for a two even numbers, in a group of three..."
"...Divisible by eleven." Nina put the pages down on the bed between them, so they both had to tilt their heads to see it. "There...4729" She read aloud.
"Now all we need is a calculator." Jack muttered under his breath.
"No...if something's divisible by eleven, it's digits...no, it's not...what's the next one?"
Jack scanned the page further down, he eventually found another pair of even numbers, about thirty numbers into the string of code. "3225?" He ventured.
"No." Nina told him quickly, "next?"
"4675...How are you doing this?"
"A number is divisible by eleven if the alternate numbers add up to the same value." Nina told him. "What was that number again?"
It took him a moment to find the number again, "4675."
"That's it."
"That's our code?"
She nodded. Jack took her discarded pen and drew lines around the code block. He'd set the numbers out in blocks so they were easy to count. "Each magnetic door key is 42 digits long." Jack grimaced at the thought of entering the digits into the door under pressure. His hand was bound to slip, and there were only two chances before the alarm went off.
Nina took the pen from him and counted forty-two numbers after the end of the door number. "This should be our next door." Nina said, circling four numbers.
Jack nodded, "5241....On the left, and...divisible by eleven."
The pages of numbers didn't seem quite so confusing now. He let Nina work though the rest of the papers and pulled the map over to look at. He tried to plot possible routes from the doors as Nina told them to him, the plans must have been incomplete, and it looked like they would walk off the end of the building. "We're not worried about video cameras?" Nina asked.
"Not inside."
"Why?"
"The information people send to be stored in here has never been photographed or..."
"Right."
-24-
The Malero building wasn't as impressive at night as it was during the day. Tiny red lights sat on the corners of the building, warning passing aircraft that they couldn't fly through the black body between them. In LA the building would have been lit from below, from the balconies and the flowerbeds with sodium vapour lights. But they couldn't afford that. If anyone on the outside figured out what was on the other side of these seemingly glass windows, there'd be problems for the company.
Jack pressed his back up against the brick wall outside the Malero's property. Behind him, he heard Nina do the same, and reached over to her. She handed him a small night vision telescope, he quietly thanked her, and placed the small implement to his right eye.
He looked across the driveway. The corporate insignia was displayed four foot high on the grass island, surrounded by green shrubs and brightly coloured, by day, flora. It would make useful cover. Jack trailed the telescope up to the building. The trees either side of the parking lot would provide a modicum of cover from the security guards. He checked the four forwards facing security cameras, two facing the other direction, two facing this way. He watched quietly as they rotated, looking over the green, the few cars and shrubbery, and then back again. "Nina, if we run together, on my mark, to the island, we can move before the cameras move."
He didn't turn to look at her, keeping an eye on the cameras and checking no guards ventured into his vision. He heard her mutter her agreement, and felt her moved closer, and then as the second pair of cameras rotated in the opposite directions. "Go."
As fast as they could, Nina and Jack sprinted across the car park, ducking as they reached the sign and squatting on the damp grass. Next to Jack the sprinkler started up again, and he moved to block its path from Nina, who was carrying most of the electronic equipment.
He bent the infrared telescope in the middle, changing it to a periscope, and checked for the position of the security cameras now. They were following their original paths still, but a security guard walked across the front of the building. Jack moved along, he rustled a few leaves, but he managed to hide the end of the periscope in the bush. The security guard walked away, having completed his loop.
The best place to run to, from here, seemed to be the flowerbeds directly underneath two of the cameras. Jack considered the positions of the cameras and led Nina towards the bushes. There were trees and some more dense foliage here, and it was much easier to make the hundred yard walk to the next entrance.
They squatted behind a short, well trimmed, weed infested bush, and peered out at the security guard. He was leaning back against the wall, cupping a cigarette and lighter in his hands. Nina pulled the dart gun out of her pack and unwrapped the trigger. Jack had a small case of darts in his trousers pocket, and pulled them out, opening the container with a strangely loud click.
The both peeked out at the guard, who gave no indication he'd heard.
Jack slotted a dart into the firing chamber of the gun, poking the end in with a narrow piece of plastic tubing. When the feathers were far enough from the end of the tube he closed the back of his weapon, and peered out at the guard, checking for any other men, just as the camera moved the other way.
He raised an eyebrow at Nina, as she dropped her bag to the floor, and clutched the few things she needed. She nodded to him, acknowledging his silent question. Her signal was when the guard dropped.
Jack glanced up at the sole camera that gave an image of their position. Two more seconds and it would be turned, only just enough so it had half a rotation to it's extreme position and then half back before they would be discovered. He aimed for the guard's thigh, the dart soaring through the air, leaving a whistling sound in its wake. The guard cried out as he clutched the dart, pulling it from his leg, only to drop to the ground soon after.
Nina jumped over the bush and headed to the camera, glancing down at the wires and computer equipment in her hands as she waited for Jack to check the guard. She noticed it turning, "Jack." She whispered, calling him over.
He nodded, and rushed over, hoisting her up unceremoniously. She gripped either side of the camera to steady herself, hoping that Jack's hands, which kept moving into various positions around her thighs, would hold.
She slotted the little metal crowbar under the white cover of camera and delivered a fast blow to the edge of the bar. The white metal buckled under the stress, and the crowbar flipped and fell, narrowly missing Jack. "Nina." He hissed, and she ignored him. She tugged a handful of wiring out the way, just as the camera began to move again.
"Shit!" She exclaimed, as she shifted along the wall. She unwound the wires from the computer board she held, and took the two simple croc clips. There were seven wires leading off from the camera, she traced each one with her eyes until she glanced at the wires in the wall, realising only two ended there she shoved the croc clips around it and hurriedly grappled for her wire cutters in her trouser pocket. Another feet degrees, and whoever was watching the security camera would see the guard. She gave up with fumbling with the zipper, and gripped the wires connecting to the camera.
One swift tug and they were set.
She tapped Jack's arm twice to indicate she wanted to be let down, and he slowly lowered her to the ground. He slid her down his body to break her fall, and she sucked in a sudden breath at the contact. Jack stared at her awkwardly as she landed.
Nina pursed her lips and glanced at his shoulder, intending to look towards the fallen guard. "Shall we?" She ventured.
Jack turned and glanced at the guard and then back at Nina, for a minute he lost himself, his body still tingling from the sensation of having her perfect body sliding down his, and holding onto her by her thighs for so long. "Yeah..." then realising what he was saying, he snapped into action, muttering 'yeah' under his breath again as he squatted next the guard ready to hoist him over his shoulder.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw the bathroom door open and Jack pad towards his suitcase. One of the hotel's pristinely white towels was wrapped low on his waist and she had to remind herself not to glance over at him. He walked behind her just as she lowered the brush to the page, and when she'd finished the first stroke he was back in the bathroom, having collected his clothes.
She'd finished painting the entire sheet when Jack settled in front of her on the bed, dressed in a pair of loose pyjama bottoms. "Don't think they packed me a t-shirt..." He muttered as an explanation, without being asked, "...How's it going?"
The oxidising agent was already working away at the paper, leaving the dark green outline of the building on the paper, plans to the building. The purple colour was fading to a pale pink, and the Cobalt was rapidly changing colour. They'd seen drawings of the building before, but they still needed one to reference from whilst making their final plan.
"Shouldn't be much longer, just needs to dry a bit."
Jack nodded, and collected the empty gold foil wrappers that had once contained chocolate. Inside each one were tiny notes on the building, security codes and room codes. Nina had unwrapped the chocolates and set them on a plate on the bed, she'd left the chocolate, which surprised him, as she reached for one before he'd even realised they were there.
He wasn't going to give her time to rethink it, and collected one of the chocolates off the tray and ate it, wiping his hands free of any melted chocolate before he read the inside of the wrappers. "Have you worked the correlation yet?" He asked her.
Nina gave him a veiled look as she stood from the bed, going to the sink to rinse off the paintbrush and mixing tray, "You take four and a half minutes to shower." She gave as her sole response.
Jack ignored her comments and grabbed some of the hotel notepaper from the nightstand. He tore off the top page and turned the notepad over to rest on the leather back, easily impressionable, and easy to place a coaster on and remove any handwriting indentations. He copied the numbers off the wrapper, holding them by the corners as Nina started on the second piece of canvas.
He'd offered her some clothes pegs that were in his case to hang them up with, but she'd waved him off, hanging them up might cause the paint to run. Nina left the second page on the bed and collected the first on a towel, taking it into the bathroom. It wasn't long before he heard a hair dryer, and poked his head round the corner to see her drying the paper with the odd burst of hot air.
The alphanumeric combinations on the chocolate wrappers were entry codes, computer file numbers, and passwords. All of them to the Malero building.
The Malero building was a bit of an odyssey to CTU agents. A pantheon to terrorism experts around the world. Juave Malero was an old man now, but his legacy lived on. He had, at one time or another, been connected to most criminal networks around the globe, either as a supplier or as a member. He'd built his financial empire during the fascist rule of Spain, and his children had survived the rebellious nature of their generation through home schooling and boarding school. His daughter, Esthero Valez, was now in her sixties, and had the distinguished honour of being the first female on the FBI's most wanted list.
The building housed a computer security system; it was where you took information if you never wanted anyone else to get to it, unfortunately, Malero also kept the list of his associates in here. A concrete link between Malero and his criminal colleagues had never been proved, and retrieving these files, together with the other, meager snippets of information would put this man behind bars for good.
He watched as she settled onto the bed, curling a leg up underneath her to begin on the second page. Most the clothing that had been selected for him had been too tight for his taste, and it looked like Nina's were too loose. She was wearing a pair of stripy drawstring trousers and a camisole, both of which were far too big, the trousers had huge bunches on them, from where she'd tightened the cord far more than was expected, and the camisole was adjusted every few seconds, obviously uncomfortable for her.
He looked down at the piece of paper in front of him. They knew that the outer doors required an iris scan, a living one, and it would be logged into the computer system. The inner doors, those nearer the centre of the building, were more complicated, requiring a magnetic key, like the swipe cards they used at CTU, but they had no magnetic scanner or programmer, just huge long streams of numbers. Hidden somewhere inside the streams were the four figure directions they had, three telling them door number, and one odd or even, as a check.
By the time he'd written all the numbers down on the paper, Nina had brought the first sheet back from the bathroom. She touched a finger to the paint, checking to see if it was dry, when she was satisfied she grabbed a hotel pen and made a dot in the corner of the page. "So this is our entrance door, it's furthest from the secure files, and is only guarded during office hours when it's propped open." Jack knelt forward and placed the pen and pad on the bed bedside him, eager to look at something comprehensible.
"Right," agreed Nina, "it's the employee entrance." She remembered this from the briefing. "So we need a guard's iris scan. Which entrance can we pinch a guard from?"
She had a mischievous smile on her face; pinch a guard, like he would be 'right back'. He let out a soft snort of laughter, and leant even further over. The employee entrance was right at the other end of the paper, near Nina's knees. He noticed a second entrance and taped the page. "What about here? As I recall, the satellite photos rarely showed two guards here."
"And it's close to the employee entrance, less distance to get caught in." Jack nodded at her comment. "How are those codes going?" She asked him. "The code is the first step."
He collected the note pad off the bed as she pushed the paper to one side; she took the pages from him, and began to read down the list. "It's nonstop, I can't figure out which parts are codes and which are directions."
Nina nodded as she turned the pages over. "Where does it start?" She asked before she noticed the page numbers in the corner.
Jack didn't point it out to her, waiting for the quiet 'ah' and then for her to turn back to page one. "Well lets think about this...it'll go code for the outside door and from then on room number, then code, and the room number is what?"
"A sequence of three digits, ending in an two even if the room is on the left, and with a fourth to make it divisible by eleven." Jack recited, almost exactly as Walsh had done. He could imagine the greying, older man pacing his office as he spoke.
Nina nodded slowly, scratching the side of her cheek. She pulled the dry map closer, running a finger along the edge of the building. "...Which has to be on the left..." She announced.
Jack scowled. "Why?"
"Stairs to offices, visitors bathroom, break room, ladies, gents..." She continued along the corridor, labeling each room on the right in turn, several had two doors, until she reached the end of the building."
"So we're looking for a two even numbers, in a group of three..."
"...Divisible by eleven." Nina put the pages down on the bed between them, so they both had to tilt their heads to see it. "There...4729" She read aloud.
"Now all we need is a calculator." Jack muttered under his breath.
"No...if something's divisible by eleven, it's digits...no, it's not...what's the next one?"
Jack scanned the page further down, he eventually found another pair of even numbers, about thirty numbers into the string of code. "3225?" He ventured.
"No." Nina told him quickly, "next?"
"4675...How are you doing this?"
"A number is divisible by eleven if the alternate numbers add up to the same value." Nina told him. "What was that number again?"
It took him a moment to find the number again, "4675."
"That's it."
"That's our code?"
She nodded. Jack took her discarded pen and drew lines around the code block. He'd set the numbers out in blocks so they were easy to count. "Each magnetic door key is 42 digits long." Jack grimaced at the thought of entering the digits into the door under pressure. His hand was bound to slip, and there were only two chances before the alarm went off.
Nina took the pen from him and counted forty-two numbers after the end of the door number. "This should be our next door." Nina said, circling four numbers.
Jack nodded, "5241....On the left, and...divisible by eleven."
The pages of numbers didn't seem quite so confusing now. He let Nina work though the rest of the papers and pulled the map over to look at. He tried to plot possible routes from the doors as Nina told them to him, the plans must have been incomplete, and it looked like they would walk off the end of the building. "We're not worried about video cameras?" Nina asked.
"Not inside."
"Why?"
"The information people send to be stored in here has never been photographed or..."
"Right."
-24-
The Malero building wasn't as impressive at night as it was during the day. Tiny red lights sat on the corners of the building, warning passing aircraft that they couldn't fly through the black body between them. In LA the building would have been lit from below, from the balconies and the flowerbeds with sodium vapour lights. But they couldn't afford that. If anyone on the outside figured out what was on the other side of these seemingly glass windows, there'd be problems for the company.
Jack pressed his back up against the brick wall outside the Malero's property. Behind him, he heard Nina do the same, and reached over to her. She handed him a small night vision telescope, he quietly thanked her, and placed the small implement to his right eye.
He looked across the driveway. The corporate insignia was displayed four foot high on the grass island, surrounded by green shrubs and brightly coloured, by day, flora. It would make useful cover. Jack trailed the telescope up to the building. The trees either side of the parking lot would provide a modicum of cover from the security guards. He checked the four forwards facing security cameras, two facing the other direction, two facing this way. He watched quietly as they rotated, looking over the green, the few cars and shrubbery, and then back again. "Nina, if we run together, on my mark, to the island, we can move before the cameras move."
He didn't turn to look at her, keeping an eye on the cameras and checking no guards ventured into his vision. He heard her mutter her agreement, and felt her moved closer, and then as the second pair of cameras rotated in the opposite directions. "Go."
As fast as they could, Nina and Jack sprinted across the car park, ducking as they reached the sign and squatting on the damp grass. Next to Jack the sprinkler started up again, and he moved to block its path from Nina, who was carrying most of the electronic equipment.
He bent the infrared telescope in the middle, changing it to a periscope, and checked for the position of the security cameras now. They were following their original paths still, but a security guard walked across the front of the building. Jack moved along, he rustled a few leaves, but he managed to hide the end of the periscope in the bush. The security guard walked away, having completed his loop.
The best place to run to, from here, seemed to be the flowerbeds directly underneath two of the cameras. Jack considered the positions of the cameras and led Nina towards the bushes. There were trees and some more dense foliage here, and it was much easier to make the hundred yard walk to the next entrance.
They squatted behind a short, well trimmed, weed infested bush, and peered out at the security guard. He was leaning back against the wall, cupping a cigarette and lighter in his hands. Nina pulled the dart gun out of her pack and unwrapped the trigger. Jack had a small case of darts in his trousers pocket, and pulled them out, opening the container with a strangely loud click.
The both peeked out at the guard, who gave no indication he'd heard.
Jack slotted a dart into the firing chamber of the gun, poking the end in with a narrow piece of plastic tubing. When the feathers were far enough from the end of the tube he closed the back of his weapon, and peered out at the guard, checking for any other men, just as the camera moved the other way.
He raised an eyebrow at Nina, as she dropped her bag to the floor, and clutched the few things she needed. She nodded to him, acknowledging his silent question. Her signal was when the guard dropped.
Jack glanced up at the sole camera that gave an image of their position. Two more seconds and it would be turned, only just enough so it had half a rotation to it's extreme position and then half back before they would be discovered. He aimed for the guard's thigh, the dart soaring through the air, leaving a whistling sound in its wake. The guard cried out as he clutched the dart, pulling it from his leg, only to drop to the ground soon after.
Nina jumped over the bush and headed to the camera, glancing down at the wires and computer equipment in her hands as she waited for Jack to check the guard. She noticed it turning, "Jack." She whispered, calling him over.
He nodded, and rushed over, hoisting her up unceremoniously. She gripped either side of the camera to steady herself, hoping that Jack's hands, which kept moving into various positions around her thighs, would hold.
She slotted the little metal crowbar under the white cover of camera and delivered a fast blow to the edge of the bar. The white metal buckled under the stress, and the crowbar flipped and fell, narrowly missing Jack. "Nina." He hissed, and she ignored him. She tugged a handful of wiring out the way, just as the camera began to move again.
"Shit!" She exclaimed, as she shifted along the wall. She unwound the wires from the computer board she held, and took the two simple croc clips. There were seven wires leading off from the camera, she traced each one with her eyes until she glanced at the wires in the wall, realising only two ended there she shoved the croc clips around it and hurriedly grappled for her wire cutters in her trouser pocket. Another feet degrees, and whoever was watching the security camera would see the guard. She gave up with fumbling with the zipper, and gripped the wires connecting to the camera.
One swift tug and they were set.
She tapped Jack's arm twice to indicate she wanted to be let down, and he slowly lowered her to the ground. He slid her down his body to break her fall, and she sucked in a sudden breath at the contact. Jack stared at her awkwardly as she landed.
Nina pursed her lips and glanced at his shoulder, intending to look towards the fallen guard. "Shall we?" She ventured.
Jack turned and glanced at the guard and then back at Nina, for a minute he lost himself, his body still tingling from the sensation of having her perfect body sliding down his, and holding onto her by her thighs for so long. "Yeah..." then realising what he was saying, he snapped into action, muttering 'yeah' under his breath again as he squatted next the guard ready to hoist him over his shoulder.