“Maybe. But it would help if I had a bit of space.”
“On the table?” Martin asked, leaning over her shoulder and pushing aside a couple magazines that were next to the computer.
“No, not on the table,” she said.
We all took a giant step backward.
“A bit more?” she asked.
We took two more steps back—except for Martin, who took a half step forward. “I’ll bet you can beat most guys at video games,” he said.
I cringed. Martin might have talent, but he definitely didn’t have timing. Livy didn’t bother to respond, even though I suspected she’d just heard him mention one of her deepest prides. She shook her head and went to work, studying the files.
Every minute or two, she’d say, “Ahhh,” or, “that’s interesting,” or “I see,” and open another file.
Finally, she looked over her shoulder. “Let me show you what I’ve found out.”
We all moved closer. Livy pointed to three open files that she’d lined up, one above the other, so they just fit on the screen. “Look at these. Based on the file names, they’re all business letters. The odds are, they’d have some text in common, especially at the start. At the very least, the header would be the same. And if the first couple words are the same, the coded versions should be the same. But they’re entirely different.”
She opened several other files. “Same here, with different expense reports.”
“So what’s that mean?”
“Each file is encrypted with a different key,” Livy said.
“Key?” Torchie asked.
“It’s like a password,” Cheater said. “The letters are used, in sequence, to encode stuff. And you need the same key to decode it.”
“So there’s no hope?” I asked. There were billions of possible words and numbers that Bowdler could have used.
Livy smiled at me. “Just the opposite.”
She let those words hang in the air for a second. Flinch was the first to figure out what she meant. “There are hundreds of files. Nobody could remember a different key for every single one. And if you wrote them down, that wouldn’t be good, because someone could find the list.”
Livy nodded. “Right. So the key has to be here somehow. But still unique for each file. First, we need a program to test the keys. That’s pretty trivial. Give me a minute.” She hunched over the computer again and began typing, then glanced up and said, “Space.”
We moved back and waited. It took a bit more than a minute, but I don’t think any of us minded. She even typed cutely.
“So, smart guys, what’s the key?” she asked when she was done.
Martin started to open his mouth when Cheater blurted out, “How about the file name?
“Good thinking, Dennis,” Livy said.
“It just popped into my mind,” Cheater said as Martin glared at him.
Livy ran her program and clicked on one of the document files. The program asked, “KEY?” Livy used the name of the file. A second later, the screen filled with garbage.
“Nope,” she said. “That’s not it. But nice try. Any other ideas?”
Martin moved a couple steps away from Cheater. “How about using the file name backward?” he asked.
“Yeah. I like that.” Livy ran the program again, and this time typed the name backward.
The screen filled with words. Beautiful, normal, words. “Awesome!” I said.
“You’re amazing,” Flinch said.
Livy shrugged. “Everybody’s got to be good at something.”
I thought about the hundreds of files in the folder. “So we just have to do this for each file?”
“Are you kidding? Why go through all that work when you can write a program?”
“Well, maybe you can write a program,” I said. I didn’t bother finishing my sentence. Livy was already back at the keyboard.
“All done,” she said, twenty minutes later. “Everything’s in plain text, copied onto the hard drive. So, what are you guys doing with encrypted files?”
I was about to try to say something clever, but I realized there was no way I could outsmart her. So I decided to go with the simple truth. “It’s a long story,” I said. “I can’t really talk about it.”
I expected her to ask more questions, but she just said, “Okay,” and headed for the door. As she stepped out, she looked back and said, “Thanks, that was fun. But I gotta go study.”
The door closed. “I think I’m in love,” Martin said.
“Can you wait to start a family until after we rescue Lucky?” I asked.
“I’ll try.”