“Yes.” That was one reason that Vladimir had needed the loan. He knew that they were only going to get more expensive for the foreseeable future.
Nasi passed him one of the compact disks. It was unlabeled in its jewel case. “On that disk is a copy of the program Pretty Good Privacy including the source code and one of my public keys.”
“What’s a public key?”
“The thing that makes this such a good system is that it has two keys. One key encodes and the other decodes. What you encode with the public key can only be read with the private key. What is encoded by the private key can only be read with the matching public key. I would suggest that after you’ve had the program checked you make yourself some keys and post a key to one of the message boards listed on the CD. Encode it using the public key I included on the CD and only I will be able to read it, so you know that any message using that key is from me.”
They talked about processes and procedures, which mostly came down to neither seeking each other out nor avoiding each other. They would use the local area internet in Grantville to transfer data. For the foreseeable future if anyone wanted to transfer information without anyone else knowing they were doing it, Grantville was the place to be. In effect, each became a part of the other’s spy network. For Nasi it was one more tiny link in an increasingly extensive network. For Vladimir, even with the filtering that he was sure Francisco Nasi would do, it represented a doubling of his capabilities or more. It was not a bargain he could afford to pass up.
* * *
When Vladimir got home he found mail had arrived from Moscow and the Dacha. There were several letters, requests for specific information for him, packages of goods for trade, mostly furs and pearls. There were also a set of letters and packages, to be delivered to Brandy Bates, some from his sister and some from Bernie. Vladimir thought for a moment about delivering them himself. He was a bit curious about what they might contain. But the truth was he simply didn’t have time. He was snowed under trying to find answers to the questions sent to him. He sent his man Gregorii.
Chapter 24
Brandy Bates woke up the morning after her mom had read her the riot act about getting her G.E.D. rather less sure of herself than she had been the night before. Yes, it would be a lot of work and what would it actually get her? It wasn’t like she was going to go to the library and find a way that the down-timers could make microwave ovens or washing machines. She was sitting at the kitchen table half-trying to work up her nerve to go see Mrs. Whitney about getting her G.E.D. and half-trying to come up with an excuse for her mom as to why she hadn’t. Brandy’s procrastinating was interrupted by the doorbell.
“Yes, can I help you?” Brandy asked the rather dangerous-looking bearded man at her door. He was carrying several packages.
“Have . . .” He paused looking for the next word. Then apparently gave it up as a bad job. “Stuff. Have stuff for Brandy Bates.” The accent was almost unintelligible and it wasn’t German. Something eastern-European.
“What sort of stuff and from who?”
He pointed at the packages. “From Berna Zeppa, from Kazrina Natalia, from Czarina.”
Oddly enough it was the word “Czarina” that clarified things. The stuff was from Bernie and Natasha. And apparently something from the czarina.
She let in the man, who muttered his name. Gregorii something, she thought he said. He stacked the stuff on the coffee table in the living room and went on his way. Then Brandy started sorting through the stuff. The packages were from Natasha and the czarina of all the Russias. Apparently she, Brandy Bates of Grantville, was now pen pals with one of the crowned heads of Europe. Maybe if she’d graduated high school she could show them all up at the ten-year reunion . Then she stopped and thought. No, probably not. Her classmates, the ones who were caught in the Ring of Fire . . . Well, a lot of them would probably know crowned heads of Europe by the time the ten-year reunion came around. It would be “which crowned heads do you know?” and Russia would be near the bottom of the list.
Brandy laughed out loud. “Gee, Brandy. Only pen pals with the czarina of all the Russias? You can’t win for losing, can you, girl? They do keep moving the goal posts, don’t they just!”
She read Natasha’s letter first. It was full of questions and observations that girls talk to girls about. It had requests for items that she might be able to send: plastic just about anything, aspirin, marijuana, medicines in general, pictures printed or photographed. It acknowledged that acquiring that sort of thing might be difficult and professed to understand if she was too busy to worry about them. A nice way of saying “we understand if you can’t afford such things.” Which, to be honest, Brandy mostly couldn’t.