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“I watch the news. The timing is not ideal, I agree. But this is math. It’s a hotel full of rational people. Nothing bad will happen.”
What have I got that the White House wants?
“Can you tell me specifically?” “The west gate, specifically. We hand you off to a second team of agents.” The same as the pilot. It’s called need-to-know. Basic security. This is a classified operation.
He knew the other two. That was for sure. The third man was Oliver Bailey, the greatest living American mathematician. Certainly the most famous, the most prominent, the most visible. The go-to guy, not that anyone went to mathematicians very often. But if they did, Bailey was their man. Richly deserved, Tyler thought. Justified by a spectacular body of work across an absurdly wide range of interests. Really a historic figure. The fourth man in the room was the president of the United States.
Math was abstract and eternal, unchanging, discovered not invented, but when human beings used it, they always left a fingerprint.
Arkady Suslov was the Russian Oliver Bailey. Even more so, Tyler thought. Older, more mysterious, reputedly eccentric. The grand old man. A historic figure for sure.
“The password is a Kindansky number. This whole thing is built on Kindansky numbers. Suslov absolutely loves them.”
“Kindansky was a leading number theorist in the nineteenth century. He proved there’s a category of numbers with unique properties. Not so much what they are, but what they can be used for. Those are the Kindansky numbers. They’re all prime numbers, but not all prime numbers are Kindanskys.”
“You’re already inside the Russian military’s computer system.” “Welcome to the club,” President Ramsey said. “You’re the fifth member.”
“Why underneath the Kremlin? What is this algorithm guarding?” At first no one answered. As if words didn’t work anymore. Then Ramsey said, “Control of the Russian nuclear arsenal.”
“The ravings of a lunatic. Do you have proof you even met the president?” Tyler paused a beat. These conversations never existed. They never happened. We’re not even filing a flight plan. This trip doesn’t exist. He didn’t answer.
