Time elapsed: 15:17:21

“Fifteen hours and seventeen minutes?” he choked. “Impossible!”

He rebooted the screen, praying it hadn’t refreshed properly. But when the monitor came back to life, it looked the same.

Chartrukian felt a chill. Crypto’s Sys‑Secs had only one responsibility: Keep TRANSLTR “clean"‑virus free.

Chartrukian knew that a fifteen‑hour run could only mean one thing‑infection. An impure file had gotten inside TRANSLTR and was corrupting the programming. Instantly his training kicked in; it no longer mattered that the Sys‑Sec lab had been unmanned or the monitors switched off. He focused on the matter at hand‑TRANSLTR. He immediately called up a log of all the files that had entered TRANSLTR in the last forty‑eight hours. He began scanning the list.

Did an infected file get through? he wondered. Could the security filters have missed something?

As a precaution, every file entering TRANSLTR had to pass through what was known as Gauntlet‑a series of powerful circuit‑level gateways, packet filters, and disinfectant programs that scanned inbound files for computer viruses and potentially dangerous subroutines. Files containing programming “unknown” to Gauntlet were immediately rejected. They had to be checked by hand. Occasionally Gauntlet rejected entirely harmless files on the basis that they contained programming the filters had never seen before. In that case, the Sys‑Secs did a scrupulous manual inspection, and only then, on confirmation that the file was clean, did they bypass Gauntlet’s filters and send the file into TRANSLTR.

Computer viruses were as varied as bacterial viruses. Like their physiological counterparts, computer viruses had one goal‑to attach themselves to a host system and replicate. In this case, the host was TRANSLTR.

Chartrukian was amazed the NSA hadn’t had problems with viruses before. Gauntlet was a potent sentry, but still, the NSA was a bottom feeder, sucking in massive amounts of digital information from systems all over the world. Snooping data was a lot like having indiscriminate sex‑protection or no protection, sooner or later you caught something.

Chartrukian finished examining the file list before him. He was now more puzzled than before. Every file checked out. Gauntlet had seen nothing out of the ordinary, which meant the file in TRANSLTR was totally clean.

“So what the hell’s taking so long?” he demanded of the empty room. Chartrukian felt himself break a sweat. He wondered if he should go disturb Strathmore with the news.

“A virus probe,” Chartrukian said firmly, trying to calm himself down. “I should run a virus probe.”

Chartrukian knew that a virus probe would be the first thing Strathmore would request anyway. Glancing out at the deserted Crypto floor, Chartrukian made his decision. He loaded the viral probe software and launched it. The run would take about fifteen minutes.

“Come back clean,” he whispered. “Squeaky clean. Tell Daddy it’s nothing.”

But Chartrukian sensed it was not “nothing.” Instinct told him something very unusual was going on inside the great decoding beast.