Tom looked at the clock hanging in the store window across the street as the local Presbyterian Church tower pealed off four loud bongs from a prerecorded CD. His iPhone quickly converted the series of three-numbered transmissions it was receiving into a short message.
‘The Citizens of each State…’
He felt his throat tighten as the prelude spilled onto the small screen.
What’s gone wrong, he thought, as he tried to make himself take a deep breath and relax back into the chair.
The phone was a fully functioning computer that had been adapted to do double duty as a hand-held radio receiver with an XOR operation to make moments like this less conspicuous. Tom was receiving a sudden burst transmission from a numbers stations far away that was used to get a message out quickly to everyone in cells spread out across the country. Different times of day were assigned to different operational cell levels.
Anyone could pick up the signals but unless they also had the right thumb drive with the OTP, the electronic one-time-pad with the decoded encryptions to the random pairings, it meant nothing. No level of cells possessed another level’s OTP.
The system could not be broken unless one of the drives fell into Management’s hands and they were able to discover the hidden algorithms underneath the music tracts or word documents that were carefully laid over the sets of numbers or letters. If a drive were found by anyone other than a member of the Circle or Management they’d overlook its real importance.
Transmissions usually began with the opening lines from one of the twenty-seven Amendments to the Constitution, which was meant as a signal that the message was either nonsensical or mundane, depending on the chosen amendment. Reams of them were sent out each week as cover and to crowd the airwaves, making detection of just where the transmitters were more difficult. Only a handful of the transmissions were of any value and most were updates on possible activity by people of interest, nothing more.
Tom had gotten used to seeing the words fly by and had seen most of the amendments so often he had almost memorized the text over the years.
But this time was going to be different. The broadcast began with the opening lines to Article IV, Section 2 of the Constitution.
‘… shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States. A Person charged in any State with Treason, Felony, or other Crime, who shall flee from Justice, and be found in another State, shall on Demand of the executive Authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having Jurisdiction of the Crime.’
It was an opening Tom had never seen on his phone before and had hoped to never see. The carefully laid out plans that had been meticulously cultivated for the past sixty years by the Circle were in danger of being exposed. Management had detected a thumb drive and may already be in possession of the encryptions. If they had identified a handler and their family in a high enough cell it was possible that torture had exposed other key players. The inner American Circle may already be in danger.
No new faces had recently arrived in town but Tom instantly began to wonder if he was being watched. The short message took less than a minute to download and unscramble before being immediately dumped after sprawling across the screen. He couldn’t afford to take his eyes off of the phone for very long to check his surroundings.
‘Richmond, Virginia. SOS009 Leave immediately.’
“Hey, Tom, why so serious?”
Tom jerked the phone, his thumb instinctively jamming down on the off button as the screen faded to black. He looked up into the fading sun at the face of his elderly neighbor, Wilbur Vernon, dressed in faded overalls and a Deere hat tilted down toward his nose. His lined face and curved shoulders gave away that he’d spent too many seasons hunched over a crop, willing it out of the ground.
“Hey Wilbur, just looking at the news crawl. Probably shouldn’t do it, just pulls me into a mess that doesn’t really have anything to do with me.”
“Know what you mean. My TV gets a hundred channels, makes me feel like I ought to watch a few of ‘em. Suddenly I’m worried about Chinese wheat crops till I remember I don’t grow wheat no more and I never sold to foreigners no how. Fancy phone you got there. I remember when they couldn’t even get moved around in the house,” said Wilbur, who was already walking away.
Tom slowly let out a breath as he called out, “Point taken, Wilbur. Maybe it’s time for a rest.” He was already laying the groundwork for leaving town without raising any suspicions.
Wilbur raised his hand in a salute but kept walking.