"The way you laymen say decode, like I was bored and killed an hour by solving a simple crossword puzzle in a newspaper. I have spent countless hours working to unscramble those two names."
"I didn't mean to imply . . ."
"I know. It's okay. Let me give you a crude example of the difficulty factor. Suppose I took a red marker and wrote a name on a sheet of paper. Then I cut that paper into hundreds of little squares. Next I used a pair of tweezers to arrange those red fragments into the shape of a frozen flame. You then come into the room. I hand you the tweezers and tell you to reconstruct the name."
"Impossible!"
"Almost!"
"So you have decoded them."
"Yes!"
Mimicking a game show host, Mick projected a leading, "And the name is?"
"Sir Spiritus!"
"I am certainly impressed. Can you locate this Sir Spiritus?"
"Now, that would be impossible. I told you this guy is possibly the best programmer in the cyber universe."
"So . . ." Loneshark trailed away, lifting both blonde brows quizzically.
"I have a theory. I guess you detectives would call it a hunch. Even Piercely doesn't know about this supposition. I didn't want my wife to think her new husband was a lunatic."
"You certainly have mastered the public relations' art of a tantalizing build-up."
"I'm serious, Mick."
"Very well, I promise to keep an open mind and tell no one about your theory. Good enough?"
"From you it is!"
"Then . . ."
"First, out of necessity, that video alteration was done quickly, without all the safeguards Sir Spiritus was capable of implementing. That's why I was able to make a copy and study his methods. If he had taken more time to, let's say, make the video erase as it played, then I would have had no program to analyze."
The detective furrowed his brows, deeply thinking before speaking, "The only video I've heard of that erased as it played was . . . Holy Christ!"
"It's pure speculation, Mick. I can't prove my hypothesis because there's no copy to analyze. I can only tell you that I felt the same subliminal sensation of a flash of flame in the
