Free A Week in December by Sebastian Faulks Page B

upstairs room. Hassan sensed that the others were not sure whether they should laugh or be indignant. They looked to Salim for a lead.
    He spoke very quietly. 'The work of the Prophet will take place at its appointed time. And you will be there. I shall give you the exact timings on Thursday, not a moment before.'
    Hassan nodded. He quickly considered the various excuses he could offer to his parents. 'Sickness' wouldn't work: his father would compel him to come, however ill he claimed to be. He would simply have to go out the night before to Pudding Mill Lane and not return. He would later have to claim a loss of memory, an accident with a car or something. His parents would be so pleased that he was safe that they'd forget their disappointment at his absence from the palace.
    'How will you be in touch? Still post?' said Elton.
    'Have you heard of steganography?' said Salim.
    Elton shook his head.
    'It's a way of embedding text in a computer file so that it can't be seen unless you have the right kit for decoding it. I'm going to give you an Internet link and I need you to check it daily. As you know I've preferred the post till now, but it could be that in the last forty-eight hours things will move too fast for the Royal Mail. So we need a fallback. There's a kafir porn site called babesdelight.co.uk . It's not hard filth like most of them. It's just naked girls, that's all, the kind of thing they sell in their most famous high-street family stationer. You get a choice of lots of pictures - sets of pictures in fact. There's a box called "Search for your girl" and in that you type "Olya". She's some Russian hooker. Anyway, the main picture of her, the big money shot, is the tenth, the last on the page. Click and open it up big. Embedded in that, in a particularly intimate place, will be any last-minute instructions. You'll need to check it hourly from Wednesday at noon. It's the last place the spooks would expect people like us to be communicating.'
    'How do we get to read the hidden message?' said Seth.
    'You can download the tools. Dead simple. The program you want - and you must remember this - is called Stegwriter. You need the Gamma version 16. Got that? Some of the instructions for encoding are in German, but that's OK. I can handle that. Of course it's more complicated using an image already on the Web rather than one from my own photo collection, but I have a great little geek to help me. Anyway, decoding is easy for you guys. You download your program. What's it called again? Seth?'
    'Stegwriter, Gamma version 16.'
    'Good man. Then basically, you follow the prompts. Open the photo of the girl on - what's the site, Elton?'
    ' Babesdelight.co.uk. ' Elton didn't relish saying the words.
    'Right. Then open up Stegwriter. Click on File manager and then Decrypt. Follow the prompts. My problem was that in order to hide data of any size I had to find a file that was proportionate. Eventually I found a 650-kilobyte WAV file would carry a five-byte text file. Stegwriter has the whole kit.'
    Seth coughed. 'Is it right to be looking at these pictures? I know that in the name of the Prophet ...'
    Salim looked at Seth sorrowfully. 'There is nothing in life that is moral or immoral, there is only the command of God. If Allah has forbidden something, then it is wrong. I am not aware that he has forbidden us to look at women. In fact, there is an early scriptural source in which devout men look at the reflection of a naked woman as she is preparing to bathe. Another authority tells us a man may inspect his wife before marrying her, to make sure she is without blemish that might harm their children.'
    'But I don't intend to marry Olya,' said Elton.
    'But you can still look. Some scholars of Arabic have argued that the word means very much more than "look" in English.'
    'I think I'd feel uneasy.'
    'Islam does not recognise "feeling uneasy", it only cares about what God has commanded. You're talking like a Christian, some ridiculous