The Demands of the Dead Read Online Free PDF

to form of what Walter was doing there. “Did they ever have a meeting called... the Intergalactic meeting?”
    “I'll come to that,” Hoffman said. “On New Year’s Eve 1994, the Zapatistas took over the central city of Chiapas, San Cristobal de las Casas. They took it and six other towns, and waited for the army to counter attack. They waited, and then retreated. They haven’t fought at all since. Instead they've held ‘encuentros’, big parties with hundreds of foreigners, including your Intergalactica in 1996, and marches. They wrote clever missives. They built health clinics and schools that taught the indigenous languages of the people of the state. They were just too nice for the government to kill.
    “Fighting bloodthirsty guerrillas out to take over the country made a government look heroic. Fighting poets out to build schools and health clinics was a different proposition.”
    “But now,” I said, “two Chiapas state police officers are dead. Were they attacking a village at the time?”
    “Patrolling, from what I was told. Just a pure ambush, in the context of a de facto ceasefire. So if the Zapatistas did it, that could change what people think of them—and the government they are fighting. If the Mexican police investigate, and find the Zapatistas did it, that could easily be dismissed as fabrication—more lies and attempts to discredit the heroes. But if independent, foreign investigators found it, it might be credible. Foreigners believe each other.”
    “So we’re being used as a weapon against the rebels.”
    “That’s the Mexican Government’s hope, yes, probably.”
    “What if the Zapatistas didn’t do it?”
    “We’re not going to falsify our investigation. We’ll find what we find. That’s why they’re hiring us. Because we’re objective.”
    “But what if we objectively don’t get the results they want?”
    “Then we don’t get what they want.” He changed the subject. “So, I know your Spanish is good. Can you read and write as well as speak?”
    “Perfectamente, si.”
     
    “The first question, then,” he said, reaching into a small pocket of his case and pulling out a 3 1/2 inch disk. “Are you familiar with public key encryption?”
    Maria and I exchanged glances.
    “Hmm. Yes, actually. Maria and I have both used it in the past.”
    “Well, we're going to make you some new keys.”
    Hoffman was properly paranoid, and I liked him for it. He insisted on making new keys, much longer keys, and made me create a password using a random password generator, and memorize all 16 random numbers and letters of it. There were to be two channels of communication. I was going to use a mix of encrypted and clear-text messages to email him. Anything more sensitive would go to a separate email address, just created, with a public key we'd just made, that Maria would be checking – just in case Hoffman's computers were being monitored.
    If they were watching my computers in Mexico, they would see me sending encrypted messages to Hoffman and some other email address. If they were watching his end, they would see him getting encrypted messages from Mexico. If they were watching Maria's machine too, they might be able to tell that she was logging into a remote server to check encrypted email. There were plenty of ways to beat our security. I would have to install the encryption software from disk on whatever computer I used, and if that computer had a keylogger they would get my passphrase, and if they then stole or copied the disk, they would have what they needed; or, if they were monitoring my computer already from somewhere nearby (I was offline when we made the keys), they would have gotten the passphrases from when I generated them. But all of these methods needed energy, expertise, and time, and seemed unlikely, acceptable risk for what we were facing.
    “You and Maria know each other very well,” Hoffman said.
    I nodded.
    “If you do need to communicate using that