Simple Simon

Simple Simon (also titled Simple Simon: A Thriller) is an action thriller novel, written by Ryne Douglas Pearson and first published in July 1996. The book follows the story of an outcast FBI agent who protects a teenage autistic savant from assassins sent by the NSA after he inadvertently cracks a super top-secret government code.

Plot Summary
What was once thought as unbreakable is now broken. A 16 year-old autistic savant named Simon Lynch has cracked a new, extremely expensive, and highly top secret National Security Agency (NSA) code, codenamed 'Kiwi'. The boy is being hunted by assassins of the NSA, sent by Nicholas Kudrow, as he now sees the boy as a liability to national security. A Japanese spy named Keiko Kimura, one who prefers gruesome methods of killing, is also after Simon, but for somewhat different reasons than Kudrow. However, Simon has a protector, an outcast FBI agent named Art Jefferson who fights for what he believes is right for the boy. Before it is all over, Jefferson will have saved Simon from death many times, as the end finally comes when Jefferson schedules a Witness Protection pickup for Simon on the Sears Tower helipad, Kimura is killed at Simon's hands after Jefferson tells him to shoot her, but he prays that "Simon won't remember what he had done." Shortly afterwards, Jefferson sent Simon away on the WP helicopter with Pritchard and Shaun Koster, but they ditch it in Lake Michigan only minutes later. A couple weeks later, Simon and Jefferson say goodbye, as Simon now has foster parents and status in the Witness Protection Program...

Trivia

 * It is possible that, for an alternate explanation of Pearson's title choice, (though highly unlikely) he chose it after the world's first personal computer, invented in the 1950's, due to the fact that Simon Lynch's mind functioned much like a highly-advanced computer, and that the computer was named Simon as well.