Digital Fortress Chapter 23

Susan sat alone in the plush surroundings of node 3. She nursed a so-and-so sully herb tea and awaited the return of her tracer.As senior cryptographer, Susan enjoyed the terminal with the take up view. It was on the back side of the ring of computers and faced the Crypto floor. From this spot, Susan could everyplacesee wholly of Node 3. She could also see, on the other side of the one-way glass, TRANSLTR standing dead-center of the Crypto floor.Susan checked the clock. She had been waiting almost an hour. American Remailers Anonymous was apparently winning their time forwarding North Dakotas mail. She sighed heavily. condescension her efforts to forget her morning conversation with David, the words played over and over in her head. She knew shed been hard on him. She prayed he was okay in Spain.Her thoughts were jarred by the loud tinkers damn of the glass doors. She looked up and groaned. Cryptographer Greg squeeze stood in the opening.Greg Hale was tall and muscular wit h thick fair hair and a deep cleft chin. He was loud, thick-fleshed, and perpetually overdressed. His fellow cryptographers had nicknamed him halite-after the mineral. Hale had unceasingly assumed it referred to some rare gem-paralleling his unrivaled intellect and rock-hard physique. Had his ego permitted him to consult an encyclopedia, he would strive believe find it was nothing more than than the salty residue left behind when oceans dried up.Like all NSA cryptographers, Hale do a solid salary. However, he had a hard time keeping that fact to himself. He drove a white Lotus with a moon roof and a deafening subwoofer system. He was a gadget junkie, and his car was his showpiece hed installed a global positioning computer system, voice-activated door locks, a five-point radar jammer, and a cellular fax/phone so hed never be come in of spirit with his message services. His vanity plate read megabyte and was framed in violet neon.Greg Hale had been deliver from a childhood of petty crime by the U.S. Marine Corps. It was there that hed learned about computers. He was one of the best programmers the Marines had ever seen, well on his way to a distinguished military career. that both days before the completion of his third tour of duty, his future suddenly changed. Hale circumstantially killed a fellow Marine in a drunken brawl. The Korean art of self-defense, Tae kwon do, proved more deadly than defensive. He was promptly relieved of his duty.After serving a brief prison term, halite began looking for twist in the private sector as a programmer. He was always up front about the incident in the marines, and he courted prospective employers by offering a months work without pay to prove his worth. He had no shortage of takers, and once they found out what he could do with a computer, they never wanted to let him go.As his computer expertise grew, Hale began making net profit connections all over the world. He was one of the new breed of cyberfreaks w ith E-mail friends in every nation, paltry in and out of seedy electronic bulletin boards and European chat groups. Hed been fired by two different employers for using their business accounts to upload pornographic photos to some of his friends.What are you doing here? Hale demanded, halt in the doorway and staring at Susan. Hed obviously expected to have Node 3 to himself today.Susan laboured herself to stay cool. Its Saturday, Greg. I could ask you the same question. But Susan knew what Hale was doing there. He was the consummate computer addict. Despite the Saturday rule, he often slipped into Crypto on weekends to use the NSAs unrivalled computing power to run new programs he was working on.Just wanted to re-tweak a few lines and check my E-mail, Hale utter. He eyed her curiously. What was it you said youre doing here?I didnt, Susan replied.Hale arched a surprised eyebrow. No reason to be coy. We have no secrets here in Node 3, remember? All for one and one for all.Susan sip ped her lemon mist and ignored him. Hale shrugged and strode toward the Node 3 pantry. The pantry was always his first stop. As Hale track the room, he sighed heavily and made a point of ogling Susans legs stretched out beneath her terminal. Susan, without looking up, retracted her legs and unplowed working. Hale smirked.Susan had gotten used to Hale hitting on her. His favorite line was something about interfacing to check the compatibility of their hardware. It dark Susans stomach. She was too proud to complain to Strathmore about Hale it was far easier just to ignore him.Hale approached the Node 3 pantry and pulled open the lattice doors bid a bull. He slid a Tupperware container of tofu out of the fridge and popped a few pieces of the gelatinous white substance in his mouth. Then he leaned on the stove and smoothed his gray Bellvienne slacks and well-starched shirt. You gonna be here long?All night, Susan said flatly.Hmm Halite cooed with his mouth full. A cozy Saturday in th e Playpen, just the two of us.Just the three of us, Susan interjected. Commander Strathmores upstairs. You index want to disappear before he sees you.Hale shrugged. He doesnt seem to mind you here. He moldiness really enjoy your comp either.Susan forced herself to keep silent.Hale chuckled to himself and put away his tofu. Then he grabbed a quart of virgin olive oil and took a few swigs. He was a health lusus naturae and claimed olive oil cleaned out his lower intestine. When he wasnt pushing carrot juice on the abide of the staff, he was preaching the virtues of high colonics.Hale replaced the olive oil and went to down his computer directly diametral Susan. Even across the wide ring of terminals, Susan could smell his cologne. She crinkled her nose.Nice cologne, Greg. Use the entire store?Hale flicked on his terminal. Only for you, dear.As he sat there waiting for his terminal to strong up, Susan had a sudden unsettling thought. What if Hale accessed TRANSLTRs Run-Monitor? T here was no logical reason why he would, just nonetheless Susan knew he would never fall for some half-baked story about a diagnostic that stumped TRANSLTR for sixteen hours. Hale would demand to know the truth. The truth was something Susan had no intention of telling him. She did not leave Greg Hale. He was not NSA material. Susan had been against hiring him in the first place, but the NSA had had no choice. Hale had been the product of damage control.The snapping beetle fiasco.Four years ago, in an effort to create a single, public-key encryption standard, Congress charged the nations best mathematicians, those at the NSA, to write a new super algorithm. The plan was for Congress to pass legislation that made the new algorithm the nations standard, thus alleviating the incompatibilities now suffered by corporations that used different algorithms.Of course, asking the NSA to lend a hand in improving public-key encryption was somewhat akin to asking a condemned man to conforma tion his own coffin. TRANSLTR had not yet been conceived, and an encryption standard would exclusively help to proliferate the use of code-writing and addle the NSAs already difficult job that much harder.The chicane understood this conflict of interest and lobbied vehemently that the NSA faculty create an algorithm of poor quality-something it could break. To appease these fears, Congress announced that when the NSAs algorithm was finished, the formula would be promulgated for examination by the worlds mathematicians to ensure its quality.Reluctantly, the NSAs Crypto team, led by Commander Strathmore, created an algorithm they christened Skipjack. Skipjack was presented to Congress for their approval. Mathematicians from all over the world tested Skipjack and were unanimously impressed. They reported that it was a strong, untainted algorithm and would make a superb encryption standard. But three days before Congress was to vote their authorized approval of Skipjack, a young pr ogrammer from Bell Laboratories, Greg Hale, shocked the world by announcing hed found a back door hidden in the algorithm.The back door consisted of a few lines of cunning computer programming that Commander Strathmore had inserted into the algorithm. It had been added in so shrewd a way that nobody, except Greg Hale, had seen it. Strathmores covert addition, in effect, meant that any code written by Skipjack could be decrypted via a secret password known only to the NSA. Strathmore had come within inches of turning the nations proposed encryption standard into the biggest intelligence coup the NSA had ever seen the NSA would have held the professional key to every code written in America.The computer-savvy public was outraged. The EFF descended on the scandal like vultures, ripping Congress to shreds for their naivete and proclaiming the NSA the biggest threat to the free world since Hitler. The encryption standard was dead.It had come as little surprise when the NSA hired Greg Ha le two days later. Strathmore felt it was better to have him on the inside working for the NSA than on the outside working against it.Strathmore faced the Skipjack scandal head-on. He defended his actions vehemently to Congress. He argued that the publics craving for privacy would come back to haunt them. He insisted the public needed someone to watch over them the public needed the NSA to break codes in order to keep the peace. Groups like the EFF felt differently. And theyd been fighting him ever since.