Rainfall

“The encryption is strange.”

“You keep saying that.”

“Ever hear of a lattice reduction?”

“I don’t think so.”

“It’s a kind of code. The cryptographer encodes a message in a pattern, a pattern like the flowers in a symmetrical wallpaper design. But wallpaper patterns are simple — only one image in two dimensions. A more complex code uses a pattern that repeats itself at various levels of detail, in multiple mathematical dimensions. To break the code, you have to find the most basic way the lattice repeats itself — the origin of the pattern, in a way.”

“I get the picture. Can you break it?”

“I’m not sure. I did some work with lattice reductions at Fort Meade, but this one is strange.”

“Harry, if you say that one more time . . .”

“Sorry, sorry. It’s strange because the lattice seems to be a musical pattern, not a physical one.”

“Now I’m not following you.”

“There’s an overlay of what look like musical notes — in fact, my optical drive recognized it as a music disk, not a data disk. The pattern is bizarre, but highly symmetrical.”

“Can you crack it?”

“I’ve been trying to, so far without luck. I’ve got to tell you, John, I’m a little out of my element on this one.”

“Out of your element? All those years with the NSA, what could be out of your element?”

He blushed. “It’s not the encryption. It’s the music. I need a musician to walk me through it.”

“A musician,” I said.

“Yeah, a musician. You know, someone who reads music, preferably someone who writes it.”

I didn’t say anything.

“I could really use her help on this,” he said.

“Let me think about it,” I told him, uncomfortable.

“Okay.”

“What about the cell phones? Anything there?”

He smiled. “I was hoping you would ask. Ever hear of the Shinnento?”

“Not sure,” I said, trying to place the name. “New Year something?”

“Shinnen, like faith or conviction, not New Year,” he said, drawing the appropriate kanji in the air with a finger to distinguish one of the homonyms that pervade the language. “It’s a political party. The last call the kendoka made was to their headquarters in Shibakoen, and the number was speed-coded into both of the phones’ memories.” He smiled, obviously relishing what he was about to say next. “And just in case that’s not enough to establish the connection, Conviction was paying the phone bill for the kendoka.”

“Harry, you will never cease to amaze. Tell me more.”

“Okay. Conviction was established in 1978 by a fellow named Yamaoto Toshi, who is still the head of the party. Yamaoto was born in 1949. He’s the only son of a prominent family that traces its lines back to the samurai clans. His father was an officer in the Imperial Army, military occupational specialty communications, who after the war started a company that made portable communications devices. The father got started in business by trading on his family’s connections with the remnants of the zaibatsu, and then got rich during the Korean War, when the American army bought his company’s equipment.”

Zaibatsu were the prewar industrial conglomerates, run by Japan’s most powerful families. After the war MacArthur cut down the tree, but he couldn’t dig out the roots.

“Yamaoto started out in the arts — he spent some years as a teenager in Europe for classical piano training, I think at his mother’s insistence. Apparently he was a bit of a child prodigy. But his father yanked him out of all that when Yamaoto turned twenty, and sent him to the States to complete his education as a prelude to taking over the family business. Yamaoto got a master’s in business from Harvard, and was running the company’s U.S. operations when his old man died. At which point Yamaoto returned to Japan, sold the business, and used the money to establish Conviction and run for parliament.”

“The piano training. Is there a connection with the way the disk is encrypted?”

“Don’t know for sure. There could be.”

“Sorry. Keep going.”

“Apparently the father’s former position in the Imperial Army and the long samurai lineage made an impression on the son’s politics. Conviction was a platform for Yamaoto’s right-wing ideas. He was elected in 1985 to a seat in Nagano-ken, which he promptly lost in the next election.”

“Yeah, you don’t get elected in Japan because of your ideas,” I said. “It’s pork that pays.”

“That’s exactly the lesson Yamaoto learned from his defeat. After he was elected, he spent all his time and political capital arguing for abolishing Article Nine of the Constitution so that Japan could build up its military, kicking the U.S. out of Japan, teaching Shinto in the schools — the usual positions. But after his defeat, he ran again — this time focusing on the roads and bridges he would build for his constituents, the rice subsidies and tariffs he would impose. Very different politician. The nationalistic stuff was back-burnered. He got his seat back in eighty- seven, and has held on to it ever since.”