Cryptonomicon

infer that we were making strenuous efforts to conceal the existence of an extremely valuable and comprehensive intelligence source.'

'Oh, bloody hell,' the don mumbles.

An extremely tall, lanky, blond civilian, the crossword puzzle editor of one of the London newspapers currently on loan to Bletchley Park, hustles into the room and apologizes for being late. More than half of the people on the Ultra Mega list are now in this room.

The young naval analyst continues. 'At 2110, Wilhelmshaven replied with a message instructing OL Beck to interrogate the prisoners immediately. At 0150, Beck replied with a message stating that in his opinion the prisoners belonged to some sort of special naval intelligence unit.'

As he speaks, carbon copies of the fresh message decrypts are being passed round to all the tables. The crossword puzzle editor studies his with a tremendously furrowed brow. 'Perhaps you covered this before I arrived, in which case I apologize,' he says. 'but where does the Trinidadian merchantman come in to all of this?'

Chattan silences Waterhouse with a look, and answers: 'I'm not going to tell you.' There is appreciative laughter all around, as if he had just uttered a bon motat a dinner party. 'But Admiral Donitz, reading these same messages, must be just as confused as you are. We should like to keep him that way.'

'Datum 1: He knows a merchantman was sunk,' pipes up Turing, ticking off points on his fingers. 'Datum 2: He knows a Royal Navy submarine was on the scene a few hours later, and was also sunk. Datum 3: He knows two of our men were pulled out of the water, and that they are probably in the intelligence business, which is a rather broad categorization as far as I am concerned. But he cannot necessarily draw any inferences, based upon these extremely terse messages, about which vessel-the merchantman or the submarine-our two men came from.'

'Well, that's obvious, isn't it?' says Crossword Puzzle. 'They came from the submarine.'

Chattan responds only with a Cheshire grin.

'Oh!' says Crossword Puzzle. Eyebrows go up all around the room.

'As Beck continues to send messages to Admiral Donitz, the likelihood increases that Donitz will learn something we don't want him to know,' Chattan says. 'That likelihood becomes a virtual certainty when U-691 reaches Wilhelmshaven intact.'

'Correction!' hollers the rabbi. Everyone is quite startled and there is a long silence while the man grips the edge of the table with quivering hands, and rises precariously to his feet. 'The important thing is not whether Beck transmits messages! It is whether Donitz believesthose messages!'

'Hear, hear! Very astute!' Turing says.

'Quite right! Thank you for that clarification, Herr Kahn,' Chattan says. 'Pardon me for just a moment,' says the don, 'but why on earth wouldn'the believe them?'

This leads to a long silence. The don has scored a telling point, and brought everyone very much back to cold hard reality. The rabbi begins to mumble something that sounds rather defensive, but is interrupted by a thunderous voice from the doorway: 'FUNKSPIEL!'

Everyone turns to look at a fellow who has just come in the door. He is a trim man in his fifties with prematurely white hair, extremely thick glasses that magnify his eyes, and a howling blizzard of dandruff covering his navy blue blazer.

'Good morning, Elmer!' Chattan says with the forced cheerfulness of a psychiatrist entering a locked ward.

Elmer comes into the room and turns to face the crowd. 'FUNKSPIEL!' he shouts again, in an inappropriately loud voice, and Waterhouse wonders whether the man is drunk or deaf or both. Elmer turns his back to them and stares at a bookcase for a while, then turns round to face them again, a look of astonishment on his face. 'Ah was expectin' a chalkboard t'be there,' he says in a Texarkana accent. 'What kind of a classroom is this?' There is nervous laughter around the room as everyone tries to figure out whether Elmer is cutting loose with some deadpan humor, or completely out of his mind.

'It means 'radio games,' ' says Rabbi Kahn.

'Thank, you, sir!' Elmer responds quickly, sounding pissed off. 'Radio games. The Germans have been playing them all through the war. Now it's our turn.'

Just moments ago, Waterhouse was thinking about how very British this whole scene was, feeling very far from home, and wishing that one or two Americans could be present. Now that his wish has come true, he just wants to crawl out of the Mansion on his hands and knees.

'How does one play these games, Mr., uh...' says Crossword Puzzle.

'You can call me Elmer!' Elmer shouts. Everyone scoots back from him.

'Elmer!' Waterhouse says, 'would you please stop shouting?'

Elmer turns and blinks twice in Waterhouse's direction. 'The game is simple,' he says in a more normal, conversational voice. Then he gets excited again and begins to crescendo. 'All you need is a radio and a couple of players with good ears, and good hands!' Now he's hollering. He waves at the corner where the albino woman with the headset and the percussionist with lipstick on his ear have been huddled together. 'You want to explain fists, Mr. Shales?'

The percussionist stands up. 'Every radio operator has a distinctive style of keying-we call it his fist. With a bit of practice, our Y Service people can recognize different German operators by their fists-we can tell when one of them has been transferred to a different unit, for example.' He nods in the direction of the albino woman. 'Miss Lord has intercepted numerous messages from U-691, and, is familiar with the fist of that boat's radio operator. Furthermore, we now have a wire recording of U-691 's most recent transmission, which she and I have been studying intensively.' The percussionist draws a deep breath and screws his courage up before saying, 'We are confident that I can forge U-691's fist.'

Turing chimes in. 'And since we have broken Enigma, we can compose any message we want, and encrypt it just as U-691 would have.'

'Splendid. Splendid!' says one of the Broadway Buildings guys.

'We cannot prevent U-691 from sending out her own, legitimate messages,' Chattan cautions, 'short of sinking her. Which we are making every effort to do. But we can muddy the waters considerably. Rabbi?'

Once again, the rabbi rises to his feet, drawing everyone's attention as they wait for him to fall down. But he doesn't. 'I have composed a message in German naval jargon. Translated into English, it says, roughly, 'Interrogation of prisoners proceeding slowly request permission to use torture' and then there are several Xs in a row and then is added the words WARNING AMBUSH U-691 HAS BEEN CAPTURED BY BRITISH COMMANDOS''

Sharp intakes of breath all around the room.

'Is contemporary German naval jargon a normal part of Talmudic studies?' asks the don.

'Mr. Kahn has spent a year and a half analyzing naval decrypts in Hut 4,' Chattan says. 'He has the lingo down pat.' He goes on: 'we have encrypted Mr. Kahn's message using today's naval Enigma key, and passed it on to Mr. Shales, who has been practicing.'

Miss Lord rises to her feet, like a child reciting her lessons in a Victorian school, and says, 'I am satisfied that Mr. Shales's rendition is indistinguishable from U-691's.'

All eyes turn towards Chattan, who turns towards the old farts from the Broadway Buildings, who even now are on the phone relaying all this to someone of whom they are clearly terrified.

'Don't the Jerrys have huffduff?' asks the Don, as if probing a flaw in a student's dissertation.

'Their huffduff network is not nearly so well developed as ours,' responds one of the young analysts. 'It is most unlikely that they would bother to triangulate a transmission that appeared to come from one of their own U- boats, so they probably won't figure out the message originated in Buckinghamshire, rather than the Atlantic.'

'However, we have anticipated your objection,' Chattan says, 'and made arrangements for several of our own ships, as well as various aeroplanes and ground units, to flood the air with transmissions. Their huffduff network will have its hands full at the time of our fake U-691 transmission.'

'Very well,' mutters the don.

Everyone sits there in churchly silence while the most senior of the Broadway Buildings contingent winds up his conversation with Who Is at the Other End. Elmer hanging up the phone, he intones solemnly, 'You are directed to proceed.'