Cryptonomicon

Graves furrows his brow, as if pained by the very question. 'Oh, by all means sir. We wouldn't dream of interrupting such an operation. That's why we are late-begging your pardon.'

'Don't mention it,' Comstock stays, slapping Graves heartily on the shoulder. 'That is why I try to give my men broad discretion. It has been my opinion for quite some time that Waterhouse is badly in need of some relaxation. He concentrates a little too hard on his work. Sometimes I frankly cannot tell whether he is saying something very brilliant, or just totally incoherent. And I think you have made a pivotal, Sergeant Graves, a pivotal contribution to today's meeting by having the good sense to stand off long enough for Waterhouse's affairs to be set in order.' Comstock realizes that he is breathing very fast, and his heart is pounding madly. Perhaps he overdid the benzedrine?

Waterhouse drifts into the room ten minutes later on flaccid legs, as if he had inadvertently left his own skeleton behind in bed. He barely makes it to his designated seat and thuds into it like a sack of guts, popping a few strands of wicker out of its bottom. He is breathing raggedly through his mouth, blinking heavy eyelids frequently.

'Looks like today's going to be a milk run, men!' Comstock announces brightly. Everyone except Waterhouse snickers. Waterhouse has been in the building for a quarter of an hour, and it took at least that long for Sergeant Graves to drive him here from the church, and so it has been at least half an hour. And yet, to look at him, you'd think that it had happened five seconds ago.

'Someone pour that man a cup of coffee!' Comstock orders. Someone does. Being in the military is amazing;you give orders, and things happen. Waterhouse does not drink, or even touch, the coffee, but at least it gives his eyes something to focus on. Those orbs wander around under their rumpled lids for a while, like ack-ack guns trying to track a house fly, before finally fixing on the white coffee mug. Waterhouse clears his throat at some length, as if preparing to speak, and the room goes silent. It remains silent for about thirty seconds. Then Waterhouse mumbles something that sounds like 'coy.'

The stenographers take it down in unison.

'Beg pardon?' says Comstock.

One of the math whizzes says, 'He might be talking about Coy Functions. I think I saw them when I was flipping through a graduate math textbook once.'

'I thought he was saying 'quantum' something,' says the other ETC man.

'Coffee,' Waterhouse says, and heaves a deep sigh.

'Waterhouse,' says Comstock, 'how many fingers am I holding up?' Waterhouse seems to realize that there are other people in the room now. He closes his mouth, and his nostrils flare as air begins to rush through them. He tries to move one of his hands, realizes that he is sitting on it, and shifts heavily to and fro until it flops loose. He gets his eyes all the way open, providing a really good, clear view of that coffee mug. He yawns, stretches, and farts.

'The Nipponese cryptosystem that we call Azure is the same thing as the German system that we call Pufferfish,' he announces. 'Both of them are also related somehow to another, newer cryptosystem I have dubbed Arethusa. All of these have something to do with gold. Probably gold mining operations of some sort. In the Philippines.'

Whammo! The stenographers go into action. The photographer fires off his strobes, even though there's nothing to take pictures of-just nerves. Comstock glances beadily at his wire recorders, makes sure those reels are spinning. He is a little unnerved by how rapidly Waterhouse is coming up to speed. But one of the responsibilities of leadership is to mask one's own fears, to project confidence at all times. Comstock grins and says, 'You sound awfully sure of yourself, Waterhouse! I wonder if you can get me to feel that same level of confidence.'

Waterhouse frowns at the coffee mug. 'Well, it's all math,' he says. 'If the math works, why then you shouldbe sure of yourself. That's the whole point of math.'

'So you have a mathematical basis for making this assertion?'

'Assertions,' Waterhouse says. 'Assertion number one is that Pufferfish and Azure are different names for the same cryptosystem. Assertion number two is that Pufferfish/Azure is a cousin of Arethusa. Three: all of these cryptosystems are related to gold. Four: mining. Five: Philippines.'

'Maybe you could just chalk those up on the blackboard as you go along,' Comstock says edgily.

'Glad to,' Waterhouse says. He stands up and turns toward the blackboard, freezes for a couple of seconds, then turns back around, lunges for the coffee mug, and drains it before Comstock or any of his aides can rip it from his grasp. Tactical error! Then Waterhouse chalks up his assertions. The photographer records it. The privates massage their chamois cloths and glance nervously in Comstock's direction.

'Now, you have some sort of, er, mathematical proof for each one of these assertions?' Comstock asks. Math isn't his bag, but running meetings is, and what Waterhouse has just chalked up on that board looks, to him, like the rudiments of an agenda. And Comstock feels a lot better when he has an agenda. Without an agenda, he's like a grunt running around in the jungle without a map or a weapon.

'Well, sir, that's one way to look at it,' Waterhouse says after some thought. 'But it is much more elegant to view all of these as corollaries stemming from the same underlying theorem.'

'Are you telling me that you have succeeded in breaking Azure? Because if so, congratulations are in order!' Comstock says.

'No. It is still unbroken. But I canextract information from it.'

This is the moment where the joystick snaps off in Comstock's hand. Still, he can pound haplessly on the control panel. 'Well, would you mind taking them one at a time, at least?'

'Well, let's just take, for example, Assertion Four, which is that Azure/Pufferfish has something to do with mining.' Waterhouse sketches out a freehand map of the Southwest Pacific theater of operations, from Burma to the Solomons, from Nippon to New Zealand. It takes him about sixty seconds. Just for grins, Comstock pulls a printed map out of his clipboard and compares it against Waterhouse's version. They are basically identical.

Waterhouse draws a circle with a letter A in it at the entrance to Manila Bay. 'This is one of the stations that transmits Azure messages.'

'You know that from huffduff, correct?'

'That's right.'

'Is that on Corregidor?'

'One of the smaller islands near Corregidor.'

Waterhouse draws another circle-A in Manila itself, one in Tokyo, one in Rabaul, one in Penang, one in the Indian Ocean.

'What's that?' Comstock asks.

'We picked up an Azure transmission from a German U-boat here,' Waterhouse says.

'How do you know it was a German U-boat?'

'Recognized the fist,' Waterhouse says. 'So, this is the spatial arrangement of Azure transmitters-not counting the stations in Europe that are making Pufferfish transmissions, and hence, according to Assertion One, are part of the same network. Anyway, now let us say that an Azure message originates from Tokyo on a certain date. We don't know what it says, because we haven't broken Azure yet. We just know that the message went out to these places.' Waterhouse draws lines radiating downward from Tokyo to Manila, Rabaul, Penang. 'Now, each one of these cities is a major military base. Consequently, each is the source of a steady stream of traffic, communicating with all of the Nipponese bases in its region.' Waterhouse draws shorter lines radiating from Manila to various locations in the Philippines, and from Rabaul to New Guinea and the Solomons.

'Correction, Waterhouse,' Comstock says. 'We own New Guinea now.'

'But I'm going back in time!' Waterhouse says. 'Back to 1943, when there were Nip bases all along the north coast of New Guinea, and through the Solomons. So, let us say that within a brief window of time following this Azure message from Tokyo, a number of messages are transmitted from places like Rabaul and Manila to smaller bases in those areas. Some of them are in ciphers that we have learned how to break. Now, it is not unreasonable to suppose that some of these messages were sent out as a consequence of whatever orders were contained in that Azure message.'

'But those places send out thousands of messages a day,' Comstock protests. 'What makes you think that you can pick out the messages that are a consequence of the Azure orders?'

'It's just a brute force statistics problem,' Waterhouse says. 'Suppose that Tokyo sent the Azure message to Rabaul on October 15th, 1943. Now, suppose I take all of the messages that were sent out from Rabaul on