“The money? So what? That's not a thousandth of a percent of what it's worth to our country,” Jack pointed out.
“It's a million dollars a month!” Cabot protested. Tax free! the Director of Central Intelligence did not add.
Ryan managed not to laugh. “So, the bastard's greedy, okay? Our trade deficit with Japan is how much at last count?” Jack inquired with a raised eyebrow. “He's offering us whatever we want for as long as we want it. All we have to do is arrange to pick him up and fly him and his family over whenever it becomes necessary. He doesn't want to retire to Moscow. He's forty-five, and that's the age when they get antsy. He has to rotate home in ten years — to what? He's lived in Japan almost continuously for thirteen years. He likes affluence. He likes cars, and VCRs, and not standing in line for potatoes. He likes us. About the only people he doesn't like is the Japanese — he doesn't like them at all. He figures he's not even betraying his country, 'cause he's not giving us anything he isn't feeding them, and part of the deal is that he does nothing against Mother Russia. Fine, I can live with that.” Ryan chuckled for a moment. “It's capitalism. The man is starting an elite news service, and it's information we can really use.”
“He's charging enough.”
“Sir, it's worth it. The information he can give us will be worth billions in our trade negotiations, and billions in federal taxes as a result. Director, I used to be in the investment business, that's how I made my money. Investment opportunities like this come along about once every ten years. The Directorate of Operations wants to run with it. I agree. We'd have to be crazy to say no to this guy. His introductory package — well, you've had a chance to read it, right?”
The introductory package was the minutes of the last Japanese cabinet meeting, every word, grunt, and hiss. It was highly valuable for psychological analysis if nothing else. The nature of the exchange in the cabinet meetings could tell American analysts all sorts of things about how their government thought and reached decisions. That was data often inferred, but never confirmed.
“It was most enlightening, especially what they said about the President. I didn't forward that. No sense getting him annoyed at a time like this. Okay — the operation is approved, Jack. How do we run things like this?”
“The code name we've selected is M USHASHI. That's the name of a famous samurai dueling master, by the way. The operation will be called NIITAKA. We'll use Japanese names for the obvious reason”— Jack decided to explain; though Cabot was bright, he was new to the intelligence trade—“in the event of compromise or a leak from our side, we want it to appear that our source is Japanese, not Russian. Those names stay in this building. For outsiders who get let into this, we use a different code name. That one will be computer-generated, and it'll change on a monthly basis.”
“And the real name of the agent?”
“Director, it's your choice. You have the right to know it. I deliberately have not told you to this point because I wanted you to see the whole picture first. Historically it's evenly split, some directors want to know, and about the same number do not. It's a principle of intelligence operations that the fewer the number of people who know things, the less likely that there will be any sort of leak. Admiral Greer used to say the First Law of Intelligence Operations is that the likelihood of an operation's being burned was proportional to the square of the people in on the details. Your call, sir.”
Cabot nodded thoughtfully. He decided to temporize. “You liked Greer, didn't you?”
“Like a father, sir. After I lost Dad in the plane crash, well, the Admiral sort of adopted me.” More like I adopted him, Ryan thought. “On M USHASHI, you'll probably want to think it through.”
“And if the White House asks to know the details?” Cabot asked next.
“Director, despite what M USHASHI thinks, his employers will regard what he is doing as high treason, and that's a capital crime over there. Narmonov is a good guy and all that, but the Soviets have executed forty people that we know of for espionage. That included T OP H AT, J OURNEYMAN, and a guy named Tolkachev, all of whom were highly productive agents for us. We tried to do a trade in all three cases, but they were popped before negotiations had a chance to get underway. The appeals process in the Soviet Union is still somewhat abbreviated,” Ryan explained. “The simple fact, sir, is that if this guy gets burned, he will probably be shot right in the head. That's why we take agent-identity so seriously. If we screw up, people die, glasnost notwithstanding. Most presidents understand that. One more thing.”
“Yes?”
“He's told us something else. He wants all his reports to be handled physically, not by cable. If we don't agree, he doesn't do business. Okay, technically that's no problem. We've done that before with agents of this caliber. The nature of his information is such that immediacy is not required. There's daily air service to and from Japan via United, Northwest, and even All Nippon Airways straight into Dulles International Airport.”
“But…” Cabot's face twisted into a grimace.
“Yeah.” Jack nodded. “He doesn't trust our communications security. That scares me.”
“You don't think…?”
“I don't know. We've had very limited success penetrating Soviet ciphers for the past few years. NSA assumes that they have the same problems with ours. Such assumptions are dangerous. We've had indications before that our signals are not fully secure, but this one comes from a very senior guy. I think we have to take this seriously.”
“Just how scary could this be?”
“Terrifying,” Jack answered flatly. “Director, for obvious reasons we have numerous communications systems. We have M ERCURY right downstairs to handle all of our stuff. The rest of the government mainly uses stuff from NSA; Walker and Pelton compromised their systems a long time ago. Now, General Olson over at Fort Meade says they've fixed all that, but for expense reasons they have not fully adopted the TAPDANCE one-time systems that they've been playing with. We can warn NSA again — I think they'll ignore this warning also, but we have to do it — and on our end, I think it's time to act. For starters, sir, we need to think about a reexamination of M ERCURY.” That was the CIA's own communications nexus, located a few floors below the Director's office, and using its own encrypting systems.
“Expensive,” Cabot noted seriously. “With our budget problems…”
“Not half as expensive as a systematic compromise of our message traffic is. Director, there is nothing as vital as secure communications links. Without that, it doesn't matter what else we have. Now, we've developed our own one-time system. All we need is authorization of funds to make it go.”
“Tell me about it. I haven't been briefed in.”
“Essentially, it's our own version of the TAPDANCE. It's a one-time pad with transpositions stored on laser- disk CD ROM. The transpositions are generated from atmospheric radio noise, then superencrypted with noise from later in the day — atmospheric noise is pretty random, and by using two separate sets of the noise, and using a computer-generated random algorithm to mix the two, well, the mathematicians say that's as random as it gets. The transpositions are generated by computer and fed onto laser disks in realtime. We use a different disk for every day of the year. Each disk is unique, two copies only, one to the station, one in M ERCURY — no backups. The laser-disk reader we use at both ends looks normal, but has a beefed-up laser, and as it reads the transposition codes from the disk, it also burns them right off the plastic. When the disk is used up, or the day ends — and the day will end first, since we're talking billions of characters per disk — the disk is destroyed by baking it in a microwave oven. That takes two minutes. It ought to be secure as hell. It can only be compromised at three stages: first, when the disks are manufactured; second, from disk-storage here; third, from disk-storage in each station. Compromise of one station does not compromise anyone else. We can't make the disks tamperproof — we've tried, and it would both cost too much and make them overly vulnerable to accidental damage. The downside of this is that it'll require us to hire and clear about twenty new communications technicians. The system is relatively cumbersome to use, hence the increased number of communicators. The main expense component is here. The field troops we've talked to actually prefer the new system because it's user-friendly.”
“How much to set it up?”
“Fifty million dollars. We have to increase the size of M ERCURY, and set up the manufacturing facility. We have the space, but the machinery is expensive. From the time we get the money, we could have it up and running in maybe as little as three months.”
“I see your point. It's probably worth doing, but getting the money…?”
