Frankie Aguirre and Art Jefferson - 03 - Simple Simon

by Ryne Douglas Pearson

  There were 103 groups of three numbers left. Simon twisted his wrist and looked briefly at his watch. The time did not concern him.

  Simon knew what to do next. He looked back to the 50 number/letter mix at the beginning of the puzzle. There was a shift key in this.

  He saw the 103 groups in order, processed them, 087 first, shifted, and on.

  The 103 groups yielded letters and numbers in a logical order.

  Simon looked at the puzzle’s body again. He saw a string of 103 letters and numbers.

  IFYOUSOLVETHISPUZZLECALL18005551398ANDTELLTHE

  OPERATORTHATYOUHAVESOLVEDPUZZLE99

  YOUWILLTHENBEISSUEDAPRIZE.

  The string needed spaces. He saw them, and read ‘IF YOU SOLVE THIS PUZZLE CALL 18005551398 AND TELL THE OPERATOR THAT YOU HAVE SOLVED PUZZLE 99 YOU WILL THEN BE ISSUED A PRIZE’.

  It had taken Simon twenty seconds to yield what he saw as an instruction not unlike those written on his cards. He stood and walked in short steps to the telephone in the far corner of the living room. His mommy had shown him how to dial 911 if something very wrong happened. (Simon understood wrong; he did not understand bad) He knew how to dial his daddy’s work if something was wrong. He was supposed to push the buttons.

  That was calling someone.

  He was supposed to call someone. He lifted the phone and held it next to his face like his mommy had shown him. It was cold plastic and it hummed in his ear. It was supposed to do that.

  Simon knew what to do next. He used a very straight finger and pressed the numbers the puzzle told him to press.

  He was calling someone.

  * * *

  Leo Pedanski was mid bite into the warm bearclaw when the buzzing of the phone brought his eyes up from his linguistics text in a start. Through his thick glasses he looked at the phone. The light above line 2 was flashing. Recording machines to his right began to hum.

  The thirty year old let the sugary pastry hang in his mouth as he slid his activity log close. It was where he was to record any happenings during his thrice-weekly shift at the ‘Puzzle Center’. He looked briefly down at the near blank form. He’d written nothing there in six months.

  “Shee-it,” he said past the bearclaw, then set the tasty morsel aside as line 2 buzzed a second time. Line 2 was the outside line. He could recall distinctly the last time it had showed signs of life. The previous year, just before Halloween, when some Jethro from COMSEC-T had had his wimpy subroutine busted clean. Pedanski had joyously passed the news on to the wannabe that he was no Z-man, and Pedanski should know; he was a Z-man.

  He grabbed a pencil and noted the time quickly on his log, picked up the receiver, and, certain that all the gear was up and running, pressed the button next to line 2 in expectation that he was going to be able to ruin another T-boy’s day. “Hi!” he said excitedly, just as he and his fellow Z-men had practiced. “You’ve reached the Puzzle Center.” At this point Pedanski wanted to laugh. If only they knew how close that was to the truth… “You have solved one of our hardest puzzles, and having done so you will be awarded a two-year! subscription to the magazine of your choice. I’ll need your name and address, phone number, and the number of the puzzle you’ve solved.” Pedanski stared at the trace gear to his front in silence. The silence persisted. “Hello?”

  Stiff paper rustling, then, “I can’t tell strangers my name.”

  What the hell… “Uhhh.”

  “You’re a stranger.”

  Was this a kid? Pedanski wondered. It spoke like one, but in an older voice. “Uh, this is the Puzzle Center. Where did you get this number?”

  “I solved puzzle ninety-nine.”

  Pedanski snatched the glasses from his face, his gray eyes bugging. WHAT!? He steadied himself as best he could and swallowed before speaking. “Again, what puzzle?”

  “Puzzle ninety-nine.”

  No. It could not be. This had to be a razz. It had to…

  But it couldn’t be. It was line 2, and if anyone in Z was pulling this as a stunt, the boss would have their ass in a federal pen before they could spit.

  It had to be a joke, and it could not be at the same time.

  “Who is this?” Pedanski asked seriously.

  “You’re a stranger.”

  “Listen, I need—” Click. Dial tone. “Hello…dammit!” he swore as he slammed the phone into its cradle. With the hand that held it he covered his mouth. It, like the one holding the pencil, was trembling. Oh, man, this can not be happening. It is im-possible.

  But something had definitely happened. Something terrible. He did not know exactly what, yet, but one thing was quite clear: a single phone call had just cost him and his comrades five years of work and Uncle Sam ten billion dollars.

  Chicken Little would have been proud.

  Two

  Big Dogs

  G. Nicholas Kudrow paced slowly along the bookcase wall of his office, a few sheets of paper held high in one hand, the other rubbing slow circles on his prominent chin as he considered what he read. At the end of the bookcase the forty-eight year old civil servant turned and retraced his steps toward his mahogany desk, still reading, his tinted glasses angled down at the object of his interest. Almost to the next turn-around he paused, square face rising a bit in contemplation, then lowering as the thought-walk continued.

  At the end he stopped and ran a hand over his graying brown hair, whose natural wave added an illusory inch to his six-one frame, and looked away from the papers for the last time. His eyes angled right, at the flexible microphone snaking upward near the computer monitor on his desk. “VOICE,” he said loudly, in a distinct tone he knew would be recognized, then, in a more normal voice, “Intercom.” His normal voice commanded attention. An electronic beep told him to continue. “Sharon?”

  “Yes, Mr. Kudrow,” a disembodied voice replied through the speaker in the microphone’s base.

  “Contact Colonel Murdoch in S and inform him that I have studied his request and that it is denied.” Kudrow stood motionless, staring toward his desk.

  “Understood, Mr. Kudrow.”

  “Intercom off.” Two beeps signaled that his voice command had been heeded. Kudrow walked around his desk and sat, tossing the poorly conceived request into a large red basket. There was no need to shred what went in there.

  Done with serious contemplation for the moment, Kudrow sipped lemonade from the half full glass on his desk and flipped through a minor stack of papers. All bore the TOP SECRET designation across their top, which was why his secretary had placed them with the routine material he needed to peruse before this first day of the work week was finished. If he had his druthers he’d have Sharon sign off on them, but the government had silly rules that only added to the workload of its truly valuable people, of whom he was certainly one, Kudrow believed without a doubt. So he moved quickly through the collection of briefs from DoD, State, and other less important entities, and was only mildly perturbed when his intercom interrupted him mid-stack.

  “Yes?”

  “Mr. Kudrow, Mr. Folger says he’s coming down.” There was a distinct hesitation in Sharon’s voice.

  Kudrow stared silently at the speaker for a second. “He’s coming down? Did you inform him that I am occupied?”

  “He didn’t give me the chance, Mr. Kudrow.” She never called him sir. Military officers were ‘sirs’. Kudrow was proudly a career civilian. “He just called, said he’s coming down, and hung up. I tried to get him back on the phone but his secretary said he just hurried out.”

  “Very well,” Kudrow said tersely and heard his secretary click off. Interruptions—the bane of those with purpose. G. Nicholas Kudrow was a man with purpose. And with position. Deputy Director for COMSEC-Z of the National Security Agency. A position that was never publicly acknowledged as existing by those ‘in the know’, in the same way that his domain, Department Z of the NSA’s Communications Security directorate, was but a phantom operation within the world’s largest intelligence gathering organiza
tion.

  But for apparitions, Kudrow and Z left an undisputable mark on the basic functions of the nation’s government. He and his people were responsible for the cryptographic systems that protected the sensitive information that flowed between pieces of the United States Government and its assorted agencies, departments, and bureaus. When people committed secrets to paper, or to some other storage media, and sent it across the street or across an ocean, when imaging satellites snapped their pictures and relayed the shots to a ground station, when secure phones rang at any U.S. installation, the signals passed at each end of its transmission through something that G. Nicholas Kudrow was responsible for. In between those stations the secret was nonsensical gobbledygook.

  It was Kudrow’s job, his purpose, to see that that remained the status quo. To that end he was directly responsible for a budget of one hundred million dollars in discretionary funding a year, fifteen times that much in annual project money, two dozen cryptographers who dreamed up the ‘ultimate security’, and a hundred technicians to build the physical structures—or cryptographic machines—that gave that ultimate security to select users. He had chosen the design of the building that housed Department Z, even the color of its windowless exterior—dark brown—and nearly everything else about Z had his stamp of approval on it. It was his domain, and he balanced his rule of it somewhere between father and tyrant dependent on the situation at hand.

  The tyrant in him snapped eyes to the door when it opened without a knock. Brad Folger, Assistant Deputy Director for COMSEC-Z, entered just ahead of Kudrow’s secretary.

  “Mr. Kudrow,” Sharon said in frustrated apology. “I tried to grab him—”

  “Good morning, Nick,” Folger said, ignoring Sharon. He was in shirtsleeves, cuffs buttoned down smartly, but his red and blue tie was askew, fat and thin ends both showing. The lid above his right eye tremored noticeably. “Can we talk?”

  This was no petty disturbance, Kudrow could tell by his assistant’s appearance. “All right, Sharon.” She stepped out with a poisoned glance at Folger and closed the thick door. Kudrow watched as Folger, forty but looking twenty-five, stepped close to his desk. “You should get that eye looked at.”

  Folger consciously tried to stem the tremor, the attempt futile. The lid shook like a flap of loose skin, covering half the eye in a perpetual jitter. “I got a call a few minutes ago. From Pedanski.”

  “And?”

  Folger slid both hands into the pockets of his pleated gray trousers. “He wants me to bring you downstairs. He and Dean and Patel want to talk to us.” Kudrow’s chin rose a bit. “Nick, he sounded scared.”

  Kudrow’s brow collapsed slowly into a series of fleshy furrows. He stood, his imposing frame against the jarring colors of the Lichtenstein that hung behind his desk. It had cost a hundred thousand dollars. “Scared?”

  “I’ve never heard him like this,” Folger said. “The guy usually doesn’t take anything seriously.”

  But what would frighten Pedanski, or any of his animals, as Kudrow referred to the three all stars of his team of cryptographers? He did not know. But he did know that anything involving the trio in concert required attention. They were special, after all, not only for who they were, but for what they had created. “Let’s go.”

  The Z building was but one of three dozen buildings on the grounds of the National Security Agency, which was ringed concentrically by three fences, the outer two chain link and topped with razor wire and the inner one electrified. Marines with smart-looking German Shepherds walked the perimeter in an endless patrol, and from control points atop the U-shaped Headquarters-Operations building other Marines scanned the grounds zealously for any attempt at intrusion, rifles slung for quick access. The security was meant to be oppressive, and seemed more so considering that the entire NSA complex sat within the boundaries of the United States Army’s Fort George Meade, located halfway between Baltimore and the nation’s capital.

  The Z building, a hundred yards inside the triple fence and fifty yards from the nearest structure, was surrounded by its own combination of chain link, razor wire, and high voltage. Two Marines guarded the single portal through the barrier at all times. They had orders to shoot any who attempted unauthorized entry into the windowless brown building known colloquially as the Chocolate Box.

  They had done so twice in ten years. Neither incident had made the news.

  On the first floor of the Z building, G. Nicholas Kudrow left his office at a brisk walk with Brad Folger on his heels. He headed for the stairs to the basement and walked freely down one level.

  There was no security inside the Z building. If you were in and breathing, you were supposed to be there.

  At the bottom of the stairs Kudrow turned right and cruised down a hallway, passing three green doors, each opening to disheveled offices that he avoided religiously. No placards marked the spaces. At the end of the hall there was one more door. He opened it without breaking stride and entered what was called the Puzzle Center.

  It looked like a college dorm at finals.

  Leo Pedanski stood with a start and spilled the remnants of his soda on a layer of papers that covered one of the room’s two desks. “Mr. Kudrow. Hi.”

  Kudrow’s head twisted slowly as he surveyed the room. Dozens of empty red cans lay on the desks, on the floor next to overflowing wastebaskets, and atop equipment that had cost the taxpayers far more than they needed to pay. Stacks of paper rose to various heights almost everywhere that there was a surface to pile them. Both desks were littered with plastic wrappers. A third chair had been wedged into the room. The air smelled of sweat and junk food.

  “Gentlemen,” he said in greeting. Craig Dean, taller than the boss by an inch and sporting an unkempt ponytail that had seen hardly a trim in a year, rose from a cross-legged position and stood next to Pedanski, whose hair was a mess of reddish-brown tangles. Vikram Patel, pudgy and balding at twenty seven, did not trust his legs at the moment and remained on the floor, arms hugging both knees to his chest. ‘Scared’ was a good word, Kudrow thought. “Redecorating?”

  Leo Pedanski, the de-facto leader of the trio by virtue of his advanced age, ran a hand hard over his head and brought the other to meet it in a grasp behind his neck. He was to be the messenger. His caffeine-filled stomach roiled loudly. “No, but, uh…we’ve got a real problem.” A nervous half-chuckle trailed off his words.

  “It’s the primary S-box,” Patel said, his voice cracking. “It was weak. I knew it was weak.”

  Dean, a twenty-eight year old holder of two doctorates in theoretical mathematics and chaos theory, rotated his spindly body toward the accuser. “You damn Jethro, The primary S was mine! It was fine. It is fine!”

  “Shut up,” Pedanski said with as much authority as he could summon. It wasn’t much. Their usually free flowing, sometimes sophomoric relationship had been virtually wiped out in the span of sixty hours. All because of a single phone call.

  “The primary S-box?” Kudrow inquired somewhat hopefully. “Is this about MAYFLY?” He looked to Craig Dean, who stared back at him through John Lennon spectacles. It had to be about MAYFLY; that’s all it could be about. “You were doing a postmortem on MAYFLY, son, weren’t you? Did you find what might have compromised it?”

  “Mr. Kudrow,” Pedanski stepped in, drawing the boss’s attention back to him. “It’s not MAYFLY. It’s KIWI.”

  Kudrow’s spine straightened, his chin rising. Behind the gray tint his brown eyes flared. He heard Folger mutter Oh shit quietly behind. “What about KIWI?”

  “We… It…” Pedanski paused and swallowed. “Someone knows it.”

  “What do you mean ‘knows it’?” Kudrow asked, more forcefully than he normally would have in dealing with the animals. They were a special grouping, one that required his fatherly touch more than a tyrannical demand for an explanation. But his paternal streak had gone AWOL for the moment.

  “We got a call,” Patel said between wet, teary sniffs. The computer engineer dragg
ed the back of his arm across his nose and looked up to Kudrow. “Pedanski did, I mean.”

  Kudrow’s eyes were snapping between the speakers. He finally locked on Pedanski and took a half step forward. He took a covert deep breath to retrieve some calm. His heart rate had nearly doubled in a minute. “From the top, Mr. Pedanski. Everything.”

  Leo’s gulp for air was plain to see before he spoke. “Okay. You know the validation protocol for KIWI?”

  “That was completed two years ago?” Kudrow responded. There was accusation in his rhetoric. “Yes.”

  “We did the standard stuff,” Pedanski explained, though ‘standard’ only in their world. For a full year, two sets of paired Cray supercomputers, individually the most powerful pieces of computing equipment on the planet, had chewed at a piece of the digital trash produced when cleartext was subjected to KIWI. On the first day of the eleventh month the Crays found one character, a ‘C’, but didn’t know where in the sequence to place it. Thirty days later the animals completed the message for the frustrated computer wizards, placing the ‘C’ in the third space and filling in the rest. Fuck you, Chip, it read, an obvious slap at the innards of the Cray. KIWI at that time was the most secure cryptographic system ever seen. But, though the computer was the premiere destroyer of crypto systems, there was one other element that had to be considered. “Including the human element test. You know, the hidden message in those puzzle sections of magazines. Three different magazines, I thin—”