The shadow war

by Glen Scott Allen

  Benjamin frowned in frustration. "Drink? No, thank you, I've had quite enough for one night. And I have a feeling I'm going to need a clear head-that we're going to need clear heads-if we're going to figure this out."

  Wolfe gave him that infuriating smile. "Quite the nanny, aren't you?"

  "Samuel." He stopped, controlled his frustration, began again. "Would you mind telling me what the hell is going on here? This is most likely some sort of note Jeremy placed in that book. But why would he go to all the trouble of putting it in code? Why all the passwords on his computer? Why this cloak-and-dagger about who he spoke with? I just practically chased Gudrun… Dr. Soderbergh out of my room because I didn't want her to see this. And I'm not even sure why, except that your paranoia is contagious."

  Wolfe raised an eyebrow. "Gudrun? You're on a first-name basis?" Benjamin started to protest, but Wolfe waved him silent. "It doesn't matter. It may even be of benefit. Anyway, you did the right thing by not letting her see this. You were acting on instinct."

  "Then they're instincts I didn't know I had," said Benjamin, sitting on the bed. "And you haven't answered my other questions."

  Wolfe waved the yellow paper at him.

  "I think this may answer your questions. And I have a feeling you do know what it means, or it wouldn't have been in the Ginsburg book, a book Fletcher knew you would want to examine."

  "But why not simply tell me when I arrived? Why put it in code?"

  "Perhaps he had a premonition he might not be able to tell you in person," Wolfe said heavily. "Here, take another look at it."

  Benjamin took the paper and studied it again.

  "Well," he began tentatively, "offhand I'd say it looks like Franklin's pyramid code. Perhaps it's a coincidence…"

  "To hell with coincidence," insisted Wolfe, "just tell me what you're thinking."

  "You know what a pigpen code is?"

  "Yes," said Wolfe. "As does every Boy Scout. It's the code the Masons used for some of their documents." Wolfe shuffled through papers on his nightstand, found something to write on and a pen, spoke as he drew on the paper. "You make two simple tic-tac-toe grids and two Xs, then distribute the letters of the alphabet across them, and then use symbols that represent the position of the letter in its grid. Like this, correct?" He showed Benjamin the sketch he'd made.

  "So for instance 'Samuel' would be rendered as…" Again he drew on the paper. "This."

  "Yes," said Benjamin, "that's the basic code."

  "But," Wolfe objected, "I don't see any of those kinds of symbols there. It's all these little pyramids."

  "Well," said Benjamin, "the pigpen code actually predates the Masons. There's even a record of a seventeenth-century gravestone in England, in Cheshire-one Thomas Brierley-with that code carved into it. Franklin felt the code was compromised by its very popularity. He thought he could do better. And he was a printer, after all, used to playing with letters and texts. He'd been experimenting with simple Caesar substitution codes for years; you know, where you simply shift letters so many places to the right or left?" Wolfe nodded. "But then that interest collided with one of his other manias, which was for pyramids. The Masons were quite mad about pyramids. They thought their 'perfect symmetry' held some ancient wisdom."

  Benjamin lifted up the paper again. "So Franklin decided to combine the two codes, to construct a tabula recta -you know, Blaise de Vigenere's alphabet grids?" Wolfe nodded impatiently, and Benjamin hurried on. "But with pyramids rather than grids. Here."

  Benjamin took the notepad from Wolfe and made his own sketch.

  "So. If you construct a pyramid of small triangles, you get something like this."

  Wolfe looked down at the sketch. "But there's only twenty-five triangles, no room in it for Z," he protested.

  "Wait, I'll get to that. Of course, if the code is always the same, with the same letters in each triangle, then it isn't a very good code, is it. So there's a first key that tells the recipient which letter to put in the top triangle. Then, once you have the letters distributed in this pyramid of triangles, you assign a two-digit number to each letter. The first digit is the row, the second digit is the triangle within the row. So in this pyramid the A becomes 11, B becomes 21, C becomes 22, and so on. And whatever the missing letter is, like Z in this instance, becomes-"

  "Zero?"

  "Exactly." Benjamin placed the small yellow paper with TEACUP at the top next to the notepad. "But remember the first symbol here, the little triangle with a B in it? Well, that must be Jeremy's first key, which means the letter to place at the top of the pyramid is a B, so…" He rapidly drew another pyramid and began filling it in with letters. When he was finished he leaned back and pointed with the pen.

  "Then 58 is fifth row, eighth triangle, which is Y, and the rest…" He worked silently for a minute. "There," he said finally, leaning back in the chair.

  Wolfe looked down at what he'd written.

  "Y-L-U-H-E-F-C-H?" Wolfe frowned. "Well, that may be a code, but it certainly isn't easy to remember. He would have had to go through this operation every time he wanted to enter his password. And what about this symbol at the end?" He touched the inverted triangle with the little dot in the upper right-hand corner.

  "Ah," said Benjamin. " That's what put me on this track. The traditional Masonic code couldn't handle numbers, so Franklin created another pyramid of triangles just for numbers, like this." Again Benjamin worked at the notepad.

  "Then he used the dots from the traditional pigpen code, rotating the dots around the corners and midpoints of the triangles, so you get this." Benjamin jotted on the pad.

  "And as with the alphabet pyramid, zero would simply be an empty triangle."

  "But why use any numbers here at all?" Wolfe asked. "Why not just a word or phrase?"

  Benjamin smiled. "Franklin did use it for numbers with the older Masonic code. But with his own pyramid code, it took on a different function: the function of the second or shifting key in a Caesar substitution code."

  "To shift letters so many places to the right?"

  "Well, to shift the letters so many triangles ahead in the tabula recta pyramid. This symbol at the end of Jeremy's code would decode as a six. So if we go back to the pyramid and add six places to these letters we get…" He worked on the notepad for a moment. When he finished he sat back, grunted.

  "What?" Wolfe leaned down closely over his shoulder. The converted message was written at the bottom of the page.

  F-R-B-N-K-L-I-N

  "Not much better," said Wolfe. He laughed. "I'm afraid you don't quite have this-"

  "Of course!" Benjamin erased the B and wrote in an A. Now the line read:

  F-R-A-N-K-L-I-N

  "Jeremy was new to all this," Benjamin explained. "He forgot he'd shifted the A to the zero triangle, which isn't in the pyramid proper. Franklin had a special notation in those cases, but I guess Jeremy didn't know that, and…"

  "Yes, yes, very interesting," said Wolfe, taking the paper from Benjamin. "Well, I suggest we don't wait until morning. Let's go and try this on Fletcher's computer right now."

  Benjamin nodded, but as Wolfe retrieved his shoes and put them on, then moved to the door, Benjamin hadn't yet risen from the bed.

  "Benjamin?" Wolfe prodded.

  "It's just strange," he said.

  "That someone as precise as Dr. Fletcher would make such a mistake?"

  "No, not that. It's just very odd that Jeremy would choose this code, from all possible codes."

  "Think where you are, Benjamin," Wolfe answered. "There's a cryptologist here, a Dr. Karl Bennett, one of the best in the field. I'm sure Fletcher was resourceful enough to seek him out and find out whatever he needed to know about codes."

  "Perhaps." Benjamin shook his head. "But it's still strange. Franklin scholars had discovered these numbered codes in his correspondence and some of his business papers, and they'd assumed it was based on the Masonic code. But they'd never been able to decipher it before, until a particular l
etter was unearthed just last year."

  "And who unearthed it?" Wolfe asked.

  Benjamin looked up at him. "I did."

  "What?"

  "I wrote a paper about it. That discovery was responsible for my appointment at the Library of Congress."

  "So in other words," said Wolfe, remaining in the doorway, "Fletcher knew that quite probably the only person who would be able to recognize this and decode it would be one Benjamin Franklin Wainwright."

  Benjamin looked up at him, not quite comprehending.

  "Isn't it obvious, Benjamin?" He smiled broadly. "He didn't leave this for himself. He knew the password. He left it for you."

  Wolfe came over to the chair, put his hand on Benjamin's shoulder.

  "That's what I meant when I said Fletcher had leaked information, just not yet. He intended to leak something, that much is clear. To you."

  CHAPTER 15

  Wolfe immediately led Benjamin off down the hall to Fletcher's room. Once there, again Wolfe performed the ritual of examining the strip of tape on the doorjamb; once again he seemed satisfied that it had not been tampered with. He unlocked the door and they entered Fletcher's dark room.

  Everything was as they had left it. Benjamin walked in and almost stumbled over the keyboard on the floor, as Wolfe had insisted on closing the curtains before turning on the small banker's lamp on the table. Then Wolfe switched on the laptop computer.

  This time when it asked for a password, Wolfe immediately typed in "poisson," and the desktop with its few icons appeared. Then, as Benjamin had before, Wolfe double-clicked on the icon that read TEACUP-6. And as before, a small window appeared with the message ENTER PASSWORD FOR TEACUP INITIALIZATION.

  Wolfe bent his fingers over the keyboard, then stopped.

  "What do you think, 'franklin' with a small or capital F?" he asked.

  Benjamin looked at the yellow paper where Wolfe had set it in the circle of light from the lamp. "Just small F, I think. He knew there was no way to designate capitals in Franklin's code."

  "I agree," said Wolfe. He tapped the name, all in lowercase letters, into the waiting rectangle.

  Nothing happened.

  "Damn," Wolfe said. "If this doesn't work-"

  "Wait," said Benjamin. "Look."

  On the laptop screen, a new window had opened. It was a list of file names-but before they could read any of them, another window appeared on the screen.

  CONVERT GADENHOWER DATA? (Y/N) it read.

  "Gadenhower data?" said Benjamin. He looked at Wolfe. "Mrs. Gadenhower?"

  Wolfe nodded. "He had spoken to her just that day, remember. And told her he was going back to his room to type in notes from their conversation. And I suspect we want to continue where he left off, don't you?"

  Benjamin nodded.

  "Very well then." And Wolfe extended his index finger and very gently hit the Y key.

  The window disappeared-and another window replaced it.

  CONVERTING TEXT it read. And then a progress bar appeared beneath it, with the message above it: Time Remaining: About 30 minutes.

  "Apparently," Wolfe said, "we have half an hour before our next revelation."

  He bent and turned the Chippendale chair upright, then motioned to Benjamin to drag the other chair over to the table. Once seated, he offered Benjamin the bottle of scotch he'd brought from his room.

  "Without a glass?" Benjamin asked.

  "You've conquered your fear of scotch," Wolfe said. "Now take the final plunge, my boy."

  Benjamin shrugged, took the bottle and tipped it very slowly. Despite his caution, a glut of scotch rushed into his throat. He pitched forward, coughing. When he had himself under control, he handed the bottle back to Wolfe.

  "Consider yourself initiated," said Wolfe, taking a swig himself.

  Benjamin wiped the tears from his eyes. He sat looking at Wolfe, silent for a moment, then apparently made a decision.

  "Arthur said something to me the night I arrived," he said. "Something about you. About a loss." He hesitated a moment, then went on. "Is that why you drink?"

  Wolfe sighed. He looked at the bottle.

  "Arthur was talking about my wife, I imagine," he said very quietly. "Cancer."

  "I'm terribly sorry," Benjamin said. "I didn't mean to-"

  Wolfe shook his head. "Actually, it was quite gentle, as such things go. Fairly rapid. Relatively painless." He paused. "Relatively," he added, and took a drink.

  Benjamin felt the need to change the subject. "But you also said something about Vietnam?"

  Wolfe looked up at him. "That was a long time ago," he said, looking suddenly serious, the typical smirk entirely absent, his eyes not focused on Benjamin.

  "I was assigned to SIG-INT, signals intelligence. We were stationed in Saigon. At first, our job was to listen to the Vietcong's radio transmissions."

  "And that's where you learned cryptography?"

  Wolfe nodded, but provided no further details.

  "And afterwards?" Benjamin prodded.

  "There aren't many things a man can do with that kind of experience. Not that I wanted to do, anyway. I kicked around for a while with various security firms, you know, for banks, corporations with offices abroad, that sort of thing."

  "But how…" Benjamin accepted the bottle from Wolfe, waved its neck around the room.

  "How did I come to work for the Foundation?" He laughed. "What does it mean to be secure, Benjamin?"

  "I'm not sure what you-"

  "That's the first question a security analyst must ask. What does the client wish to 'secure'?" He sighed heavily. "It's always about fault lines. And I learned that, paradoxically, the best place to look for those fault lines is typically in whatever the client considers their greatest strength."

  Benjamin noticed that the lean lines of Wolfe's face had become tense, hard; that the humor that usually lurked in his eyes and at the corners of his mouth was gone.

  "For instance, there are those who consider their love of freedom to be their greatest strength. I worked, here at the Foundation and other places, with such people. I know what they fear, what makes them insecure. And more often than not, it's the threat of that selfsame freedom. Only in others."

  Suddenly there was a little beep from the computer. Immediately Wolfe rose and went to the table. "It appears our cake is done."

  Benjamin joined him at the table. The progress bar on the computer screen had disappeared, and in its place was a new window.

  In the window were two lines, like graphs-the one on the left blue, the one on the right red-rising from opposite sides of the window, like two halves of a bell-shaped curve. But where the top of the curve would be, there was a gap. Underneath the curve were a series of complicated mathematical formulae, leading up to a final one in red:

  "Now it's my turn," said Benjamin. "What on earth is that?"

  "It's a formula for a concept in game theory," said Wolfe, still studying the graphs. "Something called a Nash equilibrium." Wolfe began tracing the lines with a finger, as if touching the screen would somehow communicate to him something intimate about them.

  "And what's that?" prodded Benjamin.

  "Oh." Wolfe looked up at him. "It's when, in a game, there's no advantage to a player changing his strategy as long as the other player keeps doing whatever he's doing. It's a complicated way of saying they're at a stalemate. Do you know a game called The Prisoner's Dilemma?"

  "I've heard of it. Something about two prisoners trying to decide whether to rat on one another?"

  Wolfe nodded. "They're told that the first one to betray his fellow will receive a lighter sentence, and the one betrayed will receive a harsher sentence. But if neither one betrays the other, they both receive moderate sentences. In such a game, the best strategy is for both players to remain silent. While neither really wins, it guarantees neither completely loses. It's the best aggregate result possible."

  "But what if they don't know what the other one will do?"

  "
Exactly. That's the random element. That's why the police-and other security workers," here he smiled, "always keep the two suspects separated, and try to convince each one that the other is turning snitch. If they collude, they might agree to stonewall it out and stymie the interrogators. In that case, all three parties will have reached a Nash equilibrium."

  Benjamin looked at the computer screen. "Well, I have two questions. The first is, what does the eighty percent sign mean?"

  "And the other one?" asked Wolfe.

  "What has that game got to do with Dr. Fletcher's research on nuclear war?"

  "Let me answer the second question first." Wolfe pulled the chair over to the table. He took the bottle of scotch, studied it as if contemplating another drink, then set it with some finality on the table.

  "You heard Herman Kahn mentioned at dinner." Benjamin nodded. "Cavendish was right, Kahn practically did invent theorizing about nuclear war. He worked out dozens of scenarios: What if the Soviets strike first? What if we do? What if they use only half their missiles in such a strike? Every conceivable variation of mass death. He was the one who argued that, however horrific the idea might be, it was better to come out of such a war with twenty million dead than a hundred and fifty million dead."

  "You're right," said Benjamin. "It does sound horrific."

  "He called it 'thinking the unthinkable.' " Wolfe pointed at the computer. "Kahn didn't really bring this level of sophistication to bear on such thinking. That came with computer wizards like Fletcher. And, in his day, Arthur Terrill." He saw Benjamin's look of surprise. "Yes, in his early days, Arthur was quite the whiz kid of Armageddon."

  "But he said he knew nothing about Jeremy's research."

  "Apparently Arthur's also become adept at an administrator's most useful skill: lying."

  "But how do you understand this stuff?"

  "I told you I recognized the name Anton Sikorsky from Fletcher's list?" Benjamin nodded. "Well, Anton and I worked together, some years ago, for the Foundation. On this 'stuff.' Not at Fletcher's level. His whole career had been devoted to examining Kahn's scenarios, the assumptions behind them, and subjecting them to rigorous statistical analysis. To establishing the probabilities of such unthinkable events."