The Russian Affair

by Adrian D'hage

  The base commander, an air force colonel, saluted. ‘Welcome to Air Force Base Kirtland, Mr President. Marine One is ready.’ The president returned the salute and the colonel accompanied him the short distance to where the president’s shiny olive green helicopter was waiting. Forty minutes later, Marine One flew through restricted airspace and landed at the Los Alamos County Airport where the president’s vehicles were on the tarmac with their engines running. As soon as the president, his Chief of Staff and the National Security Advisor were aboard ‘the beast’, the motorcade exited the airfield and turned onto Route 502, and then onto Central Avenue, a narrow undivided road that led past gas stations and shopping centres and on through the central business district. President Travers waved to the shoppers who had stopped to watch the cavalcade of black Suburbans with their tinted windows, travelling in front and to the rear of the two Cadillacs.

  ‘Not many people in this town,’ Travers complained, still waving.

  His Chief of Staff said nothing. The population, he knew, was 12 253, because the census figures were in the president’s briefing papers. The heavily protected motorcade completed its short run through the town and minutes later, they arrived at the National Laboratory on the outskirts of Los Alamos.

  ‘Welcome to your National Laboratory, Mr President.’ The director, Jackson Harris, had assembled his senior managers outside the main administration building, including Denis Bartók’s replacement, Doctor David Magnuson. Bartók, seething with resentment, watched from a distance as they all shook hands with President Travers. Originally excluded from the presidential briefing as well, Harris had grudgingly allowed Bartók a seat at the back of the small conference room, on condition he was to make no comment on any discussion. On the White House side, Harris had also requested and received approval for the briefing to be restricted to the president, his National Security Advisor, and Travers’s Chief of Staff, the only three in his entourage cleared into the Dragon compartment.

  ‘Once again, Mr President, welcome to the Los Alamos National Laboratory. It’s an honour to have you here.’ Harris flicked up a PowerPoint organisation chart. ‘Our mission, Mr President, is to develop and apply science and technology to ensure the safety, security and reliability of the US nuclear deterrent; to reduce global threats; and to solve emerging national security and energy challenges.’ Harris did not pick up on the president shifting irritably in his seat.

  ‘As you’re aware, Mr President, it was on this very site that the first atomic bombs were developed. Little Boy, a uranium bomb with an equivalent of 15 000 tons of TNT, was exploded above the city of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. Fat Man, a plutonium bomb with an equivalent of 21 000 tons of TNT, was exploded above the city of Nagasaki three days later. We’ve come a long way since then, Mr President, and today, the directors of our Science and Engineering division, our Weapons Programs division, our Global Security —’

  ‘You can hold it right there. Right away. I didn’t come all the way down here to get a goddamn history lesson on atomic bombs, or to be lectured to by a bunch of bureaucrats. So let’s cut to the chase. I’ve already announced publicly that we’re not going to sit quietly on our ass while Petrov, let alone that idiot in North Korea, develop new nuclear weapons when all the while the Russians are telling everyone they’re not and they’re riding roughshod over us behind our backs. I’ve said we’re increasing our nuclear arsenal and I meant it. What I want to know today is what the hell are you people doing about that?’

  ‘Of course, Mr President. Of course. I will now hand over to Doctor David Magnuson who is the principal associate director for our Weapons Programs Division and he will brief you on Program Dragon.’ Harris nodded to Magnuson and resumed his seat.

  ‘Good morning, Mr President. I’m pleased to be able to tell you that my division has been able to do here what no other country in the world has achieved.’

  Bartók’s anger was never far from the surface. Had the president not been in the room, he would have exploded, and he had to fight to control himself. My division? My division! He glared at the arrogant Magnuson. In the short time Magnuson had been at Los Alamos, not once had he acknowledged Bartók’s research that had led to the world-first.

  ‘It is known as the Holy Grail of nuclear energy, Mr President, and under my direction we’ve been able to confirm that through a super-heated fusion process, we gain more energy from the reaction than was required to start it. That has huge implications in solving the world’s energy needs, but it will also enable us to develop a new breed of smaller, but far more powerful nuclear weapons.’ Magnuson sensed he had the president’s attention, and he was right. President Travers listened attentively while Magnuson, avoiding any detailed science, gave the president the details of the seemingly impossible.

  ‘And you say that means we can make smaller, more powerful nukes?’ Travers asked.

  ‘It does indeed, Mr President.’ Jackson Harris stepped up and relieved Magnuson of the podium.

  ‘How soon?’ the president demanded.

  ‘Not overnight, Mr President. We will, of course, give this priority but our present budget would not allow . . .’

  ‘What’s your budget?’

  ‘This financial year it’s just over two and a half billion dollars which is split into . . .’

  ‘Double it,’ said President Travers, turning to his Chief of Staff. ‘There is no higher priority in this country right now than increasing our nuclear weapons stock. Russia, North Korea, China and the rest of the world are not about to find out how we’re doing that, but they’re sure as hell going to know we are. Under my presidency, America is headed right back to where we were when the Soviet Union collapsed. When it comes to military superiority, we’re going to be right at the top of the heap. I want a report on my desk by next week on how this technology is going to be incorporated into the new warheads, and a time frame for my approval.’ The president turned to Magnuson. ‘Outstanding work. We’ll have to see what we can do to get you a Nobel.’

  The president and the directors of Los Alamos headed to the boardroom for lunch. Bartók strode back to his office, his anger at boiling point and his mind made up.

  Denis Bartók looked at his watch. Six p.m. The car park was emptying for the weekend and soon he would be able to start work on attempting to bypass Los Alamos’ formidable download protections. Like any US government department, the National Laboratory, he knew, was subject to FIPS 140-2, the Federal Information Processing Standards that applied to all cryptographic modules. The four levels provided varying degrees of security, and the highest level of security, Level Four, provided a complete envelope of protection against any unauthorised access. But for Dragon, there were even more security arrangements in place. The software systems monitored the access of the very few people within Los Alamos who were cleared into the compartment. Bartók knew he didn’t have much time. He was due to leave for the conference in Paris the following Tuesday, so he had only the weekend to break in.

  ‘Working late?’ Bartók looked up to find his nemesis, David Magnuson, briefcase in hand, standing in the doorway of Bartók’s cramped office.

  ‘I don’t know if you’ve noticed, David,’ Bartók responded, making no attempt to hide the sarcasm in his voice, ‘but the pressure to deliver around here has only increased since Travers moved into the White House and I have a paper to deliver in Paris next week.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said Magnuson. ‘I saw it. Energy and decay processes. Fairly routine stuff, really. Physics 101. Whereas here, by the time you get back, we’ll have made even more progress on the Dragon compartment. President Travers was pretty impressed,’ Magnuson added. ‘But tomorrow’s Saturday,’ he said cheerfully, further infuriating Bartók, ‘and there has to be a balance. So for me, it’s going to be a round of golf. Not a bad little golf course here. Not up to my usual standard of course, but not bad just the same.’ In 1947, the Atomic Energy Commission had built a golf course for the National Laboratory’s overwork
ed scientists. Nestled on the Pajarito Plateau in the foothills of the Jemez Mountains, with fairways carved through Ponderosa pines and cottonwood trees, it was one of the oldest golf courses in New Mexico. ‘Have you ever played it?’

  ‘No,’ replied Bartók. ‘I don’t play golf.’

  ‘You should take it up. It’s a par 72,’ Magnuson responded, oblivious to Bartók’s lack of interest. ‘They rate the 7th as the hardest, but I think they’ve got that wrong. In my book, it’s the 18th par five. Last week, by the time I reached the 17th, which is a tricky little par three, I was shooting 77 and I just needed to birdie the last to hit my handicap. On the green for three, with a ten-foot putt and it ringed the cup. Ringed the cup and then popped out! It can be frustrating, Denis, but it’s a game you might enjoy. My wife Betsy, she plays off fifteen, and at the end of the day, we have dinner in the little restaurant. You and your wife would enjoy it. Don’t work too late!’

  ‘Asshole,’ Bartók muttered. The world was full of them. The night before, he’d arrived home to find a note on the fridge door. ‘Gone out fucking. Darlene.’ He looked out the window. The car park was almost empty. Bartók got up from his desk and he locked his office door, and then set about attempting to defeat the very security systems he’d helped create.

  Bartók had been with the IT technicians when they’d installed the program to protect Dragon. But like many systems, if you knew where to look, it had a weakness, and that weakness was to be found in the password of Elmer Jenner, the administrator. Not that the password itself would be weak. Jenner was not only a skilled IT technician, but he was also a stickler for detail and protocols. Bartók already had the four groups of numbers unique to Jenner’s desktop, and he set to work. He entered an array of keystrikes, pulling up the Command Prompt function followed by Netstat to display a host of detail on computer communications, and typed in Jenner’s IP address. Jenner’s desktop port address appeared on Bartók’s screen and he connected to the administrator’s computer remotely.

  On a hunch, he typed in a password that he thought Jenner might use, but in an instant, the message was one of discouragement.

  ACCESS DENIED!

  Now the real work begins, he thought. Knowing Jenner, he would have added a salt to the Data Encryption Standard Algorithm. Two characters at the ends of a password – one of 26 alphabet letters or a number from zero to nine, or a full stop or / gave a choice of 64 characters at each end of the password and as a result, 4096 different salts. Without the salts, Bartók knew it would have been easy to break in with either Hash or Rainbow Tables, but now, he connected his sophisticated decryption program to Los Alamos’ big internal Cray ‘Wolf’ computers and loaded up the code-breaker software Cohen had provided. The Wolf upgrade allowed a staggering 197 teraflops or 197 million, million operations a second, but even with that enormous capacity, Bartók knew it might take some time. Still seething over his treatment at the hands of Harris and Magnuson, he was prepared to do whatever it took. He got up from behind his desk and was about to make a cup of coffee, when first the doorhandle turned, and then there was a knock on the door. Bartók quickly turned his computer screen to an angle and unlocked his door to find the security guard.

  ‘Doctor Bartók. You’re working late, sir.’

  Bartók smiled awkwardly at the guard. ‘No later than usual, Bob. No rest for the wicked here.’

  ‘Of course, sir. As long as everything’s all right. I saw the light on and thought I’d check.’

  ‘The right thing to do, Bob. Have a good weekend.’

  The security guard made a note of the room number and building. Doctor Bartók was not the only scientist to work back, although it was less likely on a Friday night, and the Director had requested a data bank be kept on who was working back after 6 p.m. Bob shook his head. Just another idiot bureaucratic direction with which to comply.

  Bartók made his coffee and settled down to read the latest edition of the Journal of Nuclear Physics and a paper entitled ‘The Role of the Binding Energy of the Electron of the Hydrogen Atom in Nickel-Hydrogen Cold Fusion’. He made some notes on where he disagreed with the authors’ premise, and was flicking through the rest of the journal when an article on a previous nuclear symposium in London caught his eye. But it wasn’t the article itself, it was a photograph of a Russian nuclear scientist, Doctor Ilana Rabinovich, that grabbed his attention. A chill ran down Bartók’s spine. The likeness was absolutely uncanny. If you substituted short, blonde hair, it would be Cohen. Once again, Bartók forced himself to relax. The dark world of trading nuclear secrets had turned his life upside down. An uncanny likeness, but probably just a coincidence, he told himself, and he continued to flick through the journal. Just after 10 p.m., two pings on his computer screen broke his concentration. Cohen’s decryption program, with the help of the massive Cray, had produced two 12-digit passwords. Bartók, his pulse racing, accessed Jenner’s computer and typed in the first.

  ACCESS DENIED!

  ‘Fuck!’ Bartók swore. Fleetingly he wondered what he would do if he couldn’t download his research results. Would Cohen’s client still pay him for his knowledge? He steadied his hands and typed in the second password.

  Doctor Elmer Jenner – Welcome!

  Bartók let out a sigh of relief. The big Cray Wolf computer banks had broken Jenner’s code and he was into the entire Los Alamos system as the administrator. Another series of keystrokes gave him access to Jenner’s security files and he scanned them with interest. The security clearances, passwords and personal details of the entire staff of Los Alamos were filed, all 10 672 of them. Scientists, administrative staff, contractors, students, postdoctoral researchers and a security force of nearly 300. Out of interest, he opened the file on the headquarters. Downloads were authorised for just four individuals: the director, the deputy director, the executive director and the chief financial officer. He opened his own division to find that only Magnuson was authorised. His own name had an asterisk against his security clearance. At the bottom of the page it read ‘to be reviewed’.

  ‘Bastards!’ Bartók swore softly. Not only had they replaced him with Magnuson, but on top of that they were reviewing his security clearances. Had there been any doubt as to whether he would go through with what amounted to high treason, those doubts were erased. Bartók worked his keyboard again, granting himself download access. He returned to his own system and pulled up his paper, together with 300 pages of priceless data. It was the virtual manual on how to produce more energy than the reactions required, together with the priceless accompanying academic paper:

  TOP SECRET – NOFORN

  The Path to Fusion Plasma Fuel

  Doctor Denis Bartók

  Los Alamos National Laboratory

  The paper, which normally would have been published in a distinguished peer-reviewed journal like Nature, was the result of more than five years of painstaking experiments in the huge laser laboratory, the most secure laboratory on site, and now others were attempting to claim the credit. Bartók inserted a 30-gigabyte thumb drive into his desktop and, with his pulse rising again, he hovered the cursor over the ‘save as’ tab and let out a sigh of relief as his computer dutifully obeyed his command. Twenty minutes later, he reset the download settings on Jenner’s computer and logged out. Bartók checked his watch. It was nearly midnight and the whole operation had taken over five hours. Suddenly, he had a chilling thought. There was a gaping hole in his planning. Damn! He wasn’t due to fly out until Tuesday. Bartók knew that Jenner might pick up his very late log-off time, and given the ‘review’ question mark over his security, Jenner might check on what he’d been doing and dig deeper. That would uncover the break-in. Jenner hardly ever came in on the weekend, but it still left all of Monday for Jenner to unmask him, and then the game would be up. Bartók resolved to change his airline booking and fly out on the first available flight.

  A tiny pinhole camera in the corner of the ceiling in Bartók’s office recorded Bartók turning out th
e light and closing the door. The latest developments in spy technology had reduced the size of the camera to just one millimetre – no bigger than a grain of salt, making it impossible to detect.

  ‘The usual, Denis?’

  ‘Yes thanks, Hannah,’ said Bartók and he settled onto his favourite bar stool at the Brewpub and Grill.

  ‘Anything planned for the weekend?’ asked Hannah, putting Bartók’s Scotch on the bar.

  ‘Just packing for Paris.’

  ‘How exciting, Denis. I’ve never been to Paris. When do you leave?’

  ‘Well, I was due to fly out on Tuesday, and keep this to yourself, but fuck ’em. I’ve decided to leave earlier – probably Sunday, and take a couple of days off.’

  ‘Good on you, Denis. You’ve earned it and they haven’t appreciated you. Another?’

  ‘Make it a double, thanks.’

  Jackson Harris had just started to review his agenda for the week, when his secretary, Alison Turnbull, interrupted him.

  ‘I’ve had Elmer Jenner on the phone asking to see you urgently. He seems very agitated.’

  Harris sighed inwardly. ‘I think “agitated” is Elmer’s middle name, Alison. What is it this time?’ Jenner reported directly to Harris, and in the director’s view, Jenner seemed perpetually agitated over security. Most breaches could have been handled by a polite phone call to a scientist who might have forgotten to shut down a computer, but in the interests of keeping to his open-door policy, the director usually allowed the lanky IT nerd a hearing.