The crypto door beeped once, waking Susan from her depressingreverie. The door had rotated past its fully open position andwould be closed again in five seconds, having made a complete360-degree rotation. Susan gathered her thoughts and steppedthrough the opening. A computer made note of her entry.

Although she had practically lived in Crypto since itscompletion three years ago, the sight of it still amazed her. Themain room was an enormous circular chamber that rose five stories.Its transparent, domed ceiling towered 120 feet at its centralpeak. The Plexiglas cupola was embedded with a polycarbonatemesh-a protective web capable of withstanding a two-megatonblast. The screen filtered the sunlight into delicate laceworkacross the walls. Tiny particles of dust drifted upward in wideunsuspecting spirals-captives of the dome's powerfuldeionizing system. The room's sloping sides arched broadly at the top and thenbecame almost vertical as they approached eye level. Then theybecame subtly translucent and graduated to an opaque black as theyreached the floor-a shimmering expanse of polished black tilethat shone with an eerie l.u.s.ter, giving one the unsettlingsensation that the floor was transparent. Black ice.

Pushing through the center of the floor like the tip of acolossal torpedo was the machine for which the dome had been built.Its sleek black contour arched twenty- three feet in the air beforeplunging back into the floor below. Curved and smooth, it was as ifan enormous killer whale had been frozen midbreach in a frigidsea.

This was TRANSLTR, the single most expensive piece of computingequipment in the world-a machine the NSA swore did notexist.

Like an iceberg, the machine hid 90 percent of its ma.s.s andpower deep beneath the surface. Its secret was locked in a ceramicsilo that went six stories straight down-a rocketlike hullsurrounded by a winding maze of catwalks, cables, and hissingexhaust from the freon cooling system. The power generators at thebottom droned in a perpetual low-frequency hum that gave theacoustics in Crypto a dead, ghostlike quality.

TRANSLTR, like all great technological advancements, had been achild of necessity.

During the 1980s, the NSA witnessed arevolution in telecommunications that would change the world ofintelligence reconnaissance forever-public access to theInternet.

More specifically, the arrival of E-mail.

Criminals, terrorists, and spies had grown tired of having theirphones tapped and immediately embraced this new means of globalcommunication. E-mail had the security of conventional mail and thespeed of the telephone. Since the transfers traveled throughunderground fiber-optic lines and were never transmitted into theairwaves, they were entirely intercept-proof-at least that wasthe perception.

In reality, intercepting E-mail as it zipped across the Internetwas child's play for the NSA's techno-gurus. The Internetwas not the new home computer revelation that most believed. It hadbeen created by the Department of Defense three decadesearlier-an enormous network of computers designed to providesecure government communication in the event of nuclear war. Theeyes and ears of the NSA were old Internet pros. People conductingillegal business via E-mail quickly learned their secrets were notas private as they'd thought. The FBI, DEA, IRS, and otherU.S.

law enforcement agencies-aided by the NSA's staff ofwily hackers-enjoyed a tidal wave of arrests andconvictions.

Of course, when the computer users of the world found out theU.S. government had open access to their E-mail communications, acry of outrage went up. Even pen pals, using E-mail for nothingmore than recreational correspondence, found the lack of privacyunsettling. Across the globe, entrepreneurial programmers beganworking on a way to keep E-mail more secure. They quickly found oneand public-key encryption was born. Public-key encryption was a concept as simple as it wasbrilliant. It consisted of easy- to-use, home-computer software thatscrambled personal E-mail messages in such a way that they weretotally unreadable. A user could write a letter and run it throughthe encryption software, and the text would come out the other sidelooking like random nonsense-totally illegible-a code.Anyone intercepting the transmission found only an unreadablegarble on the screen.

The only way to unscramble the message was to enter thesender's "pa.s.s-key"-a secret series ofcharacters that functioned much like a PIN number at an automaticteller. The pa.s.s-keys were generally quite long and complex; theycarried all the information necessary to instruct the encryptionalgorithm exactly what mathematical operations to follow tore-create the original message.

A user could now send E-mail in confidence. Even if thetransmission was intercepted, only those who were given the keycould ever decipher it.

The NSA felt the crunch immediately. The codes they were facingwere no longer simple subst.i.tution ciphers crackable with penciland graph paper-they were computer-generated hash functionsthat employed chaos theory and multiple symbolic alphabets toscramble messages into seemingly hopeless randomness.

At first, the pa.s.s-keys being used were short enough for theNSA's computers to "guess." If a desired pa.s.s-keyhad ten digits, a computer was programmed to try every possibilitybetween 0000000000 and 9999999999. Sooner or later the computer hitthe correct sequence. This method of trial-and-error guessing wasknown as "brute force attack." It was time-consuming butmathematically guaranteed to work.

As the world got wise to the power of brute-force code-breaking,the pa.s.s-keys started getting longer and longer. The computer timeneeded to "guess" the correct key grew from weeks tomonths and finally to years.

By the 1990s, pa.s.s-keys were over fifty characters long andemployed the full 256- character ASCII alphabet of letters, numbers,and symbols. The number of different possibilities was in theneighborhood of 1120 -ten with 120 zeros after it.Correctly guessing a pa.s.s-key was as mathematically unlikely aschoosing the correct grain of sand from a three-mile beach. It wasestimated that a successful brute-force attack on a standardsixty-four-bit key would take the NSA's fastestcomputer-the top-secret Cray/Josephson II-over nineteenyears to break. By the time the computer guessed the key and brokethe code, the contents of the message would be irrelevant.

Caught in a virtual intelligence blackout, the NSA pa.s.sed atop-secret directive that was endorsed by the President of theUnited States. Buoyed by federal funds and a carte blanche to dowhatever was necessary to solve the problem, the NSA set out tobuild the impossible: the world's first universalcode-breaking machine.

Despite the opinion of many engineers that the newly proposedcode-breaking computer was impossible to build, the NSA lived byits motto: Everything is possible.

The impossible just takeslonger. Five years, half a million man-hours, and $1.9 billion later,the NSA proved it once again. The last of the three million,stamp-size processors was hand-soldered in place, the finalinternal programming was finished, and the ceramic sh.e.l.l was weldedshut.

TRANSLTR had been born.

Although the secret internal workings of TRANSLTR were theproduct of many minds and were not fully understood by any oneindividual, its basic principle was simple: Many hands make lightwork.

Its three million processors would all work inparallel-counting upward at blinding speed, trying every newpermutation as they went. The hope was that even codes withunthinkably colossal pa.s.s-keys would not be safe fromTRANSLTR's tenacity.

This multibillion-dollar masterpiecewould use the power of parallel processing as well as some highlycla.s.sified advances in cleartext a.s.sessment to guess pa.s.s-keys andbreak codes. It would derive its power not only from its staggeringnumber of processors but also from new advances in quantumcomputing-an emerging technology that allowed information tobe stored as quantum-mechanical states rather than solely as binarydata.

The moment of truth came on a bl.u.s.tery Thursday morning inOctober. The first live test. Despite uncertainty about how fastthe machine would be, there was one thing on which the engineersagreed-if the processors all functioned in parallel, TRANSLTRwould be powerful. The question was how powerful.

The answer came twelve minutes later. There was a stunnedsilence from the handful in attendance when the printout sprang tolife and delivered the cleartext-the broken code. TRANSLTR hadjust located a sixty-four-character key in a little over tenminutes, almost a million times faster than the two decades itwould have taken the NSA's second-fastest computer.

Led by the deputy director of operations, Commander Trevor J.Strathmore, the NSA's Office of Production had triumphed.TRANSLTR was a success. In the interest of keeping their success asecret, Commander Strathmore immediately leaked information thatthe project had been a complete failure. All the activity in theCrypto wing was supposedly an attempt to salvage their $2 billionfiasco. Only the NSA elite knew the truth-TRANSLTR wascracking hundreds of codes every day.

With word on the street that computer-encrypted codes wereentirely unbreakable- even by the all-powerful NSA-thesecrets poured in. Drug lords, terrorists, and embezzlersalike-weary of having their cellular phone transmissionsintercepted- were turning to the exciting new medium ofencrypted E-mail for instantaneous global communications. Neveragain would they have to face a grand jury and hear their own voicerolling off tape, proof of some long-forgotten cellular phoneconversation plucked from the air by an NSA satellite.

Intelligence gathering had never been easier. Codes interceptedby the NSA entered TRANSLTR as totally illegible ciphers and werespit out minutes later as perfectly readable cleartext. No moresecrets. To make their charade of incompetence complete, the NSA lobbiedfiercely against all new computer encryption software, insisting itcrippled them and made it impossible for lawmakers to catch andprosecute the criminals. Civil rights groups rejoiced, insistingthe NSA shouldn't be reading their mail anyway. Encryptionsoftware kept rolling off the presses. The NSA had lost thebattle-exactly as it had planned. The entire electronic globalcommunity had been fooled ... or so it seemed.

CHAPTER 5

"Where is everyone?" Susan wondered as she crossed thedeserted Crypto floor. Some emergency.

Although most NSA departments were fully staffed seven days aweek, Crypto was generally quiet on Sat.u.r.days. Cryptographicmathematicians were by nature high- strung workaholics, and thereexisted an unwritten rule that they take Sat.u.r.days off except inemergencies. Code-breakers were too valuable a commodity at the NSAto risk losing them to burnout.

As Susan traversed the floor, TRANSLTR loomed to her right. Thesound of the generators eight stories below sounded oddly ominoustoday. Susan never liked being in Crypto during off hours. It waslike being trapped alone in a cage with some grand, futuristicbeast. She quickly made her way toward the commander'soffice.

Strathmore's gla.s.s-walled workstation, nicknamed "thefishbowl" for its appearance when the drapes were open, stoodhigh atop a set of catwalk stairs on the back wall of Crypto. a.s.susan climbed the grated steps, she gazed upward atStrathmore's thick, oak door. It bore the NSA seal-a baldeagle fiercely clutching an ancient skeleton key. Behind that doorsat one of the greatest men she'd ever met.

Commander Strathmore, the fifty-six-year-old deputy director ofoperations, was like a father to Susan. He was the one who'dhired her, and he was the one who'd made the NSA her home.When Susan joined the NSA over a decade ago, Strathmore was headingthe Crypto Development Division-a training ground for newcryptographers-new male cryptographers. AlthoughStrathmore never tolerated the hazing of anyone, he was especiallyprotective of his sole female staff member.

When accused offavoritism, he simply replied with the truth: Susan Fletcher wasone of the brightest young recruits he'd ever seen, and he hadno intention of losing her to s.e.xual hara.s.sment. One of thecryptographers foolishly decided to test Strathmore'sresolve. One morning during her first year, Susan dropped by the newcryptographers' lounge to get some paperwork. As she left, shenoticed a picture of herself on the bulletin board. She almostfainted in embarra.s.sment. There she was, reclining on a bed andwearing only panties.

As it turned out, one of the cryptographers had digitallyscanned a photo from a p.o.r.nographic magazine and editedSusan's head onto someone else's body. The effect hadbeen quite convincing.

Unfortunately for the cryptographer responsible, CommanderStrathmore did not find the stunt even remotely amusing. Two hourslater, a landmark memo went out: EMPLOYEE CARL AUSTIN TERMINATED FOR INAPPROPRIATE CONDUCT.

From that day on, n.o.body messed with her; Susan Fletcher wasCommander Strathmore's golden girl.

But Strathmore's young cryptographers were not the onlyones who learned to respect him; early in his career Strathmoremade his presence known to his superiors by proposing a number ofunorthodox and highly successful intelligence operations. As hemoved up the ranks, Trevor Strathmore became known for his cogent,reductive a.n.a.lyses of highly complex situations. He seemed to havean uncanny ability to see past the moral perplexities surroundingthe NSA's difficult decisions and to act without remorse inthe interest of the common good.

There was no doubt in anyone's mind that Strathmore lovedhis country. He was known to his colleagues as a patriot and avisionary ... a decent man in a world of lies.

In the years since Susan's arrival at the NSA, Strathmorehad skyrocketed from head of Crypto Development tosecond-in-command of the entire NSA. Now only one man outrankedCommander Strathmore there-Director Leland Fontaine, themythical overlord of the Puzzle Palace-never seen,occasionally heard, and eternally feared.

He and Strathmore seldomsaw eye to eye, and when they met, it was like the clash of thet.i.tans. Fontaine was a giant among giants, but Strathmoredidn't seem to care. He argued his ideas to the director withall the restraint of an impa.s.sioned boxer. Not even the Presidentof the United States dared challenge Fontaine the way Strathmoredid.

One needed political immunity to do that-or, inStrathmore's case, political indifference.

Susan arrived at the top of the stairs. Before she could knock,Strathmore's electronic door lock buzzed. The door swung open,and the commander waved her in.

"Thanks for coming, Susan. I owe you one."

"Not at all." She smiled as she sat opposite hisdesk. Strathmore was a rangy, thick-fleshed man whose muted featuressomehow disguised his hard-nosed efficiency and demand forperfection. His gray eyes usually suggested a confidence anddiscretion born from experience, but today they looked wild andunsettled.

"You look beat," Susan said.

"I've been better." Strathmore sighed.

I'll say, she thought.

Strathmore looked as bad as Susan had ever seen him. Histhinning gray hair was disheveled, and even in the room'scrisp air-conditioning, his forehead was beaded with sweat. Helooked like he'd slept in his suit. He was sitting behind amodern desk with two recessed keypads and a computer monitor at oneend. It was strewn with computer printouts and looked like somesort of alien c.o.c.kpit propped there in the center of his curtainedchamber.

"Tough week?" she inquired.

Strathmore shrugged. "The usual. The EFF's all over meabout civilian privacy rights again."

Susan chuckled. The EFF, or Electronics Frontier Foundation, wasa worldwide coalition of computer users who had founded a powerfulcivil liberties coalition aimed at supporting free speech on-lineand educating others to the realities and dangers of living in anelectronic world. They were constantly lobbying against what theycalled "the Orwellian eavesdropping capabilities of governmentagencies"-particularly the NSA. The EFF was a perpetualthorn in Strathmore's side.

"Sounds like business as usual," she said. "Sowhat's this big emergency you got me out of the tubfor?"

Strathmore sat a moment, absently fingering the computertrackball embedded in his desktop. After a long silence, he caughtSusan's gaze and held it. "What's the longestyou've ever seen TRANSLTR take to break a code?"

The question caught Susan entirely off guard. It seemedmeaningless. This is what he called me in for?

"Well ..." She hesitated. "We hit a COMINTintercept a few months ago that took about an hour, but it had aridiculously long key-ten thousand bits or something likethat."

Strathmore grunted. "An hour, huh? What about some of theboundary probes we've run?"

Susan shrugged. "Well, if you include diagnostics,it's obviously longer."

"How much longer?" Susan couldn't imagine what Strathmore was getting at."Well, sir, I tried an algorithm last March with a segmentedmillion-bit key. Illegal looping functions, cellular automata, theworks. TRANSLTR still broke it."

"How long?"

"Three hours."

Strathmore arched his eyebrows. "Three hours? Thatlong?"

Susan frowned, mildly offended. Her job for the last three yearshad been to fine-tune the most secret computer in the world; mostof the programming that made TRANSLTR so fast was hers. Amillion-bit key was hardly a realistic scenario.

"Okay," Strathmore said. "So even in extremeconditions, the longest a code has ever survived inside TRANSLTR isabout three hours?"

Susan nodded. "Yeah. More or less."

Strathmore paused as if afraid to say something he might regret.Finally he looked up.

"TRANSLTR's. .h.i.t something . .." He stopped.

Susan waited. "More than three hours?"

Strathmore nodded.

She looked unconcerned. "A new diagnostic? Something fromthe Sys-Sec Department?"

Strathmore shook his head. "It's an outsidefile."

Susan waited for the punch line, but it never came. "Anoutside file? You're joking, right?"

"I wish. I queued it last night around eleven thirty. Ithasn't broken yet."

Susan's jaw dropped. She looked at her watch and then backat Strathmore. "It's still going? Over fifteenhours?"

Strathmore leaned forward and rotated his monitor toward Susan.The screen was black except for a small, yellow text box blinkingin the middle.

TIME ELAPSED: 15:09:33 AWAITING KEY: ________ Susan stared in amazement. It appeared TRANSLTR had been workingon one code for over fifteen hours. She knew the computer'sprocessors auditioned thirty million keys per second-onehundred billion per hour. If TRANSLTR was still counting, thatmeant the key had to be enormous-over ten billion digits long.It was absolute insanity.

"It's impossible!" she declared. "Have youchecked for error flags? Maybe TRANSLTR hit a glitchand-"

"The run's clean."

"But the pa.s.s-key must be huge!"

Strathmore shook his head. "Standard commercial algorithm.I'm guessing a sixty- four-bit key."

Mystified, Susan looked out the window at TRANSLTR below. Sheknew from experience that it could locate a sixty-four-bit key inunder ten minutes. "There's got to be someexplanation."

Strathmore nodded. "There is. You're not going to likeit."

Susan looked uneasy. "Is TRANSLTR malfunctioning?"

"TRANSLTR's fine."

"Have we got a virus?"

Strathmore shook his head. "No virus. Just hear meout."

Susan was flabbergasted. TRANSLTR had never hit a code itcouldn't break in under an hour. Usually the cleartext wasdelivered to Strathmore's printout module within minutes. Sheglanced at the high-speed printer behind his desk. It wasempty.

"Susan," Strathmore said quietly. "This is goingto be hard to accept at first, but just listen a minute." Hechewed his lip. "This code that TRANSLTR's workingon-it's unique. It's like nothing we've everseen before." Strathmore paused, as if the words were hard forhim to say. "This code is unbreakable."

Susan stared at him and almost laughed. Unbreakable? What wasTHAT supposed to mean? There was no such thing as anunbreakable code-some took longer than others, but every codewas breakable. It was mathematically guaranteed that sooner orlater TRANSLTR would guess the right key. "I beg yourpardon?"

"The code's unbreakable," he repeated flatly.

Unbreakable? Susan couldn't believe the word hadbeen uttered by a man with twenty-seven years of code a.n.a.lysis.e.xperience.