- •Dan Brown Digital Fortress
- •Prologue
- •Chapter 1
- •Chapter 2
- •Chapter 3
- •National security agency (nsa) crypto facility authorized personnel only
- •Hl fkzc vd lds
- •Im glad we met
- •Chapter 4
- •Chapter 5
- •Employee carl austin terminated for inappropriate conduct.
- •Time elapsed: 15:09:33 awaiting key: ________
- •Chapter 6
- •Chapter 7
- •“Transltr?”
- •Chapter 8
- •Keep the change.
- •Chapter 9
- •Time elapsed: 15:17:21
- •Chapter 10
- •Chapter 11
- •Chapter 12
- •Chapter 13
- •Chapter 14
- •Chapter 15
- •Chapter 16
- •Chapter 17
- •Chapter 18
- •Chapter 19
- •Chapter 20
- •Chapter 21
- •Chapter 22
- •Chapter 23
- •Chapter 24
- •Chapter 25
- •Subject: p. Cloucharde‑terminated
- •Message sent chapter 26
- •Chapter 27
- •Dinner at alfredo’s? 8 pm?
- •Chapter 28
- •Chapter 29
- •Please accept this humble fax my love for you is without wax.
- •Tracer searching . . .
- •Tracer abort?
- •Chapter 30
- •Chapter 31
- •Chapter 32
- •Chapter 33
- •Chapter 34
- •Tracer aborted
- •Error code 22
- •Chapter 36
- •Tracer sent
- •Search for: “tracer”
- •No matches found
- •Search for: “screenlock”
- •Great progress! digital fortress is almost done. This thing will set the nsa back decades!
- •Rotating cleartext works! mutation strings are the trick!
- •Chapter 37
- •Chapter 38
- •Chapter 39
- •Chapter 40
- •Chapter 41
- •Subject: rocio eva granada‑terminated subject: hans huber‑terminated
- •Chapter 42
- •Chapter 43
- •Crypto‑production/expenditure
- •Chapter 44
- •Chapter 45
- •Chapter 46
- •Chapter 47
- •Chapter 48
- •Chapter 49
- •Chapter 50
- •Crypto sublevels authorized personnel only
- •Chapter 51
- •Chapter 52
- •Chapter 53
- •Chapter 54
- •Chapter 55
- •Chapter 56
- •Chapter 57
- •Chapter 58
- •Chapter 59
- •Chapter 60
- •Chapter 61
- •Chapter 62
- •Chapter 63
- •Chapter 64
- •Chapter 65
- •Chapter 66
- •Chapter 67
- •Chapter 68
- •Chapter 69
- •Chapter 70
- •Chapter 71
- •Chapter 72
- •Abort run
- •Chapter 73
- •Chapter 74
- •Chapter 75
- •Chapter 76
- •Chapter 77
- •Chapter 78
- •Chapter 79
- •Chapter 80
- •Chapter 81
- •Chapter 82
- •Chapter 83
- •Chapter 84
- •Chapter 85
- •Chapter 86
- •Sorry. Unable to abort. Sorry. Unable to abort. Sorry. Unable to abort.
- •Tell the world about transltr only the truth will save you now . . .
- •Only the truth will save you now
- •Enter pass‑key
- •Chapter 87
- •Chapter 88
- •Chapter 89
- •Chapter 90
- •Chapter 91
- •Chapter 92
- •Chapter 93
- •Chapter 94
- •Chapter 95
- •Chapter 96
- •Chapter 97
- •Chapter 98
- •Chapter 99
- •Chapter 100
- •Subject: david becker‑terminated
- •Chapter 101
- •Chapter 102
- •Chapter 103
- •Chapter 105
- •Chapter 106
- •Chapter 107
- •Chapter 108
- •Chapter 109
- •Only the truth will save you now enter pass‑key ______
- •Only the truth will save you now enter pass‑key ______
- •Chapter 110
- •Chapter 111
- •Chapter 112
- •Chapter 113
- •Chapter 114
- •Chapter 115
- •Chapter 116
- •Chapter 117
- •Only the truth will save you now
- •Chapter 118
- •Quiscustodietipsoscustodes
- •Chapter 119
- •Illegal entry. Numeric field only.
- •Chapter 120
- •Pfee sesn retm
- •Pfee sesn retm mfha irwe ooig meen nrma enet shas dcns iiaa ieer brnk fble lodi
- •Pfeesesnretmpfhairweooigmeennrmaenetshasdcnsiiaaieerbrnkfblelodi
- •Chapter 121
- •Chapter 122
- •Primedifferencebetweenelementsresponsibleforhiroshimaandnagasaki
- •Chapter 123
- •Prime difference between elements responsible for hiroshima and nagasaki
- •Chapter 124
- •Prime difference between elements responsible forhiroshima and nagasaki
- •Chapter 125
- •Chapter 126
- •Chapter 127
- •Enter pass‑key? 3
- •Kill code confirmed.
- •Chapter 128
- •Epilogue
Chapter 29
Still unnerved from her encounter with Hale, Susan gazed out through the one‑way glass of Node 3. The Crypto floor was empty. Hale was silent again, engrossed. She wished he would leave.
She wondered if she should call Strathmore; the commander could simply kick Hale out‑after all, it was Saturday. Susan knew, however, that if Hale got kicked out, he would immediately become suspicious. Once dismissed, he probably would start calling other cryptographers asking what they thought was going on. Susan decided it was better just to let Hale be. He would leave on his own soon enough.
An unbreakable algorithm. She sighed, her thoughts returning to Digital Fortress. It amazed her that an algorithm like that could really be created‑then again, the proof was right there in front of her; TRANSLTR appeared useless against it.
Susan thought of Strathmore, nobly bearing the weight of this ordeal on his shoulders, doing what was necessary, staying cool in the face of disaster.
Susan sometimes saw David in Strathmore. They had many of the same qualities‑tenacity, dedication, intelligence. Sometimes Susan thought Strathmore would be lost without her; the purity of her love for cryptography seemed to be an emotional lifeline to Strathmore, lifting him from the sea of churning politics and reminding him of his early days as a code‑breaker.
Susan relied on Strathmore too; he was her shelter in a world of power‑hungry men, nurturing her career, protecting her, and, as he often joked, making all her dreams come true. There was some truth to that, she thought. As unintentional as it may have been, the commander was the one who’d made the call that brought David Becker to the NSA that fateful afternoon. Her mind reeled back to him, and her eyes fell instinctively to the pull‑slide beside her keyboard. There was a small fax taped there.
The fax had been there for seven months. It was the only code Susan Fletcher had yet to break. It was from David. She read it for the five‑hundredth time.
Please accept this humble fax my love for you is without wax.
He’d sent it to her after a minor tiff. She’d begged him for months to tell her what it meant, but he had refused. Without wax. It was David’s revenge. Susan had taught David a lot about code‑breaking, and to keep him on his toes, she had taken to encoding all of her messages to him with some simple encryption scheme. Shopping lists, love notes‑they were all encrypted. It was a game, and David had become quite a good cryptographer. Then he’d decided to return the favor. He’d started signing all his letters “Without wax, David.” Susan had over two dozen notes from David. They were all signed the same way. Without wax.
Susan begged to know the hidden meaning, but David wasn’t talking. Whenever she asked, he simply smiled and said, “You’re the code‑breaker.”
The NSA’s head cryptographer had tried everything‑substitutions, cipher boxes, even anagrams. She’d run the letters “without wax” through her computer and asked for rearrangements of the letters into new phrases. All she’d gotten back was: taxi hut wow. It appeared Ensei Tankado was not the only one who could write unbreakable codes.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the pneumatic doors hissing open. Strathmore strode in.
“Susan, any word yet?” Strathmore saw Greg Hale and stopped short. “Well, good evening, Mr. Hale.” He frowned, his eyes narrowing. “On a Saturday, no less. To what do we owe the honor?”
Hale smiled innocently. “Just making sure I pull my weight.”
“I see.” Strathmore grunted, apparently weighing his options. After a moment, it seemed he too decided not to rock Hale’s boat. He turned coolly to Susan. “Ms. Fletcher, could I speak to you for a moment? Outside?”
Susan hesitated. “Ah . . . yes, sir.” She shot an uneasy glance at her monitor and then across the room at Greg Hale. “Just a minute.”
With a few quick keystrokes, she pulled up a program called ScreenLock. It was a privacy utility. Every terminal in Node 3 was equipped with it. Because the terminals stayed on around the clock, ScreenLock enabled cryptographers to leave their stations and know that nobody would tamper with their files. Susan entered her five‑character privacy code, and her screen went black. It would remain that way until she returned and typed the proper sequence.
Then she slipped on her shoes and followed the commander out.
* * *
“What the hell is he doing here?” Strathmore demanded as soon as he and Susan were outside Node 3.
“His usual,” Susan replied. “Nothing.”
Strathmore looked concerned. “Has he said anything about TRANSLTR?”
“No. But if he accesses the Run‑Monitor and sees it registering seventeen hours, he’ll have something to say all right.”
Strathmore considered it. “There’s no reason he’d access it.”
Susan eyed the commander. “You want to send him home?”
“No. We’ll let him be.” Strathmore glanced over at the Sys‑Sec office. “Has Chartrukian left yet?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen him.”
“Jesus.” Strathmore groaned. “This is a circus.” He ran a hand across the beard stubble that had darkened his face over the past thirty‑six hours. “Any word yet on the tracer? I feel like I’m sitting on my hands up there.”
“Not yet. Any word from David?”
Strathmore shook his head. “I asked him not to call me until he has the ring.”
Susan looked surprised. “Why not? What if he needs help?”
Strathmore shrugged. “I can’t help him from here‑he’s on his own. Besides, I’d rather not talk on unsecured lines just in case someone’s listening.”
Susan’s eyes widened in concern. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Strathmore immediately looked apologetic. He gave her a reassuring smile. “David’s fine. I’m just being careful.”
* * *
Thirty feet away from their conversation, hidden behind the one‑way glass of Node 3, Greg Hale stood at Susan’s terminal. Her screen was black. Hale glanced out at the commander and Susan. Then he reached for his wallet. He extracted a small index card and read it.
Double‑checking that Strathmore and Susan were still talking, Hale carefully typed five keystrokes on Susan’s keyboard. A second later her monitor sprang to life.
“Bingo.” He chuckled.
Stealing the Node 3 privacy codes had been simple. In Node 3, every terminal had an identical detachable keyboard. Hale had simply taken his keyboard home one night and installed a chip that kept a record of every keystroke made on it. Then he had come in early, swapped his modified keyboard for someone else’s, and waited. At the end of the day, he switched back and viewed the data recorded by the chip. Even though there were millions of keystrokes to sort through, finding the access code was simple; the first thing a cryptographer did every morning was type the privacy code that unlocked his terminal. This, of course, made Hale’s job effortless‑the privacy code always appeared as the first five characters on the list.
It was ironic, Hale thought as he gazed at Susan’s monitor. He’d stolen the privacy codes just for kicks. He was happy now he’d done it; the program on Susan’s screen looked significant.
Hale puzzled over it for a moment. It was written in LIMBO‑not one of his specialties. Just by looking at it, though, Hale could tell one thing for certain‑this was not a diagnostic. He could make sense of only two words. But they were enough.