Digital Fortress Chapter 29

Still frightened from her experience with Hale, Susan looked out through the single direction glass of Node 3. The Crypto floor was vacant. Solidness was quiet once more, engaged. She wished he would leave. She thought about whether she should call Strathmore; the authority could basically show Hale out-all things considered, it was Saturday. Susan knew, be that as it may, that if Hale got kicked out, he would promptly get dubious. When excused, he most likely would begin calling different cryptographers asking what they thought was going on. Susan concluded it was better just to leave Hale alone. He would leave on his own soon enough. An unbreakable calculation. She moaned, her musings coming back to Digital Fortress. It astonished her that a calculation like that could truly be made on the other hand, the confirmation was in that spot before her; TRANSLTR seemed futile against it. Susan thought of Strathmore, honorably bearing the heaviness of this experience on his shoulders, doing what was fundamental, remaining cool even with fiasco. Susan once in a while observed David in Strathmore. They had huge numbers of similar characteristics perseverance, devotion, insight. Here and there Susan thought Strathmore would be lost without her; the immaculateness of her adoration for cryptography appeared to be a passionate help to Strathmore, lifting him from the ocean of agitating legislative issues and helping him to remember his initial days as a code-breaker. Susan depended on Strathmore as well; he was her safe house in a universe of intensity hungry men, supporting her profession, ensuring her, and, as he frequently kidded, making everything she could ever hope for work out as expected. There was some reality to that, she thought. As inadvertent as it might have been, the authority was the one who'd decided that brought David Becker to the NSA that pivotal evening. Her brain reeled back to him, and her eyes fell intuitively to the draw slide alongside her console. There was a little fax taped there. The fax had been there for seven months. It was the main code Susan Fletcher still couldn't seem to break. It was from David. She read it for the five-hundredth time. It would be ideal if you ACCEPT THIS HUMBLE FAX MY LOVE FOR YOU IS WITHOUT WAX. He'd sent it to her after a minor altercation. She'd implored him for a considerable length of time to mention to her what it implied, however he had cannot. Without wax. It was David's vengeance. Susan had shown David a ton about code-breaking, and to cause him to remain alert, she had taken to encoding every last bit of her messages to him with some basic encryption conspire. Shopping records, love notes-they were totally encoded. It was a game, and David had become a significant decent cryptographer. At that point he'd chose to give back. He'd began marking every one of his letters â€Å"Without wax, David.† Susan had more than two dozen notes from David. They were totally marked a similar way. Without wax. Susan asked to know the concealed importance, however David wasn't talking. At whatever point she asked, he essentially grinned and stated, â€Å"You're the code-breaker.† The NSA's head cryptographer had a go at everything-replacements, figure boxes, even re-arranged words. She'd run the letters â€Å"without wax† through her PC and requested adjustments of the letters into new expressions. All she'd gotten back was: taxi cottage stunning. It showed up Ensei Tankado was by all account not the only one who could compose unbreakable codes. Her musings were hindered by the sound of the pneumatic entryways murmuring open. Strathmore walked in. â€Å"Susan, any word yet?† Strathmore saw Greg Hale and held back. â€Å"Well, great night, Mr. Hale.† He scowled, his eyes narrowing. â€Å"On a Saturday, no less. What exactly do we owe the honor?† Sound grinned honestly. â€Å"Just ensuring I pull my weight.† â€Å"I see.† Strathmore snorted, evidently gauging his choices. After a second, it appeared he too chose not to shake Hale's vessel. He went coolly to Susan. â€Å"Ms. Fletcher, might I be able to address you for a second? Outside?† Susan dithered. â€Å"Ah†¦ truly, sir.† She shot an uncomfortable look at her screen and afterward over the room at Greg Hale. â€Å"Just a minute.† With a couple of brisk keystrokes, she pulled up a program called ScreenLock. It was a security utility. Each terminal in Node 3 was furnished with it. Since the terminals remained on nonstop, ScreenLock empowered cryptographers to leave their stations and realize that no one would alter their documents. Susan entered her five-character protection code, and her screen went dark. It would remain that route until she returned and composed the correct succession. At that point she slipped on her shoes and followed the authority out. â€Å"What the hellfire is he doing here?† Strathmore requested when he and Susan were outside Node 3. â€Å"His usual,† Susan answered. â€Å"Nothing.† Strathmore looked concerned. â€Å"Has he said anything regarding TRANSLTR?† â€Å"No. Be that as it may, in the event that he gets to the Run-Monitor and sees it enlisting seventeen hours, he'll have a comment all right.† Strathmore thought about it. â€Å"There's no explanation he'd get to it.† Susan looked at the authority. â€Å"You need to send him home?† â€Å"No. We'll let him be.† Strathmore looked over at the Sys-Sec office. â€Å"Has Chartrukian left yet?† â€Å"I don't have the foggiest idea. I haven't seen him.† â€Å"Jesus.† Strathmore moaned. â€Å"This is a circus.† He ran a hand over the facial hair stubble that had obscured his face in the course of the last thirty-six hours. â€Å"Any word yet on the tracer? I sense that I'm perched on my hands up there.† â€Å"Not yet. Any word from David?† Strathmore shook his head. â€Å"I asked him not to call me until he has the ring.† Susan looked astonished. â€Å"Why not? Imagine a scenario where he needs help?†. Strathmore shrugged. â€Å"I can't help him from here-he's all alone. In addition, I'd preferably not chat on unbound lines just on the off chance that somebody's listening.† Susan's eyes enlarged in concern. â€Å"What's that expected to mean?† Strathmore quickly looked self-reproachful. He gave her a consoling grin. â€Å"David's fine. I'm simply being careful.† Thirty feet from their discussion, taken cover behind the single direction glass of Node 3, Greg Hale remained at Susan's terminal. Her screen was dark. Solidness looked out at the administrator and Susan. At that point he went after his wallet. He separated a little file card and read it. Twofold watching that Strathmore and Susan were all the while talking, Hale painstakingly composed five keystrokes on Susan's console. After a second her screen sprang to life. â€Å"Bingo.† He laughed. Taking the Node 3 protection codes had been straightforward. In Node 3, each terminal had an indistinguishable separable console. Solidness had essentially taken his console home one night and introduced a chip that tracked each keystroke made on it. At that point he had come in ahead of schedule, traded his adjusted console for somebody else's, and paused. By the day's end, he exchanged back and saw the information recorded by the chip. Despite the fact that there were a huge number of keystrokes to figure out, finding the entrance code was straightforward; the primary thing a cryptographer did each morning was type the protection code that opened his terminal. This, obviously, made Hale's occupation easy the protection code consistently showed up as the initial five characters on the rundown. It was unexpected, Hale idea as he looked at Susan's screen. He'd taken the security codes only for kicks. He was upbeat currently he'd done it; the program on Susan's screen looked huge. Solidness thought about it for a second. It was written in LIMBO-not one of his claims to fame. Just by taking a gander at it, however, Hale could disclose to one thing for certain-this was not an analytic. He could understand just two words. Be that as it may, they were sufficient. TRACER SEARCHING†¦ â€Å"Tracer?† he said out loud. â€Å"Searching for what?† Hale felt out of nowhere uncomfortable. He sat a second examining Susan's screen. At that point he settled on his choice. Sound saw enough about the LIMBO programming language to realize that it obtained vigorously from two different dialects C and Pascal-the two of which he knew cold. Looking up to watch that Strathmore and Susan were all the while talking outside, Hale ad libbed. He entered a couple of altered Pascal orders and hit return. The tracer's status window reacted precisely as he had trusted. TRACER ABORT? He immediately composed: YES Is it accurate to say that you are SURE? Again he composed: YES After a second the PC signaled. TRACER ABORTED Solidness grinned. The terminal had quite recently communicated something specific revealing to Susan's tracer to fall to pieces rashly. Whatever she was searching for would need to pause. Careful to depart no proof, Hale expertly explored his way into her framework movement log and erased all the orders he'd recently composed. At that point he reappeared Susan's security code. The screen went dark. When Susan Fletcher came back to Node 3, Greg Hale was situated discreetly at his terminal.