Red Rabbit - Tom Clancy [166]
"Michael, you're a good man." Ed nodded his approval.
"They're good for maybe ten dispatches of about a hundred words each—assuming they still have matching pads at Fort Meade, but the guys I report to don't throw much away. They will have to dig them out of some file drawer, though."
"How hard to use them?"
"I hate the goddamned things. You know why. Damn it, guys, the new STRIPE cipher is just a year old. The new Brit system is an adaptation of it. I know the team in Z-Division who developed it. I'm talking 128-bit keying, plus a daily key that's unique to the individual machines. No way in hell you can crack that."
"Unless they have an agent-in-place at Fort Meade, Mike," Ed pointed out.
"Then let me get my hands on him, and I'll skin the motherfucker alive with my Buck hunting knife." The very thought had jacked up his blood pressure enough that he didn't apologize to the lady present for his vulgarity. This black man had killed and skinned his share of white-tailed deer, but he still had a hankering to convert a bear into a rug, and a big ol' Russian brown bear would suit him just fine. "Okay, I can't tell The Fort about this?"
"Not with STRIPE you can't," Foley answered.
"Well, when you hear a big, angry shout from the West, you'll know what it is."
"Better you don't discuss this with anybody right now, Mike," Mary Pat thought out loud. "They'll find out soon enough through other channels."
That told Russell that the Rabbit signal he'd dispatched the other day was about somebody they wanted to get out in a hurry, and now he figured he knew why. Their Rabbit was a communications specialist, and damned sure when you got one of those, you got him the hell on the first train out of Dodge. Soon enough meant right the hell now, or as close to it as you could arrange.
"Okay, get me your signal. I'll encrypt it on my STRIPE machine and then one-time-pad it. If they're reading my signals"—he managed not to shudder—"will that tell them anything?"
"You tell me," Ed Foley replied.
Russell thought for a moment, then shook his head. "No, it shouldn't. Even when you can crack the other guy's systems, you never get more than a third of the traffic. The systems are too complex for that—unless the other guy's agent-in-place is reading the cleartext on the far end. Ain't no defense against that, least not from my point of view."
And that was the other very scary thought. It was, after all, the same game they played and the same objective they were constantly trying to achieve. Get a guy all the way inside who could get the all-the-way-inside information back out. Like their agent CARDINAL, a word they never spoke aloud. But that was the game they'd chosen and, while they knew the other side was pretty good, they figured that they were better. And that was the name of that tune.
"Okay, Mike. Our friend believes in one-time pads. I guess everybody does."
"Ivan sure as hell does, but it must drive their troops crazy, having to go through every signal one letter at a time."
"Ever work the penetration side?" Ed Foley asked him.
Russell shook his head at once. "Not smart enough. Good thing, too. A lot of those guys end up in rubber rooms cutting out paper dolls with blunted scissors. Hey, I know a lot of the guys in Z-Division. The boss guy there just turned down the chair in math at Cal Tech. He's pretty smart," Russell estimated. "Damned sight smarter than I'll ever be. Ed Popadopolous's—his name is Greek—father used to run a restaurant up in Boston. Ask me if I want his job."
"No, eh?"
"Not even if they threw in Pat Cleveland as a fringe benefit." And that was one fine-looking lady, Ed Foley knew. Mike Russell really did need a woman in his life…
"Okay, I'll get you a dispatch in about an hour. Okay?"
"Cool." Russell headed out.
"Well, I think we rattled his cage pretty hard," MP thought aloud.
"Admiral Bennett at Fort Meade ain't going to be real happy either. I got a signal to draft."
"Okay, I'll see how Eddie's doing with his crayons." And Mary Patricia Kaminsky Foley took her leave as well.
* * *
JUDGE