Six Graves to Munich - Mario Cleri [6]
Marian Hawkins was a blonde who was dedicated to her studies, but she was also dedicated to all-night parties. She was his steady sex partner for a year. Rogan neglected his studies, drank a great deal of beer, and committed all the natural stupidities of a normal growing boy. His mother was distressed at this turn of events, but Rogan did not let her distress bother him at all. Though he would never admit it to himself, he disliked his mother.
The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on the day Rogan was assured of his doctorate. By now Rogan had tired of Marian Hawkins and was looking for a graceful way out. He was tired of training his mind and tired also of his mother. He was hungry for excitement and adventure. On the day after Pearl Harbor he sat down and wrote a long letter to the chief of Army Intelligence. He made a list of his academic awards and achievements and enclosed them with the letter. Less than a week later he received a telegram from Washington, asking him to report for an interview.
The interview was one of the bright moments of his life. He was interrogated by a crew-cut Intelligence captain who looked over the list Rogan had sent with a bored expression. He seemed unimpressed, especially when he learned that Rogan had no background of athletic activity.
Captain Alexander pushed Rogan’s papers back into a manila folder and took it into the inner office. He was gone for a while, and when he came back he had a mimeographed sheet in his hand. He put it on the desk in front of him and tapped it with his pencil. “This sheet is covered with a coded message. It’s an old, outdated code we no longer use. But I want to see if you can figure it out. Don’t be surprised if you find it too difficult; after all you’ve had no training.” He handed the sheet to Rogan.
Rogan looked it over. It appeared to be a standard cryptographic letter substitution, relatively simple. Rogan had studied cryptography and the theory of codes when he was eleven years old, for mental kicks. He picked up a pencil and got to work, and in five minutes he read the translated message to Captain Alexander.
The captain disappeared into the other room and returned with a manila folder from which he took a sheet of paper containing only two paragraphs. This was a more difficult code, and its brevity made it that much harder to decode. It took Rogan almost an hour to break it. Captain Alexander looked at his translation and disappeared again into the inner office. The next time he came out he was accompanied by a gray-haired colonel, who sat in a corner of the reception room and studied Rogan intently.
Now Captain Alexander handed Rogan three sheets of paper covered with symbols. He smiled a little this time. Rogan recognized that smile; he had seen it on the faces of teachers and specialists who thought they had Rogan in a spot. So he was very careful with the code, and it took him three hours to break it. He was so concentrated on his task that he didn’t notice the room filling up with officers, all watching him intently. When Rogan finished he handed his yellow work sheets to the captain. Captain Alexander scanned the translation swiftly and without a word handed it to the gray-haired colonel. The colonel ran his eyes down the paper and then said curtly to the captain, “Bring him to my office.”
To Rogan, the whole thing had been an enjoyable exercise, and he was startled to see the colonel looked worried. The first thing he said to Rogan was, “You’ve made this a bad day for me, young man.”
“I’m sorry,” Rogan said politely. He didn’t really give a damn. Captain Alexander had irritated him.
“It’s not your fault,” the colonel growled. “None of us thought you could break that last code. It’s one of our best, and now that you know it we