Cryptonomicon

Fortunately, Amy has not gone in for the prom queen look. She is wearing a form-fitting black number with long sleeves that hide her tattoos, and black tights, as opposed to stockings. Randy gives her the flowers, like a quarterback handing off the pigskin to a runner. She accepts them with a crooked expression, like a wounded soldier biting down on a bullet. Irony aside, she has a gleam in her eye that he has never seen before. Or maybe that is just light from the mirrored ball, reflecting off cigarette-smoke-induced tears. He senses in his gut that he did the right thing by showing up. As with all gut feelings, only time will tell whether this it is pathetic self-delusion. He was kind of afraid that she would go through some Hollywoodesque transfiguration into a radiant goddess, which would have the same effect on Randy as an ax to the base of the skull. The fact of the matter is that she looks quite good, but arguably, just as out of place as Randy is in his suit.

He is hoping that they can get the dancing over right away so that he can flee the building in Cinderellan obloquy, but they bid him sit down. The orchestra takes a break and the dancers return to their tables. Doug Shaftoe is comfortably sprawled back in his chair with the masculine confidence of a man who has not only killed people but who is, furthermore, escorting the most beautiful woman in the room. Her name is Aurora Taal, and she casts her flawlessly Lancomed gaze over the other Filipinas with the controlled amusement of one who has lived in Boston, Washington, and London, and seen it all, and come back to live in Manila anyway.

"So, did you learn anything more about this Rudolf von Hacklheber character?" Doug asks, after a few minutes of small talk. It follows that Aurora must be in on the whole secret. Doug mentioned, weeks ago, that a small number of Filipinos knew about what they were doing, and that they could be trusted.

"He was a mathematician. He was from a wealthy Leipzig family. He was at Princeton before the war. His years there did, in fact, overlap with my grandfather's."

"What kind of math did he do, Randy?"

"Before the war he did number theory. Which tells us nothing about what he did during the war. It wouldn't be surprising if he'd ended up working in the Third Reich's crypto apparatus."

"Which wouldn't explain how he ended up here."

Randy shrugs. "Maybe he did engineering work on the new generation of submarines. I don't know."

"So the Reich got him involved in some kind of classified work, which killed him eventually," Doug says. "We could have guessed that for ourselves, I suppose."

"Why did you mention crypto, then?" Amy asks. She has some kind of emotional metal detector that screams whenever it comes near buried assumptions and hastily stifled impulses.

"I guess I have crypto on the brain. And, if there was some kind of connection between von Hacklheber and my grandfather--"

"Was your grandfather a crypto guy, Randy?" Doug asks.

"He never said anything about what he did during the war."

"Classic."

"But he had this trunk up in the attic. A war souvenir. It actually reminds me of a trunk full of Nipponese crypto materials that I recently saw in a cave in Kinakuta." Doug and Amy stare at him. "It doesn't amount to anything, probably," Randy concedes.

The orchestra starts in with a Sinatra tune. Doug and Aurora smile at each other and rise to their feet. Amy rolls her eyes and looks the other way, but it's put up or shut up time now, and Randy cannot conceive of any way out. He stands up and extends his hand to the one he fears and hopes for, and she, without looking, reaches out and puts her hand into his.

Randy shuffles, which is no way to dance beautifully but does rule out snapping his partner's metatarsals. Amy is essentially no better at this than he is, but she has a better attitude. By the time they get to the end of the first dance, Randy has at least reached the point where his face is no longer burning, and has gone for some thirty seconds without having to apologize for anything, and sixty without asking his partner whether she will be needing medical attention. Then the song is over, and circumstances dictate that he has to dance with Aurora Taal. This is less intimidating; even though she is glamorous and a really good dancer, their relationship is not one that allows for the possibility of grotesque pre-erotic fumbling. Also, Aurora smiles a lot, and she has a really spectacular smile, where Amy's face was intense and preoccupied. The next dance is announced as ladies' choice, and Randy is still trying to make eye contact with Amy when he finds this tiny middle-aged Filipina standing there asking Aurora if she would mind terribly. Aurora consigns him to the other lady like a pork belly futures contract on the commodity exchange, and suddenly Randy and the lady are dancing the Texas two-step to the strains of a pre-disco Bee Gees tune.