Cryptonomicon

One of the prisoners turns towards them, carrying a thigh toward a wheelbarrow, and risks a direct look at the Reichsmarschall's train. This prisoner has a pink triangle sewn to the breast of his uniform. The prisoner's eyes are trying to probe through the window, past the curtain, trying to make a human connection with someone on the inside of the coach. Rudy stiffens in panic for a moment, thinking that the prisoner sees him. Then Göring withdraws the riding crop and the curtain falls. A few moments later, the train begins to move again.

Rudy looks at his lover. Angelo is sitting frozen, just like one of those corpses, with his hands over his face.

Göring flicks his crop dismissively. "Get out," he says.

"What?" ask Rudy and Angelo simultaneously.

Göring laughs heartily. "No, no! I don't mean get out of the train! I mean, Angelo, get out of this coach. I want to talk to Herr Doktor Professor von Hacklheber in private. You may wait in the parlor car."

Angelo leaves eagerly. Göring waves his crop at a couple of hovering aides, and they leave too. Göring and Rudy are alone together.

"I am sorry to show you these unpleasant things," Göring says. "I simply wanted to impress upon you the importance of keeping secrets."

"I can assure the Reichsmarschall that--"

Göring shushes him with a wave of the crop. "Don't be tedious. I know that you have sworn any number of great oaths, and been through all of the indoctrination concerning secrecy. I have no doubt of your sincerity. But it is all just words, and not good enough for the work that I wish you to begin doing for me. To work for me, you must see the thing I have shown you, so that you can really understand the stakes."

Rudy looks at the floor, takes a deep breath, and forces out the words:

"It would be a great honor to work for you, Reichsmarschall. But since you have access to so many of the great museums and libraries of Europe, there is only one small favor I, as a scholar, might humbly request of you."

***

Back in the church basement in Norrsbruck, Sweden, Rudy yells, and drops a cigarette on the floor, having allowed it to burn down to his fingers, like a slow fuse, while relating this story. He puts his hand to his mouth, sucks on the finger briefly, then remembers his manners and composes himself. "Göring knew a surprising amount about cryptology, and was aware of my work on the Enigma. He didn't trust the machine. He told me that he wanted me to come up with the very best cryptosystem in the world, one that could never be broken--he wanted to communicate (he said) with U-boats at sea and with installations in Manila and Tokyo. And so, I came up with such a system."

"And you handed it over," Bischoff says.

"Yes," Rudy says, and here, for the first time all day, he allows himself a slight smile. "And it is a reasonably good system, despite the fact that I crippled it before giving it to Göring."

"Crippled it?" Root asks. "What do you mean?"

"Imagine a new engine for an aeroplane. Imagine it has sixteen cylinders. It is more powerful than any other engine in the world. Even so, a mechanic can do certain things--very simple things--to kill its performance. Such as pulling out half of the spark plug wires. Or tampering with the timing. This is an analogy to what I did with Göring's cryptosystem."

"So what went wrong?" Shaftoe asks. "They figured out that you had crippled it?"

Rudolf von Hacklheber laughs. "Not very likely. Maybe half a dozen people in the world could figure that out. No, what went wrong was that you fellows, you Allies, landed in Sicily, and then in Italy, and not long afterwards, Mussolini was overthrown, the Italians withdrew from the Axis, and Angelo, like all of the other hundreds of thousands of Italian nationals living and working in the Reich, fell under suspicion. His services were badly needed as a test pilot, but his situation was tenuous. He volunteered for the most dangerous work of all--flying the new Messerschmidt prototype, with the turbine-jet engine. This proved his loyalty in the eyes of some.

"Remember that, at the same time, I was decrypting the message traffic of Detachment 2702. I kept these results to myself, as I no longer felt any particular loyalty to the Third Reich. There had been a great burst of activity around the middle of April, and then no messages for a while--as if the detachment had ceased to exist. At exactly the same time, Göring's people were very active for a few days--they were afraid that Bischoff was going to broadcast the secret of U-553."

"So you know about that?" Bischoff asks.