Digital Fortress

Strathmore frowned, chewing his lip. His mind was racing. He had a dilemma. He could easily enter his elevator password, and Susan would be gone. But he needed her there. He needed her help to find Hale's pass-key. Strathmore hadn't told her yet, but finding that pass-key was far more than a matter of academic interest-it was an absolute necessity. Strathmore suspected he could run Susan's nonconformity search and find the pass-key himself, but he'd already encountered problems running her tracer. He was not about to risk it again.

"Susan." He sighed resolutely. "I'd like you to help me find Hale's pass-key."

"What!" Susan stood up, her eyes wild.

Strathmore fought off the urge to stand along with her. He knew a lot about negotiating-the position of power was always seated. He hoped she would follow suit. She did not.

"Susan, sit down."

She ignored him.

"Sit down." It was an order.

Susan remained standing. "Commander, if you've still got some burning desire to check out Tankado's algorithm, you can do it alone. I want out."

Strathmore hung his head and took a deep breath. It was clear she would need an explanation. She deserves one, he thought. Strathmore made his decision-Susan Fletcher would hear it all. He prayed he wasn't making a mistake.

"Susan," he began, "it wasn't supposed to come to this." He ran his hand across his scalp. "There are some things I haven't told you. Sometimes a man in my position…" The commander wavered as if making a painful confession. "Sometimes a man in my position is forced to lie to the people he loves. Today was one of those days." He eyed her sadly. "What I'm about to tell you, I never planned to have to say… to you… or to anyone."

Susan felt a chill. The commander had a deadly serious look on his face. There was obviously some aspect of his agenda to which she was not privy. Susan sat down.

There was a long pause as Strathmore stared at the ceiling, gathering his thoughts. "Susan," he finally said, his voice frail. "I have no family." He returned his gaze to her. "I have no marriage to speak of. My life has been my love for this country. My life has been my work here at the NSA."

Susan listened in silence.

"As you may have guessed," he continued, "I planned to retire soon. But I wanted to retire with pride. I wanted to retire knowing that I'd truly made a difference."

"But you have made a difference," Susan heard herself say. "You built TRANSLTR."

Strathmore didn't seem to hear. "Over the past few years, our work here at the NSA has gotten harder and harder. We've faced enemies I never imagined would challenge us. I'm talking about our own citizens. The lawyers, the civil rights fanatics, the EFF-they've all played a part, but it's more than that. It's the people. They've lost faith. They've become paranoid. They suddenly see us as the enemy. People like you and me, people who truly have the nation's best interests at heart, we find ourselves having to fight for our right to serve our country. We're no longer peacekeepers. We're eavesdroppers, peeping Toms, violators of people's rights." Strathmore heaved a sigh. "Unfortunately, there are naive people in the world, people who can't imagine the horrors they'd face if we didn't intervene. I truly believe it's up to us to save them from their own ignorance."

Susan waited for his point.

The commander stared wearily at the floor and then looked up. "Susan, hear me out," he said, smiling tenderly at her. "You'll want to stop me, but hear me out. I've been decrypting Tankado's E-mail for about two months now. As you can imagine, I was shocked when I first read his messages to North Dakota about an unbreakable algorithm called Digital Fortress. I didn't believe it was possible. But every time I intercepted anew message, Tankado sounded more and more convincing. When I read that he'd used mutation strings to write a rotating key-code, I realized he was light-years ahead of us; it was an approach no one here had never tried."

"Why would we?" Susan asked. "It barely makes sense."

Strathmore stood up and started pacing, keeping one eye on the door. "A few weeks ago, when I heard about the Digital Fortress auction, I finally accepted the fact that Tankado was serious. I knew if he sold his algorithm to a Japanese software company, we were sunk, so I tried to think of any way I could stop him. I considered having him killed, but with all the publicity surrounding the algorithm and all his recent claims about TRANSLTR, we would be prime suspects. That's when it dawned on me." He turned to Susan. "I realized that Digital Fortress should not be stopped."

Susan stared at him, apparently lost.

Strathmore went on. "I suddenly saw Digital Fortress as the opportunity of a lifetime. It hit me that with a few changes, Digital Fortress could work for us instead of against us."

Susan had never heard anything so absurd. Digital Fortress was an unbreakable algorithm; it would destroy them.