The Children's War

by Stroyar, J. N.

  The two of them climbed the stairs together: Peter leading the way, his hands held somewhat lazily in the air at shoulder height, and the young private, his hands slippery with sweat, holding his pistol pointed at his prisoner’s back. He was less afraid of what his prisoner might do than what his superiors might do to him if they objected to this intrusion. He swore quietly to himself with frustration. What was a guy supposed to do? If you ignore something, they might court-martial you; if you see it, they yell at you for interrupting their party and being stupid and obtrusive.

  Once they reached the ground floor, the sounds of the party were unmistakable. The noise strained the credibility of Peter’s alibi, but the soldier seemed toonervous to notice. Peter also assumed an air of trepidation appropriate to the situation. It was only in part faked—at this point he was completely dependent on Tadek’s playing his role flawlessly, and that thought caused him some consternation.

  They followed the sound of the revelers past the dining room and to the drawing room. The private had Peter stop at the large, open French doors and stood anxiously waiting for someone to notice him. Eventually, one of the ladies tapped Major Rattenhuber on the shoulder, and raising his eyebrows in query, he wandered over to see what the problem was.

  Most of the party had, by this time, taken notice of the pair and fallen into a curious silence. Tadek looked up from the woman he was chatting with—the mayor’s wife—and for one unguarded moment a look of panic flashed across his face as he saw Peter but not Zosia. But then he took control, excused himself from the mayor’s wife, and went to join the little group by the door.

  As he approached, the major turned from the private, who had obviously just explained the circumstances, to ask Peter, “What were you doing down there?”

  “I was looking for Herr Móller. Frau Móller sent me.”

  “Downstairs?”

  “Yes, mein Herr. I lost my way.”

  The major seemed poised to pursue this line of questioning, but Tadek interrupted with alcohol-inspired rage, “Lost? Lost!” He raised his hand and theatrically slapped Peter hard across the face, fuming loudly, “You simpleton! Can’t you do anything right!”

  Then regaining control of his temper, he turned to the major and explained apologetically, “You know, he’s always screwing up. Doesn’t listen. Doesn’t pay attention. Too stupid to get anything right.” Tadek threw an angry, frustrated glance at Peter and continued in his conciliatory manner, “If I had my way, I’d . . . But my wife, you know, he’s been with her family for years . . .” Tadek sighed, exasperated.

  The major smiled indulgently. “Say no more—I know exactly what you mean. The simplest instructions . . .” He finished the sentence by shaking his head and hands simultaneously.

  “Sorry for the disturbance,” Tadek added. “I hope he hasn’t perturbed your guests.” He threw a glance back at the interested onlookers.

  The major caught his meaning and nodded. “Please don’t apologize. No problem, no problem at all, but I should get back to my hosting duties. You seem to have the situation well under control—I’ll leave you to sort it out.” With that, the major returned, smiling, to his guests, and soon a polite buzz of conversation indicated that Tadek and Peter were no longer the center of attention.

  With a terse “Well done” and a nod of his head Tadek dismissed the now somewhat disappointed private. The lad holstered his pistol, clicked his heels, and gave a slight bow before he marched off. They had not even bothered to note his name. Well done, indeed—the self-centered, drunk bastards!

  Tadek watched him for a moment, then with his back still toward the room, he mouthed, Zosia?

  Safe, Peter indicated more with his eyes than his lips. He was not sure that it was true, but he could not afford to explain: he was still facing the party and he could see that many of the guests were carrying on the sort of one-ear, one-eye conversations that indicated they had not entirely lost interest in what was happening by the door.

  Tadek then surprised Peter by asking, very quietly, “Did I hurt you?”

  Peter shook his head slightly.

  Without missing a beat, Tadek began to speak loudly, slowly, and simply, as if to a moron.“Now what did Frau Móller want?”

  Peter, fidgeting nervously, explained in his heavily accented German that Frau Móller had wanted to know if she should remain awake or if she should retire for the night.

  “Oh, I’ll probably be late—tell her to go to sleep.”

  “Yes, mein Herr.” Peter hesitated slightly, then added timidly, “And should I wait up?”

  “Of course, you idiot!” Tadek held his hand to his head and shook his head in annoyed disbelief. “What do you think you’re here for?”

  “Forgive me, mein Herr.”

  “Idiot,” Tadek snorted. He was ready to send Peter away when the major approached them. Tadek looked mildly surprised.“Major?”

  “I’m sorry to bother you, it’s just that he shouldn’t be out unescorted—this place is a little understaffed and we don’t patrol the main house. Let me call someone—”

  “Oh, no. Don’t do that. That won’t be necessary. I want to have a word with my wife directly anyway—before she goes to sleep. I’ll take him upstairs and then I can remind her not to send him on errands without an escort. I’m sure it’d be better coming from me.”

  “If you don’t mind.”

  “Of course not. All this fuss is my fault in any case.”

  “Nonsense, it’s been a pleasant little diversion!” The major dropped his voice conspiratorially and added, “It gave me an excuse to get away from that obnoxious little mayor! God what a bore!” The major made a dismissive gesture with his hands and added, “I really should get hazard pay for the sort of conversations I have to put up with—I’m in danger of death by boredom!”

  “Ah, but your hospitality has been most wonderful!”

  “Well, yes, but you have no idea of the incompetents I have to deal with. Why, just the other day . . .” The major rolled his eyes in contemplation and took a deep breath in preparation of a long story.

  Tadek interjected quickly, “Well, if you’ll excuse me.” And grabbing Peter by the arm, he steered him toward the steps.

  Back in the room, they stepped into the bathroom, ran the water, and Peterquietly explained what had happened. “I think,” he concluded, “Zosia is inside the office. I think she slipped in while I was walking away from the private and before the guard rounded the corner.”

  “Thank God!” Tadek closed his eyes. The sudden torrent of fear and now relief had left him thoroughly drained. “What do you think I should do?”

  Again, Peter was surprised by the question. He considered for a moment, then answered, “Escort me to the cellar. If we’re noticed, say we’re heading to that toilet the major described. Then, once I’m inside the office, I think it’s best for you to return to the party. You can keep an eye on things from there and perhaps preempt any further difficulties.”

  Tadek nodded. He had tried to limit his alcohol intake during the evening, but it was difficult to get visibly drunk without drinking—especially at dinner where everybody could watch if one’s wineglasses and cordial glasses were emptied. Now with all the tension and fear of the past few minutes, the alcohol that he had consumed—little as it was—made him feel woozy and a bit ill. He wished Peter luck and told him to wish Zosia luck as well, then they left the room together in silence.

  They reached the hall near the office without incident. As the guard’s steps faded down the long corridor, Peter indicated that Tadek should wait to see if he got in, then head back upstairs. Peter slipped around the corner, turned the handle, and slid into the soft glow of the dimly lit data room. He glanced behind him: as he expected, Zosia was waiting, her little lead cudgel in one hand, her gun in the other. She looked like a very huggable thug. He grinned at her and they giggled silently for a moment.

  He gestured to the room around them questioningly.

  “Yeah,
I swept it,” she whispered. She removed a small case from her bag and showed him the three separate devices tucked inside the soundproof cocoon. Two of the devices looked similar; one looked fairly ancient—it even had wire leads.

  “Have you got into any files yet?” Peter asked as he slipped on the thin, skintight gloves that Zosia handed him.

  “First tell me, what happened to you?”

  Peter smiled at her unprofessional curiosity. He began explaining, but she interrupted, “He hit you!” Her whisper had turned into an angry hiss.

  “Yes. I thought it was a good call.”

  “There was no need for that!”

  “Really, it’s okay—it seemed to work. It diverted the major’s attention from questioning me or seeking you out.”

  “Well, if you think so.”

  He finished his story quickly, then asked again, “Have you made any progress?”

  “Yeah. Good news and bad.”

  “What?”

  “Well, he didn’t do much to protect local access. It took me only a few minutes to use that terminal there.” She indicated the source of the dim glow. “The major’s ID is his name—how very original—and his password is, get this, Pikkadilly—his dog’s name. It’s spelled with two k ’s by the way.”

  “How did you work that out so quickly?”

  “Well, usually I try something patriotic first, but the major didn’t seem the type. Dogs are a favorite next guess. He fouled me up with the spelling, but then I remembered seeing the name of his horse on its portrait—that was Kovent Garten—also spelled with a k.”

  “You’re a bloody genius!”

  “I know.” She smiled. “Of course, he was very kind to be so predictable. But at least he didn’t write it all on a little note taped to the back of the computer.”

  Peter gave a short laugh at the image.

  “Don’t laugh—I’ve actually seen that more than once.”

  Peter nodded in silent agreement. It was true: one could usually count on a certain level of incompetence or overconfidence, and in a society where so much was considered secret, there was always carelessness caused by the security overload. If nearly everything was classified, then it was hard to treat genuinely sensitive information seriously.

  “Now,” Zosia said, “for the bad news.”

  “You can’t find the files?”

  “Oh, they’re there all right. They seem to be encrypted.”

  “So? We can sort them out later. You don’t need me! Just copy them and we’ll get out of here.” His relief was palpable.

  “Me and whose truck?”

  “What do you mean?” She motioned him to a small door and opened it. Inside was a room filled by a full-size, old-fashioned computer. “That terminal accesses this monster. It may be slow and stupid—but it’s big. I’ve estimated the size of the files, and we couldn’t get even twenty percent of the data onto ours.”

  “But we don’t need all the data! Just the theory and conclusions. You know, chemical formulas, effectiveness . . .”

  “And how are we going to tell where that is?” she responded with exaggerated patience.

  “I guess you’re telling me he hasn’t neatly labeled a file ‘Formulas and Effectiveness,’ subtitled, ‘This is the one you want to steal.’ ”

  “Well, if he has—I can’t read it.”

  “So we’ve got to break the code just to know which files to copy.”

  “You’ve got it in one. It’s worse than that, though. The files are copy-protected so we can’t even steal them at random—we’d have to pack up that entire machine! Anyway, we can read the files on the screen, but it’s all coded, so it’s just gibberish. I think this operating system is so old it doesn’t have its own built-in security, so the major just jury-rigged something. Or maybe this is Schindler’sway of avoiding too many people at the RSHA from finding out about what his little laboratory is up to.”

  Peter swore quietly. He chewed his thumb for a moment. “Maybe it’s not so bad. If he’s left them in a readable state, it’s probably because that’s necessary to decode them, which would mean the decoding program should be on this machine as well. Once that is run, it probably removes the copy protection so that the major could pass the information on to authorized parties.”

  He wandered into the little room, looked at a few manuals lying around, read any labels he could find. Nothing, nothing but numbers. Not even suggestive numbers. Meanwhile Zosia was scanning around as well. She circled the beast, inspected various bits in the hope that there would be something tangible they could use, but there was nothing. Peter looked at her. She shrugged in reply, and they left the room and went to the terminal on the major’s desk.

  “I guess getting into his file is the best we can hope for,” she said as she sat down at the desk.

  “Do you know much about the sort of computer that is?”

  She shook her head.“Not much. It’s old. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a card-reader.”

  “I’m surprised a lab this important doesn’t merit better equipment,” Peter said, leaning over her shoulder and looking at the incomprehensible strings of numbers, letters, and symbols that were appearing on the screen as Zosia tried various commands.

  “Oh, it’s not at all unusual. The government pours money into various technological pet projects, and they achieve occasional peaks of performance. That, and industrial espionage, carry them a long way, but the economy just can’t produce the goods. As soon as you take a step away from these monumental triumphs, everything else seems to be in a state of near collapse. But then what do you expect? Slave labor may well be cheap, but it’s hardly reliable or loyal.” She interrupted herself to lean forward and peer at something on the screen. Deciding it was useless, she continued her typing and her monologue. “One can hardly expect cooperation from the labor force, nor innovation. Corruption is rampant and industrial sabotage . . .” She paused again to look at something, leaned back, and continued hacking. “You worked in industry for a while, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.” He did not want to hear the question he knew she was going to ask.

  “Did you sabotage anything?”

  “No,” he sighed. “I would have, I just didn’t see any opportunities. At least none that would have left me alive at the end of it.”

  Zosia fell silent. She looked intent on what she was doing, but he felt sure she was simply trying not to indicate how disappointed she was in him. He paced away from the screen, looked contemplatively at the books on the major’s shelves. He did not even know what they were looking for or what Zosia was attempting to do, but he wasn’t surprised to hear her say somewhat indignantly, “Can’t you at least watch the screen?”

  He returned to his position behind her chair and leaned forward, resting his arms on the back of the chair so his head was just above hers and he could clearly see the screen. But he did not watch it; instead his eyes strayed around the room. Then, suddenly, something he saw out of the corner of his eye on the screen caught his attention.

  “Wait!”

  “What?”

  “What was that?”

  “Which?”

  “What have you been doing?” he asked.

  “I’ve been opening files and listing the first hundred lines, hoping we’d see something recognizable.”

  “Oh.”

  “Well, you didn’t seem to have any better ideas,” Zosia explained.

  “No, I mean, yes. But I thought I saw something. About three or four screens back.”

  “I’ll repeat the last several files.”

  She typed a few commands and Peter watched closely. “There! Stop!” She hit a key and the screen froze. Peter peered at it silently for several moments. Zosia turned from the screen to look at him, raising her eyebrows in query.

  “I think,” he said, releasing his words slowly as if speaking quickly might destroy a spell, “this might be the algorithm for encrypting the documents.”

  “So we can run it bac
kwards?”

  “More likely, it decodes them as well, or there’s a similar program that does the job. After all, we can hardly expect the major to decipher each file by hand every time he wants to read something. Run it forward a bit—just a few lines.”

  Together they studied the program; it was written in an outmoded language that had been specifically designed for military purposes by the German government. Though he was unfamiliar with the programming language, it was similar enough in structure to ones he knew that he could guess most of it, and Zosia explained the rest.

  “I think that’s it—see those lines there? I think all we have to do is call this program and it will decipher the files for us,” he concluded. He and Zosia had exchanged places—now he was sitting at the terminal and she was leaning over reading from above.

  “Great!” Zosia exclaimed in a whisper.

  “Not really.”

  “Why?”

  “It’ll ask us for a password,” he replied despondently.

  “I can start guessing at the password, while you try other, more rational approaches,” she offered hopefully.

  “I think it’s worse than that. The password is cross-referenced to the file that has been called.”

  “But there are hundreds!”

  “I know,” he responded.

  “Well, how can the major remember hundreds of passwords?”

  “Presumably there is some method to them. I suppose they could all be same, but I think it’s more likely they can be generated somehow using information contained in the file names. Some sort of mnemonic.” He sighed heavily, bent his head forward, and rubbed his neck. Already his eyes were bothering him, and he had not eaten since lunch.

  Zosia gently pushed his hand aside and gave him a massage. “Are you hungry?” she asked as she soothed the pain in his muscles.

  “Yeah. I wish I had eaten something. Idiotic planning on my part.”

  “Ah, but you didn’t contend with my superb organizational abilities.” With that, she continued the massage with one hand while reaching with the other into her bag. After rooting around a bit, the hand reemerged holding a wrapped sandwich.

  “You are a genius!” he declared, reaching for it.