The Cryptographer

by Tobias Hill

  ‘No! I reserve the right to hypocrisy. If I knew he was lying – if I knew how to phrase my lie – then I’d be lying to you. But I don’t. There’s something wrong, it’s not just us, but I can’t … I hardly see my husband now. There, now you know. It’s been worse since you arrived. I did wonder if he was seeing you, but it’s not that, is it? He works day and night, but he won’t tell me why. He tells Nathan.’ Her voice twists. ‘He tells Nathan. But he doesn’t tell me. So you see, I only wanted to know, to know –’

  ‘Anneli,’ Anna says, and at the sound of her name she looks up. The fireworks illuminate her face in neon primaries. It is the first time Anna has seen her physically less than beautiful. She has begun to cry, her features are worn down by misery.

  The crowd murmurs. Something is falling from the airships, spiralling out through the light of the fireworks until it seems to fill the whole sky. The first flakes reach the glass rooms and melt into nothing. Ah! someone says, like a child. Snow!

  ‘I’m alright.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Their voices hushed, hurried.

  ‘Yes, I’m alright.’

  ‘You should sit down. I’ll get you –’

  ‘No. I just need an answer.’

  ‘I can’t help you.’

  ‘Can’t,’ Anneli says with some ferocity. ‘Or won’t?’

  ‘Can’t. I don’t know what he’s done.’

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘Oh. Good.’ Anneli sighs back the tears. ‘How very good it is to be disappointed, sometimes. I don’t know why I asked you. Because there’s nothing as frightening as not knowing, and you seemed as if you might. Because I like talking to you. You’re much too nice to be what you are. You’re good at being spoken to, did you know? Has anyone ever told you that?’

  ‘Don’t wipe your eyes. Here.’

  ‘Thank you.’ And then, inconsequentially, ‘We never make love any more. Not for months now. I suppose it must be to do with money. Everything else seems to be. Can you imagine the money he would lose in the time it takes to make love?’

  ‘No. I could calculate it for you, if you like.’

  ‘Christ, could you?’ She laughs on cue. ‘Please don’t.’

  ‘What did you mean about Nathan?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What did you mean, when you said –’

  The lights go up as abruptly as they were switched off. The night draws back out of the glass rooms. Snow is falling against the roof, settling by dint of quantity in the warm night air. There is a half-hearted chorus of applause. The more assertive guests push towards Anneli, a hand on her bare shoulder, her neck, a word in her ear. She shakes her head questioningly at Anna.

  ‘You said he tells Nathan?’

  ‘Of course, because Nathan understands. Numbers run in the family – didn’t you know? Didn’t I tell you?’ she says, as if to say, Really, inspector, don’t you listen to what people say? Don’t you know anything?

  ‘How long has this been happening?’

  ‘– not long –’ Anneli says, distracted, smiling general acknowledgement, and Anna thinks, not long at all, no; only since last summer; but this she doesn’t say.

  Instead she remembers the boy’s face, stepping from the lake water towards her. The drip of water from his limbs. His expression, raw, as if intruding to the bone. Fearful, it seems to her now. His voice fierce, not like the father, but like the mother.

  You’re here to see my father, aren’t you? Do you know cryptography? You don’t know anything.

  ‘Can I talk to him?’

  ‘What?’

  She has to raise her voice. Already Anneli is almost gone, the crowd eagerly pressing in between the two of them. ‘Do ‘ you mind if I talk to Nathan?’

  ‘Of course not! Though I’m afraid he might not want to talk to you –’ And then a man with the physique of an opera singer is throwing his arm around her, Delightful! he is whispering, Fire and ice, the best of both worlds, how like you both, and there is nothing left for Anna to do but step away, the guests jostling her along, abetting her departure, as if they are glad to be rid of her. She looks round for Muriet, searching for her diminutive form or narrow face, taking another drink from an adjacent tray, as if it were something to hold on to, but there is no sign of the girl, and the need for air and breath rises in her until she can’t stand the room any longer.

  She makes for the nearest door. Beyond it lies a stairless upper hall hung with worn black basalt glyptographs. She passes through into rooms where people are talking about their histories and love affairs, the nature of the teeth of sharks, the latest public fall from grace, rooms where they are talking about their immortal souls, rooms where they are dancing in ones and twos, rooms of candelabra double-coiled, like hunting horns, rooms of sculpture in pools of illumination, a room with a sliding door indistinguishable from the glass around it, a balcony beyond it with a view of the harbour and the river, jigsaws of light on the water, the night air full of the smell of fireworks, which to Anna has always been the smell of change and autumn, of fall and revolution, and after tonight always will.

  The door slides shut behind her. The noise of the house is immediately gone. It is as if the crowd Anna has made her way through has ceased to exist: as if the winter ball were nothing but acoustics – laughter and music and viciousness – and silence could switch it all off, like a light.

  Her eyes begin to adjust to the dark. The balcony is one of many, a ziggurat of terraces, each tier cascading evergreen vegetation. Each terrace runs the length of the wing and turns the corner southeastwards. Along the way there are alcoved benches, most of them empty, only the more secluded occupied. A black man in a dark suit leans alone at the railing nearby. There is the wink of his cigarette or cigar. She cannot make out John, if he is here at all.

  She closes her eyes and breathes as if coming up for air. The snow has already stopped, real-unreal, though the atmosphere is cooler with its passing. The boardwalk is damp with melt.

  ‘How do I look?’

  She opens her eyes. There is no one beside her. It is like ventriloquism. The black man is still staring out, giving no indication of having spoken. But there is no one else close enough to have done so, unless they are on the terraces above or below, out of sight.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says to the man at the rail, ‘did you say something?’

  ‘You were looking at me.’ This time she sees his lips move. ‘So how do I look?’ His voice is London black, accented with money and education and something African, a residual elegance and richness.

  ‘Handsome, in a drunk sort of way.’ She says it bluntly, her supply of etiquette all but exhausted, immediately regretting it, so that she is grateful when he smiles, his head nodding with intoxication.

  ‘My drunk or your drunk?’

  ‘I’m not drunk yet,’ she lies.

  ‘Then it must be mine,’ says the man, and now that he turns to face her she can see him properly. His features are angular, the skin very dark. His hair is oddly cut, chopped, unkempt. There is something faintly familiar about him, as if he is one of the almost famous. Under Anna’s gaze he turns his cheeks, once, twice, like a man shaving, then looks away. ‘It’s a fine night.’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘Maybe all the nights here are fine ones.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Anna says. They stand for a minute, strangers looking skywards together, like tourists in a cathedral. ‘I don’t think so, though.’

  ‘The grass is always greener. Do you agree? And the stars are always brighter. You know,’ the man says, ‘I know you.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Yes indeed. We’ve met before.’

  ‘Really,’ she says, and he grins, pleasantly flirtatious.

  ‘You think we haven’t met?’

  ‘I’m sorry, no –’

  ‘Have we not had the pleasure?’

  ‘No.’ Smiling too now, despite herself. The man has raised himself on one f
orearm, hunting in his jacket.

  ‘Here,’ he says, and Anna takes the card, turning its ridged copperplate to the harbour lights.

  TUNDE FINCH

  QUACK DOCTOR – ANTIVIRUS SPECIALIST – CRYPTOGRAPHER DIRECTOR, MRE

  We work in the dark, We give what we have,

  Our doubt is our passion, And our passion is our task.

  ‘Tunde Finch,’ she reads off neutrally.

  ‘Tunde, please.’

  ‘Tunde,’ she says. ‘I’ve heard about you.’

  ‘Good things, I hope?’

  ‘I was told you were looking for me.’

  ‘And now I’ve found you,’ the man is saying, ‘or we’ve found one another. Either way, better late than never.’ But Anna is no longer listening. Her mind is doubling back, running ahead. The man’s voice echoing back to her.

  Anna Moore, is it? A pleasure. I missed who you were with –

  ‘SoftMark,’ she says, ‘October.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘You were in the hall –’ the hall where money is made, without human interface ‘– the shareholder reception.’

  ‘Right again.’

  ‘I didn’t remember you, I’m sorry

  ‘Hey. I’m used to it. But I remember you.’

  ‘Do you work for SoftMark?’

  ‘No!’ He laughs. ‘I’m a shareholder, for my sins. Sometimes it buys me as much as an hour before I’m escorted to the door. My great advantage is that the Laws never like to create a scene if they can possibly help it. If they could buy invisibility, you know, I think they would. No, I’m what you might call an activist.’

  ‘You were talking to John –’ but Tunde laughs even more, infectiously, deep-voiced, tee-hee-hee.

  ‘No. I’ve never talked to Mister Law. Or I mean Law has never talked to me. I’ve introduced myself many times, but somehow we’ve never talked …’

  His voice drifts into silence. He looks away from Anna again, anxiously back towards the harbour lights. The expression doesn’t suit him, Anna thinks, though the lines of his face accommodate it easily, as if anxiety is something he has come to accept over a course of years.

  ‘Anna,’ she says, and holds out her hand, so that Tunde Finch shrugs himself out of himself to take it.

  ‘Anna Moore. I know.’

  She holds out the card between two fingers, offering him back to himself. ‘So you’re a cryptographer? You’re everywhere tonight.’

  ‘So it seems.’ He doesn’t take the card. She pockets it.

  ‘And a Quack Doctor, whatever that means.’

  He laughs again, good-natured: likeable. ‘Quack is a term for useless data, used by the unscrupulous to overload company systems, inflicting damage, weakening defences. I am a quack doctor. I heal the damage and the weakness. And, as my card says, I work in much the same way with viruses.’

  ‘You’re a computer hacker,’ she says, and he smiles without teeth.

  ‘Hacker to my friends, cracker to my enemies.’

  ‘What’s the difference?’

  ‘A cracker breaks systems for profit or pleasure. A hacker does so only in order to highlight weakness. I think of myself as a professional hacker.’

  ‘And are you?’

  ‘Sometimes, yes. There was a time when I used to write viruses myself – I have that in common with Mister Law – and I took pleasure in it. But now the companies I worked against invite me to work for them,’ Tunde says. ‘And I accept their invitations, when the price is right.’

  ‘And the rest of the time?’

  ‘The rest of the time is mine, and in that I run an Internet society, an affiliation of professionals and enthusiasts in my field. We call ourselves the Masters of Reverse Engineering.’

  ‘MRE.’ She drains the last of her glass. ‘Funny. I know that name too.’

  ‘Then congratulations are in order,’ Tunde says, still smiling, though the humour has gone out of it. ‘You’re one of the few.’

  ‘I was looking for information on John. I almost visited your website.’

  ‘So Mister Law has brought us together more than once. Our fora often hold discussions of his work.’

  ‘The Masters of Reverse Engineering. It’s quite a name. Should I be scared?’

  ‘Not unless you have a particular phobia of overworked and under-exercised computer programmers.’ And then with abrupt sobriety, ‘But we should all be scared, since you ask.’

  ‘I see,’ Anna says, as if she does. Anneli’s voice coming back to her. They always creep in somehow and they’re always cryptic, as if they know something about us we don’t. ‘And what do you do with all this mastery?’

  ‘We are dedicated to the wider application of the hacker philosophy. Which is to test, to eliminate weakness, and thereby to strengthen.’

  ‘Fair enough. That doesn’t sound so bad.’ She leans beside him. Below them the terraces slope away like gigantic steps. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever met a philosophical hacker before. Or even an unphilosophical one.’

  ‘You’ve met me before.’

  ‘I meant in my work.’

  He nods again, slow, it is almost a bow. ‘We are something of a black market.’

  It takes longer than she would like for her to understand. Longer to answer. ‘I don’t remember telling you what I do.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What else do you know about me?’

  He clears his throat uncomfortably. ‘I’m sorry if you find all this disconcerting. I make it my business to know Mister Law’s business. That happens to include you. At SoftMark I tried to discover who you were. Unfortunately I was asked to leave before I could do so. When I found out that you worked for the Revenue, that you have some authority, I thought perhaps you might be able to help. I tried to contact you, but you never answered – possibly my address for you was incorrect. Then, when I acquired the guest list for this evening, I came across your name again. I thought that if I could meet with you, speak to you, that you at least might listen –’

  ‘Listen to what?’

  ‘To what we have to say.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘The Masters –’

  ‘Of course. Actually, I’m not sure –’

  ‘Anna, how much thought have you given to what Mister Law actually does? To cryptography?’

  ‘Much too much. That means no thanks, if it’s all the same to you.’

  ‘But it isn’t all the same to me. May I – please – may I explain?’

  ‘I have the feeling you’re going to anyway,’ she says, and the second cryptographer sighs, studying her until she has to laugh out loud at his earnestness.

  ‘Cryptography is a beautiful science.’

  ‘Is it really?’

  ‘Yes. It is the science of concealment, and concealment can be very beautiful. Cryptography can take an alphabet and fold it back on itself, again and again, like origami, until the letters become numbers and the numbers binary. It can hide the blueprint for a gun in a conversation about snow, the pattern of lights on a train, the genetic structure of a flower. But it can also undo these things. The study of concealment also concerns discovery. It is the science of the codemakers, but it is also ours. It is the responsibility of the codebreakers.’

  His voice is soft and rapid, his face dogged with incipient disappointment. He doesn’t look up at Anna as he talks, as if, she thinks, he is afraid she will stop him somehow. That he will look up to find her gone.

  ‘Sometimes these professions are the same. Often these people are less than enemies. We are willing or unwilling partners in a cycle of invention. And this is because the only way to make a code stronger is to know its weakness. And unless the code is broken, there is no way to know for sure what its weakness will be. It is a paradox – the only way to truly know a code is to break it. Without us, the hackers and breakers, there would be no more codes. There would never have been a second code if no one had broken the first. But the history of cryptography tells us that wherever there is a w
eakness there will be someone to discover it. Whatever their motivation, there is always someone who will try. And there is always a weakness.’

  He looks up, patiently earnest, hopeful, pleading, his eyes white in the dark. ‘Do you understand what I’m saying?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘No. I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s alright. I’m telling you the first rule of cryptography,’ Tunde says. ‘The first rule is that no code can be made that cannot be broken. There is no such thing as the perfect code –’

  ‘Anna? Aaaa-na!’

  The voice is childlike, sing-song, floating up or down from the terraces above or below, it is hard to be sure which in the dark. The sound cuts Tunde off. He glances away sharply – as if he were a trespasser, Anna has time to think – and she reaches for him, the alcohol singing in her blood.

  ‘Wait. Tunde – I am listening. I want to understand. Tell me again –’

  ‘Call me.’

  ‘No, wait, you don’t have to –’

  ‘Call me,’ he repeats urgently, pushing the card back into her hands, the hands into her body, and then he is stepping back from her, walking quickly away along the terrace.

  ‘Tunde!’

  ‘There you are.’

  She looks up. At the railing above is Muriet’s face, disembodied, peering down. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Anna says. ‘Talking.’

  ‘Who to?’ Sharply curious. And before Anna can answer, ‘How did you end up down there?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Muriet clucks her teeth. ‘Wait. I’ll come down.’ Her face retreats out of sight. ‘Don’t move!’

  ‘I won’t,’ she says, though only to herself, since no one else seems to be listening; and she doesn’t, standing quite still, the drink a dull ache at the back of her skull.

  She kneads her eyes shut and imagines that the pain recedes. In the dark she finds herself thinking of the cold, inching back over the walls of Erith Reach. Soon it will surely be winter again, just as it was the first time she was here. The gravel begrudging her progress. The women by the water’s edge. Nathan’s laughter.