Decoded

by Mai Jia

  The second day of the trip was coming to a close. The train was briskly making its way through a wide open field. At the far end, the setting sun was flushed red; its last rays of crimson light had a beautiful, benevolent hue. The remaining sunshine bathed the train in a warming, tranquil light, much like a dreamscape or a gentle landscape painting.

  During dinner, Vasili and the professor struck up a conversation which Rong Jinzhen only listened to with half an ear. That was until the professor said in an envious tone of voice, ‘Ah, we’ve just entered G province – by tomorrow morning you two will be home.’

  Hearing this was music to Rong Jinzhen’s ears, and he asked, ‘When will you arrive at your destination?’

  ‘Tomorrow, at three in the afternoon.’

  That would be the terminus for the train. Rong Jinzhen joked, ‘You two are certainly faithful passengers: you’ve accompanied this train from beginning to end.’

  ‘While you are a deserter . . . ’ The professor laughed heartily. It was quite evident that he was happy to have found people to talk to on the train. But his happiness was fleeting. After a couple of chuckles, Rong Jinzhen once more turned his attention to Johannes’ The Riddle, paying the professor little heed. All the latter could do was stare at him curiously, wondering whether or not he might be unwell.

  Rong Jinzhen was not ill, of course; this was simply his customary manner. Once he had finished what he wanted to say, then he was finished. He didn’t drag things out, he didn’t switch topics, he wasn’t polite; there was no preface, no postscript: he spoke when he had something to say, he was silent when there was nothing to say – like talking in one’s sleep, he made his interlocutors feel as if they too were dreaming.

  Speaking of Johannes’ The Riddle, it had been published by the China Publishing House before the Revolution, translated by the Eurasian author Han Suyin. It was a rather slim volume, more a pamphlet than a book. On the title page it had the following epigraph:

  A genius is the spirit of this world, there are few but they are the finest of humankind, they are noble, they are to be treasured. Like any other treasure in this world, they are delicate, fragile as a newly planted bud; once hit they crack; once cracked they fracture.

  These words hit Rong Jinzhen like a bullet . . .

  [Transcript of the interview with Director Zheng]

  Genius is easily broken. This was not news to Rong Jinzhen, nor was it a topic he was uncomfortable with; many times before he had discussed it with me. He said, ‘This fragility is what makes a genius, a genius. It is what allows them to transcend all limits, to become ever more refined, like gossamer silk; to become almost transparent, but to be unable to bear any knock. In a sense, a person’s intelligence can exceed any frontier, and from a certain perspective knowledge can easily be seen as limitless. But in another sense, we could say that erudition is achieved by sacrificing a broad knowledge of the world for the particular. Therefore, on the one hand, the great majority of geniuses are incredibly sensitive and learned, but on the other, they are stupid and clumsy, incorrigibly obstinate, very unlike ordinary people. The exemplar of this sort of person was Professor Klaus Johannes, a legend in the field of cryptography, and Rong Jinzhen’s personal hero. The Riddle was his work.

  No one would deny that there was something almost godlike about Johannes’ ability; he was beyond reach, a god himself really. Nothing could disturb him. He knew the ciphers behind the ciphers! But in the real world, in life, he was a fool, a fool who didn’t even know his way home. He was like a house pet – if he was let out without a collar, he mightn’t return. The story goes that he was like this because his mother had been so afraid of losing him that she wouldn’t let him out of her sight, shadowing his every movement and making sure he always returned home.

  It goes without saying that from his mother’s perspective, he was, without a doubt, an abysmal child.

  Nevertheless, in the first half of the last century, in the fascist camp, this man – this thoroughly sheltered and socially inept child – was known as the Grim Reaper: he could make Hitler piss in his pants at the mere mention of his name. Johannes was actually from the same place as Hitler, born on an island named Tars (known for its gold deposits). If it’s true that every man needs to have an ancestral homeland then his was Germany, and Hitler at that time was the commander-in-chief. You could say he should have been serving Germany, serving Hitler’s Reich. But he didn’t, at least not from start to finish (he had at one time). He was the enemy of no country, of no individual – his only enemies were ciphers. At any given time he might become the enemy of a certain nation, a certain person, but at any other time he might become the enemy of some other country, some other person: it all depended on who – which country, which person – had created and used the most complicated secret cipher. Whoever possessed such a thing was his adversary.

  In the 1940s, after documents encrypted using EAGLE appeared on Hitler’s desk, Johannes chose to betray his homeland, to desert the German military and switch sides, joining up with the Allied forces. His betrayal had nothing to do with political beliefs, nor with money. His only reason for leaving was EAGLE, a cipher that caused every cryptographer to fall into despair.

  It was said that EAGLE was developed by an Irish mathematical genius who had once been resident in Berlin. The story was that during a visit to a Jewish synagogue he had been helped by God to create it: a cipher so sophisticated that it was reckoned secure for thirty years. EAGLE outstripped other ciphers of the time ninefold – this was incredible, unheard of; indeed, it was downright unbelievable.

  We could say that the fate that awaits all cryptographers everywhere is that whatever they strive after will always remain just out of reach, always on the other side of the glass. Like the chance of a particular grain of sand from the sea colliding with a particular grain on the shore, the odds are millions upon millions to one: completely impossible. Even so, cryptographers still chase after this gargantuan impossibility. In the process of writing ciphers, the cryptographers, or the ciphers themselves, will invariably encounter certain unavoidable mishaps – akin to people randomly and instinctively sneezing: it’s bound to happen but there is really no way to calculate the numerical probability of when it will actually take place. The problem is that when pinning one’s hopes on the possible mistakes of others, one cannot but help feel this is at once absurd and terribly sad. This layering of absurdity upon absurdity, sorrow upon sorrow, has become the fate of many cryptographers: so many – all of them the elite – have passed their lives in this fashion, obscure and unknown, living dark and tragic lives.

  Whether it was thanks to his genius or his luck, Professor Klaus Johannes needed only seven months to crack EAGLE. In the history of cryptography it could be said that his accomplishment was unique and never to be repeated: an unbelievable occurrence, like the sun rising in the west, or a single raindrop deciding to fall upwards in a downpour . . .

  [To be continued]

  Every time he thought about his fate, Rong Jinzhen had an inexplicable sensation of shame and uneasiness, a dreadful feeling of unreality. He would frequently gaze at Johannes’ photo and repeat to himself: ‘Everyone has a hero, and you’re mine: all my knowledge and power come from your example and your encouragement. You’re my sun: my brilliance can never be separated from yours, never outshine yours . . . ’

  This type of self-deprecation wasn’t due to Rong Jinzhen feeling dissatisfied within himself; no, it was due to the enormous respect he had for Professor Johannes.

  In truth, besides Klaus Johannes, there was no one else that he admired other than himself; he didn’t believe that anyone else in Unit 701 could break BLACK if he couldn’t. He didn’t have confidence in his colleagues; or at least his reason for feeling this way was completely straightforward: no one else at Unit 701 showed any sincere admiration for Klaus Johannes. Amidst the clattering of the train across the tracks, he clearly heard himself speak to his hero. ‘They cannot see your intellectual magn
ificence, and if they did, they would only be afraid of it. But I cannot understand nor trust their reasoning. To appreciate something that is truly beautiful requires courage and talent; without this, beauty can only terrify.’

  Rong Jinzhen believed that only in the eyes of other geniuses could one’s own genius be valued. In the eyes of the common man, geniuses were quite likely to be seen as freaks or fools. This was because those with superior intellect had left the common man behind, had marched far off into new frontiers, so far that even if the commoner raised his eyes to look, he could not see them, thus thinking erroneously that the genius had fallen behind. This was the plebeian way of thinking. All it took for them to exclude – to fear – a genius was for the latter to be uncommunicative; they would never realize that the genius’ silence issued from his fear and not from contempt.

  It was here that Rong Jinzhen believed the reasons for his distance from his colleagues lay: he could appreciate and thus respect Johannes’ abilities. He could bask in this giant’s intellectual brilliance – it shone over him and through him as if he were glass – but no one else was able to see; they were like stone and Johannes’ brilliance could not shine through them.

  Continuing this train of thought, Rong Jinzhen felt that comparing geniuses to glass and commoners to rock was particularly apposite. Geniuses after all had many of the qualities of glass: they were delicate, easily broken, very fragile; not at all like stone. Even if a stone were to be cracked, it wouldn’t shatter like glass; perhaps a corner or a face would be broken off, but it would still remain a stone, and could still be used as a stone. Glass, however, did not have this resilience: its innate quality was vulnerability; to be cracked meant to be shattered, each shard becoming useless. Geniuses were just like this: all it took was for you to snap off their outstretched head, like breaking a lever in two. The remaining bits would be worthless. He again thought of his hero: if there were no ciphers in need of decryption, what would be his worth? Nothing!

  Outside the window, night was slowly turning into day.

  4.

  Everything that happened after this was totally unreal, because it was too real.

  That’s how it goes: when things seem too real they become unreal; people have trouble believing them – just like most people can’t believe that in any mountainous area in Guangxi you can take a sewing needle and exchange it for a cow, or even for one pure silver broadsword. No one can deny, however, that it was ten years ago, whilst dreaming of Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev (1834–1907) – who had himself been given the idea of creating the periodic table in a dream – that the secret to cracking PURPLE had come to Rong Jinzhen. This was of course an extraordinary story, but what happened next far exceeded it.

  In the middle of the night, Rong Jinzhen had been woken by the sound of the train pulling into a station. As was his habit, upon waking he immediately reached out his hand to touch the safety-deposit box that was under his bunk.

  It was there! Still chained to the leg of the tea table. Feeling at ease, he lay back down, trying to differentiate between the scattered sound of footsteps and the blare of the train station’s public address system.

  The public address system informed him that they had arrived in B City.

  The next stop would be A City.

  ‘Still three hours to go . . . And then home . . . Home . . . Only a hundred and eighty minutes left. . . Sleep a little more, home . . . ’ In a daze, he fell back to sleep.

  Before a moment passed, however, the train whistle blew sharply, signalling its departure from the station, waking him up once more. The clacking upon the tracks grew ever more intense, and just as music gradually increases a person’s level of excitement, it prevented him from falling asleep. He never slept soundly in any case; how could he endure such auditory violence? The sounds of the train rolled over him, thoroughly waking him up. Light from the moon flitted into the cabin, shining directly upon his berth. The shadows tossed about, fluctuating sharply, tempting his drowsy eyes. Just then, he noticed something unusual out of the corner of his eye. What was it, what was wrong? Making a lazy attempt to ascertain what had happened, rolling it over in his mind, he finally realized that his leather attaché case which had been hanging on a hook on the wall – a bag very much like a teacher’s black briefcase – was gone. He got up abruptly, searching in his berth for it. It wasn’t there. Then he got down and looked round the floor, the tea table, under his pillow. It was nowhere to be found!

  He noisily roused Vasili and the professor, the latter telling him that about an hour before when he had got up to use the toilet (please remember that it was an hour ago), he had seen a young man in military plainclothes on the connecting platform, leaning against the door-frame smoking a cigarette. On his way out, however, the young man had disappeared without a trace. In his hand he had been holding an attaché case very much like the one Rong Jinzhen had just described.

  The professor said, ‘At the time, I gave it little thought, thinking that it must have been his case because he was just standing there, smoking, I never really paid much attention to what was in his hands, it seemed as though he were in no hurry, would just finish his smoke and leave, but now – ah, I should have been more attentive.’ The professor’s voice was full of empathy.

  Rong Jinzhen thought it most likely that it had been that man in the military clothes who had stolen his case. Even though it seemed as though he had just been standing there, in truth he had been deciding upon his mark. The professor’s trip to the bathroom gave him his opportunity, like seeing tracks in the snow – following them would lead you to the tiger’s cave. You could speculate that whilst the professor was in the lavatory, the man had made his move, he had ‘made use of every second and every inch’.

  Mulling this over in his head, Rong Jinzhen couldn’t help but laugh bitterly.

  [Transcript of the interview with Director Zheng]

  In truth, cryptography is very much like having to make good use of every second and every inch.

  Ciphers are very much like an enormous, seamless net, thus seemingly unreal. But once a cipher is used, they are like anyone’s mouth: it is very hard to avoid slips of the tongue. These slips are like rivulets of blood, splitting open a gash, providing a glimmer of hope for those attempting to crack the cipher. Just as lightening splits open the sky, a sharp mind squirrels itself into the gaps, passes into the inner labyrinth of a cipher as if it was a normal corridor, and sometimes even finds access to heaven. These last few years, Rong Jinzhen had used an enormous amount of patience in waiting for the gaps in the sky to open, he had waited through a countless number of days and nights, and yet he still had not succeeded in deciphering BLACK.

  This was highly irregular. It was downright strange.

  In trying to find a cause for this state of affairs, we at Unit 701 thought about two things:

  1. Cracking PURPLE had forced our adversary to grit his teeth and bear the pain, to be ever more cautious when opening his mouth, to be circumspect and deliberate, to ensure that not one drop of water was spilt. It made us feel invulnerable.

  2. Rong Jinzhen had failed to detect any errors within BLACK. The drops of water fell right through his hands. And what’s more, the chances of this happening were rather high. Think about it: Liseiwicz truly understood Rong Jinzhen; he could easily have warned the creators of BLACK of Rong Jinzhen’s skill at decryption and assisted them in developing countermeasures. Quite honestly, they were once like father and son, but now, because of their respective political positions and beliefs, the spiritual gulf between them was greater than any geographical distance. I still remember to this day the moment we learnt that Liseiwicz was in fact Weinacht – everyone in our organization wanted to come clean to Rong Jinzhen, to tell him of Liseiwicz’s clever ruse, to beg him to be wary. And guess what he said upon learning about this? He said, ‘Tell him to go to hell, this devil in the temple of science!’*

  * This recalls the preface written by Young Lillie for Jinzhen’s the
sis.

  To reiterate, our adversary was increasingly cautious, making fewer and fewer mistakes; thus making it easier for us to miss things. Even if we were less than diligent, it would still have been obvious that our opponent had begun to make fewer errors. We were like an uneven mortise and tenon, echoing each other, nipping at each other, but never quite linking up; there was a heretofore unseen perfection in the network of lies we wove. But this perfection was strange and frightening. For Rong Jinzhen, each day and each night was greeted with a feeling of cold terror. No one but his wife knew what he was going through; for he had told her everything about the problems he was experiencing in his dreams: on the path to breaking a cipher, he was already too tired to be on his guard. His faith, his inner tranquillity had already met with the threat of despair; he was sick and tired of making his moves and fending off countermoves . . .

  [To be continued]

  Now, thinking of what had happened, thinking of how the thief had kept watch on them, thinking of his stolen leather attaché case, Rong Jinzhen’s thoughts became focused on his own vigilance and desperation. He mocked himself: ‘I thought of other people – the cryptographers who had constructed BLACK as well as those who had used it – and how difficult it was to get close to them, close to it. Yet it was so terribly easy for me to have my bag stolen, a task that took all of half a cigarette.’ He laughed to himself and smiled a bitter smile once again.

  In truth, at this time Rong Jinzhen had yet to realize the gravity of the situation, had yet to think about the seriousness of his predicament. Thinking about what was inside, all he could remember was the return train ticket and the receipt for his lodgings, as well as 200 yuan or more worth of food stamps and an assortment of credentials. Johannes’ book was in there as well; he had put it in there last night before heading to bed. Realizing that he had lost a prized possession sent a pang through his heart. Still, comparing these things to what was still safely locked away in the safety-deposit box made him appreciate his good fortune, to be glad he had just narrowly escaped calamity.