Molon Labe!

by Boston T. Party

  Very careful folks simply keep spare keys hidden elsewhere (e.g., on secreted floppies, within obscure Internet files, etc.), and never left them on the hard drive at all.

  The most shrewd of all keep their keys (active and spare) encrypted through PGP's IDEA algorithm (which was symmetric encryption that did not generate its own key pair). After all, possession of an open key pair is prima facie evidence of having encrypted a particular file. By encrypting the key pair, the owner forced the government to first break through that IDEA "envelope" before it could ascertain the PGP key pair necessary to connect them with encrypted files. This sly tactic maddens the NSA and FBI computer techs, which in turn drives the US Attorneys into a frenzy as they cannot even begin to make a case based on the subject's raided computer. Measure — countermeasure.

  Man has continued to evolve by acts of disobedience.

  — Erich Fromm, "On Disobedience"

  Casper, Wyoming

  February 2008

  Life for Bill Russell had pretty much returned to normal since his 1995 ATF trial. A defendant's acquittal in such cases had one of two long-term results: increased hassle by the feds, or near immunity from it. Russell had been left alone these past thirteen years. He considered suing ATF Agent Lorner for criminal fraud and obstruction of justice, but Juliette convinced him that it was likely futile. Lorner's on very thin ice, Bill, so why don't we just let him keep hopping about. He'll plunge through someday, she had said.

  He reluctantly agreed, Agent Lorner being a very bitter pill to swallow. It seemed as though nothing ever happened to rogue federal agents, no matter who they worked for or what they did. They were truly above justice. All a federal judge had to say was "sovereign immunity."

  Case closed.

  FBI HRT sniper/murderer Lon Horiuchi had proven that. At least the FBI had felt enough pressure by 1995 to take away his rifle. Rumor had it that that was a more severe punishment to "Hooch" than prison. They might as well have cut his balls off, HRT colleague Chris Whitcomb once remarked. Having to live on a military base under constant guard — rarely venturing out in public — was a consequence for blatantly shooting a nursing mother in the face with a .308 and then committing perjury over it.

  Poor "Hooch." No more freedom. No more sniper rifle.

  Maybe a bit of justice had seeped in after all.

  Russell, however, still enjoyed both his freedom and his FAL rifle. Juliette's vigorous motions got it returned in 1996, though somewhat worse for wear from vindictive federal hands. He has stayed in regular contact with the Prestons, having dinner with them several times a year. He is an enthusiastic helper of the Wyoming migration since his retirement.

  Russell holds a small UPS package, puzzled. He hadn't ordered anything from Denver, much less had it sent Red Label. He looks at the sender's name. Harold Krassny. Krassny? The man who owned my FAL and testified at my trial? With his Doug Ritter RSK® Mk3 fixed-blade he slits open the tape and opens the box. Wrapped in a towel is a WW2-era Colt 1911A1 .45 pistol in its issue holster. Whaaat? There is also neat handwritten note.

  Dear Bill,

  I hope you will enjoy this, which served me well in Europe over sixty years ago. For reasons soon to become clear, I won't be needing it any more. Think of it as some long overdue compensation for the crap the ATF put you through back in 1995, and as my gratitude for having the opportunity to help a fellow shooter in time of trouble. It will go well with your FAL during the interesting times ahead.

  I hope that you will remember me then.

  Warm regards,

  Harold

  Russell is bowled over by the unexpected gift. He reverently takes the Colt out of its brown leather flap holster. It shows signs of honest wear, but no abuse. He grins, relishing the smells of the manganese phosphate finish, gun oil, and leather. He removes the magazine and checks the chamber, which is empty. The trigger is pretty decent for an issue .45, and the bore is still sharp. He can't stop grinning. He's never had a WW2 1911A1 — much less one from a combat vet he knows. What a treasure! He reads over the note again, and then notices a postscript at the very bottom.

  P.S. Since I illegally sent/transferred a gun to you across state lines outside of the required NICS background check, paperwork, blah, blah, blah, you should probably burn the box and this P.S. No use having evidence around. You can always say that I gave the Colt to you years ago, when private transfers were still legal.

  Russell smiles as he tears off the postscript. What a fine man! As he lights the box and postscript ablaze in his backyard burn barrel, an uncomfortable notion intrudes on his happy reverie. I hope Harold's not in any trouble.

  Colorado

  Boulder County Sheriff's Office

  Detective Luther Thompkins groans when he sees 36 unread emails in his Inbox. He reads the subject lines first. There is a lot of spam:

  Reduce your mortgage payments NOW!

  Luther Thompkins, enlarge your penis safely and reliably!!!

  Hot babes show it all for you!!

  Et cetera. Thompkins laughs to himself. So, I'm undersexed, got a little dick, and am paying too much interest on my house! How do they know all this? Cleaned of spam, the Inbox is now manageable. He then searches for important emails and his eyes stop at:

  An urgent message from Harold Krassny!

  Harold Krassny? he ponders. It's a vaguely familiar name and Thompkins needs a few seconds to dredge up the memory. That rancher from Wyoming who was my childhood camp counselor? It's curious enough to hear from Krassny, but even more so because it's marked "urgent." Thompkins clicks on the blue text and a new box opens:

  The following message is encrypted.

  To decrypt, click on the question box below:

  Thompkins moves the cursor and clicks on the box. It changes into:

  What was the name of your 4th-grade summer camp?

  What the hell is this? he wonders. He types in "Camp Flaming River" and hits . After a couple of seconds the message scrolls out.

  From: Harold Krassny

  Dear Luther,

  I was your camp counselor, if you'll recall. You had a bit of difficulty there at first, but not for long.

  Thompkins bitterly recalls that summer, being called "our token nigger" by the older boys. Krassny took him under his wing and taught him how to box. How to stand up like a man for himself. How not to take shit. Several days later Thompkins treated the largest of his tormentors to a "token ass-kicking." Nobody at camp ever called him "nigger" after that. As his single mother would often later say "Luther may be scrawny, but he's savin' up to be wiry!"

  Thompkins subconsciously smiles at hearing from Krassny after so many years, and reads on.

  I sincerely apologize for adding to your already crushing caseload, but it was for good reason. I thought you would like to know where to find my body, dead by my own hand.

  Please do not rush over with paramedics, as this email was sent seven hours ago — purposely delayed by a forwarding service. At this reading, I am by now at room temperature. No hurry.

  I am in Suite 1602 of the Excelsior Hotel west of Boulder in the mountains. So as not to disturb the hotel staff (who have been superb), an envelope has been left for you at the front desk. In it is my room cardkey. You will find my body in tidy condition in the bathtub, expired by an overdose of sleeping pills and alcohol.

  Although I have "checked out" without having checked out, my hotel bill was prepaid, along with a nice gratuity for the staff.

  Please do everything you can not to inconvenience or embarrass the Excelsior. Perhaps I could have chosen the Motel 7 for this disembarkation, but there is such a lovely Yamaha baby grand piano in my suite, and the room service is incomparable. I've had a fine last 48 hours here.

  My public farewell note is attached to this email, encrypted with the same password. A handwritten copy of that note will be found in my suite. It will soon have very wide publication on the Net.

  Again, I apologize for this intrusion. You turned out
to be a good man, and a good detective. Perhaps we will meet again. Meanwhile, I wish you every joy in life.

  Best regards,

  Harold Krassny

  Detective Thompkins immediately grabs the phonebook, looks up the number for the Excelsior, and stabs at the phone.

  It is answered on the third ring by a pleasant female voice. "Good evening, the Excelsior Hotel. How may I direct your call?"

  "Suite 1602," Thompkins barks.

  If the operator is offended by his brusqueness, she doesn't show it. "Certainly, sir. Have a pleasant evening."

  Seconds later he hears the phone ringing. It rings for well over a minute without answer. The operator comes back on the line. Thompkins tells her, "I need to speak to your night manager immediately." He is put through at once.

  Thompkins explains that he is enroute because the hotel has a dead or dying man in Suite 1602, and gives the night manager his cell phone number.

  "We're en route with paramedics. Call me immediately from Mr. Krassny's suite."

  Thompkins hangs up and tells his assistant, "Charlie, have the ME and EMTs meet us at the Excelsior. Have them park someplace discreet."

  Thompkins decrypts Krassny's suicide note and prints it out. Skimming it over, he tells Charlie, "You're driving us out to the mountains."

  During the 20 minute trip, Thompkins reads.

  From Harold Krassny,

  To Whom It May Concern:

  I never understood the point of a suicide note. To the author it is invariably redundant. To the readers, eternally incomplete. Whether or not the self-deceased "left a note" is always the third question asked (after "When?" and "How?", of course). If a note cannot explain the author's decision, then how much more inexplicable is its lack?

  So, to fully play the part expected of this role — and not wanting to add to the grief, sorrow, and confusion amongst my living friends and loved ones — I shall "leave a note." My literary skills aside, the answers found herein will remain superficial. Such is the unavoidable nature of the missive.

  Some of you may ask yourselves if there was anything you could have done to prevent my act. Grieve not, dear ones, there was nothing anyone could have done. If there had been, I would have asked. Shy I was not.

  They say that to voluntarily forfeit one's life is an act of depression and loneliness. That's often true, but it's only partly true in my case. I packed up before checkout-time because I finally faced a conclusion long ago suspected: that this is a sick, cruel joke of a world — increasingly uninhabitable for anyone with 35¢ worth of integrity, honor, intelligence, compassion, or decency.

  I did not kill myself.

  I merely preempted the terminal toxicity of our environment.

  I do not blame the Creator. His love for us and His creation remains quite evident through the persistent beauty and wonder we cannot quite manage to completely smother.

  No, this earthly putrescence we've made ourselves.

  Cowardice (and its first cousin, Apathy) creates the same hell on earth as does Evil. It just takes a bit longer, that's all. Edmund Burke said it best, "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." You see, evil is the default of humanity. It is a spiritual force of gravity. It is always present, and it is always to be resisted. Good people, through rare effort, can and have resisted the gravity of evil. America always had powerful legs for jumping, but never developed wings to stay aloft.

  I couldn't tolerate it any longer. The trouble with cynicism these days is that you just can't keep up.

  I had a good run. I served my country during WWII when the government still served America. I enjoyed the undeserved love and companionship of my dear wife, Dolores, for 55 years, and the gift of our two perfect children, Michael and Rachel. I experienced what Twain perfectly described as a "thunderclap of grief." Its suddenness terrifying; intensity deafening; its effect devastating.

  Their death in a small plane crash last year extinguished my last three reasons to carry on past the age of 85. I might as well have been in that plane with them, for we all died in that smoking scar left on a Utah mountainside.

  My beautiful America is gone. My beloved wife and children are gone. The rest of my family are gone. Most of my friends are gone. After months of slogging through the endless sludge of mourning, it dawned on me that my life was effectively over.

  Not, however, without a little "account balancing" before I went; before my health was irretrievably affected.

  Our cultural and economic masters have (through the gradual assent of the people, to be sure) created an impenetrable, soul-sucking web of regulation and oppression. They control our diets, our money, our education, our political institutions, our travel, our communications, and our recreation. The rural sanctuary of ranch and farm are being assaulted. There is nowhere to hide. We have been transformed into cogs of a great machine, all within my lifetime. There will not be, within the next decade or two, any escape from this. After a generation, perhaps, though I never would have seen it.

  Our rulers left one crucial element out of their vast equation. Desperation. They disregarded Sun Tzu's wise counsel of leaving a way of escape to a surrounded enemy. Average people sentenced to what is effectually life imprisonment will begin to realize they have nothing to lose. A few of them will, as I did, "connect the dots" — forming a line leading to their jailers.

  I once read, "Wisdom is knowing what to do next. Courage is doing it."

  If that's true, then integrity is caring to know what to do next.

  I was a warrior. I flew fighters six miles high over Nazi Germany. 343rd Fighter Squadron, 55th Fighter Group, 8th Air Force. I had eleven confirmed aerial kills, and five probables.

  When I arrived at the 55th's first base in Nuthampstead in the fall of 1943, I flew a P-38 Lightning, arguably the world's coldest airplane. It had little cockpit heat, and no combination of cold weather gear really worked. (Once we switched over to P-51s we gave our leather fleece-lined suits and boots to the Red Cross girls for their winter wear. They looked like little brown bears.)

  Great instruments and an excellent shooting platform with lovely handling and no torque, but the P-38 was far too fussy. The Curtiss electric props were very complicated and twitchy, and maintenance on those tightly-cowled twin Allisons was a nightmare. There was always some coolant leak to chase. The superchargers were controlled by an oil regulator which often froze at high altitude, giving the pilot only two throttle settings: 10 or 80 inches of mercury — too little to sustain flight or too much for the supercharger. Finally, the plane's stab elevator and twin booms looked like nothing else in the sky, making us easily recognizable to the enemy. P-38 pilots got only 1.5 Germans per loss, the worst record of the ETO (though they did much better in the Pacific). I had only two kills and one probable in mine.

  The P-38 did, however, make me a lot of money. We used to bet on who would first get from our hardstands to the taxi strip, and I would always win. How? I had learned to contort my arms, hands, and fingers in such a way so that I could start both engines at once. I spent many a fine weekend in London on that trick!

  Just when I'd nearly pulled off a transfer to "Hub" Zemke's P-47 squadron in the 56th FG, we got our P-51D Mustangs. About the same time (this was spring of 1944) our 55th FG transferred to its new base at Wormingford, about six miles from Colchester. No more quagmire mud of Nuthampstead; no more P-38s! Our 343rd FS Mustangs ($51,572 in 1944 dollars!) had a distinctive paint scheme: yellow/green nose and spinner, OD rear fuselage, and yellow rudder. The P-51D was a nearly perfect fighter. The liquid-cooled V-12 Merlin was a joy, it handled like a sports car, and with those drop tanks it had legs for Berlin and back. Good guns, too. If you could get a shot inside 300yds with less than 20 degrees of deflection, those six .50s really did the job. The Mustang wasn't as robust as the Thunderbolt, but it had a much greater range. Most of our missions were long-range escorts of B-17Gs. Bomber crews had to do 25 missions for their tour, but fighter pilots had to do
50. At the end, you got a 50 mission "crush" hat. That and your white silk scarf just drove the ladies wild.

  I'll never forget 1944 Wormingford. The Tannoy public address system constantly droning on. All of us (officers, too) painting invasion stripes on our planes for D-Day. The stray dogs we quickly adopted once threatened with extermination. That day in early August when a horde of G.I.s hopped the fence behind the work line and shocked the entire wheat field because the English farmers were doing it too slowly. Red Cross girls with doughnuts on their fingers like a dozen rings. That lone V1 buzz bomb. The old ruined windmill just below the prop shop. My ground crew waiting like puppies for my return, with smiles and thumbs up when they saw that the red gun tape had been shot off. The huge Christmas Eve air armada with 2,046 bombers and 853 fighters.

  In December 1944 I was hit by flak over Dortmund. My wing-man was also hit and went down. While trying to limp back to base alone a Focke-Wulf 190A-8 hammered me at 900 yards with his four 20mm cannons. I tried to split-S for the deck, but my damaged Mustang just wasn't up to it. I bailed out in the Dutch clouds to fight my way to the Allied lines 50km away. In getting there, however, three Germans died from my Colt .45. I took one of their Lugers, which was easier to scrounge up ammo for, just in case.

  Thompkins' cell phone rudely interrupts. It is the night manager. He found Harold Krassny in the bathtub, quite dead. Thompkins tells him that he is en-route and will cancel the EMT. He grudgingly disconnects the call, as if the action somehow makes Krassny's death a certainty.