Oh, a pianist… “We used to call them telegraphers.” Lev shrugged. “Unimaginative, I know…”
The Balt refilled Lev’s glass. “A telegrapher, then. A telegrapher who is an expert in codes.”
Lev grunted. “There are no more experts in codes, Mister Smith. Why do you think I’m sitting here on this filthy island instead of shining like a star in Moscow? Today there is only Kolossal, and Kolossal is unbreakable.”
“I’ll bet you tried, though.”
Tried? Lev swallowed his drink. Oh, they’d tried all right. Kolossal was the code-world’s version of mutually-assured destruction. It had sprung, fully-formed, onto the Net about five years ago, a completely foolproof unbreakable encryption system. Even if you knew how it worked, it was impossible to break out a message encrypted using Kolossal unless it was meant for you. Rumour was that it had been developed by a group of cypher-nuts in Turin, who had then decided that everybody should have it and proceeded to post it into public domain. Now everybody used it. Moscow, Langley, London, the multinationals. Everybody.
The Federal Security Service had run a supercomputer and thirty of Russia’s elite coders at Kolossal continuously for a year to discover its secrets, and they had been none the wiser. In desperation they had tried to kidnap one of the original Turin team, but they were nowhere to be found. Spirited away by the Mafia, the story went, for whom they were developing Son of Kolossal, which would not only encrypt messages but dance the gavotte while it did it.
At the end of that year, Lev had found himself wandering naked along the banks of the Moskva with no idea who he was or what had happened to his clothes.
“It’s a wonder we didn’t all go insane,” he said quietly.
Smith was looking at him with an unreadable expression on his face. Lev hoped it wasn’t pity.
“It’s not Kolossal,” said the Balt. “But it might be just as unbreakable.”
Lev blinked at him. “Anything less than Kolossal,” he said, “is just not safe.”
The Balt grinned suddenly and took a folded sheet of paper from an inside pocket of his jacket. He smoothed it out and handed it over, and Lev looked down at the number-groups printed on it and felt an almost sexual surge of nostalgia.
“Which language is this in?” he asked.
“Russian.”
Lev snorted. “Do you have a pen?”
The Balt didn’t. Finally they asked the waitress – who also didn’t have a pen, but did have a rather blunt eyebrow pencil, which she deigned to lend them, all in the spirit of fun, and Lev did a frequency count on the message, jotting his figures on a napkin. The Balt poured himself another drink and sat back to watch.
TEN MINUTES LATER, Lev looked up and said, “Very funny.”
The Balt smiled.
The message was a basic poem-key encryption, the kind of thing that had been dangerously leaky during the Second World War. The plaintext consisted of a dozen names and addresses lifted from the Moscow telephone directory. The poem… Lev spent another ten minutes doing sums… well, it was certainly Russian – dark birch forests, a lost love, the looming threat of winter. Pasternak? Turgenev? Lev thought it was familiar, but really it could have been almost any Russian poem; it could almost have summed up the Russian soul. It certainly summed up his. All of a sudden he felt rather sad and ashamed.
“I think you should ask someone else to do this thing for you,” he mumbled, starting to stand up.
The Balt didn’t move. “The last person I showed that poem to told me he’d need at least two hours and access to all kinds of tables and reference books,” he said.
Lev shrugged, hardly even surprised not to have been first choice. “Classicists,” he said.
“You decrypted it in twenty minutes with a paper napkin and an eyebrow pencil. I think you’re exactly the person I’ve been looking for.” When Lev remained standing, the Balt said, “A hundred thousand Swiss francs, in any currency you choose, in any bank account you choose, anywhere in the world. Half now, half when you’re finished.”
Lev sat down, eyes brimming with tears, knowing how close he was to doing it for the price of a couple of drinks. “It’s been…” He sniffed and rubbed his eyes. “It’s been a long time. I may not be able to help you.”
“Perhaps a consulting fee, then,” said the Balt. “Paid daily. Perhaps that would be fairer.”
Lev nodded. “I would prefer that.”
“Before we begin, I should warn you that there may be some danger.”
“Danger?”
For the first time, the Balt looked fractionally uncomfortable. “I don’t know how, or why, but there may be some danger. But that’s my problem and I’ll do my best to protect you while you work, and afterward.” He blinked at Lev. “If you were to get up and leave right now, I wouldn’t hold it against you.”
Lev did think about it. For almost a second. He waved a hand, inheritor of the Cheka, the NKVD, the KGB, child of Enigma and Kolossal. “I no longer have anything to be afraid of,” he said, and cringed inwardly. Such a Russian thing to say.
The Balt looked sad. “Well, let’s hope this doesn’t turn out to be a learning experience for you. Is there anything you will need?”
Lev looked at him, wondering how his life had suddenly taken such a turn. “I will need to retrieve my laptop from Mr Keoshgerian,” he said.
LEV’S LAPTOP WAS made entirely of cloth. It looked like something from a fabric conditioner commercial. The tapboard resembled an alphanumeric embroidery sampler, and the printer/scanner/copier could have been mistaken for a brightly-coloured hand towel. All rolled up and stuffed into a small drawstring bag, it looked like one of those little cushions people buy to rest their heads on during long coach journeys. Rudi had never seen anything like it before.
“We did magic, once upon a time,” Lev said with a ghost of pride. “And we never told anyone.”
“How does it work?” Rudi asked, thinking about the patents involved.
Lev shrugged. “Don’t know. You just plug one end into an electrical socket, the other end into an entertainment set, and it works. You can even wash it, but if the water’s too hot it destroys the memory and processor threads, and then all you’ve got is some bits of rug. We’ll need to buy cables for it. And an external hard drive. A big hard drive.”
“Not a problem.”
Lev ran his fingers over the woven surfaces. “I never could bear to sell it. Pawn it now and again, perhaps, but never sell it. I did think once I’d take it to one of the hardware houses, sell them the technology. But my former employers would have heard about it, and they would have sent someone to kill me. Someone like you.”
Rudi looked at the little Russian. They would have sent someone to kill me. Lev didn’t sound sad or angry, just rather matter-of-fact, like a father who has just caught the weather forecast and discovered that the family picnic is going to be rained off. And what was that someone like you all about?
“Do you need a drink?” he asked.
Lev shook his head. “I need to work.”
Rudi didn’t think that Lev needed to worry about his former employers. The last time he had been in Russia – European Russia, this was, what they were just beginning to call Rus back then – the local intelligence services hadn’t been anything to phone home about.
RUDI HAD A room in one of the swanky hotels in the New Town, so Lev moved his few belongings – some books, an old iPod, a bag of clothes – in there, and after the formalities were over and he had some money in his pocket, Lev sat down and set up the cloth laptop. When it was ready he said, “Show me this thing that no one else can decrypt.”