Cryptonomicon

On the one hand, this is a pain in the ass. On the other, it gives him a chance to go through the ciphertext by hand, at the very lowest level, which might be useful later. The ineffable talent for finding patterns in chaos cannot do its thing unless he immerses himself in the chaos first. If they do contain patterns, he does not see them just now, in any rational way. But there may be some subrational part of his mind that can go to work, now that the letters have passed before his eyes and through his pencil, and that may suddenly present him with a gift-wrapped clue--or even a full solution--a few weeks from now while he is shaving or antenna-twiddling.

He has been dimly aware, for a while, that Chattan and the others are awake now. Enlisted men are not allowed into the chancel, but the officers get to gather round and admire the gold bar.

"Breaking the code, Waterhouse?" Chattan says, ambling over to the desk, warming his hands with a mug of coffee.

"Making a clean copy," Waterhouse says, and then, because he is not without a certain cunning, adds: "in case the originals are destroyed in transit."

"Very prudent," Chattan nods. "Say, you didn't hide a second gold bar anywhere, did you?"

Waterhouse has been in the military long enough that he does not rise to the bait. "The pattern of sounds made when we tilted the safe back and forth indicated that there was only a single heavy object inside, sir."

Chattan chuckles and takes a sip of his coffee. "I shall be interested to see whether you can break that cipher, Lieutenant Waterhouse. I am tempted to put money on it."

"I sure appreciate that, but it would be a lousy bet, sir," Waterhouse replied. "The chances are very good that Bletchley Park has already broken this cipher, whatever it may be."

"What makes you say that?" Chattan asks absently.

The question is so silly, coming from a man in Chattan's position, that it leaves Waterhouse disoriented. "Sir, Bletchley Park has broken nearly all of the German military and governmental codes."

Chattan makes a face of mock disappointment. "Waterhouse! How unscientific. You are making assumptions."

Waterhouse thinks back and tries to work out the meaning of this. "You think that this cipher might not be German? Or that it might not be military or governmental?"

"I am merely cautioning you against making assumptions," Chattan says.

Waterhouse is still thinking this one over as they are approached by Lieutenant Robson, the commanding officer of the SAS squad. "Sir," he says, "for the benefit of the fellows down in London, we would like to know the combination."

"The combination?" Waterhouse asks blankly. This word, devoid of context, could mean almost anything.

"Yes, sir," Robson says precisely. "To the safe."

"Oh!" Waterhouse says. He is faintly irritated that they would ask him this question. There seems little point in writing down the combination when the equipment needed to break into the safe is sitting right there. It is much more important to have a safe-breaking algorithm than to have one particular solution to a safe-breaking problem. "I don't know," he says. "I forgot."

"You forgot?" Chattan says. He says it on behalf of Robson who appears to be violently biting his tongue. "Did you perhaps write it down before you forgot it?"

"No," Waterhouse says. "But I remember that it consists entirely of prime numbers."

"Well! That narrows it down!" Chattan says cheerfully. Robson does not seem mollified, though.

"And there are five numbers in all, which is interesting since--"

"Since five is itself a prime number!" Chattan says. Once again, Waterhouse is pleased to see his commanding officer displaying signs of a tasteful and expensive education.

"Very well," Robson announces through clenched teeth. "I shall inform the recipients."

Chapter 36 SULTAN

The Grand Wazir of Kinakuta leads them into the offices of his boss, the sultan, and leaves them alone for a few minutes at one corner of the conference table, to build which a whole species of tropical hardwoods had to be extinguished. After that, it is a race among the founders of Epiphyte Corp. to see who can blurt out the first witticism about the size of the sultan's home office deduction. They are in the New Palace, three arms of which wrap around the exotic gardens of the ancient and magnificent Old Palace. This meeting room has a ten-meter-high ceiling. The walls facing onto the garden are made entirely of glass, so the effect is like looking into a terrarium that contains a model of a sultan's palace. Randy has never known much about architecture, and his vocabulary fails him abjectly. The best he could say is that it's sort of like a cross between the Taj Mahal and Angkor Wat.