The Code of History

By John Sliz

A technological mystery mixed with espionage based on the practices of the National Security Agency as they monitor the world. Two people attract their attention because of their unreadable communications. They are using a code that can’t be cracked and soon become the NSA’s greatest foe - the organization must find these people at all costs. The manhunt begins in both Europe and North America, but will they disarm them in time?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Travelogue 219
• Release date: Dec 14, 2021
• ISBN: 9781927679982

John Sliz

Since 2006 John has had 37 books published by a number of different traditional publishers. Most of his books are on the engineers of World War II, but he has also written 4 novels and 4 travel books.

Book preview

The Code of History

by John Sliz

2013, 2015, 2021 © Travelogue 219

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form without the written permission of the publisher.

TL219-205 `The Code of History’ by John Sliz Edition 1.4

December 2021

Published by:

Travelogue 219

Toronto, Canada

www.tl219.com

ISBN 9781927679928

All characters in this novel are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to anyone living or dead is purely coincidental.

Other fiction titles by the same author:

Time in the Infinite Hallway

Nowhere to Run

Urban Snapshots

with Patricia Bandurka:

The Hypnotic Hand

As always, a big thank you to Laura who jokes (sort of) that there should be a support group for writer’s wives.

`Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds’. Albert Einstein

Prologue

Persia 500 B.C.E.

The sun had not been up for very long, but was doing a good job of brightening the tops of the rolling hills when a horse drawn cart approached the coast. On board was a merchant, named Ali of Susa, who looked like he had not been awake for very long. However, at the slow pace that the horse was going, he did not have to be all that alert to drive. In fact, it was the slow methodical pace that was luring him back to sleep. Fortunately the horse knew where he was going.

The cart entered the shadows of one of the foothills and the darkness didn’t help to keep Ali awake. It was the sudden presence of three soldiers jumping out from behind the trees that jarred him back to alertness. They had laid a log across the road to stop all travelers. This forced Ali to stop the cart before the horse tried to walk over the log.

The head guard went up to Ali, as two of his men brushed past him to search the cart’s contents in the back. Where are you going? The head guard asked.

To deliver this lot to Greece for my client, Ali answered like he was bored of the question.

Greece? He looked at Ali suspiciously

One of the guards picked up a pair of wooden folding tablets and opened them up. They were blank.

The head guard noticed what his man was doing. Anything written on them? He asked.

No. They have been newly waxed. The guard put them back.

Anything else?

Furniture. Nothing written. The guard’s tone indicated that he was clearly disappointed by not finding anything illegal.

Despondently the head guard said, Fine. Pass.

The men moved the log to one side and as Ali passed, he began to wonder if this journey was worth the money that his client was paying him. He thought that taking this junk all this way to Greece was a waste of time and money, but it was not his money. Then a thought occurred to him and he smiled. Actually, soon it would be his money.

A few weeks later, Ali reached the house of Leonides in Greece and was not comfortable with the fact that he was not expected.

Who is this from? One of the staff asked with a suspicious tone in his voice. Paulo did not like nor trust Persians; there had been too many wars between them. Despite the peace of the last few years, in his mind, the Persians and Spartans were natural enemies.

Demaratus of Susa, Ali answered.

Paulo did not know that name, but he allowed the cargo to be unloaded. He and his staff were puzzled by the contents and examined every inch for value of some kind. Why bother to send furniture and blank tablets all the way from Persia? Paulo wondered out loud.

Must be a mistake, the cook said and was just about to add his opinion when he saw the lady of the house approach.

Paulo, what is all this? Leonides’ wife, Gorgo, asked when she saw the commotion around the pile.

We are not sure, my lady.

As she examined the contents of the cart she said, Who sent it?

She looked to Ali who said, My client, Demaratus of Susa.

Gorgo smiled. Oh…

The staff became silent and still as they gauged the lady of the house’s reaction. Finally, she spoke to the cook: Take this man inside and give him something to eat.

Thank you my lady, Ali said.

Once Ali was out of sight, Gorgo instructed Paulo, Take these tablets inside and carefully scrape away the wax to see if there is anything written on the wood underneath.

Without hesitation Paulo took the tablets inside.

Anxiously Gorgo waited as her staff used their knives to scrape away the wax. It was not long before one of them said that there was writing underneath. I knew it, Gorgo said. I know my old friend well; he never does anything without a purpose.

Unfortunately, she also knew that his purposes were sometimes misguided and that is what got him ostracized from Athens a few years previously. She was both anxious and cautious about what his hidden message said. Her fears were quickly erased when the entire message was uncovered. Reading his words she knew that Demaratus’ loyalty was still with the Greeks because the message warned that the King of Persia, Xerxes, was secretly building up his army and was planning to attack Greece.

We must warn all of Greece, she said to no one in particular. We must arm ourselves.

Yes my lady, Paulo said.

Paulo, bring the tablets. She went off to find her husband with Paulo trailing behind, carrying the tablets containing the hidden message.

A few years later, Demaratus of Susa was pleased to learn that the Greeks were waiting for the Persians’ invasion fleet and had defeated them. His steganographical code – and probably the first in history – had worked. He had successfully covered a secret message, sent it past the people who he didn’t want to read it and into the hands of friends, who knew how to read it.

Thanks to Demaratus of Susa, 500 B.C.E. belonged to the code makers.

"Diseases come;

Diseases go;

Welcome to the final show"

From `Every Generation Has Its Own Disease’

By Fury In The Slaughterhouse

Steganography

Definition: derived from the Greek words steganos, meaning `covered’, and graphein, meaning `to write’.

A tall lanky man wearing blue jeans, a plain white t-shirt, aviator sunglasses and a Yankees baseball cap wandered through Glasgow airport at a slower pace than the rest of the other travelers. Most people brushed past him in a hurry and nearly all of them had luggage with them. This man only had a beat-up green knapsack that was slung over his broad shoulder as he walked through the building scanning for an internet café.

Eventually he saw a round table with four computers on it in the middle of a waiting area and thought, that’s it? Not much of an internet café.

Despite the openness of the computer setup, he sat down and put the large worn knapsack on the floor by his feet. It was good to get it off his back because it was fairly heavy and a little cumbersome. He logged on and paid for fifteen minutes of computer time. From his pocket, he pulled out a USB stick and put it in the port. From it he uploaded a file and emailed it to four people.

By the time that he sat back, stretched and started to log off, his message had already travelled through a local server and became part of a packet that raced through the fiber-optic cable that spanned the Atlantic Ocean. On the other side of the ocean, the cable came ashore on the eastern seaboard inside a small, boring looking building in Tuckerton, New Jersey. From there the packet was routed to the local phone company where it and many others went through a device that was designed to look for specific triggers. In this particular case, the parameter that was reached was codes. The small black box immediately copied the file sent from Scotland, let the original message go on its way, and then sent the copy to the National Security Agency in Maryland.

Finished, the man got up and, with his head lowered, he walked out of the airport. On this particular Monday, he had a train to catch.

* * * * *

Crypto City, Maryland

In a cubicle in the middle of a sea of cubicles in one of the fifty buildings that made up part of the three hundred and twenty-five acres that was the National Security Agency’s kingdom, a woman sat at her computer wishing that she was anywhere but where she was. Her name was Sharon Gibson and she was one of many intercept operators on duty. Her hair was naturally chestnut coloured, thin and straight, her eyes were brown, her complexion was pale but clear, and the three workouts a week at the gym kept her fit. At thirty-five the only reason that she was still single was because her career came first.

Well, it used to. These days she had a metaphoric headache from hitting her head on the glass ceiling. However, that is her - sort of - joke excuse why she hadn’t advanced in the NSA. Truth was that her boss’ boss was a woman and that there were plenty of women in power in this organization, so she couldn’t use the glass ceiling as an excuse. The frustrating thing was that she was in the wrong department to get noticed. Hardly anyone was promoted out of her section and the general consensus was that if you wanted to get anywhere you had to learn Arabic or some other language of America’s enemies so you could be transferred to a high profile department. And that required a lot more training, something that she didn’t know if she wanted to do at this stage of her life.

How she got a job at the NSA was simple.

In 2003, she answered a job ad that was listed as a Network Intelligence Analyst. The candidate had to have the basic qualifications of three plus years' experience with intelligence analysis, knowledge of TCP/IP protocols, the ability to perform basic protocol and network analysis and have TS/SCI clearance. A BA or BS degree in a related field was a bonus, as was experience with advanced telecommunications, LAN, WAN, routers, data communicators' connectivity, SIGINT and UNIX. To top it off, possession of excellent technical writing skills was also an asset. Above all of this the candidate had to pass a security investigation.

How she got the job she didn’t know. Sure she had the basic qualifications, but she didn’t have a BA or BS and her knowledge of the other systems was weak at best. Her looks probably helped. She wasn’t strikingly beautiful, but she was very easy on the eyes, which explained why people were always looking at her. She learned to deal with people who constantly stared at her.

Regardless, she was glad to get the job and at first she loved it and she particularly liked the fact that they watched politicians. A former director stated in the NSA newsletter in June 1997: The public has a duty to watch its government closely and keep it on the right track.

She loved that! She knew that people abuse their power if given the chance and that most politicians are self-righteous elitist s.o.b.s. She yearned to again nail one of them in their arrogance.

Sharon thought back to the `bust’ a couple of years ago. It was a Republican presidential candidate who, like most people with power, thought that he could get away with anything by simply talking or bullying his way out of it. Sharon hated this guy’s arrogance from the first message she intercepted to his mistress. He was popular and the polls reflected that fact and the first couple of speeches during his campaign quest for power were good, which increased his popularity. However, as the race in his party hit a breaking point, he decided to use some of the campaign funds for personal use. In other words, he spent it on his mistress. Clearly, he had grown too big and too arrogant. Sharon was only too happy to help provide the evidence to put him away. To her, this was more important than any paycheck.

Unfortunately, over the last few years the fire had died down somewhat. She was still busting people, but no one nearly as glamorous as that politician. And, unfortunately, she couldn’t brag to anyone outside the office about it. Still, she was more or less happy with her job and life despite dragging herself into the office these last few weeks. She was drained both physically and spiritually and she hoped that she just needed a vacation and/or a man. But at least she knew that the vacation was almost here. The man? Who knows when Mister `it’s about time’ will show up.

A beep signaling an alert woke Sharon out of her post lunch coma and within seconds she was reading an email sent from the UK which, because it used an American based server, the NSA had the legal right to read. This was one of the rule changes made on September 12th, 2001; a direct reaction to 9/11. At the press conference on September 12th, 2001, the director from the NSA spoke for only a minute, but probably had the greatest single impact when he presented the new rules for the internet. It basically gave the NSA power to eavesdrop on whoever they wanted to, whenever they wanted to.

This fit in well with the intercept operator’s motto, `In God we trust. All others we monitor.’ In short they watched everyone, including themselves. Sharon strongly suspected that there was someone monitoring her and her colleagues as they spied on everyone else. She once asked her supervisor, Dale Robinson, and he told her, Do your job above suspicion and all will be fine.

That she had done for the last eight years and never once had a problem. Having said that, it left her with the overwhelming feeling that it is impossible to have a secret these days. Well, she knew first hand that there were absolutely no secrets on the internet and almost none in the real world. She and her colleagues had the tools and the ability to read any email sent in the world. Yet with so many messages being sent every day, it was impossible to read every one so a number of alerts were set in place. Many words could trigger the alert and coded messages could as well. This email triggered the alert because the entire message was coded; except for one word and the subject the entire email was encrypted.Those at the NSA hated encrypted emails, especially one that read:

Subject: One

GTM E TQNC TOSB. RATCEP QTSD ON F.A. TDECN GTFDCAH DDJQ OJGC FEL. BXAF JUE CNTDH BM ACBECN ES VCAWZJY OKBWUV. QAWY EWY AZNVV. AVVO ER XY VEVWA. WY ORK ONT LS U UFAHO ENTE VN ZAW FFC.

Seagull

She looked at the code and thought that it looked pretty simple; she noticed right away that there were a number of double letters and isolated letters. Who needs a computer? She thought. I could probably break this one by using good old frequency analysis.

With a pen and paper in hand she thought that this should be fun. Even if it is a one-time cipher there is enough of it to break. It always amazed her how many amateur code makers there were out there who all thought that they could write a code that was unbreakable. Or use encryption software only scrambled to 64 bits.

She replaced E with an I and she figured that F.A. was U.S. After ten minutes of working on it she had nothing but gibberish on the page; she was getting nowhere and was about to try something else when her thoughts were interrupted by a tall lanky man in his early forties who looked like a poor man’s version ofthe actor, James Cromwell, though not nearly as tall. It was Dale who asked her, What are you doing Sharon? Crosswords?

No. I thought that I could break this one by frequency analysis. It looks simple enough.

She showed Dale the cipher text.

And what does the plain text read?

Um…I haven’t deciphered it yet.

Oh. He gave her a look.

She turned back to her computer. I’ll sick Wally on it.

Right. He went to the next cubicle to see Gary Park.

Wally was her pet name for her favorite decryption program, which could break any 64 bit encryption.

As Wally was running, she said out loud Let’s see who Seagull is… Tracing the account, she read the name, Ivan Sanchez. What an odd name, she thought. Half Russian, half Spanish. Hmmm, Cuban maybe?

And any spy from communist Cuba wasn’t good.

She figured that Ivan’s code would be broken within minutes, after all this is the NSA where no code is left unbroken. Well, that is the intention. In reality, their record was further from perfect than the NSA was comfortable with.

As she patiently waited for the results her thoughts carried her mind away to her vacation in two weeks. She smiled when she thought of the absence of computers on the beaches of the Dominican Republic. Sun, rum and no NSA. There she will pretend that NSA stands for No Such Agency.

What are you thinking about? It was Gary Park, the man who occupied the cubicle to her left. He was the same height as her and bald. He didn’t wear glasses, but Sharon always thought that he had the type of face that suited them. Nor could she stop thinking that he looked like Charlie Brown. And that endeared him to her. After all, who doesn’t love Charlie Brown?

To answer his question, she stated, My vacation.

Me too.

You are looking forward to my vacation too?

You bet. I’m going to reroute one of the National Reconnaissance Agency’s satellites to watch you on the beach.

She laughed and told him to, Go for it.

I will, he said.

I don’t think that our bosses will approve.

Gary nodded. Maybe. But if they’re male and straight they wouldn’t mind. Heck, even some of the gay guys around here would appreciate your…

Sharon cut him off by saying, Don’t say another word bucko.

Got to split, Gary said and then disappeared as quickly as he had appeared.

Sharon stared back at her monitor.

A voice broke her trance by saying, This one is taking a while, isn’t it? What do you have here? It was Dale who was standing over her shoulder.

Snapping back from her daydream, she thought, geez for a big man he can really sneak up on people and then said, Aw, I’m not sure.

Where was it sent from? Dale asked and leaned in to read the screen.

Glasgow…from an Ivan Sanchez and it was sent to four people.

Any idea who or where they are?

No.

Any response from the four recipients?

No, but they all read the email. That I know.

Who are they?

She read the list: FOAH, BradPitt, ShoeMe and IvanSanchez@thetwominutetomidnightsocialclub.

Brad Pitt? The Brad Pitt?

I don’t think so.

Check it out anyway. See if he received any emails when this Brat Pitt did.

Right. I’m sure he’ll love that if he ever finds out.

He won’t. Also, find out Ian’s history.

Ivan’s.

Whatever. Find out Ivan’s and the Two Minute To Midnight Social Club’s history.

Yes boss.

Gary popped his bald head over the cubicle only high enough to allow his brown eyes to glare at Sharon. It looked eerie when he did that, but that was the point because it made her laugh.

What? She said.

Coffee?

Give me a couple of minutes, okay?

Sure, he said as he slowly sat back down, his head disappearing from Sharon’s view. It was humorous the way he did it, which made her laugh again. He was good at hamming things up.

It took only a few minutes for Sharon to find out that the actor Brad Pitt was on set with his cell phone off during the time that the other Brad Pitt read the email. It took three