“It came in last night, sir, but neither the colonel nor I, sir, was immediately available to decrypt it.”
“And only you or the colonel is able to do that?”
“Plus, of course, Lieutenant Fischer,” Lieutenant Colonel Raymond said. “And he isn’t available.”
Graham realized his temper was about to flare.
You could have sent the still-encrypted message over here, rather than wait hours until they found you, Colonel. Believe it or not, we could have decrypted it here.
“Well, Fischer’s on his way back, Colonel,” Graham said, finally and calmly. “The last word I had was that he’ll probably be here tomorrow.”
“Yes, sir,” Lieutenant Colonel Raymond said.
Graham watched as Raymond first freed himself from his handcuff, then unlocked the briefcase, took from it a large manila envelope—stamped TOP SECRET—and then took from that a business-size envelope—also stamped TOP SECRET—and handed that to Graham.
“Thank you,” Graham said. “Please have a seat, Colonel. There will probably be a reply. Can I offer you a little something?”
“No, sir. Thank you, sir.”
“Coffee, maybe?”
“Yes, sir. If it wouldn’t be a problem,” Raymond said as he sat in one of the armchairs.
Graham raised his voice. “Alice, it’s Maxwell House time in here.”
“Coming right up!”
Graham opened the envelope and removed the contents. He read it as far as the first paragraph before he knew he wasn’t going to like it.
“Alice,” he called. “Belay the coffee in here! The colonel will take it in your office.” He looked at Raymond. “This is not quite what I expected. Would you mind . . .”
Raymond was already on his feet.
“Yes, sir,” Raymond said. “I understand, sir. I did the decryption myself. That message is a bit unusual, isn’t it, sir?”
Again Graham felt his temper flare. This time he had an even harder time keeping it contained.
What Raymond had said he shouldn’t have said, although it was true. “A bit unusual” was something of an understatement. But what had ignited Graham’s anger was that Raymond acknowledged that he had read the message during the decryption process.
The only way to avoid that was for the individual actually writing the message to encrypt it, and then transmit it, himself, and for the recipient to personally receive and then decrypt it.
Otherwise, any number of people who had no business being familiar with the message at all—secretaries, cryptographers, radio operators, typists—had a valid reason to read the message and thus become familiar with it.
This system made necessary the use of code names for people and places and operations within the encrypted message itself. The theory being that if only the author and the recipient knew that “Tex” was Major Cletus Frade and
“Aggie” was Colonel A. F. Graham, et cetera, the clerks, et cetera, involved in the transmission and receipt of the message who had read it would not know what they had read.
“Yes, it is,” Graham replied, his temper under control. “This shouldn’t take long, Colonel. Thank you for your patience.”
“Not at all, sir.”
Lieutenant Colonel Raymond left the office, closing the door after himself.
Dulles got up and walked to Graham’s desk and looked over his shoulder at the message.
Graham knew what all the code names meant, but Dulles had to ask about some of them:
“Pinocchio? Who’s that?”