Page 10 of Cry Havoc (Tom Reece #1)
Lavrinenko dug into a glass jar of nearly room temperature black caviar with a mother-of-pearl spoon and shoveled it into his waiting mouth while Egorov flipped through the classified file.
The director had picked up his caviar habit during the Nazi blockade of Leningrad, when it was sold in bulk, back before it had become an expensive delicacy.
Exports of the popular black gold in the prewar years had allowed the Soviet Union to industrialize at an exponential pace.
Rich in vitamins, minerals, fats, and proteins, the salted fish eggs were quickly added to military provisions at the outset of the war, though the tin rations were reserved for pilots and submariners.
They were not wasted on the human fodder thrown against the Germans in a war of attrition in what the West called the Eastern Front.
It intrigued the director that the wild sturgeon roe had a role in the Soviet victory of the Great Patriotic War, that something so small and delicate could have such historical impact.
Like any good Russian, Lavrinenko washed it down with vodka.
Aside from his breakfast and dinner, which he took at his flat, Lavrinenko rarely left his desk at GRU headquarters.
Instead, he preferred to summon subordinates to his office while sustaining himself on an incessant diet of ?erdap Fishery Kladovo caviar from eastern Serbia and his favored Stolichnaya vodka.
Kladovo caviar had a history dating back to the 1600s.
There was none better. It was rumored to have been the caviar selected for the RMS Titanic’s maiden voyage, though that did not end well.
Kladovo came from sturgeon that lived the majority of their lives in the Black Sea.
At reproductive age they would journey from the salt water of the sea to the fresh waters of the Upper Danube, which offered ideal spawning conditions.
The long migration allowed their eggs to reach the final stage of embryonic development.
By that stage of the journey, the eggs contained all the nutrients needed for survival of the pending hatch.
Roe harvested too early lacked those nutrients.
Producing the highest quality roe required patience.
Patience was vital to survival in the secret world as well, which was why Lavrinenko had outlived many of his contemporaries.
The large man swallowed another spoonful and thought of the dams planned for the Iron Gates Gorge section of the Danube River, which he knew would block the prized sturgeon from their spawning areas.
Since the clock was ticking on his favorite caviar, Lavrinenko was determined to enjoy the Black Pearl of Kladovo while he still could.
He recognized that there were some things even beyond the control of the Soviet Union’s most ruthless intelligence organization.
Lavrinenko’s dark eyes never left the engineer as he read, the older man evaluating his subordinate, searching for weaknesses to exploit.
Egorov closed the file and tapped the document with his index finger before looking up and shifting his gaze between his two superiors.
“So, it’s true? We have them?” he asked.
“We do,” Lavrinenko replied. “The U.S. spy ship, the USS Pueblo, and her crew, are in the custody of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The General Staff Department of the Korean People’s Army’s Reconnaissance Bureau has custody of the KW-7, KL-47, and KWR-37.”
“But those are the American’s most secure cipher machines.”
“You are correct, Comrade.”
The engineer took on an otherwise absent air of confidence. He was now in his element. Or perhaps he was relieved that he was not being sent to the crematorium.
“You built the rotor reader—a device that copies American keying material—did you not?” asked Lavrinenko.
“I did.”
“How?”
“I was provided keying material and rotor diagrams. I built the reader around that.”
“How does it work?”
“It fits in a coat pocket, about this big,” Egorov said, holding up his hands. “It folds in half to the size of a pack of cigarettes. Once open, it can be mated with the key material; a rod is then pushed over the top to make an exact copy. It’s really quite basic.”
“Where did the key material come from?” Lavrinenko tested.
“I was never told.”
The director nodded.
“How did you know it would work?”
“I didn’t. I still don’t. But if we physically acquire the equipment—the KW-7, KL-47, and KWR-37—from the Koreans, I can test it and I am confident I can reverse engineer complete systems.”
“I see.”
Egorov swallowed.
“I will need time with the systems.”
“We will bring them to you.”
“Here?”
“Or in Berlin.”
“Berlin would be best. I have access to machinery with tighter tolerances in my lab there. What exactly do we have?”
“The KL-47 was slightly damaged, but we recovered a fully intact KWR-37 and KW-7, along with a KWQ-8 repair kit, additional cryptographic equipment, keying materials, maintenance manuals, and operating instructions. There may be more, as it is still early in the exploitation process.”
Lavrinenko studied the smaller man.
“You seem troubled.”
“As I am sure you are aware, Director, even with these devices that allow for real-time encryption, offline encryption, and receiving fleet transmissions, the Americans must have already changed the codes. They will discern that the Koreans have shared all intelligence from the Pueblo with us. The machines without updated keying material—the correct codes—will be useless. Kerckhoff’s Principle. ”
“What?”
“Kerckhoff’s Principle, formulated by Dutch cryptographer Auguste Kerckhoff. He found that the most secure cryptosystem was one that would not be compromised if it was known by the enemy.”
“Explain.”
“In other words, design the system under the assumption that your enemy will compromise it. Make that your given. If that is true, how do you make it unusable?”
“You change the key.”
“That principle forms the foundation of all modern cryptographic innovation. We may have the American encryption machines, but if they change the key, which they invariably have, those machines are essentially useless.”
Egorov looked from Lavrinenko to Penkovsky.
“We would need someone on the inside passing us new keying material for this exercise to be useful.”
The director and his deputy remained silent.
Egorov swallowed again.
“I am sorry, Comrades. I forget myself.”
Lavrinenko waved his hand in the air, sweeping the misstep aside.
“Continue,” Lavrinenko ordered.
“The KW-7 and KL-47 machines were built adhering to the work of an American mathematician named Claude Shannon.”
“Who is he?” Lavrinenko asked.
“One of the more brilliant minds of the twentieth century. If he was on our side, there would be no stopping us. He won the Nobel Prize in ’39. Wrote a paper called ‘A Mathematical Theory of Communication.’ I have studied his work extensively.”
“Why is he important?”
“He built on Kerckhoff’s Principle. He counseled that ‘one ought to design systems under the assumption that the enemy will immediately gain full familiarity with them.’ ”
“For situations just such as this,” Lavrinenko said.
“That’s correct, sir.”
“Are the American crypto devices similar to the Fialka?” the director asked, using the code name for the Soviet M-125 cipher machine with which he was familiar.
“All modern cipher machines trace lineage back to Enigma even though they use different mathematical ciphering functions. Our Fialka uses ten rotating electrotechnical cipher rotors—wheels—while Enigma used three or four depending on the model. I have an Enigma in my lab in Berlin. As you know, Fialka has thirty contacts on each rotor in both Cyrillic and Latin, and the KGB has a model that uses rotors with the Russian alphabet. The American machines use eight rotors. The Swiss NEMA has ten. They are all similar in that a code is required to decipher the message traffic.”
“We are obviously talking to the right person,” Lavrinenko said. Praise could be as useful as fear when dealing with someone like Egorov. “Tell me more about the KW-7 and KL-47.”
“Well,” Egorov said, pushing his glasses back in place.
“Both were developed by the NSA but built by private corporations. The KW-7 is built by Honeywell. The KL-47 is built by a company called the Teletype Corporation. They operate off the same principles. Think of the KW-7 as a tactical-level device sending coded messages via UHF—ultra high frequency radio waves. From the photos in this file, it looks like it connects to a Teletype Model 28 printer. The KL-47 uses the same cipher wheels and accepts the same keying material but is larger and has a built-in keyboard and printer. They both sync with machines on the receiving end, machines that also need the same message key. I’ll know much more once I have disassembled them. ”
“I will expect a detailed report.”
“You will have it, sir.”
“I don’t have to tell you the level of importance this has for the Party,” Lavrinenko said.
“I understand.”
“I know you do. Failure will not be tolerated.”
The engineer attempted to swallow but found his throat too dry to complete the act.
“I can’t believe the Americans did not scuttle their ship or destroy these machines,” Egorov said, changing the direction of the conversation and again tapping the file in his hands.
“They tried, but upon inspection it appears that the ship had very little in the way of destructive devices. Most everything was still intact. As to why they did not scuttle their ship, perhaps the Americans are not the adversaries we thought?” Lavrinenko offered.
“And the sailors?”
“They will stay in the DPRK.”
“For how long?”