In the dark, p.20
In the Dark, page 20
Let’s not talk about that any more: it’s time to get back to the main story.
The following afternoon, I went to the hospital to see Huang Yiyi. She had already discharged herself. It was just a bad cold – these things come on quickly and leave just as fast; all she needed was to take some medicine and it sorted itself out. On the way back from the hospital I debated with myself whether I should go and see her at home. In the end I thought it was my duty as her boss, so I decided to get together some fruit and then go and see her. I didn’t know if she really hated me or was just pretending to be cold and distant, but when she saw me she was positively icy and her words were cutting. I asked her if she was feeling any better, and she glared at me and said, ‘That’s nothing to do with you. I guess you’ll be happy when I’m dead!’ I just stood there not knowing what to say. Seeing me all silent she got really angry, and shouted at me: ‘Say something!’
‘I don’t know what to say. You should rest. I will leave.’
She immediately became furious and cursed me, saying that she should have guessed I wasn’t really concerned about her.
The only thing I could do was to stay and say, ‘Yiyi, I really wanted to see you.’
She smiled coldly. ‘I guess you came here to make fun of me.’
I raised my voice. ‘Can’t you say anything nice!’
Seeing I was getting angry, she got me to sit down and play a game of go with her. I didn’t want to play because there was no way I was good enough. She paid no attention to me but started scrutinizing the board, black pieces in one hand and white pieces in the other, helping me to play against her. She looked like a complete lunatic talking to herself: ‘Ah, I knew you would take that spot … if you put your piece there then mine goes here … the next piece someone at your level would put here. Actually that’s a really stupid move, but what can you do, that’s the level you play at …’ In the end I was forced to take over my go pieces and start playing against her properly.
We played, and then the board ended up soaked in her tears: we were back to square one! She was asking me again why I didn’t love her.
‘Can we please talk about something else?’
‘But I want to talk about it. I want you to tell me why you don’t love me.’
I thought about it for a moment. ‘Because I love someone else.’
She looked at me. ‘Who? You mean … your late wife?’
I nodded.
‘Don’t you think that’s a bit weird?’
‘I think … until the dead person has been buried, to find someone new would be wrong.’
She smiled coldly. ‘Your wife is dead. Don’t you think it is disrespectful to leave her unburied, sitting on your little home-made altar?’
‘I’m waiting for the right day.’
‘When will that be, the anniversary of her death? Christmas? The anniversary of the founding of the PLA? Or are you planning to wait until National Day?’
‘No, none of those.’
‘You’re not telling me you’re going to wait until we’ve cracked RECOVERY?’
‘Yes.’
There was a strange light in her eyes, and she looked at me fixedly for a long time, then she said, ‘You mean … if I crack RECOVERY you will love me?’
I laughed bitterly. ‘You carry on about love day in and day out; is love really that important?’
‘Is there anything more important than love?’
‘Right now cracking RECOVERY is the most important thing for me, more important than everything else put together. If you’re talking about love, that’s the very greatest kind of love. It is the living embodiment of our love for the country, our love for the Party, our love for the people, and for Communism.’
‘But our Party, our country, our people and Communism don’t say that you can only love them; that you can’t love anyone else.’
‘All other kinds of love are subordinate to those. The only thing I care about right now is cracking RECOVERY: nothing else.’
‘I want to crack RECOVERY too, and I am sure that if you promise me one thing, I can do it.’
‘Provided it is nothing to do with loving you, any other request I will grant.’
‘There is nothing I want right now. If I can’t crack RECOVERY, I don’t want anything. But if I do crack it, I want you to promise me something.’
‘What?’
‘Marry me. I want you to marry me!’
What could I say to that? It was a perfectly reasonable request. When Abing helped us out, the Party wanted to find a wife for him, and if Huang Yiyi really did crack RECOVERY, her achievements would far outstrip anything that Abing had done. In that case we would do whatever was necessary to make her happy, providing it wasn’t actually against the law. I, especially, would do anything for her. If she cracked RECOVERY, I would be one of the beneficiaries, so I had no reason to refuse her request, either as a private individual or as her boss. If there was not a very special reason, I would say yes without hesitation; even if I didn’t love her I would still be willing to marry her. Besides which – how could I not love her? She was so pretty, so talented, so attractive, what kind of man could resist? Any man would fall for her, and if she seemed to have a problematic lifestyle, no doubt it largely came about because there were so many men who fancied her. She was so seductive, and on top of that she had lived for a long time abroad, which perhaps gave her a more free and easy manner with men than most women then had. As a wife, that would of course be a shortcoming, but I think that as far as most men were concerned her attractions would always outweigh her shortcomings. I would even say that if she cracked RECOVERY, even if she had nothing going for her at all, and had this problematic lifestyle, I would still have been willing to marry her. Just like Lin Xiaofang, I would have been proud to devote the rest of my life to such a heroine!
But I … couldn’t.
Why?
Because Xiaoyu was still alive.
It was all a lie, an elaborate cover story cunningly constructed by headquarters. The aim was to give Xiaoyu a secure identity for her espionage work after I left Russia. After her ‘death’ she changed her name and moved from Moscow to Leningrad, giving up her job at the embassy to become an illegal arms-dealer. Just like Comrade Aeroplane she had become a full-time spy. At that time, apart from a few senior people at headquarters, no one was in on the secret, not even Unit Director Luo. To begin with I didn’t even know myself. How did I find out? Well, it was Director Tie who told me. It seems that while he was in Beijing he heard some gossip about Huang Yiyi pursuing me, and so he sent me a letter in which he honestly informed me about what had actually happened. That was the letter that Unit Director Luo had given me. That day I was of course very shocked, but I also suddenly understood why the Party had demanded that I make such a show of bringing Xiaoyu’s ashes home, and why the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had held such a large memorial ceremony, and told me to set up an altar at home … It was all done to publicize her ‘death’ as much as possible. We wanted as many people as possible to know that I had lost my wife; that was crucial for her safety. And the opposite was also true: the more people who knew she was alive, the greater the danger.
That evening I had no choice: Huang Yiyi had pushed me to the point of no return. I had only two options: one was to agree to her demand and marry her after she cracked RECOVERY, the second was to tell her the truth and let her get over it. I chose the second, because I thought the first was impossible; it would hurt her too much. It would have been a double lie, with the damage twice as deep. I simply couldn’t bear it. So I made her swear an oath (that she would keep this a secret and never let anyone else know) in front of a statue of Chairman Mao, and then I told her the truth. She seemed to be very shocked at the whole thing, and watched me in silence. Then she suddenly seemed to explode – she burst into tears, wailing and covering her face with both hands. She ran out, and though I called to her, and went after her, she paid no attention to me.
That night I walked up and down outside her building until I saw the light in her room go out. Seeing nothing unusual, I went home. I was sure it had been a terrible shock to her, but at least now she would be under no illusions. The problem was that I had no idea how she would cope with the situation. Would she insist on leaving Unit 701? She was always so decisive; she didn’t think about the consequences. I was really worried that she would do something hasty, and both she and the Party would suffer from it. It was for that reason I wrote her a long letter that night and pushed it under her door, in the hope she would face up to the whole thing squarely.
I don’t know if it was because of my letter or for some other reason, but she arrived on time at her office the next day – which was pleasing, but scary. I quickly realized that she had changed: she wasn’t as cheerful as she had been before, she spoke less and seemed colder, particularly towards me. Her eyes shone with an icy glitter, which left me uneasy and at a loss.
One afternoon we had a meeting which was intended to help Huang Yiyi come up with a new avenue of approach after the recent failure. She didn’t say a word from start to finish, and so I was left to mention the two main points: one was to do with the rate at which analysis was proceeding, which reflected the standard of our performance. To begin with we were having problems even reaching the rate of two in a thousand, but now we were achieving five in a thousand, and both the speed and extent of this increase were very pleasing. However, looking at it from a cryptographic point of view, even though the rate of analysis was improving rapidly, the gold content wasn’t very high. What did I mean by that? Even though we were picking out some words and phrases, and some numbers, we were getting only a tiny proportion of the key words and phrases. The majority of what we were finding were the code-names for army units, their designations, people’s names and dates. I would guess that we were getting roughly 87 per cent of the people’s names. That means that we were picking out the ordinary stuff but not what actually mattered, and that was not a good state of affairs. In a good situation maybe the rate of analysis isn’t so high, but you get what matters, even if the rest is a tissue of holes. Right now we had far too many holes, and what is worse the holes were all the important ones. The second thing was a request, or perhaps it would be better to say a demand. I wanted the comrades in the analysis department to take back all the intercepts that they had worked through and analyse them again. There was a good reason for doing that, which was as follows: we were getting our newspapers about ten days to two weeks after they had been published, which means that we were losing any connection with events on the ground. If we did the analysis in the light of what was being reported on the day, we might make new discoveries.
As the facts subsequently demonstrated, my idea was right, and there was a great improvement in the quality of analysis of the radio intercepts. Comrade Chen was the immediate beneficiary of this: a couple of days later he burst into my office to tell me the good news. He had decrypted one entire message. The contents of this secret communication were: ‘Operation Wolf’ was under way, and the agents should wait in the usual place for ‘Banana’ …
That was what old Comrade Chen was good at. Thanks to his understanding of the way enemy intelligence operations worked, and the vast and swelling sea of information he had accumulated over the years, he could build something out of nothing. It was as if a writer were such a genius that he could write a whole book without knowing anything about grammar. Twenty years earlier, before cryptography was computerized in other countries, being able to read a message in its entirety was priceless, because it could set in motion a domino effect whereby the whole cipher would be laid bare.
We then held another meeting, to discuss how to proceed in the light of Comrade Chen’s reading of this secret message. It seemed that Huang Yiyi didn’t think much of Chen’s achievements, because at the meeting she said, ‘First of all I would like to congratulate Comrade Chen on his little breakthrough; for the first time we can read an entire radio message. That means that we can now be sure that we are on the right track. But Comrade Chen seems to be under the impression that this has been a massive advance for our cryptographic work and determines the next steps in the process, and I am afraid I don’t agree with him. In my opinion this is a very simple message and will be of no help at all in our work on cracking RECOVERY. This is just a single hair when we are dealing with nine head of oxen. While from the presence of the ox’s hair we can be sure of the existence of the oxen, we mustn’t be too optimistic, nor should we make a hasty decision that sends our decryption down the wrong route.’
Comrade Chen retorted, ‘What do you mean, a hair? In the past we often found the whole ox by starting from a couple of hairs.’
‘That was in the past. At that point ciphers relied on human encryption skills, so that one message could lead you on to the next, and then to the third and fourth. Modern ciphers are mathematical problems, and if you want to solve them you have to work out the equations on which they are based, how they are formulated and how they develop. Otherwise one is one and two is two, and you can’t hope to get one and then have the rest fall into your lap. You must not be under any illusions about that.’
Chen glared at her and asked her to come up with something better instead. She waved her hands and said that she had nothing to suggest.
‘So,’ said Chen rudely, ‘I suggest that you stop trying to bite off more than you can chew and settle down to working through the information and intelligence seriously, whereby you deal with actual concrete radio intercepts. Every message decrypted is another step forward, and I am sure that once we have reached a certain point, a chain reaction will be set off.’
Huang Yiyi said, ‘Of course if you now go on to decrypt another thousand messages, then you’ve cracked it. However, by the time you’ve done that, this cipher may well have long been taken out of use and the messages will have become irrelevant. As I just said, this one message text is not a goose that is going to lay golden eggs; and having decrypted one isn’t going to help us with the rest. This message is it: it’s a gander, which not only doesn’t lay eggs but also can’t turn into a phoenix. Just think about it, Chen: if it takes you a week to decrypt one message, how long is it going to take you to do one thousand?’
Chen said angrily, ‘Well, it’s better than your stupid carryings-on.’
Huang Yiyi raised her voice. ‘What do you mean by stupid carryings-on?’
Things were going from bad to worse, so I quickly started trying to calm them down. Huang Yiyi was clearly not going to let this one go at that, and said nastily, ‘You know, Comrade Chen, in the past your work might have been called cryptography, but now you’re nothing better than a high-level cryptanalyst.’
Chen was very upset. ‘What? I’m just a cryptanalyst? There are many, many cryptanalysts in this building – how come I have never seen one of them decrypt a cipher text? Haven’t you noticed them hard at work day after day, analysing messages and picking out cribs – though even then they often get them wrong.’
‘They are ordinary cryptanalysts; you are a high-level one.’
Chen was so furious that he bolted out of his chair and glared at her. ‘Humph. Many thanks for the information. Now it’s my turn to say something to you.’
‘Please do. I’m all ears.’
Chen ground his teeth and said, ‘If a silly little piece like you can crack RECOVERY …’
She looked at him with interest. ‘Then what?’
Chen glared at her, stretched out a hand, and said, ‘I’ll use this hand as a grill to cook a fish for you!’
Huang Yiyi laughed. ‘I’ll be waiting. I dare say the fish will be delicious, particularly with overtones of human flesh.’
Chen got so angry that he walked out. When the meeting was over he came to my office, and the moment he got through the door he started shouting at me, complaining about Huang Yiyi’s behaviour. I spoke up for her, which really didn’t please Chen, and he started to blame me for what had happened. ‘It is not that I want to criticize you, but sometimes you seem to trust her and give in to her too much. That’s a bad thing. I’ve been really puzzled that you support her over this idea of finding the key in order to decrypt this cipher, which is a topsy-turvy approach.’
‘What do you mean, topsy-turvy? It’s a new way of dealing with the thing.’
‘What do you mean, a new way? It’s clearly a dead end. Humph. I’ve been cracking ciphers for more than twenty years, and I’ve never heard of trying to find the key first. What is the key anyway? It is like the key to a room, and if I give you that key, you can open the door; but if what you want is actually in the safe which you can’t open – what’s the point? On the other hand, if I can open the safe I don’t need a key: I can climb in through the window …’
I shook my head and looked silently at Chen. He really was getting past it: he didn’t know about the advances in Western computing, or understand that a revolution had taken place both in the development of ciphers and in their decryption. In modern ciphers the key is given as part of the cipher text: they are indivisible, in the same way as modern metallurgy transforms aluminium and iron into a completely new material. How can you separate the constituent elements?
It was that day, after my conversation with Chen, that I suddenly got the idea of going to the Soviet Union. If Anderov wouldn’t write back, that didn’t mean that I couldn’t go to Russia and find him myself, did it?
21
My idea was supported by my superiors, and Director Tie told me to get things organized and do the round trip as quickly as possible. The day before I set out, I decided to go and talk to Huang Yiyi. I found her in the woods, feeding biscuits to the squirrels. From the moment she learnt the truth about Xiaoyu she had been ignoring me. She caught sight of me but pretended she hadn’t seen me, and walked deeper into the woods. I had to shout at her to stop. She stood under a tree and waited for me to catch up with her, and then she said in a depressed way, ‘Are you here to try and raise my revolutionary consciousness? Or are you afraid I’m suicidal, or that I’m going to stop working for you?’
