Edgar always draws his sketches of characters based on me. Then one day I flipped through his practice works and shook out a sketch of a young man with a haggard face and protested: "Are you regressing? This drawing is too unremarkable. gone."
Edgar said that's how I looked at the end of my third year at Cambridge and the first term of my fourth year. Skipping classes, being too lazy to get a haircut, sitting in the activity room of the math club to solve codes every day, lunch and dinner are casually served with toast and black coffee.
Linton comes twice a week. We locked the door of the activity room in the middle of the night, and he began to copy the passwords that could not be solved this week on paper from memory, and then handed the paper to me, and I wrote down the results and ideas of last week's password deciphering to him on the paper. Afterwards we each burned the paper.
Most of these codes were deciphered by me independently, a small part was found by Linton himself, and a small part could not be deciphered and had to be burned intact.
We turned off the lights and exchanged ideas in Linton's favorite darkness.
Linton admired Andemon very much, saying that he had independently deciphered many high-level foreign codes, and that he had a unique perspective on thinking about problems, a god-like existence—“He even wrote the textbooks for our new recruits’ training!”
Darkness can make people's thinking concentrated, and the moment when they find the decryption method is like catching the light that penetrates the darkness, which makes people very excited.
The password level that Linton brought is not very high, even lower than the code S that I cracked back then. He is a rookie, his grades have not been satisfactory, and he has no access to high-level secrets. Most of the things I deciphered in my terrible German were personnel transfers, salary distribution of overseas spies and so on. Some information also mentioned the "baby eagle" that was deciphered when they first met Andemon. He seemed to have been installed next to an important figure, and the German spy agency promised him a raise.
One day Linton suddenly came to me excitedly, saying that this month his grades were the first in the group, and he wanted to treat me to dinner.
What I do for him is not something that a meal or two can make up for. Edgar can borrow money when I am hungry, and I never worry about eating. I helped Linton to prove my ability and loyalty to England to Andrea.
I am trustworthy, Andrew, though you do not trust me.
Linton took me to a nice restaurant nearby. Halfway through eating, he asked me with the bread in his mouth: "Alan, your surname is Custer?"
I said, "Nonsense."
He thought for a while: "At this month's evaluation meeting, Mr. Garcia praised me, saying that my idea of deciphering codes is similar to that of Jane. Mrs. Custer is very similar... Do you know Mrs. Custer, a famous cryptography expert? I suddenly remembered You have a last name."
"That was my mother. She was a former cryptography researcher." I said as calmly as I could. "She died when I was five, but no one told me... she was famous."
Most of my password knowledge comes from the books and notes left by my parents. It is inevitable that I think in a similar way to my mother.
Linton's hand on the fork froze.
"I'm sorry." He apologized.
"It's okay." I said.
"Mr. Garcia will transfer me to Office No. 1. It seems that the future work will be much more difficult." He said to me apologetically, "Allen, thank you for helping me."
There are many decryption teams in Plimpton Manor, ranked from No. 1 in order of importance, led by different cryptographers. Office 1 is Andremon's immediate team, responsible for the highest level of code-breaking work.
"That's deciphering the 'mystery'." I said casually.
At that moment, Linton's expression was as if he saw the waitress without clothes.
"It's been in the newspapers," I can't say what Andermond told me, so I can only explain: "The Germans put this commercial cipher into use in the army, and they claim it's completely unbreakable."
There is a saying that the more perfect the encryption system, the less afraid of being published. Even if you get a cipher machine and a cipher book for a certain day, complex encryption methods will make you powerless. Germany has always been confident in the encryption capabilities of the "fan", so it did not deliberately conceal its existence.
He breathed a sigh of relief: "It's the 'mystery', and we've been trying to crack it."
The restaurant is spacious and bright, but the diners are sparse. We sat in an inconspicuous corner, and Linton violated the organization's regulations and began to explain to me the encryption principle of "Mystery" in a low voice. The Polish intelligence agency copied a "mysterious" cipher machine from the German embassy, and we used a copy of the copy.
It is like a typewriter, consisting of three wheels engraved with letters, a reflective wheel, six sockets and two letter boards. Six sockets determine six pairs of letters that replace each other. When a letter is pressed on the letter board A, it is encrypted at least 4-7 times by the rotating wheel and the reflection wheel, and then a certain letter on the letter board B lights up to become a ciphertext.
"There are 6 arrangements of 3 reels, and each reel has 26 letters."
"17576 ways to turn." I blurted out.
Linton nodded: "Add six pairs of letter substitutions... 105869..."
"1058 691 676 442 000 possibilities." I feel like my head is going to explode.
Linton shrugged: "Many people say that Mr. Garcia is in charge of a code that is impossible to break."
I think as long as Andrew is around, there is no code that cannot be deciphered. If Linton and I are geniuses in mathematics, then he is a pervert. When we were still trying to find patterns from the complicated numbers, he had established a team of cryptographers consisting of mathematicians, linguists, and chess masters, and he became a ghost choking the Germans in the dark.
After Linton joined Anderson's first office, he spent more time in contact with idols. He was very excited, so I was forced to hear a lot about Andyman every time we met - he publicly praised Linton's work performance (mostly mine), had dinner with Linton - basically just drinking Light coffee, he stayed after dinner to discuss work with him. I'm a little uncomfortable with that last point. I thought I was the only one who could be with Andermon while he was working, and apparently I wasn't.
Linton's own opinions are always very bad. I was very dissatisfied and asked him bluntly, "What does Anderon think of you?"
"He said my way of thinking about things is unique, and it's close to him in a way."
In the first period of time, neither Andremeng nor I could do anything about "fans". Anderson got a replica of the cipher machine, and the spy he sent provided us with many old cipher books from the German Cipher Bureau, and he found out the encryption method pervertedly. But the password list of "Mystery" changes every day, and the encryption method is too complicated, even this is completely beyond our ability to decipher.
The name "Mi" is not for nothing.
Then one day, I remembered my mother's note. It was the summer of 1938, and I had officially burned the last notebook left by my mother. I remembered her idea of using mathematical formulas to crack mechanical codes, and tried to improve on her basis and apply it to "fans".
I thought about it for a long time, wrote my point of view on the third-line manuscript paper, and argued for a full thirty pages and handed it to Linton. Linton took him as a joke: "Conduct the deciphering method of 'mystery' into a mathematical formula? Oh, Alan, you are crazy!"
At my strong request, he was reluctant to help me submit the theory.
The summer of 1938 was very mild in my memory. The sun has been warm and the weather is not too hot. Linton and I came out of the activity room with the rest of the math club. The sun outside was blinding. I saw Andymond and his car parked firmly on the lawn outside the library.
I didn't expect him to come at all, and I froze in place.
Then I walked over lazily: "Beauty, miss me?"
Anderson glanced at me as if smiling. He passed me and walked directly in front of Linton: "The formula induction you submitted last time is very good. Now there is an urgent meeting, come back with me for the meeting."
Andremon has never smiled and encouraged me like this. He always said, Alan, you are still young, Alan, this is not important, Alan, you cannot enter Plimpton Manor.
I never saw Linton smile so conspicuously, showing his white teeth.
I heard them talking as they got into the car, and Anderson's voice sounded cheerful: "Linton, it's really interesting what you said last time about locking yourself under the bed and thinking..."
No comparison. No feeling. I found myself almost upside down with Linton. I squatted every day in the activity room of the mathematics club to decipher codes, and became the former Linton with messy hair like grass, but Linton started to match shirts with suits and followed the gentleman's route. When I used to go to the bar and the waitresses would wink at me, now I don't get looked at even if I follow the girl's ass.
Suddenly being tapped on the shoulder, I was shocked.
"Mr. Garcia actually made a special trip to Cambridgeshire to pick him up."
It was the gold-rimmed glasses that followed Andemont last time.
He came here in Andymond's car, but didn't go back with him.
"Alan, your eyes are glowing green." He held out his hand to me with a smile, and introduced himself: "We met last time. My name is Arnold. Visco, I work in the 'Golf and Chess Research Association' .Surely you know where that is."
I shrugged: "You're not wearing a military uniform this time."
The gold-rimmed glasses casually wore a black vest over a loose shirt this time. He laughed easy-goingly: "Because I'm not here to see you on behalf of Plimpton Manor this time, I'm just dealing with a private matter entrusted to me by Mr. Garcia."
Arnold. Visco is a psychiatrist of MI6, in charge of intelligence analysis at Plimpton Manor, and is directly under Anderson's management.
"It's none of my business for Andemeng to ask for your personal affairs?"
We were sitting in a tavern I used to frequent. It was a warm afternoon. I ordered a regular beer and he ordered a blue margarita. Arnold's jaw is very sharp, and his slender eyes under the gold-rimmed glasses are always squinted, making it hard to understand.
But he cut to the chase: "You know, I'm a psychiatrist. Your feelings for Mr. Garcia bothered him. He made me... make you stop liking him."