The Omega Theory (31 page)

Aryeh hadn’t contacted his superiors at Shin Bet since coming to Shalhevet. The messages previously deciphered by Olam’s computer had revealed that foreign operatives had infiltrated the Israeli intelligence agency, as well as the FBI, the CIA, the National Security Agency, and the Pentagon. Aryeh was so alarmed by the situation that he couldn’t sleep. Slumped in his chair, he stared groggily at Ehud ben Ezra, who was inserting the newly delivered disks into the quantum computer’s optical drive. Olam had taught Ehud how to run the computer; the young zealot had formerly been a student at Hebrew University, and he seemed a little brighter than the other settlers in Shalhevet. As Ehud started the decryption program, he struck up a conversation with Aryeh, asking a flurry of questions about cryptography. Wearily, the Shin Bet agent tried to explain the basics.

“Okay, it’s very simple,” he said. “The cipher is the sequence of steps for coding and decoding a message. You use the cipher to turn a message into gobbledygook and then back into readable text.”

Ehud nodded. He had a wispy, reddish beard and wore a black yarmulke. “And is the cipher the same thing as the key?”

“No, the key is a big number that plugs into the cipher and specifies the coding. So if a general at army headquarters uses a key to encode a message, the poor schmuck in his foxhole needs the same key for decoding it. But if you use the same key too many times, an enemy can figure out what it is, yes? So the army has to change its codes every day, always introducing new keys before its enemies can break the old ones.”

“But how does—”

“Yes, I know what you’re going to ask. How does the general distribute the new keys to all those poor schmucks in their foxholes? That’s a big problem in military communications, keeping track of all the keys and making sure that your enemies don’t steal them when they’re in transit. But you can solve the problem by using public-key cryptography, which is the kind of encryption you see on the Internet.”

“I think I read something about that, but it didn’t make—”

“Forget what you read. Just listen to me. Instead of using one key, this system has two. Every user has his own public key for encoding messages and his own private key for decoding them. It’s like having a lockbox with two keyholes, one for locking, the other for unlocking. If you want to send a secret message to a friend, you say to him, ‘Hey, give me your public key.’ So your friend sends his public key over the Internet, and you use it to encode your message, which is like putting the message in the box and locking it. Then you send the encoded message to your friend, who uses his private key to unlock the box. Because the private key never leaves his possession, no one else can decode the message.”

“And that’s how the military distributes new encryption keys for its communications?”

“Yes, it’s much safer than distributing them on paper. The IDF and the Pentagon use public-key systems to secure their classified data networks. The Pentagon’s network is the one that carried the message about Excalibur that Olam decoded a few days ago. You know, the message that was sent from California to Afghanistan after the Iranian nuclear test.”

“But if the public-key system is so safe, how did Olam decode that message?”

Aryeh smiled. Despite his fatigue, he was enjoying this. “Ah, here’s the trick. Because the private key decodes what the public key has encrypted, the two keys have to be mathematically related, correct? The private key is usually based on a pair of prime numbers, and the public key is the number you get when you multiply the two primes together. So if the private key is based on seven and nineteen, the public key is one hundred thirty-three, yes?”

Ehud had to think about it for a second. Aryeh got the feeling that math hadn’t been the boy’s best subject at Hebrew University. “Yes, seven times nineteen is one hundred thirty-three.”

“But if this is true, the private key isn’t so private, eh? Because if you know the public key, all you have to do is find the prime factors of one hundred thirty-three and you’ll know the private key, too. But when you get to large numbers, numbers with hundreds and hundreds of digits, finding the prime factors becomes very difficult. You can easily multiply two large primes together, but if you give the resulting number to a computer and say, ‘Tell me which primes I multiplied,’ it can take the computer a thousand years to figure out the answer. That’s why it’s hard to break the encryption. Finding the private key isn’t impossible, but you’ll have to wait a long time if you use an ordinary computer.”

Now Ehud smiled, too. He finally understood. “But Olam’s computer is different? It’s good at finding the prime factors of large numbers?”

“Yes, exactly. Because a quantum computer can perform trillions and trillions of calculations at once, it can test many numbers at the same time to see which one is the prime factor. If you know the message’s public key, which is easy to intercept, the quantum computer will quickly figure out the private key and decode the message for you. That’s what the machine is doing right now.” Aryeh pointed at the computer inside the gray cabinet, which made a low, humming noise as it performed its calculations. “You just inputted three days’ worth of encrypted communications, but the computer will decipher them all in about an hour.”

Ehud stared at the machine for a few seconds, still smiling. He seemed to have gained a new appreciation for the computer. Then he turned back to Aryeh. “Well, that gives me enough time for morning prayers. Do you want me to bring you some breakfast when I come back?”

Aryeh shook his head. His anxiety had also affected his appetite. “No, I’m not hungry.”

“I’ll bring you something anyway. You need to eat, Mr. Goldberg.”

After Ehud left the room, Aryeh took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. Maybe he should find a place to lie down, he thought. He should try to take a nap while the computer was working. But he suspected that he wouldn’t be able to sleep. It would be like trying to doze off in a burning house. All his instincts were telling him that something was wrong. And he was very worried about his American friends, who were probably somewhere in the deserts of Turkmenistan by now. He wished he could contact them, but he knew that Olam and his commandos wouldn’t use their radios unless they had to. And besides, Aryeh had nothing useful to give them yet. He needed to analyze the intercepted communications first. Then, with any luck, he could identify the people who Olam called the
Qliphoth,
the ones who’d placed Excalibur at the nuclear test site in Iran.

Aryeh folded his arms across the desk and rested his head on them. Lucille had told him before she left Shalhevet that she had a plan for getting the
Qliphoth
to reveal themselves. She was going to persuade the FBI to pay a visit to Logos Enterprises, the California defense contractor that had removed Excalibur from the Livermore lab and supposedly dismantled it. The idea was to make the people at Logos so nervous that they’d send another message to their contact in Afghanistan. It was possible that Logos had already sent this message, and that Unit 8200 had already intercepted it. In fact, Aryeh hoped that the message was on one of the disks that were now feeding their data to the quantum computer. In his mind’s eye, he saw the computer spit out a name, the name of the Afghan contact, but the letters were blurred and Aryeh couldn’t read it.

The next thing he knew, Ehud was shaking him awake. The boy’s left hand was on Aryeh’s shoulder, and his right hand held a plate of Israeli salad. “Mr. Goldberg?” he said, resting the plate on the desk. “Look, I brought you some food.”

For several seconds Aryeh just stared at the jumble of diced cucumbers and tomatoes. Then he remembered where he was. He stretched his arms and arched his back and let out a yawn. When he looked at his watch, he saw that he’d been asleep for ninety minutes.

“Ach!” he cried, turning to Ehud. “Did the computer finish its run?”

The young man nodded, but he didn’t look pleased. “Yes, it’s done. And one of the deciphered messages has the word ‘Excalibur.’ But there’s no—”

Aryeh jumped to his feet. “Where is it? Let me see!”

Ehud placed a sheet of paper on the desk and pointed at a line of text near the top. Aryeh hunched over the document. First he saw the decoded information about the sender and the receiver. The signal had come from California, from the same unregistered wireless device used in the previous message, and it had been relayed by the same cell-phone tower in Sacramento. But this time the message hadn’t traveled to western Afghanistan. It had gone to a tower in southern Turkmenistan before being shunted to the receiver. The message itself was short, just seven words:
MORE INQUIRIES ABOUT EXCALIBUR. MUST TALK ASAP.

Aryeh felt the disappointment in his stomach. He’d hoped for more. “Is that it? Nothing else?”

Ehud tapped a line near the bottom of the page. “The computer also decoded a second message, which was sent from Turkmenistan to Sacramento about thirty seconds after the first. But I don’t understand this one at all.”

Aryeh saw the words next to Ehud’s index finger. Just six of them:
SWITCH TO DRSN. I’LL CALL IMMEDIATELY.

He grimaced. “Ah, this is bad. DRSN stands for the Pentagon’s Defense Red Switch Network. It’s for transmitting voice communications, not data. Our friend in Turkmenistan obviously agreed to have a conversation with his contacts in California. Unfortunately, we won’t be able to decipher it.”

“Why not?” Ehud asked. “I thought we had the world’s best code-breaking machine.”

“DRSN is more secure than the Pentagon’s data networks. Because the system has a separate infrastructure of secure lines and terminals, our listening stations can’t eavesdrop on it as easily. It’s supposed to be reserved for the top officials at the Pentagon. The fact that our Afghan friends are using this network is very surprising. They must have some highly placed informants.” Aryeh shook his head. Damn it to hell, he thought. And they were so close.

Ehud kept his finger on the page. “But if the network is only for the highest officials, there must be someone who controls access to it, right? Like a telephone operator?”

“Not necessarily. It could be automated.”

“But either way, you’d probably need a code to get access. And someone must keep records, right? Records of who got on the network and when?”

Aryeh stared at the boy. He was right—on a network that was as secure as DRSN, you couldn’t get access with an unregistered device. You’d need to input a personal code assigned by the network. And if Aryeh could look at the DRSN call logs and the records of the code assignments, he could determine who made the mysterious call from Turkmenistan to California. Those records would be classified, of course. But Aryeh had a source in the Pentagon.

He stepped toward Ehud and hugged him, kissing the boy’s forehead. “You should go back to school, you know that? You’re too smart to be in a place like this.”

“What? I don’t—”

“Now get out of here.” Aryeh let go of him and pointed at the door. “I have some calls to make.”

29

DAVID OPENED HIS EYES. HE SAW A THIN STRIP OF SKY ABOVE HIM, RUNNING
between two jagged cliffs. It was a dim grayish blue, the color of dawn. He lay on his back and a circle of men looked down at him. They wore mud-caked boots and ragged brown uniforms, but his vision was blurry and he couldn’t make out their faces. They were carrying rifles, though, he could see that much. And although he was bleeding from cuts on his head and neck and arms, no one was rushing to treat his wounds or even help him to his feet. So the men probably weren’t his friends. Shit, he thought, who the hell are these guys?

Then he noticed that one of them wasn’t a man. It was a heavyset woman with disheveled white hair, standing on one leg. She was being held upright by the men on either side of her, who gripped her arms and dragged her forward. Her injured leg was bent sideways and the pants were ripped at the knee and damp below it. David squinted at her face and saw her open her mouth, but he couldn’t hear what she said—something was wrong with his ears. Then she opened her mouth again and he did hear something, very faint. It was Agent Lucille Parker saying his name.

The men threw her to the ground next to David and in that instant everything came back to him: the Zodiacs, the Akhal-Tekes, the storage depot, the C-4. Lucille clutched his arm. Her gun and shoulder holster were gone, he noticed, and so were his. She had a deep gash that slanted across her chin and another that ran from her cheekbone to the corner of her mouth. She was crying and her tears were seeping into her cuts. He groaned, “Lucille!” and his own voice sounded strange and distant. “What happened? Where’s Monique?”

She closed her eyes and shook her head. “We were just outside the door. The blast pushed us away.”

“But where’s . . . ?”

Then David looked past her and saw the bodies on the ground. They lay faceup in a long line, obviously dragged out of the wreckage by the soldiers in brown uniforms. Heart pounding, David sat up and looked at their dead faces. He counted twelve of them, all bearded men in black clothes. Neither Monique nor Olam was among them. At first David felt relief, but as he stared at the corpses of the
kippot srugot
he was overcome with horror. He’d listened to these men’s prayers just twenty-four hours ago.

Propping himself on one elbow, David pointed his other hand at the soldiers standing around him. “Who are you?” he yelled. “WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?”

The soldiers said nothing. David couldn’t tell if they even understood English. But while he waited for them to answer, the circle parted and a tall, wiry man stepped into the gap. This one looked different from the others. His uniform was dark green instead of brown, and he wore a checkered keffiyeh that draped his shoulders and the back of his neck. Also, his face looked oddly familiar. It was swarthy and stubbled and painfully thin. After a few seconds David remembered. Pointing at the man, he turned to Lucille. “That’s the pilgrim! The one with the cross, the one who followed us to the yeshiva in Jerusalem!”