Turing's Delirium (28 page)

It happened in 1917 ... The Germans had come to one conclusion. The only way to defeat England was to stop provisions from reaching the island ... The plan was to use submarines to sink any ship that attempted to reach its shores. Even neutral ships ... Even American ships ... But there was the fear that the Americans would react to the attacks ... And decide to join the war. This had to be prevented ... So German strategists hatched an absurd plan. But it was approved...

They knew that there was tension between the Americans and the Mexicans. The idea was to get Mexico to declare war on the United States ... Such an attack would keep the U.S. occupied ... Defending their own territory would prevent them from focusing on Europe ... There was also the possibility that Japan would take advantage of the war and land troops in California ... Back then ... Mexico had a good relationship with Japan. Which made the Americans nervous.

Steps are drawing closer. They're coming toward me. A shadow silhouetted in the doorway. I open my eyes. My gaze is vacant. As if my eyes weren't open.

I don't know him. He has spots on his cheeks. Wine-colored spots.

The decision to cordon off the British Isles using submarine warfare was made at Pless Castle ... In Silesia ... Where the German high command was located. Chancellor Hollweg was against the plan ... But Hindenburg and Ludendorff were the ones who decided how the war was fought ... And they were able to convince the kaiser.

The man stops next to me ... He has a gun in his hands. With a silencer ... He doesn't need to use it. He could just disconnect the tubes that allow me to breathe. The ones that turn me ... Into...

An electric ant...

Six weeks after the decision was made. A newly appointed minister of foreign affairs ... Arthur Zimmermann ... Arrived on the scene ... He sent a telegram to Heinrich von Eckardt. German ambassador in Mexico.

In essence ... The telegram read
...We plan to initiate unrestricted submarine warfare February 1. However we will try to keep United States neutral. If this does not work we propose an alliance with Mexico under the following conditions. Fight the war together. Declare peace together. Our total support and agreement for Mexico to recover territory lost previously. Texas. New Mexico. Arizona.

A shot fired into my chest.

The telegram was sent by telegraph. There were no radio stations in Mexico capable of receiving the telegram from Berlin.

The bullet slices through my skin...

So it was sent to the German embassy in Washington. Thanks to an agreement with Woodrow Wilson ... The Germans used American wires to send their coded messages between Berlin and Washington. So there was nothing suspicious about this.

Blood seeping into my pajamas.

What the Germans didn't know was that the messages between Berlin and Washington. Passed through England.

A puddle extending outward ... Life seeping away...

Or more precisely. Through Room 40. The prestigious cryptology division of Naval Intelligence. In the Admiralty Old Building. Eight hundred radio operators. Eight cryptologists.

A puddle that stops. But doesn't stop.

The man with the spotted cheeks leaves the room. Albert closes his eyes. He's dead ... I'm dead ... About time. Time to look for another body.

I was arrested in Rosenheim. Markets. Ruins. Medieval towers. A valley. A boy.

At that time radio operators encrypted codes following sequences in codebooks ... It was a rudimentary, dangerous method. When an enemy ship was sunk ... The first thing they tried to find was the codebooks. Toward the end of 1914 ... A German destroyer was sunk. They found several books and documents ... In an aluminum box. The men of Room 40 discovered that one of the codebooks was the
Verkehrsbuch.
Which was used ... Among other things ... For the exchange of messages between Berlin and its naval attachés ... In their various embassies abroad...

When the Zimmermann telegram arrived in Room 40 ... Two cryptologists ... the Reverend Montgomery and Nigel de Grey. Read the first line.

 

130. 13042. 13401. 8501. 115. 3528. 416. 17214. 6491. 11310.

 

The first line generally contained the number of the codebook that was used to cipher the message ... The number 13042 reminded them of another number ... 13040 ... Which belonged to a German codebook that Room 40 possessed ... They also had a book containing variations of this code. So it was easy. For me. Montgomery ... And for me ... de Grey ... to decipher at least the main parts of the message.

I'm dead. Another body.

When they used codebooks. The Germans tended to cipher their messages twice ... As a precaution ... However ... They hadn't with the Zimmermann telegram. In February 1917 ... President Wilson was advised of the telegram. In March ... Surprisingly ... Zimmermann admitted to the authenticity of the telegram. On April 6 ... The United States declared war on Germany.

I. Am. Dead.

No I'm not.

Another body. The same body.

Electric ant.

F
LAVIA SITS DOWN
in front of the computer. Her parents are out and the house is silent; all she can hear is the meowing of the neighbor's Siamese cat, which is in heat and is not letting anyone in the neighborhood sleep much lately. The morning breeze blows in through the partially open window, a breath of air rustling the branches of the trees and caressing her back.

She won't leave the house until her mission is complete. Rafael deserves that much. She doesn't know how things would have unfolded with him, but she is sure that she will never meet anyone so like herself.

Flavia had never seen death up close. It will be impossible to forget Rafael's bloodied chest at the bottom of the stairs in the Internet café; his eyes were wide open, but he was already dead. When the police came, they asked her whether she had seen anything. She was afraid of getting involved. Sobbing, all she said was, that she had just met him on the bus. She didn't know anything. They let her go, told her they would contact her later. Once alone, Flavia thought it over and decided to contact them first. She said that she would talk, but only to people at the Black Chamber. She had information that might be of interest to them.

Flavia had given herself to Rafael when she was Erin and he was Ridley. Did that count? Were those avatars extensions of themselves, or were they completely independent? Just as we may be nothing more than the means by which our genes perpetuate, 'maybe we are simply the instruments that bring our avatars to life on a screen. Flavia was someone's avatar and she controlled avatars that lived in Playground, which in turn controlled others that lived inside computers in Playground...

One of her most successful tactics when searching for hackers had been to create a "best friend." Since all hackers on the Internet have nicknames, it is easy for Flavia, or anyone, to hide her identity. Flavia tends to disguise herself as an online friend of the hacker she wants to contact. To do so she uses some of the identities she has already created and consolidated both in Playground and on IRC, or she creates a new one, depending on the situation. She has "best friends" for some of the most dangerous hackers. Her avatars talk about technicalities, discuss sites to be hacked, and tell hacker jokes; they share a hatred of authority, and sometimes she reveals personal details about her life. Once trust has been established, the hackers do the same with her. At one time she tried to create female best friends, but she didn't get very far: the world of hackers is almost exclusively male. Women have to re-sign themselves to not being taken seriously or to being hacked relentlessly until, as often happened, they are pressured to stop. Flavia was accepted because she was there as a reporter in charge of AllHacker and not as a hacker.

She reviews all the information about Kandinsky that is stored on her hard drive. It isn't much. At one time he was associated with a hacker named Phiber Outkast, who stopped circulating a while ago; he has something against San Ignacio High School; and his tactics for attacking the government are similar to those of a group in Playground called the Restoration. She obtained this information surreptitiously on IRCs and chatrooms in Playground. While the world of hackers seems to be impenetrable at first glance, the truth is that they need to communicate with one another and sometimes do so on open channels. They think they are safe because the words they type in chatrooms disappear within minutes; Flavia's computers, acting in unison, sift through chatrooms and 15,000 IRC channels preferred by hackers searching for key words, and file much of what they find.

Kandinsky is more careful than your average hacker, but he has still left enough information for Flavia to begin her search. People—even those in the Black Chamber—mistakenly think that most hackers can be defeated when you discover their technical approach or fingerprints on their codes. In the great, computerized world of the twenty-first century, Flavia uses deductive methods that nineteenth-century masters such as August Dupin and Sherlock Holmes would applaud. Her motto is something that John Vranesevich, the world's foremost expert on hackers, said: "I don't want to be an expert in the gun; I want to be an expert in the people who pull the trigger."

Her first step is to connect with some past or present partner of Kandinsky's. She searches "Phiber Outkast" in her database. The computer provides her with the names of seven hackers who have used that pseudonym at some time. Four of them seem interesting. Flavia decides to use the name Wolfram for herself. First she sets up a monitoring system on the computers that belong to those four hackers. By the end of the morning she has narrowed it down to one, who now calls himself PhatalWorm. Her files indicate that he is in his twenties and works at an Internet security company in the Twenty-First-Century Towers.

That afternoon Flavia has Wolfram send PhatalWorm a message about the inherent weaknesses in antihacker security systems. PhatalWorm is not surprised by the message—hackers are used to strangers trying to strike up conversations in chatrooms—and replies with a long diatribe in which he says that the only system that hasn't been fooled in all of Bolivia is Fire Wall. They chat about security systems for two hours. Wolfram says he knows a few secrets about FireWall.

 

PHATALWORM
: like

 

Flavia will take a chance. Hackers write the letter/as
ph.
It looks better in English, Flavia thinks, but she adopts this style whenever she chats with hackers, just in case.

 

WOLFRAM
: i was a phriend of K a long time ago he told me he was phurious about phirewall he knew everything

 

PhatalWorm is in a difficult position. If he admits that he knew Kandinsky and was his partner back when he called himself Phiber Outkast, he will be admitting that he is a hacker who sells antihacker systems. He disappears from the chatroom.

He returns at midnight. The temptation to announce his friendship with Kandinsky is irresistible.

 

PHATALWORM
: that big activist with a conscience hypocritical PHUCK

WOLFRAM
: u used 2 b phriends

PHATALWORM
: a long time ago it doesnt matter

 

It is evident, however, that it does matter. Having known Kandinsky in person, having been his partner, lends PhatalWorm a certain amount of prestige by association. It is a secret that rises to the surface in all its glory without Wolfram's having to prod. Like a reformed alcoholic nostalgically recalling his days as an irredeemable drunk, PhatalWorm tells Wolfram that Kandinsky is who he is thanks to him and proceeds to tell stories about Kandinsky's humble origins. Flavia reads, saves, records, and ends the conversation with some concrete information: Kandinsky used to live in a rundown house near San Ignacio High School.

The next morning Flavia passes this information along to Ramírez-Graham. He tells her that he will keep her apprised of their investigation.

Flavia stands up and goes into her parents' room. The bed is made: her mom didn't come home last night. Nor does she find the blanket her dad uses when he sleeps on the living room sofa, where Clancy is now sprawled. She asks Rosa. Rosa hasn't seen either of them; they haven't come down for breakfast. Strange—they're usually so predictable, so routine. Maybe they got caught by the blockade. But they would've called.

She finally goes to bed but cannot sleep. She has not done enough.

T
HE CELL IS CRAMPED
and foul-smelling, with seven women crowded into the tiny space. Two of them are carrying babies, one of whom is crying disconsolately. His face is dirty, with soot marks on his cheeks.
He's hungry,
Ruth says to herself, the anger palpable on her trembling lips.
Hungry, and they're not going to do anything about it.

She approaches the bars of the cell and shouts to a police officer who is leaning in the doorway that leads out onto the patio. Tall, mustached, with a chain in his hands, the officer approaches.

"Go ahead and punish us," she says, "but the babies too? He's not going to stop crying until he gets milk."

"Oh, he'll stop. I've proven that more than once. They get so tired that they fall fast asleep."

"That's no way to treat people."

"No one told you to get into trouble. You go out into the street to stir up a commotion and think that because you're women we won't do anything. Well, this time you're screwed."

"Not even animals deserve to be treated this way."

"What do you know about what they deserve? Get used to it."

He turns around and disappears. Ruth mumbles insults. She is barefoot, and the soles of her feet hurt. They confiscated her manuscript, and without it she feels helpless. They also took her purse and her cell phone. It was a mistake to have gone to the university on such a day. What was her rush? She should have waited until the blockades were over, until the city was demilitarized.