Catching A Code

The secure line rang. I picked it up, annoyed.

"Yes, Sir Harry?"

"You sound bitter."

"I am bitter. I was just nicely into Gerard Manley Hopkins and 'The Windhover'. You know, the poem where his 'heart in hiding stirred for a bird, the achieve of --"

"I know the poem. Not what I wanted to talk about."

"Pity. Well, come live with me and pay my rent --"

"Will you shut up! This is important. We are changing the book codes."

"Finally," I sighed. "I was getting tired of poring through Hardy's Jude The Obscure."

"As was I. The new text will be more direct."

This was rubbish. Sir Harry was never 'direct', but rather was a kind of Galapagos turtle, given to making slow and almost imperceptible movements when he thought no one was looking. What he was on about was our mutual need for a code when it was necessary to exchange super secretive information. We had learned to our cost that electronic data, no matter how well firewalled, could always be hacked by some Lisbeth Salander or other. (cf. Stieg Larsson's Millenium Trilogy). Hence we simply used the Royal/Canada Post.

The code is simplicity itself. Here is a representative line:

L35-16-7R44-8-6. Easy, eh?

Not bloody likely. To be sure, it's not too difficult to decipher the first part (CODE Barry of CSIS figured it out in around ten seconds -- he is not called CODE Barry for nothing) by determining that L = left, 35 is a page number, 16 is the number of lines down that page, and 7 is the actual word. So also with the R (right) series. BUT WHAT BOOK?

And therein, as Hamlet stated, "lies the rub." If you do not know the book being used by the two people involved, the encoded information remains just that -- encoded. Yes, both sender and receiver have to work from the same edition, but this is not that difficult to arrange.

What was bothering Sir Harry was that he found out that the Americans, through the NSA, had discovered the text we had been using was the Everyman edition of Jude The Obscure. Hence the need for another text.

I emphasized to Sir Harry that text selection was not his strong suit, and asked him to recall his first effort -- Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon. The Israelis were on to that after a week. I mean, why would he select a book on codes in the first place?

"Well what do you suggest, then?" he asked, a note of petulance in his voice.

I thought for a bit, then proffered my selection. He agreed, and no, I cannot divulge the title (that would be telling) but I can say that our choice does call upon we Finnegans to wake.

Let us hope we wake in time.