till unnerved from her encounter with Hale, Susan gazed outthrough the one-way glass of Node 3. The Crypto floor was empty.Hale was silent again, engrossed. She wished he would leave.

She wondered if she should call Strathmore; the commander couldsimply kick Hale out—after all, it was Saturday. Susanknew, however, that if Hale got kicked out, he would immediatelybecome suspicious. Once dismissed, he probably would start callingother cryptographers asking what they thought was going on. Susandecided it was better just to let Hale be. He would leave on hisown soon enough.

An unbreakable algorithm. She sighed, her thoughtsreturning to Digital Fortress. It amazed her that an algorithm likethat could really be created—then again, the proof was rightthere in front of her; TRANSLTR appeared useless against it.

Susan thought of Strathmore, nobly bearing the weight of thisordeal on his shoulders, doing what was necessary, staying cool inthe face of disaster.

Susan sometimes saw David in Strathmore. They had many of thesame qualities—tenacity, dedication, intelligence. SometimesSusan thought Strathmore would be lost without her; the purity ofher love for cryptography seemed to be an emotional lifeline toStrathmore, lifting him from the sea of churning politics andreminding him of his early days as a code-breaker.

Susan relied on Strathmore too; he was her shelter in a world ofpower-hungry men, nurturing her career, protecting her, and, as heoften joked, making all her dreams come true. There was some truthto that, she thought. As unintentional as it may have been, thecommander was the one who'd made the call that brought DavidBecker to the NSA that fateful afternoon. Her mind reeled back tohim, and her eyes fell instinctively to the pull-slide beside herkeyboard. There was a small fax taped there.

The fax had been there for seven months. It was the only codeSusan Fletcher had yet to break. It was from David. She read it forthe five-hundredth time.

PLEASE ACCEPT THIS HUMBLE FAX

MY LOVE FOR YOU IS WITHOUT WAX.

He'd sent it to her after a minor tiff. She'd beggedhim for months to tell her what it meant, but he had refused. Without wax. It was David's revenge. Susan had taughtDavid a lot about code-breaking, and to keep him on his toes, shehad taken to encoding all of her messages to him with some simpleencryption scheme. Shopping lists, love notes—they were allencrypted. It was a game, and David had become quite a goodcryptographer. Then he'd decided to return the favor.He'd started signing all his letters "Without wax,David." Susan had over two dozen notes from David. They wereall signed the same way. Without wax.

Susan begged to know the hidden meaning, but David wasn'ttalking. Whenever she asked, he simply smiled and said, "You're the code-breaker."

The NSA's head cryptographer had triedeverything—substitutions, cipher boxes, even anagrams.She'd run the letters "without wax" through hercomputer and asked for rearrangements of the letters into newphrases. All she'd gotten back was: taxi hut wow. It appearedEnsei Tankado was not the only one who could write unbreakablecodes.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the pneumaticdoors hissing open. Strathmore strode in.

"Susan, any word yet?" Strathmore saw Greg Hale andstopped short. "Well, good evening, Mr. Hale." Hefrowned, his eyes narrowing. "On a Saturday, no less. To whatdo we owe the honor?"

Hale smiled innocently. "Just making sure I pull myweight."

"I see." Strathmore grunted, apparently weighing hisoptions. After a moment, it seemed he too decided not to rockHale's boat. He turned coolly to Susan. "Ms. Fletcher,could I speak to you for a moment?Outside?"

Susan hesitated. "Ah… yes, sir." She shot anuneasy glance at her monitor and then across the room at Greg Hale."Just a minute."

With a few quick keystrokes, she pulled up a program calledScreenLock. It was a privacy utility. Every terminal in Node 3 wasequipped with it. Because the terminals stayed on around the clock,ScreenLock enabled cryptographers to leave their stations and knowthat nobody would tamper with their files. Susan entered herfive-character privacy code, and her screen went black. It wouldremain that way until she returned and typed the propersequence.

Then she slipped on her shoes and followed the commanderout.

"What the hell is he doing here?" Strathmoredemanded as soon as he and Susan were outside Node 3.

"His usual," Susan replied. "Nothing."

Strathmore looked concerned. "Has he said anything aboutTRANSLTR?"

"No. But if he accesses the Run-Monitor and sees itregistering seventeen hours, he'll have something to say allright."

Strathmore considered it. "There's no reason he'daccess it."

Susan eyed the commander. "You want to send himhome?"

"No. We'll let him be." Strathmore glanced overat the Sys-Sec office. "Has Chartrukian left yet?"

"I don't know. I haven't seen him."

"Jesus." Strathmore groaned. "This is acircus." He ran a hand across the beard stubble that haddarkened his face over the past thirty-six hours. "Any wordyet on the tracer? I feel like I'm sitting on my hands upthere."

"Not yet. Any word from David?"

Strathmore shook his head. "I asked him not to call meuntil he has the ring."

Susan looked surprised. "Why not? What if he needshelp?"

Strathmore shrugged. "I can't help him fromhere—he's on his own. Besides, I'd rather not talkon unsecured lines just in case someone's listening."

Susan's eyes widened in concern. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Strathmore immediately looked apologetic. He gave her areassuring smile. "David's fine. I'm just beingcareful."

Thirty feet away from their conversation, hidden behind theone-way glass of Node 3, Greg Hale stood at Susan's terminal.Her screen was black. Hale glanced out at the commander and Susan.Then he reached for his wallet. He extracted a small index card andread it.

Double-checking that Strathmore and Susan were still talking,Hale carefully typed five keystrokes on Susan's keyboard. Asecond later her monitor sprang to life.

"Bingo." He chuckled.

Stealing the Node 3 privacy codes had been simple. In Node 3,every terminal had an identical detachable keyboard. Hale hadsimply taken his keyboard home one night and installed a chip thatkept a record of every keystroke made on it. Then he had come inearly, swapped his modified keyboard for someone else's, andwaited. At the end of the day, he switched back and viewed the datarecorded by the chip. Even though there were millions of keystrokesto sort through, finding the access code was simple; the firstthing a cryptographer did every morning was type the privacy codethat unlocked his terminal. This, of course, made Hale's jobeffortless—the privacy code always appeared as the first fivecharacters on the list.

It was ironic, Hale thought as he gazed at Susan's monitor.He'd stolen the privacy codes just for kicks. He was happy nowhe'd done it; the program on Susan's screen lookedsignificant.

Hale puzzled over it for a moment. It was written inLIMBO—not one of his specialties. Just by looking at it,though, Hale could tell one thing for certain—this was not a diagnostic. He could make sense of only two words. Butthey were enough.

TRACER SEARCHING…

"Tracer?" he said aloud. "Searching for what?" Hale felt suddenly uneasy. He sat a moment studyingSusan's screen. Then he made his decision.

Hale understood enough about the LIMBO programming language toknow that it borrowed heavily from two other languages—C andPascal—both of which he knew cold. Glancing up to check thatStrathmore and Susan were still talking outside, Hale improvised.He entered a few modified Pascal commands and hit return. Thetracer's status window responded exactly as he had hoped.

TRACER ABORT?

He quickly typed: YES

ARE YOU SURE?

Again he typed: YES

After a moment the computer beeped.

TRACER ABORTED

Hale smiled. The terminal had just sent a message tellingSusan's tracer to self-destruct prematurely. Whatever she waslooking for would have to wait.

Mindful to leave no evidence, Hale expertly navigated his wayinto her system activity log and deleted all the commands he'djust typed. Then he reentered Susan's privacy code.

The monitor went black.

When Susan Fletcher returned to Node 3, Greg Hale was seatedquietly at his terminal.