[To be continued]
Did you hear? Someone deciphered BLACK!
Who?
Was he (or she) still alive? Director Zheng told me his name: Yan Shi. What is more, he told me that he was indeed still alive. He suggested that I go and interview him, and once the interview was over, come and see him again; apparently, Director Zheng had additional information to give me. Two days later, I met with Director Zheng again and the first words out of his mouth were a question: ‘So, what do you think of that old bastard?’ He was referring to Yan Shi, the man responsible for deciphering BLACK. His wording left me speechless for a moment.
‘Don’t be offended,’ he went on. ‘In truth, no one around here cares much for Yan Shi.’
‘Why?’ I asked, feeling that this was rather odd.
‘Because he has got so much out of it: too much, in fact.’
‘But he cracked BLACK — doesn’t he deserve to be rewarded?’
‘But everyone believes that his accomplishment was only possible because he had Rong Jinzhen’s notebook to work from; that his inspiration came solely from the work already carried out by Rong Jinzhen.’
‘That’s true; he admitted that to me,’ I said.
‘Really? No way — he would never have said that.’
‘Eh? I heard it with my own ears.’
‘What did he say, then?’ Director Zheng asked.
‘He told me that actually it was Rong Jinzhen who deciphered BLACK; that his own reputation was underserved.’
‘Oh, this is big news.’ He stared at me in surprise. ‘Previously he always skirted round the issue of Rong Jinzhen, evaded questions about how he figured out how to decipher BLACK. How is it that he didn’t with you? Hmm. . perhaps it’s because you are not a member of this organization, you’re somebody on the outside. I wonder.’ Director Zheng paused for a moment and then continued, ‘He never before so much as mentioned Rong Jinzhen, purposefully pushing him aside, trying to create the impression that he was entirely responsible for deciphering BLACK. But how could that have been possible? We’ve all been here together for such a long time, who doesn’t know who? Yet it seemed as though he had changed into a genius overnight; now tell me, who could believe that? No one, that’s who! As we saw him hog all of the glory for cracking BLACK, we really couldn’t accept it. There was so much gossip and complaint — we all felt outraged by the injustice done to Rong Jinzhen.’
I fell into deep thought. I wondered if I should disclose to him everything that Yan Shi had told me. To tell you the truth, Yan Shi never explicitly told me not to share with others what he had told me, but neither did he imply that it was okay to tell other people.
A moment of silence passed. Director Zheng looked me over and then continued speaking: ‘Actually, his inspiration for deciphering BLACK could only have come from Rong Jinzhen’s notebook, this fact is undeniable; everyone had already come to this conclusion and you’ve just now said that Yan Shi himself admits to this. Then why has he never come clean with us, why hasn’t he admitted it to us? It is just as I said: his only aim was to push Rong Jinzhen aside in order to obtain all the glory for deciphering BLACK himself. Everyone knew that. And because everyone knew it, he has stubbornly refused to admit it, causing everyone to loathe him even more and to not trust him at all. But I think that he was not at all clever with his selfish little machinations. Ah, but that is another topic altogether, let’s leave that for now. .
‘Now, I want to ask you — and you can take your time thinking about it — how is it that he was able to discover inspiration from Rong Jinzhen’s notebook when Rong Jinzhen himself couldn’t? It is quite reasonable to say that whatever it was that he learnt from the notebook, Rong Jinzhen should have been able to do the same and much earlier. Don’t you agree? After all, it was Rong Jinzhen’s notebook; his thoughts, his ideas. To use an analogy, you could say that the notebook was like a room and inside this room there was a key, the key to unlocking BLACK. Then how is it that the person whose room it was couldn’t find it? How is it that someone on the outside could simply enter the room and discover it immediately? Now I ask you, is that not strange?’
His analogy was quite apropos. It laid out all of his innermost thoughts about this situation on a plate; it was all very incisive. But I wanted to say that none of what he thought was actually what really happened. That is. . there were no problems with his analogy; rather, the problem lay in what he thought had taken place. Mulling it over whilst listening to him, I ultimately decided that I would tell him everything that Yan Shi had told to me; that in and of itself that should clear things up and establish for certain what actually transpired. But he never gave me the chance to get a word in edgewise, he simply continued on in the same breath: ‘It was then that I came to believe that while attempting to crack BLACK, Rong Jinzhen had made a cardinal sin, and what’s more, this error wound its way into his head, bludgeoning a genius into an idiot. This mistake, when all is said and done, could only have happened to someone who could transgress the iron-clad law of cryptography: it was the residual effect of his having cracked PURPLE lurking in the shadows, waiting to cause mischief.’
Having reached this point, Director Zheng stopped talking and went silent. It seemed as though he had fallen into a state of mournful melancholy. As I waited for him to speak again, it became obvious that he wasn’t going to continue on with his story but rather to bid me farewell. Even though I had thought of telling him what I had learnt from Yan Shi, I never had the chance. But I was happy with this. I thought, ‘Since I wasn’t really sure if I should tell him or not, not having been given the opportunity to do so worked in my favour, it allowed me to avoid the burden the words would have incurred.’
Before we parted, I had to remind him, ‘Didn’t you say that you had some additional information to give me?’
He was a bit taken aback, but then made his way over to a metal file cabinet and pulled open a drawer. Removing a single file, he asked, ‘Did you know that when Rong Jinzhen was at university he was the student of a foreign professor, a man by the name of Jan Liseiwicz?’
‘No, I hadn’t heard that.’
‘This man went to great efforts to prevent Rong Jinzhen from deciphering PURPLE. This file is the proof. Have a look, and should you need it, we can make copies for you.’
That was how I first heard of Liseiwicz.
Director Zheng admitted that he did not know Liseiwicz and what he had discovered had come by way of hearsay. He said, ‘When he made contact with us here, I was overseas in Y country to learn from their experience in trying to decrypt PURPLE. Even after I returned, I did not come into contact with the Liseiwicz correspondence; only the special task force assigned to cracking PURPLE had any firsthand knowledge of these letters. At the time, Headquarters was taking direct charge of things — perhaps they feared we would fight over it, fight to see who could produce the desired outcome. As a result, they kept us in the dark about the whole affair. It was only much later on that I met a senior official from Headquarters who was prepared to let me see the letters. They are all in English, but accompanied with Chinese translations.’