The words were little more than gibberish. In addition to its array of digitally secure communication systems, Bower had insisted the Omega Deep retain a unique unbreakable code to be used for open communication. This one relied on a secret key cryptography to obscure its meaning. This type of code was a variation of the one-time pad — the only truly unbreakable code in theory. To decode the message, a listener had to have both the book and the key.
Cognizant of the abundant interest in their new technology by friendly and hostile nations, the decision was made early on to use this cryptography for communications regarding the Omega Cloak.
Secret key cryptography employs a single key for both encryption and decryption. In this case, a message was sent by the Pentagon using the key to encrypt the plaintext and send the ciphertext to the receiver. The receiver applies the same key to decrypt the message and recover the plaintext.
Because a single key is used for both functions, secret key cryptography is also called symmetric encryption. When using a cipher, the original information is known as plaintext and the encrypted form as ciphertext. The ciphertext message contains all the information of the plaintext message — yet isn’t in a format readable by human or computer without the proper mechanism to decrypt it.
Halifax patiently waited as Dwight began the complex process of decoding the message.
From the navigation table, Bower removed the book — Tolstoy’s War and Peace. From his pocket, he withdrew the key to the code. Today was October 2 — thus he had to add the year, ignoring the first two digits, to the day’s date. So, 2 and 18 made 20. He then turned the book to page twenty. October was the 10th month, so every 10th letter on the page would be discounted.
Using the key, he slowly continued this process, transcribing the letters on the pad Halifax had handed him until they became a recognizable series of words.
When Bower was finished, the lines around his face deepened for a moment. Then, abruptly, his wrinkles seemed to disappear as his face broke out in a surprisingly boyish smile.
“The team of dedicated and highly intelligent men and women behind the Omega project back stateside are happy with our preliminary notes, and confident in our success,” Dwight said. “We’ve been given formal approval for silent running by engaging the Omega Cloak. We have been authorized to then complete our primary mission.”
“Very good, sir.” Halifax looked at him. “May I ask the mission destination?”
“I’ll explain that after we’ve dived, once the Omega Cloak is protecting us from all listening devices. They’re all focused on us now.”
The XO firmly set his jaw. “When do you want to sail?”
“We’ll dive as soon as we have visual confirmation of the Omega Cloak.”
The bow of the Vostok sliced through the icy swell of the Norwegian Sea with ease.
In the darkness, a large diesel powerplant hummed, as more than five miles of longline fishing hooks were slowly retracted onto their drums housed on the stern. It appeared to be a poor catch, with little visible in the line. This type of fishing was a lot like gambling. A large factory fishing trawler could spend a fortune hunting a particular school of fish in the remote regions of the Barents and Norwegian Sea into the Arctic Ocean and be rewarded with nothing. At the same time, one good catch could see them all rich.
Svetlana Dyatlova examined her monitoring station with alacrity, keen not to miss any detail.
Her face was a study of jarring contrast. She was attractive — stunning in fact, yet there was a cold, calculating, hardness in her gaze that gave people pause. Her lustrous dark hair was smartly tied back in a single plait. She had pale, smoky blue-gray eyes and a strong nose. Her jawline was prominent, with high cheek-bones, leading to a rosebud mouth and full lips, that appeared set just shy of a permanent scowl.
Suddenly, her scowl broadened into a menacing grin as she acquired her target, revealing a set of small, even white teeth, like a Cheshire cat. Her sharp eyes were wide, and despite an outward display of cold, calculating, reservation, her countenance would have made any man stare. Svetlana’s heart was pounding in the back of her ears — because she had just made the best catch of her career.
Despite their appearance, those longlines that trailed from the Vostok’s stern into the shale-like sea were never designed to catch fish. Instead, they were used for hunting submarines. Embedded into their nearly five miles of high tensile cables, was an advanced, long-range, all-weather, sonar system with both passive and active components, operating in the low-frequency band between 100–500 hertz and capable of perceiving the slightest of sounds from her quarry. And Svetlana’s line had just located the U.S. Navy’s latest experimental submarine.
The Vostok was Russia’s most advanced spy ship.
At a length of 354 feet, a beam of 56 feet, and a hull displacement of 5,763 tons, she was similar in size and capabilities to her sister ship, the Yantar, which, although widely acknowledged as a spy vessel, operated on the auspice of the Russian Navy’s Main Directorate of Underwater Research. While Yantar was launched in 2015 and openly applauded as one of the most capable instruments of espionage and counter-espionage, Vostok, started her life as a fishing trawler.
Unlike her sister ship, which had been stalked by satellites, submarines, and high altitude unmanned surveillance drones since she was first launched, the Vostok had quietly launched a year later at Murmansk. Designed and built to enter the Barents Sea for prolonged fishing expeditions, they had no evidence the vessel’s cover had been breached.
Good deception, any Russian operative well knew, took time to develop.
As such, the Vostok spent the first two years fishing on the edges of the Arctic Circle away from the rest of the world, while all eyes on Earth tracked the Yantar as she performed low-level espionage and counter-espionage missions. At times, Yantar followed fictional submarine cables, and zigzagged for no reason other than to distract the world’s surveillance machines, while the Vostok prepared to perform the most clandestine and vital spy operations for the Russian Navy.
Svetlana Dyatlova’s career had just taken a giant leap.
Three weeks ago, Svetlana had broken an encrypted transmission from what appeared to be a U.S. experimental nuclear submarine, named Omega Deep. The breakthrough meant they now knew the exact location of the next surfacing for its next set of communications. Despite being a fairly low-ranking recruit, she was flown to the high-tech spy vessel, Vostok.
This was what Svetlana was born for.
Everything in her life had been leading up to this single event.
Her father had been a senior Russian Intelligence Officer back when it was still the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti — AKA, KGB. After the dissolution of the USSR, the KGB was split into the Federal Security Service and the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation. He moved into Foreign Intelligence, and when he got too old for that, he moved into education at The Institute in Moscow until his retirement ten years ago. Svetlana, as a baby growing up in the Mikhail Gorbachev-era Soviet Union, had watched her country go through many changes.
It was because of her father that she was drawn into the field of intelligence. For his part, her father never intended her to become a spy, but none the less that’s what happened. As she was growing up, Svetlana had watched with fascination, impressed by the respect her father commanded. The fact his deference was founded on fear didn’t bother her in the least.