At the end he stopped and ran a hand over his graying brown hair, whose natural wave added an illusory inch to his six-one frame, and looked away from the papers for the last time. His eyes angled right, at the flexible microphone snaking upward near the computer monitor on his desk. “VOICE,” he said loudly, in a distinct tone he knew would be recognized, then, in a more normal voice, “Intercom.” His normal voice commanded attention. An electronic beep told him to continue. “Sharon?”
“Yes, Mr. Kudrow,” a disembodied voice replied through the speaker in the microphone’s base.
“Contact Colonel Murdoch in S and inform him that I have studied his request and that it is denied.” Kudrow stood motionless, staring toward his desk.
“Understood, Mr. Kudrow.”
“Intercom off.” Two beeps signaled that his voice command had been heeded. Kudrow walked around his desk and sat, tossing the poorly conceived request into a large red basket. There was no need to shred what went in there.
Done with serious contemplation for the moment, Kudrow sipped lemonade from the half full glass on his desk and flipped through a minor stack of papers. All bore the TOP SECRET designation across their top, which was why his secretary had placed them with the routine material he needed to peruse before this first day of the work week was finished. If he had his druthers he’d have Sharon sign off on them, but the government had silly rules that only added to the workload of its truly valuable people, of whom he was certainly one, Kudrow believed without a doubt. So he moved quickly through the collection of briefs from DoD, State, and other less important entities, and was only mildly perturbed when his intercom interrupted him mid-stack.
“Yes?”
“Mr. Kudrow, Mr. Folger says he’s coming down.” There was a distinct hesitation in Sharon’s voice.
Kudrow stared silently at the speaker for a second. “He’s coming down? Did you inform him that I am occupied?”
“He didn’t give me the chance, Mr. Kudrow.” She never called him sir. Military officers were ‘sirs’. Kudrow was proudly a career civilian. “He just called, said he’s coming down, and hung up. I tried to get him back on the phone but his secretary said he just hurried out.”
“Very well,” Kudrow said tersely and heard his secretary click off. Interruptions — the bane of those with purpose. G. Nicholas Kudrow was a man with purpose. And with position. Deputy Director for COMSEC-Z of the National Security Agency. A position that was never publicly acknowledged as existing by those ‘in the know’, in the same way that his domain, Department Z of the NSA’s Communications Security directorate, was but a phantom operation within the world’s largest intelligence gathering organization.
But for apparitions, Kudrow and Z left an undisputable mark on the basic functions of the nation’s government. He and his people were responsible for the cryptographic systems that protected the sensitive information that flowed between pieces of the United States Government and its assorted agencies, departments, and bureaus. When people committed secrets to paper, or to some other storage media, and sent it across the street or across an ocean, when imaging satellites snapped their pictures and relayed the shots to a ground station, when secure phones rang at any U.S. installation, the signals passed at each end of its transmission through something that G. Nicholas Kudrow was responsible for. In between those stations the secret was nonsensical gobbledygook.
It was Kudrow’s job, his purpose, to see that that remained the status quo. To that end he was directly responsible for a budget of one hundred million dollars in discretionary funding a year, fifteen times that much in annual project money, two dozen cryptographers who dreamed up the ‘ultimate security’, and a hundred technicians to build the physical structures — or cryptographic machines — that gave that ultimate security to select users. He had chosen the design of the building that housed Department Z, even the color of its windowless exterior — dark brown — and nearly everything else about Z had his stamp of approval on it. It was his domain, and he balanced his rule of it somewhere between father and tyrant dependent on the situation at hand.
The tyrant in him snapped eyes to the door when it opened without a knock. Brad Folger, Assistant Deputy Director for COMSEC-Z, entered just ahead of Kudrow’s secretary.
“Mr. Kudrow,” Sharon said in frustrated apology. “I tried to grab him—”
“Good morning, Nick,” Folger said, ignoring Sharon. He was in shirtsleeves, cuffs buttoned down smartly, but his red and blue tie was askew, fat and thin ends both showing. The lid above his right eye tremored noticeably. “Can we talk?”
This was no petty disturbance, Kudrow could tell by his assistant’s appearance. “All right, Sharon.” She stepped out with a poisoned glance at Folger and closed the thick door. Kudrow watched as Folger, forty but looking twenty-five, stepped close to his desk. “You should get that eye looked at.”
Folger consciously tried to stem the tremor, the attempt futile. The lid shook like a flap of loose skin, covering half the eye in a perpetual jitter. “I got a call a few minutes ago. From Pedanski.”
“And?”
Folger slid both hands into the pockets of his pleated gray trousers. “He wants me to bring you downstairs. He and Dean and Patel want to talk to us.” Kudrow’s chin rose a bit. “Nick, he sounded scared.”
Kudrow’s brow collapsed slowly into a series of fleshy furrows. He stood, his imposing frame against the jarring colors of the Lichtenstein that hung behind his desk. It had cost a hundred thousand dollars. “Scared?”
“I’ve never heard him like this,” Folger said. “The guy usually doesn’t take anything seriously.”
But what would frighten Pedanski, or any of his animals, as Kudrow referred to the three all stars of his team of cryptographers? He did not know. But he did know that anything involving the trio in concert required attention. They were special, after all, not only for who they were, but for what they had created. “Let’s go.”
The Z building was but one of three dozen buildings on the grounds of the National Security Agency, which was ringed concentrically by three fences, the outer two chain link and topped with razor wire and the inner one electrified. Marines with smart-looking German Shepherds walked the perimeter in an endless patrol, and from control points atop the U-shaped Headquarters-Operations building other Marines scanned the grounds zealously for any attempt at intrusion, rifles slung for quick access. The security was meant to be oppressive, and seemed more so considering that the entire NSA complex sat within the boundaries of the United States Army’s Fort George Meade, located halfway between Baltimore and the nation’s capital.
The Z building, a hundred yards inside the triple fence and fifty yards from the nearest structure, was surrounded by its own combination of chain link, razor wire, and high voltage. Two Marines guarded the single portal through the barrier at all times. They had orders to shoot any who attempted unauthorized entry into the windowless brown building known colloquially as the Chocolate Box.
They had done so twice in ten years. Neither incident had made the news.
On the first floor of the Z building, G. Nicholas Kudrow left his office at a brisk walk with Brad Folger on his heels. He headed for the stairs to the basement and walked freely down one level.