Hollingshead came over and grasped Chapel’s hands. He always took the left hand as well, as if to acknowledge the artificial arm without being too obvious about it. “So very sorry, son, to hear about the, ah, bends and all that. Won’t you take a seat?”
“Yes, sir, though I don’t intend to stay very long. I have an appointment in Brooklyn to keep.”
Hollingshead’s face broke into a beaming smile that would have lit up any fallout shelter. He knew all about Julia, of course, and what Chapel hadn’t told him personally he would have heard from Angel. “You are a very lucky man, Captain Chapel. You couldn’t have picked a better helpmeet.”
“I am blessed, sir, it’s true. I know it’s premature, but I hope you’ll come to the wedding.”
“Wouldn’t miss it, son, not for rubies or pearls.”
Chapel grinned. “Just talking about it out loud like that, like it’s something that I need to put on my schedule… it still feels weird. But it should be official by tonight.” He shook his head in disbelief. “I admit, I’m a little nervous. What if she says no?”
“Then my intelligence estimates will have been proven wrong.”
Chapel started in surprise. “You didn’t — I mean, you haven’t—”
“Just a small joke, son. No, I haven’t had DIA analysts working out the likelihood of Julia Taggart becoming Mrs. Julia Chapel. Call it an intuition. Or rather, let’s say that I couldn’t think of two people I hold in higher regard, and better suited to a life of shared bliss. Maybe we should have that drink after all, to celebrate.”
“Thank you, sir,” Chapel said, his grin returning, “but I’d just as soon get this debriefing over with and get on the train to New York.” He reached in his pocket and took out the little black book. He riffled through it, seeing once more the grids of numbers and Cyrillic characters that filled each page. Then he handed it over. “I hope it’s worth the trouble it took to secure it.”
Hollingshead took the book and tucked it into a pocket of his jacket. “It’s worth more than its weight in diamonds, believe me. You know what it is, of course.”
That was a question, and maybe some kind of test. Chapel nodded. “It’s a one-time pad.” A codebook, in other words, containing the key to a cipher that theoretically couldn’t be cracked. The captain of the Kurchatov would have consulted those grids when sending secret messages back to his superiors in Russia. Each character in his plaintext message was transposed with a character from one of those grids, using basic modular addition. On the other end of the transmission, in a Kremlin basement perhaps, someone else would have an identical pad and be able to decrypt the message. If the characters in the grids were truly random, and if nobody else had access to the pad, the message could never be decrypted since the cipher was unique to that particular message.
One-time pads had been used by both sides throughout the Cold War. They had only been replaced by the advent of computer cryptography. The Kremlin and the Pentagon had relied on them for decades, but unfortunately they weren’t very practical. One problem was that the receiver of the message needed to know which page of his own pad to use when deciphering the message, or even which pad to use if more than one existed. In real-world use, the KGB had ended up using what were essentially one-day pads — the same cipher matrix being used for every coded transmission sent in a twenty-four-hour window. There was also the difficulty of making sure every submarine commander, say, received a new pad every month — a tricky bit of logistics when some submarines went on six-month-long cruises and rarely called in at friendly ports.
Because of these issues, one-time pads had fallen out of use — as far as Chapel knew, no major intelligence operation had used them in years.
Which raised the question of why Hollingshead wanted this pad.
“Completely useless, of course,” Chapel said.
“Of course,” Hollingshead said, though a mischievous grin threatened to crack his face in half.
“Even if codebooks like that were still in use — even if the Russian Federation used the same sort of codes as the Soviet Union used to, which they don’t — this pad would still be obsolete. The codes in there haven’t been used for twenty years.”
“Indeed.” Hollingshead took off his glasses and started polishing them with a silk handkerchief. “Hardly seems worth putting the life of my best agent at, um, risk, wouldn’t you say?”
“I follow my orders, sir,” Chapel replied. “I don’t question them. Usually.”
Hollingshead nodded in excitement. “I’ve got quite the plan for this little book, son. It’s a shame I can’t tell you what it is.”
Chapel smiled at his boss. “The suspense might kill me,” he joked. But he understood. The one-time pad was meant for some incredibly secret mission, something truly vital to national security. He desperately, desperately wanted to know why Hollingshead thought it was good for something.
But he was never going to find out.
Chapel wasn’t going on the next mission. He was going to get married instead. He’d already asked for, and received, a leave of absence while he went home and proposed to his girlfriend. Hollingshead had been overjoyed when he heard the news.
“She’s a lovely girl, and you’re a very lucky man,” Hollingshead said, standing up to come shake Chapel’s hands again. “I couldn’t be happier for you. Well, ah, that’s not strictly true.”
“Oh?” Chapel asked, surprised.
“Well. I have a, ah, well, not a reservation. Call it my one regret. It’s simply that I wish I could use you for this mission. It’s perfect for you. But that doesn’t matter. Nothing else matters but the joy you’re going to deliver to that wonderful woman. Have you thought about where you’re going to honeymoon? I’m partial to Barbados.”
“It’s a little premature to think about that, sir.”
“Of course, of course,” Hollingshead said. He beamed from ear to ear. “Well, take all the time you need. I’ll see you when you get back.”
“Thank you, sir,” Chapel said. He stood up and saluted.
The director saluted back. “If anyone deserves a little time off, it’s you, son. Enjoy it. Enjoy it as much as you possibly can.”
“I will,” Chapel said. He couldn’t help but burst into a smiling laugh. “I really will.”
Chapel drove to Manhattan, where he stopped off at the jeweler’s and picked up the ring. It was beautiful, gleaming in its little box. He paid the man and headed south, across the Manhattan bridge, into the heart of Brooklyn. Toward home.
Toward Julia.
He parked the car outside their little apartment building and looked up at their windows. They shared one floor of a brownstone, just a couple of rooms, tiny by the standards of anyone who’d never lived in a New York apartment. There had been some very good times in those little rooms.
He caught a flash of movement behind one of the windows. A glimpse of red hair as Julia walked past. She was up there. Good.
He realized he’d been sitting in the car for ten minutes. Was he nervous? He didn’t feel nervous. Mostly he felt a little numb.
He headed up the stairs with his good hand clutched tightly around the ring box in his pocket. He had to force himself to let go so he didn’t crush it. When he got to the door, he tried the knob and found that it was unlocked. That was a little weird — Julia, like most New Yorkers, kept her doors locked when she was home. But it didn’t mean anything. He needed to stop thinking like a spy. He turned the knob and stepped inside. There was a little end table next to the door, a place to put keys or plug in a phone. He took the ring box out of his pocket and laid it there, so that he wasn’t holding it when he first saw her. “Julia?” he called.