Turing's Delirium (30 page)

"And the German cities make you think that Albert wasn't a CIA agent but a Nazi. Who knows? Maybe he was a CIA agent who worked in Germany during the cold war. But I don't want to talk about that. I have something more important to tell you."

He did not have definitive proof, but he was sure that he was right. Ramírez-Graham came from a culture where things were said up front. It would be very painful for Turing, but in the long run he would be doing him a favor. It would help him stop ... stop living a lie.

"Mr. Sáenz," he says. "You are one of the Black Chamber's great heroes. That's why it hurts me to say what I'm about to say. Do you remember your first few years here? When you acquired your fame as being infallible? Able to decipher everything that Albert put on your desk? I'm going to tell you how you were able to do that."

Ramírez-Graham clears his throat.

"You were able to do that because those messages were meant to be deciphered."

"I don't understand."

"It's quite simple and complicated at the same time. Let me start at the beginning, with Albert. According to the confidential documents I read, toward the end of 1974, during the third year of Montenegro's dictatorship, Albert, who was in Bolivia as a consultant with the CIA, requested an audience with the minister of the interior. He told him, in so many words, that at the end of the year he would be assigned to another country but that he was willing to leave the CIA and stay in Bolivia if he was offered a job. Albert told the minister that a government like Montenegro's needed a specialized intelligence service and that he could put his experience with the CIA at Montenegro's disposal and take charge of organizing such a service. The minister told him, in so many words—what I read wasn't tape transcripts, you see, but the report that the minister sent to the president—that the government already had an intelligence service."

Ramírez-Graham walks up to the aquarium and taps the glass a few times, as if trying to get the angelfish's attention. He then remembers that he hasn't yet fed them and does so as he continues speaking.

"Albert replied that the government didn't have anything like the NSA, an agency whose only responsibility was to intercept electronic signals and coded information of all kinds and to decipher them in order to keep the government apprised of the opposition's plans. The times ahead made establishing such an agency an urgent matter. The Communist infiltration of South America, the Soviet and Cuban financing of political parties and Marxist guerrilla groups, had to be fought using all of the weapons at the government's disposal. The minister answered that Albert had never worked for the NSA. Albert replied by saying that he had been the liaison between the CIA and the NSA for a time and that he knew of what he spoke. In the minister's opinion, something about Albert didn't add up. His accent, for example, was not at all that of an American speaking Spanish. It was—how shall I say?—as confusing as if a German had learned English and then Spanish. Even so, he found Albert fascinating."

"I know all of that already," Turing said, impatient.

"Wait. Just wait a moment. I don't have conclusive proof of what I'm about to tell you. There are a lot of things in the documentation that are hinted at, written between the lines. But I'll put my job on the line for what I'm about to tell you. So, as I was saying, the minister got one of those ideas that gave him his reputation as the smartest man in his graduating class at military college. He would accept Albert's idea and radicalize it."

He pauses, takes a drink of his coffee.

"Sometimes it was necessary to eliminate someone in the opposition, and a few scrupulous military men opposed this, saying that the prestige of the army was not to be tampered with. Those soldiers had formed a group called Dignity. They were asking, among other things, for clarification of the definition of 'political crime,' which the government used to justify having a member of the opposition arrested, exiled, or anything else they decided to do. Dignity didn't want anyone to be detained without concrete proof, but sometimes, as you know, there was no proof."

He touches the glass case that covers the Enigma machine. What must it have been like to use one of them? How had it even been possible to program cryptographic systems without software?

"The minister thought that it was better to err on the side of acts rather than omissions, as the governments in Chile and Argentina had. Better to make a mistake on bad faith than to leave a single possible Communist agitator alive. There are no white gloves in a dirty war. The soldiers who formed Dignity found that argument insufficient. But perhaps they could accept the need to eliminate certain persons if there was convincing proof that they were involved in conspiracies. The minister could use Albert."

"Use?" Turing asks incredulously.

"They could plant intercepted messages and use them as need be. He told Albert to come back, that he would consult with the president. A week later they had approved the plan to set up the Black Chamber in secret, an organization that would be a branch of the SIN and that would be managed, at first unofficially, by Albert."

"That's a lie. Albert was never used by anyone. He was too intelligent for that."

"For the first few months of 1975, the hard line of Montenegro's government did use Albert. However, by the end of 1975 he became part of the conspiracy, once he realized that he was being used. At first he said nothing. Then he revealed that he knew what was going on but was willing to continue his work. Perhaps he had no other choice. He knew too much—he would be eliminated if he resigned."

There is confusion in Turing's eyes. Ramírez-Graham notes the grief on his face but must not stop. He finishes his coffee.

"By that time a certain amount of sophistication had been achieved in terms of planting information that was supposedly intercepted. For example, they published notices containing secret messages in newspapers, then they discovered those messages and accused some opposition group of having published them. That's how, for example, the military and civilians who were involved in the Tarapaca plot that planned to overthrow the government were eliminated. The government didn't have overwhelming proof to get rid of them, so it invented secret messages about the conspiracy in order to justify its actions to Dignity."

"And what was my role in all of this?"

Ramírez-Graham pauses.

"In order to avoid suspicion inside the Black Chamber, Albert suggested that planted information should be given to the fewest cryptanalysts possible—the majority of them would work on analyzing real messages. Albert had a favorite cryptanalyst to whom he gave all the planted information. He chose him because he was immune to political shifts, was incapable of thinking about the consequences of his work or feeling remorse because of it. A man who lived as if he were not part of history."

For the first time in the whole conversation, Turing lifts his eyes and looks straight at Ramírez-Graham.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Sáenz. Albert took all of the messages that you deciphered from a manual on the history of cryptanalysis. It wouldn't be hard to prove.
Chapter one
, a monoalphabetic substitution code.
Chapter two
, a polyalphabetic substitution code ... In reality, neither you nor this building had any more reason for being than to hide how sinister Montenegro's dictatorship could be when it realized who its enemies were. Inertia is what allowed you to keep your job and this building to continue functioning once the reasons that gave rise to it were no longer valid. Believe me, Mr. Sáenz, I understand how difficult this must be for you. Understand how difficult it is for me too. After discovering all of this, do you think it's easy for me to be here still?"

U
NDER THE GLOW
of a red neon light, the El Dorado receptionist is logged on to Playground. His avatar is in a brothel where the women are modeled after some of the most famous porn stars. He has just closed a deal with a tall redhead wearing knee-high boots. She takes his avatar by the hand and leads him through silk curtains to a red-painted hallway, a row of rooms one next to the other on both sides. You ask him who she is. You want to have a normal conversation, something that will bring you back to the everyday world. You know that it's not going to be easy. A person shouldn't find out things he isn't prepared to know.

"Briana Banks23." It is the first time you have heard his voice, as weak as if his vocal cords could not tighten enough to produce a resonant sound. "Whoever has the trademark must be making more money online than the real Briana Banks. There are over seventy replicas in Playground alone."

He presses the pause button and the image of Playground freezes. You admire Briana, her firm thighs sheathed in silver shorts, her long, long legs. With those enormous breasts and that tiny waist, she is an excessive digital creation, the work of some fevered graphic designer who spent the night going through pinup magazines and decided to improve on his models.

The receptionist hands you the gold-colored key to room 492. "So, Carla again tonight," he says, grinning complicitly. "There's nothing better for business than a happy customer." You look down at the floor as you feel the blood rush to your face, and then you slip away, heading with tentative steps toward the elevator.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. You look carefully at the white numbers in the middle of the black buttons. Before pressing the 4, you ask yourself whether such a simple progression could hide a secret message. Never take anything for granted; even the most innocuous places are capable of hiding some writing, a signature. And few things hold as much sway over you as an undeciphered message. As if the miracle of the world would gain power simply by being hidden.

You would like to stay for hours in that noisy metal box, in that mirrored crypt, for your ascension to continue. You would then open the door and come out into an unknown world, where there would be none of the anxiety that you feel right now. Because nothing is what it seems, and the translucent waters of the river have turned murky. The women of your fantasies have their arms mapped by the cartography of drugs. The legend of your work has become an anecdote as memorable as it is obsolete. The actions of your entire life—your uninterrupted service to the nation—are for some the consummate fingerprints of a criminal career. It doesn't help to have discovered today that they might be right, and that to top it all off, most of your life has been a lie.

You come out of the elevator into a familiar space. Whom will you find behind the door you are heading toward? The California cheerleader or the real Carla? And what does she have to do with the mixed-up rest of your life? Is it that everything leads back to a plan that you can barely decipher between the lines? Is it that some secret plot conjures up the footprints your path takes and at the same time conjures you?

You miss Albert. He would have told you that paranoia is healthy. Admirable man, your discoverer. Still, not even he could have prepared you for what you discovered today. That insolent Ramírez-Graham. And the worst of it is that you think he might be right. It would be difficult, very difficult, to live with that certainty.

The years you spent in Albert's presence were unique. You were excited simply by the fact that he was in the same building, that you could walk a few yards and find yourself in his office, in his overwhelming presence, with his booming voice, his outrageous intelligence. You worked better, applied yourself to the task, felt that you were fighting for an objective that transcended your triviality as a man. You dedicated your entire life to that foreigner. You lived to hunt down secrets, knew that everyone had enemies, and yet you thought that he did not. Yes, you suspected that he treated you differently, that he hid things from you. But hiding the purpose of your work at the Black Chamber? No amount of cryptography would have been sufficient to encode so many lies.

Oh, Albert. He was very cruel to you. Worse still is that you were willing to forgive him, at least to try to understand him. Who were you, after all, to put yourself on his level, to dare to question him, to search for the ultimate reasons behind his motives? You always asked yourself the why behind the why, but when it came to Albert you entered sacred territory.

Carla opens the door and sees you standing immobile halfway between the elevator and her room. She is barefoot and wearing a purple baby doll that you find incongruous right now. It's the one she was wearing the afternoon you remember most clearly in your relationship, when she had one of her many outbursts. You were in bed watching television, having just made love; you were smoking, and she was drinking a can of rum and Coke. Out of nowhere, Carla made a joke about your member. She said it reminded her of her customer's, someone she had seen last week. Her comment hurt; you suspected that she still had other customers but preferred not to broach the subject. You expected her to do the same.

You picked up a folder containing the newest rules that Ramírez-Graham had instituted at work and began to read it. Ten minutes passed. She turned off the television and apologized; you did not respond. She tore the file out of your hands, ripped the pages one by one, and threw them onto the floor. You got up and got dressed, your socks inside out, your tie hanging loose. You told her that you would be back once she had calmed down, when she felt better. "Which might be never," you said without looking at her. She shouted: What did you know about her life? What did you know about her problems? You tried to help her, but it was all superficial. You didn't understand how difficult it was to struggle against addiction. "Son of a bitch," she shouted at you. "Bastard. Egotist. You don't know what real pain is." She threw the can of rum and Coke at you as you were walking out the door. It hit the wall and splattered on your coat. You were so angry that you took the stairs. You arrived at your car wanting to disappear from Carla's life, but you could not make yourself leave; you stayed sitting in your Toyota, brooding over your remorse. You went back up to room 492. If you didn't help her, who would?