The Cassandra Conspiracy by Rick Bajackson Read Free Book Online Page B

Crofton took a seat across from Ettleberg. The three men talked about business and the state of the economy. They did so until Grover Albright and Helene Rochambeau arrived. Again, the chairman made the introductions.
    In appearance, Albright was a diminutive man with thinning hair, at best described as nondescript. The man had no vices and was not given to any form of excess. Albright sat at the far end of the table, farthest from Wingate’s position of power.
    The other men rose as Helene walked into the room. She greeted each man separately. Mlle Rochambeau was wearing, as usual, one of her suits, tailored to reflect the exquisite taste of its owner, while conveying a businesslike appearance. She took the chair to the right of the Chairman, and waited for the meeting to begin.
    It was now a few minutes past eight, and the remaining two members of the Committee had yet to appear. A stickler for punctuality, Wingate sat at the head of the table, glancing furtively at his watch and tapping his Cross pen like a metronome on the writing tablet in front of him.
    With an air of alacrity, Carlton Steiner, entered the room, followed by Thomas Ward. After introducing Lawrence Ettleberg to the late arrivals, Charles Wingate called the meeting to order.
    “I’m glad to see that each of you could attend tonight. I regret that I had to call this meeting on such short notice. Before we address the business at hand, I want to be certain that each of you has not been having any trouble with your mail.”
    Wingate didn’t trust the telephones to handle his communications. Too many agencies were adept at tapping the lines. Instead, he relied on a simple computer-based electronic mail system. All communications between the Wingate’s computer in the library and the members’ satellite stations were also encrypted. For short messages, the system functioned in a way that assured Wingate his security integrity was maintained. Once the message was encrypted, a modem link sent it to the recipient’s computer, where the communication was decoded.
    Up to now, the Committee had been using an effective but not overly sophisticated encryption scheme. It had been more than sufficient to discourage anyone who might have come across any Committee -oriented E-mail. Now, anything less than state-of-the-art wouldn’t do, and Wingate had had a new encryption system developed by Steiner Aeronautics.
    Unlike their existing system, which used a relatively simple encryption algorithm with messages transmitted over a huge commercial network, where the sheer volume of traffic made it impossible to tell one message from another, the revamped encryption system used the government-approved Data Encryption Standard, or DES.
    Wingate knew that any attempt at penetrating the Committee’s security would come from private-sector sources; his position as the President's best friend and high-level advisor would deter any of the government agencies from even thinking about trying to intercept his communications. But for reasons known only to him, Wingate had decided to upgrade the system’s security.
    Once the new system had been designed, Wingate directed Steiner Aeronautics’ engineers and computer programmers to try and decrypt a test message. When the company’s huge IBM mainframe computers were unable to come up with the clear text message, Wingate was satisfied they had reached an acceptable level of security.
    “Our new data security system uses the best possible encryption scheme. In front of each of you is a floppy disk. Guard it well. Without it, your computers are useless. Lose it, and anyone getting their hands on it will be able to read our communications as if they were sent unencrypted. You’ll find the procedure for using the new algorithm in an encrypted file on the disk. All you have to do is to follow the normal procedure when you decrypt the instructions. Forty -eight hours from now, all communications will be encrypted using the new system.