Once Peter and Rod had left, Shelby signalled Ruthie over to her private office. Each of the ministers had an office of their own accessed by a key card. Although all four worked as a team, each understood that the others also had a personal case load and that unless a respective parishioner gave his or her permission, no discussion would be made about the others' files – and that each minister's office was indeed private.
The women waited for the pad to Shelby's office to go green indicating the door was unlocked. Once this happened, Ruthie and Shelby walked in. But rather than sit down at Shelby's desk, as Ruthie expected, they instead proceeded to the book shelf. Shelby handled a few books, and Ruthie was stunned to see the shelf give way to another, much larger door.
"A vault?" Ruthie asked. She didn't know about this feature.
"For our purposes, this is going to be necessary," replied Shelby. "I'll explain in a moment."
Shelby punched in a series of numbers rapidly. The vault unlocked and the women walked in. After a thirty second pause, the vault door closed again.
"Ruthie," said Shelby, "I'm sorry if I've spooked you, but I need to tell you three things. And this is the only truly private place to do it. So here goes.
"First, this room was put in by the Marines shortly before Rod and I took over the ministry. This is where we do SIGINT – signals intelligence. And it is absolutely hacker proof. No snooping possible."
"Whoa!" sputtered Ruthie. "Here?"
"Yes," replied Shelby. "In a few hours, the central computer for this church will send a coded message to the Pentagon. The mainframe for this region, in turn, will send a message back unlocking yours' and Peter's key cards so you can use this vault. You and Peter will also learn that your bookshelves are also trap-doors that have secret hallways leading to the broom closet on the other side of my office so you can enter in here when you need to. Which will be very often going forward."
"Do you mean," said Ruthie, "Peter and I have been given security clearances?"
"Top Secret, maybe higher depending on how deep this gets. Certainly much of what you will be read up on is on a need to know basis. And since you guys are involved with the finances, you do need to know."
"Shelby, there's got to be more, however, than this. Isn't stuff like the kind you're implying encrypted?"
"Yes. And you're also going to get read up on that also, in crash course format but it'll have to do. And, just so you know, Rod is giving Peter the low-down at a secure place not far from here before they go on their errands."
"Okay," said Ruthie, somewhat overwhelmed by what she was hearing so far.
"Ruthie, do you know what a 'One Time Pad' is?" asked Shelby.
"I do," said Ruthie. "It's an encryption system where, as long as both sides of a message keep the code secret and destroy the decrypt or 'pad' afterwards, no one trying to intercept the message can figure out what it is. Problem is, if I'm getting your drift, that's not really going to work here. There's only so many times we can run through the possibilities before starting again and anyone with a pretty robust computer can crack it."
"True," conceded Shelby, "but we're going to have to use a pad for at least the first few days. This one will take the form of the Sudoku puzzle and a few key words in the daily crossword in the local paper, with some reference points. I'm going to give you the instructions for day one, which is tomorrow. The Sudoku will yield a few random numbers which co-relate to the puzzle. The puzzle in turn, will contain a series of letters; the number will vary from day to day until next Sunday. At that point, the string of letters will be the plug-in for what Rod and I call 'The Eighth Wheel.'"
Ruthie was bewildered. She paused, waiting for Shelby to explain.
"Ruthie, have you ever heard of 'The Enigma'?"
"Who hasn't heard of it?" said Ruthie, smiling. "The Nazi encrypting system. You type the letter 'T' once, you might get a 'K'. Type 'T' again and it might be 'Z', and a third time it might be 'R'. The Poles got their hands on one, and seven years before World War Two ; and it was the Brits who got their hands on the one time pad a few months into the war, which had the start sequence for every day's codes. A lot of people say it cut several years off of the six-year slaughterhouse."
"Right," said Shelby. "And as I'm sure you and Peter know, what made it really ingenious is that the bad guys not only had a plug system that scrambled the letters for each keystroke, three plugs of the twenty-six letters of the alphabet for the land and air forces, four at sea; but also a rotor system, again three and four, out of a selection of eight, the series for all the elements determined each day by the pad.
"However, most people now know about the Enigma because 60 Minutes blew the lid off of it nearly forty years ago, deliberately violating secrecy laws. The argument the network made at the time was, the war had been long over, and the code was way outdated anyway. True enough, but the real reason the military was so angry about the breach was this: Even factoring in a four rotor and plug system, an Enigma message could be unencrypted with a brute force attack of just three hundred eighty bits. And that fact exposed just how weak military encryption was, even in the seventies."
"Most banks use one hundred twenty-eight bits for online transactions," said Ruthie. She then added sarcastically, "Makes my check book really secure."
"Yeah," agreed Shelby. "So while Rod and I spent some time at War College getting some elective credits for our divinity degrees, we got to wondering, what if we just went all the way and went with an eight rotor and eight plug set-up? It took my husband and I about an hour and twenty minutes using a combination of algebra, trigonometry and calculus, but we figured that we could get it up to at least eight hundred nine exobits. Of course, electronically, not a mechanical one.
"To prove what we had come up on, we issued an open challenge by an e-mail blast to the cadets at the four academies to crack a simple one, the Twenty-Third Psalm. Out of six thousand plus students, only one figured it out, and by her admission it took three hundred attempts before she figured out how to get the simulator to run through the possibilities. Yes, it is true a brute force could probably still decode an Enigma message with eight turns and plugs, but most people would never even bother to try. The one-time pad that will be generated as a start will have a string of one hundred twenty-eight letters. We need that kind of confidence to root out even the 'ethical' hackers, the kind that test government computers on purpose to help The Man can stay one step ahead of the really bad guys."
"You guys should be at the Pentagon. You're geniuses!" said Ruthie in admiration.
"Thanks, but not really. I'm sure the bad guys can figure this one out eventually. At least what we've talked about until now. But this is how it's really going to work. For the first four weeks, you and Peter will be working with an eight wheel system. The pad on day one will begin with the rotor sequence, plug and start positions, twenty-four letters in all. The rest of the first pad will be a welcome message as well as a sequence to use to confirm you've decoded it correctly. In future messages, you and Peter will get mostly the same; except that starting in week two, when you two begin to get classified intelligence, the rotor sequence for the next day will be at the end of the message.
"And, to make it more interesting, we'll add two rotors and plugs each on the simulator every two weeks after that; ten rotors and plugs in week four, twelve in week six, and so on until we get up to the max of twenty-six. That's the most the Pentagon systems can hope to handle at this time but hopefully the situation won't get that far. Just to be sure however, the greatest each message will have is one thousand letters in blocks of five each, at least until we get up to sixteen turns.
"Now, I'm going to say this again, Ruthie. I cannot stress enough the severity of this. Rod and I had to pull a lot of strings to get you and Peter a TS classification, so please don't misuse it. Any communications between you and relevant agencies, military and civilian, must be done only in this room. Do not say anything on the way in. Don't say anything when you leave. And absolutely, never ever, discuss this when you and Peter are in the car, at dinner, taking care of your kids, or having sex."
"Shelby, you put a lot on us when you and Rod hired us. The last thing we would dream of doing now is compromising national security. Both my grandfathers worked for the government. Dad and Lucy are ministers. I have some concept of discretion!"
"Thank you," said Shelby. "I just wanted to be clear about that."
"All right," said Ruthie, "with that out-of-the-way, you said there were two other things."
"Okay: Second. It's the twins' seventh birthday next Friday, as well as mine. Rod and I are having a party. I hope you guys could come."
"Did we have to discuss that in the vault?" laughed Ruthie. "Of course we'll come, all four of us. After all my kids have the same birthday too. We should work on this together."
"Good. Now, here's the third," said Shelby. "I told you earlier that I have a contact in Luxembourg, the one who's assisting us on this investigation?"
"Sure."
"Well, Ruthie, I need your advice on something. Just before we ended our meeting, which was at a private back room of a restaurant - well, this woman, she ... well ... she kissed me."
"Like a peck on the cheek? That's just what Europeans do all the time. Even guys do that. It's nothing!" said Ruthie.
"No Ruthie. She kissed me on the lips, uninvited," replied Shelby. "She held it for five seconds and then she began to French me for another five. I pulled away - actually I pushed her - and me telling her I was married to a great guy and I just didn't do that. She was very apologetic and promised she'd never do that again. The problem is – well, the flight back to Dulles was a total daze for me, and the connection to here in St. Louis had my head spinning."
Ruthie paused, letting this sink in. Then she shook her head and looked directly into Shelby's eyes.
"Shel, are you a lesbian?"
"No, of course not!"
"You're bi-sexual, or think you could be?"
"Before this trip, I would have definitely said no. But ever since I got back here a few days ago, well I don't know," said Shelby sullenly. "I'm not sure anymore if I'm straight, or if I go both ways, walk the same street, am just curious? Or is 'asexual' a choice of lifestyle? Meaning that I really don't like being with either a man or a woman?"
"I think Paula Poundstone has the market cornered on that last one," said Ruthie, a bit smugly.
Shelby laughed. Then she said, "Ruthie, I don't know what to do. I mean, Lucy is bi-sexual, isn't she?"
"She is," replied Ruthie, "but she made a promise to Kevin to stay faithful to him after her one-night stand with Roxanne. Far as I know she's kept that promise and I don't think she'd want to give you advice, especially as a fellow minister. Besides which, she and I talk on the phone maybe once a week, and we certainly don't discuss our respective sex lives! And just so you know, the 'other woman' in that one, Roxanne, well she and Chandler finally reconciled a few months ago and ended their 'duplex' arrangement. And that's in spite of the fact that Cathy is doing so well at school you'd never guess she has autism. Even her speech patterns are as close to 'normal' as one can hope for."
"Savant, is she?" asked Shelby.
"She's great on the piano as well at school, but that word might be unkind to her," replied Ruthie. "In any case, Roxanne has also decided she wants to be a chaplain for the NYPD, so I don't think she'd want to give you advice either. Not on that."
"Look, Ruthie, I'm sorry if that came off as a curve ball to you ..."
"Try, a deliberate bean-ball. That one I never saw coming -"
"... please let me finish, Ruthie," interrupted Shelby. "Rod and I actually haven't had sex for the last six months. We haven't even given each other so much as a peck on the cheek. Not that we've argued or anything, it's just we've come up with any number of reasons to avoid each other. We have the same bed still, but we haven't so much as held hands in that time. And after what happened to me last week, well I need to know who I am. What I am and what I want to be." She sighed. "I'm going to have to take a week or two off to sort this out in my head."
"I hope you do," said Ruthie, "because while the city slickers who attend our church tend to be rather tolerant on these kinds of things, those from the back forty may not be so much. You will always have my vote of confidence, but ultimately the employment of all four of us is up to the congregation. I don't have my father and sister to back me up anymore. This charge is my own and I can only get their advice, not marching orders. Shelby, have you even talked to your parents about this?"
"Uh-huh. Mom said just think before I act. Dad says I should just come out."
"He thinks you're a lesbian?"
"Bisexual," replied Shelby. "But that's his read. He's probably wrong. Or he could be right. I don't know."
"You absolutely have to talk to Rod about this," said Ruthie. "Tell him the truth. Peter and I can't offer counselling because of the conflict of interest here but we'll definitely find one of our contacts to help. Shelby, you and Rod and I are friends going back a long way. You two may be as different as night and day but you work grandly together as parents, as ministers and as Marines. Please, don't do anything that might be deemed as 'conduct unbecoming.'"
"Well, I'm going to have to rely on you for at least a while because someone's going to have to hold me up from falling down."
"I'm here for you. You know that. Just call me. We don't need a secure vault for that."
"Thanks," said Shelby. She and Ruthie walked out the vault, out the padded door and down to the nursery to pick up their respective children.
"Oh, and Ruthie?" as they headed to their vans.
"Yeah?"
"Good luck tomorrow on the ham radio exam. Can't wait to see your call sign on your van."
"I appreciate it. See you in the morning," said Ruthie. As she and her children drove away from the parking lot, Ruthie pounded her fist against the driver's side window. What in God's name have I gotten myself into?! she asked herself.