Mai Jia - Decoded

I fell into deep thought. I wondered if I should disclose to him everything that Yan Shi had told me. To tell you the truth, Yan Shi never explicitly told me not to share with others what he had told me, but neither did he imply that it was okay to tell other people.

A moment of silence passed. Director Zheng looked me over and then continued speaking: ‘Actually, his inspiration for deciphering BLACK could only have come from Rong Jinzhen’s notebook, this fact is undeniable; everyone had already come to this conclusion and you’ve just now said that Yan Shi himself admits to this. Then why has he never come clean with us, why hasn’t he admitted it to us? It is just as I said: his only aim was to push Rong Jinzhen aside in order to obtain all the glory for deciphering BLACK himself. Everyone knew that. And because everyone knew it, he has stubbornly refused to admit it, causing everyone to loathe him even more and to not trust him at all. But I think that he was not at all clever with his selfish little machinations. Ah, but that is another topic altogether, let’s leave that for now. .

‘Now, I want to ask you — and you can take your time thinking about it — how is it that he was able to discover inspiration from Rong Jinzhen’s notebook when Rong Jinzhen himself couldn’t? It is quite reasonable to say that whatever it was that he learnt from the notebook, Rong Jinzhen should have been able to do the same and much earlier. Don’t you agree? After all, it was Rong Jinzhen’s notebook; his thoughts, his ideas. To use an analogy, you could say that the notebook was like a room and inside this room there was a key, the key to unlocking BLACK. Then how is it that the person whose room it was couldn’t find it? How is it that someone on the outside could simply enter the room and discover it immediately? Now I ask you, is that not strange?’

His analogy was quite apropos. It laid out all of his innermost thoughts about this situation on a plate; it was all very incisive. But I wanted to say that none of what he thought was actually what really happened. That is. . there were no problems with his analogy; rather, the problem lay in what he thought had taken place. Mulling it over whilst listening to him, I ultimately decided that I would tell him everything that Yan Shi had told to me; that in and of itself that should clear things up and establish for certain what actually transpired. But he never gave me the chance to get a word in edgewise, he simply continued on in the same breath: ‘It was then that I came to believe that while attempting to crack BLACK, Rong Jinzhen had made a cardinal sin, and what’s more, this error wound its way into his head, bludgeoning a genius into an idiot. This mistake, when all is said and done, could only have happened to someone who could transgress the iron-clad law of cryptography: it was the residual effect of his having cracked PURPLE lurking in the shadows, waiting to cause mischief.’

Having reached this point, Director Zheng stopped talking and went silent. It seemed as though he had fallen into a state of mournful melancholy. As I waited for him to speak again, it became obvious that he wasn’t going to continue on with his story but rather to bid me farewell. Even though I had thought of telling him what I had learnt from Yan Shi, I never had the chance. But I was happy with this. I thought, ‘Since I wasn’t really sure if I should tell him or not, not having been given the opportunity to do so worked in my favour, it allowed me to avoid the burden the words would have incurred.’

Before we parted, I had to remind him, ‘Didn’t you say that you had some additional information to give me?’

He was a bit taken aback, but then made his way over to a metal file cabinet and pulled open a drawer. Removing a single file, he asked, ‘Did you know that when Rong Jinzhen was at university he was the student of a foreign professor, a man by the name of Jan Liseiwicz?’

‘No, I hadn’t heard that.’

‘This man went to great efforts to prevent Rong Jinzhen from deciphering PURPLE. This file is the proof. Have a look, and should you need it, we can make copies for you.’

That was how I first heard of Liseiwicz.

Director Zheng admitted that he did not know Liseiwicz and what he had discovered had come by way of hearsay. He said, ‘When he made contact with us here, I was overseas in Y country to learn from their experience in trying to decrypt PURPLE. Even after I returned, I did not come into contact with the Liseiwicz correspondence; only the special task force assigned to cracking PURPLE had any firsthand knowledge of these letters. At the time, Headquarters was taking direct charge of things — perhaps they feared we would fight over it, fight to see who could produce the desired outcome. As a result, they kept us in the dark about the whole affair. It was only much later on that I met a senior official from Headquarters who was prepared to let me see the letters. They are all in English, but accompanied with Chinese translations.’

Having reached this point, a thought suddenly occurred to him: the original English letters should remain in his possession. I therefore opened the file and began to separate the English originals from the translations. It was then that I saw a record of a telephone conversation on top of the file — someone named Qian Zongnan had telephoned. The note seemed to serve as a foreword to the case files. There were only a few sentences:

Liseiwicz was employed as a high-level military intelligence analyst for X country. I saw him four times, the last in the summer of 1970. Later I discovered that Liseiwicz and Fan Lili were put under house arrest at PP military base, reason unknown. Liseiwicz died in 1978 at PP base. In 1981, the military authorities of X country released Fan (Lili) from house arrest. In 1983, Fan (Lili) arrived in Hong Kong in search of me, hoping that I would assist her in making arrangements for her to return to China. Assistance refused. In 1986, it was reported that Fan (Lili) was in her home town of Linshui county, C City, contributing funds to establish an engineering project. By all accounts, she is still resident in Linshui county.

Director Zheng told me that this person, Qian Zongnan, was at that time an informant, a comrade charged with keeping tabs on Liseiwicz in X country. Upon being handed the file, I had thought that this man would be crucial for helping me to come to a better understanding of the role played by Jan Liseiwicz in these events. I was therefore very sad to be informed that he had died the year before. Still, the record did make mention of Fan Lili, Liseiwicz’s Chinese wife. If I wished to understand him, then she was without a doubt the best person to talk to.I was ecstatic.

Since I lacked a specific address, I had at first mistakenly believed that finding Fan Lili would entail great deal of effort and be fraught with complications and setbacks; the actual experience was anything but. Making initial enquiries at the Linshui County Education Bureau, it seemed as though everyone in the building knew her. As it turned out, several years ago not only had she succeeded in establishing three primary-level Hope Schools,* she had also donated tens of thousands of yuan worth of textbooks to the local middle schools. You could say that those on the frontlines of education in Linshui, without exception, knew who she was and respected her. However, when I found her at Jinhe Hospital in C City, my original ambition went cold, for there she was, lying in bed with her larynx removed. Gauze was tied about her neck and head in a rough fashion, making it seem as though she possessed two skulls. She was suffering from throat cancer. The doctor said that even though the surgery was successful, there was no way that she could speak unless she practised making sounds through her lungs. Because the surgery had just taken place recently, her condition was still very poor. It would be impossible for me to interview her. Therefore, I said nothing and instead pretended that I was another of the numerous senior people from Linshui county who had come to pay their respects. I left her flowers and my best wishes, and took leave. Later, over the course of the next few days, I visited her in the hospital three more times. On each visit she would write her responses to my questions. Altogether, she wrote several pages and each one astonished me!