Mai Jia - Decoded

But in my opinion, the danger and luck supposedly attached to this type of serendipity doesn’t exist, because in my mind there are no keys, I cannot manufacture them. As a result I felt none of the pain and fortune of searching them out. Now at that time, if that door was truly and firmly locked, if it had in fact required a key, then you can imagine what the result would have been — it would have been forever impossible for me to open it. It is very incongruous, but the door did indeed appear to be locked tight when in actual fact it wasn’t; it was nothing but a false façade, all I had to do was push a little and it swung open. That was all there was to it. The key to unlocking BLACK was so bizarre that people were unable to believe it; they dared not trust it, and even when the door swung open and I saw everything that was inside, I still had some difficulty believing in what I saw. I thought it must all be unreal — a mirage, an illusion, a dream.

Ah, this cipher was truly the work of the devil!

Only the devil possesses such barbarous courage and traitorous gall!

Only the devil possesses such an absurdly malicious intellect!

The devil had deftly dodged Rong Jinzhen’s attack, but had no answer for mine — me, the common man, the pleb. Still, heaven knows and I know that all of this had been made possible by Rong Jinzhen; thanks to his notebook I had been carried high up into the ether, to pass through disaster and reveal the hidden secret of BLACK. Perhaps you might say that this was unintentional, but you tell me — in this world, which ciphers aren’t decrypted by a mixture of hard work and luck? All of them are deciphered by this mixture, if not why do we say that decrypting ciphers calls for a luck that comes from far beyond the stars? Why do we say that they require auspicious smoke to be emanating from a person’s ancestral tombs?

Indeed, in this world there is not a single cipher that has not been decrypted with equal parts of ingenuity and good fortune!

Ha ha, young fellow: you never thought that today you would discover my own secret, eh? I should explain that all the things I’ve told you today are my secrets, my own personal secrets: I’ve never told anyone else. You must be wondering why I told you these things which I have never mentioned to another person. Why should I reveal to you my own inadequacies? I’ll tell you. I am nearly eighty years old now: who knows when Death will make its call, and I need no longer live with all this undeserved glory. .

[End of interview]

Finally the old man told me that the reason why our enemy created BLACK — a cipher with no key — was because they had felt so dejected after PURPLE had been deciphered and they had realized that they were at a dead end with their work. They understood, after just one confrontation with Rong Jinzhen, that his was a talent to be reckoned with. If they continued to stubbornly persist in challenging him, their own destruction was assured. As a result they risked universal commendation and in their madness brought forth this singularly freakish and malicious cipher: BLACK.

However, they never realized that Rong Jinzhen had his last countermove ready and waiting for them. To use the old man’s words: Rong Jinzhen had passed through destruction — amazingly, he had already passed on to his colleagues the secret of BLACK’s freakish birth by means of his notebook. In the history of cryptography he was one of a kind.

Now when I look back on everything, when I reflect on Rong Jinzhen’s past and present, when I think of his mystery and genius, I cannot help but feel enormous reverence for the man and also a limitless desolation, a limitless mystery.

As the name makes clear, this final section consists of one of Rong Jinzhen’s notebooks, or at least excerpts from it. The following pages are like an index, completely independent of the previous five sections. These pages reveal no new information, nor do they have some secret connection to what has already been written. You can choose to read this section or not. If you do, perhaps it will add some further details to the story, but it really doesn’t matter — the words that follow have no bearing on how we have come to understand Rong Jinzhen. In other words, this section is like our own appendixes: it doesn’t really matter if we have them or not. For this reason — I would like to emphasize this — I consider this section an ‘appendix’. Its essence is that of an afterword or coda; nothing more, nothing less.

Okay. I can tell you that according to my information, over the period of time that Rong Jinzhen worked for Unit 701 (from 1956 until 1970) he filled out twenty-five notebooks, all of which are now in the custody of his wife, Di Li. Di Li used her position as Rong Jinzhen’s wife only once, to take a single notebook into her personal possession. The remaining twenty-four are in her custody because she is the security officer and they are all locked away in a rather imposing iron cabinet, secured with a double lock that requires two keys to be turned simultaneously to open it. One key she keeps on her person, the other is held by her section chief. Essentially then, although these notebooks are in her care, she is not permitted to look at them, let alone treat them as her own.

When will it be possible to see them?

According to Di Li, that’s difficult to say for certain. Perhaps some will be declassified in a couple of years’ time; for others it might take several decades. That is because each notebook has been classified with different degrees of secrecy vis-à-vis national security. It goes without saying, therefore, that for us it is as though those twenty-four notebooks don’t even exist; just like the man residing in the Lingshan hospice doesn’t really exist. I mean, he is there, we can go and see him, but the real Rong Jinzhen has long since departed; he is gone. Consequently, I was very keen to see the single notebook in his wife’s possession. From what I was able to gather, no one has ever actually seen that particular notebook, but everyone knows she has it. That is because when she went to get it she had to sign it out and they keep records for that sort of thing. So, no matter how much she might have hoped to fob me off, I knew she had it and so in the end she had to admit it. However, every time I mentioned that I would like to have a look at it, she would spit out two words: ‘Get out!’ This was how she kicked me out of her house each and every time. There was never any hesitation on her part, never any explanation; no room for argument. A few months ago, once I had completed the first five chapters in manuscript, I had to visit Unit 701 one final time in order for the authorities to inspect my work and ensure that I had not inadvertently revealed any sensitive information. Naturally, Di Li was one of the censors in charge and upon reading it she shared her opinions concerning the story I had written. Then she suddenly asked whether or not I still fancied seeing the notebook? I answered, ‘Yes, of course.’ She told me to come and see her the following day; but before that day arrived, she came of her own volition to the guest quarters and presented me with the notebook. As you would expect, it was a photocopy of the original.

I need to explain three points:

1. The copy that Di Li provided me with was incomplete.

Why do I say this? Well as I understand things, each and every person in Unit 701 uses the notebooks supplied by the Unit itself. There are three sizes: the largest is 142 mm by 210 mm, the medium size is 130 mm by 184 mm, and the smallest is 90 mm by 100 mm. The exterior is either plastic or hard leather. Two colours are available for the plastic covers, red or blue. Since Rong Jinzhen was partial to blue, all the notebooks he used were the same: a blue, medium-sized notebook. I’ve seen a genuine example of this kind of notebook (empty of course), and so I know what they look like. Blazoned across the top and the bottom are the words ‘Top Secret’, stamped into the cover in red ink. In the middle of the cover the following is printed: