.” He put out his hand to Hart. “My compliments to General Pickering, Hart. And good luck.”
XI
[ONE]
COMMUNICATIONS CENTER EIGHTH UNITED STATES ARMY (REAR) PUSAN, KOREA 0730 2 AUGUST 1950
Master Sergeant Paul T. Keller, twenty-nine years old, had been drafted into the U.S. Army almost immediately upon graduation from high school in June of 1942. After basic training, he had been trained as a high-speed radio operator, and had been assigned to Major General I. D. White’s 2nd Armored “Hell on Wheels” Division, ending up the war as a technical sergeant on the banks of the Elbe.
A recruiter had argued that if he went home now—as his points entitled him to—and got out, he was going to find himself just one more ex-GI looking for a job. On the other hand, if he reenlisted, he would immediately be promoted to master sergeant. Moreover, he could go home by air—instead of on a troop ship—and go on a sixty-day reenlistment leave. After that, he could have his choice of both any course he wanted to attend at the Army Signal School at Fort Monmouth, and any post, camp, or station in the United States or around the world.
Midway through his leave, Master Sergeant Keller elected to attend the Cryptographic School. He didn’t know the first thing about cryptography, except what he’d seen in the movies, and had never heard of the Army Security Agency, but it sounded interesting—even exciting— and he’d had enough of supervising a room full of radio operators sitting at typewriters with cans on their ears. And he suspected that Germany was going to be a good place to be stationed, now that the war was over.
Orders came assigning him to the Army Security Agency, and his parents and brother told him the FBI had been asking questions of everybody about him, “in connection with a high-level security clearance.”
The clearance—Top Secret, Cryptographic I—came through when he was at Fort Monmouth taking Phase I of the course. By then he’d learned once you were in the ASA, had been granted the clearance, you stayed in the ASA. That meant that although he would be in Germany, he wouldn’t be assigned there. He would be assigned to the ASA Headquarters, in Vint Hill Farms Station, Virginia, outside Washington, with “duty station wherever.”
It turned out that he had a flair for cryptography. After being the honor graduate of Phase II of the course, at Vint Hill Farms, he was sent to work at Headquarters, U.S. Forces, European Theater, in the Farben Building in Frankfurt, Germany. After two months there, the ASA changed his “duty assignment” to “Crypto NCO for the U.S. Element, Allied Commandatura, Berlin.”
That was really good duty. He had his own apartment, and there were none of the annoying details usually associated with Army life, standing formations, pulling staff duty NCO, that sort of thing. All he had to do was let them know where he was twenty-four hours a day in case something hot had to go out, or came in.
And the Berlin girls were beautiful. So beautiful that he really had to take care not to fall for one of them. The CIC kept a close eye on everybody in the ASA and especially on crypto people. Keller didn’t know if it was true, but the CIC thought the Russians were using good-looking fräuleins to put ASA/Crypto people in compromising positions. If it looked to the CIC that you were getting too close to a fräulein, you got your security clearance jerked—by then his clearance was Top Secret/Crypto IV, which meant he was cleared to en- and decrypt anything—and losing that meant it would be back to some radio room.
The ASA assigned him temporary duty stations all over Europe—Vienna, Budapest, Moscow—filling in for other crypto people on leave or sick or whatever.
He was really unhappy when in late 1949, the ASA called him back to Vint Hill Farms to be an instructor. But even that proved to be very good duty. It was a good place to be stationed, near Washington, and he could go home to Philadelphia just about whenever he wanted.
Two weeks before, the First Soldier had called him in. With a five-day delay-en-route leave, he was to report to the transportation officer, Fort Lewis, Washington, for further shipment by air to Headquarters, Eighth United States Army, which had an urgent priority for crypto people.
This was not like Frankfurt or Berlin. They took him from the airport outside Tokyo, to Camp Drake, where they took his