Decrypting these transmissions is, in its form, like a game of hide and seek. Those who create the ciphers are engaged in hiding whilst those who decrypt them are the seekers. The art of concealing has its own mysteries, and so too does the art of seeking. After going through the baptism of fire that was the Second World War, both aspects of cryptography have developed into a science. Many of the brightest minds from all over the world have been recruited, especially mathematicians. Some say that decrypting is the work of one genius trying to crack the work of another genius, like hand-to-hand combat between two very skilled warriors. To put it another way, those who engage in decrypting are the greatest mathematical talents of our time. Where does our organization recruit these men? Well, that’s easy to answer: in the nation’s universities. Every summer some of our people, armed with extraordinary powers, show up on university campuses and take away student files. Later, they pore over these files, thoroughly scanning through all of the information, and then finally they select perhaps one or two of the very best students, and take them away. Forty years ago, a student in the mathematics department at S University was ‘recruited’ in this fashion: he was your father. Thirty years later, your father’s alma mater had another mathematics student ‘recruited’: that was me. No one knew what work I was going to be doing. I didn’t even know myself. It wouldn’t be until several months later I would learn that what I had been chosen for was cryptography.