The Enigma Always

“Anyway, enough of the good ol’ days, I need to enter into a contract with you for some business. What I need is some Cloud Cloaking for some recon work. Can you set up an encrypted tunnel to allow one of my end points in, oh say, New York to be able to anonymously access a system in Helsinki for a couple of hours?”

Tuck stared at the phone in disbelief. It took a few seconds for him to compose himself before he replied, "You've got to be kidding me! Two hours? You can’t nail up an encryption tunnel for two hours without somebody noticing, particularly if it’s a well-known target destination! You know the end points, you undoubtedly have the computer resources to do this, so why call me to get me involved? Why do I get this special treatment?”

Quip shifted uneasily in his chair and answered, “It’s a little too close for comfort and a little bit out of bounds for my system. I figured, with your anonymizing technology being hosted on multiple continents, you could more easily cloak this, umm…, interrogation effort better than I could. Plus, I was going to offer a few shekels for the effort. What do you say?”

Tuck remarked, “Perhaps you didn’t hear me the first time when I told you to bugger off! Your dimes, nickels, and quarters offering for doing digital breaking-and-entering isn’t enough to offset the years in prison I’d be facing. Go away, Quip. Have a nice time in prison. Don’t call me again!”

Quip was undaunted by the negative response. He knew his old friend would rise to the challenge. Being close to the same size and build when they attended school together, they had competed at everything, physical or mental. “Okay, how long can you nail up an encrypted tunnel for me? I am assuming you can do it. Of course, if you simply can’t, I can shop for this service elsewhere. I just thought that the fifty thousand Euros I was going to pay would help with your server refresh program.”

Tuck felt himself softening on the topic, and so he removed some of the anger in his voice as he replied, “That is an interesting number of shekels, but not for two hours! I am fairly certain I can do it for twenty minutes without a whole lot of eyebrows of the sovereign watchdogs going up. Price remains the same though.”

Quip sensed they were close to cutting a deal for Jacob to penetrate the supercomputer STINKIE. Quip asked, “How about twenty-five thousand Euros for an hour, and I’ll throw in a world class Australian barbie with Argentinian beef, but presented in a Texas style offering. What do you say to that? Do we have a deal?”

Tuck shifted uneasily in his chair as he responded, “You mean like that Texas barbeque you invited me to a while back with that bachelors party the night before? I remember a lot of it, and those pictures you posted of those …”

Quip smiled, nodded and interrupted, “Yep, those top heavy, wide-hipped gals dressed to maximum distraction, who served drinks so fast that no one saw the bottom of an empty glass. Yes, sir, that kind of Australian barbie served up Texas style.”

Tuck’s imagination ran out of control with the erotic images. “I can give you forty minutes, not a minute more.”

Quip grinned. “Okay! Forty minutes for twenty thousand Euros and I’ll still throw in the Australian barbie with Argentinian beef, Texas style. When can you be ready?”

Tuck, completely taken in, asked, “Uh, no one needs to hear about this, right?”

Quip, in a most accommodating tone, answered, “Push-tush! This is just a friendly discussion between us lads. No one will hear it from me! Email me the details as soon as you can, along with account information so I can effect a wire transfer.

“Oh, and one last thing. Do you still do that Saturation of Unlimited Message Pounding and Protection, or SUMPP for short, program to protect valuable computer resources from a cyber-onslaught?”

Tuck puzzled a moment but then said, “It was part of our old business model to protect customers from Distributed Denial of Service Attacks, but we don’t do DDOS protection services anymore. Why?”

Quip responded, “Well, my high-value endpoint that is the object of my interrogation is about to be pounded digitally, and I didn’t want them smoked before I had a chance to chat with them. Can you throw in a little SUMPP for my Finnish friend at the end point I will give you? I just love the way you send those computer DDOS attacks to the planet Jupiter! The disbelief and follow-on banter from the assassins just cracks me up when they learn nothing got hit by their attack!”

Tuck chuckled slightly and agreed, “Well, okay! You better throw in the good Kansas City barbeque sauce! We’ll talk again soon.”

Tuck disconnected the call and wistfully stared out the window only to be shocked back to reality when he heard Gina as she leaned on the doorway to his office.

Gina admonished, “Australian barbie, served up Texas style, by top heavy, wide-hipped gals dressed to maximum distraction? Let me guess, we aren’t going to be able to list this as a customer reference on our website, are we?”

Tuck swallowed hard and asked, “Uh, no one needs to hear about this, right?”