INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT The Registrar

SUBJECT: M. Okonkwo, Registrar (Cipher Materials), ret. 1979
INTERVIEWER: E. Marlowe
DATE: 21 April 1987
NOTE: Extract, tape 2 of 2

Blacked-out passages are redacted. Hover, tap, or focus to reveal.

Q: Tell me about VESPER.

OKONKWO: You’re not cleared for VESPER. [pause] But then, nobody is. It doesn’t exist. We burned it in June of ’74 — every pad, every setting card, in the yard behind Registry, with two witnesses and a fire hose. I signed the destruction certificate myself. My name is the last thing VESPER ever wore.

Q: Every pad?

OKONKWO: [pause] Copy nine.

Q: Copy nine wasn’t burned?

OKONKWO: Copy nine wasn’t returned. Logged out on the 3rd of June 1974, for operation GREENGLASS, to Lieutenant T. Rake. After GREENGLASS went wrong, the effects came back in a courier bag — watch, ring, photographs, pads. Copy nine wasn’t in the bag.

Q: Did anyone look for it?

OKONKWO: The officer was dead. The system was already condemned. There was a memorandum — I wrote it — and there was an answer to the memorandum, from upstairs. Two words: “No action.” You learn to hear a door closing, Miss Marlowe, in two words.

Q: If someone were transmitting in VESPER format today, what would that tell you?

OKONKWO: That either the sea gave copy nine back, or the dead man kept it. And understand what a pad book is. It is not a thing you lose. A pad book loses you.