The woman calling herself Penny cleared her throat, as if the question embarrassed her, and she glanced at Jeremy with a plea for help in her frightened eyes.
"Penny, please look at me. I’d very much like to know what you saw. It might explain a lot. Tell me, mostly in cipher or plaintext?"
"I'd have to say from the little I glimpsed, pretty much in plaintext."
"None of the file, none of it, was yet encrypted?"
"Her section manager,” Jeremy said, “he's one of these stern, time-is-money blokes, he has this rule. From the way Pen dear tells it, nothing high and mighty, understand. Nothing passed around in an intra-section circular. But from one of his windy speeches he loves to give at those weekly meetings. No reading of the files his section gets. Ever. 'You want to read about some spy
