He dialed a local New York number that was stored in the Protalk communications program. He had it set for 7 bits, no parity, no stop bits.

<<<<<<DIALING>>>>>>

The local phone number he dialed answered automatically and redialed another number, and then that one dialed yet another number before a message was relayed back to Ahmed Shah. He was accustomed to the delay. While waiting he lit up a Marlboro. It was the only American cigarette that came close to the vile taste of Turkish camel shit cigarettes that he had smoked before coming to the United States. A few seconds later, the screen came to life and displayed

PASSWORD:

Ahmed entered his password and his PRG response.

CRYPT KEY:

He chose a random crypt key that would be used to guarantee the privacy of his conversations.

<<<<<<TRANSMISSION ENCODED>>>>>>

That told Ahmed to begin his message, and that someone would be there to answer.

Good Morning. I have some news.