End Game

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Kryptos is a series of sculptures, the largest of which is the one in the courtyard of the CIA’s New Headquarters Building. Made of four copper plates into which four encrypted messages have been cut, it was conceived by the American artist James Sanborn. The enigmatic piece was dedicated on November 3, 1990, when it was placed in the courtyard in plain sight of anyone visiting the Agency cafeteria.

Three of the messages have been deciphered — the fourth remains unsolved to this day. But the messages are said to be linked. The final solution can only be guessed at from the first line of the first puzzle: Between subtle shading and the absence of lights lies the nuance of iqlusion. (The mistaken q was deliberate.)

But there are other smaller pieces scattered around the headquarters campus. Some are engraved with messages in Morse code; another has a compass rose and a lodestone.

The men and women who work for the Agency, at headquarters and elsewhere around the world, either in the open, relatively speaking, or in secret as NOCs, agents working under nonofficial cover, are American patriots — but they are also human beings with all their foibles and problems, some of them serious.

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