I thought the scene on the grounded ship, when people like Bobby Shaftoe and Root are trying to figure out if Monkberg is a German spy, was hilarious. I loved how they were all trying to use logic to determine whether or not to destroy the code books:
"'Has anyone ever died,' he [Root] says, 'because the enemy stole one of our secret codes and read our messages?'
'Absolutely,' Shaftoe says.
'Has anyone on our side ever died,' Root continues, 'because the enemy *didn't* have one of our secret codes?'
This is quite a poser" (276).
I thought it was really interesting that they were trying to use all this logic to convict Monkberg of being a spy instead of actual evidence (although they do use some of that, like his self-inflicted leg injury). The logic they were using seemed sort of backwards to me, although I am definitely not a logic/math person.
Plus, the poser line just killed me for some reason.
Also amusing: "Shaftoe says, 'This code business is some tricky shit'" (276). Funny, since this "code business" is what the entire novel is about.
I like the part with Monkberg as a spy and it made me think about one of my favorite aspects of Cryptonomicon, which is that the characters seem to get distracted and go off on tangents that they think are somehow important. They always seem to get caught up in conversation or thought that seems to be sort of tangent or unnessecary. For example on on page 381, Beck, who is on the German U-boat, gets lost in thought after capturing the Trinidadian shipa nd sinking the submarine. "He should be thinking about his strategy. But he can't get the image of Sergeant Shaftoe's bac out of his mind. His fucking head was still underneath the water! If they weren't about to fish him out of the ocean, he would have suceeded in drowning himself. So it was possible. At least for one person."
And before this, when the U-boat approaches Shaftoe and Root, Root calmly answers that he and his companion were just fighting over whether they could drown themselves. Shouldn't they be worried about the fact that they are about to be captured by the enemy? Oh, how I love their tangents.