MERCURY 2000 (code)

MERCURY 2000 is an advanced, top-secret code, and successor to the original MERCURY code, though developed in contest with the original.

History
Colonel Robert Donaldson of Zero Section ordered the creation of a new code by his cryptologists in 1988. This is how MERCURY 2000 was born. But, though Donaldson's people worked hard, day and night for five years at it, Kudrow's MERCURY was selected by the NSA in 1996 to enter full service by 1998. Nearly eight months after the so-called Lynch-MERCURY Incident, at a security meeting in Berlin in February 1999, Donaldson presented several trusted world leaders with the code, including Chancellor Rudolph Schmidt of Germany and Prime Minister Arthur Johanson of Great Britain. He also presented them with the 'threat' posed by Simon Lynch, taking them through a double-cross by denying that he was trying to kill Lynch, instead taking the credit for creation of a program to seek out children such as Lynch throughout Europe and the US, thereby tricking them into providing funding.