The Cryptographer's Dilemma

by Johnnie Alexander

  “It’s what I know of you.” She flicked the towel in front of her and stood. “I need to hang this up to dry. Didn’t you say you were starving? I’m hungry too.”

  She disappeared into the bathroom before he could answer.

  Her swift change of topic coming on the heels of her unexpected compliment had him at a loss of what to say, what to do. A rare occurrence for him. He shook away the gloomy thoughts that hung too close for comfort. He wouldn’t dwell on them any longer—at least not now. The lady was hungry and so was he.

  He lifted the phone and dialed the front desk. “I’d like to order room service. What’s the day’s special?”

  Eloise laid her cards on the table. “Gin.”

  “Again?” Phillip showed his hand. “Look how close I am.”

  “Close only counts in horseshoes,” she said in a singsong voice as she added the points.

  “Have you ever played horseshoes?”

  “Can’t say that I have. But I’m a champ at playing gin.”

  Phillip squinted his eyes as he gathered the cards to shuffle them. “The game isn’t over yet, sweetheart.”

  Eloise laughed at his Humphrey Bogart impression. After yesterday’s emotional turmoil, she’d tossed and turned throughout the night then slept late this morning. When she’d entered the living area, Phillip was stretched out on the couch, his arm over his eyes. Though she tried to be quiet, he must have heard her because he immediately sat up and greeted her. They braved the rain to eat an early lunch at a nearby diner and purchase a few items, including the playing cards, at a neighborhood grocery store.

  Perry Como and other favorites crooned from the radio while they hummed along and pretended all was right in the world. It was a lie that allowed them to enjoy the rainy-day reprieve.

  Eloise needed the pretense, and she sensed Phillip did too. The weight that had burdened him yesterday seemed lighter though they hadn’t talked any more about the executions. She’d meant what she said—he was a good man. But the words had slipped out, and she’d had to cover her embarrassment by scurrying from the room.

  She excused her lapse in professional propriety by admitting, at least to herself, that she’d been touched by how he’d treated her with such kindness. He hadn’t poked and prodded for the reason she’d fled the field office. She probably would have fallen apart if he had. Instead, he treated her as her brother would have treated her, giving her the time and space she needed to recover from her emotional fallout.

  Perhaps that explained the growing connection she felt for Phillip. It couldn’t be a romantic feeling, but maybe it was something more than platonic. She desperately missed Allan, and Phillip was a substitute. That was all.

  She wouldn’t mind more days like this one. Playing cards with a good man on a rainy day. Though she knew what her mother would have to say about her being in a hotel room with a male companion. The front desk clerk and bellboy knew them as a brother and sister, but her mother wouldn’t accept that as an excuse.

  “Are you sleeping with your eyes open?” Phillip’s voice cut into her thoughts. “It’s your turn.”

  “Sorry.” She drew a card and studied her hand. After a moment, she discarded a six of spades.

  Phillip picked it up, and she frowned. “So…what has you so deep in thought?” He seemed to be choosing his words carefully, going for a casual tone while pretending to care more about the cards he was holding than their conversation. He might have been fishing for an explanation about her behavior yesterday. But she didn’t mind. Not that she was ready to talk about that. Not yet.

  “My mother.”

  Phillip raised his eyes to hers. “Your mother? Why?” A gleam appeared in his eyes. “Wait, don’t tell me. She doesn’t know where you are, does she?” Before Eloise could respond, he answered his own question. “Of course she doesn’t. You signed an oath of secrecy. She doesn’t know what you do for the navy, and she definitely doesn’t know you’ve been transferred to the FBI.”

  “Or that I’m now your sister or that I’m on the West Coast instead of in the nation’s capital.” She drew a card after he discarded a three of diamonds. “She definitely would not approve.”

  “If it makes you feel any better, neither would mine.”

  “Does she know you’re in the FBI?”

  “Are you kidding? It’s her biggest bragging right.” He raised his voice an octave. “‘My son, the FBI agent, did this. My son, the FBI agent, did that. My son, the FBI agent, is involved in a secret investigation, but I’m not allowed to talk about it.’” His voice turned somber as he took his turn. “Not that she knows anything about our investigations until they’re over. Usually not even then.”

  “She’s proud of you.” Eloise drew a five of hearts and studied her hand.

  “I’m sure your mother would be proud of you too. Despite the sordid details of traveling with a single man,” he teased.

  “Let’s promise never to tell each other’s mothers about this trip.”

  “Good idea.”

  The phone rang, and Phillip excused himself to answer it. As soon as she realized he was talking to his uncle, Eloise laid her cards face down on the table to focus on the side of the conversation she could hear.

  “Three more letters.” He raised his eyebrows and mouthed Wow! to Eloise. “All addressed to Señora Molinali.”

  A pause then, “That’s fantastic. I wish we could see them.”

  He finished with the call and returned to the table. “Uncle Richard is arranging for duplicates of the letters to be sent to the Portland field office. We’ll pick them up there.”

  “Why Portland?”

  “Two of the letters were supposedly written by the same woman, another doll collector, who lives there. The third came from someone in Colorado Springs.”

  “Will we be interviewing her too?”

  “Sure will.” He picked up his cards. “We’re leaving for Portland in the morning. That gives me the rest of the day to win this gin rummy championship.”

  “That’s what you think.” Eloise turned her cards face up. “Gin.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The Portland field office was located in a multistoried building that seemed to take up an entire city block. Eloise shook hands with F. A. Watts, the special agent in charge, as Phillip introduced them. After a few pleasantries, he directed them to a bare-bones office that contained a square table and a couple of chairs.

  “No one will bother you here.” He placed a thin folder on the table, letting his fingertips rest on top of it. “These are the documents from Mr. Whitmer. They make no sense to me, but I expect to be informed if there’s something I should know about. I don’t want any surprises in my own backyard.”

  Eloise itched to open the folder and read the letters inside. It wasn’t her place to tell the agent that someone may have already given information to their enemies about the ships being repaired at the Puget Sound navy yard. The FBI now had five letters in their possession. But how many had slipped through the censors to the elusive Señora Molinali?

  “We’re investigating a matter of national security,” Phillip said in response to Special Agent Watts’s question. “All necessary resources will be utilized to ensure the country’s safety.”

  “A noncommittal answer. I’d expect nothing else from Richard Whitmer’s nephew.” One corner of his mouth lifted in a reluctant smile as he removed his fingers from the folder. “But I meant what I said.”

  “I know, sir.”

  Agent Watts nodded and started to leave when Phillip stopped him. “I have to ask.” His tone was apologetic. “Has anyone else seen these letters?”

  “Directive from HQ was my eyes only.” He directed a polite nod at Eloise before closing the door behind him.

  “He didn’t answer the question,” Eloise said.

  “Only because I didn’t answer his.” Phillip adjusted the chairs so they were sitting at an angle to one another. “But Richard trusts him, so I think we can too. B
esides, to anyone who isn’t a top-notch breaker of jargon codes, the letters are meaningless.”

  Eloise dug her steno pad and a pen from her handbag to hide the flush warming her cheeks at Phillip’s teasing compliment. He opened the folder and spread out the pages. “Shall we get started?”

  Eloise scanned the copies. “Look at this.” Someone had written information taken from the envelope—the postmark and the return address—at the bottom of each page.

  “That’s Uncle Richard’s handwriting.” Phillip took the letter with the earliest date of the three and placed it between them. “This one was written last February allegedly by a Ruby Lankford who lives here in Portland. But the postmark is for Oakland, California.”

  Eloise made a grid on a fresh page in her notebook with separate columns for the letter’s date, the individual’s name, the return address, and the place of the postmark.

  “Listen to this,” Phillip continued. “She says her grandson will only stay in bed if he can ‘play with his father’s fishing nets while the little girl demands balloons.’”

  “Fishing nets,” Eloise repeated as her pulse fluttered with excitement. “Remember the ‘old fisherman with a net over his back’?”

  “You thought that meant an aircraft carrier.”

  “I still do. But I don’t have any ideas about the balloons.” She made a note on her pad.

  Fishing net / old fisherman = aircraft carrier

  Balloons = ??

  Phillip continued reading from the letter.

  “You know I have three old China head dolls from England. I do not like these dolls. However, my dear husband bought them for me. It will take this Doll hospital a few months before they will have them completely repaired, then will send. There is so much repair work to do, new parts needed as arms and legs…”

  “The doll hospital could refer to a repair facility,” Eloise said. “I think she’s saying that these three ships won’t be ready for warfare for a few more months.”

  “This letter was written in February,” Phillip reminded her. “They’re probably repaired by now.”

  They scanned the rest of the letter then turned to the next.

  “May 20, 1942.” Eloise wrote the date in her notebook. “Also supposedly written by Ruby Lankford.”

  “Read this section.” Phillip pointed to a paragraph. Eloise read it aloud.

  “I just secured a lovely Siamese Temple Dancer, it had been damaged, that is tore in the middle. But it is now repaired, and I like it very much. I could not get a mate for this Siam dancer, so I am redressing just a small ordinary doll into a second Siam doll.”

  “What do you make of that?” Phillip asked.

  “Another ship that’s been repaired, I guess. Perhaps there’s a second ship just like it?” Eloise’s stomach dropped. She wasn’t being any help at all. Why couldn’t the message have been a substitution code or a transposition code? Given time, she could figure out the patterns and the answer, but a jargon code could mean anything.

  “Don’t get down on yourself,” Phillip said as if he’d read her mind. “Our primary goal is to find out who actually wrote these letters. Solving the jargon code might give us a hint, but we have other avenues too.”

  “I don’t want to be a disappointment,” Eloise admitted. She bit her lip, unsure of whether she should have admitted that to him. He was, after all, her superior and not a confidant. Not even after all the time they’d spent together.

  “You could never be that.”

  The awkward moment became even more awkward. Eloise’s brain apparently had lost the ability to string two words together. Phillip stared at the table, seeming as ill at ease as she felt.

  Finally, he cleared his throat and picked up the final letter. “Dated last February. From a Vera Swaney of Colorado Springs, Colorado. Postmarked from Seattle.”

  Eloise jotted the information on her pad.

  “She says she’s going to spend a week with her son,” Phillip continued, “who is joining her while he’s in Seattle on business.”

  Eloise pointed to another paragraph. “She’s shipping five English dolls home as a Christmas surprise. That’s odd since Christmas is already over.”

  “Agree. Then there’s this.” Phillip read from the page.

  “I purchased seven small dolls which in a short time I hope and expect to make look as if they were real seven Chinese dolls…I have almost finished the mother doll. I will then make a Chinese father, grandfather, grandmother and three children…the children will be girl, boy, and baby.”

  “Seven dolls. Seven ships.” Eloise grabbed Phillip’s arm as a light-bulb seemed to turn on over her head. “A convoy.”

  “You could be right. In fact, I’m almost one hundred percent sure you are.”

  “We should ask Richard to find out what ships were brought from Pearl Harbor to the West Coast for repairs,” Eloise said. “The type of ship, its name, the amount of damage, the status of the repairs.”

  “I’ll give him a call.” As Phillip rose, he placed the letters in the folder. “While I do that, could you ask a secretary to find a number for Ruby Lankford? Try to set up an appointment with her for later this afternoon.”

  Dismissed. Just like that. Why couldn’t she listen in on his call with Richard? After all, she was the one who thought of the convoy. No matter how much she contributed to the mission, he would always be the agent in charge while she would always be the lackey.

  She left the office to find someone—another woman, of course—to get Ruby Lankford’s phone number. Perhaps she should be thankful for moments like this. They were a reminder that Phillip Clayton was no one special, despite her heart trying to convince her otherwise.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Ruby Lankford perched in a chintz chair as her housekeeper, Claire, rolled a tea trolley into the parlor. Despite the summer heat, a paisley shawl draped her frail shoulders, and a knitted afghan covered her lap and legs. Tiny feet clad in pink slippers poked out beneath the hem of a long mauve dress. Phillip and Eloise sat next to each other on a chintz sofa. The east-facing windows opened onto a view of the broad Willamette River. The clear waters reflected gray clouds and patches of muted blue skies.

  Phillip would have liked nothing better than to bolt across the lawn toward the mighty river. Better to stand, small and alone, before the grandeur of water and sky than sit like an awkward giant among an overwhelming onslaught of feminine trappings. Why couldn’t they get to the point and then leave?

  “Claire has been with me since before Dr. Lankford and I married,” Mrs. Lankford explained, though no one had asked about Claire’s longevity and Phillip, for one, certainly didn’t care.

  “Oh, the parties we used to have, and Claire baked the most gorgeous cakes anyone had ever seen.” Mrs. Lankford’s contented sigh lasted so long Phillip wished he’d counted off the seconds. “All my friends were incredibly jealous. They often begged me to let her decorate cakes for their parties. I rarely agreed except for the most special occasions. A wedding, say. Or perhaps a very special celebration. Those were the days, weren’t they, Claire?”

  “Yes, they were, ma’am.” The housekeeper, attired in a gray uniform and white apron, lifted the teapot. “Shall I pour?”

  “Please. I’m a little tired today.” Mrs. Lankford’s sharp eyes turned to Phillip and Eloise. He had a sudden urge to pull the lapels on his jacket closer together to prevent her from seeing into his soul. “It’s not every day that one has a visit from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. How exciting this is, isn’t that right, Claire?”

  “Very exciting, ma’am.” Claire handed porcelain cups and saucers to Eloise and Phillip.

  He’d been to more tea parties than he could count, but he still felt clumsy handling the fragile dishware. He took a sip of the hot tea then set the cup and saucer on the table. He glanced at Eloise, but she didn’t seem to be having any trouble balancing the set. Her eyes, bright with interest, focused on their hostess.

  Alm
ost as soon as Claire left the room, Mrs. Lankford dispensed with any more pleasantries. “How is it that a young lady such as yourself is involved in espionage?” she said to Eloise.

  “It’s a temporary assignment,” Eloise replied with the same grace and ease as if she’d been asked about the weather. Espionage? Phillip mentally shook his head. As if Eloise were a modern-day Mata Hari instead of an ordinary schoolteacher who had traded a classroom for long days of code breaking. Important work, absolutely. But there wasn’t anything cloak-and-dagger about this particular mission.

  “I’m assisting Agent Clayton with a very important investigation,” Eloise continued. “We have a letter to show you. A copy, actually. The original letter is at our office in Washington, DC.”

  “Ah, Washington, DC.” A pleasant smile curved Mrs. Lankford’s pale lips. “Dr. Lankford and I dreamed of visiting there someday. But it wasn’t to be. My health will not allow it.” Her eyes focused on Eloise. Phillip might as well have stayed in the car. He could probably walk out this very moment and no one would notice. If only he dared.

  “We are such history buffs,” Mrs. Lankford continued. “I do so wish Claire would make the trip on our behalf. She could still do it—her health is so robust—but she won’t leave us even when I implore her to do so.”

  “How fortunate you are to have found such loyalty,” Eloise crooned.

  “Don’t I know it? My friends are very jealous of my good fortune.”

  “This letter,” Eloise said. “It’s written to someone named Señora Ines de Molinali who lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Is she a friend of yours?”

  “I know no one of that name. Nor anyone in Argentina.”

  “You didn’t write the letter then?”

  “I did not. And I can’t imagine why anyone would think I did.”

  “May I tell you what the letter says?” Eloise’s soothing voice sounded so persuasive that Phillip believed she could get Mrs. Lankford to agree to just about anything. Except perhaps to have the faithful Claire bake a cake for her.