by Randy Singer
“You know me and books,” she said.
“How much longer do you think you’ll be?” Byron asked.
This is, Nikki thought, what some would call a moment of truth. She and Wellington were so close to solving this code. Afterward, they would need to check the Internet to see whether Finney had left a message. Her boss might be in some kind of trouble.
But then again, he sure didn’t look like he was in any trouble at the end of the night’s show. And if he were here, Finney would probably just tell Nikki to go out and have a good time.
She ultimately decided to do what Nikki Moreno always did—have it both ways. She turned and faced Byron. First, she had to establish that she didn’t like competition.
“I’ve got to finish tutoring Wellington here, and he’s got a big test tomorrow.” She didn’t dare check behind her to see how badly Wellington’s face was giving away the lie. “Looks like you’ve got someone else over there waiting for you anyway.”
“Kaitlin?” Byron said, looking genuinely surprised. “Not exactly my type, Nikki. If you don’t come, I won’t be able to ditch her all night.”
Next came Nikki’s quick but effective deep-in-thought look. “Tell you what,” she said. “Why don’t you guys go on ahead to someplace at the beach and let me finish up a few things with Wellington. I’ll call you in about an hour, and we can rendezvous at a different bar, away from the gang over there, including Kaitlin.”
Byron gave her a sly I-catch-your-drift nod. “Sounds great,” he said. “You need my number?”
Nikki plugged his number into her cell phone and watched him walk back to his table. “That,” she said more to herself than to Wellington, “is how you solve a real code.”
She turned back to her instructor—or her pupil or whatever Wellington was. “Where were we?” she asked.
He already had the book open to his chart. “What do you think this first word is?” he asked.
“I see it now,” she said. “Y must be B because that first word is blessed. Which also means that W must represent D.”
Wellington filled in the blanks below Y and W and then another match occurred to Nikki. “Z must be the letter A because it’s going to say ‘Blessed are the . . . something.” And so it went, Nikki filling in blanks as Wellington watched like a proud seventeen-year-old father.
Eventually Nikki filled in the last letter and leaned back to read her creation: Blessed are the code breakers, for they shall understand the mysteries.
She held her hand up for Wellington, who managed a clumsy high five.
“It’s a centuries-old cipher,” he explained, his demeanor all businesslike again. “You just reverse the alphabet. A stands for Z and vice versa. Even Old Testament scribes used it occasionally.”
“Oh yeah,” Nikki said. “The atbash cipher.”
She thought the poor boy’s jaw would drop on the table.
31
Twenty minutes later, Wellington and Nikki arrived at a Starbucks with wireless Internet access that just happened to be on the way to Virginia Beach. Nikki ordered a cinnamon spice mocha with a double shot of espresso. Wellington wanted water. Nikki checked her purse but was low on cash, though she had a few donation buckets full of it in the backseat of the Sebring. “Guess I’ll have to use a credit card,” she said, waiting for Wellington to take the hint.
Sure enough, her sidekick reached into his pocket just as she handed the card to the cashier. “Here,” he said, holding out his pen.
She frowned, took the pen, and signed the receipt. “Thanks,” Nikki said with a healthy dose of sarcasm as she handed the pen back.
“You’re welcome,” Wellington said.
Back at the table, Wellington lectured Nikki as he fired up his laptop. “They’ve done extensive germ studies, you know. Guess what surface consistently has the most germs?”
“The toilet handle,” Nikki said. “That’s why I use my foot.”
“Nope. It’s the pens at stores and restaurants that you sign credit card receipts with. You know how many people have left their germs on that pen? You know where their hands have been?”
“It’s a dangerous world,” Nikki said.
At Nikki’s request, Wellington turned his laptop toward her so she could log on to the Westlaw site. She suspected that a guy as tech savvy as Wellington would be able to retrieve the password later even if he didn’t see her enter it. Still, she didn’t have to make it easy for him.
Nikki checked under the tab marked Research Trail and took a sip of her drink. She sat forward. Finney had left a fresh research trail, complete with a number of words capitalized. Now that they knew the key for the introduction, deciphering this message using that key would be a piece of cake.
“Here it is,” she said, feeling like a CIA agent. “Write these capital letters down.”
Wellington took out his pencil and a pad of paper he had brought from the car while Nikki looked at the first search Finney conducted in this recent series:
da (after 1/1/03) Hearsay and “Proof of Resurrection” and “firsthand Knowledge”
“H-P-R-K from the first search,” Nikki said. “And here’s the second one: R-M-G. And the third is just I-L. Three searches. Must be a short message.”
Nikki sat back and took another sip of her coffee as Wellington decoded the letters using the atbash key they had discovered. She noticed the edges of his mouth turn down in worry. “What?” she asked.
Wellington looked at his paper as he spoke. “It says, ‘Skip intro.’” He began double-checking the letters.
It took a second for the implications to sink in. “You have got to be kidding,” Nikki sputtered. “‘Skip intro’? What kind of message is that?”
She leaned forward and Wellington turned his paper toward her. Skip intro? she thought. Now’s a fine time to tell us!
“I was afraid of that,” Wellington said calmly. He hadn’t even opened his bottled water yet. “The problem is that the atbash cipher ends up replacing all the popular letters of the alphabet with letters that are hardly ever used. A becomes Z. C becomes X. E becomes V. It’s very difficult to use letters like Z, X, and V in a Westlaw search request without looking suspicious. Judge Finney probably thought he would be ill-advised to use this cipher to send us a long message.”
“He’s the one who told us to start with the intro!” Nikki said, her voice rising. She loved Finney, but this was ridiculous.
“I know,” Wellington said softly.
Nikki needed to vent, but it was hard to argue with a guy who didn’t fight back. And even harder to argue with a judge who was thousands of miles away. “All that work we did,” Nikki complained.
Wellington looked at her like maybe she had used the word we a little loosely.
“What?” she shot back, though Wellington hadn’t actually said anything. “I deciphered the first message and helped with this one.”
“I didn’t say you didn’t.”
Nikki sighed and slumped in her chair. What was the use of getting upset if nobody was going to put up a fight?
“Well,” she said, “at least we know it’s not a huge crisis, or Finney would have had the next message waiting for us.”
“Can’t argue with that,” Wellington said. But Nikki wished he would argue with something. Anything. Right now she just needed a good argument so she could get rid of her frustrations.
Instead, Wellington was still focused on the details of the code. “We need to put some Westlaw searches in as a reply,” he told Nikki. “That way Finney will at least know we’re with him.”
Nikki found it hard to disagree with that logic, though she tried to think of a reason to do so anyway. It took Wellington about fifteen minutes to construct and send two simple Westlaw searches that conveyed to Finney their own message: “OK.”
That done, Nikki was ready to head to a certain Virginia Beach dance floor.
“Do you mind if I take the book home so I can work on the next cipher?” Wellington asked.
Nikki opened the book to chapter 1 and began writing. This batch looked every bit as jumbled as the one before, but she had no doubt they would solve it. It read:
SANHOVVORYBUNKSAQLTYA
JLRNRGTSYQOFNOKISQTSAFOJN
SAQLTYACNRTRFAQBRS
Nikki suddenly had an idea, one inspired by her memory of Farnsworth’s corgi. “How far is this Starbucks from your house?” she asked.
“Twenty-five minutes.”
“Good—about halfway. This will be our rendezvous. If I call and we decide to meet at a certain time, we’ll both know without saying it that this will be the spot.”
“Is that really necessary?” Wellington asked.
Nikki looked around as if national security were at stake. “You can never be too sure,” she whispered.
32
Large thunderhead clouds filled the sky. The winds buffeted the sail and kicked up small waves that clawed at the Hobie Cat as it skimmed across the water. Finney had his hand on the tiller, the full sail tilting the boat. They leaned back over the port side of the boat to provide counterbalance, the spray from the rough surf soaking them both.
“You really love this, don’t you?” Victoria called out.
Finney had his eye on the rolling waves, catching them at just the right angle. “Believe it or not, it helps me relax,” he said. “Even when the water’s rough.”
Victoria leaned back even farther, holding on tight and allowing the wind to rush across her face. She shook some hair out of her eyes and glanced back toward the shore, where Hadji was still doing yoga.
“Is that stuff working for you?” Victoria asked.
“What?”
“Yoga. You know, connecting with your inner self and all.”
“I don’t do yoga,” Finney responded. “For me, it’s just exercise.”
Kline regarded Finney, her blue eyes full of skepticism. “Running is exercise. What you do with the Swami—that’s yoga.”
Finney considered this for a moment. He wanted to argue the point but knew that he wasn’t going to influence the other contestants by sounding defensive. He had joined the Swami to strengthen a relationship and share the essential elements of the Christian faith. He hadn’t worried too much about how it might be perceived by the other contestants—or a national television audience for that matter.
“Maybe you can get a little exercise tomorrow by joining Kareem on his prayer mat,” Victoria teased.
“Okay,” Finney said. “You win. I’m a closet sun worshiper. It’s why I’m in such a bad mood today.” As if to emphasize the point, the hull slapped down on the backside of a wave, soaking them both with ocean spray.
“I didn’t say there’s anything wrong with it,” Victoria said, but Finney had already made up his mind about discontinuing the exercises. Why run the risk that viewers and other contestants might think he was combining Christianity with Hadji’s pantheistic religion?
He trimmed the sail so that it caught less wind, reducing their speed. He and Victoria both leaned forward as she shook her hair out of her face.
“This has been fun,” she said.
Finney took advantage of the relative calm to ask her about the cross-examination room.
“I survived it,” she said. Her eyes gave nothing away. “How about you?”
Finney told her about the speedy-trial cases and the death of the store clerk in Ohio. “I don’t want it to go public,” he said, “but I’m not going to let them blackmail me with it.”
“You didn’t know about that already?” she asked.
“Not about the Ohio case. Not until Javitts told me.”
As they sailed, the sky darkened further, and Finney turned downwind. They ducked as the sail swung overhead, and then they slid to the other side of the boat. They sailed without talking now, comfortable enough so that they didn’t have to fill the air with words.
They were more than halfway to shore, cutting swiftly through the waves, when Victoria broke the silence. “My agent called McCormack yesterday, but McCormack didn’t let me talk with him. Instead, McCormack told Preston that they needed to talk again as soon as the show was over about some television opportunities but that he really couldn’t talk during the show. McCormack said he had second thoughts about me talking to Randolph while I’m on the island, since it violates the rules for the show.”
“When did McCormack tell you this?”
“I went to his place again last night,” Victoria said. She was staring at the shore, beautiful in silhouette, her full lips mesmerizing as she spoke. Finney kept one eye on the hull cutting through the water and the other on his crew.
“Toward the end of the night, McCormack moved close enough to make me uncomfortable and then told me under his breath to follow him out to the patio,” Victoria said.
She brushed some stray strands of hair behind an ear. “I was uneasy but figured I was probably safer outside than inside. We were standing side by side on his patio, facing the ocean, and he mumbled a few more things. ‘Grab my hand for a minute,’ he said. ‘And then we’re going to hug. It doesn’t mean anything, but I don’t want to risk being overheard.’”
Victoria paused as she recalled the moment, breathing in the moist ocean air. “To be honest, it sounded pretty stupid, but he seemed so serious. He reached out and took my hand and then turned and gave me a hug. He whispered that he didn’t think his condo was wired, but he didn’t want to take any chances. Then he said something that really freaked me out: ‘Don’t make the cut for the final two. I don’t want anything to happen to you.’
“I asked him what he meant, but he just said I needed to trust him and that there was a lot going on that the contestants didn’t know about. Then he said to act normal and said it might help if we kissed, just in case anybody was watching.”
She turned to Finney with a wry smile. “I told him that was the worst pickup line I’d ever heard but I appreciated the tip.”
“He was serious?” Finney asked. He guided the boat down the crest of a wave as they closed in on the shore.
“About the kiss?”
“About not making the final two.”
“I guess so. He said he didn’t want anything to happen to me.”
“Do you believe him, or is this just a reality show twist?”
“I’m not sure what to believe. I debated whether I should even tell you.”
“I’m glad you did,” Finney said. He ran the Hobie up on the sand and glanced over his shoulder. The dark clouds seemed closer, spreading across the sky like a curtain. “Looks like we made it just in time.”
When Finney returned to his condo and logged on to Westlaw, he breathed a sigh of relief at the two new searches that showed up in his research trail. Translating the capital letters using the atbash cipher, Finney decoded the message: OK.
Nikki and Wellington are in the game!
With renewed focus, he began a few new Westlaw searches of his own.
33
Nikki hadn’t been at the courthouse for more than fifteen minutes when the phone call came.
“Nikki Moreno, please.”
“This is she.”
The female voice on the other end was all business. “Are you the law clerk for Judge Oliver Finney?”
“Yes.”
“Please hold for Mr. Randolph.”
Who?
“Nikki Moreno?” This time it was a silky-smooth man’s voice.
“I think we’ve established that,” Nikki said.
“Good. I’m Preston Randolph, attorney for Victoria Kline. Did you watch the show last night?”
That was the part of the night that Nikki remembered. “Sure. Good stuff.”
“You must not have watched the same show I did. Can you hang on a second?”
Preston didn’t wait for an answer before he started talking to someone in the background. Preston Randolph? Where had she heard that name before?
“I’m back. Thanks. I normally do toxic tort class-action cases,” Randolph said. “But Dr. Kline has served a few times as an expert witness for me, so I agreed to act as her agent in matters related to this show. I forget—did you say you watched it?”
“Yes.”
“Well, what they did last night was shameful. My client and Finney go sailing together, and the show’s producers make all these insinuations. Nothing against your judge, but I know Victoria well enough to know there’s nothing more to it than sailing.”
“Of course not,” Nikki said.
Randolph next asked about the judge’s family and how to reach them. Nikki explained that Finney was a widower who had lost his only child in a motorcycle accident. “I’m probably the closest thing to family he’s got,” Nikki said. She had always taken pride in that relationship, but hearing herself say it out loud made her strangely melancholy.
“Well, then, I’m glad I’m talking to you,” Randolph said. For the next several minutes, he talked about his plans to call the network and read them the riot act. He would file suit if they didn’t stop casting false aspersions about Kline. He’d be happy to represent Finney, too, and make sure the reality show producers would start playing fair with the judge, if Randolph only had some way to get in touch with him.
While Nikki was thinking about how she might get that done through the cipher system they had established, Randolph had his own idea. “Finney didn’t happen to leave you with a power of attorney, did he? I’m sure he’d want someone looking after his affairs if anything critical came up.”
Nikki was starting to like this guy—he knew how to spell things out. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure he did. You need a copy of that?” She had signed the judge’s name to a few orders in the past. Her Oliver Finney signature wasn’t perfect, but it would do.