The Judge

by Randy Singer

  Nikki could tell this was going nowhere. And maybe the guy had a point. Besides, if the show’s producer or director had been thinking about offing Finney, he would have to reconsider now that the FBI was investigating.

  “Did you tell them about the codes?” Nikki asked.

  Flynn let the silence hang long enough to make Nikki worry. “No. We protected our source,” he said at last. “Just like we promised. But they were very curious.”

  The phone fell silent again as Nikki considered her next move. If there even needed to be a next move. It just didn’t seem like Finney would be so easily duped.

  “You’re welcome,” Flynn said.

  “Oh yeah,” Nikki said. “Thanks.”

  Thursday night’s show was a mixed bag for Finney. On the good side, it was announced that he won the viewers’ verdict for the Tuesday episode. Norfolk’s Finest Sports Bar exploded with approval, and Nikki couldn’t wipe the grin off her face. Finney had done well on the cross-examination segment, but Nikki also suspected that he got a few sympathy votes based on his botched escape attempt. Hey, a victory was a victory.

  The show’s producers announced that Finney had designated World Changers as the recipient of his fifty-thousand-dollar prize. They showed a few clips of World Changers in action—Christian high school and college students who spend part of the summer rehabilitating inner-city homes for the poor and disabled. Nikki nearly teared up as they interviewed a few of the residents whose lives had been changed.

  She gave out congratulatory hugs for the rest of the night, even to Byron, who seemed to be at her elbow every time she turned around.

  Finney didn’t fare as well in the water torture aspects of the show, dropping out after only eight hours. Patrons of the bar had mixed opinions about how hard it would be to go the full twenty-four hours, as Dr. Ando had done. Byron told anybody who would listen that he could have lasted at least three days.

  As soon as the closing credits rolled, Nikki received a call. “Did you see what Finney said?” the caller asked.

  Between the background noise and the poor reception, Nikki could barely hear. “Wellington?”

  The reply broke up, and Nikki closed her other ear with a finger, ducking her head to get away from the noise.

  “Can you hear me now?” the caller asked.

  “A little better. What’s up?”

  “We’ve got to meet,” Wellington said. “Did you hear what Finney said?”

  As a matter of protocol, the Assassin checked the offshore account one last time. It was the third bank he had used this week, transferring the funds each day. Internet banking through his secure satellite phone—the wonders of modern technology. Tomorrow he would begin diversifying the seven hundred thousand dollars, spreading it around between several different banks. He would begin investing as soon as he had finished laundering the additional eight hundred thousand that would be deposited on Saturday.

  He reviewed his plan again, probing for any details he might have missed. He was not happy about having the Client involved in the hit, but the Client had insisted that this one was personal. The Client wanted to watch the victim die. The Client wanted to taunt the victim as he drew a last breath. The Client wanted to humiliate the man.

  The Assassin should have doubled the rate.

  The hardest part, he knew, would be making it look like an accident. But he had a backup plan for that, too. A scapegoat. How fitting, in the midst of a religious show like this, to have a scapegoat ready to take all the blame for the sins of others.

  The Assassin’s escape would be easy. By the middle of next week, the Assassin would virtually be a new man—facial plastic surgery, hair implants, the works. He would change his body type as much as possible over the next two months, hitting the gym every day. Big weights, low reps. Hired killers gained and lost more weight than movie stars.

  The only loose end would be his client. And if the Client started getting shaky, the Assassin had been known to eliminate that problem as well. Gratis. What was that saying? “Two men can keep a secret . . . if one of them is dead.”

  It was nothing personal. The Assassin just didn’t like loose ends. Made it hard to sleep at night.

  He e-mailed the Seeker.

  Everything is poised for completion on Saturday. Nobody suspects a thing.

  Azrael

  57

  Nikki’s enthusiasm for solving Finney’s riddles had been dampened considerably by her conversation with Agent Flynn. She now believed it was entirely possible that Finney had been duped by the show’s producers into thinking that a murder conspiracy was afoot when it was really just part of the show.

  Wellington held the opposite view. If the agents were no longer going to help in the investigation, Finney’s fate now rested entirely in Wellington’s and Nikki’s hands. “The judge is too smart to get suckered by a game,” he argued. “There’s more to it than that.”

  He was so insistent that Nikki agreed to meet him at Starbucks after the show. Wellington had his computer up and running by the time she arrived. He motioned her over before she could even order a drink.

  “I TiVoed the show and then transferred it to my computer,” he said, clicking on a desktop icon. “Then I cut and spliced a couple segments I want you to see.”

  Another few clicks, and Wellington’s Windows Media Player showed Finney being strapped into his chair for the Chinese water torture. “Listen to what he says,” Wellington told Nikki.

  On the screen Bryce McCormack asked Finney if he had any predictions. “I would say myself and the Swami are the ones to watch,” Finney said. “We’re the only ones who know the key to outlasting this thing.”

  Wellington hit the Stop button. “Did you hear that?”

  Nikki nodded, watching as Wellington pulled up another clip. “This is the Swami,” Wellington said.

  The clip started playing. The Swami was already strapped into the chair, and the camera zoomed in for a close-up. “You want to know who’s going to win this thing?” the Swami asked.

  “Sure,” Bryce McCormack’s voice said off camera.

  “Judge Finney or me,” the Swami said. “I taught him a few relaxation techniques, so we’re the only ones who know the key to beating this thing.”

  Wellington hit the Stop button and looked at Nikki. “What do you think?”

  “Sounds pretty coincidental,” Nikki admitted. “They both refer to themselves as understanding the key.” She tried to act calm, but a rush of excitement was crawling across her skin. “Sounds like another message from Finney.”

  “Exactly. Since he can’t access the Internet anymore, he’s using the show itself.”

  “Maybe,” Nikki cautioned. “But how did he even know that the show would air both those remarks? I mean, they edit out a lot of stuff.”

  “Maybe he didn’t. Maybe that’s why both he and the Swami said basically the same thing, hoping the network would air at least one of them. And let’s face it—a boastful prediction by a losing contestant is bound to get airtime.”

  As usual, Wellington was making sense. “Wonder when that footage was shot?” Nikki mumbled. She was in her thinking-out-loud mode now. “Maybe it was shot even before we got his last message.”

  “I doubt it,” Wellington responded. “He didn’t send any messages on the other shows. As long as he could communicate through Westlaw, it was safer. I think this is a recent message. I think it’s a last resort.”

  “Let me watch them again,” Nikki said.

  After a second time through the clips, Nikki was still confused. “But what’s the message? What’s the key?”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out,” Wellington said. “It’s certainly not obvious. So far, I’ve come up with two possibilities.”

  “I’m all ears.”

  Wellington twisted his lips, searching for the best way to explain this. “There’s either a message in the words that he and the Swami used or there’s a message tied in to the amount of ti
me they spent in the chairs. I’m thinking it’s probably time in the chairs because Finney would have no way of knowing how much of what he and the Swami said would be edited out.”

  Nikki could sense the start of a long night. “You want something to drink?”

  “Bottled water and pound cake,” Wellington said.

  Code breakers are such creatures of habit, Nikki thought.

  Nikki felt a hand gently shaking her shoulder. “Ms. Moreno.”

  She cracked an eyelid and tried to reorient herself. The cobwebs cleared enough so that she remembered where she was. Wellington’s house. They had changed locations when the Starbucks closed. Wellington had been working on cracking any possible code formed by the amount of time Finney and Hadji had stayed with the Chinese water torture. Nikki had written down everything that Finney and Hadji said on the Thursday night show and started looking for clues in the words. She remembered curling up on the couch for a quick nap around 2:00 a.m.

  “What time is it?” Nikki asked, her voice hoarse, her eyes still closed.

  “Um . . . I’m not really sure. Maybe about four or so.”

  Nikki grunted and rubbed her face. She was about to sit up when she felt a little fur ball jump on top of her, wiggle around, and then lick her face.

  “Corky!” Wellington yelled, but it was too late. Nikki had already backhanded the little monster onto the floor.

  Corky yelped and Nikki sat straight up, wiping her cheek.

  “Sorry about that,” Wellington said, rubbing the dog’s head. “He likes waking people up.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Nikki muttered. She stared straight ahead, still waiting for her full senses to come back to her. Nobody had ever accused Nikki of being a morning person.

  “Let me run Corky up to my mom’s bedroom, and then I want to show you something,” Wellington said.

  “Good idea,” Nikki managed. She checked her watch. It really was 4:00 a.m.

  When Wellington headed upstairs, Nikki stumbled to the kitchen and poured a glass of water. Her mouth felt like scum. Her only goal in life was to get into her own bed as soon as possible.

  She was standing against the counter finishing the water when Wellington returned. His eyes were bloodshot and his hair tousled. “You want some coffee?” he asked.

  “I want my bed.”

  “Okay, but first let me show you what I found.” His voice smacked of enthusiasm. Nikki didn’t do enthusiasm when she was this tired.

  “Wellington, can’t it wait—?”

  “Just one second. You won’t believe this!”

  He went into the living room and retrieved his Cross Examination book. He placed it on the counter in front of Nikki alongside a piece of paper with all kinds of numbers and letters that blurred together. At the top were the numbers 8, 16, 35, 17, 33, 59.

  “This is the amount of time that Finney and Hadji stayed with the water torture,” Wellington explained as he pointed. “I’ve watched the video a dozen times. They were both watching the clock at the precise moment when they pushed the panic button. That’s significant because both of them had their eyes closed for most of the time but opened them right at the end.”

  Nikki yawned. She could feel a long explanation coming, and she could barely keep her eyes open as it was.

  “Both of them mentioned Finney’s name first when they talked about knowing the key, so I wrote down Finney’s time first.”

  “Makes sense.” Another big yawn.

  “So what do these numbers mean?” But before Nikki could give Wellington a dirty look, he recovered. “That’s the question I asked myself. The next two chapters in the Cross Examination book use letters as the ciphertext, not numbers, so I ruled out those chapters.”

  “Can we sit down?” Nikki asked. The couch wasn’t the same as her bed, but it beat standing.

  “Sure.”

  Wellington took a seat next to Nikki on the couch and placed the paper on the coffee table in front of them. Nikki glanced longingly at the couch pillow. “So I started looking at chapter 7, which is the next chapter that uses numbers for the ciphertext,” Wellington explained. “Maybe the water torture was filmed while Finney was still using the Internet, so maybe he didn’t know what chapter we would be on when the show aired. He figured he would just skip ahead a few chapters to the next one with numbers and make it easy.”

  Nikki leaned back and snuggled down into the couch. She felt her muscles begin to relax.

  “But then I couldn’t figure out the key to chapter 7 and therefore couldn’t even test my theory. I tried every type of frequency analysis and every other trick known to cryptanalysts. I nearly gave up but then decided to do something I should have done at the beginning—just run the sequence of numbers as a search on the Internet. Guess what I came up with?”

  The words had been fading in and out, Wellington’s adolescent voice putting Nikki to sleep. Ironically, it was the quiet that brought her back. “I’m sorry—what?”

  “Guess what I found out on the Internet?”

  “Oh. I’m not really sure,” Nikki said, yawning again.

  “The Beale cipher!” Wellington exclaimed. “The numbers in chapter 7 have been copied from the Beale cipher.”

  “I never would have guessed.” Nikki sank lower and put her legs up on the coffee table.

  “You ever heard of it?” Wellington asked.

  “Sure,” Nikki said, hoping to avoid another convoluted story about some super-duper cipher person. But it didn’t work. Wellington started a windy monologue about the history of the Beale cipher, and Nikki could tell he wasn’t going to stop and catch his breath anytime soon. She rested her eyelids and, for the next ten minutes, listened to his story. Wellington actually gave her the twenty-minute version, but she didn’t hear the last half until he woke her up at 7:00 a.m. and repeated everything he had said in the wee hours of the night.

  58

  The story began in 1820 when Thomas J. Beale rode into Lynchburg, Virginia, and checked in at the prestigious Washington Hotel. Handsome and charming, Beale spent the winter in Lynchburg, befriending the innkeeper and wooing the ladies. He left town in March, as quickly and mysteriously as he came, and he wasn’t heard from again for nearly two years.

  He returned to spend another winter in 1822, enchanting the town once again with his winsome personality and unmatched attractiveness. This time he left a locked iron box containing “papers of value and importance” with the innkeeper. The innkeeper placed the box in a safe and didn’t think much more about it until he received a letter from Beale two months later.

  It contains papers vitally affecting the fortunes of myself and many others, Beale wrote. Should none of us ever return, you will please preserve carefully the box for the period of ten years from the date of this letter, and if I or no one with authority from me during that time demands its restoration, you will open it, which can be done by removing the lock. You will find . . . papers which will be unintelligible without the aid of a key to assist you. Such a key I have left in the hand of a friend in this place, sealed and addressed to yourself, and endorsed not to be delivered until June 1832.

  Beale never passed through Lynchburg again, and his friend never sent the key. Absent the key, the innkeeper saw no point in opening the box, until his curiosity won out in 1845, more than twenty years after he last saw Beale. The box contained three enciphered pages of numbers, together with a note from Beale in plain English.

  In the note Beale explained that he and some friends had struck gold near Santa Fe during the summer of 1820. He made two trips to Lynchburg to bury the treasure and then enciphered the three notes included in the box. The first note set forth the location of the treasure. The second note contained a description of the treasure. The third note listed the relatives of the men who should receive a share of the treasure.

  For twenty years the innkeeper tried to decipher the notes without a key, but his quest ended in failure. When he turned eighty-four, the innkeeper conceded d
efeat and realized that the secret of the Beale ciphers would die with him if he didn’t tell somebody. He entrusted the Beale ciphers to an anonymous friend, who in turn tried his hand at solving the ciphers for another twenty years. Miraculously, he was able to solve the second of the ciphers, revealing the description of the treasure with a twenty-first century value of more than twenty million dollars. But he could never crack the first cipher, the one containing the location. And so, more than twenty years after he first obtained possession of the Beale ciphers, the friend decided to turn over custody of the matter to the world.

  In 1885 this man anonymously published a pamphlet titled The Beale Papers. He refused to reveal his own name, “to avoid the multitude of letters with which I should be assailed from all sections of the Union, propounding all sorts of questions . . . which, if attended to, would absorb my entire time. . . . I have given all that I know of the matter [in this pamphlet] and cannot add one word to the statements herein contained.”

  The pamphlet contained copies of the Beale ciphers and detailed their history. The author also described how he had solved the second Beale cipher after years of work. He initially assumed that the page contained a substitution cipher, with various numbers being substituted for letters of the alphabet. Since the code contained numbers as large as 807, the author assumed that Beale had done what Edgar Allan Poe and numerous others had done to defeat frequency analysis—used several different code symbols to stand for the more popular letters.

  One popular way to create a key for such a cipher had been through the use of a book cipher. In this type of cipher, a code maker would first number the words in a book or document. The first word would be number one, the next word number two, and so on. That number would always refer to the first letter of the word that matched the number.

  By applying this analysis, the author of the Beale pamphlet discovered that Beale had used the Declaration of Independence as the key for the second Beale cipher. But the first Beale cipher, the one that contained the location of the treasure, did not prove so easy to crack.