The Judge

by Randy Singer

  And still today, more than one hundred and twenty years after publication of the Beale pamphlet, the biggest computers and brightest minds have been unable to solve the cipher that holds the key to a buried treasure worth twenty million dollars.

  Until now?

  Even at seven o’clock in the morning, Nikki grasped the significance of this piece of history. The mention of twenty million dollars could wake a girl up fast.

  “Judge Finney used the beginning of Beale’s first cipher, number for number, as his key for chapter 7,” Wellington explained. He looked at the page again, with a sleep-deprived trance that Nikki found unnerving. “Which means that the judge must’ve cracked a cipher that most cryptanalysts concluded was impenetrable.”

  Nikki tried to blink herself fully awake. Her boss? A millionaire? A multi-multimillionaire?

  “And,” Wellington continued, dejection creeping into his voice, “it means that unless we can solve the first Beale cipher, we might never be able to decrypt the message Finney sent on TV last night. The key to the Beale cipher might die with him.”

  “Have you got any coffee?” Nikki asked.

  Part 5

  Verdict

  Ladies and gentlemen, the term verdict . . . literally means “to speak the truth” and I charge you to do precisely that.

  —Jury Charge, Ware v. Rodale Press Inc.

  You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

  —Jesus Christ

  59

  On Friday morning the contestants gathered for their day of reckoning in Paradise Court. Kareem Hasaan took his seat next to Finney, looking tense and formal in one of his custom-designed Italian suits, which seemed to hang a little looser on the man after five days of fasting. He had pulled out of the Chinese water torture after four hours, calling it “a ridiculous exercise in masochism.” He told the cameras that Allah didn’t subject his servants to torture in order to prove that he was god.

  Dr. Ando came dressed in his traditional Buddhist robes. The man was fast becoming a legend on Paradise Island. He lasted all twenty-four hours on the Chinese water torture and probably could have gone days longer. Though he looked tired and frail, Finney knew better. It was rumored that Ando’s heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing actually slowed down during the last few hours of the ordeal.

  “He probably went back to his room and took a nap on a bed of nails,” Gus quipped.

  The Swami lasted more than seventeen hours, just as he and Finney had planned, though the Swami later confessed that his meditation techniques had failed him during the last few painful hours.

  Next to the Swami sat Dr. Kline, looking stunning and rested for this final courtroom session. She was wearing a classic black sleeveless dress, with a modest silver necklace and matching bracelet. She had pressed the panic button as soon as the first drop fell on her forehead. “Rational people do not voluntarily subject themselves to torture,” she said.

  She has a point, Finney had to admit.

  Javitts took the bench, wearing his normal dour expression. He gaveled the session to order and began by congratulating Dr. Ando for his victory in the Chinese water torture. The stoic contestant nodded humbly, and Javitts moved on to the next item.

  “Today we will be selecting two finalists in a procedure that has remained a secret until this moment.” Javitts surveyed the contestants and then gazed into a camera at the back of the room. “Throughout your time on Paradise Island, we have emphasized that the important thing is not whether you can defend your faith in a courtroom setting but how well you live your faith day to day. The real crucible of your cross-examination does not take place on this witness stand or even in the cross-examination room. It occurs in your interactions with others, in the challenges you face, in the unexpected tragedies nobody can explain. The question becomes: do you have something special in those times that can only be explained by faith?

  “And who knows the answer to that question better than your fellow contestants?”

  Finney could see where this was headed—a Survivor-type voting process. But as usual, the producers of the show had a twist.

  “We’ve looked at the voting procedures for all past reality shows,” Javitts continued, his tone solemn for the occasion. “And we’ve decided to combine the best of those procedures for this, the ultimate reality game show. Accordingly, here’s the way we will proceed.

  “In a few minutes, you will be given a ballot with your name on it. Later today you will cast either one or two votes. You may vote for yourself and one other person. If you don’t vote for yourself, then you cast only one vote.” Javitts waited a few seconds for this to sink in. The cameras scanned the faces of the contestants.

  “The contestant who receives the most votes will be one finalist. As the judge, it will be my sole prerogative to select the other. Those two finalists will stay on the island for one additional day. The rest of you will pack this afternoon and leave after lunch and one final session in the cross-examination room.”

  Had Finney heard right? Lunch?

  “The finalists will each give a closing argument tomorrow. After the final show airs, the viewing audience will select the winner between the two finalists, based on the same voting procedures we’ve established for earlier shows.”

  Finney was surprised at how much tension crackled in the air. His own palms turned sweaty, and he felt a coughing fit coming on. No matter how often he told himself that this was just a reality show, that his entire job was to glorify God in the way he played the show, he still wanted to win. Badly. And it wasn’t just his competitive instincts. He saw this as a vindication of his faith—one bold and final stroke to reach the next generation before he passed into eternity.

  Yet he doubted that his dream would ever come to pass. He had sent an encoded message to Nikki, instructing her to get the Feds involved and stop this madness. Unless Wellington failed to decode that message, which Finney doubted, there would be no final session to win.

  Still, Finney wanted to at least make the finals. Yes, pride was involved. And yes, vindication was involved. But if for some reason the Feds never showed up, danger was also involved.

  Making the finals, from all appearances, was a game of Russian roulette. Both Victoria Kline and Kareem Hasaan had allegedly discovered the same thing—a plot existed to kill one of the finalists. Even the Swami, who didn’t trust anything Kareem said, agreed with Finney’s analysis—a conspiracy was afoot. And the conspirators were already setting up their scapegoats.

  For Finney, this danger was one more reason he wanted to make the finals. The other contestants, except for Dr. Ando, were relatively young. Kareem and Hadji both had at least a possibility of surviving their illnesses, and Kline wasn’t even sick. If anybody had to be at risk, Finney reasoned, it might as well be him.

  “At eleven o’clock you will return to this courtroom one at a time, in alphabetical order, to cast your ballots,” Javitts continued. “At noon I will announce your verdict and select the other finalist. But before you retire to deliberate, I have one final announcement that I have been asked to make.” He paused and cleared his throat. “We have the results of the medical tests performed earlier this week.”

  With everything else going on, Finney had forgotten all about the medical tests. But Javitts gave him no time to mull it over. “Unfortunately,” Javitts continued, “there have been no changes in your various medical conditions. The God who heals apparently decided not to intervene in this show.”

  In his peripheral vision, Finney caught Kareem’s reaction. His Muslim friend stared straight ahead without flinching, as if he had expected this news all along.

  By 9:00 a.m. Nikki and Wellington had shifted their base of operations to the dining room table. Nikki still had on her outfit from the night before—her favorite pair of faded and ripped jeans, together with a sheer V-neck sleeveless silk top and matching silk camisole. She had kicked off her sandals at the door last night, and her hair was so frizzed out thi
s morning that she tucked it all up inside one of Wellington’s caps—a new ODU hat with a bill that stuck straight out. Her mouth tasted like dog’s breath until she squeezed some toothpaste out of the tube in the Farnsworths’ bathroom and rubbed it on her teeth with her finger.

  Corky was hanging around her feet in spite of her best efforts to give him occasional kicks in the chops. Wellington was hunkered over his charts and graphs, his head nearly dropping on the table out of pure exhaustion. Nikki felt wide awake, spurred on by two cups of coffee and the thought of twenty million dollars.

  She didn’t bother trying to solve the famous Beale cipher on her own. If Wellington and a hundred and fifty years of the brightest minds available couldn’t crack it, what chance did she have? Instead, she took an entirely different approach. She assumed that Finney had somehow solved the cipher and, as with every other chapter, had given hints about the key in the chapter itself.

  She carefully read every word of chapter 7, a chapter titled “Jesus Takes the Fifth.” In it, Finney wrote about the one time when Jesus refused to answer a question from the Pharisees. When they asked Jesus where His authority came from, He answered their question with one of His own: “Where did John’s baptism come from? From heaven or from men?” Since the Pharisees didn’t dare answer that question, Christ refused to answer the one they had asked Him.

  Finney’s point: we can’t expect God to answer every one of our why questions. Sometimes we have to operate on faith.

  When Nikki finished chapter 7, she read straight through chapter 8, another chapter that used numbers instead of letters for its code.

  Chapter 8 dealt with Christ’s response when the Pharisees asked Him about paying taxes. One phrase in particular almost jumped off the page at Nikki. In discussing the separation of church and state, Finney wrote something that couldn’t possibly be a coincidence. “You can mark Jefferson’s words in the Declaration—an exercise that will generate no fewer than four independent references to God.”

  Mark Jefferson’s words, Finney had written. The key to the second Beale cipher! Nikki—on her own—had just discovered the key to chapter 8.

  “Have you got a copy of the Declaration of Independence?” Nikki asked.

  A tired Wellington looked at her like he couldn’t be bothered. “Not on me,” he said, and Nikki couldn’t tell whether he was being sarcastic.

  “Can you look it up on the computer?”

  A few minutes later, Nikki was reading the Declaration and counting words. She felt a surge of excitement but kept her cool. It would be more fun to do it this way.

  “Did you read chapter 7?” Nikki asked.

  “Sure,” Wellington said without looking up.

  “What about chapter 8?”

  Wellington put down his pencil, sighed, and gave Nikki a perturbed look. “I skimmed it,” he said.

  “Okay, so chapter 7 is all about trusting God even when we don’t understand what He’s doing. Right?”

  A small glint of curiosity sliced through the redness in Wellington’s eyes. “Yes?” he said tentatively, like a question.

  “And chapter 8 is about the separation of church and state. It even references the Declaration of Independence, you know.”

  “I guess I hadn’t caught that,” Wellington admitted. Nikki thought she might burst with pride. Maybe wearing the guy’s ODU hat did something magical.

  “So think about it, Wellington. God doesn’t always answer our questions. There are some things we will never understand. Just like there are some ciphers we will never figure out. Get it?”

  Wellington knit his eyebrows as Nikki continued. How can he not see this? “So the judge uses a cipher for chapter 7 that he knows nobody can figure out—at least nobody has for one hundred and fifty years. The first Beale cipher. Finney didn’t figure it out, either, but he used it to illustrate the point of the chapter. And then, for chapter 8 he uses the second Beale cipher, the one that depends on the Declaration.”

  “And the numbers from the water torture correspond to the second Beale cipher,” Wellington said, finally picking up on Nikki’s thought. “It’s the only chapter that uses just numbers where we actually have a key.”

  Nikki nodded. It was fun being the teacher for a change. It would have been even more fun if solving the puzzle didn’t require admitting that the first Beale cipher remained unsolved. As soon as we get Finney off that island, Nikki promised herself, I’m going to make Wellington work on the first Beale cipher nonstop until he solves it.

  “Unbelievable.” Wellington shook his head. “I fell right into the classic code breaker’s trap.” Instead of the look of triumph that Nikki expected—after all, they were partners—Wellington’s look was closer to shame. “I made an assumption and treated it as fact. Just like the code breakers who, for hundreds of years, thought the substitution cipher could not be cracked. They were using linguistic skills when they should have been focused on the mathematics, the frequency analysis. I was looking at chapter 7 when I should have been focused on chapter 8.”

  Nikki wanted to interrupt him, but his rambling analysis sounded too much like a confession to cut him off. She let the silence hang there for a moment as Wellington’s tired cranium processed his failure. “I don’t think I would have ever thought of looking at chapter 8,” Wellington admitted.

  “That’s why we’re partners,” Nikki said. “Even Einstein needed help once in a while.” She had no idea if it was true, but it seemed like the right thing to say.

  Wellington appeared to ponder this for a moment and then make peace with it. “So what’s it say?” he asked. “Have you applied the Declaration as the key to Finney’s water torture message?”

  “Here’s what you get,” Nikki announced. “It’s PER.”

  “PER?” Wellington repeated. “What’s PER?”

  Nikki paused, extending her moment in the sun for a few more seconds. She couldn’t wait to see the look on Finney’s face someday soon when she got a chance to tell him she outsmarted his golden boy.

  “PER is Preston Edgar Randolph,” Nikki announced. “He’s apparently the one behind this murder conspiracy.”

  Wellington’s mouth dropped open—the same reaction Nikki had when she first figured it out. “How could Finney know that?” he asked.

  “You got me. But we’ve been playing right into Randolph’s hands.”

  60

  Nikki felt grubbier by the minute, but she had no time for hygiene. She barely had time, at the stoplights on her way to downtown Norfolk, to freshen up her makeup. She called Wellington’s cell a few times on the way—she wanted to tell him to pick up the pace—but even in a crisis of this magnitude, the boy apparently wouldn’t answer his cell phone while driving.

  Nikki parked in her normal spot in the parking lot of the courthouse building and tried to wave Wellington and his minivan into a handicapped spot. But the kid was unwilling to bend even the tiniest rule and ended up parking in a public garage about a block away. Nikki waited for him on the front steps of the courthouse, growing more impatient by the minute as he lumbered toward her, making sure he didn’t cross St. Paul’s Boulevard against the light.

  “C’mon, Wellington. We don’t have all day.”

  “Sorry.”

  Next, Nikki thought Wellington would have a nervous breakdown when she took his arm and forced him to cut with her to the front of the metal detector line.

  “Man, I’m starting to love casual Fridays,” one of the deputies said, eyeing Nikki’s tight jeans and sheer top.

  “How many times did you vote for Judge Finney this week?” Nikki asked as she cavorted through the detectors.

  “Must have been a hundred,” the first deputy said.

  “Double whatever he says,” the other chimed in.

  “He’s with me.” Nikki pointed back to Wellington.

  From there, it took Nikki ten minutes to locate Deputy Commonwealth’s Attorney Mitchell Taylor and another five to talk him into asking another attorney to
handle his hearings that morning. In Mitchell’s office, Nikki and Wellington raced through the entire saga, including the fact that phone calls to the FBI that morning had confirmed that no Agent Rafferty worked at the FBI. There was an Agent Flynn, but he had not worked on this case.

  “I told them I was calling from the commonwealth’s attorney’s office in Norfolk on your behalf,” Nikki admitted, “investigating a possible indictment for impersonating a police officer.” As she described it out loud, even Nikki had to admit that her conduct had been a little ironic. She had impersonated a prosecutor to investigate someone who had impersonated an FBI agent. She braced herself for a reprimand, but Mitchell just frowned, too deep in thought to get worked up about Nikki’s small lie.

  “What are you asking me to do?” he asked.

  “Indict Randolph. Save Finney. Get an arrest warrant.” Nikki was throwing out alternatives as quickly as Mitchell rejected them with a knit brow or subtle shake of the head. “I don’t know—do your prosecutor thing.”

  Mitchell leaned forward, elbows on his desk. “Our prosecutor thing, Nikki, requires jurisdiction. I want to help—Judge Finney is probably my all-time favorite judge—but if we don’t follow the book on this one . . .” Mitchell grimaced. “Randolph is a powerful man. He’ll never serve a minute, and we’ll be facing a multimillion-dollar lawsuit.”

  Nikki couldn’t believe she was hearing this from Mitchell Taylor. He had never shied away from a fight in his life, as far as Nikki knew.

  “A judge’s life is at stake!” she blurted out. “And you’re worried about lawsuits.”

  Mitchell didn’t blink. “I’m worried about making these charges stick. And doing it the right way so Randolph doesn’t make us all look like fools. To accomplish that, I need jurisdiction, Nikki. The problem here is that none of these things happened in Norfolk. You’ve got Judge Finney on an island who knows where—”