by James Becker
Benelli nodded.
“That’s exactly what I mean, so the number of possible permutations is huge. The related problem is that the transcription of the encrypted text has no spaces in it, and I’m quite sure that if there had been breaks in the original, whoever did this transcription—Mallory or Jessop—would have included them. So the encrypted text must have been written in scriptio continua, and that means we have no idea where each word starts or finishes, which will make interpreting the text even more difficult.”
Vitale stared at Benelli for a few moments before speaking again.
“So are you telling me that you can’t decrypt it?”
“No,” Benelli said hurriedly. “I’m not saying that at all, but even with the assistance of some other people to help with the frequency analysis, because of the amount of trial and error we will have to do to make any sense of the text, it’s probably going to take us a long time to complete the task.”
“Define ‘a long time,’” Vitale instructed. “Hours? Days? What timescale do you actually mean?”
“Certainly several days. Perhaps some weeks. And if it proves to be particularly intractable, it might even be months. At the moment, I simply don’t know.”
Even Vitale’s silences could seem threatening, and not for the first time Benelli wished that the task of decrypting the ancient text had been given to somebody else.
“We need this done as soon as possible,” Vitale said. “You’ll get your extra men to complete the frequency analysis. Then I want you and anybody else in this organization who has even the slightest experience of cipher systems to work on this, to the exclusion of everything else. From now on, until this matter is resolved, that is to be your highest priority.”
“Suppose the English couple cracks it first?”
A humorless smile appeared on Vitale’s face.
“It would be quite convenient if they did,” he said, “because that would save us—or rather you—a lot of work. They are already being watched, and the moment we are certain that they have decrypted the text, our men will move in and seize the information. I will probably have them killed at the same time to tie off that loose end. And that would at least stop them embarrassing Marco Toscanelli every time he encounters them.”
12
Dartmouth, Devon
Mallory set his mental alarm for seven, but woke up just after six. Careful not to wake Robin, he eased out of the double bed, picked up his clothes from the chair, pulled the bedroom door closed behind him, and walked back into the study. He opened up his computer, made a mug of instant coffee in the kitchenette, then settled down to work.
Robin emerged from the bedroom at half past eight, wearing a nightdress that was so short it barely covered the interesting bits, her hair tousled and her face sleepy but infinitely appealing.
“And you got up when?” she demanded.
“About six,” Mallory replied, leaning back in his chair.
“Well, I hope you haven’t just been sitting there, staring into space or checking out porn sites,” she said.
“I’ve said it before,” Mallory objected, “that with you around, looking at porn is the furthest thing from my mind. I’ve finished the transcription, and the program is now chuntering away doing the number crunching. Can I make you a coffee or something?”
“I’ll do my own. Thank you. I’ve got a much more important job for you to do.”
He looked at her inquiringly.
“You can go out and buy my breakfast. There’s a baker about a hundred yards down the street, and I’d like one large pain au raisin or two small ones if the big ones have all gone. Do not bring me back a croissant, because I really don’t like them.”
“Understood,” Mallory said, “and by the time I’m back we should have the results of the frequency analysis.”
He was back in just over ten minutes, Robin’s breakfast order fulfilled to the letter, and immediately checked the information displayed on the screen of his laptop.
“It’s worked,” he said, “and it’s pretty much what I was expecting.”
“Which is what?” Robin asked, taking a bite out of her pastry.
“I remember you telling me about the frequency analysis of that piece of mixed-genre Latin text that was posted on the Internet, but I couldn’t remember the order of the letters, so I looked it up again.”
“It’s I, E, A, U, T, S,” Robin reminded him, “or those are the first six letters anyway, and the I and the E between them represented nearly a quarter of the letters used.”
“Got it. In fact, I guessed that I would need the full list of all the letters to really make any kind of sense of the transcription, so I saved the result. I found a couple of different lists with minor differences, but nothing significant. What we’ve ended up with isn’t exactly clear-cut, but I think we can probably work with it.”
“Let me guess. You didn’t find two letters that occurred more often than any others and that might be I and E. You probably found four of them.”
But Mallory shook his head.
“No. I found a total of nine, and that suggests we’re looking at an Atbash cipher where the code words used probably contain over seventy letters in all, giving the man who encrypted the plaintext three possible choices every time he used the letter I or E.”
“But surely if he had three letters he could choose, that would imply that there should be six letters that would occur more frequently than the others?”
“You’re quite right, but inevitably each of the code words would contain more than one occurrence of the letter that represented an I or E, so the letter M may be at the top of the popularity list, and may well decode the letter I, but it could also decode any other letter in the alphabet.”
Robin looked surprised, then shook her head.
“That’s going to make deciphering it bloody difficult, or at least take a hell of a long time. There are so many possible permutations that even if we do manage to make sense of it, I wouldn’t be entirely convinced that we were making the correct sense of it. As I understand it, decrypting using frequency analysis pretty much relies on being able to identify the dozen or so most common letters with a fair degree of certainty. If there are three possible options for each one, that’s really going to increase the degree of difficulty.”
“You’re right as usual, but I don’t see any other way of doing it.”
“Neither do I,” Robin agreed, then paused for a moment.
“What?” Mallory asked.
“I was just thinking it through, trying to look at it logically. Whatever that encrypted text says, the Templars must have intended that it could be read at some time in the future.”
“That makes sense. As we know, when Philip the Fair’s men swooped on the Templar strongholds in France in October 1307, they not only found the treasuries virtually empty, but also couldn’t find most of the knights to arrest them. That virtually confirms that the order knew what the king of France was intending to do, and made sure that his plan wouldn’t succeed. The knights dispersed, taking the treasure with them, and almost certainly planned to revive the order once the danger passed.
“Don’t forget, the Knights Templar owed allegiance to one man, and only one man: the pope. He was the most powerful man in Europe, arguably the most powerful man in the world, and in matters relating to the Templars, the king of France, like every other European ruler, was subordinate to him. It would make sense for the Templars to expect the pope to countermand the wishes of Philip the Fair and restore the order. What they perhaps didn’t expect was that the incumbent pope—the misnamed Clement V, because there was no clemency in him—was so weak and pliable that he simply did exactly what Philip told him to do and abandoned the Knights Templar to the torture chambers of the Dominicans and the flames of the stake.”
Robin nodded.
“Exactly. And ve
ry poetic. So, my point is, if the Templars thought the order could be revived, then they must also have expected somebody, at some time, to recover the Archive and find that piece of vellum. We also know that most of the knights, despite their noble origins, were borderline illiterate at best and some were completely illiterate, so it would make sense to include some kind of a clue or hint to help with the decryption. I think there must be something we’ve missed, either on the vellum or on the chest itself.”
While Robin opened the safe to recover the piece of vellum, Mallory cleared an area on the desk and placed the ironbound wooden box on it.
“We found clues in the metalwork on those other two chests,” he said, “but I don’t think that’s what we’ve got here. There are metal bands around this box to reinforce the wood, but there’s nothing like the ornate scrollwork we saw on the others.”
Mallory ran the tips of his fingers over the metal straps on the lid, then opened the chest and removed the false bottom, below which the vellum had been concealed. He checked the piece of wood that he had removed, but it appeared to be devoid of any markings. The only unusual feature was that the underside of it had apparently been given a coat of very dark brown paint, virtually the same color as the wood itself.
“That’s odd,” Mallory said, showing Robin the painted surface. “I wonder why they did that.”
“Maybe they intended it to act as a barrier between the vellum, because that’s pretty fragile, and the wood itself. But I really don’t know.”
“Yes, but if they did that for some sort of protection, why didn’t they also paint the inside of the chest, or at least the bottom of it? Because the base of the chest, where the vellum was hidden, is just bare wood.”
Robin used her powerful desk lamp to illuminate the interior of the box, and together they scanned every square inch of it.
“I don’t see anything,” Mallory said. “Do you?”
“No. No scratches or marks on the wood, apart from those left by the carpenter who made the box seven hundred or so years ago. What about the exterior?”
“If they were going to record any important information, I would have expected it to be inside the box, where it would be safe from damage.” Mallory closed the lid and pointed at the metalwork that reinforced it. “These are just strengthening bands, nothing like the ornamental scrollwork we found on those other chests. And as far as I can see, there are no marks on any of the metalwork that could help us decode this text.”
He and Robin examined every part of the chest but found nothing significant. Then Mallory put the box back on the floor and they turned their attention to the vellum. Robin placed it carefully on the desk and, again using her desk light, they checked the entire object, inspecting both sides of it. They also confirmed again that their transcription of the ciphertext was accurate, without mistakes, omissions, or additions; they found absolutely nothing that could possibly provide the clue that they needed.
“So, I suppose that’s that,” Robin said, sounding completely fed up. “Back to the bloody frequency analysis.”
Mallory nodded, and while Robin returned the vellum to her safe, he moved his laptop back toward the center of the desk. But he didn’t start work immediately, just sat there staring at the scattered sheets of paper that covered much of the surface of the desk, apparently lost in thought.
And when Robin turned back from the safe and looked at him, there was a broad smile on his face.
“What?” she demanded, sounding irritated.
“I think,” Mallory began, “that I know where we should be looking. And if I’m right, the answer has been more or less staring at us right from the start.”
13
Dartmouth, Devon
“Well, don’t keep me in suspense,” Robin said. “What are you talking about?”
But for a moment, Mallory didn’t reply because another, largely unrelated and fairly unpleasant thought had just crossed his mind. He frowned, then glanced up at Robin and smiled.
“I will tell you,” he said, “but I think we deserve a small celebration first. Get dressed, and I’ll take you out and buy you a coffee.”
“What?”
“You know. Coffee. Hot brown liquid, comes in a cup.”
“I do know what coffee is, you idiot. But why do we have to go out?”
“Because I’d like to,” Mallory replied, and at the same time wrote “JUST AGREE WITH ME” in pencil on one of the pieces of paper on the desk.
Robin looked at what he’d written and nodded.
“Oh, very well,” she said. “I could do with a breath of fresh air.”
Less than ten minutes later—Mallory having already got used to Robin’s almost masculine ability to simply pull on clothes and be immediately ready without any of the usual prolonged fannying about that had been a part of all of his previous experiences with members of the female sex—they walked down the metal spiral staircase from Robin’s apartment and headed off down the street.
“What’s going on?” Robin asked.
“Something’s been niggling at me ever since last night,” Mallory said.
“You mean about the nonburglary burglary, I suppose?”
“Yes. I know we assumed that it was simply an attempt to find out what we had, to take pictures or copies of the transcription we were working on, and to photograph the chest as well. But it suddenly occurred to me that there might have been more to it than that. If it was organized by the Dominicans, their aim is obviously to decipher the text and beat us to the prize. But at the moment we have no idea what the text says, and we won’t have an idea until we manage to work out a way of deciphering it, and they must have exactly the same problem. So it suddenly dawned on me that while we were sitting there in your office discussing the frequency analysis and the ways we could do the decryption, it was entirely possible that somebody working for the Dominicans was listening in.”
Robin stopped dead on the pavement.
“You mean, somebody’s bugged me?”
“Probably not you personally, because that would be too difficult for a whole number of reasons, but I think it’s at least likely that there might be a bug somewhere in your office.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“It may be, but that’s also probably the reality of the situation. You know how high the stakes are in this. We’ve been involved with these Dominican enforcers up close and personal, and we absolutely know that they’re prepared to kill anyone who gets in their way. So invading your privacy by sticking a bug in your apartment isn’t going to bother them at all.”
Robin took a few more steps along the pavement, then stopped again.
“If you’re right,” she said, coloring slightly, “where would they have put the microphone?”
“Not in the bedroom,” Mallory assured her, immediately guessing at her concern. “They’re not interested in what you get up to in bed.”
“That’s a relief, I suppose.”
“If there is a bug, it’ll be in your office, and it’ll probably be voice activated. There’ll be a recorder somewhere within a hundred yards or so, and every day, probably, someone will turn up at that location to change the tapes. In fact, these days, they’ll probably be using some kind of digital recorder because they’re a lot smaller and the recording time is much longer.”
They walked on and Mallory opened the door of the café to let Robin step inside. While she chose a table near the window, with a view over toward the river Dart, Mallory bought two cups of coffee and a couple of allegedly homemade chocolate muffins and carried his purchases on a tray over to the table.
“So, what can we do about it?” Robin asked, using a knife to cut her muffin into bite-sized chunks. “You know far more about this sort of thing than I do. If there is a bug, can you find it and remove it?”
Mallory nodded.
“I’ve not bee
n involved in spying, obviously,” he replied, “but many businesses these days are worried about industrial and commercial espionage, and on a couple of occasions I’ve been asked to sweep a room to make sure there aren’t any hidden microphones in it as a part of my IT work. So if there is a bug, I can certainly find it and I can also remove it. What I’m not quite sure about is whether that’s a good idea.”
“I don’t want people listening to me in my own apartment,” Robin said firmly. “I’d never feel able to fart again,” she added with a smile.
“I’m not thinking about leaving it in place permanently,” Mallory explained. “But I was wondering if we could use it to our own advantage.”
“For misdirection, you mean? Now, that’s not a bad idea. We could try to convince the listeners that the ciphertext is insoluble, and that we’ve given up. Or try and send them off in the wrong direction, perhaps.”
“That’s exactly what I mean, and that’s why I needed to get you out of the flat, because I couldn’t explain all this if the Dominicans were earwigging on what we were talking about.”
“So, what do we do next? Go back to the apartment, obviously, but what then?”
“This time,” Mallory said, “I do have a kind of plan.”
14
Via di Sant’Alessio, Aventine Hill, Rome, Italy
To say that Silvio Vitale was annoyed would have been something of an understatement. He had left Bellini’s office in a cold fury, as he once again realized that the hidden hoard of the Knights Templar, the vast wealth and the even more important treasure for which the Dominicans had been searching for over seven centuries, was potentially slipping from his grasp.
When he had seen the handwritten transcription on his computer screen that morning, he had assumed that, although the decryption process might take some time, it would certainly be achievable. But if Benelli’s assessment of the degree of difficulty was anything like accurate, it was in fact entirely conceivable that they would never be able to decipher the entire piece of text. And that was not good news. In fact, Vitale had been impressed with himself, and pleased that he had refrained from abusing the man responsible for trying to solve the riddle. Cursing him would have achieved nothing except alienating him, and as Benelli was the only person likely to be able to decrypt the cipher, Vitale knew that he couldn’t afford to do that.