The last kingdom, p.32
The Last Kingdom, page 32
Chapter 71
RIFE MADE HIS WAY THROUGH THE DARK WOODS, DOWN FROM THE snow-covered rocky promontory and back toward Neuschwanstein. Knight followed, keeping watch on their rear. A bit unsettling to know that the Duke of Bavaria had his own private militia. Frankly, he’d not given the Guglmänner much thought until a few hours ago.
He and Knight finally arrived back at the gatehouse entry into the castle. Still no one around, the place conveniently quiet. They returned to the same exterior door at the top of the stone risers and reentered, making their way quietly up to the third floor. There, they carefully avoided the corridor that led to the king’s study and scampered ahead, taking refuge in the throne room, a palatial space that stretched up two stories with rows of colorful pillars forming an upper colonnade. He knew that the corridor just outside would take them around the third floor through a series of rooms, eventually finding the study. He decided they should get closer so he motioned and Knight led the way.
He had to wait for confirmation before acting.
They’d eliminated the annoyance of Prince Stefan, secured Albert’s complete cooperation, and now only had to wait and see if Koger and Malone solved the puzzle. Why work when others would do it for you? Seemed like a good plan. But that was the thing about good plans. They could go to hell in two seconds.
Especially here.
The Chinese were impatient and unsettled, demanding immediate results. Nothing new there. Paul Bryie had checked with his people at Langley. They were aware of the attack in Munich and Randy Miller’s death, all of which had been attributed to the Scythe. He realized that repercussions could come, but Bryie was providing enough misinformation to lead that hunt in a different direction. All he needed was a little time and he might well have that deed. The Chinese had first made a deal with the Germans, but once he came on the scene they saw that money would be far easier to part with than future political favors. Those had a nasty habit of becoming never-ending. Fifty million US dollars to him for the deed was one and out. So they’d accelerated the Germans’ timetable to three days, placing pressure on them to perform. He’d assured the Chinese he’d have results before that. A solid payday. But the real payout would be sticking it up the asses of his former bosses. It would be the first of many insults he planned to inflict on the Central Intelligence Agency.
Oh, yeah.
They’d regret firing him.
Knight led the way as they headed through a series of rooms. He realized that the way the floor was designed, half the rooms ran down one side of the center, the other on the opposite side with connecting doors. They came into what had obviously been a dining room and he realized that the study was just on the other side of the closed double doors. He could hear the murmur of voices through the thick walls, but nothing specific.
He motioned for Knight to keep going.
But his partner turned into the table and jostled one side hard, causing the gilded bronze centerpiece to move across the top with a loud scrape.
Rife froze.
So did Knight.
* * *
DERRICK HAD A FAMILIAR FEELING.
One he’d honed over the years. Something was wrong. He could feel it. How? Why? Where? Those were unknowns. But his brain was on high alert, his eyes and ears assessing everything around him. The immediate vicinity seemed calm. But there was something about the whole setup that simply did not add up. Hard to say why. But he’d learned not to argue with the feeling. If he was wrong? Okay, he might look a little foolish. But if he was right and ignored it, he could end up dead. Bad enough he’d allowed Rife and Paul Bryie to get ahead of him this morning. He wasn’t about to make the same mistake again. Both he and Malone were armed, which was somewhat reassuring. But this castle had the feel of a rat maze. Lots of room to run, just no place to go.
Malone was still examining the cipher wheel.
“Can you use that thing?” he asked.
“I think I can.”
Fenn and the curator stood nearby, watching carefully.
“And what can you two add to this growing mess of mystery?” Derrick asked them.
“Many of Ludwig II’s personal effects disappeared after his death,” the curator said. “Through the years a lot of items have resurfaced. I have bought some myself for this castle’s collection, as have other sites throughout Bavaria. But I have never seen anything like this before.”
“You told me Ludwig III created this whole mystery game,” Malone said to Fenn. “So how did he get this cipher wheel?”
“The family eventually took possession of Ludwig II’s belongings,” Fenn noted. “They were passed down to various branches. Some were donated to museums, some were kept. I can only assume that cipher wheel was retained by the prince regent Luitpold, who gave it to his son Ludwig III. It’s not gold or silver, so it had no value back then. But isn’t it marvelous? The Rätselspiel has come to life. It is real and we have the solution within our grasp.”
“How do you figure?” Derrick asked.
“You don’t see?” Fenn said. “All of the clues—the book, the note from Ludwig III, then the one from Lehmann, even the key you produced—they all point right here. I think, finally, we have all of the pieces in one place.”
“How do you know that?” Malone asked.
“It is quite simple,” Fenn said. “The wording. ‘Where the minstrel aims his praise, and Parsifal points his gaze, the seer and dove offer help from above.’ That happened. ‘Faithfulness keeps guard by day and night.’ That’s here. Now we have only the final part to decipher. ‘The gateway opens and closes with Wagner.’ Along with those random letters and numbers. Tell us, Herr Malone, do they relate to the cipher wheel?”
Derrick could see Malone was hesitating with his answer, and he could also read the look in his eyes. He stepped back out of the study, through the archway, into the corridor. He gazed left and right, the view extending fifty feet in both directions past other rooms. Nothing he saw caused alarm.
Then he heard something.
Like a scrape.
“What was that?” he asked.
“Could be one of the staff closing up for the day,” the curator said.
Or it could be something else. Derrick caught Malone’s attention. “Let me talk with you.” He faced Fenn. “Excuse us.”
They stepped from the study down the hall, out of earshot.
“Can you use that thing?” he whispered.
Malone nodded.
“Okay. Whatever you learn, keep it to yourself. These two are real Johnny-on-the-spots. I don’t like friendly. We need to find what’s out there before anyone else.”
“I hear you, and agree. I don’t think we’re alone.”
“Me either.”
He turned.
Malone grabbed his arm. “Don’t shoot the staff.”
He smiled. “I’ll try to be careful.”
They returned to the study.
“Malone is going to see what he can do,” Derrick said to Fenn. “I’m going to take a walk.”
“Where?” Fenn asked.
He also hated nosey-Nellies.
“Don’t know. Just a walk.”
* * *
RIFE KEPT MOVING THROUGH ONE ROOM AFTER ANOTHER. LOTS OF oak paneling, colorful wall paintings, and beamed ceilings with carved ornamentation. He hoped the misstep with the table had not been noticed, but he had to assume it was since he was dealing with two highly competent professionals. He also had to be careful with his steps as the plank floor creaked in places. Luckily, there were a multitude of rugs that helped shield their steps. Placards identified the spaces as bedroom and oratory. They finally stopped in a parlor, heavy with recesses formed by arches and columns. The rest of its decor consisted of bookcases, brass chandeliers, and candlesticks adorned with Bohemian glass. Blue silk curtains embroidered with lilies and swans hung before the windows. He stepped over and parted the sheers, glancing down at the inner courtyard and external staircase from which they’d entered. He realized that they were at the floor’s farthest edge, pointing north, the opening to his right leading to another corridor and the series of rooms that ran opposite the ones they’d just traversed, which included the study with Koger and Malone.
Knight had slipped into the next room.
He followed.
And was surprised.
It was not like the others. Some sort of faux grotto, complete with stalagmites and stalactites and a dry waterfall. Weird. A glass door opened to an upper conservatory filled with plants. Knight stood to one side of the doorway, gun ready, signaling for him to stop and that trouble was approaching. Knight pointed back toward the way they’d come and they headed there.
“What’s up?” Rife whispered.
“Koger has good ears. He’s coming our way.”
Perfect.
Chapter 72
COTTON STARED IN WONDER AT HIS GRANDFATHER.
They sat in the attic, one of the many old trunks that littered the dusty space hinged open. He’d always been allowed free rein with the family’s memories, rummaging through stuff that had been lovingly retained for countless decades. Clothes, photos, letters, books, knickknacks, newspapers, shoes, toys, a little bit of anything and everything. But his investigations had finally uncovered something extraordinary. Two brass wheels bound on a center post with the alphabet engraved into both along with the initials CSA and S.S.
“What is it?” he asked his grandfather.
“That belonged to Angus. He used it during the War between the States. It’s a cipher wheel, for decoding messages.”
He made the connection. “CSA is Confederate States of America?”
The old man nodded. “That’s right. S.S. is for Secret Service, which was their spy agency.”
“Do you know how to work it?”
His grandfather took the disk from him. “During the war, if a general wanted to send commands to his colonels and captains, he had to guard ’em with ciphers. That way they couldn’t be read if the enemy captured ’em. But those ciphers had to be changed a lot, and those changes had to be simple and easy to do. Just enough to throw the enemy off guard.”
The whole thing mesmerized him. Soldiers on the battlefield.
Secret messages. Codes.
His grandfather showed him the disk. “This thing allowed those changes to be made, and fast. Do you know what a cipher is?”
He shook his head.
“It’s different from a code. With codes you take a bunch of letters or symbols and give ’em a new meaning. Like ‘Little red riding hood’ means ‘attack at sunset.’ You string together a lot of phrases that, if you know the code, reveal the message. But a cipher. Now that’s different. With a cipher you have the whole message right in front of you. You then convert that message to random letters that appear to have no rhyme or reason at all. But it can’t be read unless you have a way to decipher it.” His grandfather held up the brass wheels. “Using somethin’ like this.”
“That thing can reveal a secret message?”
“If you know the key. With a cipher you have to choose the key first. If you don’t know the key, you’re never goin’ to break a good cipher.”
“Have you ever used that wheel?”
His grandfather smiled. “My daddy taught me how when I was not much older than you. Around fourteen, if I recall right. You want me to teach you?”
He nodded. “I do. I really do.”
AND HE LEARNED A GREAT DEAL, ALONG WITH EVEN MORE FROM reading in the decades thereafter. Alphabet ciphers worked only when no letter in the cipher represented more than one in the original message. Each letter had to be distinct so there’d be no pattern that could lead to its unraveling. The cipher wheel created that randomness. It also helped if the number of letters within the key word was small. That made it even harder to break the cipher. Finally, word sizes in the final message were usually concealed by grouping the cipher in a set pattern.
Like here.
Thirty-two letters, in groups of four.
KRTY OGNM ISQL NBCD ZIOH LWDP DSGR ALOC
To really complicate things, sometimes the original message was reversed before being converted to a cipher. He and his grandfather had worked through many examples with the old Confederate cipher wheel. He’d never thought he would ever see another original one. Yet here one was, hidden away inside a German castle.
“Can you decrypt the message?” Fenn asked.
He removed the sheet that Dianne McCarter had provided from its envelope and laid it on the desk.
“The last part of the message says that ‘the gateway opens and closes with Wagner.’ Then there is 050 16 19 2.”
His mind raced, thinking like a Confederate spy concealing an important message. The gateway opens and closes with Wagner. He stared at the book from Herrenchiemsee that Fenn had laid on the desk. The opera it depicted was reflected in the murals surrounding him. It was part of this for a reason. He grabbed the book and opened to its title page. “Tannhäuser und der Sängerkrieg auf Wartburg.” Along with a byline for Richard Wagner. Toward the bottom of the page was Munich 1905, along with, as he translated in his mind
Printed by FRANZ HUMAR, MUNICH
Published by FRANZ SPEISER, PRIEN-AM-CHIEMSEE
050
There was the connection.
It had to be.
He told them what he thought.
“I agree,” Fenn said, excitement in his voice. “Part of the mystery to all this was the need to have the component parts.”
He turned his attention to the other numbers. 16 19 2. His grandfather taught him that books had many times been used to conceal a cipher key. A particular word somewhere inside, among the tens of thousands of words, which could be altered with each cipher. Books were not an unfamiliar item on the battlefield in the 1860s. He opened to page sixteen, then counted down to line nineteen and over to the second word.
Ehre.
Honor.
“That’s the key,” he said.
“Lucky for us,” Fenn said, “that you know what you are doing.”
Yep. Lucky for us.
* * *
DERRICK ENTERED A LARGE ROOM THAT OCCUPIED THE CASTLE’S north end, just past the grotto. A shadowy space anchored by massive furniture, bookshelves, and more of the colorful murals, only different mythical characters and scenes from the study. He crept in a slow, steady pace, conscious of everything around him, his steps sometimes revealed with a creak or groan from the wood floor. His right hand gripped the gun retrieved in the church.
A familiar void in his stomach heralded danger.
Hopefully, he’d come across one of the castle staff doing their job.
No harm, no foul.
But, if not—
He stopped at one of the columns that supported the ceiling. The capitals were decorated with images of Christ, some sort of king or emperor, a bishop, and a crusading knight. The whole damn place had the feel of a comic strip, one scrolling mural after another everywhere he looked.
But something was off.
Not right.
No employees.
The silence was broken by the occasional snatch of voices coming from Malone, Fenn, and the curator back in the study.
And something else. Ahead.
Low. But constant. A rumbling.
The waterfall?
He stared out of the room, into the next.
His right thumb engaged the gun’s hammer.
* * *
RIFE HEARD A CLICK.
Clear. Distinct. A sound he knew signaled danger.
And close. Next-room close.
He signaled to Knight.
Bait taken.
They readied themselves.
Chapter 73
COTTON RECALLED EVERYTHING HIS GRANDFATHER TAUGHT HIM about the cipher wheel. The alphabet on the inner wheel was always for the actual message to be sent. The outer wheel’s letters created the cipher text. The randomness of the key word made breaking the cipher next to impossible, as there were literally millions of words to choose from. Fenn and the curator watched him closely, which was becoming annoying. Koger had wandered off to check things out.
He stared at the cipher.
KRTY OGNM ISQL NBCD ZIOH LWDP DSGR ALOC
“I need something to write on,” he said to the curator.
The man hurried off, then returned with a pen and pad.
“Give me a few minutes.”
And he sat at the desk.
Fenn and the curator drifted back out to the corridor, beyond the archway, near the window. They conversed like two aspiring ventriloquists, lips barely moving, their voices pitched just enough for the other to hear.
He realized he was working backward. Not encrypting a message, but rather decrypting one that already existed. The first letter in the cipher was k, so he twisted the outer wheel until its k aligned with the e on the outer wheel. He could hear his grandfather’s lesson. That’s your pointer. Don’t forget. Then he altered the wheels’ alignment so the outer k now faced the inner h from ehre. He repeated that process each time with the cipher letters, twisting the wheels, finding a letter that corresponded with the matching letter from the key. Ehre was a short key. Which meant it would repeat itself eight times to match the thirty-two letters in the cipher text.
He kept working the wheels back and forth, occasionally allowing his gaze to drift to the two men standing twenty feet away. Amazing. Who knew that conversations between a boy and his grandfather would one day become vital? He’d loved that man. His father died when he was ten, lost in a top secret US Navy submarine accident. His grandfather became everything. They spent a lot of time together. He missed him. He’d been dead a long time.
It took a few minutes, but he ended up with a fully deciphered text. Which he locked into his eidetic brain. Then, while keeping his eyes on the two men who were still quietly conversing out in the corridor, he used the point of the pen to carve out the cipher and numbers from the brittle paper Dianne McCarter had provided. He then rolled that fragment into a tiny ball and swallowed it. Koger wanted the message secure.
