Ixeos: Book One of the Ixeos Trilogy (16 page)

“Well, no. First off, mostly the codes were sent by telegram, so I guess it would get somewhere the same day. Second, to decipher it, you had to know the start position of the sender’s message, and then the message key. When you sent a coded message, you also had to know the start position…”

“Clear as mud,” Marty grumbled.

“I don’t remember all the mechanics of it; it’s really complicated, which is why it worked so well for so long. But listen… this is my point. First, from what I hear about the Firsts, they wouldn’t recreate an Enigma. They were here for WWII; they’d know about the machines. And there are machines on display around the world.”

“What?” Marty exclaimed.

“I know there are some at Bletchley Park, where the British did all the decoding. There are some in the States, and I’m sure in other museums around the world. So what if they just took some? Like, they went to Bletchley Park and took the machines. And from other places, too, until they had enough. They’d need at least twenty-seven, right? One for each location the prison goes to, and one for whoever the grand high muckity-muck is…”

“Simon Lockwell,” Marty said.

“Right. They could copy code books easily, once they had one, so everyone’s on the same page. So… What if we can get a machine and a code book, too?” Clay sat up on the edge of the sofa and stared intently at his cousin.

“If we can get an Enigma machine and a code book and we can figure out how they’re sending the codes… We’ve got ‘em. And they might not need so many of the actual machines. Maybe they’d have just a few for the big guys like Lockwell, and then they use a simple code for each location that means ‘Hey, the prison’s coming next week.’” Marty grinned.

Clay grinned back. “If that’s what they’re doing, if I’m right… Then yeah, we got ‘em.”

Chapter Twenty

I
t took the entire night
to move the cell members to the new safe house. Fortunately, Gilles had agreed to the first one Vasco had shown him, largely because it was even closer to the comm center than their current house. It also had twice as much space, thanks to the former owner having purchased the townhouse next door. A large arched doorway had been knocked through the living room wall, giving the rebels a luxurious amount of space.

The first to be moved were Élodie and Maryse, to save the child yet another exhausting night. Samson and Clay put a mattress across their shoulders and did the best they could at staying in shadow while moving it seven blocks.

“If a motorcycle guy comes now, throw the mattress at him and run,” Samson said as they were sweating and hurrying.

“Impressive weapon,” Clay laughed.

“Trust me, you don’t want to worry about the ‘how.’ Whatever takes them out works.”

The Firsts weren’t on patrol that night, however, and, with every member of the cell plus the seven from the tunnels all making four round trips to carry all the mattresses, food stores, clothing, weapons, and other various personal belongings, they got Rebel Seven into the new house.

The McClellands collapsed on an antique sofa in the living room. Vasco was sitting with his back against the wall, his legs straight out in front of him and his head leaning back on the flocked wallpaper. Hannah, Samson and Monkey were sprawled on the floor. Gilles came in and sat in a leather club chair.

“Thank you all,” he said wearily. “We will rest today and tonight, but tomorrow we will be back on our task.”

Vasco smiled but didn’t lift his head. “Go slow at first; make sure the First’s aren’t patrolling the whole area. And double check the comm center before you start back at it—if they got wind of something, that might explain the motorcycle patrol. It might also lead them to put guards out.”

“
Oui
, we will be slow and careful. There is not a big hurry, no?”

“Slow is much better than dead,” Vasco agreed.

“You will stay here and rest today?” Gilles asked, looking at Neahle.

Vasco answered. “I’d like to get back to the tunnels but I don’t think we can move safely, as tired as everyone is. So yeah, we’ll stay today, get some sleep, have some lunch, then head out when it’s dark.”

Neahle smiled and glanced at Gilles. Clay saw the exchanged looks and elbowed her.

“Stop it!” she hissed.

He looked at Gilles assessingly, smiling when the man looked away embarrassed. Neahle was his little sister, after all.

By the time the girls got to their dorm room at the heart of the tunnels, they were too tired to do anything but drag themselves onto their bunks. They didn’t change clothes, brush their teeth, or even remove their shoes. Neither moved when the seven others got up and got ready for the day, staying sound asleep until noon. Neahle woke first, groaning as she turned onto her back.

After five minutes she decided she needed to go to the bathroom and hauled herself up. Hannah was still sleeping, a pillow thrown over her head. Neahle pulled a light comforter over her against the underground chill and left the room.
One good thing about going to bed in your clothes, it saves time,
she thought.

Lunch had been called when she emerged with a washed face, so she shuffled to the dining room. She was sore from all the walking and running and carrying, and stiff from a night spent in one position. Her eyes couldn’t get used to the dim light and she was having trouble warming up. When she sat down, however, everyone greeted her and asked how her first mission was. When she sipped her tea, she began to perk up. She noticed that her brother was halfway down the table, reading a book.

“Hey, whatcha reading?” she called down to him.

He looked up, surprised to see her, and moved to sit next to her.

“I had a thought,” he said. “While I was talking to Samson in the Depot. I wanted to check out the books, make sure history ran the same way here as it did back home.”

“What’s the thought?” she asked, spooning rice into a bowl.

Clay explained his idea about the Enigma machine; Neahle ate thoughtfully as she listened. When he was done she said, “Makes sense. The only problem is, how would you test it? I mean, a lot of things have to come together before you’d know if you’re right—the right code book, an intercepted message, the message key…”

“I was up all night thinking about it. If we can use the tunnels to find a machine, you’re right, we still need a code book and then a message. But there are more code books than machines. Here, look.” He turned the book he was reading to race her. “There are both originals and copies in libraries all over the world, not to mention in almost every university department where they offer cryptology. We don’t need an original, we just need the right one.”

“What do you mean, the right one?” Neahle asked, confused.

“There were a lot of code books. Every German network had their own. The army had different ones than the navy, and submarine had different ones than warships.”

“Great…” Neahle muttered. “So it’s practically impossible.”

“Not impossible, just more work. But here’s my thought. The most common Enigma machine was the three rotor one….”

“Wait, there was more than one kind?”

“Well, sure. They started as toys, basically, and the Germans kept improving on them to make deciphering harder. The most common had three rotors inserted at a time, with eight rotors to choose from. So that narrows down the code book choices. The army used ones that had three rotors but no spares. When the navy adopted the machine, they made more and more rotors available until they eventually had eight. Those produced messages that were the most difficult to break because of the huge number of possible combinations. So let’s start with the navy ones, the M3.”

“That seems easier,” Neahle commented, biting into an apple.

“Of course, it may be the wrong machine, but there’s got to be a starting place. I think we should start with the most readily available one. There were some other models introduced later in the war, the M4, for one, but production was slow and they weren’t so widely distributed. I think the M3 is the place to start.”

“So we get an M3 and a navy code book and then… What?”

“Then we have to find a message to decipher. That’s where we need Marty.”

“Did I hear my name?” Marty asked, sliding into the seat across from Neahle. He eyed Clay’s book. “Did you sleep?”

“Barely. Look, I was just telling Neahle, I’ve narrowed down the machine, at least to start with. Of course, if we come across others we can bring those back, too. But once we have a machine and a code book, we’ll need a message. That’s where you come in.”

“How’s that?” Marty asked, chewing a slice of bread.

“You’ll have to find a message, one that uses the code.”

“Oh, that’s all? Sure! No problem.” He continued to chew, thinking. “Seriously, they’ve been looking for Lockwell’s emails for a few years now. They can’t turn anything up.”

“They didn’t have you,” Neahle said.

“Right, that must be it…” Marty laughed. “I do think I can find him, that I’m somehow
meant
to find him. But how will I know if there’s a message, if I do?”

Clay frowned, thinking. Neahle said, “How were the codes written? I mean, did they make regular words, just the wrong ones, or what?”

Clay shook his head. “No, it made groups of five letters. They’d look random. The Germans kept their messages short, which made them harder to decipher. I don’t know if the Firsts would worry about that.”

“So he’d be sending emails or texts or faxes or whatever, and they’d look like gibberish?” Marty asked.

“I don’t really know. That’s a possibility. It would be the easiest. Or he could encode the code.”

Neahle laughed. “Really?”

Clay didn’t answer for a long moment, thinking about how he’d do it. “Okay, let’s say he has, I don’t know, an assistant or a secretary or something. Maybe he doesn’t even send emails or texts or anything himself. If they’re going to the trouble to encode the prison itinerary, he’s going to want to keep it secret, even from the assistant. So instead of handing over a piece of paper with what is obviously code, he does another simple code with it. If he has twenty sets of five letters, he could use either a simple substitution code…”

“What’s that?” Marty broke in, fascinated.

“You substitute a letter for another in a set pattern. Like, you move the alphabet five letters up, so A is always F, B is always G, C is always H. But those would be random, too, so that wouldn’t be any less suspicious. Even better, he writes a long letter, making sure the first letter of each word is the next letter in the code. So if the first letter group in the encoded message is AQNOR, he could write something like, ‘A quick note on Randy.’”

“Wow,” said Neahle. “That’s intense.”

“So I might not be looking for Simon Lockwell, I might be looking for his assistant. And then I would be looking for emails that seemed strangely worded. Because I don’t see how you could possibly take a message of twenty of those random letters and make a coherent email.”

“That’s true! It would be awkward. The second way makes more sense, so probably that’s what he’s doing. If any of this is anything more than crazy idea in my own head.”

Chapter Twenty-One

A
bacus leaned on his desk
with his arms crossed over his chest, looking thoughtfully at the McClellands. They had sought a meeting with him after lunch and had finished laying out their theory on the Enigma machine to him. Now they were awaiting a verdict: would Clay and Neahle be allowed to go on the hunt for one or more machines while Marty tried to find possible encoded emails?

“Have you shared this with Vasco?” he asked.

“No, sir,” Clay said. “I wanted to read up on it some more first, and I haven’t seen him yet today.”

“He left for a quick meeting in Moscow before lunch…” He thought, tapping his fingers against his arm. “History isn’t my thing; I’m more of a math guy. But I know something about codes, and it does make sense. The Firsts were here during both World Wars. They contributed some of the nastier weaponry, from what we can tell. So it would make sense that they’d know about the Enigma machines. But it’s so old-school. Wouldn’t they use more modern technology, like computers?”

Clay smiled. “The best thing about old-school is that you can’t hack into it. Also, how many people alive now even remember about those machines? Of all the technology of the twentieth century, that’s not exactly the first one that springs to mind. And maybe that was the point. Something easily set up but not easily figured out.” Clay looked at Marty for backup.

“Clay’s right. Even at home, people know that the old stuff is the most easily protected. People like me can’t hack an Enigma machine that’s just sitting on a desk somewhere being manually operated. I realize I’d have to find a message stream to make any sense of it, but I think I can do it now that we know what we’re looking for. I may not even have to reinvent the wheel—Marissa said that they hadn’t found anything other than boring, every-day emails. Well, coded ones wouldn’t seem interesting. Weird, maybe, but not interesting. I might find something if I read through what they’ve already found. At least that’s a starting place.”

“If you’re right, it would be worth losing Marty’s help on other projects. If you’re wrong… It’s a colossal waste of time.” Abacus still seemed unsure.

Neahle chimed in. “The three of us are new, anyway. If we hadn’t come, you’d have the same people in the field and on the computers, right? If we end up on a wild goose chase, all you’ve lost is our help, which you haven’t had before anyway. And who knows, maybe this is why Landon brought us here in the first place?”

The three held their breath, waiting. Finally, the older man smiled, slapped the desk with his hand and stood up straight. “You’re right. No sense getting cautious now! You’re wrong on one count, Neahle, but your point is well made.” At her quizzical look he said, “You’ll need one of us to take you through the tunnels.”