On the front of both pamphlets, there were a lot of letters written helter-skelter. There were streaks crisscrossing. It looked like when someone scribbled haphazardly during a long telephone. He vaguely recognized the picture of the front page from a book he read several years earlier. He wondered why this front page was known.
Ludwig looked at the title page. Turned on the pamphlets. Read some letters aloud. Took out his notebook. Struck up a page. Drew some figures. Took a half step back.
A whiff of nostalgia came over him, the good old days when he first came into contact with ciphers. One of the many lonely evenings in his youth.
It actually took longer than I thought, but after a while Ludwig knew what it was.
After reading for a while, he noticed that in front of him, he had something that he never thought he would come in contact with. He knew the cipher by heart, but had to read it several times before he could believe it. Ludwig exclaimed.
”But here on the Reproba pamphlet ... It's part of the Codex Enigma cipher!”
August looked at Ludwig and shook his head.
”It's just a lot of doodles.”
Ludwig shook his head. He was convinced. It was the Codex Enigma cipher. One of the most famous and enigmatic ciphers. He could not even count all the code breakers who had failed when they tried to solve it, including himself. But the reason it was so difficult was that the cipher was incomplete so it was virtually impossible to crack.
It is perhaps unfair to compare the Codex Enigma cipher and Vigenèrekryptot because the CE-cipher has always been incomplete. In any case the CE-cipher has an almost equally long history as the Vigenère-crypto which has been called ”le chiffre indéchiffrable,” because it for several hundred years was considered impossible to crack. Until Charles Babbage in the 1800s deciphered it. No one in over 400 years had managed to crack the Codex Enigma-cipher.
When he saw the cipher Ludwig forgot all other shit: The prison escape, the monkey-fucker, Ella. The cipher swept away everything. Secure in the belief Ludwig said.
”No, I don´t think it´s a lot of doodles. Have you tried to put together the doodles from the two title pages?”
”But Ludwig, it's just doodles. Why would I do that? ”
Ludwig didn´t care what August said. He brought the pamphlets close to the eyes. Zoomed in. Looked at Reproba. At Über.
He could not believe it.
He was eye to eye with the Enigma-cipher´s known fragment on the front of the Reproba-pamphlet. Then the rest of the cipher could not be far away.
He compared the pamphlets the titles pages. He then said.
”It may be as you say, it could be just someone scribbling. But when there are letters stacked in this way, it is usually a cipher. You see, it is far too neatly to be pointless graffiti. Unless the known fragment of the Codex Enigma-cipher always been a forgery, I am completely convinced that this is the complete cipher.”
August opened his eyes.
”But I must say I'm surprised at the method. In this case”, Ludwig continued, ”it's probably a simple encryption method using a scytale or something like that ”, he said spurting with confidence.
Ludwig had been interested in cryptograms ever since he was little. In fact, the first time we met he sat alone at a table at a party and scribbled as he looked at his cell phone that showed a picture of a sophisticated pattern that he tried crack. For example, I know that the Steganographia-cipher in August´s ad he encountered when he was eight years old.
He told me that many evenings when he was alone, he had read about ciphers. When no one asked. When no one called. When the others were out and hung out, drank beer and drove the scooter Ludwig solved ciphers.
August looked at Ludwig. He was impressed but disappointed in himself that he himself hadn’t seen it.
*
Vienna
June 13
Gruppeninspektor Alexander Wagner had sharpened his statistics the last month and ended well above average. The desk was getting clean. By the trash can there wasn´t any longer any failed paper fighters.
Acts lay in neat piles on his desk and in file folder holders in his cabinet. Each pile was equipped with a small note with register date, serial number and keywords that would make Alexander remember what the case was about.
He had decided to give up hope. He kicked the shit right out of the house, into the rubbish heap. He had at least one child left. It was less safe with his wife, though.6
He bought a bouquet of flowers and a box of Belgian chocolate on the way home. He waltz home happy for the first time since January 21 in the morning.
But his plan went to hell.
Four hours later he was sitting alone on the couch. His daughter had fallen asleep. An empty beer stood on the coffee table. He had a cold one in his hand, condensation ran down over his fingers.
The flowers and chocolates were in a bag in the kitchen. Lisa had crossed the threshold as soon as he got home and went off to the hospital. She had looked at the presents as if it were an insult.
In Lisa the hope was still alive.
*
Ludwig tore out a piece of paper from the notebook lying on the desk. Wrote down the letters from Reproba ... because it was written first. Then filled in the letters from the Über ...
The more letters Ludwig wrote down, the more it looked like a pattern emerged. August saw with amazement the cipher.
”It was ... I actually think you're right, Ludwig. But is it not a bit too many characters for a normal scytale cipher?”
He didn´t answer. He was busy. He tore a strip from the letter loop. August tried to keep up. He went and fetched a book ladder made of round rods. Ludwig wrapped the strip around the steps.
”Do you see anything?” August asked eagerly.
Ludwig did not respond. He tried to read the strip, he went from the bottom to the top, diagonally, but found nothing. After a while he said that it was not possible to deduce anything.
”I think we need something bigger. You don´t have a stick or a beam down here that is a little thicker. As thick as a bread rolling-pin.”
August walked briskly out to the rotunda. He soon came back with a thick, rounded beam. Meanwhile Ludwig tested the letters to see if it was a numbered crypto hiding in the letters. He gave the letters numbers, two, four, eight, sixty-four and translated from A, Q, T, R several times. He concluded that it didn´t appear to be a numeric cipher.
Ludwig wrapped the strip around the beam. Adjusted several times. Eventually he wrote a new strip that he hung around the beam. Took a step backward.
The eyes back and forth. He adjusted a final time.
”There we have it”, Ludwig said content.”Now I think we have something that is reasonably readable.”
The strip read:
Ludwig tore off a piece of paper from the notebook. They helped to carve out the words from the Codex Enigma-cipher. It formed a few Latin phrases.
Parilis bapitzare discipulus, suscipere venias acclamatio, ambulare per divinus imperium orbis, sine delego Matteus peccos in duodeviginiti et viginiti et duo signum. Peto sub terra theatrum devoveo ad ars Lullus intentio infreno ex obscurus strues lampas lumen processus et aspicio homo letum sublime. Demonstro vestrum dignus, ingredi semita quinque tentatio. Vos mos reperio semita in Corpus Thoth Fraternitatis.
Ludwig turned to August with the paper.
”I think you are better at Latin than I am. It's probably easiest if you translate.”
August took the paper. Sat down at Victoria's desk and translated.
Equal to the disciples of the Baptist, receive the consent of the graces, wander through the spheres of the divine realm without committing sins in the signs of Matthew in the eighteenth and twenty-second mark. Search for the underground Theatre dedicated to the lullian art in order to break free from the torchlight of the dark masses and behold the human annihilation from a distance. Show yourself worthy, walk the Path of the Five T
rials. You will find the road in Corpus Thoth Fraternitatis.
August looked surprised at Ludwig. It had been in front him the whole time.
”How the hell did you know?”
Ludwig shrugged.
”It just looked like it. When it comes to ciphers that are older than the 1700s, which Codex Enigma-cipher is by many years, they tend to be not particularly sophisticated. Then, for example, something as common as PGP would have been much more difficult. That I hadn´t been able to do without a computer.”
When they had read the decrypted message August complained.
”Damn! We already know that the path is in Corpus Thoth Fraternitatis. How are we supposed to find it among thousands of pages?”
August hit a hand on the table. He knew the cipher meant he was one step closer to what happened to Victoria. It felt like he took one step forward and two steps back.
Ludwig stood silent and looked over his shoulder. He read the message over and over again. He thought he saw something. Inconsistencies or clues. A four-leaf clover among the dandelions.
”Wait, August. Why would they write that we find the way in Corpus Thoth Fraternitatis. Was not this common knowledge among intellectuals in the 1500s that the pilgrim´s path was described in the corpus?”
August nodded.
”That ought to mean that there is something more in the cipher, right?”
Ludwig read the message again. Thinking out loud.
”In addition to the roads is five, there are no other hidden numbers than in the first sentence.”
”What are you talking about?”
”I think the location of the message in the corpus which leads to the Theatre is in this text. Otherwise, this message is worthless. If you spend time creating a cipher it often means something, right?”
August and Ludwig read the translated text and the Latin version loud a few times.
”The first sentence is the only sentence except for the path of the five trials that can be translated into numbers and thus can be translated into page numbers”, said Ludwig safe.
”You're probably right, Ludwig. Good!”
August read the first sentence several times as he scribbled on a piece of paper. He retrieved his laptop from the salon. Beat up some keywords in Britannica. Glanced through a couple of articles in JSTOR.
Flipped through a PDF of the New Testament. Wrote it all up in a Word-document. He made a table with two columns, at the left he wrote Baptist, graces, spheres, Matthew´s sins and the solution to the right.
”You are absolutely right, Ludwig. Look at this.”
He swung the screen against Ludwig.
”The Baptist’s disciples are thirty in number, the Graces are three, they probably counted seven divine spheres, this is before the scientific revolution in the late 1600s and thus was the old Ptolemaic and Aristotelian worldview still prevalent. So far nothing unusual, nothing difficult. However, the last here. Matthew´ sins in the eighteenth and twenty-second mark I don´t understand.”
August looked at the cipher and said.
”It could possibly be the talk of the eighteenth sphere, i.e., the moon, and the twenty-second realm, i.e. earth, in Robert Fludd´s Utriusque Cosmi from 1617. But the question is what it has to do with Matthew´s sins?”
”My only thought is that it is the Bible. Matthew 18:22.”
August moved. Ludwig sat down at the computer. Went into Google Scholar. Checked out Robert Fludd´s book first but thought it was too far-fetched and also written a few years too late.
He surfed to bibeln.se7. Wrote in Matt 18:22 in the search field. They leaned over the computer and read the verse.
Lord, how oft shall my brother do injustice to me and still get forgiveness from me? As many as seven times? ”Jesus answered,” I tell you, not seven times but seventy-seven times.
Ludwig entered 77 in the Word document in the right column of Matthew. August counted out quickly that they would go to page 117 (30 +3 +7 +77). He opened it in Corpus.
”But what the heck ...”
On the side of Thoth´s Brotherhood´s corpus was only a blank page. Disappointed August laid the corpus on the table.
But Ludwig knew that something was wrong.
He recognized the section from the Bible. He remembered the Cinematheque in Stockholm. An autumn when it was Vilgot Sjöman theme. They had seen the movie 491 in Salon Victor at Filmhuset8. He saw Ella lean on him, she was just about to say what she always said before a film when he shook it off.
He googled the 1917-year translation of the Bible. Compared with the translation from the year 2000 that bibeln.se used. Also compared with international editions. He discovered a deviation.
”August, look here.”
What they found was an anomaly interpretation. In the older version, it was:
Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother if he sins against me? Is seven times enough? ”Jesus answered him,” I tell you: Not seven times, but seventy times seven.
They counted out quickly what it was and changed the Word document, ensuring that they were on the right track.
They stood beside each other at Victoria's table. August was hot in the body. He was one step closer to an explanation of why Victoria had been taken from him.
They flipped to the page 530.
21
Rome
Year 1599
* * *
Master,
I think the Truth has begun to take possession of them. I can feel something in the air here. The Truth begins to embrace Rome and the world. It has been fast in motion Master Pletho fetched the manuscript from the mountain monastery.
The day is getting closer when the General Inquisitor Bellarmine will kneel before our Order. Christianity's hegemony will now be broken forever and the Truth will finally break through.
Your humble servant
Rome in the holy year MDIC
22
The Castle Ruotkerspurch, Riegersburg
June 13
Since the page marks were sporadically exposed and did not follow any pattern, it took a while before they came to the page 530 of the Brotherhood´s corpus. The brothers had been sloppy or it was time that faded the page numbers, in which case the pagination disappeared after just over two hundred pages. They flipped gently and counted aloud.
Every twenty page they set a bookmark.
Sand was sprinkled in the corpus to better preserve the ink, it fell out while they browsed. The sand lay on the table and crunched when Ludwig put his hand over.
They turned the page to the page 530.
Both were somewhat surprised when they saw what was at the top of the page. It was a picture of an eagle. After reading through the page a few times both August and Ludwig found that there was a similar encryption used in the pamphlets.
Ludwig laid the Latin text before August. He sat down at the table. August drew a line under Ludwig's text and translated.
Head to Sena Julia where the Path of the Five Trials begins inside the gate of the Barbarian's house. Listen to the conversation between the law-giver and the receiver. Then insert the most common symbols in the Four-Leaf Clover. Let this be your Egyptian Virgil.
They read the message a dozen times. After a while, said Ludwig.
”I understand nothing. Do you? ”
”I'm still overwhelmed that we have found this.”
August read the text again. Then he said.
”I understand some. Sena Julia is the name of an ancient Roman colony that Augustus founded. The modern name of Sena Julia is the city of Siena in Tuscany in Italy.”
Ludwig leaned against the table.
”So it is in Siena the Pilgrim´s path to the Theatre begins. What does it say? Inside the gate of the Barbarian's house.”
Ludwig was thinking out loud.
”Barbarian´s house.”
He went through the old myths to find the house. He thought of the old temple in Greece, the Parthenon, the Temple of Artemis at Ephe
sus.
”The Barbarian´s house, it may have something to do with the roman colony? Attila and the Huns and those who invaded Italy and Siena. They built a house called that way?
”It could have been a ritual place for barbarians as well, which is located in Siena,” said August. ”But it does not seem likely.”
They hung over the text for a few minutes. Ludwig gently massaged his hand which still ached after he struck it against the toilet.
He started the computer out of standby mode and searched on Google, Wikipedia and JSTOR for Barbarian´s house but he found nothing.
”I think this is a red herring, Ludwig. The more I think about it. I was in Siena for God's how many years ago and the small town has nothing barbaric about it. And the only thing that's there, besides low medieval houses, is the Piazza del Campo with its annual Palio horse race, and of course the cathedral.”
Ludwig was struck by a thought.
”Do you have any photos of the Siena Cathedral?”
”I think so. Why do you ask? ”
”I just want to check something.”
August went to get an art book. Ludwig heard him move a book ladder out in the rotunda.
It was cold in Victoria's room, the mountain cooled the summer heat outside.
August came back after a few minutes with a great book in his arms.
Ludwig flipped to a spread of the Siena Cathedral whose image confirmed his suspicion.
*
Vienna
June 13
The disciples sat in a circle on four chairs, Matteo, Marco, Luca, and Juan. Hard copies of the pictures they had taken were pinned to the walls. A dark curtain was drawn to the window facing the street.
They had gone through the plan four times in three hours. It was something Father Carlo had taught them, and they had also seen it in the Great Doctor, discipline and accuracy were commandments.
The plan had five steps. Matteo and Luca were scouts. Juan and Marco performers. The scouts would fix that the doors were open after all had gone home. Juan and Marco would hide in the museum at night. They would go out from the porter´s office where all four would meet again.