Should the search have taken this long? What if he was wasting time?
Something else made him nervous. He glanced at the field box David had left on the table. He stood, grabbed the box, but as he lifted it, the bottom fell open. The gun and cyanide capsules tumbled onto the table, the clanging noise shattering the silence. The sound seemed to echo for hours that felt like a dream. Finally, Josh reached for the gun and two pills. His hands were shaking.
On the wall, a beep snapped him out of the moment. The larger screen read: 5 results.
5 Results!
Josh sat down at the table and worked the wireless keyboard and mouse. Three results from The New York Times, one from The Daily Mail in London, and one from The Boston Globe.
Maybe he was right. From the moment he had seen the names and dates, his first thought was: they’re obituaries. Obituaries and classifieds were classic spy-craft: operatives after World War II routinely used them to send messages across spy networks spread across the globe. It was old school, but if the message had been passed in 1947, it could have been a viable method. If it was true, this terrorist network was over 65 years old. He pushed the implications of that to the back of his mind.
He looked at the coded message David had given him:
________________________
Toba Protocol is real.
4+12+47 = 4/5; Jones
7+22+47 = 3/8; Anderson
10+4+47 = 5/4; Ames
________________________
Then he turned to the results. It was more likely the terrorists had used one paper — one paper that was available in cities around the world. The New York Times was the mostly likely candidate. Even in 1947, you could walk up to a newsstand in Paris, London, Shanghai, Barcelona, or Boston and get the day’s copy of The New York Times, paid obituaries included.
If the obituaries were coded messages, they would have been flagged in some way. Josh saw it immediately: each of the obituaries had the words clock and tower. He leaned back in his chair. Was it possible that Clocktower was that old? The CIA was only formally established in 1947 by the National Security Act of 1947, although it’s precursor organization, The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was created in during World War II, in June of 1942.
Why would the terrorists mention Clocktower? Maybe they were fighting Clocktower back then — in 1947 — 66 years ago?
He needed to focus on the obituaries. There must be a way to decode them. The ideal encryption system would feature a variable cipher; i.e. there would be no one key that could decrypt a message. Each message would include it’s own key — something simple.
He opened the first obituary.
____________________
Adam Jones, Pioneering Clockmaker, Dies at 77 Working on his Tower Masterpiece.
The New York Times - Obituaries, 4/12/1947 Issue
Adam Jones, leading Gibraltar clockmaker, died Saturday in British Honduras. He was found by his valet. His bones will be interred near his late wife’s — a site they selected together. Please send a card or advise family if visiting.
____________________
The message was here somewhere. What was the key? Josh opened the other obituaries and scanned them, hoping for some sort of clue. Each obituary contained a location, and each one was early in the text. Josh ran through several possibilities, re-arranged several words, then sat back and thought. The obituaries were written awkwardly, like certain words were out of order. Or forced, like they had to use those words. The order, the intervals. He saw it. The names were the cipher, the length of the names. It was the second part of the code.
____________________
4+12+47 = 4/5; Jones
____________________
The 4/12/1947 obituary was for Adam Jones. 4/5. The first name was 4 letters. The last name was 5. If he took the fourth word of the obituary, then the fifth, it yielded a sentence.
He opened the obituary:
____________________
Adam Jones, Pioneering Clockmaker, Dies at 77 Working on his Tower Masterpiece.
The New York Times - Obituaries, 4/12/1947 Issue
Adam Jones, leading Gibraltar clockmaker, died Saturday in British Honduras. He was found by his valet. His bones will be interred near his late wife’s — a site they selected together. Please send a card or advise family if visiting.
____________________
Together, the message read:
Gibraltar, British found bones near site. Please advise.