He absolutely has to stand up and go look at it. Root is correct: the bar has been neatly marked with small Oriental characters, applied with a stamp. The tiny facets of the ideograms glitter under the light, sparks jumping the gap between the two halves of the Axis.
Root sets the gold bar down on the altar. He saunters over to a table where they keep stationery, and pulls out a sheet of onionskin and a fresh pencil. Returning to the altar, he lays the frail page over the top of the gold bar, then rubs the side of the pencil lead back and forth over it, turning it all black except for where the stamped numbers and characters are underneath. Within a few moments he has a perfect little rubbing, showing the inscription in full detail. He folds the page up and pockets it, then returns the pencil to the table.
Waterhouse has long since gone back to his examination of the pages from the safe. The numbers are all written in the same hand. Now, since they dredged all manner of other paperwork out of the sewage sloshing through the U-boat skipper's cabin, Waterhouse can recognize the captain's hand easily enough; these sheets were written by someone else.
The format of the messages makes it clear that they were not encrypted with an Enigma machine. Enigma messages always begin with two groups of three letters each, which tell the receiving clerk how to set the wheels on his machine. Those groups are missing on all of these sheets, so some other cipher system must have been used. Like every other modern nation, the Germans have a plethora of different cipher systems, some based on books and some on machines. Bletchley Park has broken most of them.
Still, it looks like an interesting exercise. Now that the rest of Detachment 2702 has arrived, making further trysts with Margaret impractical, Waterhouse has nothing to look forward to. Trying to crack the code used on these sheets will be a perfect puzzle to fill the gaping void that opened up as soon as Waterhouse broke the combination of the safe. He steals some paper of his own, sits down at the desk, and busies himself for an hour or two copying out the ciphertext from the skipper's pages, double— and triple-checking each code group to make sure he's got an accurate copy.
On the one hand, this is a pain in the ass. On the other, it gives him a chance to go through the ciphertext by hand, at the very lowest level, which might be useful later. The ineffable talent for finding patterns in chaos cannot do its thing unless he immerses himself in the chaos first. If they do contain patterns, he does not see them just now, in any rational way. But there may be some subrational part of his mind that can go to work, now that the letters have passed before his eyes and through his pencil, and that may suddenly present him with a gift-wrapped clue-or even a full solution-a few weeks from now while he is shaving or antenna-twiddling.
He has been dimly aware, for a while, that Chattan and the others are awake now. Enlisted men are not allowed into the chancel, but the officers get to gather round and admire the gold bar.
'Breaking the code, Waterhouse?' Chattan says, ambling over to the desk, warming his hands with a mug of coffee.
'Making a clean copy,' Waterhouse says, and then, because he is not without a certain cunning, adds: 'in case the originals are destroyed in transit.'
'Very prudent,' Chattan nods. 'Say, you didn't hide a second gold bar anywhere, did you?'
Waterhouse has been in the military long enough that he does not rise to the bait. 'The pattern of sounds made when we tilted the safe back and forth indicated that there was only a single heavy object inside, sir.'
Chattan chuckles and takes a sip of his coffee. 'I shall be interested to see whether you can break that cipher, Lieutenant Waterhouse. I am tempted to put money on it.'
'I sure appreciate that, but it would be a lousy bet, sir,' Waterhouse replied. 'The chances are very good that Bletchley Park has already broken this cipher, whatever it may be.'
'What makes you say that?' Chattan asks absently.
The question is so silly, coming from a man in Chattan's position, that it leaves Waterhouse disoriented. 'Sir, Bletchley Park has broken nearly all of the German military and governmental codes.'
Chattan makes a face of mock disappointment. 'Waterhouse! How unscientific. You are making assumptions.'
Waterhouse thinks back and tries to work out the meaning of this. 'You think that this cipher might not be German? Or that it might not be military or governmental?'
'I am merely cautioning you against making assumptions,' Chattan says.
Waterhouse is still thinking this one over as they are approached by Lieutenant Robson, the commanding officer of the SAS squad. 'Sir,' he says, 'for the benefit of the fellows down in London, we would like to know the combination.'
'The combination?' Waterhouse asks blankly. This word, devoid of context, could mean almost anything.
'Yes, sir,' Robson says precisely. 'To the safe.'
'Oh!' Waterhouse says. He is faintly irritated that they would ask him this question. There seems little point in writing down the combination when the equipment needed to break into the safe is sitting right there. It is much more important to have a safe-breaking algorithm than to have one particular solution to a safe-breaking problem. 'I don't know,' he says. 'I forgot.'
'You forgot?' Chattan says. He says it on behalf of Robson who appears to be violently biting his tongue. 'Did you perhaps write it down before you forgot it?'
'No,' Waterhouse says. 'But I remember that it consists entirely of prime numbers.'
'Well! That narrows it down!' Chattan says cheerfully. Robson does not seem mollified, though.
'And there are five numbers in all, which is interesting since-'
'Since five is itself a prime number!' Chattan says. Once again, Waterhouse is pleased to see his commanding officer displaying signs of a tasteful and expensive education.
'Very well,' Robson announces through clenched teeth. 'I shall inform the recipients.'
Chapter 36 SULTAN
The Grand Wazir of Kinakuta leads them into the offices of his boss, the sultan, and leaves them alone for a few minutes at one corner of the conference table, to build which a whole species of tropical hardwoods had to be extinguished. After that, it is a race among the founders of Epiphyte Corp. to see who can blurt out the first witticism about the size of the sultan's home office deduction. They are in the New Palace, three arms of which wrap around the exotic gardens of the ancient and magnificent Old Palace. This meeting room has a ten-meter-high ceiling. The walls facing onto the garden are made entirely of glass, so the effect is like looking into a terrarium that contains a model of a sultan's palace. Randy has never known much about architecture, and his vocabulary fails him abjectly. The best he could say is that it's sort of like a cross between the Taj Mahal and Angkor Wat.
To get here, they had to drive down a long boulevard of palm trees, enter a huge vaulted marble entrance hall, submit to metal-detection and frisking, sit in an anteroom for a while sipping tea, take their shoes off, have warm rose water poured over their hands by a turbaned servant wielding an ornate ewer, and then walk across about half a mile of polished marble and oriental carpets. As soon as the door wafts shut behind the grand wazir's ass, Avi says, 'I smell a con job.'
'A con job?' Randy scoffs. 'What, you think this is a rear-screen projection? You think this table is made of Formica?'
'It's all real,' Avi admits sourly. 'But whenever someone gives you the treatment like this, it's because they're trying to impress you.'
'I'm impressed,' Randy says. 'I admit it. I'm impressed.'
'That's just a euphemism for, 'I'm about to do something moronic,'' Avi says.
'What are we going to
'If you mean, are we going to sign contracts, is money going to change hands, then no, nothing is going to get done. But plenty is going to happen.'
The door opens again and the grand wazir leads a group of Nipponese men into the room. Avi lowers his voice. 'Just remember that, at the end of the day, we're back in the hotel, and the sultan is still here, and all of this is just a memory to us. The fact that the sultan has a big garden has no relevance to anything.'
