“Unfortunately, no. There is a reward offered. A British banker, filthy rich, named Morgan Jutting. He’s also interested in the Enigma. He put up a one million pound bounty a little over a year ago to be awarded to the first person to break the code. He named a panel of internationally recognized experts as judges. A majority must agree that the solution is correct.”
“So, you want me to figure out who took your notes and get them back?”
“In a nutshell, yes. If a good cryptographer studies my notes, they’ll probably figure out that the solution is incorrect. They will realize that my method is productive though. They might use it to get to the solution before I do.”
“What kind of timeframe are we talking about?”
“Maybe a few weeks, a month.”
“Any suspects?”
“Maybe a couple.”
“Okay. This is intriguing.” I stopped speaking and looked around the office. The place felt creepy, a little too personal—like reading someone else’s journal or looking through their medicine cabinet. Wolhardt was a fanatic but his problem was interesting. “I’m going to need more information,” I said. “Let’s sit down and go over it again. I have a partner I work with. I’ll have to talk it over with her and we’ll decide together whether or not to pursue it.”
Chapter 5
Eine Kleine Nacht Hacking
June 23: San Francisco
Passing through clouds at thirty-three thousand feet, slumped in the window seat, I watched tiny drops of water hit the glass, instantly elongate into impossibly thin streaks of silver, then dissipate, leaving nothing behind to show that they were ever there. I imagined each droplet as a human soul in an eternal cycle of birth, brief flash of life, death, coalescence back into the aether, formless waiting in between. It was maudlin but it was something to focus on while, in another part of my brain, the pieces of Julian Wolhardt’s story drifted slowly, forming and reforming. I searched the story for patterns, angles, wrong notes but it all seemed to hang together.
As was often the case, as soon as I was on a plane, on my way home, everything I had experienced while away began to take on an unreal dreamlike quality. My memory had always been highly visual. It has been reported, but never scientifically established, that some people have photographic memory—the ability to recall with exact precision anything they have ever seen. My memory wasn’t quite that good but I could often run through past experiences like watching a video in my head or pull up high fidelity images in my mind’s eye and examine them for details I might have consciously missed in the moment. However, my memory of Wolhardt’s house—where I had been just a few hours before—had a kind of intense, washed out, prismatic quality as if the harsh summer sunlight of southern California had overdriven my visual perception.
Wolhardt had seemed on the surface like a normal, rational guy. There had to be a bit of crackpot underneath though. If his story was true, he had been working on breaking Elgar’s enigma for close to fifty years. No normal person pursues such a fruitless, disappointing hobby for so long. I liked him but also felt like there was something missing. He came across like a latter day Parsifal, eternally seeking the grail, obsessed but dignified, an incomplete human until his quest is resolved.
Before I left his house, he had given me a few leads. There was the web address of the forum where he and other enigma enthusiasts posted their questions and progress updates. Then there was the name of the wealthy banker who had offered the reward for breaking Elgar’s code. Finally, he had also given me a list of people who, over the years, had offered solutions to the enigma, what their solutions were, and why they had been rejected.
I had already texted Ashna while waiting to board my flight:
—Free tonight? Possible job.—
—Yes. After 8 pm.—
—Okay. Come by my place? Want dinner?—
—Yes! See you then.—
I trusted Ashna’s judgment on whether or not to take the job. The case was cold, as they say. Wolhardt’s notes had been stolen over two weeks before. There was little chance of identifying or catching the thief via conventional means. If we were going to find any clues we would probably have to rely on her specialty rather than mine. I had an intuition that she would find the case intriguing though. The combination of great art, mystery, cryptography, genius, and a sizable reward appealed to me and it would appeal to Ashna too if I knew her special interests at all.
I settled back in my seat and opened my laptop. I could do some preliminary research while the plane did its thing.
I arrived home from the airport late in the afternoon, left my suitcase inside, and hopped on my bike. Cooking for Ashna meant I would need supplies. I rode by the nearly deserted Caltrain station, then up Brannan all the way to Division. The freeway hummed above me and the gritty exhaust filtered down. As I rode I thought about the Wolhardt job in an abstract way, not considering the merits of the job itself but just thinking about my shift in profession and whether or not it was really what I wanted. I had spent many years as a successful burglar. I had stolen a lot of art and I had never been caught. My unusual choice of career had netted me my home, my leisure, and a reasonable portfolio of investments but it had always been something I did without much self-examination. I had started out believing that I was a kind of social justice warrior, taking from the rich to support my spartan lifestyle while I pursued Art with a capital A. Then I moved on to thinking of myself as a kind of craftsman or master thief on the
