There was an active moderator who seemed to be the owner and maintainer of the site. His or her screen name was enigma_admin and it popped up here and there on threaded conversations reminding people, in bitterly sarcastic terms, to stay on topic, keep their posts polite, and search before posting to make sure a question had not already been answered. Occasionally, enigma_admin also asked questions or replied to posts. He or she was clearly not running the message board on a lark. They were deeply interested in the cryptography angle. Ashna browsed through the site for a while, poking around, then ran a search for Wolhardt’s screen name which was jw48. The system showed a number of his posts and comments going back ten years. The results were sorted in date order and the one we were looking for was at the top. The post was short and to the point.
JW48: Enigma Co-Enthusiasts, After many years of seeking I believe I may be very near to solving this riddle. Expect big news from me within a few short weeks.
It seemed both in and out of character based on what I knew about Wolhardt. I could imagine his triumphant feeling of being near the end of his quest and his need to share the feeling with people who would understand. At the same time, he seemed like a careful, methodical person and the post was anything but careful. His emotions must have overruled his common sense. About ten people had replied to the post, most with some variation of congratulations. There were four longer replies.
Bender39: Congratulations JW! I can’t wait to hear your solution.
Crowley1875: I await your announcement with anticipation and dread.
NB: Congratulations. Very interesting. Your solution is eagerly awaited. However, as with all other solutions proposed over the years, yours will have to stand up against the combined intellects of the community. Past solutions, as you know, have not fared well.
enigma_admin: Fascinating. I look forward to your announcement. Did any of the techniques we discussed in your last post prove useful?
“Interesting,” Ashna said, reading through the replies. “I think we have four good suspects right here. Maybe more. Although it seems like the ones who took the time to reply with actual comments are the ones most likely to be our culprit.”
“Agreed,” I answered. “It’s like when people just click the little heart on the photo you post of yourself accepting the Nobel peace prize. Those aren’t the bitter losers who are going to write angry letters to the selection committee.”
“Yeah, that happens to me all the time.”
“Let’s search up these four and see what we find.”
I looked on as Ashna searched them one by one. Aside from enigma_admin, it quickly became clear that, together with Wolhardt, the other three were the most prolific users on the site. Their contentious relationship also became quickly obvious. In post after post they bickered with each other, cut each other down, and belittled each other’s theories. The only one who was above the fray was Bender39. He—I found myself assuming they were all men based on subtle clues in their writing—often tried to calm the rhetoric and keep the discussion civil, usually to no avail. He also seemed the most deeply competent with music theory—often displaying his breadth of knowledge when arguing obscure points. Crowley1875 had a sardonic style and sometimes alluded to mysterious occult theories. NB was on the attack at all times, never backing down and often inciting arguments.
“This is running on Drupal,” Ashna said after right clicking and choosing the View Page Source option. She pointed to a line in the HTML header. “You can tell by the directory structure. It’s loading these javascript files from folders under the modules directory.”
“What’s Drupal?”
“Content management system. Basically a web app that lets you create a sophisticated website without having to write any code. Drupal is pretty well broken. It was big back in the day bit nobody uses it anymore. I’m sure there’s a known exploit we can use to gain admin credentials. It looks like this is version seven. No one ever upgrades Drupal—too much of a pain in the ass. Half the time you would end up bricking your site. I remember hearing about a privilege escalation exploit for version seven.”
Twenty minutes later Ashna had gained admin rights to the system and was viewing user profiles and log files. The profiles didn’t tell us much beyond the email addresses they had used when creating their accounts. The log files showed recent logins to the site.
“It records their originating IP address when they log in,” Ashna said, pointing at a string of numbers on her screen. “With that we can find their general geographic location.” She pulled up another site and began copy/pasting the addresses. “Bender39’s in the Seattle area,” Ashna said. “Crowley1875 is in Philadelphia. NB is in London. And enigma_admin is right here in SF.”
“What was Bender’s email address?”
“J benderick at seattlephil dot org.”
“So he’s a musician. He plays for the Seattle Philharmonic. That’s why he knows music theory.” I opened the Seattle Philharmonic website on my phone and clicked through to a page that listed all the musicians. I scanned the list but no J. Benderick appeared. On a lark, I tapped a link labeled Meet the Director and there he was: Johann Benderick, Music Director and Principal Conductor of the orchestra. “He’s the music director!” I exclaimed.
“Fancy,” Ashna answered.
“Wait, they’re performing the Enigma Variations.”
“What the actual fuck?”
“Yeah, This coming weekend. Three performances. Matinee on Sunday.”
“You’d better get your tuxedo dry cleaned and book some tickets.”
“You think I should go?”
“Of course. You need to figure out how to corner Benderick and ask him about Wolhardt’s stolen notes. I think we need to eliminate all four of these people before we look at other suspects, don’t you?”
“They seem
