The Stepping Maze Read online

  What Ludlum was looking at now, however, was the physical lettering—the typeface, or what some might call the font, though that wasn’t precisely the right term. From a practical and literal perspective, Ludlum was forcing herself to think of the type on the page not as letters, with inherent meanings, but merely as marks that might indicate some hidden data she could uncover. She was looking at them the way she’d look at a DNA sequence or an assembly of bones or blood spatter. She was looking for patterns.

  She was seeing anomalies.

  The typeface used was fairly standard. A typical serif font, not dissimilar to that used by any other typewriter from the era. It was unremarkable, for its time.

  Except there were tiny differences from one instance of a character to another. Small, almost unnoticeable, and only evident once Ludlum started looking at it under magnification. A missing serif here, a slanted character there. Small. Discreet. Very hard to spot.

  Unless you were looking for it.

  She turned to her lab computer and brought up the scans of the manuscript, then enlarged them onscreen.

  The first page—the title page—had no noticeable aberrations. But the first interior page had dozens.

  She started highlighting these onscreen, marking them on a separate layer from the scans. It took time, and she often had to double-check, to make sure what she was seeing was real and not some trick her mind was playing. It was tedious work, but unlike the previous tedium, it was producing measurable results. Something was there.

  When she finally sat back and looked at what she’d uncovered, she held her breath for a moment and then let it out in a burst.

  There was a pattern. There was definitely a pattern.

  In fact, now that she was aware of Kotler’s discovery, that the strange keyboard they’d found at the vault was employing the Baconian Cipher, the pattern in the manuscript leapt out at her as obvious. There was no question.

  She was no expert in Baconian Ciphers, not by miles, but she’d looked into them after reading Kotler’s report. They made sense, once she knew the pattern. Not all that dissimilar to looking at DNA notations, written out with the Roman characters G, C, A, and T to represent the different nucleotides. Knowing the nomenclature, the symbols and their meaning, she could determine the sequence, and decipher it.

  In a sense, Ludlum herself was a codebreaker. Her job was to spot patterns, or occasionally a break in a pattern, and decode what she saw into a language that others would understand. She could interpret the pattern of blood spatter, could identify a male or female by certain bones, and could determine whether a bullet was fired from a specific gun using striations and rifling marks found on the slug. Code, embedded in the world around her, deciphered into its core meaning. She did this regularly, and she was very good at it.

  It wasn’t much of a stretch to apply her skills to recognizing and even deciphering a Baconian Cipher. It was also easier to identify the cipher when she saw it. And she was seeing it now, spread like measles in the pages of Dr. Daniel F. Kotler’s manuscript, contaminating every page.

  The door to her lab opened, and she looked up to see one of the agents from the bullpen. “Just got word. Agent Denzel and Dr. Kotler were involved in a shootout, just down the block.”

  Shootout? Ludlum felt herself go cold. “Are they … were they hurt?”

  “Negative,” the agent replied. “Police are on the way to the scene, and some of us are going to meet them there. Can you spare anyone to tag along?”

  She almost volunteered herself but thought better of it. She needed to log what she’d just discovered and didn’t want to risk losing any details. She also had a well-qualified team who could handle this, and she needed to trust them to do their jobs, too. She called one of her staff and gave them instructions.

  The agent in the door nodded and left her to her work.

  She sat for a moment, feeling a strange sort of panic. It was unreasonable, she knew. Kotler was alright. So was Agent Denzel. They were both fine. But for some reason she still wanted to sprint from her lab and run to wherever Kotler was, to see for herself.

  She took a breath and turned back to her work. She wrote a report, detailing what she’d found. She saved it to her folder on the FBI’s database and sent an email to Agent Denzel.

  It had taken half an hour, and she’d felt like jumping out of her own skin for all that time. But it was the right thing to do. It was the job.

  She suddenly remembered that she was dressed in gym clothes and a contamination suit, and that her regular clothes and her bag were still in the gym.

  She’d left it all behind as she’d rushed to check on her hunch.

  Ludlum made her way to the elevator and rode down to the workout room.

  Her bag was still where she’d left it, near the treadmill. She snagged it and went into the changing room, giving herself a quick wash from the sink and toweling herself off before getting dressed. She checked the mirror, toyed with reapplying some makeup, and decided she had bigger and better things to worry about. She needed to get back to the lab. Maybe she could get an update on Kotler and Denzel.

  She exited the changing room and slammed into someone who was standing in the doorway.

  “Oh!” She said. “I’m sorry, I … this is the ladies changing room,” she said, suddenly realizing the figure in front of her was male.

  The man, tall and broad, looked down at her and nodded. He was wearing a balaclava, obscuring his face. “Dr. Liz Ludlum,” he said.

  Ludlum felt the panic suddenly return, too late to do her any good.

  7

  CAFÉ, NEAR FBI HEADQUARTERS

  Extricating themselves from the scene at the café took far longer than Kotler had patience for. Denzel’s subordinate agents showed up first and did an admirable job of taking charge of the scene. Witnesses were questioned and then directed to incoming medical personnel. The sidewalk outside of the café was cordoned off, along with part of the street, and agents were directing foot traffic away from the area. The police arrived quickly and took over, and the FBI agents mostly dispersed, returning to headquarters.

  Denzel met with the NYPD Detective who was taking over the case, gave his testimony, and offered his card. Kotler was questioned along with every other patron of the café, though he was hoping Denzel would have helped to arrange for some special treatment, to speed things along.

  There was just too much happening.

  Finally, Kotler was dismissed. He joined Denzel as they walked back to the FBI building.

  Kotler took the cylinder out of his coat pocket.

  “Kotler,” Denzel said, his voice stern and a frown creasing his face. “Why do you have evidence from a crime scene in your pocket?”

  “It was a gift,” Kotler said, smirking.

  “Kotler …”

  “If we hand this over, I can’t examine it. We have two men trapped in a vault with only a couple of days of air left. We don’t have time to go through protocol on this one.” He paused, glancing at his partner. “Do we?”

  Denzel had turned to look straight ahead. His expression was still stern, but he wasn’t arguing. “What is it?” he asked, his voice tight.

  Kotler shook his head. “I haven’t had much chance to examine it, but I’m pretty sure it was meant for me.”

  “Why?” Denzel asked.

  “Because it has my name on it,” Kotler replied. He held the cylinder up to reveal a series of characters etched into it in rows from end to end, encircling the entire artifact like horizontal stripes. The characters were Roman, both alphabetic and numeric. But they were complete gibberish, forming no words that Kotler could recognize.

  Except for the six characters that ran in a line at what Kotler now thought of as the “top” of the cylinder.

  K-O-T-L-E-R

  He showed this to Denzel.

  “Ok,” Denzel nodded, eyeing the cylinder as they walked. “I’ll give you that. So what does it mean?”

  “I think it’s a cip
her key.” He thought for a moment, the brisk walk helping him think. “I’m not sure what it is, exactly, but it seems familiar. When we’re back, I’ll see if I can find anything that matches.”

  Denzel was quiet for a moment, but as they entered the FBI headquarters and showed their IDs, he said, “I’m not happy with you taking evidence from a crime scene.”

  “I understand,” Kotler said, nodding solemnly.

  They rode the elevator to the Historic Crimes level, and as the doors opened, they were greeted by a bustle of activity.

  “Agent Denzel!” one of the agents called. “We have a situation!”

  Kotler stood over Ludlum’s gym bag, which had a small, plastic evidence marker on top of it. Another marker sat near the blood.

  Agents, many of whom were from Ludlum’s own team, were moving all over the gym, taking swabs and prints from the door handles, the equipment, and anything else they could find.

  Kotler was wearing a pair of disposable shoe covers and had pulled on a pair of blue rubber gloves. He had been told to stay out of the way, but now that they’d covered the women’s changing room, he was allowed to wander in. He didn’t know what he was looking for. He felt somehow numb.

  “Kotler,” Denzel said quietly.

  Kotler turned, a bit of life returning to his expression as he raised his eyebrows, hoping.

  There was a subtle shake of Denzel’s head. “We have footage from the hall and from the gym. A few angles. He took out the cameras in the stairwell just before coming in here. He knew what he was doing.”

  “What do the other cameras show?” Kotler asked.

  “He’d managed to get into the building through the mailroom, in the basement. We have him breaking open a door with a pry bar. He was actually able to make his way to the Historic Crimes level, through the stairwell.”

  “That easy,” Kotler said quietly.

  Denzel shook his head. “Not easy. Not exactly. But he used the shootout at the café for cover. He knew about it.”

  “So we were a distraction?” Kotler asked.

  Denzel shrugged. “I can’t say for sure, but it seems like it. He made it to our floor, and when Liz took the elevator back down, he took the stairs. He was smart. He’d figured out where she was going and went right to her.”

  “Smart,” Kotler sneered. Everyone was smart. Everyone had things figured out. And once again Kotler was the focus of some game, targeted by someone smart enough and bold enough to be able to get to him and the people he cared about, even here.

  Whoever this guy was, he had resources. He’d just nabbed an agent right out of FBI headquarters. It shouldn’t have been possible, but there it was.

  “Got this, around the time Liz was grabbed,” Denzel said, handing over his phone.

  Kotler read the email. A short message, only a single line. But there was no mistaking what it meant.

  We have her. You have 24 hours.

  “Tech guys are tracing it to see what they can find but …”

  “Let me guess,” Kotler said bitterly, “it’s been bounced through half a dozen VPNs, sent from a throwaway account that was probably stolen from someone else. And there’s no way to know who sent it or from where.”

  “That about sums it up,” Denzel nodded. “Kotler, listen … we’ll get her back. I swear we will. She’ll be safe.”

  Kotler looked up at his partner and saw the same frustration, the same anger, the same fear and worry that Kotler himself was feeling. He huffed and shook his head. “It’s a goad. They’re prodding me.”

  “I think so too,” Denzel said.

  Kotler held up the cylinder. “This is a message.”

  “Then let’s solve it.”

  Kotler nodded, and the two of them left the gym, riding the elevator up to the Historic Crimes floor. Kotler was out of the elevator as soon as the doors were open, and Denzel followed on his heels. The two of them ended up in Ludlum’s lab. Kotler lay the cylinder on an exam table, and opened one of the lab’s laptops, starting a search.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “Google,” Kotler said. “Six-character cipher. I recognize this. I’ve seen it before, in the research.”

  A moment later he turned the laptop for Denzel to see. “ADFGVX,” Kotler said.

  “Err … is that supposed to mean anything to me?”

  “It’s the name of this cipher,” Kotler said, gesturing to the cylinder. “Those letters are distinct from each other, in Morse Code. So they’re used as part of a binary cipher that relies on a randomized grid of thirty-six characters.”

  “Ok …”

  “Thirty-six, because there are twenty-six Roman characters in the alphabet, plus ten digits from zero to nine. Together these form a six-by-six grid, with ADFGVX at the top of each column and to the left of each row.”

  Denzel shook his head. “I’m trying to follow, but I’m not getting it.”

  Kotler turned the laptop back and started typing, frequently referencing the cylinder as he went. A few minutes later he showed the result to Denzel.

  Denzel studied the chart. “So what am I looking at, exactly?”

  “This is the key for an ADFGVX cipher. I pulled the grid from the rows of characters on the cylinder. I added the ADFGVX headers, top and left.” He pointed to the characters at the top and left of the grid, running his finger along them for Denzel to see.

  “This type of cipher dates back to World War I, invented by Colonel Fritz Nebel of the German Army. Basically, there’s a six-by-six grid of randomized characters, and with the headers on the top and left of the grid you get a binary address for each letter of the alphabet and each number from zero to nine.”

  Denzel looked at it, and Kotler saw his features light up with recognition. “Ok,” he said. “Ok, I see what you’re saying. So the letter O would be AA. The number 1 would be AF.”

  “Right,” Kotler said.

  “What part does your name play in this?”

  Kotler shook his head. “It’s a way to address this to me, but it’s also a key. This cipher is easy to crack if you keep it in this sequential order. But it becomes a lot tougher when you transpose characters, scrambling them so that anyone trying to crack this will not only have to decipher each character but will have to rearrange what they find into actual words. Add to this the fact that these codes were originally written in German and there are all sorts of challenges.”

  “But whoever sent this gave you the key,” Denzel said.

  Kotler nodded. “And I don’t know why, unless the goal is to speed things up. But there’s a problem.”

  “More problems?” Denzel asked.

  “We have a key, but we don’t have a lock.”

  Denzel considered this and nodded. “Where’s the coded message we’re meant to unscramble?”

  “Exactly,” Kotler said. “It’s likely that the message will be in this binary format, repeating the characters ADFGVX over again and again. But we haven’t seen a pattern like that. We haven’t gotten an encoded message.”

  Denzel quickly raised a hand to his eyes. “We have, actually.”

  He tapped his phone and handed it to Kotler. “Liz sent that email just before she was abducted. I gave it a look, and I was going to tell you about it, but all of this happened.” He gestured to the laptop Kotler was using.

  Kotler read through the email, his eyes wide. “She’s brilliant,” he said.

  “So there’s something in that manuscript,” Denzel said.

  “Something I overlooked,” Kotler said, mournful.

  “But we have it now. Is it connected?”

  Kotler opened a PDF of scans that Ludlum had included, noting the highlighted markings. She had gone to the trouble of translating a few of the pages, and the results were encouraging.

  “She thought it might just be gibberish,” Denzel said. “But it looks like what you’re describing.”

  Kotler agreed. The translations came to long strings of characters, alternating between A, D, F,
G, V, and X.

  The manuscript contained a code within a code.

  Kotler opened a browser tab and did a quick search.

  “Now what are you doing?” Denzel asked.

  “This cipher has been around for a century. There are hobbyists out there who know all about it, and I’m betting …” he tapped a few keys, then clicked on a link and smiled. Denzel came around behind him and looked at the screen.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “It’s a java applet that someone created to decipher this code. All I have to do is plug in all the variables, including the keyword.”

  Kotler typed his own name into the keyword field, then in another he entered the characters from the six-by-six grid, row by row. In a final field, he typed the first set of scrambled characters from the manuscript.

  The translation appeared instantly.

  Yardley’s Black Room is secure. Perfect off-site storage for our backups. All ciphers, references, and materials have been duplicated and stored safely.

  It was a short message, but it had taken a couple of pages to encode it. Kotler scrolled through the rest of the digitized manuscript. “Liz marked all of the pages. She did it. She cracked this. All we have to do is decode the rest and plug it into this applet.” Kotler huffed. “It’s going to take hours to do this manually.”

  “Let’s get the tech guys on this,” Denzel said. “Maybe there’s a way to speed this up.”

  Kotler nodded and stepped aside as Denzel called in their specialists. In moments, both Kotler and Denzel found themselves superfluous, hanging out in the background as the tech team attacked a century-old code with modern technology.

  “Come on,” Denzel said, motioning for Kotler to follow

  “Where are we going? Shouldn’t we wait here? For the team to get this translated?”

  “They can take care of it, and they’ll send it to us when they’re done. We need to see what else we can find regarding Liz’s abduction.”

  Kotler considered this and followed without question.