Selected Detective
TOM ROBERTS MEETING

After the luncheon for the fundraising was over and he saw Har-zion return to his office at the Knesset building in Derekh Ruppin, Avi Steiner boarded a bus to Romema to check the mailbox. his eyes looked around suspiciously at the other passengers, a little worried at the potential existence of God's suicide bombers, it would be ironic if it had to end up on the bus with one of Al-Mulatham's accomplices rather than the possibility of being followed by people. There was indeed a chance, he said, it is so small that the whole matter is such a closely guarded secret that almost all involved do not know that they are indeed involved but we can never be too careful. That is why Har-zion believed him, calling him Ha-Nesher, the eagle because he was so careful, seeing things.ha-Nesher, and also ha-Ne-eman the Faithful.

He would do anything for Har-zion. Anything. He was like a father to her.

He got off the bus at the end of Jaffa Street and, once again, took a suspicious glance at his surroundings, then walked up the hill towards the center of Romema, where he was, a boring suburban neighborhood with intermittent yellow stone apartment blocks and a collection of pine and cypress trees. He suddenly turned, to the road he had been on, confirmed and confirmed that he had not been followed before he finally slipped into a shop with a sign on the door announcing the Wholesale, OFFICE STATIONERY, PERSONAL MAILBOX.

He does not check his mailbox regularly - regularity means routine and routine arouses suspicion. Sometimes he came a few days after his last visit; sometimes he did not visit him at all for a week, two weeks, even a month. You can never be too careful.

The mailboxes were along the wall behind, invisible to the eyes of the shopkeeper, an elderly Sephardee woman who in three years Avi came here frequently, never once moved out of his armchair behind a low plywood service desk. Once again he looked around for the last time, then pulled out the key, opened the box number 13, took out an envelope and immediately slipped it into his jacket pocket before he locked the box back and exited. He was inside for no more than a minute.

Back on the road, he circled around first for a while, then opened his mail envelope. In it there is only one sheet of paper written in the same capital letter so it cannot be traced, name and address. He recalled the inscription in the letter, and then tore it into a small tear, mixing it first and dumping it in four different litter boxes before he returned to Jaffa Street and chased the bus that was heading for the city, hold on to the knowledge that what he is doing is for the good of his nation and country.

Arriving at five in the afternoon, Tom Roberts still remained struggling at Layla's desk, surrounded by sheets of paper with scribbles, he said, it seemed no closer to the important discovery of the obscure secret than it had been six hours before when he began to study it.

Layla and Roberts had walked together from the American Colony hotel and, after making her a cup of coffee, Layla gave a copy sheet, which she had been given, which he had released from his cover letter (like most journalists he made it a rule to never give more information than he should have given).

“And you have no idea where this letter came from?”

He asked, staring at the documents, playing around with his tie in a bit of confusion.

“Nothing at all. Someone sent the letter in the mail. All you know is yes as I know.”

He turned the sheet, watched the other side empty, then turned it over again, his eyes peeking out from behind the glasses. With his free hand he scratched a small wound of eczema on the back of his neck, just above the collar line.

“Yahh, it's hard to feel certain without seeing the original document. But my guess is, it dates back to early medieval times when palaeography was the starting point.”

He caught the hesitation on Layla's face.

“I studied that period for my Ph.D degree,” she explained

“You have sensitivity on this.”

Layla smiles. “I never knew that you were a Doctor, Roberts.”

“This is not something I use to promote myself. Early medieval Latin jurisprudence tends to turn off conversations.” Layla laughed, and for a moment their eyes clashed before Roberts glared, embarrassed.

“That's the case,” he continued, “ assuming that this is indeed medieval, then it should not be too difficult to express its meaning. Encryption was not perfect at that time. No Puzzle machine or anything. Let's just see how we express it.”

Layla has nailed him to a desk in her study. Tom had taken off his jacket, loosened his tie and worked, starting by inscribing the sequence of letters into separate sheets of paper so he could read them clearly.

“We do not know what language has been transferred into this code,” he said, “even if from the middle ages, it is reasonable if we suspect this is Latin, or maybe even Greek. For a while we put aside the issue of this language, and concentrate on the.” algorithm

Layla raised her eyebrows full of question marks. “That's it?”

“Basically, the encoding method used to write messages. As I said, early medieval letter writing was a rather unsophisticated science.

At least in europe. The Arabic language was more advanced ahead as was their general state at the time. But, there is a chance with the acquisition of a fairly simple algorithm here, either the substitution of a secret password or a possible transposition.” Layla raised her eyebrows.

“Speak to me in English, Tom.”

“maaf.” He smiles. “One of my many mistakes is always assuming that people have an interest in the same things as me. Basically, the substitution of secret ciphers is when you generate a new alphabet by replacing the letters of the existing alphabetic system either with letters or other symbols.”

He wrote the alphabet on a piece of paper, and then under each of these alphabets was written a second alphabet row by sliding all the letters one space to the right, so that A pairs with Z, so that A pairs with Z, B with A, C with B, and so on.

“You then rewrite your original message, or text only, by replacing each letter with an equivalent letter in a new alphabetical line. So, ’cat’ becomes BZS, for example. Or Layla becomes KZXKZ. On the other hand, transposition is when you simply reassemble the letters present in the original text according to the preparation system, effectively producing a giant anagram. Pretty clear?”

“Slightly,” says Layla while laughing. “though not much.”

“A little bit good enough for now,” he said again, as he composed a message that was placed in front of him and looked back at him, while tapping the handle of his glasses with a pencil.

“So what we have to do is think about the algorithm, then try to reveal the key or the most appropriate formula used to generate the text of that password. This may be just a fundamental Caesar transition problem, or it could be something more vague that we have to do the analysis many times.” This time Layla did not bother him by asking what he was talking about. Instead, with a sling full of admiration, she had patted him on the shoulder and left him immersed in the analysis, instead, heading to the kitchen to prepare a simple lunch of pepper, cheese and salad.they had lunch an hour later, which at the time, Tom had not made any progress on the secret document.

“I'm pretty sure that this is more of a regular monoalphabetic secret code substitution than a transposition,” He said, taking off his glasses and rubbing his eyes.

“Unfortunately I'm not getting close to finding the key. It looks more complex than I thought.”

They have told me about Tom's work at the consulate, Layla's journalism, the current situation in the Middle East is nothing too heavy. On one occasion, Tom asked about a framed photo of his father hanging on a table. But Layla closed the conversation quickly, moving on to other topics, not wanting to get carried away with a personal discussion that would reveal anything about her. In forty minutes Tom has returned to his desk, wrestling once again with the mysterious code.

And now four hours have passed, and the clock of the Old City has rung five times, but Tom still can't break it. He complained long and deep and then sat back in his seat, hands locked behind his neck, the table in front of him half covered by sheets of paper full of scribbles scattered.

“For God!” he muttered, shaking his head.

Layla, who had spent most of the afternoon sitting on the couch working on an article about the Palestinian aid conference she attended in Limassol, came and stood by Tom's side.

“Have Tom, leave it,” he said. “It's okay, kok.”

“I can't understand it,” He complains, while removing his glasses and cleaning the lens with the tip of his tie.

“By the secret password of this period is always easy.”

“Maybe this is not a monoalfabetic substitution,” Layla tried to joke, not really understand the term used, just to lighten Tom's mood.

Tom said nothing, just cleaned his glasses. Then he picked up a sheet with code already written on it and looked at it a short distance away, with his left knee moving up and down under the table.

“It will be something simple,” He said to himself.

“I knew this would be something simple. I just can't see it. I can't understand it.” He threw the sheet back on the table, leaned back in his chair, picked up another pile of paper, studied it while tapping a pencil with the rubberized end of the armchair. There was one sheet that in particular had attracted his attention for almost a minute.His eyes went back and forth scanning the seemingly random line of letters, then he brushed it again, and then he brushed it again, then returned to the sheet again a moment later, looking at him with more concentration and purpose than before. His pencil beats slowly and finally stop, as well as his knees. He moved the sheet away, biting his lower lip, then placed the document on the table. He picked up a blank sheet from the floor and began to write. At first slowly, then faster, with the eyes continue to stick to the sheet that has been learned and return to the paper that has been doodled. After thirty seconds he started laughing.

“What's up?” ask Layla.

“Layla al-madani, you really are a genius!” Layla leaned against Tom's shoulder, trying to read what he had written.

“Have been successfully revealed?”

“No, Layla, you revealed it. Youre right. This is not a secret code substitution. Or it's not just a cipher substitution. Whoever created the code, he used transposition as well as substitution. Thus each system will be easy to open again the password. When done together, the two produce a whole thing that is a little more confusing. Especially when the original message was written in middle Latin, as I suspected.” He continued to scribble while talking. Now he sat back down and showed Layla what she had written.

“What they do,” explains Tom, “first is to write a message in passphrase using a simple Caesar replacement password.” He grabbed another blank sheet of paper and wrote the alphabet, as he had done before, by omitting the letters J and W (they did not use both letters in the early mid-alphabet system, he explained). Under the alphabet he wrote a second alphabet with all the letters moved five spaces to the right.

“That gives this man I suspect the author is a primary level male from his cipher writing. Thus, the first few words changed from G. esclarmondae to b znxfumgihyuz.”

Tom sounded so excited, satisfied with himself, like a scientist was explaining a new discovery.

“However, what he did then, and what made me unable to express it, was transposing the first and second letters of this coded message, and the third and fourth, fifth and sixth, respectively, and so on throughout the text. So switch places with z, n with x, f with u, and so on. This transposition is indeed in its simplest form, but if you work on the basis that they only use substitutions, then this will make it a bit confusing. only if you say maybe they don't use substitutions then I should think that maybe I'll be able to reveal it.” Tom looked at Layla, smiling. Her spirit was so contagious and, bowing, Layla peeked at her cheek.

“oh, excitement in unlocking secret password!” Tom laughs.

“So, what does it mean?” Layla asked, picking up a sheet of text that had been opened. Or is this translation not part of our deal?” His brows frowned and pondered.

“Yahh, usually I charge extra for such service. But, consider that you are the one who..” Layla laughed and returned the sheet.

“Forward, Dr Roberts. Do your job.” Tom took the sheet from Layla.

“must say that my middle Latin is a bit crummy. It's been a while since I last used.”

“I can assure you that your abilities are much better than mine,” Layla said. “Forward only.” He sat back down, fixed his glasses and started translating, slowly, stopping here and there to think of an unusual word, giving quite a lot of comments like “I guess this is what” meant, you know, or “I'm making a paraphrase in this section”, or “Can I mistaken”.

Layla took the blank paper and, leaning against the table by Tom's side, wrote down what he said.

“G., to his sister esclarmonde, give greetings,” Tom started. “S.D. is salutem dicit ‘menyapa’.

Time is so short that the story of how this great thing came to me must await my return from across the sea. Suffice it to say that this was discovered by chance, and it is possible that it would never have been discovered at all if our work had not succeeded in revealing the hidden secrets. I'm sending this to you right now with the knowledge that this will be safe in C. Here there is indifference and ignorance to be eradicated, which would be a sad loss, for it is an ancient thing, great power and beauty. I must leave Jerusalem before the year is over. I believe and pray that you are in good health. Your brother, GR.”

Layla finished writing the translation then, sitting at the end of the table, read the entire text. Whatever he had expected from the document, not this one. This sounds like a puzzle

“You know what this document means?” he asks.

Robert took the sheet from him and read it quickly.

“This is indeed unusual,” he finally said. “assess by referring to “Jerusalem” and “severso the sea” I think this letter was made when he was in the period of the crusade, I guess, although it was just a guess that was likely correct, so there was no need to quote me.”

“And this when exactly?” Layla asked. “Crusade history is not my forte.”

“Not my skills either,” Tom replied, while scratching the eczema wound on his neck. “We see. The First Crusade included Jerusalem from the Saracens in 1099. Thereafter there was a crusading state on the Holy Island for the next two hundred years, until the end of the thirteenth century, although Jerusalem itself was recaptured by Saladin (al-Ayyubi)” he remained silent for a while, thinking 1187, I suppose. Yeah, 1187. The horns of hattin.

So this must have been written before that time. It could be between 1099 and 1187, my guess is like that. Although, as I said, what I'm talking about might just be rubbish.”

Tom put down the translation and, while removing his glasses, began to wipe them back.

“The crusading kingdom is known as outremer, which by chance,” he added, “means ‘across the ocean’.”

Layla looked at the secret message.

“So you think whoever wrote this is a crusader?”

“Yahh, of course not one of the regular members. Most of them cannot read. The fact that this GR knows Latin and is educated enough to write a password suggests that he could be an honorable, expert writer or a member of the priesthood.”

He took off and held the glasses in front of him, examined them, and put them back on.

“Esclarmonde is a mid French name, as far as you know it is only used within the Languedoc region, so it might just be a pretty reasonable guess that GR originated in that part of the country as well. Who he really is, and what this ancient thing found, I have no idea what it is. Really teasing. Very curious.”

“’C’?” layla asked curiously, pointing the letter at the text.

“Can be abbreviation place name, but..” Tom shrugged as if saying “who knows?”

“And is this original?” he asks. “Not fake?”

Again, he shrugged a sign of not knowing for sure.

“I can't easily tell you, Layla. Can't do without the original. In fact, this is by no means the subject of my expertise. You should go and talk to the experts.

A palaeographer or something.” He smiled apologizing.

“I think my benefit is almost done.” said Tom.

“Not at all,” Layla said, as she reached and rubbed Tom's shoulder. “You've done amazing.” they clean all the scrap paper sheets, throw them in the trash box, then go back to the living room.

Layla was thinking of offering her a drink, but decided not to. Tom seemed to catch his silence, as he said it was time he had to leave.

“I'm not enough to just say thank you, Tom,”

He said, opening the front door for her. “You've been very helpful.”

“I'm happy.” He smiles. “Really. It's a challenge for me. And his lunch was great.”

He also stepped out.

“Look, Layla, I know there is no shrimp behind the rock and I really said that there is no intention of anything from me, but I just wondered ... you, but will you...”.

He looked nervous, looking for the right words. Layla stepped forward and kissed her cheek.

“I want dinner,” Layla said with a smile. “Can I call you?”

Tom nodded. “Of course. So engrossed. I'm waiting to hear from you then.”

He walked down the stairs in light steps and Layla closed the door, then leaned her back against the door. Of course he lied. He had no intention of calling the man. Not for the moment. What he wanted to do was find out more about this mysterious letter.

“Who are you, GR?” he muttered to himself, staring at the translation in his hand, Tom Robert had already forgotten. “Who are you really? What did you find? And who sent you to me?”