Flash Fiction: Nuntius

This week, my Flash Fiction Challenge entry is posting very, very early Friday morning instead of in the usual Thursday time slot, because of my self-righteous, angry rant of yesterday. As for the challenge itself, we have to use one of three randomly generated sentences in our story, bonus points for using all three. The story idea came to me immediately, the execution more slowly and with more difficulty.

As always, comments and constructive criticisms are appreciated.

NUNTIUS

Currier was fidgeting on the couch, his “escort” sitting calmly between him and the door when the agent marched in, underlings swirling in her wake. Currier was startled, but managed to stand and take and shake her proffered hand before being directed to sit. He sat.

“Mr. Currier, I’m Special Agent Roth. Let me get straight to this. You knew Aaron Dunham?”

“Yes, Aaron’s my roommate, has been for three years. But he’s gone for weeks. What’s happened?”

“We believe he was killed after being kidnapped and tortured. Please take a look at these.” An underling handed a folder of photos to him.

Confused, Currier opened the folder. One quick look through the photos had him turning pale. He quickly closed the folder along with his eyes, leaned back, and tried to steady himself.

“You could have warned me,” he said to the detective.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “but we’re extremely short on time. You knew him well?”

“Sure, we’ve been roommates for years. I met him at MIT. We first worked together on a paper as undergrads. When we graduated, we both got offered jobs at, ah…”

“Mr. Currier, we’re aware of where you work in the government. We believe something in Dunham’s work led to his murder. He was tortured for days before they finally killed him. We also found something he left behind for us. We need your help on that.”

“I’m not a detective,” Currier said. “I’m a mathematician.”

“You worked with Dunham as a cryptographer, correct?”

“Yes, it’s largely based on mathematical models, you see. He and I were working on some new algorithms to compact data by using higher order Bushings functions…”

“Enough. That doesn’t matter. This does.”

She took the photos and pulled out two, laying them on the coffee table in front of Currier. The first showed a torn and stained mattress, propped up against a wall near a corner. The second was a close-up of the wall hidden behind the mattress. In the grime and garbage, a series of numbers could be seen. They were crudely written and upside down.

15-29-9   243-25-4   171-8-14   136-17-3   23-37-6   110-1-3   276-13-6   243-20-6

28-20-9   302-17-8   203-28-6   58-32-12   228-9-9

119-15-9   29-13-11   82-2-7   350-28-5   65-21-1   116-37-4

“Is that written in blood?” Currier asked.

“We’ll know in a couple of hours. What’s critical right now is to find out what it means. Dunham got caught up in something incredibly big. He knew he was in a shit-ton of trouble. He wanted to leave a message for us. We have to know what that message is.”

“That’s an Arnold Cipher,” Currier said immediately, “Dunham loved them.”

“Explain, please.”

“It’s a code scheme used by Benedict Arnold. The concept is very simple to execute, but in practice it’s very hard to crack. The numbers refer to some kind of document, usually a book. They set up a coordinate array of page numbers, line numbers, and word numbers to look up. Simple, a child could do it. But if you don’t know what the reference book is, you’ll never crack it.”

Agent Roth huddled with her assistants and they flipped quickly through the pictures. The small room shown was barren, dominated by the grisly remains and blood stains. There were a few ratty bits of broken furniture and trash piled up in the corners, but no books, magazines, or obvious places where one might be hidden.

“Mr. Currier, there was nothing found in the room, nothing that he could have used to base this code on.”

“I’m not surprised, that would have been too obvious. But Dunham has always been obsessed with one book, since he was a kid. He could have easily done that from memory.”

Roth looked skeptical. “That’s impossible. There is no such thing as ‘photographic memory,’ and even eidetic memory is extremely rare and only seen in children.”

“Not what I’m talking about, although it’s similar. Dunham could cite chapter and verse of Gibson’s ‘Glory Beyond Death’s Door.’ He’s done that stunt at parties, even in college. His copy’s right there on the shelf, if you’ll please hand it to me.”

An agent got the book off the shelf, but handed it to Roth instead of Currier.

“Okay, be that way. What’s the first set of numbers?” Currier asked.

“Fifteen, twenty-nine, and nine,” the agent with the photos answered.

Roth flipped to the fifteenth page, counted down to the twenty-ninth line, and read across to the ninth word. “The first word is ‘the’,” she said. “What’s next?”

Slowly the message worked its way out, one seemingly random word at a time.

“The borderlands expire thanks to the hundred violins.”
 “A poetic pattern retains inertia.”
 “The criminal disappears after the inventor.”

“That’s gibberish,” Roth finally said. “We’ve got the wrong book or we’re using the wrong code. What else could it be?”

“Let me see the picture,” Currier asked. When he was given the photos, he double checked the number sets and verified a couple to make sure that Roth had looked them up correctly. Finding no obvious error, he stared at the pictures, glancing back and forth between them.

Suddenly, he pointed at the numbers written on the wall behind the mattress. “That’s it. They’re upside down. That’s the key.”

“I don’t understand,” Roth said.

“Give me the book and read off the number sets again.” The book was handed to him, but as he put it on the table in front of him, he turned it upside down. Turning to page fifteen, he counted up twenty-nine lines from the bottom instead of down from the top, before finally counting nine words from the right instead of from the left.

“Missile launch code key stolen by terror cell.”
“General Craft is the traitor.”
“Attack set for evening May seventeen.”

“Get the Director on the phone, please,” Roth said with eerie calm.

Before the call could go through, a bright light shattered the night sky. The first wave of our own hijacked weapons began falling.