The Book of Air and Shadows - Michael Gruber [105]
“U.”
“Exactly. Low entropy, as I say. How we break these is we run probable plaintext alongside ciphertext until we see something intelligible.”
“What do you mean by ‘probable plaintext’?”
“Oh, words always appearing in English text. The, and, this, and so on and so forth. We run against ciphertext and suppose we find once that the gives us ing or shi when we work back through the tableau? We use such clues to discover more English words in key. Eventually we recognize actual source of running key, I mean, the book it comes from, in which case we have completely broken cipher. It is not very complex, but we would need a computer, or else large squads of intelligent ladies.” Here he smiled, showing small stained teeth, and his glasses glinted. Crosetti got the impression that Klim had at one time supervised such squads.
“Would mine do?” asked Crosetti. “My PC, not my squads of ladies.”
“Yes, if networked to others, which can be done. There are numbers of people in the world who like cracking ciphers for amusement and they will let one borrow computer cycles they are not using, late at night for example, and is always late at night somewheres. I can set this up if you like. Also, we are fortunate this is cipher from the year 1610.”
“Why so?”
“Because there are many less, many fewer, printed texts that could be used as running key source. In fact, taking what your mother has informed me of the character of these people, I would venture that the text is almost certainly the English Bible. So, shall we begin?”
“Now?”
“Yes. Is there objection?”
“Well, it’s kind of late,” said Crosetti.
“Does not matter. I sleep very little.”
Mary Peg said, “I’ve offered Radeslaw Patty’s old room.”
Crosetti finished his vodka and suppressed the usual shudder. He stood up and said, “Well, you seem to have arranged everything, Mom. I guess I’ll just go to bed.”
In the morning, Crosetti woke not to the buzz of his alarm but to the brisk knock and then the vigorous shoulder shaking of his mother. He blinked at her. “What?”
“You have to read this.” She rustled the New York Times at him, opened at the pages devoted to local crime, corruption, and celebrity.
English Professor Found Murdered
in Columbia Faculty Housing
This headline brought him up to full wakefulness. He rubbed the blur from his eyes and read the article, then read it again. It was a short one, the police being their usual closemouthed selves, but the reporter had used the word torture, and that was enough to start Crosetti’s belly fluttering.
“Call Patty,” he said.
“I already did,” said Mary Peg, “but I got voice mail. She’ll call back. What do you think?”
“It doesn’t look great. He disappears right after I sell him the manuscript, he’s probably in England for a couple of months, maybe with Carolyn, maybe not, and then he comes back here and someone tortures him to death. Maybe the play manuscript really exists and he found out where it was and someone found out he knew and tortured him to get him to give it up.”
“Albert, that’s a movie. Things like that don’t happen to English professors in real life.”
“Then why was he tortured and killed? Not for his ATM password.”
“Maybe the mother of another silly boy he cheated took her revenge. From what we know about his character, he may have been mixed up in any number of sleazy deals.”
“Mom, believe me, movie or not, that’s what went down. I need to get up.”
This was the signal for his mother to leave, and she did. Crosetti in the shower found his thoughts floating back to Rolly and the plot of his movie and the possibility that she could actually be the villainess of the piece, Brigid O’Shaughnessy as played by Mary Astor in The Maltese Falcon. His mother was wrong. Not only was life like a movie, movies were why life was like it was. Movies taught people how to behave, how to be a man, how to be a woman, what was funny and what was horrid. The people who made them had no idea of