NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right.
Steve Strether opens his old scratched Dutch Masters cigar box. The same one from which he offered me a cigar when we first met, on the way to Artie Bliemisch’s studio. The reproduction of Rembrandt’s Syndics of the Drapers’ Guild (De Staalmeesters), is so warn the figures are little more than blurred silhouettes. He pulls out several pieces of folded tracing paper.
“Don’t ask where I got these.”
He unfolds the biggest on the coffee table. They look like original drawings.
“Quite an interesting design Steve.”
“Yes, more interesting than I would have thought, too.”
“Are you and bel planning a project?”
“No, these sketches were drawn for Armond Macadamia.”
“Skillful handwork too, no CAD!”
“No, he wouldn’t want this stuff digitized. Too easy to lose control of the data.”
“Well, money is no object to Mac.”
“Yes, and here we see the concept for his patio.”
We look at a mandala combining triangles within circles designed as a mosaic. The title, “Evening Vista” underlined, is written in a beautiful copperplate script.
“Didn’t that mandala give him mystical insights into the stock market?”
“Yup, I heard that too. Had to chuckle.”
“They are a symbol of deeper connection with the self and the universe at large.”
“Is Mac. a Hindu mystic?”
“Doubt it. Carl Jung saw them as representing the self, or ‘total personality.’”
“Yes, bel knows about that stuff. She sees them as representing the relationships between center and periphery, or ‘me’ and the ‘cosmos’. You better ask her.”
“No one was allowed to photograph it you know.”
“Yeah, anyway, I stopped chuckling when I learned how much Mac was worth.”
“So, what do you think?”
“Remember back in the Spring of 2015, a drone lodged in that big willow oak by Mac’s property?
“Right! I heard it was taking pictures of his secret patio!”
“That’s it, and the patio was covered in years of unraked leaves.”
“Is what they got pictures of?”
“I don’t know. Never saw them, if any were taken.”
“No, now I think of it, didn’t that drone belong to Tron Plank?”
“It did. He made a real nuisance of himself with that thing until a gust of wind blew it into the tree.”
Lou smooths out folds in the second sheet and puts the other two sheets aside.
“Now look at that, the shape and location of every stone is carefully drawn to scale.”
“Pretty complicated, almost as if it is coded, see the red, blue and black lines”
“Yes, the word is now, that this design shows where Mac hid the millions he brought back from Chile after Allende was toppled.”
“Buried treasure Lou!”
“Not quite that romantic.”
“So, maybe it is just a patio design?”
“Maybe, maybe not, you see Fred, I think it may contain enciphered information.”
“About what?”
“That’s where the treasure comes in. It may hold the numbers of his various overseas bank accounts and possibly the bank’s names and locations as well.”
“Tax avoidance and all that.”
“Yes, all that and money laundering too. Fred, so long as he remembers the key, his info is safely preserved on the ground of his unkept back yard.”
“Can’t be hacked!”
“Not by electronic means.”
“This will take some work!”
“Want to try and decipher it?”
“Steve, I am no hacker of any kind.”
“Oh, I don’t expect you to figure it all out. Besides, there is no money in it, not for us at least.”
“A little interesting history perhaps?”
“Maybe, with help.”
“Well, what else can you tell me about these things?”
“Mossack Fonseca.”
“Who?’
Steve says nothing.
“Sounds familiar. Wait a minute, that’s the Panamanian bank that got hacked or leaked or something.”
“Reportedly, 11.5 million encrypted confidential documents came from them. The company is now closed, mind you.
“Yep, an old friend from our days in Bonn, associated with Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), told me Mac’s companies were named in that document dump, in April 2016.”
“Okay, so here you have more of the story.”
The doorbell rings and startles Josephine. She comes out from under the couch in a furry gray hurry, down the hall to the bedrooms. Steve gets up at the same time and greets some-one at the door in German. He then introduces Professor Joy Von Luck. Steve pulls up a chair and gestures to Joy who sits on the couch behind the coffee table. Joy’s thick black hair is cut short and combed back in choppy waves.
“Okay Steve, this must be the stuff you were talking about.”
She pulls her phone out a pocket in her high collared white shirt and puts it on the table by the cigar box. Unbuttons her deep brown suede waistcoat and leans forward over the papers. Her American English is faultless.
“Three sheets, that’s all, right?”
“That’s it, Joy. You’re a mathematician. Do you think you can crack it?”
“Not right now Steve. There is a lot going on, here.”
She studies the geometric patterns within the circular form.
“Cobblestones may be indicated here and pavers and here. Yes, and these round shapes might be river stones.”
“Take a look at the other papers.”
She unfolds a smaller sheet.
“Oh look! It’s Stonehenge! These are showing projected shadows.”
“That’s it Joy, some of these stones stand up.”
“Seems rather hazardous for a patio!”
“Fred, this thing is only pretending to be a patio!”
“Also, this doesn’t represent the sun’s shadows. No, these are cast by lights at positions designated by these little sunflower symbols.”
“Besides Joy, the patio is way too shady to catch the sun’s shadows.”
“How long ago was it built?”
“I don’t remember, do you, Fred?”
“No, was I living here then?”
“Hard to say if the trees have grown enough to shade it since whenever it was.
Steve spreads out the third sheet with a matrix full of numbers and letters ruled into the circle and hands it to Joy.
“Okay, so does this fit over the design and tell us something?”
“Looks like that is the idea behind using tracing paper.”
Joy places the matrix over the mandala design.
We all look at it for a while. Steve offers us coffee and bel comes in holding the cat.
“Riot, just zoomed out of here, honey.”
“Her name is, Josephine, dear.”
“That’s your Napoleonic name. I call her Riot. Look at those torn ears!”
“No wonder she runs away if you call her Riot!”
“She was wet and wild when she arrived, remember?”
“Steve, ‘any port in a storm’ when you are about to give birth.”
“We have been her safe harbor, too.”
“Steve and I have been trying to solve that thing all week. Have you all figured it out yet?”
Joy picks up her phone and turns it off.
“Hi bel, not even close.”
“What about those squares off to the side?”
Bel points one out.
“Yes, you mean this for instance. Look it says, 500W. Could be positions for lights.”
You know Steve, I think this puzzle is visual rather than mathematical.”
“Okay, so what do you make of the sunflower symbols then?”
Bel steps closer and bends over the table to see, still holding Josephine close facing back with two paws on her shoulder, whiskers at her ear.
“Those flowers represent what-ever it is, which casts the shadow.”
“They look like an afterthought. Drawn with a ballpoint. Maybe the trees did grow over it.
Joy traces a line between the post hole symbol outside the circle of the matrix and the sunflower symbol.
“The cast shadow is what reveals the data written in the stones!”
“Did someone say coffee, just now, Steve?”
“I did honey.”
He gets up and heads for the kitchen without turning around to get an answer.
“Everybody want some?”
Josephine-Riot, wriggles free of bel’s hold and jumps off her back into an armchair and then with forepaws on the chair-back, gains the top and leaps off into the darkness of the floor behind.
“The patio is gone. Dug up and now there’s a swimming pool there.”
“There is no way to try this out.”
Joy picks up the third sheet of paper and places it over the first two. Shadow projections are outlined by triangles with an apex at the light source and spreading across the matrix to represent a cone of light.
“Let’s see what this, reveals.”
The shadow covers a group of letters and numbers.
“Okay, so what does that mean?”
“Looks like a jumble to me, Fred.”
Steve walks in mugs of coffee, handles gripped in his curled fingers.
“Okay, that jumble is where we have to break the cipher!”
Joy is writing out sequences of numbers and letters within the shadow.
“Do we read it along the length of the triangle or across the width?”
“Well, the first thing I see, starting at the apex is, 7 then r and n and…”
“Steve, where did you get these, anyway?”
Steve pauses looking into the air in front of him.
“They were included in a packet I got from Ernie Manstein, a while back.
I’ll deny ever saying that if you quote me.”
“Ernie, wasn’t he with Booz Allen? That explains a lot!”
“Oh, was he Joy?”
“Well, maybe not Steve. I don’t know him, but he gave a lecture at PU years ago, and that’s what I heard at the time.”
“Did you go?”
“No, no, no, invitation only.”
“So, I would imagine.”
“I have an Ap that might help.
Joy clicks her phone on and taps some numbers and letters into it. Then more and takes a swig of coffee.
“I got, ‘Deutsche Bank AG’. This shouldn’t be too difficult.”
“What Ap is that?”
“A few algorithms I cooked up for another project.”
“You think Mac had the same thing?”
“I don’t know. There is probably a simpler way to do this once you fully understand it.
