Free The Lost Treasure of the Templars by James Becker Page B

you’ve just told me about, by the way. But no, that wasn’t why I was calling you. Have you checked your e-mail this evening?”
    There was another short pause before Robin replied, a faint hint of suspicion in her voice, “Not for an hour or so, no. Should I have done, Mr. Mallory?”
    â€œPlease, call me David. It’s just that I think I’ve solved your little puzzle, the one you sent me in your e-mail, and I’ve sent you an e-mail in reply. But I thought I’d call as well, just to tell you I’d cracked it.”
    â€œYou have? That’s brilliant, Mr.—er—David. You solved it?”
    â€œWell, I think I have. You only listed six words, and I have made sense of those.”
    â€œIt was obviously a cipher of some sort,” Robin said. “I got that far myself. What was it?”
    â€œAtbash,” Mallory said. “With—”
    â€œNo, you’re wrong. I tried Atbash and it doesn’t work.”
    â€œIt does,” Mallory insisted, “but what I was going to add is that you need to apply a shift. With regular Atbash, you just write the alphabet backward under the normal alphabet, so
A
becomes
Z
and so on. Whoever encoded those six words applied an extra wrinkle that I’ve never seen on an Atbash cipher before, though I have heard of it being done. They started the reversed alphabet under the letter
P
, so that became
A
in the Atbash cipher, and
O
became
B
, finishing up with
Q
enciphered as
Z
. It’s basically a left shift of eleven places.”
    â€œYou know about ciphers?” Robin asked, sounding clearly interested. “You’re not a spy or anything, are you?”
    Mallory laughed. “No, much more mundane than that, I’m afraid. I work with computers for a living, but I’ve always been really interested in encryption systems, and the good old Atbash is pretty much the earliest we know of. I’ve got a marker out with you for any books you get about ciphers.”
    â€œI know,” Robin said. “That was why I sent you that message, because you were the only person I’ve ever had any contact with who seemed interested in the subject. Where are you, apart from standing by the phone, I mean?” she added, after a couple of seconds. “Which part of the country?”
    â€œWay out in the wilds,” Mallory replied. “I work in Helston in Cornwall, and I live just outside the town. And you’re somewhere in Devon, aren’t you?”
    â€œYes, not quite as far out as you. I’m in Dartmouth, down on the south coast.” She paused for a moment, ideas spinning through her brain. “Look,” she went on, making a suggestion she hoped she wouldn’t regret, “I’ve got a bit of a mystery on my hands, and I think I’m going to need some help in solving it. And what I particularlythink I need is somebody who understands codes and ciphers. I’d be happy to pay you for your time. If you have the time, that is.”
    â€œWhat kind of mystery?” Mallory asked.
    â€œI’d rather show you than tell you. But, briefly, the most bizarre box I have ever seen has come into my possession, and there’s a piece of parchment inside it that those six words came from. From the sound of it, you’d be able to decipher it fairly quickly, but it might take me days, if I managed it at all.”
    It was Thursday evening, and Mallory had nothing scheduled for the next day or the weekend that would follow it. He’d vaguely planned on driving up to Leicestershire to follow up a couple of leads about his ancestry in that area, but that was all. But trying to solve what might be some sort of medieval mystery was a far more enticing prospect, especially if he could charge for his time.
    Estimating the age of a woman from her voice alone was almost impossible, and he guessed that Robin Jessop was most probably a lady in late middle age, simply on the basis of