The Alchemist's Code

8

T he man who rose from the secretaries’ table to lead us out was the chief secretary himself, Raffaino Sciara, widely known as Circospetto. Noble politicians come and go; like the doge, citizen Sciara goes on forever and he hoards more secrets than the Vatican. He and I have tangled in the past. He has a face like a skull and a sense of humor to match, but that evening I looked forward to fireworks, for the Maestro dislikes him even more than I do.

Out in the anteroom, Bruno had been standing within a wide clearing, glowering ferociously at the door. Seeing us safe, he spread an enormous grin and swept forward like a galleon, nobility hastily clearing a path. He was not needed yet, though, because Sciara led us across to the corner screen, which conceals two doors, one leading to the jails and torture chamber, and the other to the room of the chiefs of the Ten. That was our destination and I beckoned for Bruno to follow us through.

It is a rich room, although small, but that evening it was dim and haunted by shadows, lit by only two small lamps on the grand table behind which the three chiefs sit while interrogating witnesses, and two more on the recording secretaries’ desk at the side. Beside that stood Vizio Filiberto Vasco in his red cloak, looking as if he had just been sentenced to twenty years in the galleys. For once his distress did not make me happy, because I could guess what was going to happen. He appeared to be guarding a leather satchel, and it was to the secretarial desk that Sciara went.

I helped the Maestro to a chair, Sciara took another, and I plonked myself down on the third. Vasco just stood, scowl firmly in place, arms folded. Very few chairs fit Bruno and he knelt to grin at the tiled floor, whose pattern of black and white reverses perspective while you look at it. Sciara proceeded to open the satchel.

“We refer to the unknown as Algol,” he said. “We know of his existence from reports by our own intelligence.”

“Venice’s spies in the Porte,” the Maestro said.

The Sublime Porte is the Turkish government. Algol is the name of a star, but it means The Ghoul.

“Possibly.” Sciara extracted a sheaf of papers. “These are copies-”

“I need originals,” the Maestro said.

“You can’t have them. Our agent risked his life to supply even this much.”

I saw at a glance that the text was enciphered, the letters grouped in fives.

The Maestro looked disgusted. “You expect me to decipher this for you?”

The worst thing about Circospetto is his smile. I always expect maggots to fall out of it. “When you do you may instruct us.”

The Maestro is a genius in steganography, or hidden writing, as he is in just about everything, but the Council of Ten has been renowned throughout Europe for its expertise with codes and ciphers ever since it employed the great Giovanni Soro. The Vatican itself would send Soro intercepted dispatches to be deciphered and he would send them back in plaintext-keeping a copy, of course. They say that the only time he was stumped was when Rome sent him a message in its own cipher and asked if he could read it; he sent it back, saying that he could not. It must be a terrible sin to lie to the Pope.

The Ten are reputed to keep three cryptographers toiling away somewhere in the palace behind locked doors. If they could not break Algol’s cipher, no one in Europe could.

“What language?” the Maestro demanded.

“We don’t know.”

I lost interest at that point, knowing of no way to decipher an unknown language. The Maestro did not seem deterred, though. He held a sheet closer to the lamp.

“Roman alphabet. How many letters?”

“Twenty-three.”

In Venice we mostly use the old twenty-three-letter Roman alphabet, dropping K and Y and adding V and J. Tuscan spurns J and H , but a cryptographer may double up rarely used letters or add some, at his whim.

“Not a nomenclator, then,” Nostradamus said, “unless the characters are represented by letter pairs. Have you checked couplet frequency?”

“Minor deviations,” Sciara said. “Probably just happenstance. The same with single letter frequency. It is not truly random, but certainly neither a Caesar nor a transliteration of Arabic letters into Roman.”

“Nor a transposition, then. Curious.”

It is a rare treat to watch the Maestro fencing wits on equal terms with someone. I had a fair idea of what they were gabbling about because I have to encipher and decipher much of his correspondence, but a glance at the vizio told me that he was utterly at sea. Bruno had gone to smile at the pictures.

“I put a summary of our experts’ work notes in here,” Sciara said, tapping the satchel, “to save you from wasting time attempting to decipher the code. I know it is the sort of puzzle that distracts you. Their Excellencies accept that it is unbreakable.” The skull sneered. “They hope your occult methods will identify Algol where our cryptography has failed, and this is the only lead they can offer.”

Nostradamus snorted. “But if I break the cipher, the plaintext would lead you back to Algol, almost certainly, and would also be admissible evidence. I shall do both. What else can you tell me? How long has this Algol been operating? What departments of government has he penetrated? How does he communicate with the Porte that you are able to intercept his mail?”

“Their Excellencies have not authorized me to release such information.”

“Have they asked for a zonta?”

The secretary twitched as if jabbed by a needle. “I do not discuss Their Excellencies’ deliberations!”

The Maestro smiled foxily. “And to whom do I report my findings?”

Sciara actually hesitated before replying. “If you have evidence pertaining to the safety of the Republic, report it to the chiefs of the Ten- messere Tegaliano Trevisan, Tommaso Soranzo, and Marino Venier. If you find nothing of interest, just return these papers to me. Me personally.”

“Why bother, if they contain nothing of interest? Have they been debated in the Council, lustrissimo?”

Even Vasco had caught the drift of the Maestro’s questions now and looked horrified.

Circospetto said, “I told you, Doctor, I do not discuss Their Excellencies’ discussions.”

The Maestro chuckled and handed the papers back to Sciara. “On what terms may I take these?”

“They stay in the possession of Vizio Vasco. He will watch while you study them, collect them when you are finished, also any copies or extracts you have made of them and all your work notes. When you are done, he will bring the material back to me.” The old man handed the satchel to Vasco.

“Then I shall see what I can do,” the Maestro said.

“You really expect to succeed?” Sciara said scornfully.

Nostradamus stared at him with an expression of bemused innocence. “Why not? I have already narrowed the field, haven’t I?”

I rose and went across to tap Bruno’s arm and gain his attention.

As we trooped down the great dim staircase-the link boys first, then Bruno and the Maestro, with Vasco and me in the rear-Vasco caught my arm to hold me back.

“What did Nostradamus mean by narrowing the field?” he whispered.

“It’s not too difficult to guess, Vizio. Even you-”

His nose twitched. “He thinks there’s a traitor in the Council of Ten? That’s outrageous!”

“Sciara damn near confirmed it,” I said cheerfully. “He made sure we knew the names of the chiefs! They haven’t told the whole council what evidence they have, because that would betray the Republic’s agents in Constantinople. And why not? Remember 1355?” No Venetian forgets that date, the year the doge himself, Doge Marino Falier, was beheaded for conspiring against the state. If a doge could be a traitor, anyone could. “You need me to spell it out for you?”

“Oh, please do, sier Alfeo. In large type. Very large!”

Vasco attempts wit only when he thinks he is on top and ahead, so that sarcasm should have alerted me, but I missed it.

“Well, the procedure was wrong to start with. Normally the chiefs would have summoned the Maestro and questioned him themselves, then either just authorized him to proceed on their own authority, or asked the Ten’s approval at the evening meeting. They would not drag him out before the whole council.

“This elliptical procedure suggests,” I continued, amused to hear echoes of the Maestro’s lecturing manner in my own voice, “that the chiefs are very scared indeed, and whoever else is in the know is scared also.” I meant the doge, most likely, and probably Zuanbattista Sanudo, because it must have been he who suggested bringing in Maestro Nostradamus. “The fox is so well disguised as a hound that they don’t know which one he is. The Ten’s normal reaction to a sticky problem is to ask for a zonta, right?” A zonta is an addition, usually of fifteen men, elected by the Great Council. The advantage of the Ten being thirty-two instead of just seventeen is that all the great clans can be represented. This spreads the guilt and dilutes grudges.

“Sciara did not deny that they were thinking about it,” I concluded. “No, ‘no’ means ‘yes’ in that world. Would you like the lecture on cryptography now?”

“Later,” Vasco said. “Much later. Tell me again why the Maestro was paraded before the entire Ten, if the spy may be a member?”

I used a phrase I would have to remember for my next confession. Why had I not seen that for myself?

“Blasphemy!” the vizio said smugly. “But I think you’ve got it this time.”

“And are you being sent along to guard-what?” I asked furiously.

“Maestro Nostradamus, of course.” Vasco smiled beatifically at having caught me out.

“Bait?”

“Exactly. There’s a remote chance that Algol will be superstitious enough to believe in the old fraud’s posturing. In that case he must seem to be a danger, so Algol may try to dispose of him-and then he will run into me. Missier Grande mentioned that I should keep a protective eye on you at the same time, but I’m sure he was just joking there.”