Kate was staring at the pages of symbols and equations, trying in vain to work it out. To find anything even vaguely comprehensible.
Lou’s computer buzzed — a Skype video call. He swivelled in his chair and scooted it across the floor, stopping at his terminal and tapping his keyboard. ‘Jerry… What’s happenin’?’ he said.
‘Anything interesting?’ Derham asked.
‘Impossible to tell yet,’ Lou replied. ‘We were just looking at some papers from the briefcase inside the box we found — a collection of pages of formulae and a single sheet of fragile notepaper. We copied them in the inert gas chamber. The math in the formulae is indecipherable.’
‘And the single sheet?’ Derham leaned back in his chair and ran a big hand over his crew cut.
‘Some sort of brief encrypted message or statement by the look of it. Hard to tell and impossible to translate without careful analysis from an expert.’
‘OK, look, you’d better get over here. I have some people who can get on to it. Coffees are on me.’ Derham clicked off.
They met up in the captain’s office at the naval base ten miles north of the lab. They had been given security clearance and passes as soon as they had returned from the Exclusion Zone the day before. Derham stared at the collection of papers as Kate and Lou pulled chairs up to the far side of his desk. He had a surprisingly small office — racks of shelves along one wall; a large painting of the USS Minerva, an aircraft carrier he had served on, dominating a wall at a right angle to the shelves. Behind him, a window opened out to a view of the naval yard, cranes and gunmetal hulls in the distance.
He punched a button on his phone. It rang and a man answered. They heard him over the speaker. The guy sounded very young.
‘Kevin. Got a job for you,’ Derham said. ‘Can you drop by?’
‘Sure.’
The office door opened and the captain’s secretary came in with two mugs of coffee.
‘I did promise,’ Derham said without looking up from the papers. ‘Kevin Grant’s one of our boffins. Works a few doors down.’ He nodded towards the corridor. ‘Encryption specialist. Away with the fairies most of the time, but a genius when it comes to encryption.’
There was a tap at the door and a young man appeared around the edge. He had cropped hair, big brown eyes, a large nose and acne. He looked like he was barely out of his teens.
Lou took a gulp of coffee, stood and offered the kid his chair.
‘It’s cool,’ Kevin Grant said.
‘Kevin. What do you make of this?’ Derham handed him the single sheet from EF’s box. ‘By the way, this is Dr Kate Wetherall and Dr Lou Bates.’
Grant gave them a brief nod, barely lifting his eyes from the paper. Kate and Lou watched as he scanned the encoded message.
‘Clever shit,’ he muttered.
‘Sure you don’t want to sit down?’ Lou asked.
‘Yeah, actually I will,’ Kevin Grant said and lowered himself into the seat as Lou stood to one side cradling his coffee.
‘It’s a short message,’ Derham commented. ‘Should that make it easier?’
‘The opposite, actually,’ Grant replied, barely paying the commander any attention. ‘The shorter the message, the less I have to go on to find the key. And…’
‘And?’
‘The dude who put this little baby together created such a convoluted key. It’s…’
‘You can crack it, though, right?’ Kate commented.
Grant looked at her as though she were mad. ‘Of course I can crack it. Might just take a bit of time, is all.’
‘I can keep this, yeah?’ Grant asked Derham.
The captain nodded. ‘But don’t flash it around.’
‘What? You reckon anyone one else will be able to decipher this? No friggin’ chance… sir.’
‘Confident guy,’ Lou said, returning to his seat as the kid left.
‘Has every reason to be. If anyone can make sense of any code known to man, he’s the one to do it. Never seen him beat yet.’
‘OK,’ Kate said. ‘So the rest of the papers?’
‘That takes a different set of skills. Come with me.’
Professor Max Newman, the chief scientist at the naval station, worked in a state-of-the-art facility that was all pristine metal benches and halogen lighting. Rows of slender plastic machines lined one wall, their function a mystery to all but the initiated; flat screens displayed dancing numbers and geometric shapes.
The lab was empty and Newman evidently about to leave. He was clasping shut his briefcase as Jerry Derham tapped on the door.
‘Got a moment, professor?’ Derham asked.
‘I was about to head off, actually,’ Newman replied.
He was a tall, slender man. Bald, his forehead deeply lined, he possessed an air of carefully nurtured self-containment. He headed up his department efficiently but, according to reports, clinically. He could not claim to have any friends here at the base or indeed elsewhere. He looked tired and self-absorbed.
‘Just wanted a quick word. Can you spare five minutes?’
Newman checked his watch and nodded. ‘Sure.’
Derham introduced Lou and Kate.
‘Ah, yes, working on the Titanic material. Pleased to meet you.’ He shook their hands. ‘Too cramped in here. Let’s go outside.’ He led the way to a bench and they drew up stools.
‘We’ve got some papers we’d like you to take a look at,’ Derham began.
‘From the Titanic, I assume?’
The captain laid out the collection of photocopies on the shiny metal surface of the bench. Newman pulled on a pair of glasses and picked up the top few sheets. It was quiet in the room, nothing more than a low hum from the machines and computers close by. From beyond the lab they could just discern voices, shoes on concrete floors, a lift door swishing open, then closing.
‘It’s a complete mess,’ Newman said after a moment, picking up a second set of sheets. He scanned them then laid them back down and started to mumble to himself as he repeated the process with the rest. Finally, he tossed the last page on the bench, pulled off his glasses and looked up. ‘Utter nonsense… Means nothing.’
‘What!’ Kate exclaimed and turned to Lou.
‘These were taken from the wreck?’ Newman asked, as though Kate had not spoken.
‘Yes, but the details are classified at the moment, professor,’ Derham replied.
Newman sniffed. ‘Well, God knows why, it’s a crock. Written by a lunatic or a child, I’d guess!’
‘All of it?’ Lou asked, studying Newman’s face.
Newman put his glasses back on. ‘Well, the math itself is standard — most of it. This section —’ and Newman indicated the first three pages ‘— is a set of equations describing radioactive decay. Nothing odd about that. But here —’ and he tapped a fingertip on one of the sheets ‘— it goes off at a ridiculous tangent.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘To be honest, I’m not sure. As I said, a lot of it is nonsense.’
‘Explain,’ Derham said.
Newman shrugged. ‘Whoever wrote this knew some physics, but they… well, they seem to have had something of an overactive imagination. They make ridiculous, nonsensical leaps from a simple, acceptable premise… like here.’ Newman pointed to the top page again. ‘Straightforward, undergraduate math… until bang!’ He pulled up the third page and then the fourth. ‘Take this —’ he nodded to a photocopy of densely packed formulae ‘— might as well be Venusian!’
‘Does it pick up?’ Kate asked, eyeing the scientist suspiciously.
Newman moved some of the papers to one side and clutched up a handful of the remainder. He glanced through them, adding page after page to a growing pile on the bench. Pausing, he considered one sheet. ‘Here, he’s gone back to some form of simple logic,’ Newman commented. ‘But then, Good Lord! Here… he’s off again. Look at this… it’s nuts!’