JOURNAL OF RICHARD FOX
November 22, 1937
Tokat, Turkey
Returned from the cave empty-handed. The expedition was a failure. Now we’re back at our hotel, which is barely better than sleeping in tents, as there is currently no running water here: the hotel’s water main is being repaired. After a yelling match with the hotel manager, I left to meet with someone whom I wished I’d talked to before we went up the mountain. Would have saved me blood, sweat, and tears.
Vlad’s Turkish enemies didn’t behead him in Wallachia and take his legendary war ring across the Black Sea. It’s not here. A retired Muslim cleric showed me a lockbox that had been taken from Topkapi Palace thirty years ago. Inside was a letter to the Ottoman sultan, dated 1891. It was written by a Romanian boyar, confirming receipt of a package that was sent from Turkey to Romania. And it was damn enlightening....
Seems to me that there are three rings. Two fakes, one real.
I can’t be sure, but I think the actual ring was duplicated in Turkey. Two reproductions were sent back to Romania along with the real ring, and all were distributed to three historic families there for safekeeping. (“The power is in one” is what was written in the boyar’s letter, which I assume to be a reference to the war ring’s supposed esoteric power or curse.)
Regardless, I think two duplicates were made toconfuse anyone who’d come looking for the real war ring. So maybe Rothwild was right: perhaps the ring in his possession is one of the reproductions.
That leaves two more—one real, one not. I need to retrace my steps back to my summer trip in Romania. Must talk to: XTTNMVGAFWVLWJQUIKLWLAUCJ. One of these three has the true ring, I’m certain.
The boyar’s letter mentions what I believe to be a gruesome way to authenticate the ring, though I can scarcely believe it. No doubt Theo will say “I told you so!” and God knows I hate it when she’s right. She gets this look in her eye exactly like Elena used to.
This wasdefinitelymore enlightening. I eagerly skimmed over the words again, absorbing them like sunlight, and asked Huck, “What did he mean when he said here that I was right? Why would I say ‘I told you so’? I’ve never given him advice about this ring. What is he talking about?”
“Beats me,” Huck said. “What about this gobbledygook here? And here? This is the cipher part?”
“Yes. Looks like he’s trying to hide someone’s identity—whoever showed him the boyar’s letter in the lockbox, and then three people who may have the ring?”
“Can you decipher it?”
“Probably.” I’d just need some time to study the patterns. Was it a Caesar cipher? That would be too easy. “Oh! I bet it’s a Vigenére cipher. It’s harder to crack. It’s encoded with a passphrase—a random word that would determine how each letter of the message would be encrypted.”
“How do you figure out the passphrase?”
“You normally wouldn’t. That’s the point. The person who encoded the message—in this case my father—would pick the passphrase and write the encoded message using it. He’d only share the passphrase with the message’s recipient. You can’t decode the message without it.”
“Unless you could guess it?”
“Unless you could guess it,” I confirmed.
“Well, count me out. Right now I’m so knackered, I couldn’t guess how many feet I have.” Huck settled back against the berth’s pillow and rubbed a hand over his face. “I barely slept last night, and I drove all day, and now I need to sleep.”
Not me. I was too wired to sleep. I stared at the open journal on my lap, mind spinning on both the words I could read and the ones that were encoded. How would I figure out Father’s cipher passphrase? And who was the Dragon? And what did he learn in that second meeting that prompted him to leave and direct Huck to come fetch me in Istanbul? Whatever my father had gotten himself involved in, it must be bad.
But I did know several things: (a) that ring was more than just a piece of history, (b) someone besides this Mr. Rothwild fellow who’d hired Father to find the ring was interested in it—enough to send goons after us—and (c) Father’s final journal entry was addressed to me, which meant he intended for me to read it.
And I would.
“Look,” Huck said, stretching his neck from side to side. “There’s no need to get worked up about cracking his code. We’re going to meet Fox in Bucharest, just like his letter said. We’ll be there tomorrow night. All we have to do is sit back, enjoy the first-class service, and have a little faith, and everything will be fine.”
“That’s nearly word for word what Father said when he dumped me at the Pera Palace Hotel and ran off to Tokat to meet up with you in secret. And look how that turned out.”
Huck frowned at me. “You’re going to stay up all night and decode his journal, aren’t you?”
How could I not? This was my chance to do something besides sitting around hotel rooms for days at a time. “I’ll require the bottom berth to work,” I said. “The lamplight down here is brighter.”
Huck sighed dramatically, pushed out of the berth, and headed across the compartment, mumbling something about finding our car’s restroom.
“If you want to help,” I called out, eyes on the journal pages, “ring that Rex fellow and order a pot of tea.”
“What if I don’t want to help? What if I just want to brush my teeth and go to sleep?”
