What if she looked at it like a simple alphabet code, with one letter off? B-O-E-J would be A-N-D-I, then F-H-S-V would be E-G-R-U, and Q-Q-F-X would be P-P-E-W. ANDIEGRUPPEW.
She dropped her head into her hand, frustrated, then all at once, something shifted in her brain, as if she’d flicked on a lamp. Just as the letters emerged from sounds, now they floated before her eyes, switching positions and spelling out a message she saw clear as day. That’s when she understood why she hadn’t spotted the answer before: the message was in German.
It was so simple. How had she missed that?
A-N D-I-E G-R-U-P-P-E. The W had to have been added to throw her off. A-N D-I-E G-R-U-P-P-E:To the Group. A salutation. To whom?
Now that she saw it, she could see there was so much more. Her pulse sped up as she turned to solving the lines and lines of letters that followed. The next group of letters was much longer, and at first they meant nothing to her, so she slowed her thinking.
J-D-H-M D-A-D-R…
Sticking to that simple code, the six rows of four letters spelled outKeine besondere Ereignisse.No special events.
“Ha!”
“Shh!” came the response from all around the room.
Flushed, Dot set her headphones on the table and put up her hand. Chief Wren Stevens approached, speaking quietly as to not disturb the others. “Yes?”
Dot tapped her finger on the long string of letters she’d just written. “This is a German transmission,” she whispered. “And it’s a common one. I’ve seen it before.”
One corner of Chief Wren Stevens’s mouth curled up, but her tone was serious. “I thought you understood welistenhere, we do not decipher.”
“Yes, ma’am, but I had time, and I’ve been very curious.”
“Let’s take a look.” She gestured for Dot to follow her back to her desk. “We purposefully did not mention that the transmissions were in a different language. Tell me the steps you took to find this.”
“Well, it’s obviously a cipher, and I love ciphers. I’ve loved puzzles all my life. Crosswords, mysteries, I love it all. My father was my greatest influence. Every Saturday morning he and I—Oh, that’s for another time.” She knew she was speaking quickly, but the Chief Wren did not slow her down. It was as if she understood that Dot saw things better at that pace. “I feel a little foolish for not recognizing this one until now because it’s a rudimentary cipher, but I overlooked the fact that it might be in German. Such a silly mistake, considering the war and all.”
Dot wrote out the first series then rewrote them one letter earlier. “B is A, C is B, D is C, and so on.” She drew lines from the first group of letters she had printed, putting them in the order she now understood. “You see? Once I figured that out, I translated in German. This short series saysAn die Gruppe, which translates simply as ‘To the group,’ a common opening to a message.”
She sensed the chief Wren leaning over her, but she couldn’t break her trance to check if the woman approved or not.
“I tried to see the rest of the message the same way as I had the beginning, but it didn’t work. The letters obviously had to mean something universal, otherwise why connect them to a group message? That stumped me briefly, but I’m not one to quit mid-puzzle. Just ask my family. I tried the one-off code again first, and it still worked. It had to, considering there were eight Ds in there. An obvious key. To me, thosehadto be Es. After that, all I had to do was rearrange. I moved this to there, and this…”
When she was done explaining, she sat back, triumphant. “You see? It’s not a very interesting message, but it does work.Keine besondere Ereignisse.That translates to ‘no special events, or ‘nothing to report.’ Now that I recognize it for what it is, I know I have seen it used before.”
Chief Wren Stevens nodded noncommittally, a beat of judgementthat, in the past, would have sent Dot down terrifying spirals of anxiety, but not this time. She knew she was right.
“Excellent work,” the Chief Wren said softly. “Very, very well done. From a listener to a codebreaker with no training. I’m interested to learn how the initial idea for using German came to you. How did you figure that out?”
Seeing a message appear amidst a scramble of letters, well, it wasn’t that different from some of the puzzles Dot had played with growing up. Just another anagram that basically showed itself to her. She’d never thought abouthowshe did it.
“I don’t really know. I just saw it.”
Alice must have been listening, because later that evening she sat beside Dot at supper with a pencil and paper. “Show me how to see what you see. I want to do more than listen.”
“I’m not sure I can,” Dot replied.
“I will try to keep up. Say it like you’re explaining it to yourself, only do it out loud.”
Dot stared at the blank page, wondering where to start. Then she wrote down the message she had told her instructor about, seeing it again in memory.
“A code is essentially a form of substitution,” she told Alice. “If you can figure out the key, you can work backward from there. The key is the trick. Sometimes we know what it is, but often not. Also, I discovered today, and I really should have realized it all along—”
Alice held up her hand, her brow twisted. “Slow down, Dot. No one talks as fast as you once you get going, you know that?”
“I’m sorry. My family tells me that all the time.” She inhaled, slowing herself. “I discovered today that I needed to think in German, not just English.”
