Simple Genius (38 page)

IT WAS A CHILLY DAY in early November when Sean drove Michelle to Horatio’s office.

“I don’t want to do this, Sean. I really don’t.”

“Hey,
you
came back from Camp Peary alive. And if I know one thing about you, you never go back on a deal.”

“Thanks for your support,” Michelle said bitterly.

Horatio was waiting for them.

Sean started to leave but Michelle gripped his hand. “Please stay with me.”

Sean looked at Horatio. “That’s not a good idea,” the psychologist said.

“But I want him to.”

“You’re just going to have to trust me on that, Michelle. Sean can’t stay.”

After Sean left the room it didn’t take long to perform the hypnosis.

Horatio spent a few minutes getting Michelle back to the age of six. And he took another few minutes placing her in that night in Tennessee when her life had changed forever.

Michelle’s eyes were open, even though her conscious mind was no longer in charge. Horatio watched with great professional interest and also with growing pain as she recounted what had happened. Sometimes she talked as a child and other times with the reflection and vocabulary of an adult whose subconscious mind had grappled with that night and tried mightily to make sense of it.

The man in uniform had come that night. Michelle didn’t remember seeing him before. She must have always been asleep when he came. But that night her mom was very nervous and kept Michelle with her. Her mother told the man she didn’t want to see him; that he had to leave. He thought she was joking at first, and when it was apparent that she wasn’t he turned angry. He started taking off his clothes. When he reached for Michelle’s mother, she told Michelle to run. The man started pulling her mom’s clothes off. Her mom was trying to stop him but he was too strong. He was forcing her down on the floor.

It had taken Michelle only a second to reach it. She had sometimes held her father’s gun when it was unloaded of course. She pulled the soldier’s gun from the holster he had thrown on the sofa with his other clothes. She had pointed it at his back and fired one time. A big red mark appeared on the man’s back, dead center. He had died quietly, slumping over on top of Michelle’s mother. The woman was so shocked she’d fainted.

“I killed him. I killed a man.” Tears came down Michelle’s face as she spoke about this long-buried event in her life.

She had been standing there with the pistol in her hand when the door had opened and her father came in. Michelle didn’t know why he had come home early but he had. He saw what had happened, took the gun from Michelle and pulled the man’s body off his wife. He tried to revive her, but she was still unconscious. He carried her up to bed, ran back down and took Michelle by the hand, whispering gently to her.

“He took my hand,” Michelle said in a small voice. “He said he had to go away for a while, but he would be back. I started screaming, screaming for him to not leave me. I grabbed his leg, I wouldn’t let go. I wouldn’t. Then he said he was going to take me with him. That we were going for a ride. He put me in the front seat of his car. Then he went back inside and carried the man out and put him on the floor in the back.”

“Why not the trunk?”
Horatio said.

“It was full of junk,” Michelle immediately answered. “So, Daddy put the man in the back. I saw his face. His eyes were still open. He was dead. I knew he was dead because I shot him. I know what happens when you get shot. You die. You always die.”

“What did your daddy do next?” Horatio asked quietly.

“He put newspaper over the man. And an old coat and some boxes, whatever he could find. But I could still see the man’s eyes looking at me. I started crying and told Daddy. Daddy, I can still see the man’s eyes, he’s looking at me. Make him stop looking at me.”

“And what did your daddy do?”

“He put more stuff on him. More stuff until I couldn’t see him anymore. No more eyes staring at me.”

“And your daddy drove somewhere?”

“Up in the mountains.
He parked the car and went away for a bit. But he promised me he’d be back. And he did. He came back.”

“Without the man?”

Michelle’s breath caught in her throat and then she sobbed, “He took the man away. But I couldn’t look down at the floor.
Because he might be there.
He might be there looking at me.” She bent over in her anguish.

“Take a rest, Michelle,” Horatio instructed. “Rest for a few moments, it’s all right. None of this can hurt you. The man is not coming back. You can’t see him anymore.”

She straightened up and finally the cries stopped.

Horatio said, “Are you ready to continue?”

Composed, she nodded and said, “And then we drove home to Mom. My daddy drove me home.”

“Was she awake then?”

Michelle nodded. “She was crying. She and Daddy talked. Daddy was mad.
Madder than ever.
They didn’t think that I could hear, but I could. Then Daddy came and talked to me. He said he and Mom loved me. He said everything that had happened was a bad dream. A nightmare, he said. He told me to forget it.
Never to talk about it.”
She started crying again. “And I never did. I promise, Daddy, I never did tell anybody. I swear.” She sobbed heavily. “I killed him. I killed that man.”

“Take another rest, Michelle,” Horatio said quickly and she sat back in her chair with the tears dampening her face.

Horatio knew that what was destroying Michelle was keeping this all inside. It was like a wound that had never been cleaned; the infection just built until it became lethal. She’d carried the knowledge of her mother’s adultery and her father’s covering up a death with her all this time. And yet Horatio knew that paled in comparison with the guilt she must feel for killing another human being.

He recalled something she had blurted out when he had been at Babbage Town; that maybe her problem stemmed from her brutally murdering someone when she was six. Horatio had thought she was being a smart-ass, but her subconscious had been talking to him. He’d just been too slow to see it.

Horatio didn’t believe that Michelle saw the face staring at her from the floor of her truck or bedroom. He didn’t believe she
saw
anything. It was more likely that she sensed something terrible, but didn’t know what. Her reaction had been to cover it up, physically doing what she was also psychologically attempting.

Horatio waited a few more seconds and then said, “Okay, Michelle, can you tell me about the rose hedge?”

“Daddy cut it down one night. I saw him from my window.”

Horatio sat back and recalled that Frank Maxwell had planted that hedge as an anniversary present for his wife. Apparently, the Maxwells had gotten through this nightmare by simply burying it. And yet somewhere out there a family had been wondering for nearly thirty years what had happened to the dead man. And all these years his bones had been lying somewhere up in the Tennessee hills. One day, the Maxwells would have to face what they’d done, at least in the complicated chambers of their own minds if not a court of law. He looked back at Michelle. “You just rest now.
Just rest.”

He left the room and spoke with Sean, but didn’t tell him anything of what Michelle had revealed. “And I can’t tell her either,” he informed Sean.

“So what good has it done?”

“By her subconscious revealing what it has, it may relieve pressure on her conscious being. And I can tailor treatment that will more likely help her than not. In fact with another hypnosis session I can plant certain suggestions in her subconscious that may take care of the problem entirely.”

“Why not do it now?”

“Doing it now could put a strain on her subconscious that might prove harmful.”

“What can I do?”

“You can be more understanding of her little quirks. That would be a start.”

Horatio returned to his office and slowly brought Michelle out of the trance.

“Well, what did I say?” she said anxiously.

Horatio said, “You know, I think we’ve made real progress today.”

Michelle snapped, “You’re not going to tell me, are you, you little shit!”

“Now there’s the Michelle I’ve come to love and fear.”

After leaving Horatio, Michelle said to Sean, “Are you or are you not going to tell me?”

“I can’t because he didn’t tell me either.”

“Come on, do you really expect me to believe that?”

“It’s the truth.”

“Can’t you tell me anything?”

“Yes. I will never kid you about being a slob again.”

“That’s it? I pour my soul out for
that.
”

“It’s the best I can do.”

“I can’t believe this.”

He put his arm around her. “All right, I
can
tell you something else. But I need to give you something first.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out the emerald he’d taken from Lord Dunmore’s house. He’d had it mounted on a necklace for her.

When Michelle’s eyes widened at the sight of it he said awkwardly, “Uh, it didn’t seem right that you walked away with nothing from the treasure.” He helped her put it on.

“Sean, it’s beautiful. But what did you want to tell me?”

“It’s a request actually,” he said nervously.

“What is it?” she asked cautiously, her gaze locked on his face.

He paused, took her by the hand and said, “Don’t ever leave me, Michelle.”

The End

AUTHOR’S NOTE

WARNING: DO NOT READ THIS BEFORE YOU READ THE NOVEL
.

Dear Readers,

Babbage Town is completely fictitious but was inspired in part by Bletchley Park outside London where German military codes were broken by the Allies during the Second Word War. I have fudged certain geographic details and other facts where Babbage Town is set, created places out of thin air, totally fabricated a history for that area of Virginia, complete with abandoned mansions, and generally run amuck in a literary sense. However, readers knowledgeable about Virginia history will recognize in the story the influences of some of the “real” Tidewater estates along the James River (as opposed to the York River) of historical significance, such as West-over, Carter’s Grove, and Shirley Plantation. Fortunately, this triumvirate of Virginia estates has
not
fallen into ruin.

That said, “
making
it up” and distorting the facts are legitimate tools of the novelist, so please disincline from writing to me to point out various factual and historical gaffes. I am not only aware of
them,
I tend to revel in them.

Now, the material concerning quantum computers is all true, or at least as true as a layperson such as yours truly can understand these baffling concepts and then communicate them to the reader in a narrative form that will not put one to sleep. There really are colleges, companies and countries in a race to get there first. And if someone does the world
will
change forever. To what degree and whether for the positive or negative depends, I guess, on who wins that race. One book that I found helpful in writing about quantum physics was
A Shortcut
Through
Time,
by George Johnson.

Since secret codes and the history of certain real-life cryptanalysts are tangentially explored in the book, I took inspiration from that field to create some of the character names. Here’s the list:

1. Champ Pollion was derived from Jean-Francois Champollion, a brilliant French linguist, who was instrumental in the decipherment of the cartouches of Ptolemaios and Cleopatra. His work also enabled scholars to read the history of the pharaohs as set down by their scribes.

2. Michael Ventris was the name of the man who discovered that the so-called Linear B tablets unearthed on the island of Crete were written in Greek.

3. Alicia Chadwick’s surname came from John Chadwick whose extensive knowledge of archaic Greek was instrumental as he and Ventris went on to decipher the Linear B tablets. As an interesting side note their findings were made public around the same time that Mt. Everest was first conquered, prompting their discovery to be labeled the “Everest of Greek Archaeology.”

4. Ian Whitfield’s surname came from Whitfield Diffie, who came up with a groundbreaking new type of cipher that used an
asymmetric
key, instead of a symmetric key. Symmetric merely means that the way one unscrambles the cipher is the same way one scrambles it.

5. Merkle Hayes’s first name came from Ralph Merkle, who worked with Diffie and Stanford professor Martin Hellman on their world-changing work in conceptualizing public cryptography in a way that finally solved the key distribution problem.

6. Len Rivest’s last name came from Ron
R
ivest, who teamed with Adi
S
hamir and Leonard
A
delman to create RSA, the system of asymmetric public key cryptography that is dominant in the world today.

7. Monk Turing’s last name came from, of course, Alan Turing, whose actual history is set forth in the book. Charles Babbage and Blaise de Vigenère were real people as well, whose discoveries are also chronicled in the novel.

8. The inspiration for Valerie Messaline’s surname (with a slightly different spelling) didn’t come from the world of cryptanalysts. However, students of history may spot the significance. One clue: Unlike RSA, which is brilliantly asymmetrical, Valerie’s name and character are beautifully symmetrical.

So as they say, what’s in a name? Well, with
Simple Genius,
a lot!

The history of Camp Peary revealed in the novel is based on the research I was able to do and is factually accurate as well. However, the descriptions of what goes on there in the book are entirely products of my imagination. This was necessary since it’s doubtful any novelist will ever be allowed there to do research. In that vein, anyone who works at Camp Peary who reads the novel, please keep in mind that I just made up what happens at the place; the characters and the dialogue, and nothing in the story is a reflection on you or the work you do for your country. A rogue agent is just that. Known as the “secret place” by some locals, it’s worth a trip down just to drive by Camp Peary. No, you can’t tour the place; the CIA won’t even acknowledge it exists.

The idea for
Simple Genius
came to me, or at least part of it did, after reading about the Beale Cipher. The Beale Cipher is one of those oxymoronic phenomena––a famous secret. It concerns an enormously complicated code, three pages worth of numbers, and an alleged treasure worth tens of millions of dollars that was supposedly hidden by Mr. Thomas Jefferson Beale in the early 1800s. One page of the cipher has been––at least allegedly––successfully deciphered long ago by a friend of a friend of Mr. Beale’s. The page was decrypted using the American Declaration of Independence as a source of letters corresponding with the numbers on the cipher. For example, the third number in the cipher is 24, which means, you’d look up the 24th word in the Declaration. That word is “another,” so you’d take the first letter of that word, or “a,” and plug it into the ciphertext in order to form words.

The decrypted page tells the general vicinity of the treasure––somewhere in Bedford County, Virginia––as well as the type and amount of the treasure––gold, silver and some jewels––and that it’s buried in stone-lined caves stored in iron pots. Based on today’s precious metals prices the treasure would be worth well over $20 million. It’s impossible to calculate the value of the jewels, really. However, the deciphered message says they were worth $13,000 in 1821, so presumably they’re worth a lot more today.

Easy, you might say. One page broken, two pages to go, put me down for the private jet. Well, here’s the catch. Apparently everyone who is anyone in the cryptanalyst field has tried to decipher the other two pages, using cutting-edge technology and supercomputers, and they’ve all failed. Indeed, it’s estimated that one out of ten of the best cryptanalysts in the world have tried to crack the Beale Cipher and not a single one of them has succeeded. The difficulty is that if the ciphertext is tied to a particular document––e.g., the Declaration of Independence––you need to know which document is the right one. And even in 1820 there were a lot of possibilities. The more obvious ones, like the U.S. Constitution and the Magna Carta, have already been tried.

However, at least one Web site
has
claimed to have solved the cipher and includes photos of the alleged vault found on the site. The folks running the Web site also claim that the treasure vault was empty when they got to it.
Hmm.
Maybe, maybe not.

The Beale Cipher has achieved such mythic status that another Web site offers specialized Beale Cipher software that can be used to decrypt the code and discover the location of the treasure. It makes you wonder why
they
don’t use the software to decrypt the code and find the treasure. Yet, it could be they’re selling a lot of that software and are perfectly content with those profits.

There is even a Beale Cypher and Treasure Association founded in the 1960s to stimulate interest in the mystery, not that enough people aren’t stimulated already. It’s said that there’s hardly a farmer or landowner in Bedford Country, Virginia, that hasn’t had part of their land dug up by eager treasure hunters, often without their consent.

Below I’ve reproduced the three pages of the cipher for you, including the plain text of the decrypted one. The first page of numbers supposedly reveals the exact location of the treasure. The third page lists the parties who are legitimately entitled to the treasure. I would imagine that virtually all interested treasure hunters would not even bother to look at page three!

To find out more information about the mysterious Mr. Beale and how and why he did what he allegedly did, read
The Beale Treasure: New History of a Mystery,
by Peter Viemeister, or check out the Wikipedia free encyclopedia entry. Another tome you aspiring cryptanalysts might want to check out is
The Code Book,
by Simon Singh.

Is it all a complete hoax as many believe? It certainly could be. If so, someone went to extraordinary lengths to carry it off. Just so you know, I’ve tried a few times to break the code but I’m far from an expert. It will take a better cryptanalyst than your humble novelist to pull it off, if it is genuine. Piece of advice for those of you thirsting for instant wealth: Don’t quit your day job while you’re hunting. The odds of cracking the Beale and finding the treasure, if it does exist, are probably longer than winning the Powerball lottery. Another piece of advice: Never go digging on anyone’s land without their consent. You might get sued or shot at, neither of which is particularly healthy.

For those of you who, despite the incredible odds, still want to pit your wits against perhaps the most impenetrable puzzle of them all––I wish you good luck.

And I hoped you enjoyed the return of Sean King and Michelle Maxwell in
Simple Genius.

Take care and keep reading.

Sincerely,

David Baldacci