Chapter 3: The Mosconi Codex

Winston-Winslow. Wednesday, October 15, 2008.

Neal should have guessed that Henry's choice of the rock-music-themed huddle room for their meeting meant that he intended to rock their worlds.

He'd succeeded.

Henry eyed him expectantly. "So what do you think? Has the time come for Nick Halden to become a real person?"

Sara and Peter were waiting for his answer. "Yes, I believe it has," Neal confirmed after one more moment's reflection. "In reviewing the cons I ran as Nick, I can't find any that would come back to bite us. In any case, Tulane's bound to be impressed by how brazen I am to use it as an alias."

"How long has Nick been around?" Peter asked.

"Mozzie and I created the alias shortly before I went to work for Adler."

"I bet Mozzie loved Henry's idea," Sara said, smiling at the thought. "You two have already fleshed out many of the details of Nick's life. Now they're fabrications you invented when you turned the name into an alias." She turned to Henry. "How do you plan to leave an actual trail?"

"Initially notes from interviews. DNA evidence may surface. As to the delivery mechanism, I've already discussed that with Aidan." Henry chuckled as he tapped a hand drum on the table. "Man, am I glad Aidan's on our side. The supposed cracks in the false doors he created are a godsend."

"Aidan once admitted to me that he wondered if he'd ever be challenged by someone as abstruse as Rolf," Neal said. "Is he testing Tulane's hacker?"

"That's exactly what he's doing," Henry agreed. "He's convinced that the harder he makes the code, the more intrigued the hacker will be. Aidan expects that it will take a couple of months for them to breach the door. If they haven't succeeded by then, he could give them a break. Meanwhile, we'll have plenty of time to flesh out the evidence."

Peter nodded slowly. "I like it. We need to capture the entire crew. These days, the hacker is often the key player in a crew. If the hacker escapes, they could join another crew and cause just as much damage."

"Like Alice Langton," Neal said. She'd disappeared without a trace after helping them capture Penfold.

"You're not the only one thinking about her," Henry said. "Aidan gives high odds that she's the hacker working for Tulane. He'd studied the code Alice wrote during the time she ran the entertainment extortion ring called Pod2 and claims the similarities are too numerous to be a coincidence."

"Her partnership could cause us extra difficulties," Sara warned. "Alice worked with Rolf for an unknown number of years. She could have accessed his information on all of us."

"But I don't think it will help her," Neal said. "I never mentioned the Caffreys when I worked in Klaus's crew, and Nick Halden hadn't been created. There shouldn't be any hidden gotchas." He turned to Henry. "Did you make any modifications to Isaak Mosconi's bio?"

"I'd like to know that as well," Sara said. "Should we start promoting the Mosconi Diamond as another success for the Red Diamonds?"

"Not yet," Henry advised. "The mystery surrounding the gem has quadrupled in complexity. The breakthrough was provided by the link Mosconi has to Martin Winston."

"Our firm's co-founder?" Peter asked.

Henry nodded. "Mozzie connected Mosconi to Harry Winston by claiming he was an uncle from Russia who'd changed his name. It's a verifiable fact that Martin Winston's branch of the family didn't get along with Harry Winston and his father. Let's take that a step further. Suppose that Mosconi didn't just smuggle one diamond out of Russia but several pieces of the crown jewels. In the bio Mozzie created for him, Mosconi was fascinated by cryptography and puzzles. He also had an eccentric sense of humor. Now suppose he hid the jewels. Originally he may have done so because of the uncertainties of the war. The remaining members of the royal family were scattered and in no position to keep them safe."

"Then, later when he saw what happened to them, he may have decided they weren't proper guardians," Neal suggested. "The aristocracy were selling off their jewels for a pittance. The settings were dismantled with the gems either sold separately or recut into smaller, more liquid sizes."

"Mosconi loved those jewels," Henry said. "He didn't want to see them destroyed."

"So he made a puzzle out of them!" Peter exclaimed.

Henry smiled at his enthusiasm. "He wanted to leave instructions on how to find the gems. But he also used it as a test to prove if someone was worthy, figuring that anyone who could solve the fiendishly difficult puzzle would treat them with the proper respect. As to where to leave the document, he wouldn't have left it with Harry Winston's family since they weren't on speaking terms."

"But he might have picked Martin's family," Sara suggested.

Henry nodded. "He could have even bequeathed them an odd manuscript called the Mosconi Codex. Suppose he left a note explaining that whoever deciphered the codex would find a rich inheritance, but the family didn't put much weight in the tale. After all, he was an eccentric. In any case, no one could figure out the meaning of the jumble of letters and symbols. Still, they kept the document safe. Eventually it wound up being stored in the Win-Win vault along with other historical documents of the two founders."

Peter nodded knowingly. "Then you came along."

Henry shrugged. "You know how curious I am. Naturally, I contacted you and Mozzie, my two master puzzle-solvers, for help in deciphering the codex."

"I told Tulane that I was taken to Ireland as a child and then brought back to the States after my parents were killed in an accident," Neal said. "During that trip you made to Ireland, you didn't find anything contradictory but that niggling doubt never left you. Recently you began a more thorough investigation. Just what is my source of money? Am I doing jobs on the side and not telling anyone?"

"Since you're keeping Neal in the dark, he can provide Tulane tantalizing clues about the codex without giving the game away," Sara pointed out.

Henry beamed at them. "Kids, have I given you enough to play with while Eric and I are gone? Try to behave until we're back."

Neal arched an eyebrow. "Did you give Mozzie the same message?"

"No need. He's in cryptographer's heaven inventing a puzzle worthy of our abilities. You and Sara are seeing the musketeers this weekend, right?"

"Yeah, we're going to N-Con together. Richard and Travis have invited us to their place afterward." The annual gaming convention had a special significance this year. A playable demo of a video game Richard had designed creatures for, Silent Planet, would debut at the convention.

"You should try to find out what they know about the codex," Henry suggested. "Mozzie met at length with them but wouldn't provide any details, muttering something about how Mosconi wasn't ready to share."

Neal smiled, knowing he wouldn't have to wait for the convention. The musketeers were scheduled to fence tonight. Now that Travis was learning the skill, Neal would be able to pump all three men for details. Wednesday had become their regular evening for fencing. Sara had persuaded Maggie Feng to move her martial arts class to the same evening. So while Neal fenced, Sara could coax information from Keiko, Angela, and Janet. Neal wouldn't be at all surprised to hear they'd all contributed elements to something as intricate as the Mosconi Codex was bound to be.

Mozzie had often praised the Voynich manuscript, a handwritten illustrated codex from the fifteenth century. Despite extensive study by cryptographers and scholars, the text had never been deciphered. Experts couldn't even agree if the letters represented an unknown language or a code.

Now Mozzie was planning to make his own version. Given his passion for authenticity, how much would he reveal to his fellow crew members?

That evening at the Aloha Emporium.

Would Mozzie have also questioned Maggie and Angela? Sara wouldn't put it past him. But she'd need to be careful about her approach since Maggie and Angela didn't know anything about the Red Diamonds con. Her best opportunity would come after practice when they took a break for Hawaiian tea. Sara's favorite was lilikoi mango black tea. She took it as an auspicious sign that Maggie had chosen to serve that blend.

As it turned out she didn't have to pump the others for information. Angela simplified the process when she said, "What's up with Mozzie? Has he embarked on a new treasure hunt?"

"Why do you think he has?" Sara asked innocently.

"Last Saturday when I was working on the emporium's books, he asked me about non-Western musical notation systems—the more arcane the better. I learned the basics in an overview course for ethnomusicology." Angela smiled mischievously. "I told him ancient cuneiform notation looked like something out of Arkham Files. That appeared to satisfy him. Perhaps he's inventing a new code to encrypt his notes. You know how paranoid he is."

"Mozzie is a man with unfettered curiosity," Janet said, giving Sara a wink. He'd undoubtedly confided his plans for the codex in her. "Only yesterday, he quizzed me on dragonfly wing venation."

Maggie poured the tea into rustic clay cups. "He's up to something. Sunday he spent an hour photographing orchid blooms with a macro lens. When I asked him about it, he said he was researching a new type of alien for Doctor Who. I bet he'll use that notation for an alien language."

"That must be why he asked me about stained glass," Keiko said. "The university has several lovely panels from the early twentieth century." She turned to Sara. "I wonder if the stained glass angels in the New Haven mansion gave him ideas."

Although Keiko had been unconscious when the angels turned into ferocious spirits, she'd heard Neal's account. Sara gave Mozzie points for inventing a plausible excuse for his questions. Research for an upcoming Doctor Who episode provided a logical reason. But to Sara, it sounded like Mozzie wanted to include elements from his friends into the codex, making it in essence a rarefied scrapbook. If so, octopus tentacles for Diana were a must.

When Sara first heard about the codex, she hadn't expected that Mozzie would devise something that could in theory be cracked, but she should have known better.

From her perspective, the best part was that Neal was excited about the project. When he returned from Cannes, he was uneasy about Keller's connection to Rolf. A reminder of the con he had to pull against Keller was the last thing he needed now that Adrian Tulane appeared to be Diamond Lil. Puzzling over Mozzie's codex could be a welcome de-stressor.

The same evening at the Columbia gym.

"Take your pick," Richard said expansively. "Or better yet, grab one of each."

Aidan arched a brow. "So we can change our shirts every few hours?"

"Why not? We need all the publicity we can get."

"Hardly," Neal scoffed. "Mozzie told me all three games are trending even better than his expectations, and you can be assured they were astronomically high." Richard had brought along t-shirts for Silent Planet and Red Sands as well as Yellowface, their bee superhero.

For once even Aidan was willing to put fencing on hold. They'd gathered in the locker room to change into their fencing uniforms, but thoughts of N-Con were shoving fencing into the background.

Neal suspected that the excitement was partly due to their Comic-Con experience last summer. The buzz around the release of the animated movie Yellowface vs. Godzilla, already at a fever pitch, was augmented when Scima announced a new expansion pack coming to the Yellowface video game franchise.

"Has Mozzie started working on a new game?" Richard asked.

"Not to my knowledge," Neal said. "I know he has some ideas for Red Sands where in future expansions Neptune and Uranus would be featured. He mentioned something about diamond mining. Currently, though, his focus is more on Doctor Who scripts."

"That could explain why he asked me what my favorite alien creation was," Richard said.

"Mozzie's mind works in devious directions," Neal said. None of them knew about the plans for the codex since there was no need for their involvement at this point. "Which one did you pick?"

"The flurpels on Mars," Richard said promptly. The lovable aliens had been created for Red Sands. The cave-dwelling sentient shapeshifters could change their gender at will.

"I thought the project might be SETI-related," Travis said. "He asked me for copies of radio signal transmissions. With Mozzie, you never know. He could have refined his alien tunnel slime theory."

Would Mozzie include alien slime in the codex? It would be just like him. As Neal smiled, he realized he hadn't thought about Keller in days. Even better, no ghosts had haunted his dreams. The miracle cure of sleeping with Sara and focusing on other projects was working.

Adrian Tulane's townhouse. Brussels, Belgium. A month later.

Tulane went upstairs to Alice's office. She'd converted several rooms to a digital command center. For the past couple of months, she'd practically lived in that space. Tulane had never seen her so consumed by a project. He envied her concentration.

"Stop pacing," Alice ordered, not turning to look at him. "I'll let you know when I succeed. Can't you go steal something?"

Tulane winced. A sore subject. His attempt to steal the Dresden Green nearly cost him his freedom. The situation was beyond frustrating. He had buyers chomping at the bit but he couldn't supply them. Some even taunted him with the Red Diamonds' discoveries. Tulane had sunk so low as to consider selling them a forgery, but his buyers weren't that naïve. Any purchase had to be authenticated. So he was stuck.

Could the Mosconi Diamond actually exist? The twin to the Hope Diamond would fetch an astonishing price. Where were the Red Diamonds getting their information? Tulane had been inclined to discount the rumors as simply not plausible. But the darknet authenticator testified to the accuracy.

"I should go ahead and approach Caffrey," he said. "I already have enough to use against him."

That caused her to spin her chair to face him. "We've already gone over this. Neal's too good a con artist. You need hard evidence." She paused to give him the smile he'd been waiting for—that of a cat who's trapped her mouse. "And that could soon arrive."

"Finally."

"Hey, you try decrypting code in an esoteric language. Aidan sharpened his skills on Rolf's esolangs. I can detect his fingerprint all over Winston-Winslow's code. But no one is perfect. I detected a loophole that should allow me to worm in. Christmas may come early this year."

And not just for them. Tulane had long suspected that Neal was too slippery to make an effective partner. But Alice was convinced that the problem could be resolved by applying leverage at precisely the right spots. And no one had a better grasp of what they were than their future ally. Tulane had been waiting for the right moment to reach out to Keller. The time had come.

Notes: There will be more about that future ally in the next story, A Better Way, which I'll post on September 24.

The Mosconi Codex was featured in the fifth season of White Collar. The codex in my stories differs in several key ways. I wrote about the canon treatment in my Winston's Diamonds blog post.