The Black Book Gambit

Moscow Rules, taught to any secret operative worth their salt since the Cold War, are equal parts vital knowledge and common sense. The rules, ten in all, are as follows:

Assume nothing.

Trust your gut.

Everyone is potentially an enemy.

Do not look back; you are never alone.

Blend in.

Vary your pattern; stay within cover.

Lull them into complacency.

Do not harass the opposition.

Pick the time and place for action.

Keep your options open.

The James Bonds and Jack Ryans of old would have been well advised to add an eleventh:

Check your pockets whenever you move, you might have forgotten something.

It was this rule, or it’s absence, which caused one agent, Cicada, to leave behind the most important tool he owned, worth more than his life (accounting had run the numbers), under a park bench. It was under this park bench that Kurt Allen, a bored, down-on-his-luck 20-something with no ties to the trade of espionage, found it. Kurt was wandering through the park, one of the few things he could afford to do for leisure, when the toe of his sneaker caught the corner of the tool and sent it skittering across the cobblestone. An unassuming, black leather-bound book. The kind you can buy as a journal or composition book. The sort of thing a child gets as a gift for their First Communion or Bar Mitzvah. Not expensive, but not a spiral-bound twenty-five cent Wal-Mart notebook. Kurt picked it up, dusting off the back.

“Hmm” he remarked to himself.

He started flipping through it, hoping for a name or an address to return it to. Or at least something interesting to read. Someone’s juicy secrets, who they had a crush on, or maybe some emo middle-schooler’s attempt at songwriting, which might be worth a laugh or two. Something interesting. Instead, the book was filled with… Nothing meaningful or useful. Symbols, diagrams, and other gibberish filled the front half of the notepad. Not only was it not English, it wasn’t any recognizable language. These weren’t Russian backwards letters, Japanese kanji, or anything Kurt had seen before. They looked like a made up language, symbols meant to obfuscate the message encrypted within.

Kurt spun in a slow circle, looking for anyone who might have dropped such a book. As Kurt gazed around, his glance fell upon the bench that the book had been beneath. He knelt down, scanning the space beneath the bench for some clue as to the book’s use. Instead, he spotted a familiar white and red box. He stood , glancing around again, and strode towards the bench. He bent down and picked up the box, and was dismayed at how light it seemed. Hoping beyond hope, he popped open the flip-top on the cigarette pack, hoping maybe its previous owner had left at least one. Nothing. Or at least, no cigarettes. Kurt wasn’t much of a smoker, he couldn’t afford to be, but he found that an occasional cigarette could help take the edge off of his life, a life which had seemed to be almost entirely edge as of late. Instead of a serendipitous carcinogen treat, however, he found a piece of yellow notebook paper. When Cicada had forgotten the book, he had violated another rule of security— always keep the lock and key separated. The lock, a message hidden in a cigarette pack, intended for another agent.

The key, an unassuming black book.

Kurt scanned the paper he had found, still wishing it were a cigarette. The top contained a grid, with several of the squares marked out. The bottom half was covered in glyphs, like those in the book.

“Uughhh” Kurt moaned to himself, leaning back in the bench. Why can’t this be something useful? He thought to himself. He flipped through the book again, this time flipping past the blank pages, to the back, where he thought he spotted something almost… recognizable? He flipped through again, and this time he spotted them: pages just like the one from the pack— grids at the top, glyphs at the bottom. He continued, and found more of the same. X’s in different places in the grids, and different sets of symbols at the bottom, but the messages always seemed the same length. On a hunch, Kurt started counting. The page he was on had three lines of glyphs, the first two separated from the third. The first two lines were always thirteen glyphs, the last always ten. No glyph ever repeated. It hit Kurt suddenly.

“There’s no way it’s that easy” he whispered under his breath. A set of twenty-six and a set of ten. Letters and numbers. Kurt started frantically flipping through the book, comparing the grid on the sheet and the grids in the book, until he finally found a match. He began decoding the message, trying to keep it all straight in his head.

After a few moments, Kurt was confident he had worked it out, and read it out in his head:

MPD

Game ends soon

Receive payment at WA

You earned it

C

Useless, Kurt thought to himself. Just a game. Some kind of ARG or something.

Wish I could send a message back, just to mess with them.

Kurt’s eyes fell on a bodega, across the street from where he sat.

If I could get a pen from there, I could leave a message of some kind.

Kurt stood up, glanced around again, though this time he wasn’t sure why, and walked across the street.

“Do you sell pens here?” he asked the cashier inside the cramped bodega.

“No pens” the man responded, in some accent or another.

“Can I borrow one of those?” Kurt asked, pointing at the pens on the counter.

“No, must buy something” the man responded.

Kurt rolled his eyes, but began browsing the store. It was mostly snack items: packets of ramen, pop tarts, hot dogs that had been on a roller grill since the Clinton administration, and a soda fountain with “Out of order” sticky notes on half of the flavors. Kurt’s eyes fell upon a small display case, with small cell phones in it. Kurt had meant to get one anyway, as applying for work is made much more difficult by having no phone number.

“The cheap one” he said, pointing, “and however many minutes five dollars will get me.”

The cashier rang him up, and he handed the cashier a ten dollar bill. One of the few he had left. He snatched one of the pens from the cup.

“I’m borrowing this” he insisted.

He laid the book down, and laid the yellow page face down. He carefully wrote a message:

MPD

Game never ends

Call to recover book

Kurt considered for a moment before signing a codename:

DBC

He activated the phone, then wrote down the phone number, in code, on the message. He put the pen back, stuffed the message in the cigarette pack, and crossed the street to the park, placing the pack where he had found it. He walked to the opposite side of the park and waited. To pass the time, he worked on cracking other parts of the book. He had just begun to work out C’s most recent note, when his new phone began to ring.

“That was fast” Kurt greeted smugly, continuing to decode the message he was working on.

“This is Markov,” the voice on the phone responded, “who is this?”

“Call me D.B. Cooper” Kurt responded, pleased with himself.

“Where is Cicada?” Markov asked. Cicada must be C, which makes Markov MPD. Kurt thought for a moment about the most coy way to respond.

“Indisposed.”

“You have his book.”

“Correct. What’s it worth to you?” Kurt asked playfully.

“Nothing.”

“N… Nothing?” Kurt was shocked.

“Correct. I have my book. It is no concern of mine if Cicada is neutralized.”

“You… you’re sure?” Kurt was annoyed. It’s like this guy didn’t even want to play along in his own game.

“I’m going to the Astoria to collect my payment. Goodbye, Mr. Cooper.” The Waldorf-Astoria. WA. Kurt glanced down at the message he had been decoding, and gasped.

End MPDs game

Poison at WA

“Don’t go to the Astoria!” Kurt blurted out. He realized he might be ruining their game, but if he was to play his own made up role as the profiteering third party, wouldn’t it be in character not to let them die until he’d been paid?

“Why not?”

“Cicada is going to kill you. Poison.” Kurt responded smoothly. There was silence for a moment.

“I’ve changed my mind. I want Cicada’s book. Name your price.” Kurt thought for a moment. $5 for the phone, $5 for the minutes, and $10 for his trouble.

“Twenty.”

“Reasonable, meet at Pier 96 in thirty minutes.”

Click.

Kurt began the journey. He knew Pier 96 was at Hudson River Park, and was somewhere around twenty minutes’ walk away. He walked briskly, as most New Yorkers do, and arrived early. He paced up and down the pier itself, the book tucked in his waistband, under his shirt. As he stood at the end of the pier, looking across the Hudson at Jersey City, a loud voice caught his attention.

“Mr. Cooper?”

Kurt turned around slowly. A man stood about twenty paces away. The man wore a business suit that would have helped him blend with the brokers and traders on Wall Street. In fact, that was its exact purpose. The man held a briefcase at his side.

“Markov,” Kurt grinned, “I see you have the money.” $20 in a briefcase? The briefcase is worth more than the money. “Do I…” Kurt hesitated, “…get to keep the briefcase?”

“If you’ve got what I want. I don’t know who you’re with, Mr. Cooper, but you should know the US Government doesn’t take kindly to being extorted.”

US Government? Man, this guy is in to this.

“No worries. Let’s just make the exchange, and everyone goes home happy.”

Markov stepped forward, halving the distance between them, and set the briefcase down. He backed up to where he had stood before. Kurt walked forwards, his hand gently grazing the briefcase’s handle.

“Not so fast, Mr. Cooper” Markov warned. He pulled his jacket back to reveal something shiny on his hip.

A gun.

That’s a real gun. Kurt’s mind raced. Why would he shoot me over $20? Unless… He glanced down.

“The briefcase…” Kurt started.

“Twenty grand, as we agreed. The book, Mr. Cooper.”

Kurt slowly drew the book from his waistband. He held it up in the air, to show Markov that he had it.

He’s gonna shoot me, unless…

Kurt’s eyes met Markov’s. He flicked his wrist, and the book went sailing behind him. Markov’s eyes widened. He rushed past Kurt and leaped off the edge of the pier, snatching the book in midair. By the time he hit the water and turned around, “Mr. Cooper” and the briefcase were long gone.

Kurt ran to the bus terminal. If that guy was government, they’d be looking for Mr. Cooper. DBC. Kurt ran to a kiosk and tapped the button for a ticket to Seattle. He input his name on the touchscreen “Dan Cooper” and opened the briefcase a crack. It was full of $100 bills. He crammed one in the slot, and waited for the ticket to print. He snatched it and ran, leaving the receipt. Instead of heading for the bus, however, Kurt headed for the bank, throwing the ticket in a trash can on his way out.

Three hours later, a man known formerly as Cicada was arrested for criminal conspiracy, his own notebook condemning him. A CIA agent called Markov was on a flight to Seattle, ready to lead a manhunt for Dan Cooper. And in New York, a young man named Kurt Allen paid his rent on time for the first time in months.