Echoes in the Shadows

20

Major Klauberger entered the room without sending a messenger ahead. The massive blackboard facing the door was densely packed with numbers, each corresponding to a series of even more closely packed letters. These letters, seemingly disconnected, were nearly impossible to form into coherent words in any known language. The environment spoke of intense intellectual labor, a silent battlefield where cryptic codes and ciphers clashed in the shadows of the war. In this secluded corner, formed by towering filing cabinets, Captain Werner Iser's desk was situated. Despite the oppressive segregation, the air was alive with the whispers of Allied communications, and certainly, it did not diminish Captain Iser's fervent dedication to his work.

In the room, a group of people in SS uniforms were engrossed in their work, too occupied to pay attention to the unannounced visitor.

"I must say — this is the most chaotic code I've ever seen," remarked the young lieutenant with the baby face, sounding exasperated.

"It's a typical British-style encrypted code," Iser commented calmly, his eyes fixed on the jumble of letters. Abruptly standing up, he traced his finger under a series of characters, "These, mostly, are long consonants!"

Iser had noticed his guest but did not immediately approach for pleasantries. Instead, he simply nodded in acknowledgment and then plunged back into his work, keen not to lose the fleeting spark of inspiration for deciphering the code.

"Gerhard, compile a frequency table of the letters for me," Iser directed the young lieutenant with a baby face. This young man, abruptly transferred from the mathematics department of Freiburg University to a military position, eagerly began tallying the letters on the blackboard.

Iser continued to pore over the series of letters he suspected to be long consonants, completely forgetting about his Wehrmacht guest in the process.

Klauberger, left with no other option, pulled up a chair and stared blankly at the mass of letters, just like everyone else in the room.

"Based on the frequency of letter appearances, it seems to be a regular language frequency. This is definitely an encrypted code."

The lieutenant swiftly finished his tally of the letters on the blackboard, arriving at a conclusion that seemed rather obvious to Klauberger — in these times, what else could a code floating through the air be, if not a military encrypted message?

"I believe... this is most likely an encrypted message from the British army. Based on the British codes we've deciphered so far, the style of these codes feels more like something the British would use. I think we should skip the language comparison test and directly try decoding it as if it were a British military code."

Iser's penchant for taking risks was evident once again, but his suggestion immediately met with opposition from his more cautious colleagues and subordinates.

"If we're wrong, we'll end up wasting a lot of time and effort on meaningless work! Decryption is a serious business; you can't rely solely on your intuition..."

"But this kind of obvious transpositional encryption is a very typical method used in the British codes we've intercepted..."

In the midst of a heated and technical debate, Klauberger suddenly felt that this was Iser's way of getting back at him for having to sit through the artillery ballistics argument.