Agent Chetiri

Chapter 18

Oh, what a tangled web we weave...when first we practice to deceive.

-Walter Scott

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The next morning, Q quickly got out of bed and showered, before eating a quick breakfast of tea and Jammie Dodgers. The initial panic from the events that had unfolded the night before seemed to dissipate, as he was focused on decrypting the message. He grabbed his coat and his book of ciphers before heading out the door to go to work. It was only about a quarter to eight when he walked into the MI6 base but he wanted to come in early to get started on decrypting the code.

He turned on the lights and opened his computer, while grabbing the note and the quantum cryptography book. Q looked at the message for a moment and noted that it had a codeword and looked in his cipher book for anything that had a codeword. He narrowed it down to several ciphers and tested them out on a piece of paper.

After about two hours, he looked at a code with an incomplete columnar pattern. This seemed to put him on the correct path and he began looking for different ciphers with an incomplete columnar pattern. He worked tirelessly through different codes until about two, when he finally found the cipher he was looking for. Q set down his pen and pulled out his phone, dialing Sherlock's number. The dial tone went for several rings before someone finally picked up.

"Whatever you're going to say, Q, make it quick. I am currently elbow deep in formaldehyde," Sherlock grumbled. It had been obvious that he had been doing a potentially illegal experiment again and Q rolled his eyes.

"Sherlock, I figured it out. Get over here," he said. This obviously sparked interest in his older brother and Q heard a clatter of a metal object and the swears of a female voice on the other line, coupled with what he identified as the scolding voice of John Watson. He heard his brother apologize (which was generally a rare occasion) and Sherlock came back on the line.

"What did you find?" he asked.

"The correct cipher. You should head down here," Q said.

"I'm at Bart's. John and I should be there shortly," Sherlock said. Q hung up and he set the phone on the table, while staring at the letters on the page. It was the Myszkowski cipher, one that was simple yet generally unused. He had found the cipher by recognizing that it had a key word and a pattern of threes, which he deduced would lead to an incomplete columnar pattern. Q had not yet decoded the message and decided that it would best to wait for his brother.

After all, he had no idea what he was going to find.

Q waited for several minutes before Sherlock and John came rushing into the room. Sherlock went straight for Q but John nodded at the other members of the Q-Branch before he made his way to Q, in an effort to be polite. Sherlock made no effort to ask about the events of the night before, as he was focused on the matter at hand. "Show me," Sherlock demanded.

"It's a code; the Myszkowski cipher, in fact," Q said.

"Ah, that's right. You had a knack for ciphers when you were younger," Sherlock muttered. "Have you decoded it?"

"I got the first word, but I haven't decrypted the rest. You'll be here to see that," Q said. Sherlock watched his younger brother pull out a pen and the man began writing on a new page.

"Er, Q? What the hell is a Myszkowski cipher?" John said hesitantly, looking confused.

"The Myszkowski cipher is a code that used a codeword to help encrypt and decrypt the specified phrase. You number the letters of the codeword according to their position in the alphabet. The codeword here is banana and she marked down c2, c1, c3, c1, c3, and c1 because they were the column numbers. She must have written c in front to make us think they're a chapter number, when in fact they're columns," Q explained with a hint of excitement in his voice. Alexa had left something clever for him and he mentally berated himself for not looking at this earlier.