Gossip Girl

Cracking the Code

The next morning Maddie awoke to Nate and Chuck talking.

"Hey how'd it go with Diana?" Maddie asked sitting down on the couch next to Chuck.

"I think it's a question of who's my dad not who's my mom. Look at this photo" Chuck said. Maddie grabbed the phone. It displayed a picture of a young Elizabeth Fisher pregnant with an unknown arm around her bump.

"That tattoo. I've seen it before" Maddie said trying to recall where and on who.

"So have I" Chuck said showing Maddie a picture of Chuck and Jack on the beach in Australia.

"You think Jack is your dad?" Maddie asked. Nate and Chuck looked at each other.

"I did obtain this last night" Nate said pulling out Diana's red book. "It seems to be in some sort of made up code. I couldn't crack it" Nate explained.

"Good thing we know someone who can" Chuck said looking at Maddie.

"Give me an hour. I need to stop home and grab a few things before we can begin cracking this" Maddie said jumping from the couch and grabbing her purse.

She hurried to her father's penthouse where she had shipped most of her stuff from Europe. The boxes where still unopened and spread out across the room, spanning from the floor to the ceiling.

Maddie shifted through each of the boxes until she came across her Cipher slide.

She hurried out of the penthouse and into the limo Chuck had been waiting in outside.

"Let me see the book" Maddie said taking the red leather book and quickly glancing through it.

"It's definitely not classic caesar" Maddie said before pulling the cipher slide out of her bag.

"What is that?"

"A cipher slide. You don't have one?" Maddie joked. "Baizen gifted it to me when I started muling drugs around. Meet ups were cryptic" Maddie explained.

"Can you break it?" Chuck asked.

"Let me look" Maddie said. She skimmed her finger across the pages.

"Look. Every first Saturday of the month at 9pm. There's an appointment made up of 14 or 15 letters" Maddie said as she looked at the pages of the calendar.

"They seem to be different but if you crack those you can crack the rest of the book. Nate has to know something about these Saturday during the time he dated her. " Maddie said confidently.

"Genius" Chuck said with a big smile.

The two walked into the empire to find Lola and Nate on the couch and Serena standing next to them.

"Looks like we might have a lead thanks to Maddie's power of observation" Chuck said immediately jumping past the hellos.

"Unfortunately the clue trial hangs by the flimsiest of threads... Nate's long term memory" Maddie jokingly said.

"Excuse me" Maddie said grabbing her ringing phone out of her bag.

"Hello?" Maddie answered walking down the hall away from the group. Blair had called Maddie asking her advice on a certain Humphrey and Rome situation.

"B, if you think your relationship is in a good place go for it.... look I'll call you later I'm with Chuck, Nate, Serena and Lola" Maddie ended the call heading back to the group.

"Let me see the book again" Maddie said reaching for her bag. "It's gone"

"Serena" Lola called putting dashing for the elevator. Moments before the door closed Lola had successfully stopped Serena from escaping with the book.

"Why would you go behind our back and steal the book?" Chuck asked as Serena exited the elevator.

"Diana told me if I got her book back that she would give me gossip girl's real phone number" Serena revealed. "That's more important to me than kicking Diana out of the spectator"

"More important than me finding my father?" Chuck asked.

"What?"

"Diana lied to me. She's not my mother. And I think she's covering for my father- well, my real father Jack" Chuck explained.

"Oh Chuck I'm so sorry. I didn't know" Serena empathized.

"That book is the only chance I have at tracking Jack down"

"Well what can I do?" Serena asked.

"Be with us. Not against us" Maddie spoke out.

"You have me 100%" Serena said handing back the book.

Maddie scrolled through it again.

"She has a massage appointment today. Nate do you have her assistant's number?" Maddie asked. Nate showed her the contact and Maddie called from her cellphone.

"Hi this Denise from the massage place. I see Ms. Payne has an appointment today. I was goin through the files and noticed you had booked an appointment last month on the first Saturday but never showed. My manager is going to charge the card on file. We just want to approve the charge with you" Maddie explained.

"No that's incorrect Ms. Payne was in Portugal that weekend" the assistant revealed.

"Ok then. That appointment won't be charged" Maddie said before ending the call.

"What do we know about Portugal?" Maddie asked grabbing her slide.

"They speak Portuguese?" Serena asked.

"They play good football?" Nate commented.

"No they don't" Chuck commented back.

"What if these letters are just different international phone numbers?" Maddie asked examining the numbers in the book. "The code for that night was K-L-L"

"Which is 5-5-5 on the keypad and we all from watching movies that's fake" Nate said.

"If she's using a numeric key it can be decoded as 0-0-1 and then 3-5-1"

"That's country code for Portugal" Chuck said. Everyone exchanged a look of shock that Maddie has cracked the code.

Maddie figured out the phone number for the event tonight giving it to Chuck.

He dialed the number waiting for an answer. The woman on the other end answers the phone. They all listen in to the call on speaker phone.

"How can I help you?" The woman asked.

"Yes I'm interest in the event tonight" Chuck said.

"Yes, how many?" The woman asked.

Maddie and Nate raised their hand while Serena sat this out.

"Three"

"Three it is. Do I need to send a car?"

"No the address will be just fine"

"The Vardin House in Briarcliff Manor. See you at 9 o'clock" the woman informed before disconnecting.

"I'll get Arthur to pull the car around" Nate said jumping up from his seat.

"Here's the book" Maddie said handing it over to Serena. Serena weekly smiled back before exiting without saying much.

"You ready?" Chuck asked.

Maddie shook her head grabbing her purse and following Nate and Chuck into the limo.