The Story of Blood and Roses

"So, you're saying that these things will take hours to make?" I shook my head.

"Someone who is used to this sort of an encrypting will take a minute to solve it. Similarly, someone who has practiced making such codes will take a couple of minutes to make it."

"So, these are all those codes?" He took one paper up and gave it an apprehensive look. I mumbled a yes and picked up a paper myself. The code was simple enough, it seemed.

"Where did you find these?" I asked Eric.

"They used texts to send the codes," he explained.

"Can't we track the cell phones that these messages were sent to?" Anthony inquired. Eric shook his head.

"We tried that, but it turned out that these cell phones were disposable. The only consistent thing was the phones of the senders, and they will never go to ground zero, themselves. They know the risk they are running by sending the messages in such an open manner."

A few moments of silence passed as everyone took in the news. It seemed obvious enough, but what struck me was the unknown reason why they kept the cell phones of the senders traceable. Suspicion spiked as I wondered the possibilities of Luke Darcy trying to lure us in and trap us. It was a possibility, but I was inclined to believe that there were fewer chances of it as Darcy was trying to maintain some sort of a relationship with Anthony despite the cold rivalry between the two.

"Should we start doing this?" one of them asked. I had been too busy contemplating the reasons to truly recognize who had spoken.

"Do you want to teach us or do you want to do it on your own?" Ethan asked.

"Why don't Anthony and I do it? It'll take us less time and we will be able to avoid the hassle of teaching you lot how to properly decode a Caesar's Box." They all seemed to agree, including Anthony.

There were about eight sheets of paper. While the others changed the Norse to English letters, Anthony and I did our part of decoding further. We divided the pile among ourselves and started working.

My procedure was clinical. First, I counted the number of letters. Then I went on to round up any numbers that were not a perfect square and determined the number of rows and columns would be made. Then I wrote the letters into the rows, concentrating on filling each column, starting from the first letter at the first-row first column, continuing until the number of columns allotted was fulfilled and then moving over to the next row to do the same. Then I started reading from the top left letter and read down, then started at the top of the next column and read down again. This continued until the very end. I wrote down the combinations I found after the vertical reading and then divided the letters that were put together into words, revealing the intended messages at last.

There were eight sheets in total. All of them were signals of upcoming police stops and what they had to say to each of them. The amount of money allotted to these stops and the like. Other things that were hinted at were the routes that were to be taken to avoid others from attacking, namely us. The instructions were helpful and with them, we could plot out the routes that could have been taken to reach the location where the stolen shipment was being kept. It would make the selected pool smaller. But one had to have an open mind and forget about previous calculations and locations that were previously considered to be viable options.

That would be the first step to successfully finding out the exact location and thereafter formulating a plan to extract the shipment from under Darcy's nose.

"Have we tried to find out properties on the available routes that belong to someone that works for Darcy or is an associate?" This was Ethan.

"We can do that, but so far we've found no storehouse that was bought by someone Luke knows. We have a few people who both of us associate with, though," Anthony replied in a gruff voice. He was staring at the map, his teeth grinding together, making his jaws clench and twitch. He was trying to figure out something but was failing to do so.

"What about other properties? Storehouses are too narrow a search to be sure. We need to look at other private properties as well." Everyone seemed to agree with Eric.

"How do we do this, Boss?" I asked him in a small voice. Of course, I could find out the details myself with the help of the two databases that I could easily access, but this was unknown to Anthony and the group, and I was never going to give it away. That brought us back to square one.

"We could send out a team to investigate and go through each and every house in the possible areas, but it would take over two months to get the project done even if we work really fast," Eric suggested.

"I don't think that would be a good idea, really. This would involve a large number of civilians who would have no clue as to why people without badges were banging on their doors and asking for smuggled goods. And we're talking about guns, here. These things are dangerous and sensitive. Civilians won't take this lightly and you might get the cops called on you," I tried to reason with Eric. He seemed to smile and shake his head.

"We'd have the cops on our side or produce fake ID's. It's not that difficult, you know." I shook my head at his defense.

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