Moscow Rules #2 The Six Broken Pencils Mystery Cache
Moscow Rules #2 The Six Broken Pencils
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(small)
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This is number 2 in my encrypted caches series. This one is located off the Bristol and Bath Cycle Path close to a piece of art whose official name is Sentinel-1. The listed co-ordinates point to a location close to where the cache is, not the cache itself. The clues to the cipher are again contained within the following text. Also the cipher is different to that of Moscow Rules #1.
Following the successful capture of Elana Ostrakova (See Moscow Rules #1 – GC1HPYG) I was expecting a foreign and exotic posting, possibly somewhere like the South of France, what I got instead was more Bristol. It was a liaison job mostly. Helping out with the various authorities in the Bristol area. Actually it did turn out to be pretty interesting, as I got dragged into all sorts of scrapes.
Of the many interesting events I was involved in, the one that stands out the most was the case of the 6 broken pencils. It all started back in the winter of 1979. I was working in my office, a tiny little place located somewhere close to the floating harbour, when I got a phone call from the local police liaison officer. He said he'd got something that might interest me.
It seems that two boys had been playing on a Derelict railway line when they'd come across this odd looking chap frantically searching for something in the undergrowth. When the man spotted the two lads, he called out to them in heavily accented English asking them to help him search for a lost pencil case.
Even to the two lads, that sounded funny, and remembering what their parents had said about not talking to strangers, the two lads turned to run. Instantly they did, the man made a grab for one of the lads. Luckily for the boy, the track was rough and the man tripped and fell, enabling both of them to make good their escape into the bushes that lined the cutting.
When they got home, the two boys told their mother what had happened, and although scolding them for playing on the railway line, did take things seriously and called the police. After convincing the two boys that they wouldn't be sent to prison for playing on the old lines, they told their story again to the local bobby. He in turn passed it up the tree and it landed on my desk.
Now the description the boys had given was vaguely similar to that of a certain Gentleman from Russia, one Comrade Burstorph, whom we had long suspected might be up to no good. So after asking raising the appropriate support I trundled off to North Bristol to do a bit of investigating.
When we got there we found a very overgrown line, which had been rapidly recolonised by all sorts of British flora of the most obnoxious sort, and so it wasn't any wonder that something lost wouldn't be easily found. In fact it was by pure fluke that we did turn up a pencil case, containing of all things six pencils all with broken points.
The case itself was of cheap East German manufacture but the pencils looked to be of the highest quality French. An interesting and expensive choice all told, which could in part have been the reason why Burstorph was so keen to recover them. However on closer inspection it turned out that each pencil was a work of high art; for if you pressed a pin into the broken point, the pencil would open to reveal a tiny hiding place.
The first three pencils proved to be empty, but pencil four contained a microfilm copy of the nozzle assembly for the Harrier Jump Jet, with pencil five holding a message which cryptically stated 'Shipping Forecast' and the last pencil held a paper on which was a string of 223 numbers. I can remember groaning when I saw this coded message and quickly passed it up the line to Head office. Again if they deciphered the message, they never told me.
Again for all you amateur cryptographers I have included a copy of the message for you to play with.
---MESSAGE STARTS---
20 07 09 12 03 20 06 16 22 25 01 18
21 05 20 21 06 11 20 01 15 20 07 19
16 10 12 08 14 20 10 13 10 23 24 18
24 09 18 15 12 02 04 24 20 01 08 14
09 07 23 09 08 20 21 21 20 10 26 17
25 17 11 12 06 20 06 18 21 11 07 23
01 07 25 17 02 21 22 21 07 03 22 21
06 14 17 24 23 14 10 23 03 24 02 26
17 21 08 12 20 17 19 03 04 21 04 14
07 12 10 14 05 07 23 13 02 06 08 01
26 21 22 16 21 21 21 11 11 05 25 14
07 03 04 12 24 10 26 26 25 19 22 08
02 26 20 14 16 06 13 14 07 15 13 16
24 25 19 24 13 15 19 15 07 19 11 09
23 26 21 20 17 22 23 11 12 03 04 10
20 23 13 07 20 07 05 19 14 06 10 05
11 15 12 23 25 08 05 25 09 02 08 26
20 14 07 12 24 25 25 09 08 02 06 07
24 05 06 19 25 12 02
---MESSAGE ENDS---
CONGRATULATIONS to skimstone for the FTF!
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Abg gur fnzr nf Zbfpbj Ehyrf 1. Pney Sevrqevpu Tnhff'f Pybpx zvtug or bs fbzr nvq gb lbh. Gur ahzore bs ahzoref zvtug or fvtavsvpnag. Nyfb ABG n Ornhsbeg Pvcure!