The Fascist Femme Enigma Mystery Cache

It’s a stormy night in Flat River, capital of one of the world’s great mining districts, the Missouri Lead Belt. My office in the Phoenix Building feels like a Turkish steam bath. I’m here with the lovely Chelsea Cabot, my secretary and assistant gumshoe detective. The heat doesn’t bother me and I’m enjoying the show as Chelsea gradually strips to the bare essentials in a hopeless effort to get comfortable.

We’re working late tonight, wrapping up the paperwork on my latest case, an adventure I call Keepers of the Cache (GCP9M4) Chelsea is taking dictation as I wax philosophically on the coming New World Order. Over the thunder and pounding rain I hear turmoil in the hallway, then my office door flies open.

“Police Lieutenant Bradshaw,” my voice oozing faked sincerity. “What brings you to my humble hearth on a night like this?”

“Can the sweet talk, Danger.” But Bradshaw’s eyes are riveted on my partner. “Hiya Chelsea. Gee, you’re lookin’ great tonight.” Then, nodding toward me, “Why don’t you dump this sleazebag? I can get you on in the typing pool down at the precinct, you know.”

“You’re so generous, Lieutenant!” I love it when she puts on her ‘dumb broad’ act. So does Bradshaw. “I will most certainly look into it next week.”

“Great! Just ask for me at the front desk.” He instantly changes, as he turns back to me, from lovesick adolescent to hard-boiled police detective. “I gotta problem, Danger. And that means you gotta problem, too.” Bradshaw digs deep into the pocket of his dripping, navy blue, police-issue trench coat, pulls out a dog-eared carbon from a Western Union telegram and throws it on my desk. “Take a look at this.”

I spread the paper out on the desktop. We all lean over it and study the following:

Bradshaw bites his tongue while I study the jumbled message. Finally, he can’t hold it any longer, and blurts out the product of his very limited reasoning capacity. “It’s gibberish, Danger! Nonsense! What idiot would bother to send this babble to anyone by telegram?”

“Bradshaw,” I say quietly, as I peer at him through my big magnifying glass, mainly for theatrical effect. “This isn’t gibberish, and you’re the idiot.” I set the glass down. “So who’s Lillian Gruner – and where did you get this?”

“My nephew Catherwood is the night shift operator at Western Union. He thought it was suspicious, too, so he pinched the carbon and gave it to me.” (I’m glad we’re not living in the 21st century! This kind of monkey business will certainly be illegal by then – won’t it?)

“I know Catherwood. Smart kid.” (He helps me out from time-to-time, too.)

“He says this devastating blonde bombshell with a heavy foreign accent comes in about 12:30 this morning and sends this message. We can only assume that this woman is Lillian Gruner. We know nothing about her, though. That’s one problem I have to solve,” he continued. “The other problem is the message itself. What does it mean? How do I figure it out?”

“Frankly, Bradshaw, you don’t,” I lean back and prop my feet up on the desk. “You can’t figure this out. And I’m not being a smart*ss when I say that, because I’m not sure I can figure it out, either. This message is encrypted and it could be encrypted by any of a hundred different methods.” I lean forward (Ouch! My hamstrings!), “But cryptology is my strong suite, so I think I have at least an outside chance of cracking it. Give me a few days and I’ll get back to you with something, I hope.” I slip the telegram in the top drawer of my desk and pick up the newspaper, signaling that our interview has ended.

“I’ll need that telegram, Danger,” he sticks out his ham-sized hand. “Police evidence.”

“For chrissake, Bradshaw! What good is it to you until I decrypt it?” No response. Hand still out.

“I give up,” pulling the drawer open. “Chelsea, write all this down and make sure you get it exactly right.”

A minute later, Bradshaw is gone. The office seems much bigger again.

“Chelsea, you better get home and slam those big brown peepers for a few hours. We’re gonna have a busy day tomorrow,” then I added, casually, “How ‘bout I walk you home? This can be a rough neighborhood, you know.”

“Thanks Nicky, but I live just one flight up. You know that.”

“Well, okay. (Rats!) If you’re sure. Could you make a fresh pot of coffee before you go? I’m gonna be here for a while yet.”

Chelsea leaves and I work on the mysterious message until dawn. I run a series of tests that I designed to tell me which type of cipher I’m dealing with: substitution, transposition, one-time pad, etc. I’ll admit, however, that I can’t make heads or tails of this one. If only I could get a glimpse of the source code…

In frustration, I walk down to the Western Union office, the cryptic message in my pocket. There I find my young friend Catherwood, dozing at the front desk. He doesn’t hear me come in, even though there’s a bell on the door. I watch him for a moment: the even, regular breathing of deep innocent sleep. He’s a small, wiry lad with red hair, freckles and thick horn-rimmed glasses. Can’t be more that 19 years old. I suddenly realize just how tired I am.

“Good morning, my young friend!” Catherwood wets himself while struggling to consciousness.

“Mr. Danger! Uh, good morning, sir!”

“How’s business, Catherwood? Did I come at a bad time?”

“No sir! It’s been a slow night, actually.”

“Well then, how ‘bout you hammer out a message for me? Brush away the cobwebs, Catherwood! This one has to be perfect, with no errors.”

Moments later Catherwood hands me a receipt for the following cable:

If anyone can break this code, or at least recognize it, this queer, but brilliant young mathematician will be up to the job. I’ve known Turing since his prep school days, but that’s a long story, no time for it now.

“Nice job Catherwood,” proofreading the copy. “I hope to get a reply to this before your shift ends, so stay alert and call me when it comes in, would you?”

“Yes sir, Mr. Danger. I’ll stay right on it.” He still hasn’t noticed his trousers.

“By the way, what can you tell me about Lillian Gruner?” The glasses make his eyes look huge, but somehow they get even bigger at the mention of her name.

“Gosh, Mr. Danger! She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen! What mams!” That’s when he looks down and sees the wet spot.

“What did she say to you last night? Think, son, this is important.”

“Not much, really. In fact she apologized for her poor English. She smiled a lot, though, and was very friendly to me. A perfect smile. Every tooth in place. She’s not from around here, that’s for sure. I’d say she’s German. She sent a telegram to Berlin, you know.”

“Thanks, Catherwood, you’d make a good detective. Listen, I need your help. The next time she comes in here, go to the back room and call me. Then do something, anything, to stall her until I can get here. I need a 10-75 on this double-barreled, Bavarian beauty. Will you do it?”

“You bet, Mr. Danger. It’ll be a pleasure!”

With that, the dense fog of fatigue began to set in. I drag myself up the street to my studio hot-plate apartment in the top floor of the Parkview Apartment Building, next to the railroad tracks. Feels like I’m gonna die if I don’t catch a few z’s before Chelsea shows up for work at eight. I take off my hat and coat, but not the shoes. Then I collapse into my unmade pallet.

Half an hour later the phone rings. Don’t answer it, Nick, sleep. Twenty rings, twenty-five, thirty … won’t this bastard give it up? I roll over and knock the handset off the cradle and onto the floor. I hear a small, tinny voice.

“Mr. Danger! Mr. Danger! Answer the phone! It’s important! Answer the phone!” Suddenly I’m wide awake – dammit!

“Catherwood! Is she there?” What’s that stench? Oops. It’s me.

“No, no. It’s not her. But a telegram just came in for you – from Turing, the guy at Bletchley Park!”

“Thanks, Catherwood, I’ll be right there!”

Minutes later I’m staring, trying to focus on the telegram in my hand.

“Friggin’ Nazis! Right here in Flat River!”

“Pardon me, sir?”

“Oh, nothing Catherwood. Nothing. Keep up the great work! See you later.”

By eight o’clock I’m lounging behind my desk, drinking old coffee, chewing a coca leaf (a trick I learned in the Andes) and rehashing the night’s events. There’s a commotion in the foyer. A split-second later, Chelsea bursts through the door. She’s looking chic in her custom-tailored khaki safari outfit, including pith helmet. That means only one thing – she’s ready for action. Those cargo pants really accentuate her shapely derrière.

“Morning Nicky!” she plants a friendly kiss on my forehead. “Any news since last night? It smells like camphor in here.”

“It’s the coffee, I guess. I know more than I did last night, but I’m no closer to breaking this cipher.”

I show her the telegrams that I sent and received in the past few hours.

“Enigma machine – Wow! That sounds mysterious! And Nazis! That sounds dangerous!”

“Danger is my middle name, Baby. Well, not really, but you know what I mean.”

“What do we do now, Nick?”

“Okay, Chelsea, here’s the plan. I need you to go down to the library at Farmington and find everything you can find about the Enigma machine. Here’s 20 cents for bus fare and a quarter for lunch. Check out Bob-a-rino’s pizza. It’s just a couple of blocks away, on the courthouse square. In the meantime, I’m going to try to get a line on this Gruner schoenfrau.”

“So, you’re giving me the grunt work and saving the fun stuff for yourself, eh?” She gives me her funny little look that says ‘I’m jealous. You belong to me.’ I’ve seen that look before. But not from her.

“Don’t be that way, Chelsea. You know I’m helpless in a library. Now get going and meet me back here at five o’clock.”

With Chelsea off on her mission for the day, it’s time for me to do a little legwork here in town. I walk back to the telegraph office and send a quick cable to an old friend. Then down the street to Deluxe Cab Company where I find Tony, the manager, enjoying his morning espresso and boconnotto.

“Nick!” he waves me in, with his stereotypically expansive Italian gestures. “Please! Sit down and join me, my friend!”

“Hi Tony. It looks delicious, but I just got up from the table. Tell me, do you know where I can find the offices of a company called Deutsche Minenfirma?

“Sure Nick. It’s on Park Street, next to the park, of all places. We pick up a ‘donna bella dolce’ there almost every day,” he makes that 36-24-36 hand gesture as he says it.

“Every day, huh?” I act like I’m not really interested, just making conversation. “Where do you take her?”

“Western Union, Nick. Same thing, every time. We wait while she does her business, then we take her back to her office.” He looks up at me with a cocked eyebrow, “She always goes late at night, sometimes after midnight. Not during your regular business hours. Very strange. You are interested in this woman, no?”

“Interested? Not really. But I need to go there. Got a cab available?”

“Sure. My nephew Frankie is sitting out back. He knows where to go.” Then he leans forward, and in a low, conspiratorial whisper, “Nick, she always asks for the same driver. Schlenker. Otto Schlenker. He’s a new guy I hired a few weeks ago. Just got off the boat from Austria.” He pauses. “In fact, he started about the same time this woman began calling for rides to the telegraph office.”

“You don’t miss a trick, Tony.” I head for the door. “Enjoy your breakfast.”

Minutes later, I’m standing before a run-down cottage on Park Street. Odd looking because it has a stone veneer on the front half and whitewashed stucco on the back. I wave Frankie on. I plan to be here for a while, get to know this Nordic vixen and maybe get a peek at her … enigma machine.

This place doesn’t look like a business office. Seems to be deserted. There is, however, a small card pinned to the front door:

Schickelgruber. Where have I heard that name before? I turn the knob, but the door is locked. There’s a doorbell, but I decide not to ring it. Feels like I’m being watched, but not from inside the house. Maybe coming here in broad daylight wasn’t such a smart idea. Time to beat a dignified retreat. I record the info on the card into my notebook, then casually cross the street into Columbia Park, stroll past the busy swimming pool and out of sight.

It’s still early. I head back to the apartment, take a shower and hit the hay for some badly needed sleep. I step back into the office at a few minutes after five. Chelsea is waiting for me.

“Hey girl! What’s the bird’s eye low-down on this caper, whatever that means?”

“You won’t believe what I found, Nick,” reaching for one of several books lying on my desk. “The enigma machine is awesome! Even if we find it, I don’t see how we’ll ever break the code.”

“Always the cockeyed optimist, aren’t you? Did you figure out how it works?”

She opens a book to some type of electrical diagram that looks like a pile of spaghetti and chopsticks. Then she starts talking about rotors, plug boards and reflectors. After about 30 seconds I have to cut her off.

“Okay. I think I got it,” a headache, that is. “Can you show me a picture of this thing, so I’ll recognize it if I ever find it?”

“Let’s see,” flipping pages. “Here it is.”

“Looks like some kind of a weird, portable typewriter.”

“Nick, it’s the most secure encryption method ever developed. To decrypt a message, we have to know which rotors were used, the connections on the plug board and the initial rotor settings,” she points to one spot on the photo, then another. “With that information, we set up our machine to match the sender’s. Then we type in the encrypted message. The output will be the original plain text message. That’s why your friend at Bletchley Park is so desperate to get his hands on this one. But, without knowing the settings of the sender’s machine when the original message was typed in, it’s practically impossible to decode the message.”

“Thanks. I understood that explanation, or at least most of it.”

“Nick, if we can get our hands on that machine, it could turn the tide of the war in Britain’s favor. It could change the course of history!”

“Wow! I see what you mean, Chelsea. Unfortunately, my day wasn’t so fruitful. I found the Deutsche Minenfirma office, but it was closed. I think someone was watching me, so they may know I’m on the case. That will just make it harder.”

At that moment, there’s a knock at the door. A U.S. Army sergeant steps into the office and closes the door behind him. “Mr. Nick Danger?” he asks. A leather pouch is draped over his shoulder.

“Nick Danger, Third Eye (when two are not enough!), at your service. What can I do for you, soldier?”

“I have a top secret package for you from Mr. William Donovan, Director of Military Intelligence.” He pulls a large manila envelope from the pouch. Predictably, it’s stamped ‘TOP SECRET’ in large red letters. “This was flown direct to Lambert Field today on a special military flight from Washington, D.C. I took it from the pilot before he even stepped off the plane and drove it directly here, to your office.” Chelsea’s eyes are as big as hubcaps.

“Please sign here. Thank you, Sir.” Then he salutes, turns and leaves.

“Director of Military Intelligence! What’s going on here?” Chelsea is squirming with excitement.

“That’s my old pal ‘Wild Bill’ Donovan,” I said casually as I opened the envelope. “We played football together in college.” I read the following letter, then toss it to Chelsea:

Included in the packet are two 8 x 10 glossies: One of Lillian Gruner, the other of her accomplice, ‘Professor’ Schickelgruber.

Wow! Catherwood was right. This gal is dynamite! As for Schickelgruber: I’ve seen that face before – but where? Also in the packet, an operator’s manual for the Enigma machine, translated from German. I hand that over to Chelsea for safekeeping.

“What’s our next move, Nick?” like I said this morning, she’s ready for action. “Should we wait for ‘Germania’ to arrive?”

“Hell no! If we do that, he’ll think we want him to take over the case. I’d like to have this adventure wrapped up before he gets here.” I pull out my notebook and begin sketching out a plan.

“Let’s assume that fräulein Gruner will be sending another Enigma message tonight. My guess is that they do the encryption at their office, then take it to Western Union for transmittal. That means we should stake out the office and watch for any activity.”

“Yes!” Chelsea chimes in, “after Gruner leaves we can overpower Schickelgruber and snatch the Enigma machine!”

“That may not be necessary, but we won’t know until we get there.” I grab my hat. “Let’s go to Hunt’s Dairy Bar for supper and kill some time before the stakeout.”

10:42 PM – Chelsea and I are sitting on a picnic table in Columbia Park, a dark, secluded spot where we have a good view of the Deutsche Minenfirma office. I suggest we cuddle and smooch, so as not to arouse the suspicions of passersby. Chelsea readily agrees. My not-so-idle hands are just unlatching the gate to the devil’s playground, when a Deluxe Cab pulls up and stops in front of the house (“Dammit!!”). A man and woman get out – both from the FRONT DOORS of the car. They go into the house.

“Holy Cow!” My mental picture of this case, fuzzy up to now, snaps suddenly into sharp focus. “Chelsea, run back to the office and grab that photo of Schickelgruber. Show it to Tony at Deluxe Cab. I’ll bet you a dollar to a donut he says it’s Otto Schlenker!” Then, almost as an afterthought, “Better stop by the precinct and tell Bradshaw what we’re up to. Bring him back with you, but tell him I said ‘No sirens, no flashing lights!’”

Chelsea rearranges her Daisy Mae blouse then sprints back to the office. Meanwhile, I sneak to the back of the house and peer through the window of a dimly lit room. A blonde woman, Gruner, no doubt, is hunched over the Enigma machine. She concentrates intently on her work.

I’m admiring her physical attributes, which, even in the poor light, are considerable. A twig snaps behind me. Before I can turn, I feel a sharp pain in the back of my head. I see stars. My knees buckle. Then everything goes black.

11:28 PM – Oh, my head! Where am I? My eyes finally begin to focus – on the business end of a Walther P-38 pistol hovering about 3 inches from my nose. I try to raise my hand to slap it aside, but, just as I expected, I’m tied securely to the straight-back chair.

“Welcome back to the world of the living, Herr Danger! Though not for long!” It’s Schickelgruber. From this angle he looks like a weasel. He even talks like a weasel; that is, how I imagine a weasel would talk, if it wanted to be a Schickelgruber.

“Schickelgruber, you weasel!” I know it’s just a matter of moments before Chelsea and Bradshaw make their appearance. Time! I have to stall for time! “Or would that be ‘Schlenker, you weasel?’”

“Ha! No matter, Danger, you fool!” He laughs like a weasel, too. “You have discovered our secret, perhaps, but it is too late! Our work here is nearly finished. Soon, we will be leaving this squalid village for the Idaho silver mines, and you will be dead!”

“Alois!” Lillian looks up briefly from her work, “shut your face and kill the bastard!” Looks like Wild Bill was right about her.

“Oh, I will, my dear.” He turns back toward me, smiling through yellow, weasly-looking teeth. “But we shall do it my way this time. A little fear. A little panic. A little intense pain. Then it will all be over for you, my nosy friend!”

“Cut the crap and shoot him, Al.” She closes up the Enigma machine. “I’m ready to go.”

“No, Lillian. Shooting is too good for a washed-up, two-bit gumshoe. I think fire is the correct approach for this one. Let’s gag him and set the house on fire. He’ll be dead before the firemen can get here.”

“Christ, Alois! Every time you get theatrical like this, you screw up! Shoot him and let’s get the hell out of here!”

Suddenly the dimly lit room goes black. Someone breaks down the door and rushes into the room. Must be Bradshaw. “Bradshaw! He's got a gun!”

In the ensuing melee, someone crashes into my chair and sends me flying backward. My head hits the corner of the desk, then rebounds into a nearby wastebasket. Stars again, but I’m sitting, so my knees don’t buckle and it’s already pitch black. Still, I think I’m losing it.

11:47 PM – My head is pounding double time as I slowly come to, again. This time, however, the situation is much more user friendly. I’m lying on the couch, my throbbing head cradled in Chelsea’s soft and fragrant lap. Lillian Gruner and Alois Schickelgruber are sitting on the floor, hands and ankles firmly cuffed. Bradshaw is strutting around like a peacock, and a man I’ve never seen before is examining the Enigma machine.

“Who’s that guy?” I whisper hoarsely. It’s all I can do to get three words out.

“That’s GERMANIA, Nick. He saved your life tonight.” The big man turns around and grins. He looks just like the Wild Bill Donovan I remember from college.

“Bill?” I thought my head was clearing, but now I’m not so sure.

“Bill, Jr., Mr. Danger. Dad told me you were a resourceful dude. You probably would have gotten out of this pickle on your own, but with so much at stake, I thought I’d better lend you a hand.”

“Yeah, right! I had a first-class FUBAR going here until you showed up. Please call me Nick, and by the way, thanks.”

“Actually, Mr. Dang-, I mean Nick, you created just enough of a diversion that I was able to enter the house and take out these Nazis quite easily. Don’t sell yourself short.”

“Okay, so we got the machine, that’s great. But did we get any of the other stuff we’ll need to break the code?”

“As luck would have it, we did.” he holds up a leather-bound booklet. “Here are the daily rotor settings for the entire year. Every Enigma operator uses these same settings. With this, our friends at Bletchley Park can decrypt every message that any agent sends. It’s no exaggeration when I say that tonight marks the beginning of the end for the Third Reich.” Schickelgruber trembles with rage while Lillian sobs quietly.

“Wow! Now I feel great!” I turn and look up at Chelsea, who is running her fingers through my hair. “Any chance we could go back to the park and pick up where we left off?”

“I’ve got a better idea, Nick.” She outlines my lips with her finger. “Let’s go back to my place.”

When GERMANIA captured Lillian Gruner, her last, and most important, Enigma message fell into American hands, unsent. Here is that message:

When decrypted, this message will lead you to a dead drop, a secret location where the Nazi spies leave messages and other items for each other (sounds kind of like a geocache, doesn’t it?). I had to do some fast-talking, but I convinced Donovan and Turing to provide you with access to the Enigma machine so you can complete the project. You’ll find it at the following link:

Use this machine if you can. It’s simpler. But if it doesn’t work for you, here’s another one:

If you use the Enigma Applet, make sure that:

• Wheel order is set to 123
• Ring settings are: 111 blank
• Stecker Pairs: all blanks
• Indicator Settings: don’t touch
• Number of rotors: 3
• Reflector: B
• 4/5 letter group: checked

You may have to play with the settings a bit to make it work right, but eventually the messages will come through.

The Abwehr gives every Enigma machine operator a booklet with the rotor settings for each day of the year. This booklet is called a one-time pad because the settings are used only once and they change every day. This creates a theoretically unbreakable encryption. (The practice described here is badly flawed, but we won’t get into that.)

To further enhance security the one-time pad is encrypted two ways:

• To obtain the daily rotor settings the operator must answer three questions, one for each rotor.
• The answer to each question is a letter of the alphabet.
• The questions are encrypted using a simple substitution cipher, one that every geocacher will recognize.

The questions also serve as a daily refresher for information that every Abwehr agent needs to know. The answers are unambiguous and you can find them by searching the Internet. Here are the rotor setting questions for 4 July 1939:

I. CUBRAVK OYQT BA FGERRG JUBFR ANZR VAPYHQRF PNEQVANY PBZCNFF CBVAG (A, R, F, J). JUVPU BAR VF VG?

II. VAIRAGBE BS RAVTZN ZNPUVAR (SVEFG YRGGRE BS YNFG ANZR)

III. QVERPGBE BS NOJRUE (SVEFG YRGGRE BS YNFG ANZR)

Answer the three questions, set the rotors, then type in the encrypted messages. The Enigma machine, if set correctly, will return the plain text version that will lead you to the geocache. Don’t start looking for the cache until you’ve broken the code and deciphered the final message. You’ll be wasting your time, otherwise. The Enigma machine is pretty simple to use, once you get the hang of it, but if you hit a serious snag, contact me and I’ll help you any way I can. You can reach me by email: nick_danger@juno.com. Here’s another hint: I hope you enjoy the story, but don’t read too much into it. There are some clues, but also some red herrings and you won’t know which is which. Concentrate on breaking the cipher.

Later, at Chelsea’s apartment:

“Doesn’t it seem odd, Nick, that they wrote their secret messages in English, rather than German, their native language?”

“I thought about that, Chelsea,” really, I hadn’t. “I think they were daring us to break their code.”

As in life, this geocache has multiple levels of meaning, some of which require a higher level of understanding. Most folks live happy and productive lives at the lowest level, blissfully ignorant of a universe that exists beyond their limited perception. A small minority, however, seek greater understanding. This quest for meaning, or illumination (hence, Illuminati), is reflected in some aspects of the "Fascist Femme."

Many will consider this cache too much work just to log a single find. If your geocaching goal is simply to maximize your total finds, this one is not for you. On the other hand, if you seek a higher challenge, with greater rewards, this is the type of cache I think you'll enjoy. There are, in fact, numerous rewards hidden here, awaiting your discovery. Enjoy the hunt and thanks for your help solving this case!

-- Know Future