bout de papier, Vol. 14, No. 3 (1997) — Fall 1997 // Automne 1997, pp. 46–48
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, to coin a phrase. The head of the Centre, Hamish MacBannoch, came out of the closet. (He wasn’t gay, he just got lost there one day while looking for his hat. After a week surviving on a forgotten cache of single-malt Scotch and oatcakes, he was found by the janitor.) Mabel Stanley and her grunge band, Edible Granite, continued their Asian odyssey with a Japanese tour, starting at the Hashimoto Home for the Grateful Deaf. And in York, a provincial capital (none more so), Premier Sleazewagon returned to his office from a happy morning squeezing blood from a stone (Melvin Stone, impoverished welfare parent) to take a call from his new Agent-General in Tokyo, “Papa Jack” Paridy (fresh from his own tour of the Tuvan prison system). Papa Jack reported in guarded tones that the Premier’s secret project was ready to roll. Sleazewagon gave him the go-ahead and fell back into his leech-leather swivel-chair, gazing with hope and adoration (in his case, an expression not easily distinguished from gas pains) at the candle-lit shrine to Mabel in the corner of the room.
Two weeks later, LDC Liebnitz was startled, on entering the men’s washroom nearest his office, to find a long-haired, stiletto-heeled vision in a sarong slit to the waist, crying copious mascara-enriched tears into the sink. The ace logician was even more surprised to find that the vision in question was Dryan Iweedie, the Centre’s conservative (male) archivist. “What’s the matter, old fellow,” Liebnitz asked, “and why the Mata Hari get-up?”
“Oh Liebnitz, it’s awful,’ Tweedie replied. “Mabel, my true love, has been kidnapped in Japan by the yakuza. A friend at our Tokyo Station says the Japanese mob was hired by some depraved wretch to smuggle her to another APEC capital and hold her until he could come and have his way with her. My only chance to find her is to sign up as a sing-song girl with the same yakuza outfit until I can worm my way into their confidence. I thought I’d done a good job with this dress and the wig and make-up, but every time I get close enough to a man to test the disguise, he falls asleep. My plane leaves in a few hours. What can I do? Liebnitz? Liebnitz?” The logician shook himself awake and quickly worked out the source of Tweedie’s problem: the volumes of Hansard he had torn up and used to pad
46 bout de papier Vol. his pectorals. Replacing this soporific prose with shredded Mickey Spillane gave the archivist a much racier image as he dashed out to the airport limo.
Another week had passed when Mabel burst into Liebnitz’s office, seeking Tweedie’s whereabouts. She had easily freed herself from the yakuza, by playing Edible Granite’s latest video to her captors until they rushed from the building gibbering in abject terror and affronted aesthetics. She had also found out that the man behind the scam was none other than (gasp!) Rialto Sleazewagon. But by that time, Tweedie had started work at an Osaka teahouse, been betrayed to the yakuza by Sleazewagon’s unknown mole in the Centre’s Tokyo operations, and disappeared. “That lovable dipstick!” she exclaimed with a warmth that surprised Liebnitz. “All that effort, and now we need to rescue him.”
“Easier said than done,” replied the ace logician. “Our only source of information is Tweedie’s unknown friend at our Tokyo Station. But we can’t just show up in Tokyo and start asking questions, or we might tip off Sleazewagon’s mole. All we know about the two is that both are on the Station’s Executive Committee. We’ll need to do a lot of digging before we act.” Replied Mabel, “Not so! Tweedie managed to smuggle a report to the Centre from the place he is being held. I found it in the cafeteria, disguised as a sushi maki wrapping, and managed to retrieve it by claiming the filling was poisonous blowfish. Tweedie provides enough information on the Station for us to work out who to contact, but unfortunately he seems to have been taking Jimmy the Turk’s Lessons in Unnecessary Complication.” She handed Liebnitz the following wasabi-stained report.
GENERAL CONDITIONS
(1) The Head of Station (HS) has four
Directors General (DGs) reporting to him, one each for Administration (DG/ADMIN), Signal Intelligence (DG/SIGINT), Human Intelligence (DG/HUMINT) and Operations (DG/OPS). Each DG supervises three Directors (Ds), except for one DG, who supervises four. The HS, four DGs and thirteen Ds make up the Station’s
Executive Committee (ExCo). (2) The organization of the Station is reflected in the attached organization chart, with each name replaced by a chart-box number (CB#). The total number of people working for the HS (CB#1) is a cubic number, ie the result of multiplying a number by itself twice (eg 1000 = 10x10x10). No two divisions have the same number of people except D/Analysis(I) and D/Analysis(II), which as the result of an ancient compromise each have 6 plus the respective Directors. (3) The building housing the Station has four floors. The fourth floor, which houses the SIGINT bureau, has rooms 400-450. The third floor, which houses the ADMIN bureau and the HS, has rooms 300-350. The second floor, which houses the HUMINT bureau and a small part of the OPS bureau, has rooms 200-250. The first floor, which houses the rest of the OPS bureau, has rooms 100-150. Each staff member has his/her own office; some are also set aside for meeting rooms (eg room 350), store-rooms etc.
(4) The room number of the HS is evenly divisible by 7 and by 11; the only other room number with this trait is that of the D/Penetration (CB#13). The DGs’ room numbers (one per floor) are all evenly divisible by I and are the lowest such numbers available on their floor (not counting the HS’s room number). The Directors’ room numbers are all evenly divisible by 7; of these, leaving aside the room of the D/Penetration, six are each an exact multiple of their occupant’s age and the other six are each evenly divisible by 5.
’5) All members of the ExCo are over 21 and under 65. Their current ages are all prime numbers (ie numbers evenly divisible only by I and themselves, like 13 and 17). No more than two ExCo members are of the same age, and the oldest and youngest are the only ones of their respective ages. The HS is the only one ExCo member in his 60s; the DGs are all in their 50s; and the Directors are all under 50.
6) There is at least one ExCo member from each of the ten Canadian provinces (none from the territories). No bureau has more than one ExCo member from the same province, except one bureau that includes all three Exco members from Ontario.
(7) The APEC capital where Tweedie is held
is an anagram of: (a) the first letter of the code name of each of the ExCo members in the SIGINT, HUMINT and ADMIN bureaus, plus (b) the first letter of the surname of each of the ExCo members from the three provinces that returned a majority of Liberal seats in the last federal election, but (c) not including any letter derived in either way from the mole’s particulars.
SPECIFIC CLUES
In the following clues, first names are given n mixed upper and lower case (eg George); surnames are given in all upper case eg JONES); and the codenames, which are ill the names of vegetables, are given in quotation marks (eg “Spinach”).
a) The mole is codenamed “Yam”;
Mencius is Tweedie’s contact. b) “Endive” (D/Analysis (I) in room 406) and “Rhubarb” (D/Analysis (II)
Humint Bureau) are the same age. c) The CB# of the D/Housekeeping
(McGEEK) is three times that of the D/Development (“Daikon”). The former supervises four more people than the latter.
d) Ms SYZYGY (who reports to Elijah) and Hyperbole (who reports to Ms PURLIEU) are both 41.
= The room number of D/Interception
FLASHWORTHY (whose CB# is 1/60 of that room number) is twice the room number of the D/Maintenance (“Eggplant” at CB#10) and four times the room number of the D/Persuasion
(ROSENKRANZ), who is 47. Of the four DGs, the DG/SIGINT
(CB#2) and the man from BC are older than the woman in room 319 and McCarthy NOSEWINKLE.
Head of Station (g) OLDESOTO (“Artichoke”)
30 people working for him, including D/Recruitment O’HAGEN and his 8 subordinates.
‚h) Felix (“Shallot”) from PEI has the most subordinates (14); Ishmael has the least (3). Other than Felix, the five Maritime members of ExCo are “Watercress” in room 315 and Ulysses at CB#7 (both Nova Scotia); the D/Special Ops (“Leek”) at CB#14 and Head of Station NOSHWELL (both Newfoundland); and “Squash” MacHINERY in room 301.
i) No-one has the same CB# as number of subordinates.
]) The D/Tech Support (ARROSES),
Mr AFRICA (age 23) and the woman at CB#12 all report to “Cauliflower” the 53 year old man in room 110. k) Aloysius MARIMBA from Quebec is in room 434; Moses (“Okra”) in room 217 is at CB#15; and “Garbanzo” SOUFFLE, the D/Finance, is in room 329.
|) Zeitgeist (“Beans”) in room 245 and IRRAWADDY in room 140 are the same age.
m) There are five women in ExCo: the DG at CB#5 plus four directors (“Chives”, the D/Communications at CB#16, the Saskatchewan native and DeCADENCE). By rising order of room number, these are Ramona, Seratina, Hypatia, Pavlova and Desdemona.
1) Paco “Bok Choy” RALLENTANDO has 26 people under him, one less than the DG from Manitoba. Beauregard from Quebec has 9 subordinates, one less than “Asparagus”
1) The CB# of the DG from Ontario is double that of the DG from Alberta and three more than the CB# of Marcus
15)
D DO D 18 (“’Chicory”). The CB# of the BC woman is only one away from that of the director from Alberta.
(p) The woman at CB#8 is living with Mr TATTERSALL from Quebec. “So where do we start?” Mabel said grimly when Liebnitz had finished reading. The ace logician replied by sketching out the attached table, saying “Actually, this is another of those puzzles that looks harder than it is. For example, there are only a few prime numbers between 21 and 65, and not many room numbers that fill all the listed qualifications.” He and Mabel sorted out the puzzle in short order, and were soon on their way to Asia to pick up Tweedie’s trail, stopping en route only to pick up some shredded Hansard.
Can you duplicate this feat by providing the surnames of Tweedie’s contact and the mole, and by working out the APEC capital where the sarong-clad archivist is being held for Sleazewagon’s arrival? Filling in the table will help you solve the puzzle but need not be submitted. The winner will be chosen by drawing from all correct entries received by [DATE], and will receive a CD of Tuvan throat singing plus a book on lost Japan.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 14, No. 3 (1997) — Fall 1997 // Automne 1997, pp. 46–48. Read the rest of this issue →
