bout de papier, Vol. 15, No. 1 (1998) — Spring 1998 // Printemps 1998, pp. 46–48
It was a beautiful evening in Boca Grande, capital of the small yet unimportant state of Escorial. Warm breezes ruffled the palms in the Embassy gardens as the reception got underway. The orchestra played a gentle medley by Stomping Tom Connors and PDQ Bach, while cod and maple syrup hors d’oeuvres circulated among the country’s elite.
The visiting Prime Minister chatted calmly with Escorial’s leader, Generalissimo Don Gordo Ballena de Puerco y Frejoles. “I almost had to cancel this visit because of the weather,” said the PM. “We thought it was another ice storm, but it was just my Finance Minister’s reaction to the bank merger.” Don Gordo’s bodyguard frowned in puzzlement.
Political Officer Attila McGee was in the gazebo behind the swimming pool, playing strip poker with a charming young lady named Esmeralda he had just met at the reception. He was of course cheating. Esmeralda, who had a PhD in combinatorial mathematics, knew it, but thought he was cute. He was unaware that she was Don Gordo’s daughter.
Commercial Counsellor Morton Orillia was working hard to nail down another contract to add to the visiting delegation’s total: a thousand gross of electric neckties that flashed “Kiss me in the dark, baby”. Unfortunately, the man to whom he was talking was not (as Morton believed) the owner of the Cardinal Sin boutique, but rather a lisping local Cardinal named Thin. Fortunately, the tie was in any event refusing to light up.
Behind the bar, Office Manager Douleur des Ormeaux desperately tried to move 25 cases of screech before the auditors arrived to check up on the departmentally-mandated “Use Our Booze” program. The last three guests who tried it had just been taken away.
And from a window overlooking the garden came that most familiar of diplomatic sounds, an Ambassador going ballistic. “You find those f***ing beavers before the alligator ceremony, Africa, or I’ll have you peacekeeping in Moose Jaw by Monday!”
An ashen-faced Felix Africa, First Secretary (Consular) and head of the Centre’s office, stumbled out of the Ambassador’s office and stared in anguished appeal at his friend, who had arrived earlier that day with the delegation. “You’ve got to help me, Liebnitz,” he pleaded. “The PMO sent down a pair of beaver ahead of the PM, to be presented to Don Gordo tonight in exchange for a pair of alligators. Jimmy the Turk, who I replaced only yesterday, was put in charge. But he was browned off at the Ambassador for making him draft the Embassy’s contribution to the Business Plan when Jimmy wanted the time off for the local saturnalia. So Jimmy hid the beavers, submitted the Business Plan in code and took off without telling anyone.”
Liebnitz blanched. ’The Business Plan? The one that drove an ADM nuts last year, and ate three interns? The one that had E Branch setting up a factory for whoopie cushions to keep Senators awake, until someone told them that “business line” was only a figure of speech? The one that made it necessary to delete ’Knowledge’ from the appraisal criteria for EX promotions, as no-one who had read a copy could remember their name?”
Africa replied, “That’s the one. The Ambassador wants me to decipher the Plan tonight, so he can get it into the bag leaving first thing tomorrow. AND he insists I find the beavers before the end of the reception. The only break I’ve got is that Jimmy wrote down the location of the beavers — HSMDVSDBEO NBZDLG — in the same cipher he used for the Plan here.” So saying, he handed the ace logician a table with the row and column headings of a planning document but the other entries unreadable.
Liebnitz pondered the document. “Well, this isn’t too tough. The cipher he used seems to be a simple alphabetical substitution, with one letter in the cipher-text always replacing the same letter in the plaintext of the original message. You can generally solve these puzzles by doing a letter-count and working things out from there. E is usually the most common letter, with A/I/N/O/R/S/T next in some order. Since Jimmy was obviously feeling generous, did he leave us any other clues?”
Africa said, “Yes he did. He told our secretary that if you wrote out the cipher-text letters in a column in alphabetical order from A to Z and then wrote down the plain-text equivalent letter beside each cipher-text letter, the first half of the plain-text letters would include out a word that contained all five vowels.”
With that clue, Liebnitz and Africa quickly solved the cipher and restored the Business Plan to readable form (unfortunately). They also quickly figured out where Jimmy had put the beavers. Just as they were dashing from Africa’s office, however, they were stopped by a prolonged bull-like roar and a loud crash from the garden.
While they were working, the reception had deteriorated. Strolling through the birch grove at the back of the garden, Don Gordo had come across Attila and Esmeralda in the final stages of their card game. Picking up a nearby alligator and brandishing it by the tail, he lumbered with surprising speed after the rapidly departing political officer, shouting Spanish imprecations of such inventiveness and vigour that other guests started taking notes. Don Gordo’s bodyguard joined the chase but was tripped by Esmeralda just as he passed the orchestra pavilion, winding up wedged head-first into a tuba.
As Attila rounded the corner between the grove and the gym, Don Gordo was catching up. Suddenly, the Embassy officer slipped on a fallen canape and went to his knees by the edge of the pool. Just as the enraged father raised an equally enraged alligator to brain him, however, one of the large birch trees behind them toppled majestically down and knocked Don Gordo into the water. Attila dashed quickly over to a laughing Esmeralda, a pair of beavers waddled out from the grove to inspect their work with a professional air, and the startled alligator scampered off to the adjacent jacuzzi, where he interrupted a close theological discussion between the Ambassador’s wife and Cardinal Thin.
Don Gordo was meanwhile floundering in the water and bellowing for help. Ever the cool manager, the Ambassador delegated the rescue to Morton Orillia. The Commercial Counsellor threw himself wildly into the pool just as Don Gordo realized he was in the shallow end, stood up and stomped up the ladder. As others gathered to rescue Orillia, who in fact couldn’t swim, Douleur des Ormeaux handed the generalissimo the first glass of strong spirits that came to hand. As the screech hit Don Gordo’s palate, his face adopted a rainbow coloration and paisley pattern that would have overjoyed Timothy Leary, his mustache started revolving like a propeller and all the gold braid on his uniform melted. Many commented on the improvement in his appearance. Staggering back, he grabbed the connina Montan Arillin for amaret it at ao up the Commercial Officer’s electric neckwear. “Kiss me in the dark, baby?” wondered the confused Presidente. So Morton thought of his country and did.
A considerable time later, having rounded up the beavers for the ceremonial exchange, Liebnitz and Africa watched while Don Gordo congratulated a bemused Prime Minister for the best party he’d attended in years, personally signed the contract for Morton’s thousand gross of ties and took delivery of the entire consignment of Newfoundland firewater. As the Ambassador said while the other guests departed, “This reception has been a classic of its kind. We shall never see its like again. With luck. Now what about that business plan, Africa?”
Can you duplicate Liebnitz’s and Africa’s feat by deciphering the Business Plan table and working out where Jimmy the Turk put the beavers? bout de papier will decide the winner by drawing from a box containing all correct entries received by June 15, 1998. The winner will receive a book prize autographed by A Aalto.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 15, No. 1 (1998) — Spring 1998 // Printemps 1998, pp. 46–48. Read the rest of this issue →
