To utilize the key, let’s return to the cipher rows themselves and lay them one after the other, per Patterson’s instructions:
If we apply the first numerical key, 33, to the letters we would count 3 over on the first row then identify the next 5 letters, FEETH. The next number, 3, indicates the original position of this letter row. Using 28, you would count 2 more letters over and identify 5 letters that would be placed in the row 8 position. By applying the remaining keys to the letters, the grid reappears in its original order:
The message can be read vertically down the 5 columns from left to right:
Malone read again Voccio’s report and Andrew Jackson’s coded message.
Jefferson Wheel.
Followed by twenty-six random letters and five symbols.
He’d already surfed the Internet and determined what the words Jefferson Wheel meant. Twenty-six wooden disks, upon which were carved the letters of the alphabet in random sequence. Each disk was numbered 1 through 26 and, depending on the order in which the disks were threaded onto an iron spindle, and the manner in which they were aligned, coded messages could be passed. The only requirement was that the sender and receiver had to possess the same collection of disks and arrange them in the same order. Jefferson conceived the idea himself from cipher locks he’d read about in French journals.
The problem?
Only one wheel still existed.
Jefferson’s own.
Which had been lost for decades but now was on display at Monticello, Jefferson’s Virginia estate. Malone assumed the twenty-six random letters in Jackson’s message would align the disks.
But what order should the disks be in?
Since none was specified, he would assume numerically. So when the disks were threaded in the correct sequence, then properly arranged, twenty-five lines would contain nonsense.
One would reveal a cohesive message.
He hadn’t told Cassiopeia what he’d found.
Not on the phone.
Monticello was less than an hour to the west.
They’d go there tomorrow.