Moby-Dick book cipher¶

The Moby-Dick book cipher is the code system, keyed to a 1980 reprint of Moby-Dick, through which the Biz's Russian correspondents send him numbered messages by recorded "sweepstakes" phone lines.


Type	Lore (communication method)
Aliases	Torn-out Moby-Dick; the Moby Dick codebook; the sweepstakes numbers
Used by	Dick "The Biz" Baxter
Senders	The "Russian intelligence service" (Summer Service 04); a KGB front (Appalachia 01)
First appearance	Summer Service 04

How it works¶

A recorded voice on a payphone line advertises a "promotional sweepstakes" and reads out lists of numbers ("our winning numbers are 178, 14, 97, 325..."), signing off "Best of luck! Everyone's a winner!" The Biz decodes them against a specific edition of Moby-Dick. A word that does not appear in the novel cannot be sent as written, which is why "Georgia" arrives as "George I A" (Summer Service 04, Appalachia 01). Decoding the first message takes the Biz about ten minutes of laborious work.

History¶

The Summer Service¶

In Summer Service 04 the Biz's secret instructions require the big 1980 reprint of Moby-Dick, which he does not carry. He jogs to the Readful Things bookstore in Marblehead, using the hotel's lack of toilet paper as his excuse, and finds the right edition (Summer Service 04). About four hours later he sends the others away and phones the number from a payphone. Andre has him decode a message "from the Russian intelligence service": "Two secret[?] submarine lost near Massachusetts. Cause unknown. Instructions to follow soon." The Biz concludes that the Russians probably were not behind the Marblehead events, since, in Ezra's words, "They also lost submarines", and keeps the message to himself (Summer Service 04). The word "secret" is hard to make out in the recording.

The Things in Appalachia¶

The cipher returns in Appalachia 01. The Biz gets a sweepstakes invitation that Andre calls a KGB front and rings the "Canada maple syrup sweepstakes line". The numbers (13, 45, 196 and so on) decode to an offer: information on the "Massachusetts matter" in exchange for a favor (Appalachia 01). See KGB.

The Radford Horrors¶

When the Biz disappears, the team searches his apartment and finds a copy of Moby-Dick with its first few hundred pages removed. Some of the pages lie in the wastebasket with words circled and underlined, and a chart of numbers and arrows is in the back. The circled words read "instructions to cause soon submarine lost near", though the team cannot tell their order and can see the set is incomplete. All seven words occur in the Summer Service 04 message ("Two secret[?] submarine lost near Massachusetts. Cause unknown. Instructions to follow soon."), although nobody at the table makes the connection. Rita, as Andrew, briefs Kurt that the Biz is "weirdly into sweepstakes" and "receiving coded messages through the book Moby-Dick", and hands over the book and the crumpled pages (Radford Horrors 01). The same apartment holds months of unopened mail and a bug-out bag.

Unresolved¶

Andre presents both the Summer Service 04 messages ("Russian intelligence service") and the Appalachia 01 messages ("KGB front") as coming from the same Russian source, but the two arcs use differently named sweepstakes lines.
The "instructions to follow soon" are never shown to arrive, and it is not established whether the torn copy in the Biz's apartment is the book he bought in Marblehead.