Amish Covert Operation

by Meghan Carver

  She bit her lip and looked out the window. “I am sorry, Adam. Alcohol is a powerful evil.”

  Her sympathy warmed him in a way no one else’s had. Perhaps it was the sincerity she exuded. Jed and Sarah’s house came into view, and he instinctually checked his mirrors to see if anyone was around. All was clear as he pulled into the drive. Before he turned off the SUV, he rotated to her. “My dad wasted his life, but I’m determined not to waste mine. That’s why I’m with ICE. I want to do something significant. Something productive and helpful.” He turned the key and opened his door. “Are you ready to crack that code and get this case solved?”

  A surprised and somewhat sorrowful look crossed her face, but with a visual scan of the property, he hopped out of the Tahoe and hurried to her side, helping her down without making eye contact. Why was he sharing so much of his past? This was just a case. Besides, how would acknowledging his Amish roots improve his life? How could one man working a field, or doing whatever it is Amish men do to earn a living, improve the world? The Amish were hiding from the world, and Adam Troyer did not hide from anyone or anything.

  Katie’s twins burst from the front door, one of them sporting an adorable milk mustache. They must have arrived in the middle of breakfast. Katie hugged both daughters as one told her mother about the other hogging the bed last night. “Ach, mein liebchen, Gott’s Word tells us not to complain.” But a large smile stretched across her face, and she hugged her twins closer.

  “Go on inside, Katie, and I’ll be in in a minute.” He withdrew his phone from his pocket. It was time to check in again with his supervisory special agent.

  A moment later, the door closed on Katie and the twins as his supervisor answered his call. Adam quickly told him of their safety through the night.

  “And you think the Amish woman will be helpful?” His supervisor’s voice seemed loud in his ear compared to the quiet of the country morning.

  “Definitely. Her only brother is involved, so she’s invested.”

  “Well, keep her safe at all costs, until that message is decoded and she is no longer in danger. We can’t let an innocent Amish woman be harmed. That’s not the way the agency operates.”

  “Of course, sir.” Adam peered around the yard.

  “What about taking her out of the Amish area? Hide her somewhere?”

  “I think she’s an important part of decoding this message first, sir. And wouldn’t she be more conspicuous in her Amish clothing outside the community?”

  “Have her change. Buy her some jeans and a sweatshirt.”

  “It isn’t that simple.” What he knew of the Amish from his grandparents rose strong in his mind. “A faithful Amish believer would never put on worldly clothes. She has already mentioned trusting God with her safety.”

  “Okay, fine. She does seem to be an important part of this case. But do whatever you need to do to keep the two of you safe.”

  Adam pocketed his phone and headed inside with one last examination of the area. The aroma of freshly brewed coffee assaulted him, and at Sarah’s urging, he accepted a second breakfast, consisting of a sticky bun and a mug of coffee, his third cup already that morning.

  “Is everything all right with your supervisor?”

  He took a sip of his coffee. “I’ve been tasked with keeping you safe until this can all be resolved. We don’t want any more attacks like yesterday. And we have agents examining the card you found, as well as the message from your brother. Those pieces of information could be helpful in ICE’s search for the document smugglers.” Somehow his words came out more briskly than he had intended. It wouldn’t be a burden at all to protect this pretty Amish woman. Adam tried to soften his tone as he added, “If you’ll have me.” Not that she had much of a choice.

  Katie nodded, a somber expression on her face.

  As he bit into the bun, Sarah seemed to size him up. “I think Jed’s clothes would fit you.”

  Had he missed something? “Why?”

  Sarah stacked a couple of plates and carried them to the sink. “I was remembering the time Jed wore Amish clothes because his were torn, and it helped him not be recognized because he looked Amish.”

  Katie wiped off one of the twins’ mouths with a wet cloth. “Jah, that is a gut idea. You could disguise yourself by wearing Jed’s Amish clothes.”

  Wear Amish clothes? Wasn’t this going backwards? He would look like his grandfather. “What about driving my SUV? Yesterday, at the cabin, I had hidden the Tahoe down the road. It was unlikely anyone saw it. And, obviously, I might be more noticeable if I look like an Amish man but I’m driving an automobile.” Were they serious about this?

  “You could just remove the hat when you are driving. Then you would look Englisch with your Englisch haircut and clean-shaven face.” Katie tilted her head and looked at him as if she were studying his haircut and facial hair.

  Under her gaze, suddenly the idea didn’t seem so crazy. “I suppose I could still carry my weapon. I have a holster that fits at the small of my back. And for as long as I’m here, in the Amish clothes, I would be perceived differently by the non-Amish, so that might give me an advantage in a pinch. An Englisher, as you call them, wouldn’t be as careful with information around an Amish man they think is just going about his business.” If dressing Amish would allow him to move around the community incognito, then that could only help to keep Katie safe and catch the smugglers. “It would also help disguise you, wouldn’t it? Would you be more noticeable if you were seen with an Englisher?”

  “Jah. Definitely.”

  Before he changed, he dug the little whittled squirrels out of his pants pocket. As he presented one to each of Katie’s twins, their eyes widened with wonder at the tiny wooden creatures. “Danki,” they murmured in unison.

  It didn’t take long to don the Amish clothing, the dark trousers and blue shirt, although the suspenders would take some getting used to. As he buttoned the shirt, he remembered his grandmother explaining that the straight pins a woman used wouldn’t be practical for a man’s shirt. The twins, Ruth and Rebekah, gawked at him, probably unaccustomed to seeing a man in Amish clothing without the bowl-style haircut. Katie said her goodbyes to her children, looking uncertain about when she might see them again, and soon they were speeding toward the sheriff’s offices.

  The one-story redbrick building that housed the local law enforcement sat in a remote and quiet corner of Nappanee. For that, Adam was grateful. He would have enough trouble explaining his Amish dress to the sheriff without encountering citizens on the street.

  But inside, the Sheriff greeted him with an offer of coffee or tea and expressed approval of his disguise—his blue shirt, broadfall trousers, suspenders and straw broad-brimmed hat. Adam brought him up to date on the prior evening’s events, and when he saw the coded message, he picked up his phone to summon a deputy.

  A uniformed officer with thick glasses and an even thicker mustache appeared in the doorway before Adam could sip his fourth cup of coffee for that morning.

  “This here is Deputy Cravens,” Sheriff Moore said. “He’s had extensive training in ciphers. Let’s see what he can do.”

  Adam shook his hand and introduced Katie. “Glad to have help.”

  The deputy opened his laptop, and as it booted up, he examined the note. “As you probably know, Agent Troyer, a cipher, to operate correctly, usually depends on a key. A key could be anything. It’s just a piece of supporting information that is needed to unlock the code. But the cipher cannot be decoded without knowledge of that key.”

  “So we find the key, we break the code.” Adam knew all this.

  “Right. But there’s no telling how detailed the key could be. And without the key, we will not be able to decrypt the cipher.”

  The deputy peered at the screen of his laptop and pecked at the keys. “I’m going to enter a few of these numbers into my cipher program
, and we’ll see what happens.”

  The only noise in the room was the inner whirring of the computer. Katie looked down at her hands in her lap, seemingly uninterested in the deputy’s technology.

  “Nothing. The program isn’t putting together anything that makes sense.” The deputy looked at the note again. “Let me try a few other combinations of the numbers.”

  But even after several more attempts, the computer hadn’t solved anything.

  Deputy Cravens stood and walked around the room, as if thinking. “What do we know about the person who wrote this message? Sometimes knowledge of the person who wrote the message can help figure out the key, especially if it’s something personal.”

  Katie leaned forward and studied her brother’s note again, her eyebrows creasing. “When you use the word key, could that be a book?”

  “Definitely. A book cipher is actually brilliant because both the person writing the message in code and the person reading it need the same book. And since it’s a regular book, neither look suspicious.” Deputy Cravens pointed to the numbers on the slip of paper. “See how these numbers are in groups of three? They could point to a specific word in the book. Then the first would be the page number, the second would be the line number and the third would be that number word in that line.”

  “And eventually, with all the words, you have the message.” Adam watched Katie finger the paper, a myriad of emotions in her expression.

  She held her breath as she turned the paper over and ran her finger over a few letters printed on the back side, near the torn edge.

  He leaned toward her, the hair on his arms standing at attention with anticipation. “What is it? You’re remembering or realizing something.” It was a statement, not a question. He could tell that she had figured it out. “You know how to crack the code.”

  * * *

  It really was true. It was that simple. Her brother had used their old method of sending secret messages. All those years ago, when they were scratching pencils on paper in the dark of the night, hiding under the covers of their respective beds with a flashlight, so as not to be discovered by Daed or Mamm, she never imagined their secret code would be used in such a dangerous situation.

  She took a deep breath to steady her hands. “Jah, it is a book code, as you call it.”

  “What book?” The deputy had moved to the edge of his seat, but Adam held out a hand to shush him.

  With her finger, she pointed to five letters printed on the back side. The rest were missing because the paper was torn. “These are the last five letters of the name of a publisher of the Ausbund. That is the hymnal that all Amish use. My brother must have torn this piece of paper out of a copy of the Ausbund and used the hymnal as the book key.”

  “That makes sense.” Adam touched her forearm, a gesture that calmed her. Sitting in the sheriff’s office with two men in uniforms was not an everyday occurrence for her, and her nerves had been on edge ever since being in the woods the day before.

  The sheriff pierced her with his stare. “And you and your brother have communicated like this before?”

  “Jah. When we were children. A long time ago. It was just for fun.”

  “But why would a little girl know the name of the publishers of the hymnal?”

  Katie shifted under his scrutiny. “I was bored sitting through three hours of sermons every other Sunday. Mamm would make dolls out of her handkerchief and do her best to entertain me, but there were still moments of overwhelming boredom. So I read the hymnal from cover to cover. Every single page, over and over.”

  Sheriff Moore leaned back in his chair, apparently satisfied that she knew which book was the key. “So, what words do all these numbers correspond to?”

  She tucked a stray piece of hair back inside her prayer kapp as she reminded herself to be respectful of his authority. “I do not know. That was a long time ago.” She added in a lower tone, “I do not recall ever knowing exactly what words fell on which page.”

  “That’s a great breakthrough.” Adam leaned back as if to relax the others and reduce the tension between the Sheriff and Katie. “Let’s run back to your house and get one. We can get this solved and get you safe.”

  “It is not that simple, unfortunately. Amish households do not typically have hymnals on their shelves, at least not the hymnal we use for service. The hymnals stay with the benches and are delivered to the house that will host church.”

  Deputy Cravens leaned toward Katie, his forehead wrinkled with confusion. “Benches delivered to a house?”

  “Jah. We do not have church buildings. We worship in each other’s homes or barns. But no one has enough seating for the entire congregation, so there are benches that the bishop keeps. On the Saturday before a church Sunday, he delivers the benches and the hymnals to the home wherever church will be.”

  “So, you don’t have a copy of this Ausbund at your house?”

  “Nein.”

  “What about a friend?”

  “Nein.”

  Adam held up a hand. “Okay, Deputy, she doesn’t have one.” He stared at the floor for a moment, then looked back at Deputy Cravens. “Let’s get online. Everything is online, right? Bring up Google and search the text of the Ausbund.” He flashed a smile at Katie, but it looked insincere. Nervous, even. “How do you spell it?”

  “A-U-S-B-U-N-D.”

  As the deputy tapped on the computer, Katie picked at a fingernail, eventually forcing herself to stop by placing her hands under her white starched apron. If Adam was nervous, then she didn’t have the slightest idea how to handle her emotions. She didn’t know much about being online, although she had seen a little from Englisch acquaintances at the market and the other patrons at the public library. But why would anything Amish be online? That seemed to fly in the face of what the Amish were really all about.

  Adam continued giving instructions as the deputy stared at his screen, scrolling and clicking on his mouse. “If we have to pay for a pdf download, fine. I’ll give you my credit card number to charge it.” He stood and crossed the room, joining the sheriff to look over the deputy’s shoulder.

  Several minutes passed in relative silence, broken only by the click of the mouse or a question of What about that?

  “There’s nothing here.” The deputy exhaled noisily. “I can keep looking, but I don’t know where else to look. There’s some history about the Amish. A slew of bloggers and websites with photos and information about how the Amish live. But there is no full text of the Ausbund available online.”

  The sheriff ran a hand through his graying hair. “Seriously?”

  Adam just chuckled and returned to his seat. “Well, they are Amish. No technology.” He scrubbed a hand over his chin and looked at Katie. “What else can you tell us about the hymnal?”

  “It dates back to the 1500s, and it is written in Pennsylvania German.”

  “German?” The sheriff frowned. “Well, this just keeps getting better and better.”

  Katie stiffened at his comment but said nothing. She had not written the book. It wasn’t her doing. And she had not written the message either. She was trying to help them as best she knew how. “It is our language.” It was the only comment she could muster.

  Adam looked at her with kindness radiating from his rich brown eyes. At least she had one ally in the room. “That means then, gentlemen, that the book key must be in German. An English translation wouldn’t have the same words in the same order for the book code to decipher the message properly. Deputy, try an online-bookseller’s site. Perhaps we can get an ebook version or order an original.”

  A few clicks later, the deputy had more bad news. “I see two versions available, neither for ebook. Both are used. One is temporarily out of stock, with no notice for when it might be available. The other is over one hundred dollars and would take five days to arrive by mail.”

 
“Five days? We can’t wait that long. Is there a way to contact the seller and expedite shipping?”

  “No.”

  Katie summoned her courage and cleared her throat, shrinking slightly back into her chair when the three law enforcement officers all turned to look at her. Law enforcement had not always been kind to the Amish, but she was stuck now. There was no way out except to help find a copy of the Ausbund. “Mein bruder and I had access to the hymnal when we were children because our father was the bishop. But when mein daed died, another bishop was appointed. All the hymnals were passed on to him. Mein bruder probably thinks I have an old copy at home. The church purchased new hymnals a few years ago, and those would be a different version.”

  “Why couldn’t your brother have just written English words on the piece of paper?” the deputy asked. “It would be so much easier.”

  “And so much more dangerous for him if he was caught,” Adam replied. “So, where do we get a hymnal?”

  “We could check the Amish bookstore. That would be faster than ordering through your computer and waiting for the mail.”

  “Yes, the Amish bookstore.” The sheriff was quick to agree with Katie, looking as if he wanted to swipe his hand across his brow in relief. “That would be quick and easy, and we could get this wrapped up.”

  Adam slid a hand up and down one of his suspenders, then let it slap against his chest, wincing slightly with the impact. “Let’s do it. We’ll grab a copy of the hymnal from the Amish bookstore and get that cipher cracked today. The sooner, the better. Katie can direct us.” He grabbed his straw hat from the desk and put it on. “Thank you, Sheriff. Thanks for your help, Deputy. I’ll keep you posted.”

  But as Katie said her goodbyes and let Adam usher her down the hallway and toward the door, she couldn’t help but wonder how Adam would be received in the Amish bookstore. The owners knew every Amish resident within miles of their store. What was that Englisch saying? Would he be perceived as a wolf in sheep’s clothing?