The Code Kurien Joseph   © Copyright 2023 by Kurien Joseph

Photo of Meissen sea life chess set - $75,000.00.

“Chris, I’ve broken the code,” Bashir announced nonchalantly.

If he intended his casual tone to shock his immediate boss, he was not disappointed.

“You did what???” Chris O’Leary, dour, lanky and bespectacled, almost fell out of the high stool on which he was perched as he examined a fresh consignment.

It was early on an unusually overcast Monday morning in July 1972. As it did every morning, the bus had dropped Bashir, an immigrant Masters’ student at UCLA Engineering, a few steps outside the store. Chris was the one who usually opened the store at 8.30 every morning, half an hour before the official opening time.

The Ben Chandler store specialized in high-end jewelry and timepieces, as well as crystal, antique silver, and gifts. Established in 1955 and located on Rodeo Drive in upscale Beverly Hills in Los Angeles, it had been a go-to place for Hollywood celebrities for more than a decade.

None of the other employees had arrived yet. Even so, Chris took Bashir to his cabin in a corner of the store and shut the door.

“Now,” ordered the Store Manager and Head Appraiser, “Tell me what you know.”

The Ben Chandler store – or Chandler’s to its elite clientele - had unusually been looking for someone for its Receiving and Shipping, or R&S department. Unusually, because what it usually recruited were part-time salespeople, and it found in UCLA a regular supply of intelligent and presentable female students. Chandler’s did not deign to advertise; instead, it spread the word discreetly among its own staff. The R&S job duties included moving cartons and crates within the store. That last task required some physical strength, and so Chandler’s had made it clear that for this job it wanted male applicants.

One Monday afternoon, a girl in his class, who worked part-time at Chandler’s, had tipped Bashir off about the vacancy, knowing how desperately he needed to support himself financially through university. The same evening, he rushed to Chandler’s, hand-delivered his application, and got the job.

Top Hollywood stars of the time were loyal and frequent customers of Ben Chandler, whose stern and distant demeanor kept his employees in awe, but whose courtesy and straight dealings endeared him to his customers. Chandler’s was rumored to have supplied high-end china and crystal ware even to the White House.

Bashir recognized Aretha Franklin, Dionne Warwick, and Natalie Wood, among many others, when they visited the store. He watched when Robert Wagner came into the store to buy a “little gift” for his dinner host. With a salesgirl’s help, he selected an antique steak carving set comprising a knife and fork with exquisitely carved handles. He paid the tab of $3,000 in cash.

A week later, a customer came in, dressed hippie-style, in ragged jeans and a T-shirt. The girl who attended to him watched in awe as he carefully picked out a massive chess set with a three-foot square base. Like the base, each of the chess pieces was made entirely of pure Georgian silver, with gold inlay. It was priced at $ 90,000. As she rang up the amount, he told her, “I’ll be back from my car with the money.”

He went outside and came back with an old TV carton, which turned out to be full of hundred-dollar bills. Mr. Chandler happened to come into the retail area just at that moment. As soon as he saw the customer, Chandler gave him a friendly handshake. “And how are you today, Mr Kelly?” Chandler personally accepted the bunch of notes, which he did not bother to count, before depositing them in the till.

No one ever learnt Mr Kelly’s full name – no one was even sure if that was his real name.

Students were permitted to work up to 20 hours a week during term time, and full time during the spring and summer breaks. Ben Chandler was generous. He paid students $2.75 an hour, more than the going rate for students. As for the work, it was easy. Bashir had always been methodical and always good with figures, and he didn’t mind the physical work either.

But he would soon need to look for a “real” job. Soon enough, on the UCLA notice board, he saw an advertisement for an Assistant Engineer at Comptech Technologies, which manufactured computer peripherals. Taking a day’s leave, Bashir hopped two buses to get to Comptech’s office in Hawthorne, 14 miles south of UCLA. Once he handed in his job application, he had to take a written test. The girl at reception had no idea how long the company would take to make a decision – it might be a week, it might be two months.

Back at Chandler’s, he was soon given an additional, more interesting responsibility, working in Merchandise Appraisals, under Chris. With his keen sense of observation and his own innate artistic sense, Bashir quickly began picking up the rudiments of appraising glassware, china and jewelry.

He soon observed that every item on the floor had an alphabetical code, which Chris always referred to as “THE CODE”, enunciating the phrase with such deference and awe Bashir could almost hear the upper-case letters. Chris explained that THE CODE represented the total cost at which the item had been acquired – its purchase price, shipping and land freight costs, custom duties, and so on.

“But those numbers,” he said grandly, “are not for you to know. They’re secret - classified.” In a hushed voice at once smug and solemn, he added, “Only two people in the world know THE CODE – Mr. Chandler and I.”

“But wouldn’t it be easy to break the code?” Bashir queried. “After all, we know the selling price. Subtract from that a retail margin and we would arrive at the total acquisition cost, wouldn’t we?”

“Ah.” Chris was usually solemn, but he condescended to smile, if only for a half-second. “You might think so, but how would you know the margin?” His voice dropped to a whisper. “That margin Mr. Chandler personally decides, and it’s different for each product.”

And now here he was, just ten days later, flippantly announcing he had cracked THE CODE. In the closed cabin at the back of the store, now, Christ pointed to various coded product labels at random, and for each item Bashir was able to tell him its exact cost.

Astounded, Chris hurried Bashir to Ben Chandler’s office upstairs. “Mr. Chandler, this young fella,” he whispered with the urgent air of having discovered a breach in national security, “knows THE CODE.”

“Do you really?” Chandler stood up, his unblinking eyes never leaving those of the young man.

“Yes, Mr. Chandler, I figured it out. Once you have the costing data, it’s really just basic logic.”

Chandler scratched his chin. “Young man,” he said, “I like smart employees, and you've done good work here, I’ll grant that. But you also owe us your loyalty.”

“Sir, I’ve never discussed it with anyone.” Bashir earnestly assured him. “And I never will discuss it. It has really no interest for me. It was just an elementary logic puzzle, which I couldn’t get off my mind.”

“I didn’t realize it was that elementary,” Chandler smiled wryly. He turned to Chris. “Thank you. I’ll take it from here.” Chris reverently tiptoed out of the cabin.

Chandler sat down and stared at Bashir. “Now tell me how you figured this out.”

“To begin with,” Bashir began, “when Chris told me it was a ‘code’, I was sure he meant it was a cipher. Unlike a code, any cipher has a logic, and logic can be analyzed.”

“What about a code then?”

“Well, a code would be something purely arbitrary and not logical, something that you would just decide at whim. For instance, in a wartime code, a field commander might decide that ‘We’ll be having sandwiches for tea’ means ‘Do not attack until dawn’.”

“But you’d need hundreds of codes then,” observed Mr. Chandler.

“True. And you would need a code book in which you’d write them all down. And you’d have to keep that code book very safe. If it were stolen, all your codes would be compromised.”

“Go on.”

“I soon observed that this cipher used only ten letters, A through K, and excluded the letter I. It is not unheard of in numbering systems to leave out the letter I to ensure it wouldn’t be mistaken for the numeral 1. I figured that each letter of a product code represented a distinct number from 0 to 9. It was pure logic – and an irresistible challenge.”

“I’m beginning to see…” Chandler was smiling.

“It was part of my duties in the Receiving Department to note down, for each new incoming product, what you had paid for customs, for freight and so on. Summing them up, I could compare the figures of the total to the letters of the ‘code’. So, if the total acquisition cost for a product came to, say, $ 4,365, and if the ‘code’ showed “BJEA”, it was obvious that B stood for 4, J for 3, E for 6, and A for 5. Working on the costs for several products, I soon arrived at the ten alphabetical letters that represented the digits 0 through 9.”

“I see. So, could I fix this now?”

“Well, as I said, if it’s a cipher, it will have some logic, and logic can be figured out. But for your limited, practical purposes, you just need to make it a little more complex. For instance, to take the example I gave you, if your present system has the cipher ‘B-J-E-A’, you could, for instance, insert decoy letters from the rest of the alphabet randomly in between the letters A through K. So ‘B-J-E-A’ could become ‘B-S-J-N-E-W-A’, where the intervening letters S, N and W are just dummies or decoys. Even this system can be figured out eventually if someone really spent time on it, but it’ll certainly be much more time-consuming.”

“Thank you.” He was no longer smiling. “So, what do I do with you?”

Bashir said a quiet, fervent prayer – he just couldn’t afford to lose this job.

“I guess I have an alternative.” Chandler paused while Bashir flinched.

“My son is in high school,” Chandler began. “I believe he’s very sharp, but he needs help in math. So, every week, I’ll give you five hours off from your normal duties. During those five hours, I would like you to coach my son in math. And I’ll pay you a dollar extra per hour for those five hours. Deal?”

Bashir couldn’t believe his ears. “D-deal,” he stammered. He hadn’t been fired, and Chandler was smiling again. Suddenly, Bashir was both Appraising Assistant and Math Tutor.

Chandler’s son turned out to be an eager student and responded enthusiastically to Bashir’s tuition. In four weeks, math had become his favorite subject, and he aced two class test papers in quick succession.

But less than a week thereafter, Bashir received his long-awaited job offer from Comptech and, after alerting Chris, was back with Mr. Chandler, this time with his resignation.

Both father and son were taken aback. “Bashir,” said Mr. Chandler. “I hate to see you go.”

“I really wish you’d stay,” the boy added. “Do you think I can become an engineer, like you?”

“Absolutely.” Bashir reassured him. “You’re on a roll now. Keep at it and you’ll soon get into engineering college.”

The three walked slowly to the door.

“I’ve loved working here,” Bashir smiled. “But, as you can appreciate, I’m now getting work in my own field. And, in turn, that work will help me even with my studies. I’ll be completing my Master’s shortly and hope then to start on my Ph.D.”

Chris was waiting at the door. “How are you going back?”

“Oh, my bus is due in four minutes.”

“Give me ten minutes to lock up, and I’ll drop you home. You’ll get there before the bus reaches you. It’s been mighty fine knowing you.”

“No, Chris,” Mr. Chandler intervened, “I’ll lock up today. You drive him home.” 

Kurien began as a professional architect in Mumbai, India, then eased into a career of 23 years – including four years in Australia - as a corporate manager. His next avatar, for 21 years, was of a corporate trainer and professor of Public Speaking, in New Delhi. Concurrently, for 17 years, he was the India representative of the University of St Andrews, Scotland, UK. From 1995 through 2015, he regularly wrote inspirational editorials and articles on business subjects. His narrative of business experience in Turkmenistan was excerpted in Prof. Roni S Lebauer’s Learn to Listen, Listen to Learn: Academic Listening and Note-Taking [2nd Edition]. For 10 years, he also edited the UN bimonthly Tech Monitor, published in New Delhi. However, he has never before written a full-length (90,000 words), and his manuscript is still seeking an agent.He migrated to the US in 2016 and now lives in Los Angeles with his wife, just over a mile away from each of their two sons and three precious grandchildren.