MICRO CODE: THE ALF BOXALL CODE BOOK #1, UPDATE 1.

THE GAME CHANGER ...

This blog has for some time taken the position that Alf and Jess were involved in espionage in some way. We've never really been able to nail it, the inscription of verse 70 in Alf's book does show hidden writing within the words which were supposedly written by Jess, but is that snippet enough?

There must surely be more happening between Alf and Jess, information must have been passed, but what and importantly how?

In the 40s microfilm was quite widely used to pass the secret information on and there is the story of one spy couple who hid microfilm in a bar of chocolate only to be stopped at the Swiss border and told that there was a limit to the number of bars they could take with them into Switzerland. Ever resourceful, the couple sat down and ate the surplus which included the bar with the film. They crossed the border safely with their stolen information which, in due course, became available once more.

What if Alf and Jess really were spies? How would they have communicated?  More to the point, how and where was Jess trained in the fine and ultimately deadly art of spying?

THE DECEPTION GAME

90% of Espionage is Deception. Covert ways and means are used to conceal weapons, equipment, messages, and more. Disguises are used, encrypted diplomatic messages containing top-secret information are passed in the most unlikely of ways.

Take the copy of the Rubaiyat that Jess is said to have handed to Alf in August 1945, how else could that have been used in this scenario? Let's call it 'Alf's Code Book':

 In the 40s, everyone had one of these, but our story says that not everyone had a copy quite like this one, you might say that it's almost unique.

Let's take a peek inside:

There we have it, just as it was presented to Stuart Littlemore back in the 70s, inscription page on the left and the Title page on the right. We can see the inscription quite clearly. In fact, using some new recovery techniques and tools, the hidden writing within each of the letters has been revealed. More on that later.

Wearing our newly acquired 'Spy' hats, we need to answer the question, where else in this open book, was information concealed? Where else was micro written code hidden?

For now, we'll look at the left hand, inscription, page, I've marked up two areas of interest in the red oblong shapes, one is the bottom left corner and the other the mid-right side:

BOTTOM LEFT OF THE INSCRIPTION PAGE:

The left-hand side of the inscription page, when you examine it carefully, has what appears to be a thin blue line running from bottom to the top of the page and close to the edge of the page. Here's the bottom section of that line in close-up:

What you can see in the highlighted area is a string of numbers and letters, the little red star is directly beneath the letters AD. This line gets thinner and extends to the top of the page. The rest of the line will be added to this post in the coming days. The small inner rectangle to the left also contains a micro-written code. Again, this will be added to the post shortly.

SEE NOTE AT BASE OF PAGE RE CLOSE UP IMAGES

HIGHLIGHTED RIGHT MID SECTION

A little more difficult to see but once again, there are letters and numbers concealed in plain sight in the crease down the center between the left and right pages. The small rectangle to the left has 3 numbers inscribed, it is placed right on top of one of the threads that hold the book pages in place. I will add a close-up version for the midsection.

We have more to include for the right side inscription page and over the course of the next few days, I will add more images.

CLOSEUP OF CENTRE SECTION:

THE TRAINING MANUAL

This edition of the copy of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam within which Jess Harkness is said to have handwritten an inscription of Verse 70 from that book for Alf Boxall, was much more than a standard book, it was Alf Boxall's code book, his training manual for Jess.

There are a number of questions that are raised about this book including when and where it was printed, we know that it was published by The Australasian Publishing Company who had offices in Sydney but publishers are mostly not the printers.

For reasons we will discuss later, the issue of the identity of the printers of this book is crucial information.

   NOTES ON CLOSE UP IMAGES

IMPORTANT: When you download the full page image, you can print it out but you must print it on a reasonable quality inkjet printer and set the quality of print to 'BEST' or 'HIGHEST'. The paper you should use for this print is BLEEDPROOF, it stops the ink spreading and gives a sharper image. When you print on bleedproof paper using a high-quality setting, your printer outputs more ink than for a normal print, you should, therefore, leave the print on the printer output tray for about 10 minutes to allow the ink to properly dry. You can then go ahead and photograph parts of the newly printed image. Ideally, you use a camera with a macro lens, but, if you have a mobile phone with a 12-megapixel camera, you can take a reasonable photograph from quite close but you must use the flash to get the best result.

One final note, these images are subject to copyright, you may download and use them for your personal use but they are not to be displayed on any other blog or website without express permission from myself. If you wish to publish them, I can be contacted via the comments section or email form.