The Great Game by Michael Kurland

do.
     
                  Summerdane assembled the notes gathered from observations, discussions, and reports of his compatriots over the past fortnight, added to them with some insightful comments and observations of his own, and condensed them into one continuous message:
     
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    Greetings from Vienna. Austrian general staff has received reports on range and accuracy of new French 12cm short-recoil field piece. Suggests spy in place in French Army high command.
     
    Two battleships in drydock in Pola. The Kronprinz Erzherzog Rudolph for repair and refitting and the Tegetthoff for complete reconstruction.
     
    I am now member 37 of the GVF. Last night I delivered envelope to man named Brommel at 578 Brandtstrasse. Was followed there by GVFers. Don't know whether I am suspected, or it was standard procedure. An assassination attempt is being planned, possibly more than one. Also something big in progress. Do not know what, we apprentice anarchists are told only what we need to know. But hints from several sources indicate major outrage is due soon.
     
    GS tells me the Interior Ministry believes Russian agents increasing activity in Hungary and Serbia ...
     
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                  The report went on for another page and a half. He ended it with the note:
     
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    I have just come into possession of a list that might be important but at present tells me nothing. I shall continue to stare at it from time to time to see if its meaning suddenly leaps out at me.
     
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                  When he was done, he put the pen back in its holder, capped the inkwell in his small writing desk, and carefully checked over what he had written. It said what he wished to say; it was comparatively tersely written; it would have to do. He spent the next two hours encrypting the report with his own specially devised cipher: page after page of a specially composed "Paul Donzhof" tone poem for chamber orchestra, written with thick black pencil on pre-lined paper. The musical score he created was playable—not enjoyable, but playable; and that would suffice. Then he carefully burned all his notes and the plain text message in the room's small fireplace and went to sleep.
     
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                  Late the next morning, when most of the citizens of workaday Vienna were done skittering about on their way to their employment, Herr Paul Donzhof hailed a passing fiacre and took Fraulein Giselle Schiff to the Café Prinz Eugene for breakfast.
     
                  "I do so enjoy being out with you," Giselle said as they settled at an outdoor table to the right of the entrance, one that would get more of the March sun and less of the March breeze. She looked up at him with a wide smile on her full red lips and her head arced just so. "We are such an attractive couple, passersby cannot help but stop and admire."
     
                  "Well," Paul said, "half of us is , anyway. You must have practiced in front of a mirror to look so artless."
     
                  "For hours," she agreed. "Klimt is painting me as Mary Magdalene with just this look."
     
                  "Ah!" Paul said. "In that case your wonderful innocent look might become quite well known. Klimt's work has been described as 'degenerate' by the Neues Wiener Tagblatt, which might draw a large audience to his next show." He intercepted a passing waiter and demanded two coffees and the pastry tray.
     
                  "What do they mean, these critics, when they say 'degenerate'?" Giselle asked.
     
                  Paul considered. "It depends on just whom the 'they' is," he told her. "The word has come into vogue, and different groups are using it to mean just what they choose it to mean, neither more nor less, as Humpty Dumpty once said."
     
                  "Who is this Humpty Dumpty?"
     
                  "A childhood friend, never mind about