One of the few uncracked codes at the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia is found in Kryptos, a wonder of technology, a sculpture sitting in a sunny corner of the headquarters courtyard.
"EMUFPHZLRFAXYUSDJKZLDKRNSHGNFIVJ" is the first line of the Kryptos sculpture, a 10-foot-tall, S-shaped copper scroll perforated with 3-inch-high letters spelling out words in code resembling a piece of paper emerging from a computer printer. Completed 15 years ago, Kryptos, which is Greek for "hidden," at first attracted interest from government code breakers who deciphered the easier parts without announcing their findings publicly.
The main sculpture is made of red granite, red and green slate, white quartz, petrified wood, lodestone and copper, and is located in the northwest corner of the headquarters courtyard.
The characters consist of the 26 letters of the standard alphabet and question marks cut out of the copper. This "inscription" contains four separate enigmatic messages, each apparently encrypted with a different cipher.
Mystery lovers around the world have joined members of the national-security establishment in trying to crack the rest. So far, neither amateurs nor pros have been able to crack the code.
The latest scramble was set off by "The Da Vinci Code," the worldwide bestseller about a modern-day search for the Holy Grail. On the book's dust jacket, author Dan Brown placed clues that hint at Kryptos's significance. The main one is a set of geographic coordinates that roughly locate the sculpture.
A game at www.thedavincicode.com suggested that Kryptos is a clue to the subject of Mr. Brown's as-yet-unpublished next novel, "The Solomon Key."
Kryptos devotees are intrigued by the three passages that have been deciphered so far. They appear to offer clues to solving the sculpture's fourth passage, and possibly to locating something buried.Some devotees believe Kryptos holds profound significance as a portal into the wisdom of the ancients.
Sculptor James Sanborn, Kryptos's creator, says he wrote or adapted all three. In addition to deliberate misspellings, there are letters slightly higher than others on the same line. The first reads, "Between subtle shading and the absence of light lies the nuance of iqlusion."
The second passage, more provocative and mysterious, reads: "It was totally invisible. How's that possible? They used the Earth's magnetic field. The information was gathered and transmitted underground to an unknown location. Does Langley know about this? They should: it's buried out there somewhere." That passage is followed by geographic coordinates that suggest a location elsewhere on the CIA campus.
The third decoded passage is based on a diary entry by archaeologist Howard Carter, on the day in 1922 when he discovered the tomb of the ancient Egyptian King Tutankhamen.
It reads in part, "With trembling hands I made a tiny breach in the upper left-hand corner. And then, widening the hole a little, I inserted the candle and peered in. The hot air escaping from the chamber caused the flame to flicker, but presently details of the room within emerged from the mist. Can you see anything?"
Other possible clues are contained in smaller parts of the work scattered around the CIA grounds. Made of red granite and sheets of copper, these are tattooed with Morse code that spells out phrases like "virtually invisible." In addition, a compass needle carved onto one of the rocks is pulled off due north by a lodestone that Mr. Sanborn placed nearby.
Experts say the unsolved fourth passage -- known to insiders as "K4" -- is written in a more complex and difficult code than the first three, one designed to mask patterns of recurring letters that code breakers look for.
Sanborn, who lives and works in Washington, has exhibited around the world, including at the Hirshhorn Museum and Corcoran Gallery of Art. His more recent work has focused on the early development of atomic weapons, employing actual equipment from the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
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