Wish You Were Here - Card Two

For tonight's COVID adventure, we delve into the second card of the "Wish You Were Here" series by The Enigma Emporium, as sent to us by our mysterious criminal penpal. Once again, my great thanks to my pal for a wonderful evening of joint puzzle solving and general crime stoppery.

In order to preserve any of you who accidentally arrived at this page looking for the puzzles of Enigma Emporium, I have inserted this spoiler space into my walkthrough - you may leave now and preserve your puzzling intact. For what lies beyond... caveat emptor

Spoiler Space image provided by NASA's picture of the day, which is awesome.


The 'front' of the second card is a pale, weathered yellow. a grid, apparently an empty periodic table, is overlaid with a picture of a bearded man (Dmitri Mendeleev) a series of incomplete calculator/alarm clock type face, and the quote "Look for peace and calm in work: you will find it nowhere else." -- Dmitri Mendeleev. Dmitri Mendeleev, mind you, is the creator of the periodic table. I give utmost respect to The Enigma Emporium for their attention to detail on this.

The 'back' of the card has on the left a diagram of an atom and its layers of electrons, bringing me back to high school chemistry. On the right are three stamps, two men and a woman, with what look to be atomic weights. Below the series of stamps, which were canceled on February 24, 2018, another Saturday but over a month from our 'last' postcard, is a series of encoded text, with what look like a series of atomic symbols.

Let's look at the stamps first. It seems our penpal likes American outlaws and gangsters.

• On the left, an image search reveals that it is a mug shot of John Dillinger over the atomic weight of Boron (B = 10.81. 5th element). 
• In the middle, Ma Barker (mother of the Barker gang)  over the atomic weight of Argon (Ar = 39.948. 18th element)
• On the right, we have Jesse James over the atomic weight of Sulfur (S=32.06. 16th element)

Looking at the atomic diagram, my trusty companion counted the dots because my eyes kept blurring. The inner ring has 2, then 8, then 18, 32, 18, 1, for a total of 79, which is the atomic number of Gold (Au, with a weight of 196.967). So, given that the stamps chemical names spell out BArS, we are probably stealing bars of gold - possibly not the same traveling exhibition? 

Going back to the front of the card, we realized that the empty periodic table had a series of light dots in four of the boxes, which correspond to Helium (He), Nitrogen (N), Sulfur (S), and Astatine (At). HeNSat? Or, rearranged, ATHENS. A new location for a new heist! (dun dun dun....)

From there, it was back to the longer message, which was more time consuming than tricky, per se. Identify the element, identify its atomic number, and convert that to the normal alphabet using a straightforward A=01. Innumerable thanks to my friend on this, as I made the chart while they read the elements in order. I kept getting lost. Placed in a handy table, we get:

Atomic Symbol	Atomic Name	Atomic Number	A=01
F	Flourine	9	I
C	Carbon	6	F
(Space)
Mn	Manganese	25	Y
P	Phosphorus	15	O
Sc	Scandium	21	U
(')			'
Ti	Titanium	22	V
B	Boron	5	E
(Space)
C	Carbon	6	F
P	Phosphorous	15	O
Mg	Magnesium	12	L
Mg	Magnesium	12	L
P	Phosphorous	15	O
V	Vandium	23	W
B	Boron	5	E
Be	Beryllium	4	D
(Line)
Ca	Calcium	20	T
O	Oxygen	8	H
F	Flourine	9	I
K	Potassium	19	S
(Space)
C	Carbon	6	F
H	Hydrogen	1	A
Ar	Argon	18	R
(Space, Comma)			,
Al	Aluminum	13	M
H	Hydrogen	1	A
Mn	Manganese	25	Y
He	Helium	2	B
B	Boron	5	E
Space
Mn	Manganese	25	Y
P	Phosphorus	15	O
Sc	Scandium	21	U
(Line)
LI	Lithium	3	C
H	Hydrogen	1	A
Si	Silicon	14	N
(Space)
K	Potassium	19	S
H	Hydrogen	1	A
Ti	Titanium	22	V
B	Boron	5	E
(Space)
Al	Aluminum	13	M
B	Boron	5	E
(period, space	.	.	.
F	Flourine	9	I
(Space)
O	Oxygen	8	H
H	Hydrogen	1	A
Ti	Titanium	22	V
B	Boron	5	E
(Line)
K	Potassium	19	S
Ca	Calcium	20	T
P	Phosphorous	15	O
Mg	Magnesium	12	L
B	Boron	5	E
Si	Silicon	14	N
(space)
He	Helium	2	B
Sc	Scandium	21	U
Ca	Calcium	20	T
(space)
Si	Silicon	14	N
P	Phosphorous	15	O
Ca	Calcium	20	T
(line)
He	Helium	2	B
Mn	Manganese	25	Y
(space)
Li	Lithium	3	C
O	Oxygen	8	H
P	Phosphorous	15	O
F	Flourine	9	I
Li	Lithium	3	C
B	Boron	5	E

Quite the message from our friend: If you've followed this far, maybe you can save me. I have stolen but not by choice...

We then returned to the scrap of what looked to be broken alarm clock letters/numbers under the picture of Dmitri Mendeleev. Stared at long enough (long, long, long enough) we realized that it was what WASN'T present that mattered, and we saw the invisible outline of the following numbers: 302103249531. If we treat these as more atomic numbers we get 30-21-03-24-95-31 or Zinc-Scandium-Lithium-Chromium-Americium-Gallium or Zn-Sc-Li-Cr-Am-Ga. At which point I and my amazing partner got stuck. For a very, very, very painfully long time. I had to go get more wine. Twice.

Eventually, we came to the conclusion that the number is not an atomic element but is instead a phone number. The international country code for Greece is +30, and the 'area code' for Athens and its surrounds is 210. A look up of the phone number +30 210 3249531 gives us the Athens Branch of Bank Saderat Iran. I sincerely hope no mysterious figures in dark clothes and balaclavas show up at my door tonight asking why I was snooping around an Iranian bank. Not sure how I'd explain that one...

So, in card #2, it seems that our nefarious penpal is robbing gold bars from the Athens branch of an Iranian bank. Not by choice, mind you.

And that, as far as I can tell, is the solution of card #2 of the "Wish You Were Here" series by The Enigma Emporium. Go ahead and check out this series, and the 3 other puzzle sets in the same vein. Spoiler - I've already ordered the physical copies of all of them and am eagerly awaiting their arrival to my shut in tower of puzzles.

Thanks to Table Generator for making the message easier to see