Last Chance to Die by Noah Boyd (large screen ebook reader .txt) 📗

It’s a telephone number. And since there apparently isn’t an area code, we’ll have to assume it’s local—202.”

“Very good, Kate. Now all we have to do is figure out the code.”

Kate said, “Since the last two digits are the same, maybe they’re zeros, like a business phone.”

Vail stared at the patterns for a long time. Then he went to the couch and lay down, closing his eyes. Kate waited, and after a few minutes she wondered if he had fallen asleep.

“Maybe it’s some sort of auditory clue,” he said finally. “Could you read them to me?”

Kate sat down at the desk and read the groupings aloud. “Just keep reading them for a while,” he said.

Kate read them again, and when he didn’t react, she started over. Vail’s eyes remained closed, his body motionless. On the fourth time through, she let her voice slip into a singsong rhythm.

Vail jerked up to a sitting position. “It’s so simple. When I heard you repeating ‘dot, dot, dot,’ it came to me. It’s not ‘line, dot’—it’s ‘dash, dot.’ It was easier and more economical to cut a perpendicular line across the edge than a dash. It’s Morse code.”

He was at the computer now, looking for the symbols of the code. Once they were on the screen, he said, “Write this down. Four dashes and a dot is the number nine. The first and fifth number is nine. Three dots and two dashes is three. Three dashes and two dots is eight. And five dots is five, so the last two numbers are five.”

Kate said, “It’s 938-8955.”

Kate picked up the phone and dialed. “This is Deputy Assistant Director Bannon. Extension 3318 Tango, please.” She then enunciated the number clearly, as one does when responding to voice prompts. She repeated it. Then, after a few seconds, she smiled, wrote down the subscriber information, and hung up. “It comes back to the Russian embassy.”

Vail walked over and took the number from her, pointing at the phone on the desk. “Which line has the recorder on it?”

“Line three.” As he lifted the receiver to dial, she pushed the first button on the row along the bottom of the phone. He leaned toward her and turned the handset so she could listen. After four rings the voice of a middle-aged male with a noticeable Russian accent asked the caller to leave a message. Vail listened to the beep and waited until the line disconnected. “Anything?” he asked her.

“Think that was Calculus?” she asked.

“It could be. Did you hear anything out of the ordinary?”

“You mean like an anomaly?” she teased.

“Yes, Katherine, like an anomaly.”

“Nope.”

Vail looked back at the handwritten dots and dashes. “That’s got to be it. But the message doesn’t say anything.”

“Maybe you need the access code to get into it—you know, to retrieve a message like on your home machine.”

“Good idea,” he said. “But those can be two, three, or four digits. I suspect that with Calculus it’s four digits. That’s ten thousand combinations. Then no one can accidentally access it.”

“Maybe it’s in the phone number, the first four digits or the last four.”

“Give it a try.”

Kate pressed the Speakerphone button and then hit Redial. The same message played, and after the beep Vail entered the first four digits of the telephone number: 9388. There was no response. Kate disconnected the line and hit Redial again. The message replayed, and Vail tapped in 8955. Still there was no response. She said, “How about first and last four backward?”

Vail went through the procedure twice more, entering 8839 and 5598. Neither gave them access.

“Just nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-six more to go,” Kate said.

Vail studied the seven digits to see if there was another logical set of four to strip out and try. Finally he turned the sheet of paper over so he couldn’t see it. “It has to be something else. Something we can figure out, something so simple it’s invisible.”

“Like Pollock being our first fish.”

Vail smiled. “You’re really getting good at this. This guy isn’t our first fish, but . . . ?”

“Our second,” Kate said. “Zero, zero, zero, two.”

Vail stood up and waved his hand at the phone ceremoniously so she could sit down and dial. Once she hit 0002, a message started to play:

“Hello, it’s me—you know, Preston. I’ve got those infrared facial-recognition schematics you wanted, but the price has gone up.This time I want a hundred thousand dollars in cash, just for me.I’ve been getting the short end while taking all the chances.So this will keep it, you know, level and true.” The voice chuckled briefly before he said, “You’ve got my number.”

The caller hung up, and Kate started to say something, but Vail held up a finger for her to wait. After a few seconds, they heard the tones of a phone number being dialed. The line went dead. “Another phone number?” Kate said.

“Sounds like it.”

“At least this time we got his first name. Preston.”

“Did you notice that there was a slight emphasis on it? I would guess that’s his code name. It’s traditional cloak-and-dagger stuff to have one for identifying yourself to the other side.”

“Then how are we supposed to figure out who this guy is? The phone number dialed at the end?”

“That was done after Preston hung up. I’m guessing Calculus punched in those numbers. Hopefully to help us identify this guy. This time he gave us the evidence first, and the puzzle is to find the name that goes with it.”

“Let me get the number converted, and maybe we can go from there.” She picked up the phone and called headquarters, asking for a different extension from before. “This is Deputy Assistant Director Kate Bannon. Need a readback on this touch-tone number.” She pressed the phone recorder’s button, and Vail listened to the number being played back. After a few seconds, Kate wrote down the number and hung up. “It reads out as 632-265-2974. Any idea where that is?”

“No.”

She turned to the computer and entered the first three numbers. “There’s no such area code.