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

“Maybe it’s not a phone number. Maybe it’s some other type of code. The first two clues were different.” He stared at the ten numbers, trying various combinations. “Calculus apparently likes creating puzzles to show how smart he is.”

“Or how dumb we are.” Kate was also studying the numbers, looking for patterns. “Obviously we’re missing something.” She got a distant look in her eye, which then focused all of a sudden. “That’s it! What’s missing?”

Vail said, “What? What do you mean, what’s missing?”

“There are no eights, ones, or zeros.”

Vail looked at the line of numbers. “I still don’t get it.”

“Look at your cell phone.”

At first he didn’t understand but then examined the keys more closely. “There are no letters on the number one and zero keys. He’s telling us to convert these numbers into letters from the phone.” She picked up a pen, rewrote the numbers and then, underneath, the corresponding letters from the phone dial:

She said, “It must be a ten-letter clue—one from each of the groups?”

“Very nice, Katie.”

“Do you think it could it be a name?” she asked.

“With all the variations and spelling combinations, a name would be difficult to decode. And these clues are getting more difficult. A name seems a little too direct after all the work we had to do to get the embassy phone number and access code. Chances are it’s something else.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, but let’s listen to it again.” He played the recorded message back. Vail struck slashes between the letters. “There are three hesitations between the groups of letters dialed. He showed her:

mno def / abc abc mno jkl / abc wxyz / pqrs ghi

“So it’s a two-letter group, then four letters, a two-letter, and another two. Do you think it’s four words?”

“Let’s assume it is. Try the two-letter words first, since there are fewer possibilities.”

Kate said, “Okay, with a letter from each group, the only possibilities for the first group are ‘me’ and ‘of.’ ”

“And the third word could only be ‘ax’ or ‘by.’ ”

“The last one has just one vowel, i, and that doesn’t match up with p, q, r, or s.”

Vail, listening intently, played the recording again. “No, that’s definitely the way they’re spaced. Let’s try the four-letter word.”

They both took a sheet of paper and wrote at the top:

abc abc mno jkl

Then they started writing down letter combinations, one from each group. After a couple of minutes, Kate said, “Have I got this right? There’s only one word that you can make out of it?”

“ ‘Bank’?” Vail asked.

“That’s what I got.”

Vail rewrote all the letters with the second group decoded:

mno def / BANK / abc wxyz / pqrs ghi

“ ‘Of bank’ or ‘Me bank’? Neither one makes any sense,” he said.

Kate said, “He’s directing us to a bank. The first two letters must be an abbreviation for the name of the bank.” She was up and started pulling open desk drawers until she found a phone book. Once she located bank listings, she ran her finger down the page and then stopped, smiling. “OD—Old Dominion Bank.”

“I might as well go for coffee while you finish this.”

Kate flashed him a brief grin of appreciation. Vail rewrote the name on another blank sheet of paper:

OLD DOMINION BANK / abc wxyz / pqrs ghi

“And what were the two words—‘by’ and ‘ax’?—for the third word? If the bank was by something, he wouldn’t need the word ‘by.’ In a ten-letter message, he wouldn’t waste two of them on an unnecessary preposition. So it’s probably another abbreviation.”

Kate wrote everything on her pad of paper again. After looking at the options for only a second, she said, “How about a combination of ‘by’ and ‘ax’—‘bx’? Box. It’s a bank box.”

Vail laughed. “How about giving us common laborers a chance?”

“And the last two are not letters—they’re the original numbers from the message. The bank-box number.”

“Old Dominion Bank, box 74. Very impressive, Bannon. For upper management—extraordinary.”

She noticed him looking at her somehow differently, as if rediscovering something he had forgotten or never known.

“In the morning we’ll have to figure out which branch has box 74,” he said.

“I’ll call Langston and let him know.”

“How are you going to tell him we found this?”

Kate said, “He’s going to have to get a court order, which means probable cause, which means we’ve got to tell him about the clues Calculus has left. It’s urgent that we get into that box so we can identify any other spies.”

“Which means he may want first crack at everything from now on.”

“Yeah, Vail, like you’ll let that happen.”

10

Vail was sitting at the kitchen table with his injured hand unwrapped, trying to cut away the stitches with a small pair of scissors when Kate came in. Without a word, she took them from him and turned his hand over so she could see the sutures better. With tiny, careful snips, she cut them loose and then pulled each one out slowly. “It looks pretty good.”

He flexed his hand into a fist and then pressed the injured edge against the table. “It feels fine. What did Langston have to say last night?”

“In a very official monotone, he thanked me for the information and said he would have Kalix get to work on it. On the way over here, John called and said that after a discreet call to a contact at the Old Dominion Bank he was told that box 74 was at their Vienna, Virginia, branch. He is meeting with the prosecutor at eleven and will meet us at the bank at one o’clock unless we hear otherwise.”

Vail flexed his hand again. “Did you tell him how we connected the identities?”

“No, but he’s got to be starting to wonder.”

“Don’t forget, he’s an administrator. He’s used to figuring out what to do when answers are brought to him, not where they came from.”

“Let’s hope it stays that way.”

Vail checked his watch. “We’ve got to talk to those homicide detectives about Pollock. We should be done in time