Enigma Variations

by Bradley W Wright

  “There are no other copies?” Jutting asked, stomping up.

  “Of course not. Nothing in the cloud as you requested.”

  “Dear God,” Jutting replied and turned back to the guard. “We need to watch the footage. Let’s go.”

  I moved to Victoria’s side. “I’m going to slip out and take a rain check on dinner.”

  She looked at me, distracted. “Of course. I have to go with Mr. Jutting,” she said, then hurried off after him leaving Baptiste and I alone with the mangled French doors.

  “It was nice meeting you,” I said. “I hope your work isn’t set back too much by this. It must be something very important if people are willing to take a risk like that.”

  “Yes. Very disturbing. If you’ll excuse me, I need to go get a new laptop.”

  “I’ll see myself out.”

  Chapter 16

  The Magician

  July 3: London

  I left Jutting’s house feeling confused, my thoughts disjointed. I chose a direction at random and began walking. I had some thinking to do. The evening air was warm and humid, prickling the hairs on my arms and I wandered along the edge of Hyde Park where a light breeze rustled the leaves. I passed through an upscale shopping area, and into a more lively, youthful area where the streets narrowed and the pedestrian traffic thickened. There were trendy shops and coffee bars, neon signs, bicycles, graffiti and graffiti inspired street art everywhere.

  As I walked, I mulled over the state of my job. I had found Wolhardt’s notes only to have them snatched out from under my nose. I found them again, only to have them spirited away a second time. The cast of characters—Wolhardt, Molly, Benderick, Dworkin, Bathmore, Morgan Jutting, Victoria Butler—seemed trapped by fate, like automatons stuck in an ingenious Victorian mechanism, traveling well-defined paths, bumping into each other, circling and finding each other again, all the time passing Wolhardt’s notes back and forth, running variations on an enigmatic theme. Was I a puppet in the machine too? Or was there a way for me to stand back, observe the mechanism, find its weakness, and exploit it to achieve my goal? I needed to track down Dworkin now and I needed to do it before Jutting found him. The odds were lengthening. Jutting’s house was, as I had expected, a fortress—complete with a creepy cave in the basement for occult rituals. Somehow, though, Dworkin had landed on just the right strategy for stealing what he was after. I would never have thought of it or tried it myself. He had to have been staking out the house. He knew, somehow, where St. Martin was working and pinpointed a weakness. How had he known? Now he was surely hiding somewhere in London or possibly even on his way back to Philadelphia. Thinking it all over, I felt dispirited and out of my element. I glanced at the faces of people I passed on the sidewalk. They didn’t all look happy but they at least looked like they knew where they were and what they were doing. Somehow, I had chosen two professions that required me to make things up as I went along. In my art, I was always responding to the form, shaping the aesthetic vision in real time. As a hunter of stolen things, I was finding that plans often had to be abandoned in the face of new conditions and unexpected circumstances.

  I must have been walking for an hour or more at that point, stewing in my obsessive rumination. I resolved to head back to my little apartment and check out. I had booked a new place just down the street from Jutting’s house. Improbably, I had found a three bedroom townhouse that was available for five days. From the photos, it looked like a traditional house that had been gutted and reimagined as an ultra-modern party playground for wealthy tourists. The price tag matched the photos but I took it anyway. I had been thinking I needed to be close to Jutting’s house in order to plan my break in. Now I wasn’t sure when or if that would happen but it couldn’t hurt to be close while I considered my next step.

  I paused for a moment on the sidewalk, watching the stream of humanity pass by. Something was bothering me about the whole scene at Jutting’s house. I had an intuition that something was off but I couldn’t quite grasp it. I was about to turn around, head back to the busy street I had just passed, and try to hail a cab, when I heard a voice.

  “You look a bit lost.”

  I turned and saw a woman standing in the doorway of a narrow storefront—small and tough looking, with the arm muscles of an aerialist and lavender hair in an asymmetrical bob. She wore a simple blue sleeveless dress. Despite her small physical size, there was something outsized about her presence. My eyes were drawn to hers and the space between us seemed to collapse.

  “I’m fine, thanks,” I replied.

  “Sorry, but you do look lost to me,” she paused, smiling, leaning her head against the ancient wooden door frame of her shop. “Not physically. Your spirit. I see it wandering strange paths. Maybe you need some guidance from the unseen forces.” Her accent was heavy—maybe from Wales or Scotland. It took me a moment to decode what she was saying.

  I looked at the sign above the door. In curling, hand painted letters, it said Green Goddess Books. A neon sign in the window flickered and buzzed, advertising Tarot Readings.

  “That’s okay,” I said, smiling politely. “Thanks, though.” With an effort, I pulled away from her gaze and turned to go but her soft voice called me back.

  “Are you afraid of what the unseen forces might reveal? No, you don’t look like a fearful person. Maybe you believe you can do everything yourself? You don’t need help from anyone or anything? Give it a try. A free reading. Pay me only if it’s useful. I’m bored here tonight. I want to feel the spirits talking through me. The veil is thin this evening. They’re close.” Her eyes were avid, hopeful, but with a touch of distance, like she was looking not just at me but also surveying a barren internal plain, watching for a flash of movement.

  “All right,” I answered, feeling drawn in against my better judgment. “I guess it can’t hurt.” Maybe listening to a stranger read my fortune would help put things in perspective.

  Inside, the tiny shop was neat and sparse. Built-in shelves covering the walls held books, tarot decks, incense, crystals, and jars of herbs. Floorboards creaked as the woman led me to the back where a square table was placed against the wall with two facing chairs. On the table were a small lamp with a dark red shade and an oblong box of fine grained wood that seemed almost golden in the pool of light cast by the lamp.

  “Please,” she said, gesturing to a chair, then seated herself and opened the box. The tarot deck inside was wrapped in pale silk. She extracted the cards from the fabric, shuffled them thoroughly.

  “I’m Lavinia. Tell me your given name?”

  “Justin,” I replied and took the hand she offered.

  “I’ll lay out the cards one by one and we will discuss their meanings. Have you had a tarot reading before?”

  I shook my head. “Never,”

  “Each card has a meaning. Both right side up and reversed. I lay them out in a cross and each position is for a different aspect of your life journey.” She turned a card over and placed it in the center of the table. It showed a man facing away, looking out over a barren landscape. Three staves were planted upright in the earth behind him.

  “Three of wands,” she said. “This is your present. You face obstacles. Frustration.”

  I nodded, my attention half there, half still mulling over the scene at Jutting’s house. “Yes. That’s a fair characterization.”

  She turned over another card, placing it on top of the first at an angle. It showed a man in a white robe and red chasuble holding a wand above his head. In the foreground, laid out on a kind of altar, were a cup, a sword, a pentacle, and a staff. I stared at the card, amazed, flashing back to the room in Jutting’s basement—the cup, the dagger. Above the figure’s head, an infinity sign floated in the air.

  “The magician. Reversed. This is your challenge. The problem you’re trying to solve. Interesting. I’ve never seen the magician in this position. What could it mean?” Her eyes turned inward and she stared through me. She was silent for a moment. I watched
her face. Her skin was smooth and damp with perspiration, shining in the lamp light. Suddenly, her eyes focused and looked at me first with curiosity, then with an almost imperious glare. “Mortal,” she said, her voice hoarse and deeper than it had been. Goosebumps rose on my arms. “The magician plays with dangerous forces. He pierces the veil.” She paused for a moment and a deep shiver ran through her body. “He gazes on things he should not see. Half in one world, half in another. He is powerful in the material world but his soul withers. Soon, he will breach the veil. The two will become one and both will be annihilated. The balance is maintained.” She stopped speaking and her whole body trembled for a moment as another shiver ran through her. She closed her eyes. When she opened them she was herself again. She took a shuddering breath and touched a handkerchief to her forehead. “They were speaking through me. What did I say?”

  I stared at her. I didn’t believe in ghosts or spirits or supernatural phenomena emanating from an invisible, non-material world coexisting with our own. But something had been speaking through her. It was clear. My skin was still prickling. Maybe it was just another aspect of her psyche—a message from her unconscious mind. I couldn’t answer. The still, damp air between us felt charged. I could almost feel it—an uncanny sensation of something unseen looming close. “You said that the magician plays with forces and sees things he shouldn’t,” I replied. “He’s half in this world, half in another. Power he gains here is reflected in atrophy of his immaterial self.”

  “Yes. The magician reversed is a deceiver. He is a trickster who weaves illusions and is caught in his own illusory world. Fooled by his own trickery. Others in his wake are pulled in. He might make terrible decisions due to his inability to tell fact from fiction. The image he presents can never be trusted. Always look for signs of deceit.” She stopped speaking, looking inward again.

  Was she talking about Jutting? The more I considered it, the more I thought the only true thing I had heard or seen at Jutting’s house was the accidental glimpse of his basement. Everything else had seemed almost like an elaborate performance. Maybe he was the Magician, spreading lies while plotting to pierce the veil between two worlds like Cellini in the Coliseum. I looked up from the cards and her eyes were distant. She seemed to have gone away again. Both of her hands were flat on the table, pressing down hard. The muscles in her forearms were tense. Her eyes opened and like before they bored into me with an alien gaze.

  “Justin Vincent, heed our warning. The magician is dangerous.”

  “That’s enough!” I jumped up, knocking my chair over with a loud crack.

  Lavinia came back to herself, looking confused. “What happened?”

  “Sorry,” I said, digging in my pocket. “How much do you charge?” I put a twenty pound note on the table. “Is that enough? I have to go.”

  I walked to the door and glanced back. She was watching me, head tilted slightly. For a moment, I had a sensation of tilting—as if the shop was rising into the air and I was falling away into space. “Be careful,” she called to me.

  “I will. Thanks.”

  Back on the street, I walked fast, weaving around groups of weekend revelers, unaware of my surroundings. It took a few minutes for my heart rate to calm. Finally, in a taxi on my way back to Hammersmith, the fog cleared from my head and I was able to think. Even with some distance from the experience, I was still spooked. The thing that bothered me most was that the second time she appeared to go into trance she had said my full name. I had only given her my first name. No matter how uncanny it felt, I still didn’t believe spirits or demons were speaking through her. But how did she know my name? My phone buzzed in my pocket, interrupting my thoughts. It was a message from Ashna.

  —Just landed. Where are you?—

  —In London?—

  —No, on the moon. Of course London.—

  —Okay. I’m on my way to check out of current rental. Moving to a new one. Meet me there?—

  —Sounds good. I’m starving.—

  —I’ll get takeout on the way.—

  I sent her the address of the party villa and put my phone away. I was glad Ashna had finally arrived. I was going to need her help tracking down Dworkin. I asked the driver to wait outside the house in Kensington while I ran up the stairs and grabbed the few things I had left there. As soon as I entered, though, I realized I had forgotten about one major issue. Belka looked up at me from the couch and gave me a meow that could only be interpreted as: ‘Where the hell have you been? My bowl is empty.’ I had, improbably, become attached to this cat. It seemed he had become attached to me too. I had a small tote bag with me that folded down and zipped into a little square. I often carried it when traveling in case I needed to bring anything large back home. I opened it up and placed it on the couch next to Belka. He stood up and gave it a sniff. I lifted him into the bag and he stood there, looking up at me.

  “You’re not going to like this. Apologies in advance,” I said and pulled the zipper closed. Muffled, plaintive meows began to emerge from inside the bag, sounding simultaneously betrayed and pissed off. “It’s just for a little while,” I said. “You’ll be roaming around the fancy house and peeing on the couch legs in no time.”

  Ashna was already waiting when the taxi pulled up in front of the townhouse. I crawled out of the capacious rear of the hackney and hugged her.

  “Good to see you. I have a lot of stuff to carry.”

  “What took you so long? And what is all this crap?” Ashna complained, picking up the bag of takeout. “And what’s in this bag? My stomach wants to know.”

  “Curry takeout.”

  “British curry? You know that’s not real Indian food, right? It’s mildly spicy casserole.”

  “I’m sure you’ll eat it anyway. Grab that bag too.”

  “Oof, heavy. Cat litter! Why do you have cat litter?” Ashna hefted the bag and we climbed the three steps to the front door of the townhouse.

  “Long story,” I answered, looking up the code on my phone and punching it into the keypad on the door. The lock clicked open and I pushed inside. “I have a cat now. A proper English cat.”

  Inside, the house was every bit as luxe as it had appeared in the photos. The style reminded me of every millionaire tech bro’s loft I had ever had the misfortune to visit. There were hard surfaces everywhere with contrasting textures—brick, concrete, stainless steel, wood. The furniture was dark and low. The lighting was industrial.

  “I feel like I got on an airplane, circled around for many hours, then landed right back in San Francisco.”

  “Yeah. Our city’s desultory contribution to interior design has finally made it across the Atlantic. Anyway, it’s close to Jutting’s house. We can see his driveway from here,” I said, holding a heavy curtain aside and looking down the block. “Not that that matters anymore probably.”

  “Sounds like you need to fill me in. But first, someone needs to let the cat out of the bag, both literally and figuratively.”

  Belka meowed with an increasing fury. I unzipped the duffle and he hopped out immediately. He froze on the hardwood, sniffed, looked around, and began exploring.

  “Nice looking cat. He’s a thick boy.” Ashna crouched down and ran a hand over Belka’s back.

  I’m going to set up his litter box in a bathroom,” I said. “You can unpack the takeout.”

  Twenty minutes later we were sitting on stools at a black marble breakfast bar eating curry.

  “So, occult nerd has the notes now?”

  “Yes,” I answered.

  “That guy sounds like he’s all thrust and no vector. But I guess that’s useful in some circumstances. And the St. Martin character didn’t have any backups?”

  “He did have a backup on an external hard drive but Dworkin took that too. At least that’s what he said.”

  “Hmmm. So we need to track down Dworkin. I might be able to find out where he is by his cell phone. If I remember right, he has a cheap android phone. I have a fun hack I’ve been w
anting to try.”

  “Fun?”

  “Fun for me Justin. Ordinary people would not understand the fun to be had compromising an unsuspecting oaf’s electronic devices.”

  “How do you know he has an android phone?”

  “I was in his email and all his accounts, including his cellular service account,” Ashna said, pulling a laptop from her backpack. “It’s simple. I craft a PNG image file containing malicious code. There’s a bug in the open source image library they use to display PNGs. I can use the vulnerability to execute my code and take over his phone. He’ll never even know his phone is hacked.”

  “Then you can triangulate his location.”

  “Trilaterate actually. GPS uses trilateration to measure distances, not angles. But yeah, more or less. I can actually just get his GPS coordinates from the phone.”

  “How do you get him to open the image?”

  “Hmmm. I’ll email it to him. Think of a subject line that will hook him.”

  “How about The Miracle Big Pharma Doesn’t Want You to Know About!”

  Ashna frowned. “No jokes please. We need something that won’t get spam filtered.”

  “Okay. How about Dark Magic and the Elders of Zion, Shocking New Book Proves Existence of Global Conspiracy!”

  “That might actually work,” Ashna said, looking up from her screen.

  Chapter 17

  Trilaterating Dworkin

  July 4: London and Powick

  I woke the next morning in a tangle of dark gray satin sheets with a black leather headboard looming over me. A muffled banging sound came from somewhere outside the room and I heard Ashna’s voice calling my name.

  “Justin! Get up. He opened it. I’ve got him nailed.” The bedroom door burst open and Ashna strode in. She was holding her open laptop and pointing at the screen. “He’s outside London. Near some place called Powick.”

  “Powick?” I asked, still half asleep.