The Magdalene Cipher

by Jim Hougan

  “What?” Max asked, eyes on the money.

  “In Russia, when you were living there—did you ever read about any . . . I don’t know . . .”

  “Ask!”

  “Cattle mutilations.”

  The Russian gave him a puzzled look. “You mean . . . dead cows?”

  “Yeah. Cows getting cut up . . . in the pastures.”

  Max chuckled. “No. I never heard of this. Not while I was there. Why?”

  “I was just wondering,” Dunphy replied, and handed him the last of the bundles.

  “But after glasnost, a” Max said, “there are many of these reports.”

  Dunphy looked at him. “About cattle mutilations?”

  The Russian nodded as he shoved the money into his overnight bag. “UFOs, too. All kinds of craziness. But this is new—with communists, we never have this.”

  Dunphy sat down on the bed. “There’s one other thing,” he said.

  Max smiled and rezipped his overnight bag. “Always, there is one other thing.”

  “I need a second passport—for a friend.” Removing another bundle of notes from the attaché case, Dunphy counted out thirty-five hundred-pound notes, and handed them to Max. Then he gave him an envelope with Clementine’s pictures inside. “Her address is on the back. It’s kind of an emergency.”

  “I’ll do it tonight,” Max promised, and glanced at the pictures. “Attractive girl.”

  “Thanks.”

  “What name you want?”

  “Veroushka Bell.”

  He smiled and wrote the name on the back of the envelope containing the pictures. “She’s Russian?”

  “No. Just romantic.”

  “Even better.” He looked up, suddenly serious. “Veroushka’s passport—it’s like yours, okay?”

  Dunphy nodded.

  “Is blank—from embassy. I don’t say which one. But never issued—so no bad history. Go anywhere, except—maybe not to Canada. Okay?”

  “We aren’t going to Canada.”

  “Then you don’t have problem.”

  “Do me a favor,” Dunphy asked, walking Max to the door.

  “Ask.”

  Dunphy went over to a desk in the corner of the room and, taking out a sheet of hotel stationery, wrote down the number of the room he was in. Finally, he sealed the page in an envelope, addressed it to Veroushka, and handed it to Max. “Make sure she gets this when she gets the passport.”

  ***

  He went out only once over the next three days, buying magazines at a small store on Fraumünsterstrasse. The rest of the time, he rode out his cold in the comfort of Max’s hotel room, sitting by the window above the river, listening to the hard little pellets of snow tick against the glass. The only people he saw were the ones who turned down the bed, changed the towels, or delivered room service. There were no phone calls, or only a couple, and both of those were hang-ups. All in all, it would have been an excellent time to be sick, if it weren’t for the weakness that he felt, the fever that he had, and the cough that he couldn’t seem to shake.

  Of the three, it was the fever that bothered him the most—because it invaded his dreams, imposing a kind of boredom on his sleep. Ordinarily, Dunphy didn’t pay much attention to his dreams, but fever dreams were different, as repetitive and monotonous as a test pattern. Waking from them in a sweat, he felt more tired than when he’d first gone to sleep.

  By the afternoon of the fourth day, impatient with his body and for Clementine, as well, he decided to go out. Getting dressed, he rode the elevator down to the lobby and walked out into the little street behind the hotel. He needed a couple of things. In fact, he needed everything—and something to carry it in besides. Once Clementine arrived—and once they got to Zug—the world would shift into overdrive. He just knew it would. And when it did, it would be nice to have a change of underwear.

  So he went out and bought clothes. For two and a half hours, he wandered through the Old Town’s cobblestone streets, weaving in and out of some of the planet’s most expensive men’s furnishings stores. He bought an overnight bag that had more pockets than a pool hall, and which the salesman swore was stronger than the nose cone of a Saturn rocket (nine hundred Swiss francs). There were shirts from France at four hundred francs apiece, a couple of pairs of German slacks for about the same price, Armani T-shirts at one hundred thirty francs a pop, and socks at twenty francs a foot. He found a houndstooth sports jacket that made him want to shoot grouse (whatever they were, and whatever they’d done to deserve it), and the basic necessities for running: shoes-shorts-and-socks.

  And when he was done, it was four o’clock in the afternoon, and he’d learned two things. One: Zürich was a very expensive city in which to buy clothes. And, two: he was definitely being followed.

  There was a pair of them, just as he’d always known there would be. The blond guy in the loden coat was one, and there was a second guy, a thug on a red Vespa. And they weren’t being secretive. Though they kept their distance, they did nothing to conceal the fact that they were following him. Which meant they owned him, or thought they did.

  The guy on the scooter looked like a jock. He had the bull neck and bunchy shoulders of a boxer, piggy little eyes, and a flattop shaved around the sides. Lightly dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, he seemed impervious to the weather—or wanted others to think that he was. His pal huffed along the street about fifty yards behind, hands jammed in his pockets, sucking on a cigarette.

  They’ve been waiting outside the Zum Storchen for three days, Dunphy thought. Which means they’re persistent little fucks, and what I oughta do is call ’em out.

  Yo! Fuckhead!

  But, no. That would not be a good idea. For one thing, he had too many packages in his hands. For another, he wasn’t feeling all that good, or all that brave. On the contrary, he felt a lot like a novice swimmer standing at the end of the high diving board, looking down at the deep and rock-hard water. It wasn’t vertigo, exactly, but he did notice a tightening of the scrotum, as if it had just been taken in an inch.

  Which surprised him because he was supposed to be a pro at this. When he’d joined the Agency, he’d gone through the usual surveillance and countersurveillance exercises in Williamsburg and Washington. It was standard procedure, and he’d been pretty good at it. So the situation was not entirely unfamiliar—but neither was it the same. Unlike the instructors that he’d had at the Farm, these people did not mean him well.

  Still, they hadn’t tried to kill him yet, either. Which suggested that their brief was limited to baby-sitting. And, in fact, while making no effort to conceal their interest, they seemed content just to keep him in view. And while they didn’t encourage eye contact, neither did they avoid it. It was, in other words, a very passive surveillance. Similar, perhaps, to the one he’d run on Schidlof.

  Slowly, Dunphy’s adrenaline dwindled to a trickle. His breathing slowed and, with it, his pulse. Studying his adversaries in the reflection of the window at Jil Sander, it occurred to him that being followed was in some ways like being on stage, however involuntarily. Suddenly, the world was screaming lights! camera! action! Your heart began to race, your lungs seemed to collapse, and then . . . well, then, if you weren’t snatched or blown away, you got on with it. Because, in the end, there wasn’t anything else you could do. People were watching. So what?

  They must be Blémont’s people, Dunphy thought. They can’t be the Agency’s. He’d lost the Agency in London—left its finest bleeding in the foyer of Clementine’s apartment. Curry and his goons didn’t know where he’d gone. They’d been in too much pain. So these guys were Blémont’s.

  Which wasn’t good, but it wasn’t the worst case, either. Unless he was badly mistaken, the Agency didn’t want to question him. It simply wanted him dead—because that was the most efficient way to end the inquiry that he’d begun. Blément, on the other hand, had lots of questions to ask—beginning with where his money was, and how he could get it back. There was nothing to fear fr
om the Frenchman, really, except kidnapping and torture.

  On reflection, Dunphy thought, it might be better to be dead—though not, perhaps, under the present circumstances. To be found in a pool of blood, surrounded by shopping bags with designer labels, was not his idea of a good way to go. He could imagine the headlines in the Post: CIA MAN SHOPS TILL HE’S DROPPED.

  Up ahead, the Zum Storchen’s flags fluttered from the hotel’s rooftop, and Dunphy quickened his pace. The thing about it was, Blondie and the Jock were not going to follow him forever. It wasn’t a study, after all. It was a hunt. And they’d reached the point where the fox was treed, and there was nothing left for the dogs to do but wait for the shooter to arrive. Which meant that Dunphy was in the crosshairs of an interregnum, and that, if he hoped to survive, he had better figure out a way to lose the surveillance.

  Entering the Zum Storchen, Dunphy took the lift to the fifth floor and let himself into his room. The walk seemed to have done him some good. His cough had abated, and he was breathing more easily than he had for days. Tossing the overnight bag on the bed, he began to pack the clothes that he’d bought—when a soft knock came at the door.

  I have to get a gun, he told himself. Or a baseball bat—or something. Glancing wildly around the room, his eyes settled on a stand of andirons beside the fireplace. Grabbing a poker, he crossed the floor as quietly as he could, and put his eye against the peephole in the door.

  “Jack?” Clem’s voice, soft as fog.

  He pulled open the door, drew her into the room, then into his arms. “I thought you’d never get here,” he told her.

  “Are you making a fire?” she asked, nodding at the poker in his hand.

  For a moment, he didn’t know what she meant. And then he felt foolish. “Oh, this,” he said. “This is . . . well, I was just . . . yes. A fire.” He returned the poker to its stand as Clem went to the window and looked out.

  “Verrry nice,” she declared. “Much nicer than Val’s.”

  “Who’s Val?”

  “My girlfriend. And I see we’ve been shopping,” she added, gesturing to the empty bags at the bottom of the bed. “What fun you’ve been having! And here I was, worried about you!”

  “Well—”

  “Is there anything for? . . .”

  “Who?”

  “Moi?” a A demure smile.

  And Dunphy thought, She’s winding me up. But that wasn’t what he said. What he said was, “Oh! Yeah, but . . . they had to have it reset. a”

  “Reset?!” A suspicious look from the Clemster as she perched on the arm of an easy chair beside the windows.

  “Yeah, it was too big, but—otherwise, I just got a couple of things for myself. Necessities.”

  She was silent for a moment. Then, “Jack.”

  “What?”

  “Gucci doesn’t make necessities.”

  He decided to change the subject. “You’d be surprised,” he said, “and, anyway, we’ve got a bigger problem than what you obviously think is my shopping jones.”

  “And what would that be?”

  “I was followed from Jersey.”

  She didn’t say anything for a long while, as he made each of them a drink from the minibar. Finally she asked, “By who? What do they want?”

  He rattled the ice in her drink and handed it to her. Then he sat down on the side of the bed and told her about Blémont.

  “So you are an embezzler!” Once again, the round-eyed, exclamatory look.

  “It wasn’t his money,” Dunphy said. “It’s not like he earned it.”

  “Maybe not, but—”

  “And since he didn’t earn it, how could I steal it from him?” He used his forefingers to enclose the verb in quotation marks.

  Clementine gave him a sort of look-sans a-look. “Good point,” she said (rather dryly, he thought). “Now what do we do?”

  Dunphy fell back on the bed, so that he found himself gazing at the pixilated ceiling tiles. The pillow cases gave off a whiff of laundry detergent. “They don’t know you,” he replied, as much to himself as to Clementine. “So they don’t know you’re here.” He raised his head and cocked an eye at her. “Do they?”

  Clementine shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

  His head fell back on the pillows. “You didn’t ask for me at the desk?”

  “No. I came straight up.”

  They must have changed the sheets when he was out, because they were nice and crisp. “I was thinking,” Dunphy said, “maybe you could get a room—across the hall, or something. And I could check out of this one and move in with you.” He gave her an expectant look.

  “Ye-esss . . . we could do that . . . and then what?”

  “I don’t know—maybe they’d think I’d left.”

  For a moment, Clementine didn’t say anything. Finally she cleared her throat and asked, “That’s your plan?” There was a tone in her voice, and when she said the word plan, a she made a face and gave her head a funny little shake. Suggesting, perhaps, incredulity. Or dumbfoundment. Or worse—incredulous dumbfoundment. Soon, perhaps, to turn to anger.

  Dunphy rose to the occasion, propping himself up on his elbow. “It’s not a plan, a” he explained. “It’s just an idea.” Taste of whiskey (very nice, and good for the cold, too).

  “But there is a plan, right? I mean, you do have one?” Clem asked.

  “Of course I have a plan,” Dunphy answered. “Do I look like a man who doesn’t have a plan?” Was it Lemon-Fresh—or what? Some sweet perfume, acquired in the wash. There must be a laundry, Dunphy thought, where they wash the linens and towels of all the big hotels.

  “Uhhh, Jack?”

  The chambermaids collect the sheets in the morning, and take them somewhere—probably to the basement. Is there a basement in the Zum Storchen?

  “Earth to Jack?”

  There must be. And a truck would pick them up—

  Dunphy looked up. “What?”

  “The plan. You were going to tell me what the plan is.”

  “Oh,” he said, “yeah, I was.”

  “Go on.”

  “Well . . . the plan is . . . what I was thinking was, you get a room in the hotel—”

  “What’s the matter with this room?”

  “Nothing, except . . . I want to check out—you can do it on the TV. So, when I move over to your room, and they don’t see me for a while, they’ll call this room and get someone else. And when they ask the front desk where I am, they’ll say I took off. And maybe they’ll believe that.”

  “And then what?” Clementine asked.

  “Then I want you to get another room—in Zug—for tomorrow night.”

  “What’s Zug?”

  “It’s just outside of Zürich—about twenty miles. So we’ll need a car, too. Ask the concierge.”

  “So I get a room, and a car.”

  Dunphy swung his legs over the side of the bed, sat up, and reached into his pocket. Removing a small key, he tossed it to her.

  “And this is what? The key to your heart?”

  “Better,” Dunphy said. “It fits a safe-deposit box at the Credit Suisse. On the Bahnhofstrasse. Number two-three-zero-nine. Can you remember that?” She nodded. “Ask to see the manager and give him the key. He’ll want to see your passport—”

  “Which one?”

  “Veroushka’s. I put both our names on the box, so there won’t be any hassle.”

  “Then what?”

  “There’s a lot of money in the box. Take some. In fact, take about fifty grand.”

  “Fifty what a?”

  “Thousand.”

  She hesitated a moment. “Francs?”

  Dunphy shook his head. “Pounds.”

  Her jaw dropped.

  “Just take the money,” Dunphy told her, “and meet me in the parking lot at the train station in Zug. I’ll get there as soon after six as I can.”

  “But—”

  “It’s just a commuter stop. You’ll see me as soon as I come
out.”

  “That’s not what I mean. What I mean is, how are you going to get out of the hotel? Without those people seeing you?”

  Dunphy picked up one of the pillows and fluffed it. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “Now, come here.”

  Chapter 21

  From the basement of the Zum Storchen to the steps of the train station was barely a mile, but it cost Dunphy one hundred pounds to get there. The Turk who drove the laundry truck was surprised, at first, to find an American businessman in the basement of the hotel. But, once he saw the money, he was more than happy to help his fellow man flee what Dunphy claimed was an angry husband.

  The trains to Zug ran all day long, and it would have been a simple matter for Dunphy to get there in time for lunch. But then he’d have hours to kill before Clem arrived, and Zug didn’t seem like a good place to do that. The only thing he knew about the town was that it was home to the most secret archive in the world, a font of data so important—or so dangerous—that it could not be kept in America. And since this archive was at once the focal point of his investigation and the reason that he was being hunted, screwing around in Zug did not look like a good idea.

  Better to get in and get out.

  So a day trip was in order, and he knew exactly where he wanted to go: to Einsiedeln. To see the lady in the hologram—la protectrice.

  There were trains every thirty minutes, which was about as long as it took to get there. The tracks followed the shoreline of the Zürichsee, wending their way through the suburbs. In a perverse way, the trip seemed a neatly scrubbed and altitudinous version of the ride out to Bridgeport. A montage of half-seen vignettes, glimpsed along the route, revealed the Swiss in the most ordinary of ways: it showed them in their backyards and daily lives, which, as it happened, were not so very different from other people’s backyards and daily lives. The men and women he saw were leaning out their windows, smoking cigarettes, hanging laundry, riding bikes, sweeping stairs, chatting, arguing, and generally going about their business.