Jeff would never forget it. It was the first scam he and Tracy had pulled off together and it had worked like a charm. The two grand masters had sat in separate rooms and unwittingly copied each other’s moves. Jeff had run a book on the match for fellow passengers and cleaned up. The question was, how did Daniel Cooper know about it?
“How much did you make on that fraud, out of interest?”
Jeff’s voice was hoarse. “Around a hundred thousand dollars, I believe.”
“Between you?”
“Each.”
“Your idea or Tracy’s?”
“Mine. But I couldn’t have done it without her. She was magnificent. Tracy was always magnificent.”
Cooper said nothing, but Jeff could feel his jealousy in the air between them like a living, malevolent thing, a hovering falcon poised to strike. On the one hand, it seemed crazy to keep provoking a man who was obviously totally crazy and who already wished him dead. On the other, Tracy was Cooper’s one weakness. If Jeff could get him to reveal more about himself and his obsession with Tracy, maybe he could use that information to figure out a way out of here . . .
It was worth a shot.
“C4 to C5.” Cooper scraped his piece across the board. “Your move.”
Jeff hesitated. How did it work again? The horizontal rows had numbers and the vertical ones had letters? Or was it the other way around.
“I said YOUR MOVE!” Cooper shouted.
“Okay, okay. I wanna move my knight. That’s N, isn’t it? . . . er . . . Nd5.”
“Hmm.” Cooper seemed unimpressed. “Predictable.”
“Sorry to disappoint,” said Jeff.
“Don’t be sorry. Be better. This might be your last game. You want to leave a good impression, don’t you?”
Jeff ignored the threat. Instead he focused on keeping his captor engaged.
“I guess no one could accuse you of being predictable, could they, Daniel?”
“Don’t call me by my first name.”
“Why not?”
“Because I said so, that’s why not.”
“You don’t like your name?”
Cooper muttered under his breath. “He used to call me that. Zimmer.”
Jeff registered the loathing in his voice.
“Zimmer?”
“Fred Zimmer. He was disgusting. A lech, like you. Bxd5. Say good-bye to your knight.”
More clattering on the chessboard. Jeff tried to picture the pieces but it was so hard to focus.
“G5 to E5.” He tried to draw Cooper back into the conversation. “How did you know him?”
“He was our neighbor,” said Cooper. “He used to come over to our house and defile my mother.”
Defile. He likes that word.
“Fred Zimmer and your mother were lovers?”
“It was disgusting. Afterward he would pass me in the hall as if nothing had happened. ‘Hey, Daniel, how are you?’ ‘You wanna go to a game, Daniel?’ Zimmer turned my mother into a whore. But I brought down the Lord’s vengeance on him. On both of them.”
“What did you do?”
“I did the Lord’s will. I spilled the blood of the lamb. That was the first covenant. Ra5.”
“You killed Fred Zimmer? How?”
“Are you deaf? I said ‘the lamb.’ The lamb! Zimmer wasn’t the lamb. He was a wolf. Your move.”
Jeff tried to wade through Cooper’s deranged logic. It was like trying to swim through molasses with your arms tied behind your back. If the neighbor was the wolf . . .
“Your mother. She was the lamb?”
“I loved her so much.” Cooper started to cry. “But just as Abraham had to sacrifice his beloved son, Isaac, so I too was called by God to bring the lamb to the altar.”
“God had nothing to do with it,” Jeff said bluntly. “You murdered your own mother, Daniel. No wonder you’re so screwed up.”
“DON’T CALL ME DANIEL! I told you already.”
“You were jealous of her boyfriend, so you killed her, and then, what? Got got rid of him too, I suppose?”
Cooper was crying softly to himself.
“Jesus,” Jeff exhaled. He didn’t know what he’d expected exactly, but certainly not this. Not only was Daniel Cooper insane, but he’d been insane for a very, very long time.
“I am the instrument of the Lord.”
“Like hell you are. You’re a psychopath.”
“I am a vessel!” Cooper was growing hysterical. “The blood of the lamb will be shed for you, and for all men, so that sins may be forgiven. That’s what the Lord said. So that sins may be forgiven. ‘Do this in memory of me.’ ”
“Do what? Murder your own mother?”
“You don’t understand! My mother had to atone. To sacrifice. Just as I have had to sacrifice, to earn Tracy’s love. If Tracy had come to me in the beginning, like she should have, all of this could have been avoided.”
“Oh, so now you’re blaming Tracy? That’s not very gallant of you, Daniel.”
The chess game was apparently over. But Jeff had a strong feeling he was playing for his life. Provoking Cooper was a risky strategy, but right now it was all he had.
“Just now you said it was your mother and Zimmer who turned you into a killer. So which is it? Who’s to blame?”
“NO! STOP TALKING! My mother was perfect!”
“I thought you said she was a whore?”
“Tracy’s the whore,” Cooper muttered darkly. “Tracy tempted me, like Eve in the garden. Because of her sins, and mine, many lambs have been sacrificed. But now the price has been paid. Well, almost paid. It’s time for the new covenant. One last sacrifice . . .”
Many lambs? Did that mean many murders? If Cooper really had killed his mother—if it wasn’t one of his sick, fantasy projections—what else could he be capable of?
He continued rambling.
“I did the Lord’s will. I obeyed, but it was awful. Awful. So much blood! Just like with my mother. You don’t know what I went through. But then, you see, there was so much sin with these women.”
“What women?” Jeff asked quietly
Cooper didn’t seem to hear the question.
“So much sin. So much recompense to be made. I thought it would go on forever. But the Lord in His mercy had other plans. He brought Tracy back to me, you see.” He paused then, and after a few seconds seemed to regain his composure. When he spoke again, he sounded totally calm. “That’s why we’re here, Mr. Stevens, you and me. Playing our last game. The time has come. The Lord has demanded a new covenant. A new lamb must suffer death, death on a cross. Only then can Eden be restored.”
A new lamb? A new covenant? Death on a cross? For a moment there Jeff had felt as if he had Cooper on the ropes, emotionally. But now he was losing him.
“Once the new covenant has been made, Tracy and I can at last be married. Our sins will be forgiven. We will walk hand in hand, pure and clean in the light of the Lord.”
“You want to marry Tracy?”
“Naturally. After the sacrifice.”
The sacrifice.
Death on a cross . . .
Jeff held his breath. Slowly, very slowly, the shoe was beginning to drop.
“After the sacrifice, Tracy will come to the tomb, like Mary Magdalen.” Cooper sounded positively cheerful now. “But like Mary, she will find it empty, but for a shroud. She will press the new shroud to her face and she will weep. Then, at last, she will believe. She will see her Messiah face-to-face and she will understand.” Jeff felt the hairs on his arms stand up and the bile rise in his throat.
The new shroud . . .
Daniel Cooper had never been planning to steal the Shroud of Turin.
He was planning to make a new shroud all his own.
He came to Seville to learn how to do it.
What had he said a few minutes ago?
“Do you know why you’re here, Stevens?
“Because you are the lamb.”
Jeff had shrugged off the words as lunatic ramblings. But now he knew what they meant. Panic gripped him like a frozen fist clenched around his heart.
“Your move.”
Jeff couldn’t breathe.
Jesus Christ.
Daniel Cooper’s going to crucify me!
CHAPTER 24
TRACY WAS AT HOME, reading, when the telephone rang.
“How are you with riddles?”
Jean Rizzo’s voice shattered her peace of mind in an instant, like a bullet through a windowpane.
“Terrible. I hate riddles.”
“You might want to improve your skills. Real quickly.”
“Yeah? Well, you might want to get lost. I’ve told you, Jean. Leave me alone.”
Tracy hung up.
Twenty seconds later the phone rang again. Tracy would have left it, but Nick was downstairs in the kitchen and might pick up if she didn’t.
“What?” she barked into the receiver.
“I need your help.”
“No. No more. You had my help and it didn’t help, remember? Please, Jean.”
“Daniel Cooper’s got Jeff Stevens.”
The silence on the other end of the line was deafening.
“Tracy? Are you still there?”
“What do you mean he’s ‘got’ Jeff?”
“Kidnapped. Abducted. Maybe worse, I don’t know. Cooper left a letter. It’s addressed to you.”
“It can’t be!” Tracy suppressed a sob. “Why?”
“I don’t know why. But I opened it and it’s a riddle, and I’m pretty sure that if you can’t help me solve it, Jeff Stevens is a dead man.”
More silence.
“I’m sorry, Tracy.”
After what felt like an age, Tracy’s voice crackled back onto the line.
“Read it to me.”
Jean exhaled. “Okay. This is it. ‘My dearest Tracy . . .’ ”
“He wrote ‘my dearest’?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. Go on.”
“ ‘My dearest Tracy. I have taken Mr. Stevens hostage. I hope, for Mr. Stevens’s sake and for your own, that you will act on the instructions contained in this note. What I write below will make sense to you and you alone. Do what I ask and neither you nor Stevens will be hurt. And come alone. Yours ever, D.C.’
“Has he sent you messages like this before?” Jean asked.
“No. No messages. Never. I’d have told you if he had. What else did he write?”
“Nothing. Just the riddle. You ready?”
Tracy closed her eyes. “Go ahead.”
“Okay, so it’s sort of like a poem. It’s in four stanzas.”
Four stanzas? Jesus. “Okay.”
Jean cleared his throat and began to read Cooper’s words aloud in his soft, Canadian accent:
“ ‘Twenty Knights at three times three
Waiting for the Queen will be.
Her lover, husband, destiny
Beneath the stars, where God can see.’
“That’s the first stanza. Mean anything to you?”
Tracy sighed. “No. Nothing. Knights and queens, maybe something to do with a card game?” She realized she was clutching at straws. “Go ahead and read to the end. Maybe it’ll make more sense as a whole.”
“Okay.” Rizzo went on: “So then he writes:
“ ‘Thirteen lambs at altar slain,
Fourteen suffers daily pain,
Soon to end, his sins erased,
The shroud of old will be replaced.’
“Then:
“ ‘Dance the dance in black and white,
Where masters meet, the time is right.
Six hills, one was lost,
Here shall sinners learn the cost.’
“And the last verse:
“ ‘Twenty Knights at three times three,
Upon the stage of history,
At last, my love will come to me,
And what the Lord demands will be.’
“That’s it.”
“That’s it?” Tracy sounded bereft. “Nothing else?”
“Nothing else.”
Silence descended again. Jean broke it first.
“Do you know what it means?”
“No,” said Tracy.
“Not any of it? You have no ideas at all?”
“I need time, Jean! You can’t just call me up out of the blue and read me some crazy poem and expect me to solve your case for you like that.” She snapped her fingers angrily. “Daniel Cooper’s insane. How am I supposed to know how his warped mind works?”
“Fair enough. I’m sorry. It’s just that we don’t have much—”
“Time. I know.”
Tracy could hear the disappointment in Jean Rizzo’s voice. The truth was, she did have an idea. But it was half formed and not yet clear and not a solution as such. She wasn’t ready to share it with Rizzo.
Jean said, “I’ll e-mail the poem to you now so you have it in writing. I have to leave Seville and fly back to France in the morning, but you know how to reach me. You will let me know if anything comes to you? Any idea or clue or thought, however unlikely.”
“Of course I will.”
“You’re the key to this, Tracy. I knew it before but now Cooper’s confirmed it directly. He’s trying to tell you something. This is personal.”
“Are you sure he has Jeff?” Tracy asked. “How do you know he’s not bluffing about that? Using Jeff as a ploy to lure me in?”
“I don’t,” Jean Rizzo said truthfully. “But do you really want to call that bluff, Tracy? If you’re wrong . . .”
He didn’t need to finish the sentence.
I know. If I’m wrong, Jeff dies.
Tracy sat back in her chair and rubbed her eyes. Her palms were sweating and her mouth felt dry, as if she were chewing a ball of cotton.
She thought, I’m afraid. I’m afraid for Jeff and I’m afraid for myself.
Jeff had saved Tracy’s life once. Now it was her turn to return the favor. Except that what she’d said to Jean Rizzo before was true. She hated riddles. She was terrible at puzzles of any kind, always had been. And this one had been concocted by a madman.
“Give me twenty-four hours,” she told Jean. “I need to think.”
“We don’t have twenty-four . . .” Jean began.
But the line was already dead.
TRACY DROPPED NICHOLAS OFF at school the next day. Instead of heading home, she turned onto Route 40 and headed toward the tiny town of Granby.
The Granby chess club met four days a week, in a small room above the general store. Its members were mostly retired men, some local, some from as far afield as Boulder or even Denver. For a tiny local club, Granby had a big reputation.
“I need to know about chess moves.”
Tracy sat at a Formica table, opposite a man in his late sixties named Bob. Bob had a wrinked face like a pickled walnut. He was short and bald, and had tiny, wide-set brown eyes that glinted with intelligence and interest as he listened to Tracy talk.
“That’s a big subject. Can you be a bit more specific?”
Tracy handed Bob a piece of paper with Cooper’s poem written on it.
“It’s a riddle,” she explained. “The answer should be a place, a very specific geographic location. It may also specify a time. At first I thought the writer was alluding to a card game, with the knights and the queens. But then I looked at that third stanza, and the phrases ‘dance the dance in black and white’ and ‘where masters meet.’ And I realized it wasn’t cards. It was chess.”
The
old man nodded. “I can see the dance might be an allusion to chess. But there are no references to moves here.”
“Twenty knights at three times three, waiting for the queen?” Tracy asked hopefully.
Bob smiled. “A chessboard has four knights, my dear, as I’m sure you are aware. Two white, two black. There are no moves with twenty knights. Unless, of course, you had five boards. Five games, playing simultaneously.”
Tracy wrote Five games? on the pad in front of her.
“Let’s forget the numbers,” she told Bob. “Can you tell me about moves where a player uses knights to trap his opponent’s queen?”
The old man’s face lit up. Now Tracy was talking his language.
“I can do better than that, my dear. I can show you.”
TWO HOURS LATER, DRIVING back to Steamboat Springs, Tracy knew a lot more about chess moves. But she still had no idea what Daniel Cooper was trying to tell her.
She tried to think sequentially.
Chess.
Jeff and I did a scam together on the QE2 where we hoodwinked two grand masters, Pietr Negulesco and Boris Melnikov. Does Cooper know about that? Is the QE2 “where masters meet”?
Presumably I’m the queen in this “dance of black and white.”
But who are the “twenty knights” waiting for me?
Five boards. Twenty knights . . . Shadows of answers danced before her eyes, but there was nothing she could grasp, nothing that was real.
THE STEAMBOAT LIBRARY WAS practically empty. A few young mothers sat in a circle in the children’s section, listening to “story time” with their toddlers, but that was it. Tracy remembered coming here with Nick when he was little and felt a momentary pang of nostalgia.
“Can I help you?” The librarian smiled at Tracy. “Mrs. Schmidt, isn’t it?”
“Do you have a history section?” Tracy asked.
“Of course. I’ll show you.”
“Thank you. Also, do I need a code to log on to the computers here?”
The librarian nodded. “I can give you a temporary library card so you can log on.”
THAT NIGHT, AFTER NICHOLAS was asleep, Tracy read through the notes she’d made until her eyes began to cross. Numbers swam in her head like pieces of an elaborate jigsaw puzzle
Sidney Sheldon's Chasing Tomorrow (Tracy Whitney) Page 28