But his thoughts couldn’t let go.
1679.
23 by 73.
What annoyed him most was that he recognised the combination, and he had an inkling that he should know where from. But no matter how he tried he couldn’t figure it out, and it annoyed him to the point that he eventually had to tell himself to drop it.
At the end of the corridor the passage took a turn to the right, the same way that Connors had led him to the meeting with Franquin, and further down, there were other smaller passages running in different directions. He chose one he’d not been down before, and as he tramped along it he continued counting the stones, silently and calmly, but with a growing awareness inside of him.
The first thing that occurred to him was that he couldn’t see any cameras. That was quite remarkable. Either it meant there weren’t any, which didn’t make any sense, or it meant they were so well hidden inside the thick stone walls that they couldn’t be seen by the naked eye. Which would be even more remarkable. Cameras did their job best if they were clearly visible and worked as a deterrent.
He decided to assume they were everywhere.
The second thing that struck him was that he had been presented with an opportunity. The guard had let him wander off to reconnoitre by himself, probably without understanding that’s what he was doing, which in turn was probably because William hadn’t intended any such thing. He’d only wanted to stretch his legs. But now that he was here, it was too good an opportunity to waste.
And so he kept walking. Still the same, dawdling pace. But this was no longer a casual stroll. Rather, he concentrated on memorising the route, noting which passages went where and what they looked like, and silently decided that this little walk would be followed by many more, as often as he could until he had a clear mental map of as large a part of the castle as possible.
Eventually, his journey came to a halt. A large wooden door blocked the passage in front of him, and next to it on the wall was a box with what could only be a sensor for electronic key cards. A red diode glowed dimly at the top, telling him the door was locked and that it would remain so until the right card came along to open it.
William looked at it for a moment. And decided that he had been ambling around for long enough. That it was time to turn back before anyone began to worry about where he was.
On his way back to his own corridor, he declared two goals for himself.
The first was to see to it that he stayed ahead at all times.
Not by one step, or two, but by as many steps as possible.
To do everything he could to solve the structure and the logic of the cipher key, and to keep releasing his findings to Connors and Franquin, but at a pace he decided for himself. He would do enough that they were satisfied with his performance, but at the same time he would make sure he knew more than he told them. Not that he knew what to do with the information, but it was always better to hold more cards than them. Rather than the other way around.
But his second goal was the important one.
Whatever might happen, he promised himself, he would find a way out.
Consequently, when Connors left him alone in his office the following morning, it was with a new level of energy that William got to work.
The night’s calculations on the bathroom mirror might not have helped him discover anything new, but they’d forced him to think. He had accessed parts of his mind that he hadn’t visited for years, he’d forced himself to search for links and patterns, and even if it didn’t lead to any immediate triumphs he knew that the work was necessary if he was to crack the code in the end.
For the second day in a row, William started moving about between the walls, back and forth between numbers and symbols, columns and rows, looking for connections, anything that stood out or repeated itself. He looked, moved to a new position, looked again. He scribbled on paper, stuck Post-it notes to the wall with different colours representing different links or thoughts or ideas, and slowly, slowly, he felt it coming. The feeling of being back. For a man who’d tried to commit suicide only two days earlier, euphoric was a strong word. But if someone had asked him to describe how he felt, that’s exactly the word he would have used.
He worked for two hours before putting his pen down. By then, it was time for part two of his project.
His own part.
This time the guard was prepared for his question, and significantly more cooperative. William explained his need for a walk, received the obligatory admonitions, and strolled away.
Same tactics as yesterday. Slow stroll, casual steps. No obvious destination. And all the while, he registered everything he passed, tried to memorise each detail and add it to his mental map. He chose passages he hadn’t been down, methodically and precisely checking them off in his mind to keep track of which ones remained to be covered. And after a while he was tired enough to decide to turn back to his office.
One more corridor, he thought.
Peeled off down a side passage.
One more corridor, then I’ll go back.
Instead, he found himself confronted with a choice.
He saw it the moment he turned the corner.
The door at the end of passageway, some ten metres away, exactly like the one he’d encountered on his walk the day before. A big, heavy wooden door. Iron hinges. A metal box to one side.
But there was a difference.
The diode on the box was showing green.
Someone had just passed through it, the door had closed but the lock hadn’t yet clicked back into place, and a faint whirring sound revealed that the bolt was still retracted and the door could be opened.
William stood transfixed. Should he? Should he not?
It was his chance. But it was a chance he didn’t want, not now, not already, not yet.
He wanted to know more. He wanted to understand what he was working on, wanted to find more passages, perhaps be led to new meetings in parts of the castle he hadn’t yet seen, all to further his chances of getting out of there, and to give him more to tell the world once he did.
But there was no time to think about it. It was a chance he might never get again. The lock in front of him was showing green, and that wouldn’t last for ever.
He hesitated.
And then suddenly he didn’t hesitate any longer.
It was more an instinct than a conscious decision: he charged forward, rushing down the corridor towards the door, and with each step he took his mind’s eye saw the light switch back to red, but it never did. A few seconds later he was there, yanking the door open, gliding through it and letting it slide closed the instant he was on the other side, afraid that the alarm would be triggered if it wasn’t back in place when the lock closed.
Behind him, it clicked back into its frame, immediately followed by the whirr of the bolt turning, as the green diode on the box returned to red.
Only then did his brain begin to work properly.
And he realised he’d been stupid beyond belief.
He stood perfectly still, breathing as quietly as possible. Somebody else must have passed through that very same door seconds before him, or else it wouldn’t have been unlocked in the first place. If he’d only allowed himself a moment’s thought, he would have realised that that person couldn’t be very far away.
In front of William was a new passage. It was almost identical to the one he’d just come from, same stone floors, same masonry walls. In the distance he could see it come to an end in a small alcove with a tiny window, perhaps some stairs leading in different directions, he couldn’t tell from where he stood.
And it was completely silent. Which made him uneasy.
He would have preferred the sound of footsteps, some sign of life that echoed away at a distance, fading and vanishing and giving him an idea where the person who’d used the door before him was currently at.
Because the alternative was that the person was still nearby. And that would give him some explaining to do.
He started moving again. Didn’t see any cameras here either, but continued to assume they were there, very well hidden. As before, he pretended to stroll casually, all the while scanning his surroundings and registering everything he saw.
He passed an archway. And another one. Beyond lay smaller passages, low ceilings and no lights, all of them ending in heavy wooden doors that he knew he wouldn’t be able to force open if he tried. He added each detail to his mental map, kept walking towards the distant alcove. With a little luck perhaps it would be a landing, with stairs or passages leading further away, perhaps even to an entrance or an opening where he could get out.
He wandered. Soft, measured steps. Like running away in slow motion. But he had no other choice.
And then he stopped short.
Footsteps.
He looked around. The sound came echoing from somewhere in front of him, and it confirmed his suspicions. There was indeed a staircase. The bad news was that the footsteps were growing louder and louder.
Pulse at breaking point, he searched for an escape route.
His only line of retreat was blocked by a wooden door, guarded by a glowing red light. Perhaps he could jump into one of the side passages? Hope they’d pass without seeing him? On the other hand, if they caught him, he wouldn’t be able to pretend he wasn’t consciously trying to escape, and that was the last thing he needed. The alternative was to stay put and convince them that he’d simply got lost.
That didn’t feel like a very tempting scenario either.
And ahead of him the footsteps came closer.
William wasn’t given the opportunity to choose.
By the time he felt the rag against his face, it was already pressed firmly into his mouth. And he wanted to scream, but wasn’t able to make a sound.
The man who’d passed through the door after her had waited for so long that she began to wonder if he was still there.
Janine was pressed up against the stone wall in the dark side passage. Breathing silently, berating herself in her mind.
She hadn’t noticed anyone following her. She had been careless. It had gone too well for too long; it had been too easy, and she’d let herself believe that she was smarter than anyone else. And this was her punishment. Someone had been behind her, and now he stood right outside the archway waiting for her.
Or did he? Then why couldn’t she hear anything?
Maybe she was wrong. Maybe she’d been imagining things, and here she was hiding in a passage for no reason, maybe she was paranoid and nervous and needed to shape up and go back to her room. Perhaps that was all there was to it? She was just about to leave her spot when she heard the footsteps again.
Slow. Cautious. Looking for something?
A strange rhythm. Almost like strolling.
It didn’t make any sense. There were two types of people around, one was the guards and military staff and the other one was herself, and the steps she heard sounded as if they belonged to a visitor or someone who was just out for a walk, and that was a type of person that simply didn’t exist, not here.
It wasn’t until the man walked past her opening that she realised he wasn’t a guard. He passed her with slow, mooching steps, and for a moment she didn’t understand what she was looking at. And the moment she did, it was too late.
She heard them first.
A split second later his ears picked them up too. He halted a few steps away from her, listened for the same sound as she did. Footsteps. Far away. Guards coming up the stairs.
And she hesitated; she could let them take him, it might even be her best chance. When they led him away, that might give her the chance to go on unnoticed.
Might.
But she couldn’t afford to take chances.
This was what she’d been waiting for.
And she pulled off her T-shirt in one move.
She mustn’t allow him to scream. It had to be quick and silent, and if she injured him he wouldn’t be of any use.
Even without a T-shirt stuffed into his mouth, William Sandberg would have been too surprised to say anything.
The young woman who stood over him couldn’t be any older than thirty. Her dark hair was swept back into a ponytail, she was barefoot and wore tight black leggings, and where her T-shirt had been until a few seconds before, a black top clung to her well-trained body as if someone had painted it there.
She gestured for him to hush, staring insistently into his eyes, and sandwiched him between herself and the wall as the guards continued on their way to the same door the two of them had just passed through. Heard them take out their key cards, and then, at last, the sound of the door thudding back into place as the guards disappeared on the other side.
She waited with bated breath for the whirr of the electronic bolt to stop.
When it finally did, she looked him in the eye again.
‘You and I need to talk.’
10
The streets of Amsterdam had been covered with Japanese cherry blossom swirling in the breeze when Janine Charlotta Haynes first met the bull-necked man.
It was spring. Warm enough to take a stroll, no wind, but still with a wintry freshness in the air. It was going to be a perfect evening.
At least, that had been the plan. In reality, it was already ruined, and it was still only quarter past eight. She was dressed up, as much as her budget allowed, and waiting at the little restaurant even though the table wasn’t booked until nine. She’d hoped there’d be time for them to have a glass of wine at the bar, to watch people around them and pretend to insult each other with their childish, intellectual word games, a practice which had grown into their own tongue-in-cheek mating ritual. They were so good at it that it had taken months for their colleagues to work out they were a couple; the more widespread belief was that they were liable to kill each other, given the chance.
The table was booked under the same name as always. And as always, she’d had to struggle not to smile as she talked to the maître d’.
‘Name, please?’ he’d asked.
‘Emanuel Sphynx,’ she’d answered. ‘With a capital x.’
The waiter had looked at her. He’d heard the vibration in her voice as she swallowed the giggle, but he couldn’t quite make out what she was laughing about. Perhaps she was poking fun at him. But he shrugged it off, smiled his featureless smile, and decided to let it lie.
‘There’s a message for you,’ he said, leafing through the booking list in search of a note he knew should be there, scanning it quickly before looking at her:
‘Mr Sphynx will be fifteen minutes late.’
He passed the note to her. A formal gesture, as if the note were something she might want to save in an album or hang on the wall. But disappointment had already taken the shine from her eyes. The smile he thought he’d heard was gone now, and she mumbled something about waiting in the bar before heading off into the dark restaurant.
And here she sat. Phone in her hand, thumbing listlessly to avoid looking lonely, a half-empty glass of wine in front of her. It might as well have been gravy. She couldn’t taste it, anyway.
One year earlier, Emanuel Sphynx had come into the world. They had been laughing like children. Now it didn’t seem the least bit amusing.
Janine and Albert had been sitting at the back of an unbelievably boring seminar, and over lunch they’d secretly downed a couple of glasses of wine, and that had made a considerable difference. The afternoon had been much more exciting.
And even if the only part of the seminar that had actually stuck was the two of them pa
ssing a notepad back and forth, giggling like school kids, every time with a new, made-up name or ridiculous acronym based on something the lecturer had just said, it still couldn’t be considered anything but a rather fruitful day. She had followed him back to his place, and as far as she could remember they’d only spent four nights apart since.
That was one year ago to the day. This was Emanuel Sphynx’s first birthday. Janine’s and Albert’s anniversary. And he was late. Fucking Europeans.
Fifteen minutes meant at least an hour. Having lost interest in the phone, she folded the napkin in front of her into a crumpled-up nothing, and when that was done there was little else to occupy her. She hated sitting alone in places made for company. Not that she had a problem with solitude, quite the contrary, but she very much preferred to be alone in private.
When the man in the suit sat down next to her, that didn’t make things any better.
He was about her age, noticeably muscular under his heavy tweed jacket, his white shirt casually unbuttoned around an impressive neck. And he seemed to want to chat, and she definitely didn’t.
‘I’m busy,’ she said.
‘I can see that,’ he said, but didn’t mean it. ‘What is it? A swan?’
He indicated the crumpled napkin in front of her. It was a lot of things. But it definitely wasn’t a swan.
‘I’ll make myself a little more clear,’ she said. ‘Had I been single, I would have preferred to stay that way.’
‘Don’t look at me, I wouldn’t have stopped you.’
She heard his tone. Looked at him. Was he joking or was he being rude?
His face was serious, unmoving and firm, as if he meant exactly what he said. But there was a faint glimmer in his eyes, faint but obvious to a trained eye like hers, and that could only mean one thing. He’d enjoyed her sarcasm, and he had sent her a curveball to match her own. Now it was her turn.
‘So that’s why you sat down next to me,’ she said. ‘To tell me you weren’t interested.’
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