by John Wilson
My hand was shaking with excitement when I clicked open the email. DJ’s covering note didn’t tell me much that I didn’t already know. He had no idea what the codes meant—mine or his—and he was sending me money. He did say he was flying to England and was going to stay with his friend Doris, but he didn’t know what he would do there.
The first PDF I opened was a photo taken in Grandfather’s cabin. It showed a hole in the wall beside the fireplace. Bunny was crouched beside it, grinning and pointing into the dark space.
The second PDF was a photograph that showed the table at the cabin covered with piles of money, passports, a hat, what looked like a fake beard and mustache, a small black notebook, a bag of golf balls and a pistol. Bunny was in this one as well, standing behind the table, grinning happily and holding a wad of money. It was all so bizarre, but it had to be true, even if it didn’t make sense. Golf balls?
The third PDF was a scan of an old Spanish passport. It had been issued in 1965 to someone called Pedro Martinez and had been stamped for entry into Spain at Madrid airport on January 10, 1966. There was no exit stamp. I had no idea who Pedro Martinez was, but the photo was of Grandfather, older than in the photo I had of him from 1938 and younger than when I knew him.
The fourth PDF was a scan of an envelope, plus a handwritten page from a notebook. The words You are a traitor and You deserve to die were faintly legible on the envelope. On the page was written: I hoped I’d never have to use this book, but I needed to keep my own record, my own account, in case things ever came tumbling down around me. Maybe I know better than anybody that you can never trust anything or anyone, and I needed proof of who I was and what I did. I just know that I always did what needed to be done. Nothing more, and nothing less.
The fifth PDF had scans of a couple more pages from the same notebook. The pages showed a few letters and some intelligible words, but they were mostly groups of numbers. If this was Grandfather’s record and proof, it meant nothing to me. In fact, since it was in code of some kind, it probably wasn’t meant to mean anything to anyone other than him.
I sat and stared at the PDFs for a long time. I felt as confused as I had in the summer when the things Grandfather had left me tumbled out of the envelope after the will reading. At first they had meant nothing, but with DJ’s and Laia’s help, I had figured it all out. Could I figure out this mystery too?
I doubted it. That first envelope had contained clues from Grandfather that led me to a path to follow to get to the answer. Here, there was nothing to even suggest where to start. Grandfather had kept this record for himself. He’d probably never intended for anyone, least of all his grandsons, to find this stuff.
There was a knock on my door. “Come on, sleepy-head,” Laia shouted. “Felip wants to get on the road early, so you’d better hurry if you want any breakfast.”
“Okay, coming,” I replied. I took the laptop with me and showed the email to Laia as I ate my croissant.
“Quite the mystery,” she commented. “Do you have any idea what the numbers mean?”
“Some kind of code,” I said. “See how most of them are written in groups of four? That’s often how codes are written. That way, it gives no clue to the lengths of the underlying words.”
“These numbers aren’t written in groups of four.” Laia pointed to several lines that were different from the others. I shrugged.
“Why don’t you forward the email to me and I’ll print out the attachments?” Felip suggested. “Then you can examine them to your heart’s content in the car. But be quick. We have to leave soon if I’m to make my meeting with Chad.”
“Okay,” Laia said, finishing off her coffee in one gulp and standing up. “I’ve got some stuff to pack.” At the door she stopped and turned around. “And bring the book of Lorca’s poetry that Sofia gave you. If we get to Granada, it’d be cool to read some there.”
“I’ll bring it,” I said. I’d sent the email to Felip and the printer in the corner was clacking away before I realized what he had said. “Who did you say you were meeting in Palomares?” I asked. How common a name was Chad in Spain?
“A guy called Chad Everet,” Felip replied. “To be honest, he’s a bit too smooth for my liking, but we’ll see how useful he can be.”
I had pulled out the business card the boring guy on the plane had given me.
Chad Everet
Investment Counselor and
International Real Estate Advisor
“I know him!” I exclaimed.
“You know Chad Everet?”
“Well, I don’t really know him. He sat next to me on the flight to Barcelona. He talked nonstop about investments and hedge funds.”
“That sounds like him,” Felip said with a smile. “You’ll be able to renew your friendship.”
I groaned. Now I really wanted to stay in Seville with Laia, but it was too late. I collected the pages from the printer and went to throw my stuff in my backpack.
As we sped west across the dry Andalusian plain, Laia and I examined the printouts. The photos of the cabin and the passport didn’t tell us much. We discussed the fourth PDF at length, but since we didn’t know who had written that Grandfather was a traitor, and since the other message was so cryptic, we didn’t make much progress. For many kilometers, we stared blankly at the mysterious pages from the notebook.
“The simplest number codes substitute numbers for letters of the alphabet,” I said. “A is 1, B is 2, C is 3, and so on. So Laia would be 12-1-9-1.”
“But that’s not what this is,” Laia said. “Your grandfather’s code is written differently. There are no gaps to show the letters, so how would we know if 12 was L for Laia or A-B for about? Besides, each group of four letters begins with one, two, three or four. If those are letters, it’s much too regular to be words.”
“There must be a key. Some codes use a book as a key.”
“Your grandfather’s journal from the war?” Laia suggested.
“Maybe,” I said, unsure. “It’s in my backpack in the trunk. We can check it later, but I can’t see how the letters could possibly relate to it.”
We puzzled over the numbers for a few more kilometers but got nowhere. “What about the line at the top of the page?” Laia suggested. “It’s not numbers.”
“It looks more like a mathematics equation,” I said.
FGL@=5pm
“Maybe five PM is a time,” Laia said.
“How will that help us?” I guess the frustration in my voice came through, because Laia fell silent and gazed out at the countryside.
“Sorry,” I said. “I hate having a problem I can’t solve or a mystery I can’t unravel.”
“Not all mysteries can be unraveled,” Laia pointed out, but she returned her attention to the pages. “So we’ve got the line at the top, which may or may not have a time in it. Below that we’ve got lines of numbers divided into blocks of four, each of which begins with one, two, three or four. Then we have ten lines of numbers not in blocks of four, followed by a large block with the numbers again in blocks of four beginning with one, two, three or four. My guess is that the first line is some kind of key to the groups of four numbers, and I have no idea what the other numbers mean.”
“That sounds reasonable,” I agreed, “but without the key, we’re completely stuck.”
“Maybe we should take a break,” Laia suggested.
“Good idea.” I took out the book of Lorca’s poems and began thumbing through it.
“Read ‘Lament for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías,’” Laia suggested. “It’s Lorca’s most famous poem. Mejías was a friend, a bullfighter who was gored to death in the ring.”
“Okay.” I was looking up the page for the poem when Felip suddenly swerved off the road into a rest area and braked hard. I was thrown against Laia.
“What’s the matter?” she asked.
“Sorry,” Felip said, but he was staring back at the highway. I looked out. There wasn’t much traffic; a couple of large trucks and a
few cars. As I watched, a black SUV with dark tinted windows sailed past in the slow lane. I couldn’t see inside, but I had the odd impression that someone was watching us.
“We’re being followed,” Felip said.
SEVEN
“I’ve been followed before,” Felip explained matter-of-factly. “A lot of people in Spain don’t want the past dragged out into the open.”
“The black SUV?” I asked.
“Yes,” Felip said. “He was behind us in the traffic in Seville, and he’s stayed there ever since. I’ve slowed down and speeded up, but he’s always kept his distance. I pulled off to see what he would do.”
“Who is it?” Laia asked, a trace of nervousness in her voice.
“Someone with a history they don’t want uncovered,” Felip said. “It happens quite often to those of us who are looking into the past—the lawyers, the investigators, even the forensic archaeologists we call in to identify the remains in old mass graves. We’ve all been followed at one time or another.”
“What do they do?” Laia asked.
“Nothing much. There have been a couple of cases of investigators having their car tires slashed and one break-in that I know of, but those are rare. Mostly, it’s just following.”
“They’re not very good at it,” I said, thinking of all the spy films I had seen and the mysteries I had read.
“They’re not trying to stay hidden,” Felip said. “Quite the opposite. The point is to intimidate the investigators. To discourage us from digging too deep into something.”
“What does this guy want to stop you doing?” I asked.
“That’s what’s confusing. This sort of thing usually happens when we’re in the middle of a case and close to making a breakthrough. It’s always been obvious which case the surveillance relates to. Right now I’m working on a number of cases, but either they’re not controversial or we’re in the very early stages.
“Of course,” Felip added with a smile, “we mustn’t overthink this. The people we’re talking about are not noted for their intelligence. Are we ready to go on and brave the mysterious black SUV? I thought we’d stop for coffee and stretch our legs at Granada. It’s about halfway.”
Laia and I agreed, and we pulled out into the traffic. For a while, we both kept glancing nervously at the surrounding traffic, but finally we settled into our books. I looked up “Lament for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías” and began reading. About halfway through, I made our first breakthrough in cracking Grandfather’s code.
I flipped back to the beginning of the poem and excitedly recited out loud:
At five in the afternoon.
It was exactly five in the afternoon.
A boy brought the white sheet
at five in the afternoon.
A basket of lime made ready
at five in the afternoon.
The rest was death and only death
at five in the afternoon.
“I see you have developed a taste for our poetry,” Felip said over his shoulder.
“What happens at five in the afternoon?” I asked.
“That’s the traditional time for the bullfight,” Laia said. “The time Mejías was killed. That’s why Lorca repeats it so often.”
“Federico García Lorca,” I read from the cover of the book. Laia looked oddly at me. “That line at the top of the page—FGL@=5pm—it means Federico García Lorca at exactly five in the afternoon.”
Laia’s mouth dropped open. “The key!” she exclaimed. “Your grandfather picked ‘Lament for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías’ as the key to his code. It makes sense. Anyone who knows about the war in Spain would know about Lorca, and the lament is his most famous poem.”
“I guess so,” I said.
Laia grabbed the printout of the pages of the notebook. “But how?” She ran her finger along below the top row of number groups.
1155 1761 4314 3123 3261 2214 3925 4331 2535 3141
“Every group begins with one, two, three or four,” she said thoughtfully. “Let me see the poem.” I passed over the book, and she thumbed rapidly through pages. “The poem’s in four parts,” she said, her voice rising. “What if the first number of the four tells us the part?”
“The second is the line,” I contributed, being drawn along by Laia’s excitement.
“The third is the word,” she said, almost shouting now.
“And the fourth is the letter,” I said. “Each group of four numbers represents a letter.”
“Let’s see,” I went on. “One one five five. Part one. Line one—At five in the afternoon. Word five—afternoon. Letter five—R.”
“One seven six one,” Laia said. “Part one. Line seven—The rest was death and only death. Word six—only. Letter one—O.” Laia rummaged in her bag for a pen and began writing letters down below the number groups.
The more letters she wrote, the more our enthusiasm waned. The letters didn’t mean anything. We had the whole first line—rotoflecha. “It’s gibberish,” I said miserably. Then I had another idea. “Lorca wrote in Spanish, right? Grandfather probably used the original, not the English translation.”
Laia stayed silent.
“We’ll pick up a copy in Spanish and try again,” I suggested.
“He used the English translation,” Laia said eventually.
“But it doesn’t mean anything,” I said.
“He used the English translation, but he wrote in Spanish. Roto flecha means broken arrow.”
I was excited and confused. “What does broken arrow mean?”
“I don’t know, but at least it’s words. Let’s try the next line.”
We worked together in silence for a few minutes. The second line also revealed some words, but they were equally obscure.
“Cupola de cromo means chrome dome,” Laia explained, “but what a chrome dome is, and how it relates to a broken arrow, I have no idea.”
“I do,” Felip said, easing the car onto the access road leading to a gas station and a generic motorway restaurant. “This is as close as we come to Granada on this drive. Let’s stretch our legs, have a snack and I’ll explain.”
“Chrome Dome was the name of a Cold War defense program in the 1950s and ’60s,” Felip said as we sat drinking coffee out of plastic cups in a burger joint that wouldn’t have been out of place beside the 401 highway in Ontario. “Back in those days, the Americans were paranoid about the Soviet Union launching a surprise nuclear attack. The only way they could see to respond fast enough to deter such an attack was to have B-52 bombers in the air at the edge of Soviet air space at all times.”
“All the time?” I asked.
“Twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year,” Felip said. “Every moment, there were dozens of bombers in the air ready to attack. They flew from bases in America but were refueled from bases around the world. As soon as a fresh wave arrived, the previous wave headed for home. Each one of those B-52s carried four M28 thermonuclear bombs, each one hundreds of times more powerful than the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.”
“Like the ones that fell on Palomares?” Laia asked.
“Yes. And Broken Arrow was the code name for an accident involving nuclear weapons.”
“So Grandfather’s talking about the Palomares incident?” I said excitedly. “The Spanish passport would support that.”
“If the passport and the notebook pages are related,” Felip said, pouring cold water on our enthusiasm. “You don’t know that, and there were a lot of Broken Arrows.”
“A lot of accidents!” I exclaimed.
“Oh, dozens,” Felip said with a calm I didn’t feel. “Mostly in the United States, but in 1950, a nuclear bomb fell and exploded—not a nuclear explosion—over the St. Lawrence River in Canada. The worst two accidents that we know about were the Palomares incident and a similar accident near the Thule Air Base in Greenland in 1968, when a B-52 with four bombs on board crashed on the ice off the coast.”
“I didn’t know any of this,” I said,
suddenly feeling that the world was a much more dangerous place than I had thought. “What did Grandfather have to do with nuclear accidents, whether it was Palomares or not?”
“It was Palomares,” Laia said. While Felip had been explaining Broken Arrows, she had been thumbing through Lorca’s poem. “The next line of code is Palomares, and I think the line after isn’t code at all. It’s a date.”
Laia showed us the page where she’d written Palomares under the code. The next line was simply two groups.
1701 1966
“The first group is the only one that has a zero in it, so it can’t be part of the code we’ve worked out, but it could be the seventeenth of January, 1966, the date of the Palomares accident.”
“You’re right,” I agreed. “Grandfather must have been involved in some way with Palomares, and he came to Spain as Pedro Martinez. The entry stamp on the passport says he arrived in Madrid on January 10, 1966, plenty of time to get to Palomares by the seventeenth. But why?”
“Perhaps the rest of the code will tell us,” Laia said.
“Well, that will give you two something to do on the second half of the journey,” Felip said, standing. “We should be heading off.”
We gathered up our stuff and left. I walked across the parking lot, deep in thought. On the one hand, I was thrilled at the progress we had made decoding the numbers from the notebook, and wished I could boast to DJ about it, but on the other hand, what did it mean? We still didn’t know why Grandfather had taken the dreadful risk of going back to Spain while Franco was still in power. If anyone had worked out his real identity and realized that he had fought for the International Brigades in the war, he would have disappeared forever into a Spanish jail. And did any of this have anything to do with the accusation that he was a traitor? Laia and I walked quickly, both eager yet nervous to see what the notebook said next.