by Jess Lourey
Remembering her dad gave her courage.
She reached for the sixth V, this one a complete triangle.
All three of its arms were smooth. She touched the whorls inside. The first and second were sleek.
The third was not.
Its center hid a marble-sized indent. She pushed it.
The bottom half of the V popped out of the wall like a drive-up bank drawer. The rock that had concealed it clattered to the ledge below.
Her angle prevented her from seeing inside the metal trough.
Salem forced herself to be patient, inching slowly to the left, closer to the drawer, attaching herself to the wall with two solid footholds and a handhold. She was rewarded. Her new position allowed her to peek in the drawer.
It held a jewel-encrusted box the size of a harmonica.
On top of that lay a sheet of white paper folded in half.
Salem reached for it.
It was thicker than printer stock, the texture and weight of kindergarten construction paper.
She dipped her thumb into the fold so she could look inside.
The light was shadowy, intermittent, but bright enough that Salem could see what was drawn on the paper. She began trembling so violently that she feared she would not be able to cling to the wall. A wail began to build deep in her belly, threatening to explode up her throat.
The paper featured a crayon drawing of two people holding hands, one a curly-haired brunette woman, one a yellow-haired little girl, both with dramatically five-toed feet and five-fingered hands. Round blue tears fell on the child’s cheeks. HELP was scratched underneath her in uneven block letters.
Salem struggled to breathe. Mercy had drawn this picture, Salem would have known that even if Bel hadn’t shown her a similar drawing on the Minneapolis fridge. The message was clear: Time is running out.
She fought to calm herself. The Order had been one step ahead of her and Charlie the entire way. They’d known this code was down here, and that she’d find it. Why were they playing with her?
Breathe in through your mouth to the count of four. Hold to the count of seven. Breathe out to the count of eight. You can still save Mercy. They still want something from you, or you’d be dead. Don’t give into fear. Don’t give up.
When she had her breathing under control, she slid the drawing into the back pocket of her jeans. She then reached for the metal box in the drawer, grasping it, the cold gems sharp against her palm. She unzipped a bandolier pocket with the same fingers that held the box, slipped it inside, and zipped it closed.
She jammed the metal drawer shut. A spelunker with lights would be able to discern the imperfection in the wall, but they’d have to be looking for it.
Eyes back on the surface, she started her climb to the top.
Her fear for Mercy began to morph into anger. It was terrible what the Order was doing. This was not a game. A sweet little girl’s life was at stake, and they were toying with her. If Salem made it out of here, she would solve this train and feed it to them.
If she made it out of here.
Her leg was growing numb. On one level, the pain cessation was a relief, but it meant there was more blood loss than she thought. A muffled, off-kilter feeling crept up her spine. She must not lose consciousness. She needed to reach the top. If she perished down here, this clue was lost forever.
And Mercy would die.
Salem jammed her foot in a toehold. She reached for a new handhold. She’d climb out of the sea cave one inch at a time. It didn’t matter how long it took.
Her concentration was so absolute that a whisking sound overhead startled her.
A rope had dropped down.
Her heart hammered at her chest. If she wasn’t clinging to a wall, she’d have jumped away from the rope like it was a snake. She studied it, wary. She reached out and tugged. It held. She glanced up at an unbroken sliver of sky. Bode had shown her how to string her harness. She could do it, but she didn’t know who had thrown the rope down, if they were friend or enemy.
She’d have to confront the person sooner or later. Might as well conserve her remaining strength and reach the top the easiest way. She threaded the rope through her harness. She felt around until she found a sharp wedge of stone she could palm.
And then she hoisted herself toward the opening, not knowing who or what awaited.
39
The Tea Room, London
Clancy had waited in the Dublin airport for three more hours but never spotted anyone else he recognized. Not Lucan Stone, not Jason, not Salem or her British friend, no one wearing a cap with I’m the Grimalkin emblazoned across it.
His curiosity had its limits. He’d caught a flight back to London.
Did it have something to do with the Order sending him the coordinates to the Tea Room, the mythical meeting spot whose location always moved, famous for is succinct invitation—just the words Tea Room plus coordinates—and the sensitive nature of transactions it hosted?
Damn skippy.
Matter of fact, he’d carried his balls in his throat since he’d received the invitation. The Tea Room’s dealings routinely included murder. But if the Order was going to kill him, he’d prefer they be quick about it, and so he’d rented a car at Heathrow and drove to the location. Smartphones made life so much easier.
His navigation software brought him to a nondescript office in London’s Camden neighborhood.
The building’s front door was unguarded, the foyer necessarily spare. The Tea Room’s location moved daily, sometimes hourly, so the intelligence community could not trace it. That left little time for decorating.
“Back here.”
The accent was unmistakably Russian. Clancy was surprised by the serenity that suffused him as he walked toward the single open door off the foyer. He hadn’t necessarily lived a good life, but it had had its moments. He’d made peace with the reality that in this life, there are no second chances, no opportunity to make amends, not really. You couldn’t erase what you’d done, only beg clemency, and that had never been Clancy’s style. It was ungracious to ask someone else to bear the burden of your mistakes, which is what forgiveness seemed to be to him.
“Thank you for coming.”
Clancy’s eyebrows twitched, but he contained his surprise beyond that. He recognized Mikhail Lutsenko sitting behind the desk. Most would. The man had a face like a wolverine above shoulders as broad and solid as a railroad tie. He wore his bespoke suit well, but he’d worked for his wealth, clawing his way from beggar to steel magnate, today one of the richest and most feared men in the world. And here he was, alone in a gray room featuring only a desk and two chairs, not a weapon in sight.
“Thank you for having me.” Clancy took the chair opposite the desk.
Lutsenko wasted no time. “Did Linder request you retire both the president and vice president?”
Before Carl Barnaby had gone to jail, he’d been the one to give Clancy all of his assignments. Since Barnaby had been sent upstream, Clancy wasn’t sure who held the power at the Order. For all he knew, it might be Linder, and this was a test to see if Clancy was loyal. “If Linder issued me any command, it would have come during a private meeting.”
“Linder is an idiot. If you want to live, you will tell me whether he asked you to retire both or one.”
Well, that mystery was solved. “He told me to remove both of ’em.”
Lutsenko was either holding back a laugh or an appendix attack. Clancy didn’t know him well enough to say. Neither fully manifested.
“You will dismiss only one this Saturday,” Lutsenko said after he’d composed itself. “I don’t care which. The schedule hasn’t changed. It must occur between twelve hundred and thirteen hundred.”
Clancy kept his face still, but his brain was slipping like a drunk on ice. Linder had gone rogue. He wanted the president and vi
ce president dead—of course he did; then he automatically became president—but the Order only wanted one assassinated now, just enough to destabilize, not destroy, the United States. Linder likely had planned to set up Clancy to take the fall, and why not? He’d already bungled one assassination.
Clancy discovered a short-lived respect for Linder, quickly squashed under the awareness that the Order had predicted exactly what Linder would do with the power they’d given him.
And damn if Lutsenko wasn’t reading him like a book right now with those shrewd Russian eyes, squinty and probing.
Lutsenko rested an elbow on the desk separating them. “Have you met the man?”
Clancy adjusted to the conversational tangent. “I read his file when I was with the FBI. Never met him in person. I’ve only talked to him on the phone.”
“You are not stupid.”
Smart enough to know I’m in the middle of an operation going south, anyhow. Only explanation for giving any power to Linder, now that he’s proved himself a traitor.
Lutsenko continued, reading Clancy so skillfully for the second time that Clancy wondered if he’d been hypnotized into speaking his thoughts out loud. “You suspect Linder is an idiot, and now you know he’s a useful idiot. Eagerness is not the worst sin. Understand?”
“Perfectly,” Clancy said, relieved. Linder thought he was in charge, but he was their puppet. They’d give him enough rope to hang himself.
“I still see worry on your face. You must know we have the best men for the job. Any job.”
Clancy nodded. It didn’t matter much to him. He stood, sensing the meeting was over. “Anything else?”
Lutsenko cleared his throat. “Don’t fuck this one up.”
Clancy may have walked out if not for that last comment, but it poked his stubborn streak, and Clancy found that he had a thread of integrity still running through him, though it’d grown rusty from disuse. “You have the little girl? Mercy?”
Lutsenko measured Clancy. Clancy would never know what Lutsenko saw, or why he decided to tell the truth. “Not here.”
Kidnappers of children. Well, Clancy guessed he already knew that, so he didn’t know why he’d even asked. It was too late for him to make changes or amends.
He walked toward the door, his spine prickling, bracing for the cold punch of a slug right up until he found himself standing on the sidewalk, out of Lutsenko’s range. He was surprised by his palpable relief. Guess he wanted to live more than he’d thought. He was so happy, he wasn’t bothered by all the new-age hippies on the street, gathering in front of the bright buildings and under dirty awnings in this counterculture neighborhood. He found he liked it, in fact. They reminded him of his own teens. Once he was behind the wheel of his rental, he even let himself think about Vietnam, and the day he’d been called in for a medical exam, all of eighteen years old and as green as a spring apple. They only needed to send over ten soldiers that day. Clancy was the eleventh. The recruit ahead of him, the last man who was supposed to go to war, claimed he had vertigo, which meant Clancy had to go to Vietnam after all.
Life could hang on a dime like that.
40
The Gloup
Orkney Islands, Scotland
The warmth of the sun on her shoulders was at odds with the cave darkness that still enveloped her lower body and the bone-shivering that had overtaken her since she’d threaded the rope through the harness. She hoisted herself over the lip with her last bit of energy, crawling up the grassy incline leading to the prairie and the trail.
Two bodies lay on the ground.
Charlie was slumped over the anchoring rope, Bode on the trail halfway between the car and the sea cave entrance. Salem dropped her rock shard and ran-limped toward Charlie, flipping him over. He’d been struck hard, his cheek split like a ripe plum. The front of his shirt was tacky with blood. His chest wasn’t moving.
She reached for his wrist to take his pulse.
The middle finger of his left hand was missing.
Salem recoiled. “Charlie!”
He still didn’t stir. She pushed through her squeamishness and grabbed his wrist. She felt a pulse, weak but present. She twisted and scoured the landscape. Unless the attacker was hiding behind a hillock, he was long gone. The bleeding from Charlie’s finger stump was steady but slow. He was stable. She needed to get to Bode.
Her leg gave way when she stood. She fell hard to the ground, jostling Charlie.
“Salem?” He blinked. One eye was swollen shut, but the other tracked and found her. “You made it.” He tried to sit up and collapsed backward.
“What happened?”
“We were ambushed.”
“Bode?”
“Dead.”
Salem jerked toward the guide’s slumped form, her eyes hot. She’d known from the way he was bundled, like a bag of clothes thrown out a window, that he wasn’t alive, but she’d locked that away in a compartment to deal with Charlie.
“Who was it?”
Charlie succeeded in sitting up this time, his hand clutched close to his chest. “Two men. One was the gray-haired guy who was behind the breakfast counter at the inn. The one with the tufts of hair over his ears, talking to the innkeeper? I didn’t recognize the other one.”
“We need to get out of here,” Salem said. “And get to a hospital. Can you walk?”
“Can you?” Charlie pointed at her leg, the blood so thick it had grown black.
Salem nodded and stood so she could free herself from the harness. “I have to.”
Charlie watched her, his usually pale face an odd gray shade with shock.
“I found it,” she said quietly.
Charlie stiffened. “The end of the Stonehenge train?”
“I don’t know. It’s a box.”
She helped Charlie to his feet. Once he gained his equilibrium, some of his strength appeared to return.
“Lean on me,” he said. “My legs are fine.”
She did. They shuffled like zombies toward Bode, who lay face down. Salem felt part of herself detaching. “The Order was down there before me. Recently. They hid a drawing from Mercy in the same alcove where I found the box.”
Charlie drew a sharp breath. “Dammit. Is the box encoded?”
“I don’t think so,” Salem said. “I haven’t examined it yet.”
They reached Bode.
“They sliced his throat,” Charlie said. “You don’t want to turn him over.”
“We can’t leave him here.”
“I’m sorry, Salem.”
A black rage flooded her. “We are not leaving him here.”
Charlie sighed. “I’m sorry, love. Neither of us is in any shape to move him, and if we call the local constable, we’ll get tied up in paperwork for hours, if not days. We might lose your girl. I can bring the car over here to spare you the walk, but then we have to leave.”
Salem dropped to the ground next to Bode. His position reminded her of a sleeping boy, butt in the air, blankie tucked underneath him. From this angle, she could see the dark gash to his throat, the puddle of blood his face rested in. She reached out and slid her hand inside his.
The cold of death.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
The black rage returned, shoving aside the sadness. The burning anger made her feel powerful, huge, a vengeful Shiva. She was going to find the men who did this, the same ones who kidnapped Mercy, and she was going to make them pay. She would take their money, and their power, and she would show the world she’d beaten them. She would string them up by their testicle hair and sell piñata sticks to everyone they’d hurt.
And when they finally dropped to the ground, she’d kill the motherfuckers.
The labored breathing of an animal pulled her back into the present moment.
It was her.
Sh
e yanked her hand free from Bode. Her wits had scattered. She called them back.
A car rumbled to life. Charlie would soon be here.
She retrieved the jewel-encrusted box from her bandolier. It glittered in the sunlight, carpeted in diamonds the size of marbles, deep red rubies, emeralds a green so rich they reminded her of the rolling Irish hills. A simple clasp held it closed.
She popped it with her thumb and lifted the lid.
41
The Gloup
Orkney Islands, Scotland
“We need to fly back to Ireland.”
Charlie had left the car running and walked over to help Salem get inside. “What?”
She held the box toward him. Inside lay a silver pendant, its center the size of a quarter. Four arms radiated off the midpoint, each with a silver tie at the end. The metal was worked to resemble reed.
He whistled. “St. Brigid’s Cross. It’s to Kildare for us?”
“That’s my best bet.” Salem flipped it. “But there’s more. A mix of letters and numbers. The print is tiny, but it looks like 8CH3COOH.”
“A transposition cipher?”
Salem grimaced. Transposition ciphers were some of the simplest, so it made sense that someone not deep into the code world, like Charlie, would go there first. Any high school algebra student recognized transposition in a formula like y = f(x). A transposition cipher was created similarly using a bijective function, meaning each letter or number of the unencrypted information was matched with another letter or number and only that letter or number. Transposition codes were solved inversely, or by walking the original encryption backward.
“Maybe, but the mix of numbers and letters makes it unlikely, or at least nearly impossible to crack without knowing what key was used to create it.” Salem was eight when Daniel taught her how to crack Affine’s Cipher.
It was the first day of spring. In Minnesota, that meant a snowstorm so dense it changed the properties of sound and sight. The whole world was muffled, like Mother Nature had knit fluffy white ear muffs for everyone, and every outdoor surface glittered with prismatic flakes.