Ixeos: Book One of the Ixeos Trilogy

by Jennings Wright

  The three pairs began walking again and Riley picked up the pace. Neahle still clung to Monkey’s sleeve. Sarah and Abacus brought up the rear this time. They walked as quickly as they could on the uneven ground, keeping their eyes on the small circles of light in front of their feet.

  They arrived at Green Park Station at noon. Riley had been extremely cautious at all the stations, but they hadn’t had an encounter with anyone else. All the platforms were being used as campsites but they never saw anyone on them. Voices carried through the darkness and once they heard guitar music drifting through the tunnels. Neahle had never been so happy to see a cloudy sky in her life as when they emerged from the station.

  Green Park was across the street. It had begun to return to the wild, with long grass, saplings, piles of leaves, and fallen trees littering the once pristine lawns and tree lined walks. Riley led them across the street into the shadowy park.

  “We’re going to stay here until dark. There’s a lot of activity around—it’s making me nervous. I’d rather stay hidden and go to the auction house later.”

  Abacus nodded, trusting his best London operative’s judgment. Neahle and Clay both looked around, confused.

  “I don’t see anybody,” Clay finally said, watching Monkey and Sarah get comfortable against an enormous tree trunk.

  “Listen,” Monkey said. He pulled out a bottle of water and a sandwich and started to eat.

  Clay listened. He looked at his sister and shrugged, raising his eyebrows to ask if she understood what was going on. She shook her head slightly, then sat next to Sarah and tried to get comfortable on the damp leaves. Clay closed his eyes and stood still, letting the sounds of the breeze and the birds fade as he tried to listen beyond them.

  He began to hear it. Faintly, coming from the streets nearby, he could hear engines. They sounded like cars, expensive ones at that, with soft, purring motors. He kept his eyes closed and concentrated. Something that sounded vaguely like a tractor or a boat, farther away. Periodically, voices. Electronic sounds tinkled right on the edge of his hearing.

  “Cars. A boat?” He looked at Riley in question.

  “The Thames is south, not that far. A few blocks. They move supplies by boat.”

  “People. Maybe with cell phones or something?” Clay said.

  Riley nodded. “Firsts have cell phones. Good hearing.”

  “I couldn’t hear anything at first,” Clay said. “It sounded like a dead city to me.”

  “Me, too. I still don’t hear all that!” Neahle said.

  “You get used to listening for it when your life depends on it,” Riley said, dropping his back pack to the ground. “I’ll take first watch. Two hours each for me, Monkey, and then Abacus. That’ll take us to dark. Then we’ll move. Get some rest—sleep, if you can, since we’ll need to work most of the night. Little girls’ tree is right over there.” He pointed to a dense grouping of shrubs and smiled.

  “Gee, thanks,” Sarah said. “All the comforts of home.”

  Over the course of the afternoon, Neahle began to hear the quiet sounds that drifted through the park. Their location was only blocks from Westminster, which the Firsts had taken over years before. Belgravia and Mayfair were populated neighborhoods, the old homes and stately streets being convenient to the former government headquarters. Buckingham Palace was not far, and it, too, had been turned into offices and laboratories. While nothing like the pre-war traffic London had been famous for, the soft hum of cars going by was a constant.

  Night came early and everyone gathered their belongings, stuffed any trash into their packs, and huddled together next to their ancient tree.

  “Okay,” Riley began. He pointed to the right. “There’s a little footpath from the park to a group of old houses. We’re going to take that path and get on Little St. James Street. There’s an old gentlemen’s club there, the Carlton, and we’ll skirt in front of that, then head down King Street. That’s where Christie’s is; it pretty much takes up the whole second block. It’s not far, and there are a lot of trees for cover. Don’t take any unnecessary chances—stay with your partner, stay silent, go fast. There are a lot of occupied office buildings all along in here, although the entrances are on Pall Mall, and we’re on the back side. If we get separated, go to Fortnum and Mason. It’s an old department store on the corner of Jermyn and Duke. Duke’s the street just past Christie’s. Your partners know. Got it?” He looked at everyone again, collecting nods. “No lights. Go.”

  The moon was hidden by clouds but there was dim light cast by street lights on Piccadilly and Pall Mall. They found the footpath and followed the route Riley had laid out, jogging silently on their sneakers. Neahle, not a runner, tried to keep her breathing quiet. It would be embarrassing to get caught because she was out of shape. The Carlton Club loomed up at them; they didn’t pause, skirting in front of it and picking up King Street. Christie’s was dark, its four story flat facade of light stone rising from the edge of the sidewalk. They came to a stop in front of it.

  “Front door?” Sarah whispered.

  Riley shook his head and pointed forward. They all followed. He turned left onto St. James Street, jogged quickly along the fully exposed sidewalk, and slid left into an alley. Winding their way around several buildings and the wings of adjacent galleries, they came to the back of the auction house. Riley pointed and the others saw a broken window near the steel back door. Shining his flashlight around the door, they saw that there was a thin piece of cardboard sticking out near the handle, preventing the door from locking. He swung it open, and they all slipped inside.

  Chapter Thirty

  Standing huddled together in the doorway, they watched as Riley clicked on a larger flashlight and reconnoitered the nearby offices. In five minutes he was back, looking more relaxed.

  “Obviously someone has broken in here before, but it looks like no one’s been here in a long time. There are no fresh footprints other than mine.” He swept the beam across the floor. “Cleaning crew hasn’t made it for awhile,” he said smiling. Decades of dust coated the floor.

  “So what’s the plan?” Clay asked Abacus.

  “We split up and try to find a records room. My guess is it’s in a basement or on the first floor.” He turned to the group. “We’re looking for two things, and they might be in different places: old records, which would include files and ledgers, and either discs or portable hard drives for back-up data storage. You’ve got your duffels. We’ll look at the physical files here, but we’ll take the data. Stay in your pairs, and if you find something, come find the rest of us. Questions?”

  Everyone shook their heads “no.”

  “Let’s hit it,” he said, clicking on his full sized flashlight. Everyone else clicked on theirs and spread out in the huge building.

  It was quickly apparent that the former break-in had been to steal whatever could be carried and sold on the black market. Offices had been trashed, and the galleries and showrooms were bare of anything weighing less than two hundred pounds. There were still sculptures and metal art pieces covered with dust and cobwebs stuck in corners throughout the building. Neahle let out a startled scream when she turned a corner and ran into a full suit of armor on display along the wall.

  “Good Lord!” she murmured. Monkey laughed and kept walking.

  They found an emergency stairwell and started down, surprised to find that there were actually two levels to the basement.

  “One or two?” Monkey asked.

  “Two. Start at the bottom and work our way up. This place is enormous!” Neahle felt like she had to whisper in the stuffy space.

  The basement was pitch black. The two shined their flashlights down the hall. There were doors on either side, as far as their light reached.

  “You take the left, I’ll take the right,” Monkey said. “If they’re locked, I’ll come ba
ck and pick ‘em. Let’s do the easy ones first.”

  The metal doors opened silently on oiled hinges, revealing store rooms, offices, closets, and a small kitchenette. None were locked on the first hall. There was a ninety-degree turn to the right; they kept going, opening doors, shining their flashlights in the dark rooms, closing the doors softly, and moving on.

  At the last door on the left, Neahle said, “This one’s locked.”

  “I’ll open it before we start on the next hall. Looks like we’re making a run along the perimeter of the building, so I guess there are two sides to go.” He crossed the hall, knelt down, and removed a small leather case from his back pack. Unzipping it, Neahle saw a dozen slim metal tools of various kinds.

  “Were you a criminal back home?” she asked, only half joking.

  “Nah. My dad’s a locksmith. I went out on calls with him, worked in his shop, made keys. Probably one reason Landon brought me here.” He examined the lock, pulled out two tools, and went to work. In less than half a minute the door clicked open. “These are a piece of cake. Wherever the vault is that’d be a different story.”

  Standing, he opened the door and shined his light. “Jackpot…” he muttered. “Come see.”

  Inside were rows of black filing cabinets, some obviously from the early twentieth century. There were dozens of them, all four drawers high. Neahle walked to the closest one and slid it open. It was stuffed to the gills with files. She looked helplessly at Monkey.

  “Guess we better get the others. This is gonna take awhile,” he said.

  Sarah and Clay came to help in the search, leaving Riley and Abacus hunting for the data storage. When Clay walked in the room, he whistled.

  “Well this is gonna be fun,” he said, looking around at the wall to wall filing cabinets. “Have you looked at anything yet? How far back do these go?”

  “These old ones over here are from the 1920s,” Neahle said. “I guess there’s another room somewhere with the older stuff—they opened in 1766, from what these brochures say.”

  “Are they alphabetical or by date or by category or what?” Clay asked.

  “By date,” she said.

  Clay grinned. “That helps. We need to find 1945. That’s when the war ended. I doubt anyone tried to sell a machine right then, but I’d hate to miss one. Pick a cabinet and dig in. You’ll have to look through every file, unless there are ledgers somewhere. Did you see any?” he asked Neahle.

  Neahle shook her head. “But there must be some auction records somewhere. The files in here are really detailed: information on the buyers, including their address; what they bought and where it came from; the history; the seller… There are probably lists from the auctions themselves, don’t you think?”

  “Makes sense to me. Why don’t you look for ledgers and we’ll get started on these,” Sarah said, shining her flashlight on the front of the cabinets. “The years are on the front of the drawers. Looks like 1945 is… here.” She stopped in front of an old steel filing cabinet halfway down the left wall and slid the top drawer open. “Guess I’ll start here.”

  While the others claimed a cabinet and started methodically going through files, Neahle opened drawer after drawer looking for ledgers. She reached the last drawer, marked 1982. Just files. Frowning, she shined her flashlight around the room and spotted an interior door. Trying the handle, she found it unlocked.

  Inside was a much smaller storage room, the size of a large closet. The walls were lined shelves, and the shelves were lined with tall, grey cloth-bound books. Pulling one down at random, she opened it. “Jackpot,” she whispered. It was a ledger containing all the transactions of auctions held in 1934, with a column for the date, the item, the buyer, and the price.

  “Guys!” she called out. “In here! I’ve found them!”

  Two hours later they were each sitting down with their legs spread out in front of them and piles of files and ledgers stacked haphazardly all around. Riley and Abacus came in and didn’t see them on the floor.

  “Hello?” Abacus called out.

  “Down here!” Sarah said. “Be careful, don’t trip. We’ve made a mess.”

  The men walked over and shined their flashlights around the floor. A few ledgers lay open, but most were in untidy piles.

  “Find anything?” Riley asked, squatting down and thumbing through a 1967 ledger.

  “A few. What we need to do is go to the filing cabinets and see if they’re the right ones. We’ve got five so far, but in the ledger the description is just ‘WWII Enigma code machine.’ No model or other information. One sold in 1959 for twenty grand.” Clay stood up, groaning. “My butt’s killing me.”

  He picked up the open ledgers and handed one to Riley and one to Abacus. “The cabinets are by year, by month, then alphabetical by buyer. Y’all take these and find the files. The rest of them can keep looking.” Neahle groaned, adjusting her flashlight, which was perched on her shoulder and held in place under her chin.

  In ten minutes, the men met around the end of a row of filing cabinets, each with their files. Clay slapped his two on the cabinet and flipped the top one open. “We need the Enigma M3. If it doesn’t list a model, then hopefully it’ll say either ‘navy’ or ‘kriegsmarine.’ If it’s a different model or from a different branch of the military, we don’t want it.”

  Christie’s kept amazingly detailed files, including the history and provenance of each item, detailed information on the seller and the new buyer, and photographs of the pieces sold. The first of Clay’s was an M4. He closed the file and looked at the next one. The description said, “Enigma code machine, used by German Kriegsmarine, WWII. Sold by Heinrich Schmidt.” A lot of information on the buyer, Mr. Leveque, followed. Nowhere was the model of the machine listed.

  “Got a potential,” he said. “No model, but it’s navy. And the buyer was French, with a Paris address.”

  “Mine’s a bust,” Abacus said, throwing down his file.

  “I got ‘WWII German code machine, M3, New York, New York.’ Doesn’t say Enigma.” Riley held up his folder.

  “That’s gotta be one, though!” Clay said. “So we’ve got 2 options so far. Did you find the data storage?”

  “We think so. There was a fireproof room with microfiche, floppy discs, and larger hard drives dated from 2005 to 2102. We left the microfiche—it’s probably just all this.” Abacus swept his arm around the room. “We’ve got most of the rest, but it’s heavy so we didn’t take it all. We’ll have to come back if nothing works out. It’s not safe to carry too much back through the Tube, in case we run into problems.”

  “Hey!” Neahle called out. “I got another one. 1981, M3 German code machine, Michael de Santos, Madrid, Spain. Can you find the file?”

  Riley hurried over to the drawer and rifled through it, withdrawing a folder. He set it on the top of the cabinet, shined his light on it, and slid his finger down. “‘World War II era German code machine, Kriegsmarine, model M3…’ Yes! We got one.” He flipped the page. “‘Michael de Santos, 612 Calle de Leganitos, Madrid, Spain,’ and a telephone number. Very helpful.” He grinned. “Vamanos, muchachos!”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Marty was chomping at the bit, waiting for someone to visit the vault from the tunnels. He had found several older emails on the server from Alex Verestyuck in the same nonsensical style; he printed these off and stuck them in a notebook. After that, he tried to track down the recipient, logistics@LRTD.com. This guy was using code, too, although his messages were much shorter. The one sent in reply to Alex Verestyuck’s latest email had said, “X back, needs pretty long Monday. Visiting in old garage storage. Says energy quit. Zack to loan John Keller cases designated under Frank. Ready your Xtera, all moved. Vincent on.”

  Oh yeah, that made sense. Clear as mud. He scribbled on the white expanse under the printed email
.

  XBNPL MVIOG SEQZT LJKCD UFRYX AMVO

  Sighing heavily, he threw down his pen. All the messages were great, except he had no way to decode them. He’d spent some time trying to decipher them with various kinds of codes he’d learned in school but nothing worked. Of course. If they were made by an Enigma machine, nothing would.

  Later that evening, they were eating reheated beans and rice when Hannah came in, wet from a rain storm. She grinned at the sight of hot food.

  “Please tell me you have more of that and some hot tea? I’m freezing!”

  Travis got her a bowl while Marissa made tea; Hannah pulled off her wet jacket and the sweatshirt underneath.

  “How’s things?” she said, digging in.

  “I got something,” Marty said, with barely repressed excitement.

  “Already?” Hannah asked, surprised.

  “Yeah. Actually Travis found the first email. After that it was easy to backtrack into the server. I’ve got a dozen messages, but my guess is that the most recent are the ones we want. They’re being sent by some chick named Alex Verestyuck to someone at LRTD.”

  Hannah chewed thoughtfully. “That makes sense. The LRTD part, anyway.” She turned to Marissa. “Isn’t Verestyuck some kind of scientist?”

  “Yeah. If Clay’s theory is right, she’s just sending and receiving the coded messages for Lockwell. She doesn’t know what they mean.”