‘So how did it get there?’
‘Who knows? Maybe some visitor to Russia brought breeding stock back with him and dumped it in the loch. André would be so disappointed if it turns out to be something that mundane.’ She looked down at the mysterious message on her phone. ‘It’s as if he were trying to tell me something but had a few too many before he wrote the message.’
Grant had Alexa read the odd email again as he exited the highway onto Island Crest Way on Mercer Island, one of Seattle’s wealthiest suburbs. They were on the way to Laroche’s lakeside estate, where Tyler, Brielle, and Harris were planning to meet them.
‘I’m worried about him going missing like this,’ Alexa said.
‘I hate to tell you, but Laroche might be one of the bad guys.’ Since Alexa was now caught up in the aftermath of the Eiffel Tower plot, Grant explained that Laroche was the prime suspect responsible for funding the attack. He left out the part about his exposure to the chemical weapon.
‘That can’t be true,’ Alexa said, shell-shocked by the news. ‘He may be an odd duck, but he’s not a mass murderer.’
‘His mother was Jewish. The Muslim countries think he’s in league with the Mossad to assassinate their leaders.’
‘And what do the Israelis say?’
‘They deny it, which is exactly what the Muslim countries would expect them to say.’
‘Maybe he was kidnapped like Mike was.’
‘Or he’s gone to ground because he knows he’s been implicated in the attack. He’s got enough money to make it happen.’
Alexa shook her head. ‘I don’t believe it. Not André.’
The sadness in her voice made Grant’s heart sink, almost as if she were readying herself for the inevitable. She was a trusting soul. It was like he was watching innocence lost.
‘We’ll find out what happened to him,’ he said. ‘I promise.’
Alexa grabbed his hand and gave it a squeeze. ‘Thanks.’
Grant turned down a heavily wooded lane that took a steep decline toward the western side of the island. They wound through the twisting streets until the navigation system announced they’d arrived. All that was visible was a white iron gate with a speaker box. Grant pulled up and pushed the intercom button.
A woman with elegant diction replied. ‘May I help you?’
‘Grant Westfield and Alexa Locke.’
‘Oh, yes. Please park to the right of the fountain. I’ll meet you at the door.’
A buzz sounded, and the gate swung aside.
Alexa crinkled her lips. ‘Fountain?’
‘You haven’t been here?’
‘No. Just to his office downtown.’
The driveway curved as it descended. When the forest parted, it was as though they’d emerged through some kind of wormhole into the French countryside. Laroche’s mansion was built in the style of a French chateau, with ornate accents along the eaves, three cylindrical towers topped by needle-sharp spires, and a steeply pitched slate roof.
‘This is where Laroche lives?’ Grant marveled.
‘Why? Have you been here before?’
‘No, but I’ve seen it. From the lake, every year when I come down to watch the hydroplane races from my boat. We call it the Disney Castle.’
‘It does look like where Cinderella might live,’ Alexa said. ‘Of course, after she marries her Prince Charming.’
A six-car garage sat to the left of the circular masonry driveway that wrapped around a twelve-foot-high fountain.
Alexa peered at the geysers spouting from the waterworks. ‘I know I’ve seen that before.’
‘The fountain?’
‘Yes, but I can’t remember where.’
Grant parked, but didn’t see Harris’s government-issued SUV, only a BMW sedan. She must have already dropped Tyler and Brielle off and left to pursue other leads. According to Tyler, the FBI finished their search of the house and found nothing. Laroche had vanished into thin air.
Grant and Alexa got out and went to the front door, which opened as they approached. A woman in her late twenties waited there, smiling at the sight of Alexa. Her painstakingly highlighted coif, tailored Armani suit, and heels that looked more expensive than a semester at Harvard shouted that she was a woman of means. Laroche must pay his people well, Grant thought.
She waved them over and closed the door before grasping both of Alexa’s hands with hers.
‘I’m so glad you could come, Alexa.’
‘Not at all. I just wish it weren’t true.’
‘I know. I feel the same. I’ve been with Mr Laroche for four years, and I find it unbelievable that he would plan something so callous. The FBI have been through the entire mansion and finally left twenty minutes ago.’ She turned to Grant. ‘Mr Westfield, I’m Marlo Dunham, Mr Laroche’s executive assistant.’
‘Pleased to meet you. Is Tyler here?’
‘In the living room. If you’ll follow me.’ She turned and marched away, her heels clacking on the marble floors.
Grant had been in mansions before, but he couldn’t help gawking at the intricate tapestries and artworks that lined the spacious foyer. He assumed it all was original, collected from Laroche’s ancestral homeland.
But other touches were quite odd and seemingly out of place. One in particular made him stop when he passed. Set into an alcove was a nine-foot tall hairy ape-man. At first he thought it was a Chewbacca costume set there as a joke, but a second glance confirmed that it was actually a replica of the Bigfoot that was videotaped in the famous grainy footage he’d seen so many times. It was even posed in the act of walking. Next to it was a plaster molding of a footprint, set into the floor as if it were a celebrity’s at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. Grant hovered his boot over it. This was the first time his foot had seemed tiny.
‘I told you he was odd,’ Alexa said.
‘When you have this much money, I believe the word is ‘eccentric.’’
Dunham, who stood at a doorway further on, said, ‘Mr Westfield?’
They followed her to an enormous living room like none he’d seen before. On one side of the room, hundreds of pieces of metal seemed to hang in mid-air. They didn’t conform to any particular shape or apparent pattern. It wasn’t until he got closer that Grant could see the pair of ultrathin wires suspending each piece in its place, done so as to keep the fragments from spinning. The mobile was set in a corner against one blank stone wall and one etched with lines.
The rest of the room was furnished with ornate red velvet chairs and settees positioned around polished wood tables inlaid with cloisonné designs. A grand piano sat majestically among them. A third wall was a series of glass doors that opened onto a patio with a lavish garden and pool below. The doors framed an incredible view of the lake, with the tips of Seattle’s skyscrapers visible in the background.
Tyler and Brielle stood at the opposite end of the room, huddled in discussion. She had changed out of the getup that Tyler had told Grant about and was now back into slacks and a light sweater. Behind them was a painting of a lake scene with a moody gray sky and green rolling hills in the background. It looked like any other pastoral scene that caused Grant to glaze over on an art museum tour until he spotted a small shape swimming in the water next to the ruins of a castle. It was a spitting image of the Loch Ness monster from the famous surgeon’s photograph that Alexa mentioned, showing the creature’s long neck rising above the surface.
Things were getting weirder and weirder.
Tyler saw them and rushed over to Alexa, hugging her then holding her out to look at her.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked her.
‘I’m fine.’
‘I’m sorry I couldn’t come look for you myself.’
‘I understand. I’m sure glad that you’re a smart guy and that Grant knows how to punch people.’
Tyler clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Thanks. I owe you.’
‘Happy to do it,’ Grant said. ‘It’s too bad Dillman made a run for it. Any word
about him?’
Tyler shook his head. ‘Nothing. And we’ve got a lot to talk about.’
‘I know. You couldn’t even wait to trash your new plane until after I’d gotten a ride in it?’
‘Sometimes my will to live depends on destroying stuff. I just wish it wasn’t my stuff.’
Tyler introduced Brielle. For a moment, Alexa glanced back and forth between Brielle and Tyler, but she said nothing.
‘The FBI couldn’t find anything?’ Grant asked.
Tyler shook his head. ‘They gave up, but I wanted to look around a while longer, so thanks for coming to get us. With Zim gone, Laroche is our only lead now. We’ll try his office next.’
‘No luck?’
‘Nada. I thought we might notice something they didn’t, but they were pretty thorough…’ Tyler stopped talking abruptly and focused on Alexa.
She was staring intently at the piano. She examined it for a moment, deep in thought, and then took out her phone. After a few moments looking at the screen, she turned to Grant.
‘That has to mean something,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘The subject of André’s email. “Play the opening of the Fifth”. He hoped I’d come here eventually to look for him.’
Grant shrugged. ‘Can’t hurt. Give it a try.’
‘I don’t play the piano.’
‘I do,’ Brielle said. ‘What do you want me to play?’
‘The opening to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.’
Brielle walked over to the keyboard and played four chords, tapping out the familiar dun-dun-dun-duh.
Grant heard a clunk near the picture of Loch Ness. They collectively gasped when the painting swung aside, revealing a gigantic steel door of the size found in a bank. There was no keypad, keyhole, or combination lock. Just a huge wheel shaped like an old sailing vessel’s helm.
‘It’s good you brought Alexa with you,’ Tyler said as he stood agog in front of the vault. ‘Now, how do we get it open?’
TWENTY-ONE
Tyler phoned Agent Harris about their discovery, but she wouldn’t be able to make it back for an hour. While they waited, he wanted to tell Grant and Alexa about what he and Brielle had found at Lake Shannon, but it couldn’t happen until they were out of earshot of Marlo Dunham. The only reason that Brielle had been brought up to speed about the Nazi weapon was because of the revelation about Wade Plymouth’s death.
The Altwaffe designation now made sense. ‘Old weapon’ wasn’t a code word. It was the literal description of the poison’s effects. The Nazis had developed a chemical weapon that somehow sped up the aging process. In effect it was an artificially accelerated form of progeria, a genetic disorder that causes children to age rapidly, with few living past their teens. The Third Reich had been hoping to unleash this secret weapon to turn the tide of World War II. If Laroche possessed the records of Altwaffe’s development, it might provide information that the toxicologists could use in creating an antidote.
As he considered their next move, Tyler stood next to Brielle at the patio doors and studied the statues that dominated the lawn below. Three enormous white marble carvings of horses and men flanked an even larger statue of women bathing the feet of a seated godlike man in robes. All of the people had the strong features and curly hair he’d seen in Greek-style statues that didn’t seem to fit in with the French motif of the mansion. The only flaw was the missing outstretched foot of the pampered man. Given all of the other strange elements of the house, Tyler supposed that he shouldn’t consider it odd.
‘Ms Dunham,’ he said, ‘does Laroche have any other safes?’
‘I didn’t even know about this vault,’ she said.
‘So you don’t know what he kept in here?’
‘No, but I can’t believe that Mr Laroche would be behind something so heinous.’
‘Then let’s hope what we find inside the vault will exonerate him. Any other surprises in this room?’
‘The only one I know about is this,’ Dunham said. ‘I showed it to the FBI yesterday.’
Dunham picked up a remote control with a touchscreen display on it. She tapped on the screen, and a segment of ceiling slid aside. A device that looked like a LCD projector lowered with a mechanical whine. When it came to a stop, a white light bloomed from the lens.
Tyler turned, expecting to see a video. Instead, he saw a shadow.
The hanging metal mobile, which had appeared so random, now cast a silhouette on the wall that clearly depicted the outline of a dragon, yet another mythical creature. The spotlight was placed in the only position that could produce the shadow. Alexa couldn’t resist the urge to pass her hand in front of the light.
Dunham walked over to the mobile. ‘There are two things Mr Laroche is passionate about. One is his French heritage, as you can see from this house. The second is cryptozoology, which led to his hiring Dr Locke. I mean, this Dr Locke,’ she said, indicating Alexa. ‘He had this mobile commissioned after he’d seen the work of artists Tim Noble and Sue Webster, who create a similar effect with piles of trash.’
‘Similar effect?’ Alexa asked.
‘Noble and Webster arrange refuse in a distinct way. What looks like a collection of garbage in normal light is transformed when a single light source is projected from the exact right location. The result is a shadow of, say, a couple embracing. They also have a sense of the macabre, creating the silhouette of two heads on pikes using the carcasses of dead animals.’
Alexa screwed up her face at the description. ‘Lovely.’
‘It looks like Mr Laroche has a taste for the peculiar as well,’ Tyler said. ‘He never mentioned this vault to you?’
Dunham shook her head. ‘He’s a private man. I have to say I’m disappointed he didn’t trust me enough to tell me about it.’
‘Enough with the games,’ Brielle said, throwing her hands up. ‘Can’t we cut it open? Find a specialist who opens bank vaults?’
Tyler shook his head. ‘Not in the time we have. It would require delicate work with a thermal lance. It might take days, and even then the lance is so hot that it might destroy any document inside. We have to figure out the code.’
‘Do you think it’s the piano?’ Alexa asked.
‘It opened the painting, so that’s a good bet,’ Grant said. ‘And it’s a great way to encode something. There are eighty-eight keys. It’s better than 256-bit encryption. Even a supercomputer wouldn’t be able to crack it.’
‘There must be a coded acoustic receiver in the room,’ Tyler said. ‘And I doubt it would be a common tune. Too likely that someone could happen upon the code by sheer luck. Do you have any idea how to get inside it, Ms Dunham?’
‘No clue. Obviously I didn’t know a piano tune could move the painting.’
‘The email!’ Alexa shouted, clapping her hands. ‘The rest of it must tell me how to get inside the vault. He was giving me the code.’
‘Mr Laroche sent you a code?’ Dunham asked, mystified.
Alexa nodded, pulled out her phone, and read the email to them.
Dunham pursed her lips. ‘Why do you think the rest of it is a code?’
‘What other reason could he have for making it so cryptic?’
‘Do you know how to interpret it?’
Alexa frowned. ‘Uh, no.’
‘Read the first part again,’ Tyler said.
You must continue our search no matter the obstacles. You of all people should know that doubling the degree to which you work is important to reaching our goal.
Tyler pointed at Alexa. ‘“You of all people”, he says. Something you in particular should know.’
‘So she needs to double the work she does on this?’ Grant said. ‘How is that relevant? His message is, “Work harder”?’
Alexa shook her head slowly. ‘André was always saying that he was so proud of how much effort we were putting into the job, taking our work to the nth degree. It has to be what he meant. He said it all the time.’
Gr
ant turned to Tyler. ‘Didn’t we have equations about nth-degree polynomials in linear algebra?’
‘Yes, but I doubt Laroche was giving her a math equation to solve. He was aiming this puzzle at Alexa. That means it should be something in her area of expertise.’
‘Which is what?’ Brielle asked.
‘Zoology, with a specialization in taxonomy and genetics.’ When she saw Brielle’s confused look, Alexa continued. ‘I study the classification and heredity of animals. That was the reason André said I was the best candidate to search for Nessie. Once we found it, he wanted to me figure out how to classify it in the animal phylum.’
‘Keep going with the message,’ Tyler said.
Alexa read the next paragraph.
At times the creature has been said to resemble a sea serpent, a water horse, a kraken, or a plesiosaur. Dinosaurs are extinct, so the key is in the cells of animals still living.
‘About the only thing he left out was a yeti and a unicorn,’ Grant said.
‘He was making a juxtaposition with the mythical creatures,’ Alexa said. ‘André must mean that the key is literally in the cells of these animals.’
‘How?’ Tyler asked. ‘Is he talking about genetically combining them?’
Realization dawned on Alexa’s face. Tyler knew the look well.
‘Doubling the nth degree,’ she said. ‘Double n, meaning 2n. The key is in their cells.’
Brielle looked confused again. So was Tyler. ‘What’s 2n?’
‘It’s the diploid chromosome number for any living thing. It varies widely. Humans have forty-six chromosomes. Chickens have eighty. Fruit flies have eight.’
She read the next part of the message.
Hydrophis spiralis, hippopotamus amphibius, and Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni are all good candidates, but it can’t be any single one of those.
‘It has to be what he means. The chromosome numbers for the sea snake, hippo, and colossal squid.’ She tapped furiously on her phone touchpad. ‘There’s an online database at Harvard that I have access to. It’ll take me a couple of minutes to track all three down.’
Tyler shook his head in wonderment. ‘Laroche would have known that only a zoologist could have connected the dots.’
The Loch Ness Legacy Page 13
