Salem's Cipher

by Jess Lourey

  “How about that.”

  Salem Wiley had just passed in front of the same second-story window as Isabel Odegaard, her hair short enough to send her corkscrew curls into a straight-up halo, but it was her, nonetheless. Stone’s heart thudded. He didn’t think he’d ever see her again, not since he received word that she and Odegaard had escaped from the Amherst holding cell. He’d almost laughed when he’d heard about their prison break. Those two were either the worst double agents or the best women on the run he’d ever encountered.

  Wiley and Odegaard squatting inside Golden Lucky spun the NSA’s findings in a new direction. It also made Stone dislike even more the fat-fingered suit across the street.

  The man’d been leaning against the melon stand adjacent to the Golden Lucky for far too long. Stone didn’t like the lethal, compact shape of the man, or the girth of his fingers, each like a muscled sausage. Stone guessed from the way he squeezed an exerciser in each that his digits were as strong as they appeared.

  The sun was beginning its downward trajectory. Stone estimated he had half an hour of natural light left. The creeping twilight brought out the natural witchiness that he’d always felt in San Francisco’s Chinatown. He possessed a healthy respect for the culture and magic of the place, and there was a lot of it—people taking care of each other, family secrets passed down through the women, medicine that treated your spirit as much as your body. It reminded him of his MawMaw, his mother’s mother, who cooked her own salve out of almond oil, beeswax, and boiled herbs. He could recall the acrid, green scent at will, and craved it even to this day when he was cut or burned.

  An exultant yell caught his attention, yanking him out of his MawMaw memories. He glanced out the window to the north, up Powell. A parade was starting, probably forming to celebrate the Autumn Art Festival. Like most in displaced, close-knit communities, the people of Chinatown would find any reason to celebrate, and they’d do so often.

  Children in red silk kimonos led the parade. Behind them, four women in heavy white face paint and ornate headdresses followed, and to the rear of that, one of Chinatown’s famous parade dragons rippled and swelled, spitting sparklers running the length of it, tossing hot bits of light into the street.

  He needed to figure out what he was going to do about Wiley and Odegaard and soon. They were known fugitives, and with the parade, this street was going to be chaos in a matter of minutes.

  “Can I help you?”

  Stone glanced at the shopkeeper. He’d been standing in this exact spot for twenty minutes, taking up valuable space. “Sorry. Can I buy some mango juice?”

  “In back.” The man pointed toward a cooler humming against a far wall and returned to his till.

  Stone nodded. His phone buzzed, and he yanked it out of his pocket as he turned back to the window. The fat-fingered man was also pulling his phone out and gluing it to his ear. A chill passed through Stone. Why did he feel like they were both about to talk to the same person? But of course that was impossible. Caller ID told Stone that his SAC was on the other end of his line.

  “Hello.”

  “Stone, where are you?”

  Stone didn’t answer immediately. He couldn’t. Across the street, a dozen men in full SWAT gear were swarming upstream from the parade and toward the Golden Lucky Fortune Cookie Company factory, silent as mice, lethal as deathstalker scorpions.

  75

  Chinatown, San Francisco

  Salem hurried out of the bathroom after Bel. “What is it?”

  “I can’t even describe it to you. You won’t believe it.”

  Salem followed her across the apartment, weaving around the old couch, to the north end of the building. She noticed, for the first time, that Lu had pasted a strip of wallpaper imprinted with a photo of molding just below the ceiling in every room. They reached a door, its paint chipping, a red scroll emblazoned with gold lettering covering the worst of it. Bel tossed Salem a loaded glance, grasped the rusted door knob, and turned.

  Salem felt the heat of the computers before the door was fully open.

  Inside the room, the familiar smell of charged ions and stationary people greeted her. A tower of green lights to her left told her that Lu had her own server, which made sense given the ten computers inside, each one with its own person typing furiously. The space was dark except for the glow of ambient lights, quiet but for the sound of fingers clacking on keyboards and the hum of a heavy-duty air conditioner near the server. The windows must be painted on the inside to keep any natural light—or prying eyes—from leaking in. Salem thought she heard music outside the building, but there was no way to know.

  She felt like a conductor walking into an acoustically tuned concert hall.

  “If this doesn’t teach me once and for all not to judge someone by how well they speak English, then nothing will,” Bel whispered into Salem’s ear. “See the ID maker over there, by the camera? This is a full-service lab.”

  “Out of my way!” Lu pushed past Salem to stand over the shoulder of a portly Asian man wearing round glasses. She commanded in Chinese that he do something. At least that’s what it sounded like.

  Salem coughed to get Lu’s attention. “I thought you weren’t going to show us the computers until we returned from the Mission.”

  “We get new information,” Lu said without looking away from the man’s computer screen. “Make it extra urgent that you get the code before Gina Hayes come to Alcatraz. Hermitage plan to kill her there. I’m eccentric, not stupid. I need to know if these computers work to break Beale’s code so we don’t waste time.”

  “You have to tell the police,” Bel said.

  Lu rolled her eyes. “No idea whose side they on. I tell Hayes, and she not even care. She said they trying to kill her all the time, what make Alcatraz special?”

  Salem cocked her head. “You know Gina Hayes?”

  “Duh. Now you tell me—these computers good for you?”

  Salem walked over. The man was working on an HP Spectre laptop. It appeared to be the old model but running quickly. Next to him, a woman with her hair tied up in a pink bandanna was typing on a Mac. “I can’t be sure until I see the keytext, but if it has access to the Internet and is fast, I’m sure it’ll work fine.”

  If the cipher is even crackable. People have been trying for 150 years. But she didn’t see a reason to express her doubts. Instead, she tried to see what the man was typing, but he had a privacy screen that made it impossible to read his screen unless she looked at it dead on. “Is everyone here working for the Underground?”

  Lu’s eyes were sharp and black. “Yes.”

  Bel stepped next to Salem. “What are they doing?”

  Lu sighed. She was wearing a 49ers t-shirt, sweatpants, and men’s slide sandals in a camouflage pattern over Christmas socks. “Depends. Sometime, we intercept messages. Other day, we move groups of women and children to hiding, lobby for women’s causes, deliver crisis supplies where needed. Mostly cleanup. We’d like to be in front of horse rather than behind one of these days.” She smiled. It creased the corners of her eyes.

  Salem indicated the computers. “Who pays for all of this?”

  “Bad guys not only ones with money.” Lu full-on cackled this time. Then her switch flipped, exactly like it’d done earlier that day in the kitchen. “You know someone try to kill Hayes in Iowa?”

  Salem nodded. “We heard it on the radio driving here. Was that the Hermitage?”

  “We don’t think so. If it Hermitage, they don’t fail. We think they going to try something else. We get text.”

  What was it that Salem saw behind Lu’s eyes? “Who was the text from?”

  Lu glanced away. “No matter. You have your plan. If computer okay, you go to Dolores Mission. Now.”

  “All right,” Salem said. “Should we—”

  The commotion outside the painted-over windows becam
e louder. At first, Salem thought it was more music, but then she realized it was coming from inside the fortune cookie factory.

  “SFPD! Come out with your hands up!”

  76

  Chinatown, San Francisco

  Every one of Lu’s computer workers responded to the takedown like they’d rehearsed for it. Two women and two men ran outside the room. A fifth followed to the doorway, locking the door behind them, sliding a second door made of soldered iron bars over that, and then locking it as well.

  “People who run out? They stalling for you.” Lu patted Salem’s bottom and pointed toward the opposite wall. “You go out window.”

  “What?”

  Lu nodded, smiling. “Don’t worry. Fire escape out there. SFPD come up through living room. Maybe also on roof, so you be small. Blend in.”

  “Why is SFPD here?” Bel was following Lu to the window.

  Lu shrugged. “Slow day. Sometimes, they just want to come check on us.” She pointed at the five workers still on their computers, each of them leaning to work two computers simultaneously. “We only need seven minutes to hide everything. They find nothing but digital mahjong club, no gambling, when they get here!” Her laugh was punctuated by the screech of Bel forcing open the window.

  A flood of cool air and the refreshed smell of baking cookies flowed in. The discordant Chinese music below was almost too loud to be heard over. “A parade! You so lucky,” Lu said, exaggerating her accent. “Like the fortune cookie. Now go.”

  She stepped aside and shoved Bel out onto the fire escape. Bel scanned the perimeter, assessing the situation, before offering her hands to Salem.

  “My damn gun is back in the room,” Bel muttered. “I almost don’t deserve one.”

  Salem stepped onto the fire escape, too scared to respond to that. “Is this a good idea?”

  They were perched a story above the sidewalk, floating over a group of boys who waved red ribbons and wore red and gold kimonos. Salem’s eyes followed the long, looping dragon behind the boys, four men wide and at least fifty feet long. Sparklers glittered and popped inside its nostrils, and ornately dressed soldiers flanking the dragon set off small fireworks that erupted green and blue in the sky. These were met with cheers from the throngs on the crowded sidewalks. The setting sun added to the visual cacophony, raspberry dusk blending with caramel celebration.

  “I don’t even know what a good idea looks like anymore,” Bel said, shoving on the fire escape’s rusty metal ladder to release it to street level. It wouldn’t give. She kicked at it. It yelled back at her and moved an inch. “Help me!”

  Salem began kicking the ladder along with Bel. A few of the parade children glanced up as heavy rust flakes rained down on them. From inside the apartment, violent knocking sounded on the other side of the caged door. The noise was muffled by the volume of the parade, but Salem still heard it.

  “SFPD, we know you’re in there! Open the door or we’ll break it down.”

  “Hurry,” Salem begged.

  Bel knelt so she could put her shoulder to the ladder. Salem did the same. They pushed until sweat broke out on their foreheads, but it wasn’t budging. The dead drop was at least 20 feet.

  “Get help!” Bel said.

  Salem stood and turned back to the window. Lu was now seated at a computer station, all the workers typing so fast that their fingers nearly disappeared.

  Suddenly, the wood of the door splintered, revealing the head of an ax.

  “They’re breaking down the door!”

  Bel stood and stared over the side of the fire escape. “God help us, I hope we don’t weigh too much.”

  “What?” Salem was frantic.

  Bel pointed below. The parade dragon was just weaving its way under the fire escape. Salem could make out the forms of people below the rich, brocaded material of the beast. They seemed to be holding the dragon’s body over their head like a blanket.

  “We can’t jump on them!”

  The ax swung against the door again, this time sending a foot-long splinter of wood halfway across the room.

  “It’ll be like the parachute game in school,” Bel said, leading Salem to the edge of the fire escape. “Remember? We’d all hold the edge of a parachute, and someone would roll into the middle, and we’d toss them in the air like popcorn. Their weight would be spread out. Easy peasy.”

  “But we didn’t jump on each other’s heads!”

  The ax slammed through the door a third time, ripping the knob free. The wooden door opened. A masked man in all black knelt to begin work immediately on the iron bars, the only barrier between him and the computer room.

  It was either stay, get arrested, and lose any chance at saving Grace or Vida; jump 20 feet to a sidewalk and crack their ankle bones like toothpicks; or aim for a soft spot on the back of a parade dragon.

  Salem didn’t give herself time to think. She let Bel grab her hand, they both hoisted their legs over the iron side of the fire escape, and they tipped forward. They fell through music, firecracker smoke, the strident song of the parade actors, and their own yelling.

  Thump.

  Thump.

  Salem landed first, her heart and stomach still back on the fire escape. Bel followed immediately. If they’d thought it over, they’d have spread out their weight more, but the people underneath held them as firmly as a palanquin.

  “Are you okay?”

  Salem nodded. The dragon’s back was a thick felt. It smelled like mothballs. Underneath her, hands adjusted, and what sounded like swearing in Chinese assaulted her ears. She didn’t blame them one bit.

  The dragon carried them down the street, jostling them above the crowd. The noise was even louder at street level, people yelling and pointing at them, music pounding, colors swirling, the sizzle of sparklers threatening them from every angle.

  Bel glanced above toward the fire escape they’d just flown from, raising her voice to be heard. “The SWAT hasn’t made it outside yet. I hope Lu had time to hide what she needed to hide.”

  But Salem didn’t hear her.

  Her eyes were drawn somewhere else—across the street, beneath the blue awning of Powell Grocery, and into the bemused stare of Agent Lucan Stone.

  77

  Mission District, San Francisco

  The Misión San Francisco de Asís, nicknamed Dolores Mission, Spanish for “Mission of Sorrows,” was founded in 1776, making it one of the original missions in the United States and the oldest San Francisco building still standing. At the time of its construction, missions were not merely religious centers. They were settlements that housed people, contained animals, raised crops, manufactured goods, educated, and healed. At one time, the mission encompassed 125 square miles.

  Bel and Salem were interested in a single building, the only remaining original construction: the adobe mission chapel, dedicated in 1791, along with its three bells: San Martin, San Francisco, and San Jose.

  Lu had conjectured that the priests of the mission, themselves friends to the poor and dispossessed and particularly the native population, may have been Underground members, or at least sympathetic to the cause. It made perfect sense to her that Beale would have hidden his keytext there, inside bells that would stand the test of time.

  Salem and Bel stood side by side, on the Dolores Street median directly facing the white-washed adobe mission. It was a story and a half high. The upper level was surrounded by a copper-colored metal railing. The three bells and a short door were inset into the wall behind the balustrade.

  The wedding was actually taking place next door, in the basilica erected over a century after the adobe chapel. People were filing into the basilica. The hosts must be offering some sort of hors d’oeuvres to hold guests over because white-coated caterers were unloading a van and heading toward the breezeway between the chapel and the basilica.

  “Maybe we s
hould steal one of those hats and jackets,” Salem joked. “You can sneak in anywhere in a caterer’s outfit.”

  A limo pulled up on Dolores Street, unloading six women dressed bright as peacocks along with one resplendent bride. Her strapless gown cascaded over her body, her streaming veil dusting her shoulders. The seven women were talking animatedly and laughing. Their entrance elicited applause and hollers from those assembled on the sidewalk.

  “Now’s a good time.” Bel pushed Salem off the median. “All eyes will be on the bride. Let’s sneak into the chapel.”

  They crossed the street. Salem had felt super-visible the whole run to the Metro station, riding the M, and walking here, as if her haircut looked as amateur as it felt. But the self-consciousness was even more acute here, surrounded by wedding guests wearing their finest and catering staff in immaculate white. Salem’s frumpy hair and informal clothes felt like a beacon.

  “We’ll do fine,” Bel said, reading her mind.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because we don’t have a choice.” Bel used her weight to yank open the heavy wooden doors of the mission.

  A wave of incense washed over them. The interior was glorious Spanish baroque, with a multicolored chevron-design ceiling that reminded Salem of a pair of corduroy pants her mom used to wear. Behind the altar, a wall of bronze stations of the cross dominated the area, floor to ceiling. The church was empty except for a handful of women sitting in the front pews, their heads bent, and a single elderly woman lighting a candle. The space had an aura of song, everyone inside held in the arms of a chant.