by Rob Swigart
“Assuming that is a message,” Defago said mildly.
“It’s the cipher, I tell you,” Lacatuchi retorted. “We have it all. We’ve only to decrypt it and the Struggle will be over.”
35.
It was well after midnight when Lisa and Steve arrived at Foix’s building on the rue du Dragon. There was no one in sight, no lights, no movement behind curtains along the street; the shutters of the tabac were down. Lisa tapped 2214, the door clicked and they slipped inside.
The light in the entry was dim. She gestured toward the stair. Three flights up and they were in front of the apartment entrance. There was no further sign of the tragedy: no warning police tape, no indication that only two days before someone had been murdered inside. She slid her key into the lock and turned it slowly. The door swung open.
“What about the alarm?” Steve asked.
“My key disables it.” She reached for the light switch. The harpsichord appeared, casting a pool of dark shadow. My Ladye Nevells Book was still open as if someone had just been playing. She scanned it thoughtfully. “I used to sing this. He liked my voice.” She looked at Steve and her eyes were stricken. “He loved me.”
Steve shifted awkwardly and touched her hand. “We’d better hurry.” His face was drawn despite his smile.
“Are you all right? You shouldn’t have come.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.”
The door to the study was open and the crime scene tape was gone. The police had finished their investigation, taken their photographs and evidence, and left the place to Marie, Foix’s housekeeper. The sawdust and wood chips were gone. The carpet glowed in the subdued light from the hall. She turned on the lights. The starred fractures in the street window where the bullet had struck it flared, a discordant note. The shutters were closed.
The books were back on their shelves, neatly aligned. Of course she knew the library well: she had been dusting the books for years. It seemed Foix might come back at any moment.
“So where is it?” Steve asked.
Lisa pointed at the desk, the ornate bronze decorative leaves and flowers, the lovely inlaid wood, the cupids, and the pewter lamp on the gallery.
The roll top was down. She raised it slightly and lowered it again. It made no sound.
“How do you know it’s here?”
“The books,” she said, squatting beside the desk and running her fingers over the decoration.
“The books?”
“The ones on the floor. I was looking for something in the titles, or the authors, anything, but it was just the books laid out in a curve toward the desk.” She shook her head ruefully. “Raimond almost fooled me that time. All his other puzzles were complicated. This was too simple.”
“So the rest of the Alberti is part of the desk?”
“Part of it.” She examined the raised metal designs. “Or in it somewhere.”
He joined her. “I might be able to help. I know a bit about hiding things.”
They examined the exterior without finding anything. Now she looked down at the roll top again, the elegant curved surface reflecting the ceiling light.
With a brief shudder she lifted the top again. It slid noiselessly into the hollow at the back, below the gallery, revealing the gray leather writing surface set into the dark red wood. The twelve small drawers on either side of a recessed alcove were closed. Above them was a shelf. She searched and found the metallic tape, a pair of silver grape scissors, some pens and other office supplies.
She opened the three larger drawers below the writing surface, chewing thoughtfully on a fingernail. “He wouldn’t put it in a drawer,” she said softly. “Not where anyone could find it.”
“There’s a hidden compartment,” Steve suggested.
“But where?”
He absent-mindedly reached for the desk with his left hand and gasped in pain. He smiled sheepishly and changed hands. Now he worked slowly, pushing against a piece of decoration, a raised surface, a bit of inlay. He touched all the medallions and swags of bronze and the flat wooden spaces between them, the twelve drawers, the sides of the desk, around the inset leather, along the railing of the gallery. He gently pressed and twisted the cupids at the corners. Finally he leaned back and stared, as if challenging the desk to remain so stubborn.
“OK.” He emptied the large drawers. The desk was soon littered with coins, wooden pencils, folded paper filled with stamps, a photograph of Lisa on an old copy of Le Monde Diplomatique, a plastic boxed set of tiny Phillips screwdrivers, assorted note cards covered with writing in English, Greek and French, and numerous other small objects that must once have belonged to some larger gadget long discarded.
Lisa began to sort through it again while Steve felt the insides of the drawers and squinted into them. Finally he sat back in the big leather chair, tented his fingers under his chin and closed his eyes, relaxing. He nodded and very gently drew the roll top toward him. It flowed smoothly. He pushed it back, leaned forward and felt inside the alcove, passing his hands over its interior.
“Aha.”
The sound was soft, almost inaudible. The back panel of the alcove slid to one side, revealing a small square space.
“It’s built into the roll top!” Lisa exclaimed.
He tipped an imaginary hat. “With the lid closed the hidden compartment is facing the top of the alcove above the shelf. When it’s open the back panel hides the hidden chamber. Clever!” He took her hand and guided it. “Feel that tiny groove. Use your fingernail. It’s the hidden catch.”
She groped around and her fingers touched cool metal, set into a space made especially for it. A slight push on the bottom and the disk fell forward into her hand. She brought it into the light.
It was dark, tarnished bronze. A scrambled alphabet of capital letters was etched around the outer circumference. Lines radiated from the center, separating the letters. “It’s an Alberti cipher disk all right,” Steve observed. “An old one.”
She turned it over. A faint diameter line bisected one of three lines cutting equal chords off the circumference. These lines formed a ghost triangle with the tips clipped off enclosing a faint circle.
“It’s the Delphi symbol,” she said. “Phi inside Delta. The tips of the triangle must be on the outer disk.”
“Which we don’t have.”
“Which we don’t have yet. What do you make of this?” Near one side in crude, uneven characters, was a date: MCDLXII.
He whistled. “Leone Battista Alberti died in 1472, ten years after this date, so this was made during his lifetime. He may have made it himself. If so, this would be the only known original and would be worth a staggering amount of money, especially if we had the rest.”
“Money isn’t the issue, Steve.”
“I know.”
“First we have to uncover the original message on Procroft 506. If it is in code, then we’ll have to decipher it.”
“We will,” Steve said gravely. “Your friend Foix seems to have planned it that way.”
“You’re right, of course. And for that I’m sure we’ll need the rest of the disk. Even though the outer part has just a plain alphabet the real disk is obviously important. If the nun has it, we have to get it back.”
She examined the room. It was as if Foix had just stepped out for a moment. She sighed. “This may be the last time I see this place for a while. I’m going to get something. Wait here.” She went into the bedroom next door. He heard her moving around in the dark. When she returned she closed the bedroom door behind her and they left the apartment as they had entered.
36.
Lt. Mathieu squatted uncomfortably in a low closet tucked under the mansard roof of a building on the rue du Dragon across the street from Foix’s apartment. His vigil had paid off, for he had watched two people enter the building on the screen of his thermal imaging equipment. At first he thought it might be the pair with the gray van seen Friday in front of Rossignol’s apartment, but this woman seemed t
o be younger, though it was hard to be sure with his night camera’s low resolution. Still, he could barely contain his elation: they must be the suspects!
The flares of red and yellow on the screen were moving around the study on the top floor. He dialed his cell phone. Captain Hugo answered.
“In the apartment, Captain. Two people. No alarms. I’m sure it’s the Emmer woman and Rossignol’s assistant.” He waited. After a moment he said, “Are you there?”
“Not a word to anyone about this,” Hugo said. “No arrests, no reports. We will have serious problems, Mathieu. Rossignol was… I can’t tell you who he was. Take my word for it, we don’t want to be caught investigating this any further. The case is officially closed. Do you understand me?”
Mathieu winked in the dark and said. “Yes, sir. Follow and report.”
Static crackled in his ear. Hugo’s voice seemed to come from farther away. Portable phones! “I want to know where they go and what they do. Are they working with Rossignol’s killers? If so, why? If not, what is the connection?”
The line faded away and finally dropped. Mathieu frowned at the phone, shrugged and put it away.
Half an hour later the shapes faded, which must mean they were on the stairs where he couldn’t get a good IR reading. They reappeared briefly in ghostly outline on the floor below and vanished again.
Minutes passed; Mathieu grew nervous. Had they left by a back door? There was no door in the back: the garden belonged to a different building. The street was deserted. It was two in the morning. Monday, he thought. It’s Monday already. Had he slept at all since Friday?
He rubbed his eyes. Something flared on the screen at the front door. The shapes emerged, walked swiftly to the corner of Bernard Palissy and turned.
He grabbed the camera and fled down the stairs, four flights, winding around the elevator shaft, trying to keep silent. The soles of his shoes helped. He raced across the rue du Dragon and down the small side street. He could just see them at the far end, on the rue de Rennes. They boarded a bus and it pulled away. He panted, hands on his knees, and watched the taillights of the number 121 Noctilien dwindle away in the direction of Montparnasse.
* * *
Back in the safe house, Lisa fell onto the couch. “I could sleep for a week.” She watched Steve pace back and forth. His face was pale and drawn.
“Stop pacing,” she commanded. “Alain isn’t going to call at three in the morning and we need sleep. We have to be at the lab at ten.”
He sat next to her. “Something’s not right.”
“What’s not right?” She stifled a yawn.
“That was too easy. Someone should have been there. Someone was there, watching. I’m sure of it. It’s what I’d do.”
“Someone,” she agreed. “But who? Did they see us? Where are they now?” She laughed. “Too many questions, as always.” She turned to him, her fatigue forgotten. “I have to tell you something.”
“Uh-oh.”
She took a photograph from the pocket of her windbreaker and handed it to him.
Raimond Foix had his left arm around her shoulders, his hand visible on the other side, fingers cupping her bare upper arm. He was looking to his left at the ruins of a Greek theater. A pale cliff face filled the frame behind and to his right. His tan face was deeply wrinkled and grave, his eyes hooded, as if his thoughts were important but far away. He might have been considering something she had just said, or what he was about to tell her. Yet his long stare gave the impression he might not be aware of her at all, and was looking into his memory, or the history of the place, or even, Steve thought, the future, seeing something that had not yet happened. When this picture was taken he must have already become the Pythos.
A spirited breeze was blowing his white hair toward the camera. His right hand was pointing at the stone bleachers of the theater. Perhaps he was telling her about a play he had seen there decades before.
Lisa had just looked away from the theater and turned toward the camera, an exuberant half smile playing around her lips. Her blue eyes were caught behind eyelids squinting against the sun and nearly invisible. She wore a white skirt and cornflower blue tank top, heartbreakingly beautiful and young. And, Steve realized, vulnerable.
“Where is this?” he asked.
“Delphi, three years ago. He kept it on his dresser. I didn’t steal it. If I’m his heir, it belongs to me.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“No.” She fell silent, looking into his eyes.
He had a sudden realization. “You were lovers.”
She shook her head. “Not the way you think. I loved him, of course I did, but he was fifty-one years, five months, and twelve days older.”
“I don’t understand what you mean. He was old enough to be your grandfather.”
“I can’t explain it, but I always knew exactly how much older he was. It seemed important. There were times he gave me something that made me very sick. After, though, we went, together, somewhere… else.” She wanted to say more but stopped. “I don’t have the words. I didn’t understand then what it meant. He was teaching me about life, he said. I think, now….” She shrugged.
Steve examined the photograph. Foix wore a long-sleeved maroon shirt. It fit loosely and ballooned where the wind played inside it. His dark slacks were pressed and formal. Looking at the picture a second time it seemed Foix was unconsciously set in a heroic pose, chin jutted out, eyes set on a horizon only he could see. There were pine trees in the background.
“I understand.” Steve handed her the picture.
She didn’t take it. “No, you don’t. You can’t know what it meant. To me it was always strange. Strange, and wonderful. My life before that, Chicago, college, was a dream. He woke me up, brought me to understand what I could do, and to accept what I had always thought of as my problem, my fugue states. Now the second dream, life with Raimond Foix in it, is over. His death woke me up, you see. He loved me,” she added simply. “And I loved him in ways I can’t easily describe. Gratitude? Admiration?”
“The precision about his age seemed odd, that’s all. I shouldn’t ask you about it.”
She shook her head and her long blond hair swirled. “No, Steve Viginaire, you have every right to ask. But there are things you don’t know, things about me… I can’t tell you. I was young, then, and maybe I was foolish, but from the beginning I knew one day, even without the bullets, he would have had to leave. He was a vital man, and healthy, but he was old, and already moving away, as if he knew it was going to end. Now I see he was preparing me to take his place. Hell, you can see it there.” She turned the picture toward him. She looked at it herself and her voice dropped. “I can see it.”
“I…”
She put her finger to his lips. “I don’t know what will happen,” she said.
“You’re the Pythia,” he said softly. “You know what will happen, even if you don’t know you know it.”
She put the picture aside and unzipped her jacket. Underneath she wore a blouse. This she unbuttoned with profound concentration, as though this ordinary act was her only thought. Though her bra was black and lace trimmed, it was sensible. She took it off and faced him.
He watched her unbutton his shirt without moving.
She touched the bandages over his smooth chest very lightly.
“I’m breathing,” she said softly. “In this moment, I’m alive.” She leaned toward him. “We’re both breathing. Can we breathe together?”
They remained thus, her hand on his chest; they might have been two statues caught as one suspended forever in a single moment.
The moment ended and they separated. The Pythia, he knew, was supposed to be celibate.
He wondered if this rule was really unbreakable.
37.
Gray light filtering through the window facing the river cast a pall over the Prior General’s office. He rested his head against the back of his executive chair, his eyes closed, his cheeks wreathed in foam. His
secretary carefully scraped with a straight razor, pausing frequently to rinse the blade in a bowl of steaming water dotted with islands of foam and dark whisker.
Lacatuchi closed his eyes to better savor this moment. He knew his minions Defago and the nun were compelled to wait patiently. He could feel the scrape of the blade against his cheek, smell the faint garlic and tobacco scent of his secretary’s breath. There was an exquisite tension in the room. Ritual was important. Cleanliness was necessary for the final deciphering of Bruno’s message in Lo spaccio de la bestia trionfante, for it would reveal where to find the final piece of the puzzle, the almost mythical Founding Document so often mentioned in the annals of the Order. The heretical text was written in the presence of the witch Hypatia herself and would reveal at last the grand plan of the Pythos and the principles that had directed its actions for more than sixteen hundred years. With the final mask ripped away, the Order of Theodosius would know exactly what it had been fighting.
He sighed contentedly and opened his eyes. The secretary wiped his face with a soft towel, cleaned up his things and left the room. The portable computer on the surface of the enormous desk displayed a photograph of the enciphered page in Bruno’s book. Beside it were a pad of yellow paper, a Montblanc ballpoint pen, and the reassembled cipher disk.
With a friendly smile at Defago and Sister Teresa, waiting tensely, the Prior General turned the laptop and carefully examined the photograph. He then turned the wheel of the disk, lined up the letters, and carefully copied the plain text.
When he was finished it made no sense. There was no message, merely a random jumble. “The keyword does not work, Defago.”
The monk’s expression remained unchanged.
Lacatuchi tried again, with the same result. He slammed his fist onto the desk; the image on the computer screen jumped.
Defago’s expression changed to open contempt. “Patience, Eminence. It’s a polyalphabetic cipher. Decipherment takes time; we don’t know the interval.”
