Caleb turned to the next page. Here there were dozens more tables, each with the alphabet across the top, but with the numbers in various different arrangements. The number one was circled several times.
He tapped the circled one. “This is it.”
“How do you know?”
“I didn’t at first,” Caleb said as he set the pad down and pulled one of the paperback books from the stack. “There was a lot of hit and miss. Hell, I wasn’t even sure it was numbers at first, but…” He turned the book over and held it out to Ash. “Here. Read that back to me.” He tapped the white box near the bottom of the cover.
“US six dollars and ninety-nine—”
“No, no, no. That!” Caleb pointed again.
Ash read the number aloud.
“Now look at this,” Caleb said as he picked up the pad again and turned to the next page.
Here there was a single, nine-letter string, A-U-G-U-S-T-I-N-E, and underneath, numbers in a seemingly random order.
It wasn’t random.
Ash looked back at the book and then at the number. “It’s the same except for the first digit.”
“First digit doesn’t matter. For book ISBN numbers, the first just indicates what language it’s in. Since they were dealing with English, which would either be a zero or a one, they didn’t worry about that.” He took the book from Ash. “Now this is the real key. Get it? The nine-letter word would point Matt at which book he needed, then he’d use that to decipher the previous message.”
“What if he didn’t have the book already?” Ash asked. “That might take a day or two or more to track it down.”
“It would also depend on how quickly he received the key word after getting the original message,” Caleb pointed out. “The thing is, we know from Matt’s journals that he was receiving other messages from his contacts inside Project Eden, ones he could read right away. This special number method”—he held up the book—“was limited to a very specific topic.”
“Which was?” Ash asked.
“DS,” Chloe said.
He looked at the back of the paperback again. “I don’t understand how—”
“Aha!” Caleb said. “You’re wondering where that book came from, aren’t you?”
“I am.” If Matt had been passed the code word in Las Cruces, he shouldn’t have had the book that matched up to Augustine since he had died right after.
“I found it,” Chloe said. “Used bookstore in Ely, while you were sleeping.”
There was a knock at the door.
Chloe answered it, then looked back and said, “Ash.”
His kids were standing in the doorway, Josie carrying a sandwich on a plate, and Brandon holding the requested journals.
Caleb rose from the bed. “Are those what I think they are?”
Ash put a hand on Caleb’s chest, stopping him. “I’ll get them.”
“I thought you said you were going to stop in the cafeteria,” Josie said.
“I was. I just haven’t had time yet.”
She grunted and shoved the plate toward him. “Here.”
Ash had no choice but to take it. “Thanks. I’ll eat it all.”
“I know you will. I’m going to watch.”
“Uh, no, you’re not.”
“Yes, I am.”
She tried to enter the room, but Ash moved into her way.
“I’ll make sure he eats,” Chloe said, moving up behind Ash. “I promise.”
Josie didn’t look happy but she stopped protesting.
“Are those the books?” Chloe asked Brandon.
“Yeah,” he said, and handed them over.
“All right,” Ash said. “We need to get back to work. I’ll check in with you both later.”
As he closed the door, Josie said, “Every crumb.”
Caleb took the journals from Chloe, carried them over to the bed, and began rifling through them.
“How long will it take?” Ash asked.
“Depends. If all the books are here, forty-five minutes, maybe an hour.”
“More than enough time for you to finish that sandwich,” Chloe said.
“If you want to know the truth, I’m not hungry.”
He’d barely gotten the words out when there was another knock. His immediate thought was that Josie had been listening at the door and was not pleased with what he’d just said. Only it wasn’t his daughter, but one of the women who usually worked the nightshift in the comm room.
“Captain,” she said. “Sorry to intrude, but you’re needed in communications.”
25
Martina had been so desperate to know if anyone in the third detention area was one of her friends that Gabriel allowed her to stay in their lookout spot for over an hour, but when he heard the snap of a branch, he regretted the decision.
The sound had come from about fifty yards away, down a dip that led to a private parking area.
He motioned for Martina to stay quiet as he grabbed the binoculars from her.
From observations that he and his team members had made, Gabriel knew that in addition to the jeeps that patrolled the parking lot and streets around the stadium, there were also the occasional guards on foot. These patrols averaged two a day but, as far as he could tell, had no set times.
He wondered if the sound came from one of those sweeps, or had he and Martina been spotted and a patrol sent out specifically to capture them?
A crunch of leaves, a bit closer than before.
Gabriel scanned the area around their position. They were under the trees but there was little ground cover. The closest was a dense patch of brush ten feet behind them.
He pointed at it, making it clear they had to move silently.
In a crouch, they circled to the backside of the group of bushes and discovered a spot where the branches rose off the ground about two feet, creating a tunnel to what looked like a larger clear area in the middle of the brush. If they could get in there, they might be all right.
Gabriel put his mouth right up next to Martina’s ear. “Crawl through. I’ll hand you my pack and then follow.”
After Martina snaked under the bushes, Gabriel passed the bag to her and began to crawl through himself.
Before he reached halfway, he heard the footsteps, two pairs at least. They couldn’t have been more than twenty-five feet away. He stopped where he was, pulled his knees to his chest, and hoped to God his feet were far enough in.
For over a minute the footsteps moved through the area, coming very close to the clump of brush multiple times but never stopping.
“Must have been bullshit,” a male voice said. “Probably just testing us.”
“Rodney was sure he saw a glint off something,” another guy said.
“Probably an old beer bottle or something. I’m telling you, there’s no one here.”
More moving around.
“I’ve got footprints over here,” the second voice said.
“So what? There are footprints all over the place. They could be from weeks ago.”
“They look fresh.”
“It’s dirt. They’ll look the same until it gets windy or rains.”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Well, do you see anyone around?”
A long pause.
“No. I guess you’re right.”
“I’m always right, you know that.”
There was a snort. “Only in your head.”
The steps started to move away.
“Oh, like you’re right all the time.”
“Not that we’re keeping score, but more than you.”