He continued south, taking the foot trail past Military Road, where he turned right, lest he end up smack dab in front of the Park Police Headquarters, and followed a branch of the trail toward the horse center, stopping somewhat short of the facility, right where a crumpled beer can lay to the right of the path.
“In here,” a voice said, startling Dean when he knew he shouldn’t be. The fatigue, he told himself. It was getting to him. The hours at work, the time spent setting up this latest endeavor, and the worry.
“Where?” Dean asked the darkness among the trees.
A few branches shook. Dean stepped between the shrubs and followed a man in dark clothing deeper into the foliage. Beneath a barren tree, the Asian man turned to face Dean.
“Your contact is here.”
Dean looked around, surprised to the point of horror. “Here?!”
“Not here, you fool. Here. In the country.”
“Oh. I wrote down the information.”
The Asian man’s expression soured. He held out his hand, waiting for Dean to put the information in it. When he did, the Asian man folded it twice and ripped the paper into slender shreds.
“What…”
The Asian man grabbed Dean by the shirt, bunching the material in one fist, and shaking the remains of the paper in the other. “Never write something down! Never!”
He had a good eight inches on the Asian man, but there was no doubt in Craig Dean’s mind who would win a fight. “Sorry.”
The strips of paper became a wad in the Asian man’s hand, which he dropped in a pocket as he released his grip on Dean. “Saturday morning, ten o’clock. Here. There is a bench on the path by Miller Cabin. Your contact will be there.”
“How will I know him?”
“She will know you,” the Asian man answered with a correction. “You tell her what she wants to know then.”
Dean nodded. “Yeah. Ten. Got it.”
The Asian man gestured with a toss of his head for Dean to leave. He backed toward the path, watching as the Asian man turned and waded into the black foliage with hardly a sound.
“Fucking ninja,” Dean commented. Once on the path he walked faster than he had on the way in.
“Smile,” Georgie said from a hastily chosen position a hundred feet west of the trail, just off the foot path from the planetarium. Through the long lens of his camera, Craig Dean jogged north toward the path along Military Road. The shutter clicked softly, repeatedly, until the film ran out.
Several minutes later, Ralph approached from the south, a small bag in hand. “I stepped in horse shit.”
“Good,” Georgie said. “How close did you get?”
Ralph opened the bag and removed a cassette. “Close enough.”
The respite lasted but a single night.
Art heard it first, around two, restless mumbling now instead of the broken melody, and when he sat up in bed Anne was still out like a light. Someone should sleep, he thought to himself, and gingerly got out of bed and went to the guest room.
The light by the bed was on, and Simon sat on the edge of the mattress, covers folded haphazardly down. The red rocker had been for naught, Art was thinking when he saw something on Simon’s lap. It was a magazine, the one Simon had with him the day Anne and he coaxed him out of the basement.
Art sat next to Simon on the bed. “What are you reading?”
“Simon is reading puzzles.”
“Puzzles,” Art said softly, bending his neck to see under Simon’s mop. As he did he glanced at the page the magazine was open to, then the glance became a look, and the look a stare of near disbelief. The page, covered by a jumble of numbers and letters, was familiar. Shockingly familiar. “Can I look at that?”
A single rock forward, then the magazine slid toward Art. Simon’s head twisted away.
Art lifted the magazine, took a look at the cover to get the title, and then focused on the page in question. As he did he realized it was more than familiar; it was nearly identical to the sheet found on Mike Bell’s body. A twin, except maybe for the specific numbers and letters. The format was the same.
He handed the magazine back to Simon and asked, “Can you do this puzzle?”
Simon blinked several times, in a series of spurts, and said, “If you solve this puzzle call one-eight-zero-zero-five-five-five-one-three-nine-eight and tell the operator that you have solved puzzle ninety-nine you will then be issued a prize.”
What? Art touched the page. “This says all that?”
“The puzzle says all that.”
What the hell kind of puzzle is this? Art asked himself, wondering next if there might be a similar message on the paper recovered from Mike Bell. “Wait here, Simon. I want to show you something.”
Simon watched the big feet walk away. Art was his friend. If Art told him to wait, he would. Simon knew to listen to friends.
Back a minute later, Art leaned his briefcase against the dresser and removed a sheet of paper from the hardcopy of the ROMA file. He sat again next to Simon and laid the paper on the young man’s lap, covering one jumble of numbers and letters with another. “Is this a puzzle, Simon?”
The green eyes played over it, blinking, looking, blinking, until it made sense. Until it became words. Three words.
“Does this puzzle say something?” Art gently pressed.
Simon began to rock. His cheek stung, and he remembered heavy footsteps. And a man with red hair. A stranger.
“What does it say?” Art asked once again, putting a hand on Simon’s back.
Eyes open, and Simon saw it. Just like he had before the man with red hair hit him. “I know kiwi.”
For a few seconds the statement brushed Art, tickling his intellect, and then the connection was made. To an hour spent with Nels in the com room, to one of Bell’s past employers. A time and an entity that should mean little to him, except for their relationship to the kid sitting next to him, and what he had just said.
“Again, Simon. What does it say?”
“I know kiwi,” Simon repeated. A friend had asked him to do so.
Art straightened where he sat and rubbed Simon’s back. Scratch one hole, Art said to himself. But he knew he’d done more than fill a hole. He’d created a mountain.
The time had come to rewrite a small portion of one man’s history, and Rothchild silently thanked Bell and Marconi for making it all possible. Smiling at the computer screen, he reached forward and pressed the ENTER key.
What happened next took less than five minutes, and would have taken less time had not the completion of some changes been required for others to begin. Over phone lines and through the air, from sixty feet beneath the Headquarters-Operations Building, millions of bits of digital instructions flowed to hundreds of computers in several countries.
All of the systems resisted the unexpected intrusion, demanding proper authorization, just as they did with any communication.
It took just milliseconds for their security to be breached.
The first changes, actually creations, were in overseas banks, and here was where Rothchild believed he’d done his best work. Next came alterations to the records in U.S. banks, and then credit bureaus, and phone records, and on, and on, and on. It was all automatic, scripted in advance. All Rothchild had to do was watch the progress meter on his screen climb toward a hundred percent.
Beauty, he thought to himself.
“You nervous?” Calvin Pachetta, behind the wheel of the motionless blue Chrysler, asked the man seated to his right.