He sighed, quite audibly. “I don’t think I can handle that kind of question . . . that kind of emotion . . . right now.”
“No,” she said sourly. “Of course not.”
After a short pause he concluded. “My nerves are shot, and I didn’t get much sleep last night. I’m going to take a couple of your Valiums and close my eyes for a while.”
She didn’t answer.
He yawned aloud, then switched off the “Record” function.
CHAPTER 53
Back in the suite they worked quickly. Madeleine’s lively cooperation convinced him that the feelings she’d presented during their recording session in the Outback were at least partially manufactured for the task at hand. Of course, that might be wishful thinking—but there was no time to dwell on it now.
She took her bugged phone out of the bottom of her shoulder bag, where it had been lying, effectively muffled, under a thick wool scarf in a corner of the suite. At Gurney’s suggestion, she placed it on one of the end tables by the couch. It was his belief that the device in it that had been substituted for its original microphone functioned as a transmitter not only of phone calls but of all nearby audio whether or not the phone was in use.
He’d decided to expose their prerecorded conversation to the phone bug as well as the Harding portrait bug. His guess was that one of them had been planted by the bad guy and the other by Fenton or someone in the shadowy hierarchy above him. He saw no downside in “tossing the rock” at both nests. The more hornets making themselves visible the better.
He reloaded the Beretta, replacing the two rounds he’d fired at the hawk, and put the gun in his right-hand jacket pocket. In the left pocket he put the smaller of their two flashlights. He gave the larger one to Madeleine. As he was explaining how it could be employed as a weapon, he was interrupted by his phone’s text ring.
The message came from a blocked ID:
xBb770Ae
TellurideMichaelSeventeen
MccC919
LimerickFrancisFifty
It made no sense to him. Beyond the fact that there were certain repeated structural elements, whatever significance the sequences of characters and words might have eluded him. But at least the ring reminded him to put his phone on vibrate.
He emailed the audio file of their Outback conversation to Madeleine’s tablet. When it arrived a minute later, he placed the tablet on the coffee table.
He selected the newly arrived audio file and tapped the “Play” icon. He waited until he heard her initial comment, “Do you want a fire?”
He made a small volume adjustment, then gestured to her, and they left the suite. He locked the door as quietly as he could.
He led the way to the far end of the dimly lit corridor and into the dark little cul-de-sac where the door to the attic stairs was located. He opened it.
“We’ll stay here by the stairs, out of sight. If and when someone shows up at the suite, I’ll deal with it. All you’ll need to do is wait here until I’ve taken care of the situation. I’ll come and get you as soon as everything is under control.”
After a fraught moment she asked, “That’s it?”
“What do you mean?”
“That’s it? What you just said? Us hiding in the dark. Waiting for God knows who to approach the suite. Then you go there and . . . what? Confront them? Question them? Arrest them? Play it by ear? That’s the plan?”
He didn’t immediately reply. As long as he’d been describing the stratagem calmly, it had seemed sensible enough. But the illusion of sensibleness was starting to crumble. He realized there was a desperate, improvised quality to what they were doing—which he was trying to excuse to himself as necessary in the face of diminishing options.
He was saved from the need to respond by the vibration of his phone.
He looked at the screen. It was a message from Hardwick.
“Take a look at this unsigned text I got a few minutes ago—presumably from our techie friend in Albany. ‘BAD TIME TO MEET. ASK G FOR KEYS TO THE HOUSE.’ Any idea what she’s talking about, apart from not being able to meet with me? What keys? What house? What the fuck? I’m on my way back. Hellacious storm rolling in.”
For a minute Gurney was as baffled by the text Hardwick had received as by the one he’d received himself.
Then he saw a possible connection—and possible meaning.
He guessed that both texts had come, unsigned for reasons he could easily imagine, from Robin Wigg—the first to him, the second to Hardwick. And the second was probably referring to the first. The “house” would be the locked website he’d asked her about. The “keys” would be the site’s IDs and passwords—the alphabetic and numerical character and word sequences she’d sent him.
He opened the text he’d received earlier and looked again at the four lines.
xBb770Ae
TellurideMichaelSeventeen
MccC919
LimerickFrancisFifty
Madeleine, peering at his phone screen, spoke up. “What are you doing?”
Half whispering, he explained his Internet quest to discover what sort of device had been planted above the bathroom ceiling.
She pointed at the message on the screen. “Does that tell you?”
“I think it’s the entry data for a website that can tell us.”
He brought up a copy of his own email to Wigg with the device serial number and the website address it had led him to. Then he went to the website page with the four data-entry boxes and entered the two alphanumerical IDs and the two passwords. A few seconds later a new page opened on the site, consisting of nothing but a data entry box and three words: ENTER INSTRUMENT CODE.
He got the device serial number from his email to Wigg and entered it.
A new page opened. At the top was a recognizable photo of the device. Below the photo was a dense table of scientific abbreviations, mathematical symbols, and figures that he guessed represented electronic specs and performance parameters. The terms heading the rows and columns were so unfamiliar he couldn’t even tell what branch of technology they came from.
He was about to give up any attempt to understand what he was looking at when he spotted a simple word at the lower right corner of the incomprehensible table: “Compare.”
He tapped on it.
Another page opened with another dense table. This one appeared to be a comparison of the specifications of several devices. This page had a headline: “Micro-Laser-Enhanced Pseudo Volume Visualization.”
Madeleine was staring at the screen as intently as he was. “What does that mean?”
“I have no idea.” He copied the headline and pasted it into a new search window.
Nothing came up that matched all the headline terms. Over a million hits matched at least one of the terms—a useless pile of data under the pressure of the moment.
He saved the web page’s headline and began composing a reply to Hardwick’s text. He included the website address, the IDs and passwords, and the headline—along with a request for Hardwick to do some research on it. He concluded with a brief description of the activity he and Madeleine were engaged in at the moment.
He read through the message and sent it.
Madeleine put her hand on his arm. “Are you sure . . . this is the way we should be handling this?”
Her question amplified his uncertainty. “Right now, it may be the only way.”
He opened the door to the attic stairs and checked the dusty stairwell once again with his flashlight. He saw nothing unusual and heard nothing but an eerie, empty silence. They sat down gingerly on one of the lower steps—and waited, side by side, in the dark, listening.