“I don’t see how I can help.” Thomas poured Jean a cup of coffee so thick it was technically a solid, and he turned down the Wagner that was playing on his sound system. Jean had given Thomas a brief history of the Bible killings and Daniel Cooper. He explained that Cooper was holding a man hostage and that the man’s life, among others, depended on his, Jean’s, deciphering Cooper’s letter to Tracy.
“You’re a crossword nut,” said Jean.
“This isn’t a crossword.”
“It’s a puzzle. Crosswords are puzzles.”
“Well, yesss . . .” Thomas answered hesitantly.
“Just read it as if it were a crossword and tell me if anything comes to mind. I need a time and a place.”
Jean watched as his friend read in silence. After about a minute Thomas announced cheerfully, “I’ve got a few ideas.”
“Great!”
“They’re just ideas. I’m not a psychiatrist. I don’t know how your average mass murderer thinks.”
“Understood. Go on.”
“All right. So starting at the beginning. If this were a crossword—which let’s not forget, it isn’t—then ‘twenty knights’ might really mean ‘twenty nights.’ Puzzle writers use that sort of ‘homophonic’ wordplay a lot. ‘Three times three’ is nine. So your bloke might be waiting for somebody, the queen, for twenty nights, at nine o’clock.”
Jean’s eyes widened in astonishment. “That’s amazing!”
“It might be total bollocks, remember. It’s just a thought,” Thomas reminded him.
Jean calculated how long it had been since Cooper wrote the letter. Assuming the twenty nights had begun the day after he wrote it, that meant they had . . . eight days left.
A week in which to save Jeff Stevens’s life. If he was still alive.
“Moving on then, line by line.” Thomas was clearly warming to the task. “ ‘Beneath the stars’ probably means what it says: outside. The meeting place is outside. But references to altars and such suggest a place of worship. So it may also be a church with stars painted on the ceiling, for example? Lots of possibilities.”
Jean scribbled feverishly on a notepad.
“ ‘Thirteen lambs slain’ has to be your thirteen murder victims. I imagine ‘fourteen’ is the hostage.”
Of course! It sounded so obvious when Thomas said it.
“If he’s ‘suffering daily pain, soon to end . . .’ ” Thomas paused. “That sounds like a death threat to me. Torture and death. Especially followed by references to a shroud. Shrouds go with bodies, don’t they? You need a corpse to make a shroud.”
Jean shivered.
“The next two verses are the most important,” said Thomas. “The ‘dance in black and white’ has to be a reference to chess, especially with all your knights and queens.”
“I thought so too,” said Jean.
“In which case ‘where masters meet’ is a place reference. Somewhere where chess masters play. Perhaps outside? I know in Russia they play in the parks, don’t they? Or a chess championship of some kind. ‘Six hills, one was lost’ is another place reference, his most specific. But don’t ask me what it means because I haven’t a clue. I suspect ‘on the stage of history’ is place specific too. All your geographical information is in that stanza. You just need to untangle it.”
“Okay,” said Jean. “Is that everything?”
“That’s it.”
Jean finished writing. And stood up to leave. “Thank you.”
“It’s not much, I’m afraid,” Thomas Barrow said, handing Jean his jacket. “But if I were you, I’d look into six hills, and chess games in outdoor venues. Or weirdos hanging around the same spot at nine o’clock at night for three weeks in a row.”
JEAN RACED INTO HIS office, made himself another coffee from the machine in the lobby and had just sat down at his desk to start following up on Thomas Barrow’s ideas when his colleague burst in.
“Progress. Tracy Whitney took the two fifteen P.M. Delta flight from Denver to London Heathrow. Someone at a fast-food restaurant in the airport recognized her picture!”
Antoine Cléry was young and ambitious, with a wiry frame, pale, pockmarked skin and a permanently eager expression. He delivered this news to his boss like an enthusiastic puppy dropping a ball at its master’s feet. If he had a tail, Jean thought, he’d be wagging it. On this occasion, however, Jean shared Cléry’s excitement.
“Did she take a connecting flight out of London?”
“No. Not that day. She cleared customs.”
“Under what name?”
Antoine looked at the paper in his hand. “Sarah Grainger. She used a British passport.”
“Terrific work,” said Jean. “I want the British police on high alert.”
“I’ve already spoken to our office in London.”
“Not just at Heathrow. I want her picture at all the airports, and the Eurostar and the ferry ports. Dover, Folkestone, all of them. I don’t believe Cooper’s in London. Chances are she’s already left England and I want to know where she went next and when.”
“Sir.”
Antoine Cléry left the room. Jean Rizzo felt elated. It was the first piece of good news he’d had in days.
I’m going to find you, Tracy.
I’m going to find you, and Jeff Stevens and Daniel Cooper.
And then I’m going to end this thing, once and for all.
THREE DAYS PASSED.
Nothing happened.
Elation gave way to anxiety and finally to despair. Tracy had come to London and evaporated. No trace of her had surfaced, as Sarah Grainger or any of her other alter egos.
The staff members at Interpol’s London office defended themselves to Jean Rizzo.
“Do you know how many passengers pass through Heathrow every day? Almost two hundred thousand. And you expect people to remember one woman’s face? She could be flying under any number of identities. Eighty-two airlines use Heathrow, Jean, flying to a hundred and eighty destinations. And that’s assuming she flew out of Heathrow. Forget needle in a haystack. She’s a speck of dust in the Royal Albert Hall.”
While he waited, increasingly desperately, for a positive sighting of Tracy, Jean redoubled his efforts to solve Daniel Cooper’s riddle. Tracy had done it by herself, after all. Then again, maybe Tracy knew something he didn’t. Some secret that only she and Cooper, and possibly Jeff Stevens, shared?
The chess angle was taking him nowhere fast. He spoke to players and chess clubs and to the editor of New In Chess magazine, the most widely read and respected publication in the game.
“There are as many outdoor venues for chess matches as there are stars in the sky, or grains of sand on a beach,” the editor told him. “All you need is a board. As for official championships, those always take place in indoor venues. The WCC—World Chess Championship—is the most prestigious, of course. But ‘where masters meet’ could be a reference to any number of matches or competitions.”
Jean refocused his attention on the “six hills” clue. He contacted the local police in Hertfordshire, England, and had staff at the long barrows site shown Daniel Cooper’s picture as well as Tracy’s. No one had seen them, or reported anything suspicious. Nor had any significant chess matches been held in the area in the past ten years.
The police in Six Hills, Georgia, clearly considered the whole thing a joke. “A riddle? Sounds like somethin’ out of Batman. We don’t get too many hostage situations down here, but if we see your fella, we’ll be sure and let you now. You want us to look out for the Penguin too?”
Jean was irritated, but didn’t dwell on it. Cooper was almost certainly still in Europe. Although it was technically possible to enter the United States with a hostage in tow, there was no need for him to make his life that difficult.
Sylvie called him. “It’s Clémence’s birthday tomorrow. She’ll be seven.”
Jean winced. “I’m sorry. I totally forgot.”
“I know. That’s why I’m calling you. I bought a present from you and wrapped it. It’s a camera.”
“Thanks. I’m sorry.”
“You’re taking her and Luc to the movies tomorrow afternoon at four.”
Jean balked. He had less than four days to find Daniel Cooper and the trail was almost cold. “Sylvie, I can’t. I have to work. I—”
“I booked the tickets already. It’s her birthday, Jean. She wants to see you. Be there.”
CLÉMENCE AND LUC WERE in a state of high excitement.
“Can we have ICEEs?”
“Can we have Pick ’n’ Mix?”
“As it’s Clem’s birthday, can we have popcorn and Pick ’n’ Mix?”
“Can we see it in 3-D?”
Jean experienced a familiar feeling of happiness combined with the guilt that he always felt in his children’s company. They’re so sweet. I should see them more.
Against their mother’s express wishes, he bought both of them an enormous bag of candy and settled down between them in the dark theater. The movie was formulaic, a lazily written cartoon complete with a wisecracking sidekick and an improbably proportioned if feisty heroine.
Tracy would make a great heroine, he thought. Bullheaded and brave. Intelligent but impulsive.