“Our surveillance of Vargov has produced some results. He made contact yesterday with a known terrorist sympathizer. Their conversation was encrypted, but the lab is working on it. We think it might lead us to Stungun. If it does, we’ll have all the evidence we need to make arrests.”
Lucy knew she should be excited to hear that news. She would be out of danger; she could resume her normal life-whatever that was. She could call her parents, who by now might have started to wonder where she was, if they’d tried to call her.
But Bryan’s news brought her no joy. “So is this supposed to keep me entertained while you’re away?” she asked, ruffling the stack of tabloids. If he thought stories of mutant three-headed dogs and monkey colonies on Mars would be her choice of entertainment, he didn’t know her very well.
“In a way, yes. You’re good at puzzles, and I’ve got one for you.”
Lucy’s interest ratcheted up a notch. “Yeah?”
“The publisher of this rag is a suspected spy. We believe he’s supplying information to-oh, let’s just say governments unfriendly to the United States-through secret drop sites. And the locations for those drop sites are encoded and published somewhere in his magazine. Our code breakers are working on it and I thought you might like to take a crack.”
Lucy was unabashedly thrilled at the idea. “How could I possibly do better than professional code breakers?”
“They’re good at encryption, but their training puts limits on them, too.
Because you aren’t trained, you can think outside the box. Just have a go.”
“Okay. But I’ll still miss you.”
“I’ll try and get back soon.” He gave her a kiss that ensured she would think of him often during the day, and then he was gone.
Lucy spread the tabloids out on the living room floor-there were eight weeks’ worth. She had to figure out what was common to all the issues. For instance, could the encoded information always be hidden in an alien story? Or a story by a certain reporter?
None of her initial ideas worked out, but she kept trying, reading every story, hoping something would jump out at her.
Bryan couldn’t have chosen a better way to distract her. She really did love puzzles. She’d invented her own secret code in sixth grade, which she and some of her friends used as the basis for an exclusive club.
She filled legal pads with scribbles, combining and recombining words and phrases. She’d briefly thought maybe the Lucky Lotto numbers were the key, making references to page numbers, column numbers, column inches, but nothing panned out.
Finally she got the idea to look at the ads. There was one ad for a weight-loss product that caught her attention. It ran in all eight issues, and though the graphics looked similar each time, the text in each one was radically different.
The advertising copy seemed odd to her-and not totally persuasive. No pseudoscientific jargon, no claims of pounds melting away while you sleep.
She did a web search for the product. She found a badly designed Web site and some discussions on a dieting listserve in which people were puzzled because the product was always out of stock. Yet the ads kept running…
Positive she was onto something, Lucy kept at it. When Bryan returned later that afternoon, she had covered every surface of his living room with yellow paper and sticky notes.
“Bryan!” She jumped to her feet, then almost fell over as her legs cramped from too many hours of sitting on the floor. She realized she was starving too, and was shocked to see the time. She’d forgotten to eat.
“Did you make any arrests?” she asked, not too sure she wanted to hear the answer.
“Not yet. Vargov knows we’ve got him, though. He went on the run.”
“Oh, no.”
“We know where he is, but he thinks he’s slipped the noose. We’re just waiting to see where he goes for help, who he contacts. It shouldn’t be much longer.” He took his first good look at his living room. “What in the world have you been doing?”
“Breaking a code.”
“Any progress?”
“I know this sounds crazy, but I think I’ve figured it out.”
“Ha! I knew you could do it.”
Unable to contain her excitement, she showed Bryan how the coded copy referred to a URL connected to the product Web site. On a page of customer testimonials, a matrix of numbers and letters specified streets and block numbers in and around New York.
“You take my breath away,” Bryan said. “This is brilliant.”
But suddenly all Lucy could think about was taking Bryan’s breath away by another method, one that involved a lot less clothing.
Bryan obviously had the same idea, and they didn’t even make it to the bedroom.
They didn’t make it past the living room floor. They rolled naked on the soft, lamb’s wool rug, and when their fevered lovemaking was concluded, they both had multicolored Post-it notes stuck to their bodies and in their hair.
A few days later Bryan came home in a foul mood from another of his mysterious errands. It was the first time Lucy had seen him anything but perfectly controlled-well, except for when they were making love-and her heart just about stopped when he rebuffed her normally affectionate greeting.
He was getting tired of her already, she realized. They’d spent too much time together.
He did not volunteer any information about his day, and she didn’t ask. She wasn’t entitled to the details of his investigation, after all, and she was frankly surprised he’d told her as much as he had over the past few days.
“Scarlet has tickets to a play,” she ventured, thinking he might need a diversion. “She invited us to come along with her and John.”
“You go ahead if you want. I’m waiting for phone calls.”
Lucy knew perfectly well he could receive phone calls anywhere. He didn’t need to stay home for that. But she let it pass.
“Then I won’t go, either,” she declared. “It wouldn’t be any fun without-Bryan, what’s wrong? Has something happened?”
“Stungun’s dead. They found him in the Potomac River.”
“That’s terrible. I’m so sorry.”
“He’s been dead for at least a week.”
“Which means he didn’t disappear because he was on the run. He was murdered.”
“Someone killed him, yes. His body wasn’t meant to be found. They wanted me to believe he was the betrayer. Now I have no idea who it is. But the list of suspects is shrinking.”
He didn’t seem to want comforting, so Lucy didn’t try to touch him. “I’m so sorry,” she said again. “Were you close to him?”
“We don’t make friends at the agency. But he was a good man. I didn’t want to believe he was dirty. Part of me is relieved that he probably wasn’t. But that doesn’t do him much good in his condition.”
“His family will know he died a hero. Does he have a family?”
“I have no idea. We never exchange personal information.”
Lucy wondered whether poor Stungun had a mother, a wife, kids who would mourn him or maybe think he’d run out on them. Would they ever know what happened? Or would he just never come home?
“What if something happened to you?” Lucy asked in a quiet voice. “Would your family know?”
“I have a safety deposit box that will be opened in the event I disappear or die, explaining everything to my family. Well, as much as I can explain.”
“I’m not sure I want to talk about this anymore. It’s too depressing.” A few days ago she’d been so excited about solving the code in the tabloid. She’d been giddy at the idea that her information might help catch a spy and prevent sensitive information from getting into the wrong hands. Now the whole spy thing left her sick to her stomach. It wasn’t glamorous. It was dangerous and ultimately tragic.
“There’s more bad news,” Bryan said. “Vargov got away. He went into a crowd and lost his tail.”
