the coded letter. A book of poetry, perhaps. At least, it had the heft of a book to me.”
“A book, yes, that’s exactly what it was.”
“So you examined it?”
“Of course. I’m a snoop.”
“And?”
“It’s book. Innocuous enough. A popular novel.”
“Any good?”
“It’s no War and Peace. I can hardly imagine giving it as a final farewell gift to a grieving widow. Still, there can be no disputes about taste.”
“De gustibus non est disputandum. Still, you kept it.”
“I can hardly put it down.”
“And where is that book now?”
“Brought it along for the voyage. Stuck it in my library desk over there. I thought to finish it tonight.”
“Where, exactly?” Congreve asked, moving to the desk.
“Left bottom drawer most likely. That’s where I usually stick things I want to keep track of.”
Congreve crossed to the small leather-topped desk, sat down, and opened the left hand drawer.
“I don’t see it.”
“It’s there.”
47
H ere we are. Let’s take a look, shall we?” Congreve withdrew the book and placed it on the desk before him, staring down at it.
“Careful,” Hawke said, “Anything ticking? You’d best shake it a few times and see if it rattles, Constable.”
“Very funny. Still, a rather good, although belated, point. It’s the Da Vinci Code.”
“Hmm.”
“The special Illustrated Edition.”
“The pictures help, actually,” Hawke said, “I wouldn’t know the Mona Lisa from Lisa Marie.”
“Please, Alex. Spare me.”
Ambrose held up the book for closer inspection. He said, “An odd choice, I must admit. For a belated gift to the one left behind.”
Hawke smiled. “Somewhere in the heart of the Amazon lurks the last literate human being on earth yet to read the bloody thing. Did you ever get round to it yourself?”
“Like a lamb to the slaughter,” Ambrose said. “I rather enjoyed it. Anything at all to do with codes hooks me instantly.”
He was holding the book by its spine and shaking it over the desktop. Seeing nothing fall from the pages, he set it down and began leafing through the book slowly.
“Are you going to read it again?” Hawke asked. “Now?”
“Quiet,” Ambrose said, lost among some vast, shadowed hallways of thought.
“Are you onto something? Twitchy eyebrows. You’ve all the symptoms.”
“Perhaps I am.”
“What? Spill it.”
“Don’t you find it the least bit interesting, Alex, that the last book Zimmermann bequeaths to his wife has the word Code in its title?”
“Funny, that, now that you mention it.”
“Yes, isn’t it? Hand me the letter, will you, Alex? I left it over there on the table somewhere.”
Hawke retrieved the ambassador’s coded farewell message and handed it to Ambrose.
“We need a positive supposition here,” Congreve said, his eyes darting rapidly from letter to book. He was quickly running his finger down the page Zimmermann had filled with scrawled numbers.
“Namely?”
“That the letter and the book are connected.”
“Too simple. Too obvious.”
“The truth often is. That is, I suspect, why we haven’t cracked the bloody code, Alex. Humans naturally look for complexity where none exists. Whilst I, on the other hand, subscribe to William of Occam’s point of view.”
“Remind me about William of Occam again?”
“A mediaeval philosopher, Alex. His principle, widely known as Occam’s Razor, stated that one should not make more assumptions than the minimum needed. Confronted with a puzzle, reduce the entities required to explain it. In other words, Alex, choose the simplest path through the forest.”
“Ah, that’s it.”
“Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.”
“Exactly.”
“Yes. Assume for a moment the widow is not a polymath with multiple degrees in higher mathematics, nominism, or cryptography. Assume she’s an ordinary woman possessed of ordinary gifts, an average human being, just like you or me. But, also assume this letter and this book are not the loving farewell of a dying husband, but something far more…sinister.”
“Such as?”
“A program sequence initiator, for instance. You use the numbers to key in some kind of unstoppable electron virus to disable worldwide communications. Or launch a missile at London. Who knows? Doomsday scenarios are your bread and butter, not mine. I’m a simple copper.”
While Congreve spoke, he was rapidly flipping the pages of the novel.
“You’ve solved far more intricate puzzles than this one. Stick to your knitting, Constable,” Hawke said, sensing an excitement in Congreve’s expression he’d despaired of ever seeing this night. “Do you see anything in it? Any connection?”
Ambrose was studying the letter, repeating numbers under his breath, and then flipping back and forth through the novel.
“I’m looking, I’m looking. Ah. Yes. Here we go, here’s something. The book has one hundred and five chapters, plus a prologue and an epilogue.”
“And?”
“And, hold on a tick…yes…the cryptic farewell message has exactly the same, wait, yes, one hundred and five individual lines of numeric code!”
“Brilliant!”
“Thank you. But it doesn’t mean anything, yet.”
“Is there anything at the end of the book itself that resembles the code’s format?” Hawke leapt to his feet and moved to the desk to look over Congreve’s shoulder.
“Yes. Two short numerical lines appended at the end like some kind of coda. It’s a match.”
Hawke squeezed Congreve’s left shoulder vigorously. “You’ve cracked it, old slug! God bless you for a common genius after all. So, how does the bloody thing work?”
“You take the book, I’ll do the code. We’ll start with something simple. The ambassador’s first handwritten line is 001005005. Take a look at the book, Alex. First chapter, fifth paragraph, fifth word? What is it?”
Hawke flipped rapidly through the book, searching for Chapter One, and then quickly running his finger down the page. “Ah, here it is, fifth paragraph, fifth word…Reckoning. That’s a good start…and I must say, Constable that you have a remarkable ability to, when all seems lost, stick to your—”
“Ah! There you are!” a cheery voice called from the doorway.
Hawke and Congreve looked up from their fevered study of the Da Vinci Code and the accompanying message.
“Pippa!” Ambrose almost came out of his chair with delight.
Hawke slipped the folded letter inside the novel and snapped it shut. Then he slid the book under some loose
