JA00RHGW!!RHJA“”ALRHMFTJJAUGRHBH
:MVGCRHJA00TJJGWH!AJ00JPGCTJTJJA
00UGRH!?JA00RHUGBHMVBHJARHJTRH
JA00GWRHJB.JAMVJGTJJA00”“MVGC
BHAJMV,TJGCJBJMJMRHJAJGTJJA00!
CA!BHJTRHGWRH.
He sat at his computer console and stared at the cryptogram. It reminded him a lot of the type that might have been incorporated in an old-fashioned potboiler, circa the 1890s, meant to amuse and challenge the astute reader with a basic knowledge of encipherment techniques. And he had a feeling Palardy had wanted it that way. Wanted it to be just difficult enough to buy him time to retract it unbroken, should that become advantageous, and simultaneously rattle whoever might steal his laptop in the event he was harmed
Carmichael stared at his monitor. It almost was as if he’d stepped into a Holmes novel. Or one of Poe’s prototypical mystery stories. And the damnedest thing, the thing he would never have admitted to anyone outside his crypto section, was that getting to the clear might have actually entertained him were the stakes not so terribly high.
“Give it to me, Palardy,” he muttered into the silent room. “Give me something.”
A thoughtful expression on his face, hands poised over his keyboard, Carmichael decided to remove the punctuation marks from the character string. They had almost jumped out at him as nulls on first impression, and that feeling had only grown stronger as he studied it.
He typed, repeatedly tapping the delete key. The image in front of him was now:
RHJAJAOOBHJMOOWHRHJMOOWHBHJAOO
TJAJOOCAJBJTRH
GWRHMVGCRHUGBHAJOORHJBAJOORHBH
CAJBJTRHGCBHGWJAOOTJCARHJAOO
CATJJAOOUGBHJBJAMVGCRHJAOORHJBJA
OORHGWRHJAALRHMFTJJAUGRHBH
MVGCRHJAOOTJJGWHAJOOJPGCTJTJJAOO
UGRHJAOORHUGBHMVBHJARHJTRH
JAOOGWRHJBJAMVJGTJJAOOMVGCBH
AJMVTJGCJBJMJMRHJAJGTJJAOO
CABHJTRHGWRH
Carmichael stared at the monitor. Trying to stay mentally loose and limber, slip into what athletes liked to call “the zone,” a space where you didn’t second-guess yourself, where you let yourself be guided by the automatic cognitive and sensory processes that equaled instinct.
“Come on. Give it up.”
He typed again. Letting his thumb give the space bar some action. Splitting up the obvious letter groups to leave him with:
RH JA JAOO BH JMOO WH RH JMOO WH BH
JAOO TJ
AJOO CA JB JT RH
GW RH MV GC RH UG BH AJOO RH JB AJOO
RH BH CA JB JT RH GC BH GW JAOO TJ CA
RH JAOO
CA TJ JAOO UG BH JB JA MV GC RH JAOO RH
JB JAOO RH GW RH JA AL RH MF TJ JA UG
RH BH
MV GC RH JAOO TJ JG WH AJOO JP GC TJ TJ
JAOO UG RH JAOO RH UG BH MV BH JA RH JT
RH
JAOO GW RH JB JA MV JG TJ JAOO MV GC BH
AJ MV TJ GC JB JM JM RH JA JG TJ JAOO CA
BH
JT RH GW RH
Carmichael stared at the monitor. All right, he thought. Getting somewhere. And here it came again, that tickle of a thought in his brain soil. Some of those discrete letter pairs… What was it about them that seemed to bait it out?
Carmichael did a quick cut and paste to put the combinations that kept drawing his eye onto a separate screen:
GW JA TJ JM AJ
He stared at them.
“Come on, come on, let’s see you. Come on ou—”
He straightened in his chair and sat very still for about five seconds. Then he abruptly reached into his pocket, activated his cellular, and called one of his section mates.
A woman answered.
“Michelle?” he said.
“Jimmy, hi, what’s up?”
“Better head over to my office. I think I’ve got something figured.”
Her tone was crisp. “Be right with you.”
“Thanks.” Carmichael’s finger paused over the disconnect button. In his excitement, he’d almost forgotton to ask for what he wanted her to bring along. “Michelle, still there?”
“Yeah, Jimmy, I was just putting back the phone.”
“A favor. It’s no big deal, I suppose. We can get the info easily enough on-line or something—”
Impatience:
“Sorry, Michelle, I’m a little hyped,” he said. “Since you’re passing the reference library anyway, would you see if you can find that book on the American presidents?”
The highway’s posted speed limit was sixty-five miles per hour. The jet black Beemer’s speedometer had ticked up near ninety. This was the Bay Area. Megan Breen was at the wheel. She was in a rush to get to the hospital and hadn’t bothered with the radar detector.
Belted into the passenger seat, Rollie Thibodeau gripped his assist handle as she wove in and out of the left lane to pass a Suburban snailing along at a mere seventy-five miles per hour.
She snapped a glance at him through her sunglasses. A deep crease had established itself across his brow. He was very quiet. It occurred to her that six months was not very long ago when someone was recovering from the kind of internal damage he’d suffered in Brazil.
She resisted the urge to sway around the Lincoln now in front of her.
“Rol, everything okay?”
He nodded. “Just thinkin’. Don’t slow down on my account.”
“Oh. That’s not why—”
