David Baldacci - Simple Genius

They were diving nearly straight down and yet Michelle didn’t seem to notice the altimeter reading plummeting or hear the warning horn in the cockpit. She also didn’t see that Champ was frantically pulling his wheel back, screaming at her to let go; that she was going to crash the plane. And yet she couldn’t pull her hands from the wheel. It was as though it had been electrified. For a second time she heard herself say, “Goodbye, Sean.”

Finally, through the fog of her mind she heard, “Let go!”

Michelle glanced to the side and saw a white-faced Champ straining with all of his might to pull the wheel back, to free them from the death spiral. Michelle ripped her hands from the wheel. Champ managed to pull the plane level and then took them in for a bumpy landing, the tires kicking off the runway twice before settling firmly down.

They taxied to a stop. For several minutes all each could hear was the other’s strained breathing. Finally Champ looked at her. “Are you all right?”

She could feel acid racing up her throat. “For nearly killing us both, yes, I’m fine.”

“I’ve known other people to freeze up at the controls. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have let you take the wheel.”

“Champ, you did nothing wrong. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”

They were walking back from the plane to Champ’s Mercedes when a motorcycle pulled up to them. It was Horatio Barnes’s Harley. The rider pulled off his helmet, and Sean King said, “Beautiful day to fly, isn’t it?”

“What are you doing here?” she demanded.

He tossed her a spare helmet. “Let’s go.”

“Thanks for the flying lesson, Champ. I’m afraid I’m not up to lunch right now.” She climbed on the bike behind Sean.

After they’d left the private air terminal and been on the road for a couple of minutes Michelle told Sean to pull off.

“What’s wrong?”

“Just do it,” she urged.

He pulled off and Michelle ran behind some trees and threw up.

She came back a minute later, white-faced and wiping her mouth. She slowly climbed back on the bike.

“Skies a little unfriendly to you?” he asked.

She said slowly, “No, just chalk it up to pilot error. So what are you doing on Horatio’s precious Harley?”

“Just went for a stroll.”

“And just happened to arrive at the air terminal as we landed?”

He turned and said angrily, “You call that a friggin’ landing? You guys were coming straight down. I thought you’d lost the damn engine. I almost killed myself getting to the runway even if it was just to spatula you off the tarmac! What the hell happened up there?”

“Some kind of engine trouble. Champ corrected it.” She felt terrible lying to him, but would have felt even worse telling him the truth. And what was the truth? That she had frozen, nearly killing herself and an innocent person?

“I thought you said it was pilot error?”

“Just forget it,” she said. “Any landing you walk away from is a great one.”

“Excuse me for caring.”

“So you’ve been riding this bike all over the countryside watching us fly around?”

“I told you I didn’t want you to go up there with the guy.”

“You don’t think I can handle myself?”

“Oh hell, don’t pull that crap with me. I was just-”

She smacked his helmet. “Sean?”

“What?”

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

They rode on.

Michelle clung tightly to Sean’s jacket. She didn’t want to let go, for any reason. She had never been more terrified in her life. And this time the reason for the fear was not some external enemy. It was herself.

SEAN DROVE THEM TO THE B amp;B where Horatio had originally been staying. “Joan is faxing me some info,” he explained.

They got the documents and drove to a nearby restaurant. Michelle’s stomach had settled down enough that they ordered sandwiches and coffee. She told Sean about Monk going up in the plane.

As they ate, they went over the pages Joan had faxed. Sean said, “Monk Turing did visit Wiesbaden.”

“How’d they find that out so quickly?”

“Joan’s firm has an affiliate in Frankfurt. They were able to track him via his credit card receipts. He bought that beer stein he gave Champ there among other things.” He next looked at several sheets of paper. “This is the list of German POWs held at Camp Peary during World War II that I asked for.”

“Okay, how the hell did Joan get that so fast?”

“One of their top executives is a former rear admiral and once headed the NSA. He was able to cut through the red tape. And it’s not like this stuff is classified anymore. Just gathering mold in some office in the Pentagon.”

They went down the list of Germans. Each name had the man’s date of capture, rank and what had happened to him.

Sean said, “You can see that most of them were released at the end of the war or else died in captivity. But I don’t see a Henry Fox listed.”

“Wait a minute. Look at this guy.” Michelle’s finger pointed at a blank space. “There’s nothing here that says what happened to him.” She scanned the pages. “And he’s the only one.”

Sean looked at the man’s name. “Heinrich Fuchs.”

“Heinrich Fuchs,” Michelle repeated slowly. “Anglicized, that might be Henry Fox.”

Sean stared at her. “I think you’re right, and for a very good reason.”

“What’s that?”

“Because I’m betting everything I have, little though it is, that Heinrich Fuchs was a German naval radio operator and that he was also the only man to escape from the naval stockade that is now the CIA’s Camp Peary. That’s why there’s a blank in the space as to what happened to him. The Navy wasn’t going to admit anyone escaped.”

Michelle drew in a sharp breath. “Escaped and changed his name to Henry Fox?”

“And moved to New York, set up another life, grew old and ended up living in the same apartment building as Monk and Viggie Turing.” He jumped up. “Come on. We need to see Viggie.”

“Why?”

“Horatio says she was programmed. Well, the name Heinrich Fuchs may be the key she needs to tell us more. Maybe everything.”

They drove to Babbage Town and hustled to the schoolroom where Viggie and the other children were. Only Viggie wasn’t there.

“She said she was sick,” the teacher said.

“She told you in person?” Sean asked.

“No, she sent in a note. It was on my desk this morning when I got in.”

A few minutes later Sean and Michelle were rushing up the steps to Alicia’s cottage. They burst through the door and Michelle called out, “Viggie? Viggie!”

She hurtled up the stairs and threw open Viggie’s bedroom door. The room was empty and she clattered back downstairs. She and Sean searched the rest of the cottage.

“No sign of her,” he said, his voice panicky.

“Where the hell is her guard?” Michelle demanded.

The door to the cottage opened and Alicia walked in. She was holding a bundle of papers and looked very tired. She seemed surprised to see them here and then said in a scolding tone, “Okay, you two, I’ve run every possible configuration of these damn notes through our strongest computer programs and came up with gibberish every time. So either the code is beyond our capability to decipher it, or it’s not code at all, which is the conclusion I’m fast coming to. I did find out the name of the song. It’s ‘Shenandoah,’ from the nineteenth century. Anyway, what do you know, it has lyrics, not many, none of it spectacular, but it has words. So I had the brilliant idea that perhaps the lyrics were the key to the code. I hit them with everything we had, in every conceivable combination. And do you know what? It was still all gibberish.”