David Hagberg - End Game

“Coffin didn’t mention anything about them burying whatever was out there — just that they saw it,” McGarvey said. “Could have been buried before Kryptos was devised. Webster was the DCI from eighty-seven to ninety-one. Maybe it was buried then.”

“Maybe he knew about it,” Pete said.

“Or maybe it was buried five thousand years ago,” Otto said. “But I’m betting in the last five or ten years.”

“Why?” McGarvey asked.

Otto brought up the fourth panel. “This one hasn’t been solved yet, even though a lot of seriously bright cryptographers have been working on it since ninety. A few years ago Sanborn published a clue. He said letters sixty-four through sixty-nine— NYPVTT —en clair read BERLIN.”

He turned the iPad so everyone could see the screen. It was split in two columns of fourteen lines each.

NGHIJLMNQUVWXZKRYPTOS TMQSRSYUZMRYDKRYPTOS

ABCDEFGHIJOHIJMNQUVWX ABCDEFGHIJDPYSHJQMLKUC

“They’re different,” Pete said.

“Yes,” Otto said dreamily. “The column on the left is the one that’s been published since 1990. The one that’s in all the books and on every Internet site. The one the code breakers have been working on since then.”

“The one on the right?” Pete asked.

Otto looked up at her and then Louise and finally McGarvey. “I took that picture this morning.”

“Jesus,” McGarvey said. “Someone changed the panel.”

“Probably not long ago. Otherwise, someone might have noticed it,” Otto said. He brought up a photograph of a husky-looking man with a broad Teutonic face and square jaw. “Until last year this guy worked for us as a maintenance man. Name was Ludwig Mann. Part of his job was cleaning the outsides of all the buildings on campus, including the New Headquarters Building.”

“In the courtyard of which is Kryptos .”

Otto brought up another photograph, this one of a man who could have been a very close relative of Mann. Hair a little thicker, a face bit thinner, but with the same jaw and eyes. “Roy Schermerhorn,” Otto said. “Alpha Seven.”

“Let’s put something up on an encrypted site the CIA normally uses to contact its officers, that Carnes and Coffin were murdered in Athens,” McGarvey said. “We want the rest of Alpha Seven to contact us immediately because their lives are in danger.”

“The killer will see it too,” Pete said.

“Right. In the meantime, Otto can work on cracking the new code on four.”

“My darlings are working on it right now.”

“What about us?”

“We’re going to see if we can find Mr. Schermerhorn. He somehow changed the message on four, which means he knows something and maybe has posted a warning.”

“Where do we start?”

“His social security number when he worked here. It’ll be a fake, of course, but it’ll list an address.”

“And?” Pete said.

“I’m betting that once the message goes up on the bulletin board, someone will be calling in,” McGarvey said.

“Or one of the other team members will get themselves killed,” Louise said.

“If they’re as good as they’re supposed to be, they’ll know that the killer has also seen the message and they’ll be on their guard. But for now Roy Schermerhorn is our best bet.”

On the way home from the Milwaukee Public Library, Roy Schermerhorn took a great deal of care with his tradecraft, switching buses twice, backtracking his way for several blocks downtown. Stopping to light a cigarette while he watched the reflections in a store window of people and cars. Watching the roof lines for snipers. Even a passing police cruiser gave him pause.

He turned suddenly and walked into a tavern already busy mostly with people in suits and ties stopping in for a drink or two before going home. This was beer town USA; stopping in for a beer and a shot after work was the norm.

Sitting at the end of the bar from where he could watch the front door and the short hall back to the restrooms, he ordered a Mich Ultra draught.

Ever since he’d moved here, his normal weekday routine was to stop at the library after work to use one of its computers to cruise the Internet, especially the CIA bulletin boards, and the numerous Kryptos sites. Until this afternoon nothing concrete had been happening, though the campus apparently was conducting some sort of a lockdown drill. One day of which would have been understandable, but it had been going on for three days now.

Then this afternoon he’d used an old password to get into one of the encrypted sites the Company used as a bulletin board, and the Alpha Seven message popped up.

His beer came, and he forced himself to raise the glass with a steady hand, though he was truly more frightened than he’d ever been since ’03, after they’d gotten out and George had disappeared.

Carnes had left first, and a couple of months later Coffin had come over to where Schermerhorn had been living at the time, in Chevy Chase, and said he was going to disappear for a while.

“Just to be on the safe side,” he said. “You know how it’s probably going to work out.”

“No, I don’t,” Schermerhorn had told him, though he did know what he expected everyone else had figured out. But he had wanted to hear it from Coffin’s mouth.

“Alex has disappeared.”

“Probably went with George.”

“That’s right, and you know damned well where that is. And why she left.”

“I know where. Why don’t you tell me why?”

“Don’t be so goddamned dense, you dumb Kraut. The shit’s probably about to hit the fan. My guess is that someone has either found the cache, or is about to, and all of us are going to be in the crosshairs.”

“You think one of us will be blamed for blowing the whistle?”

“Of course I do. I’m going deep, and I suggest you do too. Right now. And I do mean right now.”

They’d been sitting on the balcony of Schermerhorn’s third-floor apartment. He lived alone, except for Henry, his cat, and after his brief but superintense fling with Alex, he preferred things that way. “Where are you going?

Coffin got to his feet. “Take care of yourself,” he’d said, and walked out the door.

Schermerhorn had thought about going away too, but he could not leave things just like that, or else the Georges and Alexes of the world would win. He spent the next two weeks altering his appearance, thinning his hair, aging his face, and building himself a new legend, complete with social security number, driver’s license, military records, and even photos of a family he didn’t have. Bulletproof enough that when he applied for a job as a maintenance man at the CIA, he would pass the background investigation.

It took nearly six weeks before he was hired and had started on the job, and nearly another year before he got into the position he’d wanted. When he was finished, he walked away, changed his appearance and legend again, and disappeared to Milwaukee, where he got a job managing a Hess station and convenience store.

Mindless work, not satisfying but bearable because of Janet, his live-in girlfriend. They wouldn’t last for the long haul, of course, nor would Milwaukee. All of it here was designed to be disposable, like just about every previous day of his life had been.

And it had worked until now.

Someone in a sports coat and tan slacks, his tie loose, came in, and Schermerhorn stiffened, until the bartender pulled out a Bud and set it on the bar for the man. He was a regular, and he didn’t look like George.

Schermerhorn finished his beer, paid for it, and left the bar. Two blocks later he caught a cab and gave the driver an address a couple of blocks away from the small house he and Janet rented. She worked as a nurse at Columbia St. Mary’s Hospital on North Lake Drive and would be getting home about now.