James Twining - The Black Sun

‘You just need to keep at it,’ she laughed. ‘One day it’ll all just click into place.’

‘So you keep saying.’ Frustrated, Tom changed the subject: ‘When’s Archie back?’

‘Tomorrow, I think.’ She picked at a frayed piece of cotton where her jeans were ripped across her left thigh.

‘That’s twice he’s been to the States in the last few weeks.’ Tom frowned. ‘For someone who claims to hate going abroad, he’s certainly putting himself about a bit.’

‘What’s he doing there?’

‘God knows. Sometimes he just seems to get an idea into his head and then he’s off.’

‘That reminds me – where did you put those newspapers that were on his desk?’

‘Where do you think? I threw them away along with all his other rubbish.’

‘You did what?’ she exclaimed. ‘They were mine. I’d been keeping them for a reason.’

‘Well, try the bottom left-hand drawer then,’ Tom suggested sheepishly. ‘I put a bunch of old papers in there.’

She slipped off the desk and opened the drawer.

‘Luckily for you, they’re here,’ she said with relief, pulling out a large pile of newspapers and placing them down in from of him.

‘What do you want with them anyway?’ Tom asked. ‘Are you collecting tokens or something?’

‘Do I look like I collect tokens?’ She grinned. ‘No, I wanted to show you something. Only you might not like it…’

‘What are you talking about?’ Tom frowned. ‘You can tell me anything, you know that.’

‘Even if it’s about Harry?’ she asked.

‘Harry?’ Tom sprang up.

Harry Renwick. The mere mention of his name was enough to make Tom’s heart rise into his throat. Harry Renwick had been his father’s best friend; a man Tom had known and loved since…well, since almost as long as he could remember.

That was until it transpired that dear old Uncle Harry had been living a double life. Operating under the name of Cassius, he had masterminded a ruthless art-crime syndicate that had robbed and murdered and extorted its way around the globe for decades. The betrayal still stung.

‘You told me he’d disappeared after what happened in Paris. After the –’

‘Yeah,’ Tom cut her off, not wanting to relive the details. ‘He just vanished.’

‘Well, wherever he’s gone, someone’s looking for him.’ Dominique unfolded the top newspaper, the previous day’s Herald Tribune . She turned to the Personals section and pointed at an ad she’d circled. Tom began to read the first paragraph.

‘Lions may awake any second. If this takes place alert me via existing number.’ He flashed her an amused glance. She indicated that he should read on. ‘If chimps stop their spelling test within one or so hours, reward through gift of eighty bananas.’ He laughed. ‘It’s nonsense.’

‘That’s what I thought when I first saw it, but you know how I like a challenge.’

‘Sure.’ Tom smiled. Amongst her many attributes, Dominique had an amazing aptitude for word games and other types of puzzles. Never one to be outdone, it was partly this which had driven Tom to attempt the crossword. Not that he was making much progress.

‘It only took me a few minutes. It’s a jump code.’

‘A what?’

‘A jump code. Jewish scholars have been finding them for years in the Torah. Did you know that if you take the first T in the Book of Genesis, then jump forty-nine places to the fiftieth letter, then another forty-nine places to the fiftieth letter after that, and so on, it spells a word?’

‘What?’

‘Torah. The book’s name is embedded in the text. The next three books do the same. Some say that the whole of the Old Testament is an encoded message that predicts the future.’

‘And this works in the same way?’

‘It’s a question of identifying the jump interval. In this case, it’s every eighth letter.’

‘Starting with the first letter?’

She nodded.

‘So that makes this L…’ Tom counted seven spaces, ‘then A…’ He grabbed a pen and began to write down each eighth letter: ‘Then S…then T. Last!’ he exclaimed triumphantly.

‘ Last seen Copenhagen. Await next contact . I decoded it earlier.’

‘And there are others like this?’

‘After I found this, I looked back through earlier editions. There have been coded messages using the same methodology every few weeks for the last six months or so. I’ve written them out here –’

She handed Tom a piece of paper.

‘ HK cold, try Tokyo ,’ he read. ‘ Focus search in Europe…DNA sample en route…Reported sighting in Vienna… ’ He looked up at Dominique. ‘Okay, I agree that someone seems to be looking for someone or something. But there’s nothing to say it’s Harry.’

Dominique handed him a newspaper from the bottom of the pile and opened it at the Personals page.

‘This was the first and longest message.’ She pointed at a lengthy ad she’d circled in red.

‘What does it say?’

‘ Ten million dollar reward. Henry Julius Renwick, aka Cassius, dead or alive. Publish interest next Tuesday .’

Tom was silent as he tried to digest this news.

‘Did anyone reply?’ he asked eventually.

‘I counted twenty-five replies in all.’

‘Twenty-five!’

‘Whoever’s behind this has got a small private army out there trying to track Harry down. The question is why.’

‘No,’ Tom reflected, ‘the question is who.’

FBI Headquarters, Salt Lake City Division, Utah

4th January – 4.16 p.m.

Where had it all gone wrong?

When had he passed from being a high achiever to an average Joe, a stand-up guy, but one who, according to his superiors, didn’t quite have what it took to go all the way? How was it that people almost half his age were accelerating past him so fast that he barely had time to spit their dust from his mouth before they were a speck on the horizon? When had hanging on long enough to max out his pension become his only reason for getting up in the morning?

Special Agent Paul Viggiano, forty-one, slipped a bullet into each of the five empty chambers of his shiny silver AirLite Ti Model 342 .38 Smith & Wesson as each question registered in his mind.

The gun loaded, he snapped it shut and stood contemplating it for a few seconds before raising it to eye-level. Again he paused and took a deep breath.

Then, breathing out slowly, he emptied the gun into the target at the far end of the indoor shooting range as fast and as loudly as he could, each successive bang magnifying the noise of the one before it, until it seemed that the whole room was echoing in sympathy with his plight.

‘Sounds like you really needed that,’ the woman in the booth next to him said with a smile. He managed a tight grimace in response as she turned to take aim. And how was it, her intervention reminded him, that in some misplaced drive for gender equality, the Bureau was falling over itself to promote women ? Women like that bitch Jennifer Browne, who’d got moved upstairs while he’d been posted here. Wherever here was.

One small oversight, that’s all it had been. One little slip in an otherwise spotless career. And here he was, drowning in mediocrity.

He shook his head and hit the button to retrieve the target from the other end of the gallery. It whirred towards him, the black silhouette ghosting through the air like a vengeful spirit, before jerking to a halt just in front of him. He examined it for holes.

To his disbelief there were none. Not a single one.

‘Nice shootin’, Tex,’ smirked the FBI armourer, sneaking a look over his shoulder. ‘Hell, you’re as liable to blow your own balls off as hit the bad guy.’