Michael Gruber - The Book of Air and Shadows

“That was fast,”he said.

“It was. It was fast and furious.”

“I like the way your eyes pop open when you get your rocks off.”

“An unfailing sign,” she agreed, “so I’ll remember who.”

“Wise. Now, although I would like to extend this more or less indefinitely…”

“You want to read the ciphers. Oh, so do I but I didn’t want to say.”

“Lest it be misinterpreted. I understand. So since we’re agreed, let us visit the bathroom in turn and then make it happen.”

She kissed him briefly and slid out of the bed and he thought, There can’t be many things more lovely than watching a woman you’ve just made love to walk across the room, that way her back and her ass look in the dawn’s early light, and he was thinking about how to make that shot on film look like what it actually looked like in real life when Carolyn gave a yelp and dropped to the floor.

“What?”

“They’re here!”

Carolyn’s face had the fox-in-the-headlights look he recalled from New York, the animal fear in her eyes. In an instant it broke his heart all over again. “Who?” Although it was an easy guess.

“One of them’s standing in the garden, Semya. The others must be in the front. Oh, Christ, what’re we going to do!”

“Get dressed! And keep away from the window!” She slid into the bathroom like a lizard and Crosetti got up and went to the window naked, stretching and scratching his belly like a man who’d just slept the sleep of the just and had nothing to fear. There was indeed a man in the garden, a broad-shouldered fellow in a knee-length black leather coat and a knitted cap. He looked up, saw Crosetti, stared briefly, and then turned his attention elsewhere. So even if they knew his location, and that Carolyn might come to him, they still didn’t know him . Which was strange, because they had spotted him easily enough on the street in Queens. Unless that was a different group of people entirely. Carolyn had mentioned two rival organizations…

But he couldn’t think about that now. He pulled clothes on, yanked the phone cord out of the wall, plugged in a phone adapter for U.K. systems, connected it to his computer, compressed and encrypted the Bracegirdle material and dialed up his Earthlink mailbox. He hadn’t used a dial-up connection to the Internet in years, but it still worked of course. It seemed to take eons for the thing to go through-perhaps five minutes-and after that was done he used a disk-scrubbing program to strip the cipher, the key, the Bible, and the plaintext version from his hard drive. He looked up and saw Carolyn in the bathroom doorway.

“What are you doing ?” she stage-whispered.

“Protecting our secrets. It’s funny, I’ve seen so many movies about this situation that it’s like I’m following a script. The guy and the girl have to escape from the bad guys…”

“Oh, fuck you, Crosetti, this isn’t a fucking movie ! If they catch us they’ll torture us until we fucking give them the secrets. They use blowtorches …”

“That’s not in the script, Carolyn. Put it out of your mind.”

He sat at the computer again, worked for another few minutes, then switched off the machine and packed it in its case. “Now we have to pack you,” he said and dumped the contents of his duffel bag onto the floor. “I hope you’re limber enough to do this.”

She was, but barely. When this trick is done in movie land, Crosetti knew, the hero doesn’t really carry the girl in the bag, but a styrofoam simulacrum. In real life, he now found, hauling a 125-pound woman down a flight of stairs in a duffel bag was a lot harder than he had imagined. He was sweating heavily and breathing hard when he reached the lobby.

There were two of them standing there as he checked out. He was careful not to examine them, but he absorbed peripherally an impression of leather, largeness, and quiet determination. At the front desk, he handed the clerk the note he had prepared:

Please don’t say my name out loud. I am trying to avoid the people who asked for me. Thank you.

There was a twenty-pound banknote folded into this message. The clerk, a young Asian, met his eye, nodded, and did the checking-out process in silence, with a simple “Good-bye, sir, hurry back,” at the end.

Crosetti now opened the duffel bag and removed the rain jacket, muffler, and hat he had squashed down on top of Rolly and put them on in full view of the thugs, who regarded him without interest, their eyes on the main stairway and the emergency stairwell at the lobby’s other end. He picked up the duffel and walked right by them out to the street. The E-class Mercedes he had arranged over the Internet was waiting, as was a Daimler V8 just behind it, with yet another leather thug leaning against the fender, smoking. The limo driver, a Sikh with a white turban, helped him load the duffel bag into the trunk, and when he was seated, he told the driver to take him to the nearest department store. The man suggested Templar Square, which was fine with Crosetti. He thought the place looked like any small-town American mall, with less energy; it made him obscurely sad.

Back at the car with his purchases, he had the driver pop the trunk. Rolly crawled out, groaning, and he helped her into the backseat. She smelled of dampness, canvas, and unwashed clothing. With the car again under way, he handed her a shopping bag. She looked through the clothing it contained.

“You’re always buying me clothes, Crosetti. Should I be worried about that? Undies too. That must’ve been a thrill.”

“Just being tidy. It’s a vice of mine. How do you like them?”

“I hate them. I’m going to look like a starlet or an amateur whore. And what’s with the Dolly Parton wig? I thought the point was to avoid notice.”

“That’s how you avoid notice, if you’re someone who always dresses in black and has brown hair. You should put them on.”

She grumbled but did as he asked, donning a lilac sweater, tight yellow jeans, an oversize white parka with a fake fur collar, and fleece-lined boots.

“This all fits,” she said. “I’m amazed. What’ve you got there?”

“Makeup. Turn this way and hold still.”

As the car sped down the motorway, he painted on foundation, blusher, a heavy plum-colored eye treatment, and dark scarlet lip gloss. He showed her what she looked like in the little mirror of the compact he’d bought.

“Hey, sailor, lookin’ for some action?” she asked the mirror. “Crosetti, how the hell did you learn to do this?”

“I have three older sisters and I worked on lots of very, very low-budget movies,” said Crosetti. “And don’t thank me. Mishkin gave me an American Express card before we left.”

“And where are we going on Mishkin’s American Express card?”

Crosetti’s eyes flicked to the driver.

“Casablanca. We’re going to Casablanca-for the waters. I have a standing invitation. We should be safe there until things settle down. We can study the Bracegirdle ciphers and figure out where they lead us, if anywhere.”

“What if they have people at the airport?”

“That’s extremely unlikely. We’re not running from the government or Goldfinger. This is a bunch of local gangsters. Right now they’re probably breaking into our room, noticing the pile of clothes and books and realizing how they were scammed. They’ll know we’re going to the airport because they saw me get into an airport limo. They’ll chase us, but we should be okay.”

She exhaled and leaned back on the soft leather, closing her eyes. He took her hand, which was warm and damp, like a child’s, and he too closed his eyes as they drove south.

T HE S IXTH C IPHERED L ETTER (F RAGMENT 4)