Ted Bell - Spy

The small ship’s clock on the library mantel struck four silvery bells. Hawke, lost in a daydream of drum-beating savages and thick, unyielding jungle, was roused from his reverie. He had been listening to the lovely song now playing softly over the system. It was Andrea Bocelli’s haunting version of Vorrei Morire. He’d decided not to dwell for too long on why this particular lyric had such morbid appeal.

It was just ten o’clock and through the library’s starboard windows, Hawke could see that the rain had finally let up. A rind of yellow moon was visible behind tattered rags of cloud slowly sliding off to the east. The cold front had almost cleared. Tomorrow promised balmy sunshine.

A sleepy sigh was heard above the gentle music and Alex looked from the fire to his friend.

“I’m afraid I’m bloody well stumped,” Congreve said, removing his gold pince-nez glasses and pinching the bridge of his nose. He laid aside the Zimmermann letter. He’d been staring at the bloody thing for hours on end. He stood and stretched his arms above his head.

“You? Stumped?” Hawke said, holding his thistle-shaped snifter aloft so that its many facets refracted the firelight. “Where’s Miss Guinness? We need her famous Record Book!”

“Very amusing, Alex. But I tell you, if C’s Signals section can’t crack it, and I can’t crack it, it simply cannot be cracked.”

They had discussed a variety of approaches to the puzzle at dinner. They kept coming back to the deathbed letter that, for convenience sake, they now referred to simply as the Zimmermann Letter. The numeric code, so promising at first, was now deemed to be a random sequence, computer generated, and thus indecipherable.

“Everything can be cracked,” Hawke said, reaching for the damnable thing. He stared at the letter blindly for a few moments and then put it back down with a sigh of frustration. Numbers. The bane of his existence.

“Gibberish,” Hawke said, giving up any last hope of discerning some kind of repeat or pattern. “Maybe you’re right. We’re both bloody well stumped. There has to be another way.”

Congreve eyed Hawke carefully, his invisible brain wheels spinning so rapidly and obviously Hawke was surprised they weren’t audible. Ambrose stood with his back to the fire, lighting his first pipe of the evening. In a second, the familiar fragrance of Peterson’s Irish Blend was in the air.

“Before the towel is thrown,” Ambrose puffed, “Or, at least, whilst the flag of surrender is still paused mid-flight above the gaping maw of the rubbish bin, bear with me a moment longer.”

Hawke sat back in silence, waiting for Ambrose’s genius to slip silently into the room.

“Consider. The ambassador wanted a letter delivered to his wife. We both assumed, until we actually saw it, that the thing might be some kind of poetic deathbed farewell to his soon-to-be widow in Brazil. Yes?”

“Yes,” Hawke said.

“You subsequently learned from the captured Venezuelan officer, that Zimmermann’s widow has fled Rio de Janeiro for the tatty Amazon River town of Manaus, correct? Fearing for her life.”

“Correct.”

“A problem arose in Mexico City. The ambassador was abducted from his hotel in the Zona Rosa by Brazilian agents, whereupon he was quickly disappeared into the jungle.”

“Yes. Where Top tried unsuccessfully to kill him. Zimmermann was up to his neck in this thing. But he lost the heart for it, or the nerve, and escaped to England.”

“So, we have a German ambassador with links to Brazil, Venezuela, and Mexico City. And all three somehow go back to this Syrian, Muhammad Top.”

“Top stands at the crossroads,” Hawke said. “He’s the link.”

“Why Mexico, though? Why are they in bed with a Muslim terrorist?”

“Who stands to benefit most if Top succeeds? Mexico, I’d say. A few successful border skirmishes, America succumbs to the media outrage, and they have a chance to reclaim all the land they lost to the Americans in the war of 1848.”

“I suppose you’re right. Finally, Alex, one thing I may have overlooked. There was a second gift in addition to the coded letter. A book of poetry, perhaps. At least, it had the heft of a book to me.”

“A book, yes, that’s exactly what it was.”

“So you examined it?”

“Of course. I’m a snoop.”

“And?”

“It’s book. Innocuous enough. A popular novel.”

“Any good?”

“It’s no War and Peace. I can hardly imagine giving it as a final farewell gift to a grieving widow. Still, there can be no disputes about taste.”

“De gustibus non est disputandum. Still, you kept it.”

“I can hardly put it down.”

“And where is that book now?”

“Brought it along for the voyage. Stuck it in my library desk over there. I thought to finish it tonight.”

“Where, exactly?” Congreve asked, moving to the desk.

“Left bottom drawer most likely. That’s where I usually stick things I want to keep track of.”

Congreve crossed to the small leather-topped desk, sat down, and opened the left hand drawer.

“I don’t see it.”

“It’s there.”

47

H ere we are. Let’s take a look, shall we?” Congreve withdrew the book and placed it on the desk before him, staring down at it.

“Careful,” Hawke said, “Anything ticking? You’d best shake it a few times and see if it rattles, Constable.”

“Very funny. Still, a rather good, although belated, point. It’s the Da Vinci Code.”

“Hmm.”

“The special Illustrated Edition.”

“The pictures help, actually,” Hawke said, “I wouldn’t know the Mona Lisa from Lisa Marie.”

“Please, Alex. Spare me.”

Ambrose held up the book for closer inspection. He said, “An odd choice, I must admit. For a belated gift to the one left behind.”

Hawke smiled. “Somewhere in the heart of the Amazon lurks the last literate human being on earth yet to read the bloody thing. Did you ever get round to it yourself?”

“Like a lamb to the slaughter,” Ambrose said. “I rather enjoyed it. Anything at all to do with codes hooks me instantly.”

He was holding the book by its spine and shaking it over the desktop. Seeing nothing fall from the pages, he set it down and began leafing through the book slowly.

“Are you going to read it again?” Hawke asked. “Now?”

“Quiet,” Ambrose said, lost among some vast, shadowed hallways of thought.

“Are you onto something? Twitchy eyebrows. You’ve all the symptoms.”

“Perhaps I am.”

“What? Spill it.”

“Don’t you find it the least bit interesting, Alex, that the last book Zimmermann bequeaths to his wife has the word Code in its title?”

“Funny, that, now that you mention it.”

“Yes, isn’t it? Hand me the letter, will you, Alex? I left it over there on the table somewhere.”

Hawke retrieved the ambassador’s coded farewell message and handed it to Ambrose.

“We need a positive supposition here,” Congreve said, his eyes darting rapidly from letter to book. He was quickly running his finger down the page Zimmermann had filled with scrawled numbers.

“Namely?”

“That the letter and the book are connected.”

“Too simple. Too obvious.”

“The truth often is. That is, I suspect, why we haven’t cracked the bloody code, Alex. Humans naturally look for complexity where none exists. Whilst I, on the other hand, subscribe to William of Occam’s point of view.”

“Remind me about William of Occam again?”

“A mediaeval philosopher, Alex. His principle, widely known as Occam’s Razor, stated that one should not make more assumptions than the minimum needed. Confronted with a puzzle, reduce the entities required to explain it. In other words, Alex, choose the simplest path through the forest.”