Cries of the Lost (11 page)

“Do you have this in digital form?” she asked.

I gave her a flash drive. “Excel.”

She spun around in her chair, after taking the drive, which she inserted into a slot on the side of a Mac laptop. I could see the screen, but nothing on it made any sense to me.

“I’m thinking the Henniger-Rosen Table Cascade,” she said, after about twenty minutes of study.

“Underwriters and actuaries are big on tables,” I said.

“They are.”

“My friend was one of those.”

She went back to her screen, frowning. “It’s simply a matter of getting the rhythm of the cascade. Otherwise, the constantly shifting relationships can tie you up in knots. Very interesting.”

We waited while Edwina worked for about a half hour at her computer, hunched over the keyboard as if she needed her body weight to control the calculations.

“I have about a million if/then scenarios loaded in this little laptop, but it’ll take a solid day or more to run all of them,” she said, reluctantly looking away from her screen. “Not including about four hours of programming, so we’re sure we’re asking the right ifs and thens.”

“That’s quite an imposition,” said Natsumi, breaking her silence.

“No, dear,” said Edwina. “It’s what people like me do for fun. Which is why I’ll never be married. Unless you know someone of the male species who suffers from the same condition.”

“I heard of one once, but I’m afraid he’s lost the facility,” said Natsumi.

“Pity.”

W
HEN
I had two workdays of video-recorded traffic within the mews under my belt, I called up the surveillance application and assessed the results. As the McPhersons would have predicted, no one arrived at or left number eight. Although the same was true for five and eleven. I did notice that after the man of the house at number six left for work, another bloke stopped by for a couple hours. I wondered what Mrs. McPherson might have thought of that.

The only other thing I had to do was wait for Edwina’s results, so I spent the time searching for a post-1978 mention of the Zarandona family, with no success. I wondered how the only evidence of their existence at the time was the paper trail left by a hotel registry. Yet I reminded myself that as omniscient as the World Wide Web often seemed to be, it only held a fraction of total human knowledge. If only because there were lots of things humans didn’t want other humans to know.

I also spent time fretting over, and cleaning up, the various digital trails I’d forged, nurtured, then sought to abandon. The bank and investment accounts, identities, credit cards, online purchases, hotel check-ins, airline tickets, car rentals, passports, drivers’ licenses, rental agreements, IP addresses, browsing histories, cell phone numbers—the list was a mile long and getting harder and harder to keep track of. I’d tossed enough breadcrumbs out there to open a bakery, which might have been the right strategy. Dazzle the opposition with complexity, with data paths so tangled they’d never be sorted out. But maybe this was now in the realm of offshore, national security operations, clandestine and untouchable.

In which case, all bets were off.

M
r. Freeman:

I have your answer. Quite an interesting little project. Would you mind coming by tomorrow so we can discuss it?

Edwina

Natsumi and I had to wait a while in the hallway since one of Edwina’s students had gotten in ahead of us. We sat on the floor and talked about everything but the remaining contents of the code. When the door opened, a young woman was a little taken aback that we were sitting there, and Edwina somewhat charmed.

She waved us in.

“It had nothing to do with linear regressions. Just a nice simple substitution code my computer here particularly enjoys sorting out.” We settled into our places in the office and she slid a piece of paper across her desk. “The words are correct, and the sentiments quite clear.”

Out of politeness, I held it so we could both read it, though I knew Natsumi’s Spanish wasn’t up to the task.

“Es imposible describirte cuánto me llena el corazón cada vez que pienso en ti. Siempre apreciaré cada momento que hemos pasado juntos . . . te amaré siempre y nunca me olvidaré de todo lo que has significado para mi.”

“Can you make it out?” I asked her.

She shook her head. I wrote out the translation: “It is impossible to describe how full my heart is whenever I think of you. I will always treasure every moment we have spent together.”

Then the string of coordinates, then the close: “I will always love you and will never forget what you have meant to me.”

“Oh.”

C
HAPTER
6

A
fter recording another week’s activity within the Spottsworthy Mews, we confirmed that number eight was the only house apparently uninhabited. So that seemed like the easiest place to snoop. We played a game of Frisbee out in the courtyard, which offered ample opportunity for running up to the façade and sneaking a look through the windows. All Natsumi or I could see were closed curtains.

I told Natsumi I was going to break in and have a look around.

“Okay,” she said. “That’s mildly frightening.”

“By all appearances, it’s empty. Nothing to be frightened about.”

“Everything is a reason to be frightened. What do I do if you don’t come back?”

I didn’t have a ready answer, not having considered that possibility.

“If I’m not back by three
A
.
M
., check into the Hilton next door to the place where we stayed on Hyde Park. Use a fresh ID. Bring along my laptop and backpack. Leave everything else. If I contact you and it’s a setup, I’ll ask you how your mother’s doing. Give it a couple weeks, then turn yourself into the American embassy. You can probably bargain your way out of a prison sentence by giving up the story. Just be careful how you meter it out. Save the best till last.”

“Now I wish I hadn’t asked.”

“No, you were right,” I said. “Foolish of me to leave you unprepared.”

I waited until midnight, then dressed in my favored blacks and headed back to where I’d tapped into the video feed, which was attached to number nine, right next door.

Between the two houses was a wall, which I hadn’t noticed before, having come in from the other direction. I dragged over a piece of garden furniture, which gave me just enough height to heave myself over.

I was in the garden, which was about the same size as ours, and though untended, it felt bigger. As with ours, it backed up to a large building that faced the street. The building had a big double-hung window, locked. Instead of a set of French doors, this mews house had a single, glass-paned door, curtained off. The lock looked sturdy, and it was, resisting all my efforts to effect a breach. So I picked a loose brick off the ground, and after wrapping it in my jacket, busted out a pane of glass.

I reached inside and opened the door, guiding my way with a small flashlight.

Inside, the room was naked but for two cots, a TV on a small stand, and a card table with two folding chairs. On the table sat a lamp and two partially full ashtrays. The kitchen next door was equally spare, with lightly equipped cabinets, a coffeemaker on the counter and an open waste basket against one wall. The freezer held a few frozen meals, and the fridge was mostly filled with beer, along with some cheese, salami, fruit juice and a cantaloupe that felt and smelled reasonably fresh.

The sitting room at the front of the house was empty. The curtains, made of heavy material, were pulled tightly across the windows. I went upstairs and found the bedrooms also empty, though the bathroom was well stocked with towels, toothbrushes and toothpaste, shampoo and antacids. The floor of the shower enclosure was moist.

I started down the stairs, but only made it halfway before what felt like a metal rod smashed into my back.

Losing my footing, I pitched forward, then fell down the stairs facedown, bouncing on my chest, my hands flailing around for a way to slow my fall. I hit the landing at the same time a heavy body fell on me, grabbing the collar of my jacket and slamming my face into the floor. I grunted, I think, but the only sound from my assailant was heavy breathing and partially formed Spanish words.

A kick in the stomach came from another direction. I doubled up and prepared for more of the same.

“I’m done, lads,” I said in my best impersonation of an East End Londoner, hoping Spanish guys wouldn’t pick up subtle tell-tales. “No reason to pile on.”

I got one more kick, for good measure, but then things quieted down as they studied me in the dark.

One of them pulled something that felt like a T-shirt over my head, which was then secured with duct tape around my neck. I was led into the kitchen and dropped down into a kitchen chair.

“No offense, mate,” I said. “Thought the place was abandoned. Just lookin’ to cop a squat.”

I heard the unmistakable sound of a shell being loaded into the chamber of a semiautomatic.

“No call for the artillery,” I said, “I ain’t seen you, and got no reason to care you were ever here. Movin’ on soon as you let me go. With apologies. Wouldn’t like it myself ’avin’ some bloke disturbin’ me tranquility.”

One of them said in Spanish, “Tell us your name and who sent you.”

I shook my head.

“Sorry, don’t know what you just said. Italian is it? Been to Rome for a bit of football. Nice city.” I felt the tip of a gun pressed against my temple.

“Pushin’ that thing at me ain’t teachin’ me Italian. Shit, I can hardly talk English, me native tongue.”

“Spanish,” said one of the men.
“Hablamos español, estúpido
.”

“Okay, sorry. Never been to Spain. You speak English? If not, we gotta find somebody who can.”

The gun was pulled away from my head, and they were silent for a while. I strained to hear sounds of movement.

One said in Spanish, “What are we going to do with this idiot?”

“How do we know he’s telling the truth?”

“We don’t.”

“Let’s start cutting his balls off with a steak knife. Maybe that will improve his Spanish.”

“You’re sure you don’t know somebody who speaks English?” I said, slowly and loudly as if that might help them understand what I was saying.

“Call Rodrigo,” one of them said. “We need instruction.”

After a pause, I heard the other man say, “Rodrigo, we got a guy here who broke into the house. Anglo. Says he’s a squatter. No, he walked around, but didn’t see us. What do you want us to do?” After another pause, he said, “Okay. I know the place.”

I felt two sets of hands pull me to my feet and direct me through the rear door. We crossed the garden, went through the big window of the building next door, then down two flights of stairs. At the bottom, we moved along what sounded and smelled like a rough, basement corridor. I asked them where we were going, but got nothing back.

We climbed up another set of stairs. At the top, one of them held on to me with the gun stuck in my kidney while the other opened a door. A few minutes later they pulled me through into a space with a different acoustic signature—a bigger space. A car started.

They both had me again, and with firm grips, taped my hands behind my back, then shoved me into the trunk of the car. It wasn’t hard to affect alarm.

“Whoa, what’s this? You don’t have to worry about me. Just let me go.”

“Shut up,” one said, and cracked me on the side of the head with the gun barrel.

“Foockin’ ’ell.”

The trunk lid slammed shut.

Fear erupted in my mind and my heart tightened in my chest. I tested the tape restraints. My wrists were held firmly together, but I could partially move my hands and fingers. I thought furiously through several scenarios, none of them good, until I remembered the Swiss Army Knife in my left front pants pocket.

The car moved aggressively as it left the parking garage and began maneuvering the Chelsea labyrinth; though after about ten minutes, it slowed to a halt, then moved slowly after that. London traffic.

I twisted around until my hand touched the top of the pocket. I was able to pull out the fabric about a quarter inch at a time, bringing the knife along with it. This worked until the knife itself began to clog the hole, forcing its way back down again. So then I had to use a combination of pulling and holding that reduced progress to a tiny fraction every few minutes.