‘You know, “it goes on”. It runs on. Or “the end approaches”. Maybe Foot runs is a coded way of saying that the operation is nearing its end. And the B Gates thing is just a sign off. You know, Bill Gates. Mickey Mouse.’
TC did not react. She just took the phone over to the couch, sat down and stared at it. ‘Can you pass me the pad? And a pen.’
Will sat next to her, so he could see what she was doing. He felt awkward as soon as he had done it; his legs so near hers.
She was writing down a new message.
GPPU SVOT
‘OK, so that doesn’t work. Let’s try it the other way.’
ENNS QTMR
‘Nor does that,’ she said, not disappointed so much as challenged.
‘What are you doing?’
‘It’s kiddie code-breaking stuff. Each letter stands for the one after it – so that F is really G, O is really P – or, alternatively, the one before it – so that F is really E and O is really N. That way FOOT is either GPPU or ENNS. Which means that neither of those is the code. Let’s try another one.’
TC began to write, very fast, the alphabet across the page. Then, underneath it, she did the same in reverse, so that Z, Y, X, appeared directly under A, B, C.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Z Y X W V U T S R Q P O N M L K J I H G F E D C B A
‘Now we can read off and see what we get.’ Her finger scanned along the line, then she started scribbling.
ULLG IFMH
‘Shit,’ Will hissed. ‘I am getting so tired of these fucking games. What the hell does this mean?’
‘We’re not thinking logically. Not many people send text messages by phone like this.’
‘Brits do.’
‘Yeah, but most Americans don’t. And it would have been just as easy to communicate by email. But they didn’t do that. Why not?’
‘Because they know that we can trace their emails. They must know that I worked out where their last one came from.’
‘Sure, but that might not be a bad thing from their point of view. They might want you to know it was a message from them. No, I reckon they chose a different method for a reason. Can you pass me your phone?’
She grabbed it eagerly, instantly finding the messaging programme. She hit ‘Create message’ and began typing with her thumbs. Will had to huddle even closer to see what she was doing. He could smell her hair and had to fight the urge not to breathe deeply: in an instant, her scent had carried him back to those long hot afternoons together.
That in turn jogged another sense memory, the perfume of Beth. He liked it best when it was strongest: when she dressed up to go out for the evening. She might have got her outfit just right; he would want to rip it all off, to ravish her there and then. Later, at the party, he would spot her across the room and find himself looking at his watch: he wanted to get her back home. He was suddenly flooded with memories, of TC and of Beth, and they were arousing him. He felt confused.
TC was typing the word FOOT. Now her thumbs searched for the * button; she pressed it twice, and a smile began to form around her lips. The display changed, showing the word FOOT, then FONT then DON’T, then ENOU, then EMOT, then DONU and finally ENNU before going back to FOOT. TC wrote down the word DON’T.
Next she keyed in RUNS, which showed up on the screen as SUMS, SUNS, PUNS, STOP, RUMP, SUMP, PUMP, as well as STOR, SUNR and QUOR. She wrote one of those down, too.
‘There,’ she said, with the satisfaction of a bookish schoolgirl who had just completed her algebra homework in record time. The two-word nonsense of FOOT RUNS now appeared as a clear message of encouragement.
DON’T STOP.
It was not really a code at all, thought Will. Just a neat use of the ‘predictive’ language function on most cell phones: every time you tried to punch in a word, the phone offered possible alternatives using the same combination of buttons. You pressed 3,6,6,8 to mean FOOT, but you might have meant DON’T so the machine cleverly offered you that option. Whoever sent this message had found a novel use for the function.
The satisfaction of TC’s handiwork was brief. True, they had decoded the message, but they hardly knew what it meant and they still had no idea who had sent it.
‘So who the hell is Bill Gates?’
‘Let’s have a look,’ said TC, picking up the phone again. ‘Well, B could be C or A.’ She keyed in the word GATES. ‘And that could be HATES or HAVES or HAVER or HATER.’
‘So what would that mean?’ said Will. ‘A hater? A hater of what? Or is it B Haves as in “behaves”?’
‘Or maybe it’s the opposite of “a hater”,’ said TC, suddenly excited.
‘The opposite?’
‘The opposite of a hater. A friend.’
‘But it doesn’t say that. It’s just gates or hates or haves or hates.’
‘Or haver. Haver is the word for friend in Hebrew. B Gates is A Haver. This message says, “Don’t stop, a friend.”’ She began circling, staring at the floor. ‘Who would want to stiffen your resolve now? Who would think there was a chance you would give up?’
‘The only people who even know about this are you, my father, Tom and the Hassidim themselves.’
‘You’re sure there’s no one else. No one who’s aware this is happening?’
With a stab, Will thought of Harden and the office: he would have to do something about that eventually.
‘No. No one knows. And since neither you, nor Tom, nor my Dad need to contact me anonymously that leaves the Hassidim. I think we may have a bit of a split on our hands.’
‘What do you mean?’
Will enjoyed the novelty of TC being a pace behind him for once. Politics never was her strongest suit.
‘A split. A split in the ranks of the enemy. The only person who could have sent this would be somebody who heard the Rebbe, I mean the rabbi I spoke to yesterday, telling me to back off. They must want me to ignore that advice. They must disagree with what the rabbi’s doing. This person doesn’t want me to stop. And I think I can guess who it is.’
Saturday, 8.10am, Port-au-Prince, Haiti
These days he came down to check only once a week. The Secret Chamber now seemed to run itself, needing only the lightest supervision. These visits of his were less practical than sentimental: it gave him pleasure to see his little invention working so well.
He had designed things before of course. Down at the docks, he had come up with a new roll-on, roll-off method for unloading the boats that came in from Latin America and went on to the US. He had not planned it this way, but his new system was said to have revolutionized the country’s drugs trade. He had only been trying to improve the efficiency of import-export. But thanks to him, cocaine could come in from Colombia and be bound for Miami with the shortest possible turnaround. From there, and in a matter of hours, the parcels of white powder would spider out to America’s cities – Chicago, Detroit, New York. Haiti’s drugs bosses boasted that if ten lines of coke were snorted into the nostrils of a US citizen at any given moment, it was certain that at least one had passed through Port-au-Prince.
In his social circle, that gave Jean-Claude Paul prestige. Among the well-heeled dollar millionaires of Petionville, each in their armour-fenced, high-walled