Oliver’s phone chirped, and he glanced down at the caller ID: Unknown Caller. He answered, and a voice he didn’t recognize asked a single question: “Do you have any special training in mathematics?” Oliver held the phone at arm’s length, staring at it quizzically, then brought it back to his ear. “Um … no. Just the usual math classes – algebra and stuff.”
“Good,”
the caller responded. “Go to the Port Authority Bus Terminal; go inside and
head for the 42nd Street exit. Just inside will be a man holding a
sign reading ‘USGS Seminar’. He’ll take you to your contact. Get there as
quickly as you can – we’ll have gear waiting for you.” The call clicked off.
“I’m
Agent Jennifer, and I’ll be your handler.” She was in her late 30s, trim with
very short brown hair and dark eyes. “Earlier this afternoon a man walked into
a house in River Vale, New Jersey and murdered the family who lived there. He
chased the last victim through the back yard and into the parking lot of an
office complex, where he killed him, then killed himself. But before he died,
he spray painted a series of numbers on the pavement of the parking lot.
“Delta
Green has encountered these numbers before, and they have some kind of
unnatural, arcane power. To anyone with sufficient knowledge of higher
mathematics, they lead inevitably to madness and murder … or worse. The numbers
are believed to be the solution to a problem posed by a 16th century
Belgian mathematician and engineer, Fascius Claudan. Early in his life he was
noted for some minor inventions in clockworks, pulley systems, and the like,
and published some books on mathematics and astronomy. But he traveled much
more widely than most of his time – to Egypt, Persia, Turkey and perhaps
beyond. Towards the end of his life, he published a book on cosmology: Libri
Plures Admiratio – the ‘Book of Many Wonders’. Most viewed the book as
rambling nonsense, the work of a madman. In it, he published something called
the Laqueus Equation, which he said he learned from a 900-year old Arab in
Constantinople. He claimed that the solution to this equation would reveal the
inner workings of the entire universe. For 500 years, mathematicians have tried
to solve it, but it’s resisted their efforts. Some view it as having the
potential to create a perfect cipher, one that is completely unbreakable.
“As
far as Delta Green is concerned, it is extremely dangerous. These numbers, when
they crop up, always seem to tie back to the Book of Many Wonders in some
fashion. And now they’re in New Jersey.”
“Thirty
minutes,” the driver said. Agent Jennifer reached down beside her seat and
pulled out three FedEx envelopes, and passed one each to Oliver, Carlos, and
Seamus. “Study those. We’re giving each of you new identities to get you inside
the case.” She turned to Tabitha. “Luckily, when the last victim fled to that
parking lot, he crossed the New Jersey New York state line, creating plausible
cause for the FBI to take over the case. Special Agent Aiden Canor from the
Garret Mountain office is in charge, but you all are being positioned as
“experts” sent in by Quantico to see if these numbers have any national
security ramifications. Since you’re already FBI Suta, you’ll go in as
yourself, as team lead. But this is still Garret Mountain’s case.”
The
other three opened their envelopes. Inside was a wallet with driver’s license,
credit cards, insurance cards – a whole fake identity. There were also tax
returns for the last three years, with addresses, income, and marital status.
There was also a very official-looking FBI badge and ID card. Oliver’s
identified him as Sid Smith, belonging
to the FBI’s Science and Technology Branch, Carlos as James Castro from the
FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit. Seamus was now Ted Brightenstein, from
Counterintelligence. “You’ll need to leave your own wallets and any other
identifying information – including firearms – with me,” Agent Jennifer
continued, holding out a large bank bag. “You’ll get them back of course, but
we can’t risk anything blowing your cover. There are FBI-issued sidearms in the
back, along with other gear.” Everyone emptied their pockets into the bag;
Carlos was a little reluctant to part with his pistol (which he’d begun keeping
with him at all times since the fiasco in upstate New York), but ultimately he
let it go.
“Ten
minutes,” the driver intoned.
“Shit.
OK, your mission has multiple parameters, and all are essential. First, you must
destroy the numbers at the scene, along with any photographic evidence of them.
We cannot allow anyone with any mathematical ability to see them, even
by accident.
“Second,
you have to determine how the killer obtained the number, whether anyone else
was involved, and if he shared it with anyone else. Destroy any notes or other
records he may have left about the numbers – phone, hard drive, anything.” She
passed Tabitha a smartphone. “If you have reason to believe that anyone with
mathematics experience has been exposed to the numbers, email me with the
subject ‘BAKER’, no body, and I’ll call you for details.
“Finally,
it’s critical that this case be closed as quickly as possible; the longer the
investigation continues the harder it will be to keep things quiet. Luckily,
the killer helped us here – there were witnesses to the parking lot shooting.
But you need to help the FBI and local authorities believe this was a simple
lone-shooter and wrap things up without any loose ends. If that means you have
to plant incriminating evidence about the killer or anyone else, so be it. Make
no mistake – you’re not here to solve the case. We know who did it – we just
don’t want anyone else to know why.
“We
do have one Friendly on the ground – a New Jersey State Trooper named Tomas
Blaner. He is not Delta Green, so don’t reveal anything to him that you
don’t have to, but he’s helped us in the past, and he should have access to at
least some of the case files or evidence, if you need it.
“Are
there any questions?”
The
group looked at each other, then back at Agent Jennifer and shook their heads.
The SUV pulled up in front of an office park; signs out front labeled it “Blue
Hills Plaza”, a pair of multi-story office buildings surrounded by parking lots
and greenery. Numerous police cars and emergency vehicles were parked blocking
the entrances, outnumbered by news vans. A policeman stopped the SUV, and the
driver flashed a badge, letting them through the police cordon. “We’ll leave
the car here for you,” Jennifer said as the driver pulled to a stop, crossways
across three parking spaces. “The shooter’s body and the numbers are back
there,” she pointed to the south, behind one of the office buildings. “There’s
a Holiday Inn in Orangeburg, about five miles from here. The rest of the FBI
team has rooms there, and we’ve reserved rooms for you, too. The rest of your
gear is in the back. Good luck.” Agent Jennifer and her driver got out, and
headed north across the parking lot on foot.
Seamus
already had the hatch of the SUV open. Inside were four sets of pistols,
handcuffs, tactical radios, and FBI windbreakers and caps, as well as Kevlar
vests, and the team spent a few minutes gearing up in silence. Then they set
off towards the back of the office park. As they approached the scene, they saw
it was roped off with yellow crime scene tape. A policeman with a clipboard
stopped them as they approached: “I’ll need to see some ID.” He noted each name
on his clipboard, along with the time, then lifted the tape to allow them to
pass. As they approached, a tall African American man in a black suit saw them
and broke off his conversation with another policeman to head their way. He
greeted them with warm handshakes. “Hi! Special Agent Aiden Canor. You must be
the reinforcements Quantico called in.” He’s in his late forties, tall and
wiry, with close-cropped hair. “This looks pretty open and shut, but we’re
happy for all the help we can get. C’mon – let me show you what we’ve got.”
Canor
led them into the center of the parking lot, where two bodies lay in pools of
blood. The first was a teenage boy. “The victim is Michael Ridgeway, age 18.”
Canor said, pointing to the kid. “The shooter killed the rest of his family in
their kitchen, across the way.” He nodded to the south, where they could see
back yards and houses through some trees. “Michael was shot in the leg, but
tried to make a run for it – there’s a clear blood trail. The killer followed
him, then shot him here.” They could see that the boy’s left leg was bloody, and
his chest a gaping hole. “Then the killer took out a can of spray paint,
painted these numbers on the pavement, put the barrel of the shotgun under his
chin, and blew his head off.” The other body supported his story – the entire
face was missing. Carlos shuddered and turned away, but Seamus squatted on his
haunches for a closer look; he’d seen worse.
Oliver
was glad he’d skipped that sandwich, and turned his back on the body to examine
the numbers. A string of sixteen digits had been written in fluorescent
red/orange spray paint on the pavement: 9920.229989212.333. Oliver
surreptitiously scuffed one of the numbers with the toe of his shoe, but the
paint was already dry.
“The
shooter was Michael Wei, 24,” Agent Canor continued. “He’s a California native,
but a student at Columbia. We have his wallet and cellphone over here,” he
pointed to bagged items on the back of a squad car, “but the cellphone’s
locked. We have the murder weapon, too – Remington 870 Police Magnum. Don’t
know how they hell he got his hands on one of those – we’re tracing the serial
number.” They could also see the shotgun in a plastic bag on the back of the
car. Tabitha raised her eyebrows but said nothing; she knew that the 870 Police
Magnum was a model sold exclusively to law enforcement.
“As
far as we know, there was no connection between Wei and the Ridgeway family,
but we’re still looking. NYPD has secured his dorm room at Columbia, but we
haven’t sent people to search it yet. We have no idea what the numbers might
mean, if anything. But I suppose that’s why you’re here, isn’t it?
“Listen,
I’ve got to run. There’s a press conference in a few minutes, and I have to be
on it, along with River Vale Police Chief Upton Weeks. Weeks is happy to have
us on the case – he’s totally out of his depth with this case, and he knows it,
but we want to paint the picture of full collaboration between local, state,
and federal agencies. Billy! Billy!” he called, and a younger man hustled
across the parking lot. “This is my #2, Special Agent Billy Gant. Anything you
need, Billy can get it for you. Oh, and we’ve been holding the bodies until
you’ve had a chance to examine the scene – the sooner you can clear us to
remove them to the coroner, the better. Appreciate your help.” Canor hurried
off towards the phalanx of news vans.
Gant
was around 30, short and stocky in a charcoal gray suit. “You must be Agent
Suta,” he said, sticking out his hand. Tabitha shook it, and he turned to the
others. “And this must be your team. Billy Gant.” He stuck out his hand to Carlos.
“Jim Castro, Behavioral Unit,” he said, hoping he’d remembered the name right.
“Ted Brightenstein, Counterintelligence,” Seamus offered without being asked.
“Sid Smith, Science and Technology,” Oliver joined in.
Gant
looked confused. “Wait … what’s your name?”
Oliver
panicked – had he given the wrong name? “Uh … Sid Smith?”
“You’re
not Comox?” Gant asked. Oliver shook his head, thoroughly confused. “Hang on a
sec.” Gant pulled a small notebook out of his pocket and thumbed through it. “I
got a call from Quantico that they were sending up a Dr. Sarah Comox from
Science & Technology, some kind of cryptology/mathematics expert. You know
her?”
“Uh
… no, I don’t think so,” Oliver stammered. Tabitha rolled her eyes – why
couldn’t he just lie?
“Huh.
Wonder why they’d send two of you? Well, her plane’s supposed to land in Newark
in …” he referred to his notebook again and then his watch, “about two hours,
so I guess you can sort it out then.”
Carlos
wanted to change the subject. “Listen, can we get a tarp or something to cover
up those numbers?” he asked. He was scanning the sky for any sign of news
choppers.
“We
need to do more than that,” Seamus said insistently. “This could be some sort
of terrorist code, a message to other cells. We need to paint over those
numbers, wipe them out completely.”
Agent
Gant was aghast. “Are you crazy? That’s destroying evidence! Absolutely not.
I’m responsible for the integrity of this crime scene, and I won’t have you or
anyone else fucking it up!”
“But
someone’s going to see something they shouldn’t! Lives are on the line here!
Where’s the paint Wei used?” Seamus scanned the scene and spotted a can of
spray paint in an evidence bag. “I’m going to paint over those numbers.”
He
moved towards the paint, but Gant grabbed his arm, fingers digging in. “Like
hell you are!” Seamus spun on him, face dark and fists clenched.
“Guys!
Guys! Let’s just calm down!” Tabitha stepped between the two men before punches
could be thrown. “Look, we all want the same thing – we want to keep people safe.
And we want to close this case. Gant – can you help us cover this up? And Sea…
Ted – can you just let Agent Gant do his job?”
The
two men glared at each other for a moment, then each took a step back. Gant
took a deep breath, then turned. “Officer!” he called to one of the River Vale
patrolmen manning the perimeter. “Have you guys got a tarp or something we can
throw over these numbers?” The officer thought for a moment. “We’ve probably
got something in the impound garage – I’ll got see what I can find.” He hurried
back to his squad car and drove off.
“What
do we do in the meantime?” Seamus growled. Gant rolled his eyes but held his
tongue. He got two more patrolmen to move their cars, to cover up the numbers.
“Satisfied?” he snapped, and Seamus nodded.
“Um
… could we see the shooter’s effects?” Carlos interjected, trying to defuse the
tension. Gant led them to the evidence baggies. Wei’s ID was a California
driver’s license (home address – Alta Mira) showing a solemn looking young
Chinese man, and a Columbia student ID with a smiling version of the same
person. He also had a key-card labeled ‘Fu Foundation School of Engineering and
Applied Science – LAB’. “Do we know what Wei was studying at Columbia?” Carlos
asked, but Gant shook his head.
While
Carols was going through Wei’s possession, Tabitha stepped away from the
others. She pulled out the phone Agent Jennifer had given her, and opened the
email app. It had a single contact: 'Jennifer'. Tabitha sent the “BAKER” email
as directed, and settled in to wait. It didn’t take long before the phone
jingled. “What’ve you got?” Agent Jennifer asked.
“Potential
problem.” Tabitha responded. “The FBI has dispatched a real Science and
Technology agent, Sarah Comox. She’s flying in from Virginia in a couple of
hours. She’ll know our guy’s a fake, and she’s some sort of math expert.”
“Understood.
We’ll see what we can do, but make sure the numbers are gone before she gets
there.” The connection clicked off.
“If
you want to examine the other scene, it’s just through those trees,” Gant
offered as she rejoined the group. “I’ll warn you – it’s not an easy one. There
are seven other victims, all one family.” He refered to his notebook again.
“Parents were Malcom and Dinah Ridgeway, age 44 and 43. He shot them and five
of their kids in the family kitchen, then chased the oldest, Michael, over here
and killed him. The other victims were Clark Ridgeway, 16, Dean 14, Mary 13,
Alice 12, and Claire 10. All the victims were clustered in the kitchen. The
shooter reloaded and shot each of them twice – fucking overkill.”
“Do
we know what the Ridgeways did for a living?” Tabitha asked.
“Malcom
was an accountant – worked for a small local firm, did the books for local
businesses. As far as we can tell, his wife was just a housewife. With six
kids, probably had her hands full.”
Gant’s
cellphone jingled, and he checked the caller ID. “Hang on a sec – I need to get
this … Gant here. Yeah? That’s right – Remington 870
Police.” He referred to his notebook again. “Hang on … OK here it is – serial
number 2022998. Yeah? Yeah?” He was writing frantically. “Are you sure about
that? OK, thanks.” He hung up with a deep frown. “What the holy hell?” He
looked up at Tabitha. “We just got a trace on the murder weapon. It was sold to
the state of New York in August, 1959, and disbursed to the NYPD 24th
Precinct as a utility weapon. According to the city of New York, it’s still
there. I guess we’ll have to send somebody over to have a chat with our friends
in blue and find out how one of their weapons just killed eight people in New
Jersey. The press is gonna have a field day with this one! I’d better give
Agent Canor a heads-up.” Gant hurried off to warn his boss of the shit storm
that was on its way.
“What are we going to do about those numbers?”
Seamus hissed when he was out of earshot. Gant was gone, but there were two
automobiles parked on top of the numbers, and half a dozen uniformed cops
looking on. Tabitha shook her head. “I don’t know yet.”
“Well we’d better decide pretty quick,” Oliver
said, looking at his watch. “That Comox person is due to land in about an hour,
and she’ll figure out pretty quick that I’m a phony.”
“Not to mention that she’s a math whiz,” Carlos
added. “Prime candidate to be susceptible to the numbers.”
Tabitha didn’t have any answers. “Let’s see if
there’s anything at the other crime scene,” she suggested, as much to give
herself time to think something up as anything. They made their way to the
Ridgeway house. It wasn’t hard to find; Michael Ridgeway’s knee had been
shattered by the first shotgun blast, and he’d had to drag himself through the
trees. They made their way through a backyard with a swing set, crossed the
patio, and entered the backdoor.
The Ridgeway kitchen was a scene of horror. Small
bodies littered the room, blood pooling around them, its reek filling the air.
The kitchen windows were shattered by buckshot, the walls pockmarked by bloody
holes. Dinah Ridgeway appeared to have tried to shield one of her children with
her own body – to no avail. Carlos staggered outside, fighting back racking
sobs. Tabitha stood motionless, frozen in place as she stared at the spray of
bloodstained blonde hair spread out on the table before her.
Small triangular evidence tags marked each
expended shotgun shell, fourteen in all. All the victims were clustered at the
kitchen table. It appeared that Michael Wei had stood in the doorway between
the living room and kitchen and slaughtered the family. Only one shot deviated
from the pattern; for some reason, Wei had fired one shot into the family’s
stove, an avocado-green electric model, 90 degrees away from where he’d been
firing at the victims. It’s clock was stopped at 2:12:33.
“Well at least we know the time of the shooting,”
Oliver said quietly, but Seamus was staring at the clock. “2:12:33,” he said.
“That’s right. Gant said the 911 calls started
coming in about 2:15, so it fits,” Tabitha confirmed, but Seamus shook his
head.
“2:12:33.” Seamus said again, his voice barely
above a whisper. “That’s part of the number. 212.33 – it’s in the number.” The
others stared at the stove as a chill started to form at the base of their
spines.
“Let’s fan out, search the house,” Carlos said,
breaking the tension.
“The FBI already searched,” Tabitha protested.
“But they weren’t necessarily looking for what we’re
looking for,” Carlos countered. The group fanned out, covering the whole house
and the area around it, but ultimately had to acknowledge that if there was
anything linking the Ridgeways to Michael Wei or the Book of Many Wonders, they
weren’t seeing it. Seamus did emerge from the basement carrying a pair of
gallon pails of paint and a roller; he stashed them in the woods at the edge of
the parking lot when they returned.
Billy Gant was back on the scene, but he was
giving the group wide berth. Tabitha approached anyway. “Who was taking crime
scene photos?” she asked in her most professional-sounding voice.
Gant responded in kind. “Felix Harper is our
evidence tech on the scene.” He nodded to a pot-bellied man sitting in the back
of a car on the far side of the crime scene. “He took our photos, and can get
you copies if you need them. River Vale PD doesn’t have their own evidence
techs, so the New Jersey State Police sent one of theirs: Cecil Osborne.” Gant
craned his neck to scan the scene. “I’m pretty sure Osborne is long gone, but
he’d have left his pictures and anything else he collected with Detective Helen
Short from the River Vale PD. Don’t see her here – she could be at the other
scene, or back at police HQ.”
“Thanks,” Tabitha said with a nod. “We’re done
with the bodies – you can take them to the coroner now.”
Seamus joined the pair of them, and Gant
stiffened. “Look, Billy,” Seamus said apologetically, “I know I overreacted a
while ago. This is your scene, and I didn’t respect that. I’m sorry. But it’s
just … there are things you don’t know, that I can’t tell you. These sorts of
numbers are dangerous. Terrorists are using them to pass messages to each
other in ways that we can’t intercept, can’t block. They’re triggers,
Billy, just like the trigger on your Glock. The Ridgeways aren’t the only
people Michael Wei tried to kill today.”
Gant looked off into the darkening sky. “You
seriously think Al Qaeda might be using those numbers to communicate?” Seamus
and Tabitha both nodded. “Well fuck it, then. We’ve got pictures of the
numbers, we’ll be closing the scene soon, anyway. Let’s go ahead and get rid of
the numbers.”
Seamus clapped Gant on the shoulder, and the two
men exchanged a look. Tabitha couldn’t read it – there was too much
testosterone involved – but they seemed to part friends. Seamus collected the
paint cans he’d hidden in the woods while Gant waved the patrol cars off the
numbers. Within five minutes, the numbers were hidden under a fresh coat of ‘Carmelized
Walnut’ by Glidden.
As Gant called in ambulances to collect Michael
Wei and his victim, Tabitha approached Felix Harper, giving Oliver a nod to
join her. Felix was sitting in the back seat of a car, his feet out on the
pavement, making notes on crime scene sketches. A digital SLR camera lay on the
seat behind him. “I understand you were the photographer on scene,” she said.
Felix looked up, then leaped to his feet when he saw it was a woman addressing
him. “That’s right – Felix Harper, at your service!”
“Mind if I take a look?” Oliver asked, and Felix
nodded eagerly, handing him the camera. Oliver began flipping through the
camera’s on-screen display. Between the two crime scenes, Harper had taken
hundreds of photos. There were several of just the numbers, but many more had
the numbers clearly visible in the background; perhaps two dozen in all.
“You upload those yet?” Tabitha asked as Oliver
looked at the photos. She knew that standard procedure was to upload all digital
evidence to the FBI servers at Quantico; once they were there, getting rid of
them would be far beyond anything their group could hope to accomplish. But
Felix shook his head. “Not yet. I’m getting ready to head back to Garret
Mountain – I’ll log everything there, and then upload it. Going to be a long
night!”
Oliver’s brain was working overtime. The camera
had a menu option to reformat the SD card, but he knew that wouldn’t help. Not
only would it destroy all the crime scene pictures, but they would be
easily recoverable by anyone with even a modicum of knowledge. If he had his
laptop, he could easily scramble the files containing pictures of the numbers –
but his laptop was sitting in his apartment in Manhattan. On a hunch, he leaned
in behind Felix – who was totally focused on Tabitha – and took a peek into the
car’s front seat. Bingo! On the seat was a laptop computer, and plugged into
one of its USB ports was an SD card reader!
“Say Felix – could I get a copy of these?” he
asked innocently.
“No problemo! I’ve got a few extra thumb drives
in here somewhere.” Felix rooted around in his evidence bag and came up with a
flash drive. He popped the SD card out of the camera, inserted it into the card
reader, slid the flash drive into another USB slot, and started copying files.
“That’ll take a few minutes,” he apologized. “I always use the highest
resolution and no compression, so the files are huge.”
Oliver was jerking his head frantically at
Tabitha, trying to get her to draw Felix away. “Say, Felix,” she said, trying
to invent a story on the fly, “Did you see this weird stuff where the shooter’s
body was?”
“What stuff?” Harper’s interest was piqued.
“I don’t know,” Tabitha said, walking towards the
blood pool where Wei had lain, hoping Felix would follow. He did. “I didn’t
notice it before, but now that they’ve taken the body away … There – don’t you
see it?”
Felix knelt down, being careful to avoid the
fresh paint. “Where? I don’t see … Oh – that? That’s just brains.” He pulled a
rubber glove out of his pocket, snapped it on, and picked up a glob of
jelly-like stuff the size of a cockroach. As he knelt, Tabitha unbuttoned the
top button of her blouse and leaned over at the waist. Felix looked up, and
continued his anatomy lecture into her cleavage. “See people just think about
the damage that the bullet does, but when a gun is pressed right up
against a body like this, the expanding gasses can do just as much damage. In
this case, I’m betting they blew this poor guy’s brains right out his ear
holes.” Tabitha smiled as she tried not to gag.
While Felix tried to impress Tabitha with his
deep and disgusting knowledge of human mutilation, Oliver was frantically
tapping away on the laptop. He opened a binary editor, pulled in one of the
photos from the Ridgeway house, and copied a random section from the center of
the file. Then he opened the files containing the numbers one by one,
overwriting random portions of each with data from the other file. The files
would look like they were still there, but anyone trying to display them
would see nothing but garbage pixels. He finished, closed the editor, and
placed the laptop back on the car seat. “So yeah, that’s why in cases like this
it’s hard to tell buckshot from dental fillings!” Felix finished with a
chuckle. Tabitha looked a little green. “All done here!” Oliver said waving the
thumb drive with a broad smile. “You owe me!” Tabitha growled under her
breath as they walked away.
Having done all they could at the crime scene,
the team headed back to their SUV. As they approached, they found all the news
cameras waiting outside trained on them, lights blazing and microphones
outthrust. One voice cut through the rest. It belonged to a classically
handsome man with dark skin and dark hair going gray at the temples.
“Agent Suta! Agent Suta! Enrico Savé, Channel 4
Eyewitness News. Can you confirm that the FBI is treating this as a terrorist
attack? Is this the act of a terrorist sleeper cell inside the United States?
Can we expect more attacks? Are the people of northern New Jersey in danger?”
Tabitha gritted her teeth and climbed into the car in silence; the others
followed her lead. As they did, they saw him turn back to the camera: “There
you have it, Heather – the FBI refuses to deny that this killing spree is the
start of another 9/11. We can only pray that the death toll doesn’t escalate.
Enrico Savé, Channel 4 Eyewitness News.”
“How did he know your name?” Carlos asked as they
drove away. Tabitha just clenched her jaw. She didn’t know, but she had a
feeling this op was going to blow up on her big time.
“Hey! Stop the car! Pull in here!” Oliver barked
from the back seat. They’d barely gone a block, but he was pointing across the
street to their left. Tabitha pulled the car into a sharp left, cutting across
traffic into a strip mall. “I’ll be back in just a minute!” Oliver called, and
dashed into a store called ‘KVL Audio/Visual’. Five minutes later he came back
out with a small bag. “OK – let’s go see that police detective!” he said
happily as he removed his purchase – a blank SD card – from the bag.
The River Vale PD was a tiny operation: a
converted strip mall with an impound yard out back. There was a civilian on
duty at the front desk and he directed them to the ‘Detective Bureau’ – a group
of four desks pushed back-to-back. A stocky middle-aged woman in a brown
pantsuit sat at one of the desks with an open evidence box and a stack of
folders in front of her. She looked up in surprise as they approached, but
stood as soon as she recognized their FBI windbreakers. “Detective Short – how can
I help you?”
Oliver gave her his best smile. “Special Agent
Sid Smith – pleasure to meet you. We’re just making sure we’ve got all the
evidence we need, and we’re looking for the crime scene photos you folks took.”
“Oh sure, they’re right here somewhere – I just
logged them a few minutes ago.” Detective Short began rooting through the
evidence box, pulling out folders one by one. “Here it is!” She opened a folder
to reveal an evidence baggie containing an SD card.
“Fantastic!” Oliver said brightly. “Now if I
could just copy those files onto here.” He held up the thumb drive he’d gotten
from Felix.
Short’s face fell. “Um … well …” she was looking
around the small office. “It’s just that I’m not sure we’ve got a way to do
that here.” River Vale PD’s computers looked to be a bit long in the tooth;
Oliver wouldn’t be surprised to find out they were still running Windows 95.
“Let me see,” Oliver offered, holding out his
hand, and she passed him the baggie. He held it up to the light, pretending to
examine the card inside. “Yep – this is a Version 1. Should be something
in here that can read it.” He made a show of going around to each of the computers
in the room, examining the back of each tower case for a slot for the SD card.
As he ducked behind the desks to look at the back of the PCs, he deftly slipped
the SD card out of its bag and replaced it with the one he’d just purchased.
They were different brands, but he hoped Detective Short wouldn’t notice.
“Hmmm … I guess not,” he tried to sound
disappointed.
“I’m sorry. Our stuff here is just so old. I’m
sure I could call Cecil Osborne in the morning and he could get you a copy.”
“Cecil? Of course! You know what? Felix Harper is
going to be talking to Cecil tomorrow anyway – we’ll just get him to get them
for us! Don’t you worry about it – sorry to have wasted your time.” Oliver gave
her a wink, and was out the door.
All evidence of the numbers destroyed (they
hoped), the team made their way back to Manhattan. They’d already offered to
take care of searching Wei’s room and talking to NYPD about the murder weapon,
and Gant had readily agreed – it meant less paperwork authorizing travel for
his agents. They crossed the George Washington Bridge and made their way down
the Parkway to Columbia University.
Wei’s room was in John Jay Hall, a skyscraper
building on the Columbia campus that held both student housing and classroom
facilities. As they entered the lobby, an attractive woman in her mid-40s
leaped up from one of the sofas to greet them. “Sandy Beema, Columbia Public
Relations!” she chirped. She had well-coiffed medium-length blonde hair, and
was wearing a beige suit; Tabitha noted that her hair and makeup were perfect
and the suit unwrinkled, despite the late hour. “Agent Gant called to say you’d
be coming. Horrible business – not the image Columbia University wants the
public to hold at all. I’m happy to help in any way I can.”
“What can you tell us about Michael Wei?”
“Mr. Wei had been a graduate student here for two
years. He was working on his PhD in Mathematics, and had a full fellowship from
the Fu Foundation. His area of study was …” she referred to a note, “Mersenne primes,
whatever that is. I have no idea, but that’s what his thesis advisor, Professor
Baxter, told me. Dr. Baxter is currently in Madrid for a conference, but I
called him as soon as I heard the news. He’s equally horrified, and is willing
to speak with you by telephone if that would be helpful.”
“I see that the Fu Foundation is also in this
building,” Carlos said, pointing to a brass directory plate on the wall.
Sandy Beema nodded. “That’s right. Our entire Engineering
and Applied Mathematics departments are part of the Fu Foundation, thanks to a
very generous endowment from Mr. Fu.
“Did Michael Wei have an outside job, any close
friends?” Tabitha asked.
Sandy shook her head. “Not as far as I know. I
think he was the classic loner, kept to himself. No way the University could
have anticipated something like this.” Tabitha listed, but she knew that this
PR person wouldn’t have known Michael Wei if he’d pointed a shotgun at her –
she was spinning tales to protect her employer.
“Could you take us to his room, please?”
Sandy led them to the elevators and up to the
fourteenth floor. When they got off, it looked more like a hotel than a
university: rows of numbered doors evenly spaced down the hallway. One of the
doors stood out, due to the yellow police tape and the burly blue uniform
sitting on a folding chair outside it. He noted their names and badge numbers
on his clipboard, then sliced the tape and let them into the room.
Wei’s room was small, modest, and messy, with no
sign of any life outside of work: no posters, no stereo. Every surface was
covered with open textbooks and tablets of paper. The bed was nothing more than
a futon dropped in the middle of the room. A single rickety desk held a
nondescript gray tower computer and cheap monitor.
Oliver went straight for the computer while the
others began searching the room. They weren’t sure exactly what they were
looking for, other than possibly a 500-year old book, and the mathematical
scrawls on every sheet of paper might just as easily be a math grad student’s
homework as the result of a sinister unnatural force.
“I’m not really seeing anything in his file
system,” Oliver called over his shoulder. “He’s got a partially completed
thesis, but that file hasn’t been touched in over a week. Most of his files are
source code – some kind of mathematical algorithms. But there again, the last
file that was touched was three days ago, and that looks pretty benign.”
“How about email?” Carlos asked, coming to look
over Oliver’s shoulder. Oliver poked around for a bit. “Looks like he used
gmail – let me pull it up.” He clicked the mouse a few times. “Oh shit.”
Everyone gathered around. The last email Michael
Wei had sent had been at 6:41 AM this morning. It was addressed to mathgeeks@listbrain.com, and it contained the
complete solution to the Laqueus Equation, along with detailed instructions for
how to derive the solution.
“Goddamn it!” Tabitha hissed, starting to pace. “Who
did that email go to?”
“Hang on – I’m working on it.” Oliver was typing
madly. “Here we go. listbrain.com is a collection of online forums – looks like
its derived from the old Unix listserves.” He saw everyone’s blank looks. “Never
mind – ancient history. Anyway, you can post articles in the forums, but most
users just subscribe to email mailing lists. Let’s see if it says who … yes!
Here’s a list where all the subscribers identify themselves and give a short
description so the moderator can vet them.” He looked at the screen for a
moment and his shoulders sagged. “Oh my god,” he said quietly.
The mathgeeks mailing list would be considered
small by most standards – just ten subscribers plus the moderator. But they
were scattered all over the world, and each ranged from math enthusiast to
mathematics expert – and each had now potentially been infected by the Laqueus
Equation.
Tabitha had already keyed in the emergency email
to Agent Jennifer, and now she bounced nervously from foot to foot as she
waited for an answer. “Let me delete this email and we can get out of here,”
Oliver began.
“No!” came a chorus of replies. “We need to see
if there are any other emails, and try to figure out where the book is.” Carlos
explained.
Oliver turned back to the gmail window and almost
immediately hit another “Oh shit”. Michael Wei’s last received email came in at
2:23 PM on October 10 – two days ago. It was from fwei333@aol.com and read:
The
key is in the last line of the last page. I know you can figure this out,
Michael – I have faith in you!
“OK, so who is fwei333?” Seamus asked.
Oliver filtered Michael’s email to search for that user ID. He found sporadic
exchanges going back a couple of years. In them, Michael refered to fwei333 as “Uncle
Francis”. Most were simple exchanges of pleasantries – his Uncle’s
congratulations on being accepted into the Fu Foundation program, how-are-you
type messages, an invitation to spend Thanksgiving break with him, etc. However,
three weeks ago Michael sent this message:
Uncle
Francis – Thanks for the book! I can’t imagine where you found this, but it
looks interesting. I’ve never heard of Fascius Claudan – he’s not even in
Google. But it should be a fun read, and I’ll take a crack at that equation you
mentioned. Thanks again!
A week ago, there was another message from
Michael:
Uncle
Francis – I have to admit that I’ve become a little obsessed with that book you
sent me. Claudan seems to have been a total nutcase, but I think he might have
been a genius, too! The notation’s totally different, but I swear he discovered
Information Theory 400 years before Shannon. And if I read his stuff right (no
easy task!), he seems to claim you can compress information far beyond the
Shannon Limit. Totally impossible of course, but it’s got me thinking about what
might happen if you extended information theory to Calabi-Yau manifolds, but in
even more than six dimensions. I’m convinced it would let me compress my algorithms
for finding Mersenne primes by orders of magnitude! Too bad it’s all fantasy. I’ve
beat my head on that Laqueus Equation but no luck.
Sorry
– I know this is all greek to you, just like if you started spouting off lots
of bird stuff to me. I just wanted to thank you again for the cool book.
“OK, so this ‘Uncle Francis’ seems to have
been the source of the book,” Seamus stated, “but where the hell is it?” They’d
looked at every book on Wei’s bookshelf, but found nothing.
“Hang on – what’s that?” Tabitha spotted
something orange peeking out from under Wei’s futon. She lifted the bed, and
pulled out a bundle of photocopied pages, bound together by an orange binder
clip. The title page said it all:
‘Libri Plures Admiratio’
The Book of Many Wonders
by Fascius Claudan
The
book was heavily annotated in Wei’s handwriting. Most were numbers or
mathematical formulae; any words were barely legible, and even less coherent. The
deadly 16-digit number sequence covered the last page in a violent red scrawl;
it appeared that the marker used to scribble it broke during the writing.
There was a typewritten note on the front of the manuscript of the Book of Many Wonders, clipped onto it with the same binder clip: ‘‘Michael – I think you’ll enjoy this. I have a feeling you’re the person who’s destined to solve the Laqueus Equation inside! -- Uncle Francis’.
“OK. So this ‘Uncle
Francis’ is clearly the person who gave Michael the book. He must have the
original,” Tabitha said, pacing the floor.
“Or he could have gotten the photocopy from
someone else who has the original,” Oliver pointed out.
“Either way, we have to find him. Do we
have any idea where he lives?”
Oliver turned back to the computer. “Let me
check his contact list.” He tapped away. “OK – here he is: Francis Wei. Says he
lives at 37 Church Street, in …” his voice trailed off.
“Where?” Tabitha demanded.
“In Keene, New York,”
“Shit!”
Tabitha squeaked. There was a clear note of fear in her voice. Clyde Baughman’s
cabin had been outside Keene, New York. And the thing that had been his wife
had escaped into the mountains there.
Tabitha’s
phone suddenly chirped, and she answered it instantly. “We have a big problem,”
she said before Agent Jennifer could even speak, and told her about the email
to the mathgeeks alias.
“Shit!”
Jennifer responded, echoing the prevailing sentiment. “OK. Give me the names
and locations.” Tabitha read them off. “OK. Missori – we’ve got someone in St.
Louis. And Modesto we can handle. Billings will take a day or two.” She seemed
to be muttering to herself. “What about the other countries?” Tabitha asked. “Let
us worry about those.” Jennifer snapped. “There’s one in New York City – Tia Markell.
Your team will need to get over there and make sure she hasn’t read the email.”
“And
if she has?”
“Terminate.”
Agent Jennifer hung up.
“What
do you make of this?” Carlos asked as Tabitha spoke on the phone. He showed
Seamus a tablet covered with mathematical scrawls. Seamus raised one eyebrow. “You’re
asking me?”
“No,
I know – none of us understand this math. But this one has three numbers
circled – none of the other pages have circled numbers. And they’re circled in
red marker, like the one he wrote the numbers in on the last page.”
“Well
I don’t know anything about math, but that’s today’s date.” Seamus pointed to ’10.12’.
“And those,” he pointed to the long decimal numbers, “have got to be longitude
and latitude – GPS coordinates.” Seamus had seen plenty of those in the Corps. Carlos sat down in front of the computer and
plugged the numbers into Google maps. An overhead view of the Manhattan street
grid appeared, with a flag for the location specified by the coordinates. “Holy
crap – that’s only a few blocks from here!” He spun the mouse wheel to zoom in,
then pushed his chair back. “Shit! It’s the 24th Precinct!”
While
everyone else was occupied, Oliver was leafing through the manuscript of the
Book of Wonders. He couldn’t make heads or tails of Michael Wei’s math or
notes, but one sequence of 3-digit numbers caught his eye.
072 101 108 108 111
079 108 105 118 101 114
Something about them was familiar, all in a limited
range of values. Suddenly he snapped his fingers. “Let’s see – ‘A’ is hex 40 –
that’s 64, so 72 would be … ‘H’. Then … ‘e’. Next … ‘l’, and another ‘l’. Hey
guys!” he called out. “I think this is ASCII text. It spells …” His face went
white and he sat down heavily on the futon. The others gathered around.
“What’s it say?” Asked Tabitha.
“It says … ‘Hello Oliver’,” he whispered.
“No way!” Seamus exclaimed. “How could he have
known you’d be here? How did he even know you exist?”
Oliver was still staring at the page. He reached
out a trembling finger and tapped another number: 4121982. “That’s my
birthdate,” he whispered.
Seamus pointed to another pair of numbers on the
same page. “Those are more GPS coordinates – almost the same as the others, but
not quite." He sat down in front of the computer and typed them in. “It’s across
town, lower east side.”
“Do you think it’s another target?” Tabitha asked.
“No,” Oliver said shakily. “It’s my apartment
building.”