“They don’t spell words,” she said.“They map.Stylized numbers.Coordinates.He’s pointing at positions in a text using a dead language like a priest with a laser pointer.”
“A book code,” he said.Not a question.
“A book code.”She rubbed the back of her neck where the headache was learning to live.“Which means both sender and receiver have to be holding the same book.Page-line-word.Old-school spycraft.He picked something I don’t have.”She let the frustration breathe once.“I tried half a dozen Bibles.King James, NIV, the NJPS Tanakh, Jerusalem Bible, American Standard.Nothing aligned.”
Marcus’s mouth tipped in a wince.“He wouldn’t give you a key and no door.”
“He’d give me a door and brick it up,” she said.“But he also enjoys a reveal.”She looked at him.“You came in like you forgot something.”
He shifted, sheepish.“I did.Twice.”He stood, crossed to the credenza where a small heap of interoffice envelopes had accumulated like driftwood, and picked up one the color of old manila with her name in Bureau type.A corner was crumpled, a crease turning the flap into a tired smile.“This arrived in the precinct mail.I meant to hand it to you an hour ago, then...you know…”
Kate held the envelope, weighing it.It had that book heft; the way glue and cheap laminate made a scent of their own.She slit it with the edge of her ID.Cardboard fibers gave with a papery sigh.
“What is it?”Marcus craned.
She slid the book out and had to bite down on a laugh that wasn’t humor.“Of course,” she said.“He’s not even subtle.”
Dark-blue cover.The eagle in its circle.HANDBOOK FOR NEWLY APPOINTED SPECIAL AGENTS.
“Such a snappy title,” Kate said.
“The Feds’ Bible,” Marcus added, grinning despite himself.“I thought they killed that ten years ago.”
“They tried,” Kate said.“There was uproar.Tradition is a narcotic.”She laid it on the table, its spine refusing to lie flat, and flipped past the Director’s foreword, past the anodyne history to the meat: field offices, chain-of-command diagrams, dire admonitions about interagency communication.“If he wants page-line-word, this is a safe bet.He’s ensuring we’re reading from the same altar.”
“Give me the numbers,” Marcus said, pulling his chair alongside hers, shoulders almost touching.He had the steadiness of a wall.
Kate glanced at her notebook.“Triplets.First set resolves into four triplets, which should produce a phrase.I checked the character shapes against transliteration passes last night.We’re at page ninety-six, line seven, word four.”She counted—lips moving silently, finger tracking.“THE.”
Second: page 173, line nine, word two.She found it.“MASTER.”
A small throb in her throat.She kept going.Page thirty-nine, line twelve, word eight.“REARS.”
Page two hundred and one, line six, word three.“THE.”
Page 112, line three, word nine.“SPOTTED.”
Page 252, line eleven, word one.“CALF.”
Marcus whispered it, as if saying it too loudly might make it truer.“THE MASTER REARS THE SPOTTED CALF.”
Kate sat back.The fluorescent light put a ring of white on the plastic sleeve.You could call it an update to Denton’s nickname, to Gadd’s whackjob journal.But updates generally meant something.And maybe this meant nothing; maybe it was just more of Cox’s taunting, more of him saying, ‘You don’t know how much I know.’But what if it meant more than that?
“The calf is me,” she said, trying to sound matter-of-fact.“Remember Denton?”
“Sure,” Marcus said, cautiously.
“He called me that.The spotted calf.I think Cox is referencing that.I’m okay, Marcus,” she added.
“You’re sure?”
She capped her pen so she wouldn’t snap it.At some point, she’d have to tell him about Gadd’s journal.But not yet.This felt more urgent.Or maybe she just didn’t want to go there, when she understood so little herself.“I’m sure.On to the second set.”
He exhaled, nodding.“Hit me.”
This time, the results were stranger. A pair of numbers, 96 and 224.And a woman’s name: the editor of the manual, thanked profusely, at least by Bureau standards, in the handbook’s foreword.Jeanette.
“Two-twenty-four,” Marcus mused.“February 24th.That’s today.”
