The next morning, after writing his report, Ferreira collected his two guests and took them into the city, to the central station.
Janet took in the attractive architecture, eyeing the statue above the main entrance. ‘That is Saint Sabastian, Señora. One of our sixteenth-century kings,’ Ferreira informed her. Inside the station, they walked along the concourse, across to the barrage of lockers situated on the far side. Ferreira took from his pocket the key retrieved from the assassin’s handbag and reminded himself of the number.
Swan also noted it, quickly pointing to locker number seventeen. Ferreira inserted the key into the lock.
The door open, Swan was the first to gaze inside the locker and inspect the contents. Pulling out a collection of passports neatly bound with a rubber band, he handed them to Ferreira to peruse, while he continued inside the locker, placing his fingers on a black notebook. He showed it to the others and then flicked through it.
Scrutinising the list of names written on the pages, he paused, as one name caught his immediate attention. ‘Well, well, Eltan Babak, I wonder what you are doing in here.’
Ferreira looked over at him. ‘You know this man, Alex?’
Swan nodded. ‘Oh yes, Carlos. Very much so. An old adversary, as a matter of fact. He’s a Turkish arms dealer, or rather, I should say, a retired arms dealer. Now owns a nightclub in Knightsbridge.’
‘Knightsbridge, Harrods? Estella wants to go there when we visit London.’
‘That’s right, Carlos, not too far from there. I think I will be paying our Mr Babak a long overdue visit when I get back home.’
Janet peered over her husband’s shoulder. ‘Just a minute. May I see that notebook?’
Swan handed it to her and watched his wife curiously as she examined both the cover and the pages.
‘Carlos, can we keep this for the evening?’ Janet asked.
The inspector said, ‘Of course, Señora. You think that it may be some clue?’
Janet looked at her husband. ‘We also need to go to a radio shop.’
Swan was puzzled. ‘Why on earth do we need to do that?’
Janet replied. ‘Because I think Carlos may be right — we may indeed have a clue.’
Chapter 16
Later in the hotel room, Swan came out of the shower and sat on the bed next to his wife, who was busy unpacking the radio from the box. ‘So, what is this all about?’ Swan asked, intrigued, as he dried his hair with a towel.
Janet ignored him. Instead, she continued taking off the battery cover and attaching the contacts to the terminals of a small nine volt battery. She put down the radio and picked up the notebook. ‘This looks like a standard issue MI6 notebook, Alex, and if I’m right, inside the spine should be a tube containing a one-time pad.’
Swan did a double-take. He was already familiar with one-time pads, having come across many in his current position and also before, at MI5. ‘Are you telling me the Praying Mantis was working for MI6?’
Janet nodded. ‘She could well have been, Alex.’
Swan watched as his wife held the notebook with two hands and shook it. After a few shakes, a metal cylinder dropped out onto the bed.
‘Dear God!’ His mind began to race, thinking how MI6 could be involved in all this. He looked on as Janet carefully took the rolled-up piece of paper from the tube and unrolled it.
Janet pointed out the typed features:
59833632110760299431
68374506458706544115
67480542201608408714
77923740200064872967
79553877498122021006
6+12–10+2-4-6+8+4–2+5
56097897256813670881
Taking a pen, she pointed to each set of numbers. ‘The first set is the number station and interval signal ID. Look where the zero begins and where it ends. In between, is the code 076. This is the identifier for the number station transmitting the broadcast.’
She then moved along the line to where another zero preceded the numbers 299. ‘If I remember rightly, this is the interval signal identifier. Which happens to be one called “The Lincolnshire Poacher”’
Swan interrupted. ‘As in the old English folk tune?’
Janet listened as Swan whistled it to her, then gave her husband a confirmatory nod.
Swan continued. ‘Before she died, Menendez, said the word ‘cacador’. Carlos said this translates as poacher. I thought she had meant this as an insult to me, but I’m now thinking she was trying to tell me something, about who it was who hired her. She also said our government was behind the assassination of Jeremy Danvers.’
He allowed his wife to continue.
‘Okay, same method again, you see, the zeros separate 64587, this will be the user identifier for the message. This will be how it starts after the musical interval signal.’
‘So, is there a time for this broadcast?’
‘That’s this line. Can you work it out now? Think about the position of the zeros.’
Swan looked along the row of numbers. ‘02:00 hours?’
‘Janet smiled. ‘Well done. That will be when the tune starts, which will then run on a loop for ten minutes.’
Swan looked at the row beneath. ‘Here, 02.10, the time the message is broadcast.’
Janet was confident her husband was beginning to understand how the one-time pad worked. ‘That’s it. So all we have to do now, is wait for the message.’ She looked at her watch, then looked at Swan thoughtfully and placed the radio and notebook on the side table. ‘We have three and a half hours to kill, and seeing you are all nice and clean following your escapade with a deadly assassin, I know exactly how we could kill some of that time…’
It was a few minutes after two in the morning, when Janet took the radio from the table. Referring back to the one-time pad, she worked out the frequency range from the third row of numbers.
Swan watched, as she carefully moved the dial until the familiar eighteenth-century tune played out. ‘My God, there it is!’
They listened to it in silence for the next six minutes, then suddenly the tune ceased and was replaced by a female voice, reciting the hidden numbers found within the second row: ‘0-6-4-5-8-7,’ — the user identifier.
As the voice repeated these numbers, something about it had caught Swan’s attention. He listened on, to confirm what he had discovered.
Suddenly, in sheer disbelief, he turned his head to his wife. He had suddenly recognised the voice.
It was hers!
Janet smiled. ‘I was saving the best for this moment. Yes, that’s me, Alex. I will explain later after we have the message.’
A few minutes later, a bleep sounded out, followed by Janet Swan’s disembodied voice again, as it began a new set of numbers. As they were called, she wrote them down on a hotel notepad, instantly noticing they were running identical to those on the notepad found in the locker.
Janet continued until another bleep was heard, and the numbers changed, with the first being a zero. She indicated they would be for a different covert operative. After hearing the numbers 0113, she switched off the radio and held up both pads. ‘They’re exactly the same, Alex.’
Swan agreed. ‘Okay, so how come you know all this stuff?’
Janet spent the next fifteen minutes explaining how the use of one-time pads had been part of her field training at MI6. She had been asked to help with voicing the numbers for a new number station. The number stations had been set up to communicate with agents in the field, and the one that she had worked on, had happened to be called ‘The Lincolnshire Poacher’.