Lazenby met his old student for a drink at the Mitre. Philpott had urgently requested the meeting either at the institute or in London. Lazenby had no intention of running up to London and didn’t want him at the institute. The Mitre was a much more discreet venue — few tourists yet on the scene and all the students away. They sat quietly in a corner while Philpott produced, one after the other, various papers from his briefcase.
One was a photo of the envelope and the bits of cigarette paper; another an enlargement of the address; and some others showed treatments that had been applied.
‘The envelope and the sticky tape are Swedish,’ he said, ‘but the ballpoint isn’t. The cigarette papers are Russian. We believe a sailor posted them. We believe he was given the cigarettes and told to slit them and remove the tobacco, and then put the papers in an envelope and send them off. The address was written on this third paper. It was in faint pencil and you probably didn’t notice.’
‘I didn’t,’ Lazenby admitted.
‘Well, it was there. The pencil lead is Russian, too. What probably happened is that something was inscribed on one layer of paper in order to impress it on another underneath. The ones underneath were wrapped as cigarettes and given to the sailor — presumptive sailor — together with this other for the address. This one he had to tape to the envelope and then trace over the pencil with ballpoint.’
’Well now. Very clever.’
‘Yes. This is what came off the cigarette papers.’
Lazenby looked at the enlargement. The indentations had been enhanced in some way and revealed a string of figures:
18 05 22 (01 18 01–05)04 05 21 (31 27 12–15)10 05 18 (46 10 49–52)16 19 01 (18 11 13–14)
There were several lines more.
‘What is it?’ he said.
‘You’ll see it breaks into segments, each starting with a group of three numbers. Forget the bits in brackets. The first lot is eighteen, five, twenty-two; then four, five, twenty-one; and ten, five, eighteen … It’s alphabetic code, English alphabet — that is, one stands for A, two for B. You’ll see how it works out.’
Lazenby tried for a minute and got lost.
‘The first group is R-E-V,’ Philpott said, ‘the second J-E-R, the third D-E-U, and so on. They’re books of the Bible. The bracketed groups give chapter and verse, and the hyphenated portions identify the words required. Here it is.’
Lazenby looked at a new sheet.
I am he that liveth/ I am yet alive/
in the north country/ in dark waters/ in
the waste howling wilderness/ Wherefore
do you not answer me?/ Behold new things
do I declare/ The eyes of all/ shall be
opened/ Send me therefore the man/
understanding science/ of every living
thing/ Let me hear thy voice concerning
this matter/ the first day at midnight/
Voice of America.
‘The Voice of America is in the Bible?’ Lazenby said, bemused.
‘Well, no it isn’t,’ Philpott confessed. ‘That group just came out as VOA and there was no book for it. It is quite plain in context, though.’
‘Ah. The same with science, is it?’
‘Science? No, that’s the Book of Daniel.’ Philpott consulted another sheet. ‘Yes, Daniel one, verse four.’
‘Good.’ Lazenby finished his drink. ‘That is a very good thing to know,’ he said.
‘Have you any idea what this is about, Prof?’
‘None at all. Tell me yours.’
‘Well.’ Philpott frowned. ‘We believe it’s from a Russian scientist, a biologist, someone in a life science, anyway. He evidently knows you, or of you. He has tried to reach you before. He’s come up with something he thinks a lot of. He wants you to let him know if you got it and understood it. He can get the Voice of America. That, more or less, is what we consider it means.’
Lazenby thought about this.
‘Have you considered the man might be a nut?’ he said.
‘He’s gone to rather a lot of trouble, Prof.’
‘Nuts do go to a lot of trouble.’
‘Quite. This one would be a Jewish nut, incidentally, or one of Jewish extraction.’
‘Because of the Bible?’
‘Because of his thumbs. He left two good prints on each of the papers.’
‘You can tell a Jew by his thumbs?’ Lazenby said, staring.
‘There is apparently something called a Jewish whorl. The Israelis are expert at it. Yes, Department of Criminology,’ Philpott said, checking. ‘Tel Aviv. Rather keen on spotting a Jew from an Arab out there. Genetically it’s a dominant, so even with a racial mix it tends to come through. The interest here being — you’ll see he seems to be stressing that he’s alive, as if you might suppose he isn’t. What we’re hoping is that you might recall a Jewish biologist who has dropped out of sight for some years. We think he has met you. He’s certainly addressing you very directly as if he thinks you will know him. Which would mean he’s travelled abroad to conferences and so forth, since you never yourself visited the old Soviet Union.’
Lazenby tried to think when he had told Philpott that he had never visited the old Soviet Union. He decided he had never told him this.
‘I’ll think about it,’ he said.
‘We’d be very grateful. Some preliminary work has been done, actually. I wonder what you know about these people.’ He handed over a list.
There were ten or so names on it, all distantly familiar to Lazenby; all in biological sciences.
‘A thing I know about Stolnik,’ he said, perusing it, ‘is that he’s dead. Some years ago, I believe.’
‘Yes. We have the obituaries. I shouldn’t worry too much about that. If the chap has had to go out of sight.’
‘Ah … Well, it’s all a long time ago, of course,’ Lazenby said. It was a very long time. He had thought most of the men on the list were dead. One of them had certainly had a serious motor accident. ‘I expect I met them all.’
‘Might they appear in your diaries?’
‘I don’t keep diaries.’
‘Miss Sonntag’s, perhaps — appointments diaries?’
‘When from?’
‘Upwards of five years? Maybe ten.’
‘Highly unlikely. What would you expect to find there, anyway?’
‘Meetings. Which we might be able to reconstruct. Perhaps some mention of the other chap.’
‘Which other chap?’
‘He wants you to send him one.’ Philpott found the place for him. ‘“Send me therefore the man understanding science — of every living thing” … Another drink, Prof?’
‘All right, very small. With a great deal of soda.’
Philpott got the drinks. ‘The feeling is,’ he said, settling himself, ‘that it must be some particular chap. Whom you have jointly met, or discussed. Feasible?’
‘Yes. I suppose it is.’
‘Might there be anything in your correspondence?’
‘In ten years of letters —’
‘Well, we could help there, of course,’ Philpott said.
Lazenby drank a little, musing.
Philpott, although not a big brain at science, had never struck him as a total idiot. It must surely be obvious to him that a prankster was at work here.
‘Philpott,’ he said, ‘why do you suppose anyone should choose to write to me on cigarette papers?’
‘As the only choice — if it was — it isn’t such a bad one. An advantage of a cigarette is that, if apprehended, you can smoke it.’
‘Yes. Why bother writing in code on it, then?’
‘In case you are apprehended, and can’t smoke it.’