HELP
“I’ll be damned,” he said in a hushed voice. “It worked.”
He carefully read the rest of his list. Sam completed the message. No one else spoke until he was done. She wordlessly handed over the sheet, her eyes huge and filled with tears.
Hayden read the message, then sighed deeply. He gave it to Simon, then stood up and turned away, so he wouldn’t have to watch the younger man read it.
HELP ME
HELD CAPTIVE IN ANTARCTICA
TALK TO LEON. HE WILL KNOW
Simon put his hand to his forehead, as if his mind was moving in too many directions at once.
“This is crazy,” Hayden said into the silence. “He must have played each of these games in reverse, starting with where he had to have the king end up.” Simon ran both hands through his hair and pressed his skull between them. Why Dad? he asked himself. Why did he have to go to such incredible lengths to send me a message? And even now: no one but me would know what he meant by “Talk to Leon.” He’s still being careful, even in his code-within-a-code message. He looked at Andrew and Ryan; they were both speechless as he handed the message to them, so they could read it for themselves.
“Ryan?” He said as they finished. “I need a glass of scotch.”
Samantha’s eyes were filled with tears. “Simon,” she said, almost whispering. “I am so sorry.” She closed her eyes.
Simon stood up and gave her a warm embrace. “It’s okay. I’m going to find him.” He looked up at all the friends and allies around the room. “We are going to find him.” He squeezed her between his arms and closed his own eyes.
Ryan handed him a glass with three fingers of decent scotch in it. As he raised it to his lips, the sliding doors rolled open and Sabrina revealed herself.
“Ryan?” she said. “Is everything all right?”
The group exchanged guilty looks. “Fine, darling,” Ryan said, trying to keep it light. “In fact…I think we’re about to break it up for tonight.”
The others looked at each other and nodded, stunned and mute. Sabrina smiled at all of them. “Is there anything I can get for you before you go?” she said.
Samantha cleared her throat. “Yes, please,” she said politely. “I could do with a glass of water, if it’s not too much trouble.”
Sabrina offered her a very thin smile. “Not at all,” she said, and retreated to the kitchen.
Andrew took advantage of the moment. He opened his briefcase and passed out the secure phones he had created, one to each of them. “Talk only to each other with these,” he said. “And don’t even mention the plan in any other way-not now. Clear?”
They all agreed.
“Things are happening very fast,” Simon said. “I’ll talk to you all tomorrow, but please, if I call and say, ‘it’s time,’ be ready!”
There was a strange, sweet electricity in the air between them: anticipation, dread, boldness, fear. Sabrina returned with a glass filled with water. Samantha took it with murmured thanks and drank a fraction.
“Ah,” she said. “Much better.”
“We’re off then,” Simon announced, slightly uncomfortable under the withering gaze of Ryan’s fiancee.
Samantha offered her hand to Sabrina. “You’ve been a gracious host, thank you.”
The grip was very polite and very brief. “Of course,” Sabrina said.
Those women just don’t like each other, Simon observed as he gathered everything and put on his coat.
Simon watched them file down the hall and make brief goodbyes to their hosts. As they left, he thought briefly of the list he had made. It was complete now, one way or another. He had talked with everyone he wanted to. Though how he would proceed without Max on board, he still wasn’t sure.
I’ll work it out somehow, he told himself. I’ll have no choice.
OXFORD, ENGLAND
Ryan's Estate
Simon and the others stood in the oval driveway for a while. He was unsurprised to see a shiny, sleek black hybrid roadster-a car worth more than his annual salary at Oxford-parked behind Andrew’s boxy Range Rover. “Yours?” he asked Jonathan.
Jonathan shrugged and gave him a smile that was almost embarrassed. “Rented. To a guy you’ve never heard of, far as I know.”
Simon let it pass; he shook Ryan’s hand and bid him good night as he packed Andrew, Samantha, and Hayden into the Range Rover. “Just drop everyone off, please,” he told Andrew. “I’m going to stay and talk with Jonathan a bit; I’m sure he’ll get me home.”
The others had little to say; it had been far too eventful an evening.
“Tomorrow,” Simon told them. “We’ll pick it up tomorrow.”
After the Range Rover’s taillights flared one last time and disappeared beyond the gate, Simon and Jonathan sat side-by-side in his car and talked. Every twenty minutes or so for the first hour, Ryan or Sabrina would peek through the front window, checking to see if they were still there. After about ninety minutes, they stopped checking and simply went to bed.
“Have you contacted Max?” Jonathan asked.
Simon shrugged. It was an obvious question. He told Jonathan about the conversation he’d had with his old friend, and how disappointing it had been.
“You might want to try again,” Jonathan suggested. “Who knows, he might have changed his mind.”
Simon thought about it for a moment and then agreed. “No harm in trying,” he said. He picked up the secure phone that Andrew had given him and dialed Max’s number from memory.
Much to his surprise, he heard a pre-recorded voicemail message meant especially for him, rather than Max himself, live and in person. It was his friend’s voice-that much was clear-but the words made no sense at all.
“Hey buddy,” Max’s voice told him. “I know that you’re thinking about that vacation you were talking about, but I talked to the other guys and none of them can make it. I’ll catch up with you later. Give Jake my love.” The disconnection was a loud pop in his ear.
Simon stared at Jonathan with frank and obvious confusion. “What the hell is wrong with that guy?” he said. “What vacation? Besides, Max never mentions Jake in his phone calls. And he would never say ‘give my love to Jake,’ even if that’s what he wanted to say.” Something was very wrong here. He just had no idea what it was.
“Never mind,” Jonathan said. “We’ll just have to do this without him.”
They sat in the car for almost three hours, talking through the plan. The eastern sky was turning chalky with dawn when Jonathan finally started the nearly silent engine and drove Simon back to his flat.
Neither of them knew that the clock was already ticking, and that everything was about to change.
THE REPUBLIC OF MALTA
Before Dawn
The air traffic controller assigned to the night shift at one of Malta’s more modest airfields didn’t really know what to make of it. He rarely had more than a flight or two a day; sometimes days would go by when no planes of any size arrived at all. But today-in the last nine hours-he had barely had time to sit down.
The last arrival had been a small private jet. It had given him call signs, but he knew they were counterfeit; they were unlike any he’d ever encountered before. He watched with his binoculars as a single, stunningly beautiful passenger with jet black hair and striking blue eyes exited the aircraft and left the tarmac in a black limousine that had already been waiting. The one lone crewmember that had stayed behind didn’t even bother to visit the tower or file a flight plan for departure.
The controller didn’t like it-not one bit. But nobody asked him to. One thing he knew for sure: no one wanted to answer any questions, so he wasn’t about to ask any.
* * *
The woman who had arrived on that private jet knew exactly where she was going. She had instructions, and she would follow them exactly, as always.