Simple Genius (29 page)

THE SUN WAS STARTING TO RISE as Sean and Michelle walked over to see Horatio in his room at the mansion. They checked in with the dour guard at the front security desk and then headed upstairs.

Sean had called ahead and Horatio opened the door immediately. The psychologist was fully dressed although he hadn’t bothered to put his hair in its customary ponytail with the result that it was curled upward like a wave about to crash on the beach.

He started to say something.

“Not here,” Sean said. “Let’s take a ride.”

Twenty minutes later they were standing next to Michelle’s truck where it was parked under some trees near the banks of the York. The sunlight crept across the surface of the water as Sean and Michelle watched Horatio study the letter and the photo.

“Okay, the return address on the letter is Wiesbaden, Germany. Thankfully it’s in English although the physical writing is that of a very old person whose first language is not English. And it’s addressed to Monk Turing from . . .” Horatio squinted at the signature and adjusted the reading glasses he was wearing.

“Henry Fox,” Michelle said helpfully.

Sean explained, “Basically Fox is thanking Monk for helping him get back home to Germany.”

Horatio looked at the top of the letter.
“Dated nearly a year ago.
So
before
Monk went to England and Germany.”

“At least the
last
time he went. Now check out the last two lines of the letter,” Sean said.

Horatio read, “‘Now that you’ve helped me, I will, as agreed, return the favor. I have it. And it is yours when you come for a visit.’” Horatio looked up. “So Fox had something he wanted to give to Monk Turing in return for him helping Fox get back home?”

“Looks that way,” Michelle said. “And Monk went to Germany to get it. And on the same trip he went for a jaunt through his family history with Alan Turing in England.”

“So what did Monk get from Fox?”

“We don’t know that yet,” Michelle admitted.

Horatio said, “So Monk helped Fox back to his homeland, but Henry Fox doesn’t sound like a German name.”

“I have a theory about that,” Sean said mysteriously. “But I have to wait for confirmation.” He picked up the photograph. It showed three people sitting on steps in front of a large building. One person was Monk Turing; a younger Viggie was sitting next to him. The third person was a smallish, very elderly man with a white beard and shrewd, blue eyes. There was a date at the bottom of the picture.

“This was taken over three years ago,” Michelle said. “Viggie told me that she and her father lived in an apartment in New York City then. She said they had no friends except for a very old man who talked to her father about old stuff. She also said he talked funny.”

“Probably meaning with an accent, a German accent,” Sean filled in.

“So presumably the old guy in the photo is Henry Fox?”

“Right,” Sean said. “This explains a lot but it doesn’t tell us what Fox gave Monk.”

“Viggie said that the old man would write letters down on a piece of paper and challenge Monk Turing to, I guess, decipher them,” Michelle added.

Horatio broke in. “Wait a minute. South Freeman said that one reason the military was keeping the presence of those German prisoners secret is because some of them might have had knowledge of the Enigma code. I did a little history reading after I talked with South. Each of the German military branches had different networks of the Enigma they used. The naval code was thought to be the toughest of all. The folks at Bletchley Park, Alan Turing included, couldn’t make a dent in it. And the Germans and their U-boats were murdering the Allies in the Battle of the Atlantic. That is until some German naval codebooks were successfully obtained by the Allies. With that information the folks at Bletchley Park worked their magic and the tide began to turn.”

“How does that help us?” Michelle asked.

“South also told me that the war in the Atlantic began to turn in favor of the Allies
after
those German POWs were taken to Camp Peary.
And those POWs came from boats and subs that had been sunk. That means the POWs at Camp Peary could’ve had German naval Enigma codebooks and other intelligence the Allies could use.”

“So you’re thinking that this Henry Fox might have been one of the POWs?” Michelle said slowly.

“He’s the right age, speaks with presumably a German accent, writes codes down on a piece of paper and talks about the war. Yeah, I think the probability lies in that direction.”

Sean said, “And that’s why I wanted to talk to you. Because we need to find out what Fox gave Monk Turing, the thing that’s referenced in the letter.”

Horatio looked puzzled. “Me? How should I know what Fox gave him?”

“Viggie slipped this letter and photo to Michelle while she was sleeping. I think she did it because she trusts Michelle.”

“Okay, but where do I come in?”

“Might Turing have left all these clues with his daughter and told her to only give them out to someone she comes to trust?”

Horatio nodded. “That’s entirely plausible. Viggie is highly intelligent, but quite capable of being manipulated. She’ll sometimes give you whatever
answer
you put in her head. I saw that quite clearly in my talk with her.”

“But Michelle spoke to Viggie after she gave her these items and the girl just clammed up. She wouldn’t even acknowledge that she’d given Michelle anything. Why would she do that?”

Horatio didn’t speak for a bit. When he did his words came slowly. “As funny as it sounds, I believe that Monk Turing hasn’t simply manipulated his daughter but
programmed
her.”

“Programmed her?” Michelle exclaimed.

“I’d suspected this before, but what you’re saying now makes me think I’m closer to the truth than not. I think that brilliant father gave brilliant but naive daughter information, and he trained her to release that information only under certain circumstances. Viggie played the song for Michelle because she was nice to her and Viggie felt she could trust her. Then Michelle risked her life to save Viggie, so Viggie went a step further and gave her more information.” Horatio looked at her. “It’s curious though that she would give you this after what happened with the truck.”

“Truck, what are you talking about?” Sean asked.

“Viggie and I worked it out,” Michelle said hastily, averting her gaze from Sean’s questioning look. She plunged on. “I doubt I’ll be saving her life again, at least I hope I won’t have to. So what else do I have to do to get her to give up the rest?”

“I don’t know the answer to that.”

Sean mulled this over. “So we’re at a dead end for now, until Joan comes through, or Alicia decrypts that song.” He put the articles away in his pocket, stretched and yawned. “Well, since we’re up early we might as well go eat.”

Michelle checked her watch. “Let’s make it quick. Champ is picking me up at nine for our flight.”

“You’re still going?” Sean said harshly.

“I’m still going.”

“But he doesn’t have an alibi for the time Rivest was killed.”

“I doubt we’re going to get any good information from innocent people. So it makes far more sense to go after the ones we think might be guilty.”

“My gut tells me to leave this guy alone.”

“Yeah,” Michelle said. “Well, my
brain
tells me we can’t afford to do that.”

Horatio glanced over at Sean. “Your turn unless you want to concede to the lady.”

“Shut the hell up,” Sean snapped as he climbed in the truck.

Horatio turned to Michelle. “Geez, could the guy be any more obvious?”

“More obvious?” she said, puzzled.

Horatio rolled his eyes, sighed deeply and got in the truck.

HORATIO CALLED SOUTH FREEMAN later that morning for two reasons. First, to see if the man had a list of any of the German POWs held at Camp Peary during World War II.

The man laughed out loud. “Oh, yeah, I got that right here on my desk. Pentagon wouldn’t give it to me so I strolled on over to the CIA and the spooks printed me out a nice clean copy and then asked me what other secret shit I’d like to get my hands on.”

“I’ll take that as a
hell no,
” Horatio said. Then he asked Freeman whether he knew any people with newspapers in Tennessee around the area where Michelle grew up. On this query Horatio struck gold.

“Man named Toby Rucker runs a weekly in a little place an hour south of Nashville.” When he named the town, Horatio almost jumped out of his chair. It was the very place where Michelle had lived.

“What do you want to know for?” Freeman asked.

“I’ve got some questions about the disappearance of someone down there, say nearly thirty years ago.”

“Well Toby’s been there over forty years, so if it made the paper he’ll know about it.” Freeman gave Horatio the number and added, “I’ll call him right now and tell him you’ll be in contact.”

“I appreciate it, South, I really do.”

“You better. And don’t you forget our deal. Exclusive! Or I strangle you.”

“Right.”
Horatio hung up, waited twenty minutes and called the number.

A man identifying himself as Toby Rucker answered on the second ring. South Freeman had just gotten off the phone with him, Rucker said. Horatio relayed his request and Rucker agreed to see what he could find out.

As Horatio clicked off his phone, there was a sound from overhead. He poked his head out the bedroom window. It was a chopper buzzing over Babbage Town. As it sped away Horatio thought about Michelle thousands of feet up in the air with a man Sean King clearly didn’t trust. So clearly in fact that he’d asked a special favor of Horatio that the man had granted.

“Come back in one piece, Michelle,” he muttered under his breath. “We still have a lot to talk about.”

The takeoff had been clean and smooth. The Cessna Grand Caravan was very roomy and luxurious, with a single aisle, seating fourteen counting pilot and co-pilot. It also had every navigation and communication bell and whistle, Champ had assured her.

“You take many people up?”

“I’m a solo kind of guy.” He hastily added, “It’s just that I like to think up here.”

She looked back at all the seats. “Seems like kind of a waste then, all this room.”

“Who knows, if things go really well, I could buy my own jet.”

“You don’t really strike me as all that materialistic.”

He shrugged. “I’m not really. I went into science because I liked figuring out things. But it gets complicated, and I’m not referring to the science.” He fell silent.

“Come on, Champ, talk to me.”

He stared out the window of the plane. “Quantum computers have enormous potential to do
good
in the world and bad.”

She said, “I’m sure the guy who invented the atom bomb had the same concerns.”

Champ shuddered. “Can we please change the subject?”

“Okay, show me what this little old plane can do.”

He put the plane into a steep climb, something it handled easily. Next he guided the Cessna through controlled dives, cutting tight banks and even doing a rollover. None of it bothered Michelle; she’d ridden in just about anything with two wings in some of the roughest conditions possible.

He pointed out the window.
“The infamous Camp Peary.
This is about the closest we can get without being shot down.”

“Can we at least go a little lower?”

He eased them down to two thousand feet and circled back around. Michelle kept her eyes on the topography, taking in every detail she could. “So you can’t get any closer?”

“Depends on how risk-averse you are.”

“Not very.
I take it you are.”

“Funny, not since I met you.”

He moved the flight wheel to the left and reduced their airspeed. The plane flew along on a straight line basically following the contours of the York River.

“This is really as close as we can get without having a missile up our butt,” he said.

Michelle could see the boat dock that Ian Whitfield had presumably used to launch his RIB. Next to that appeared to be the bunkers that Sean had shown her from the satellite map. From the air they looked like a series of concrete boxes lined up side by side. To the north of that was the inlet from the York that seemed to bisect Camp Peary.
And farther north of that she saw the massive runway.
Her gaze next ran across the old neighborhoods South Freeman had described, then an old brick home, and a small pond. And south of Camp Peary
was
the Naval Supply Center and the Weapons Station.

“The feds have this area pretty well locked up,” she said.

“Yes they do.” He banked to the right, flew east over the York, staying at two thousand feet and passed over some of the most picturesque country Michelle had ever seen.

“It is beautiful.”

“Yes, it is,” Champ said, staring at her. Then he looked abruptly away.

“Come on, Champ, it’s the girl who’s supposed to blush.”

He looked out the window. “I took Monk up once.”

“Really?
Did he want to see anything in particular?”

“Not really.
Although he did want to fly pretty low over the river.”

Michelle thought,
So
he could do a recon on Camp Peary.
Just like I am
.

“Um, would you like to take the controls?”

She took the wheel in front of her and eased it to the left.
And then to the right.
“Can we climb a bit?”

“You can go up to eight thousand. Just take it slow and easy.” She edged the nose of the plane up and leveled off at eight thousand feet.

She said, “How about a controlled dive? Like you did?”

He stared at her a bit nervously. “Oh? Sure, okay.”

She eased the wheel forward and the plane’s nose dipped. Then it dipped some more. Michelle could see the earth coming at them awfully fast. And still she kept the wheel pushed forward. Suddenly flashing through her mind were nightmares that had torn at her for nearly three decades. A child petrified, but what child?
Her?
Even in her mind’s eye she couldn’t be sure. And yet the terror she was feeling was very real.

They were diving nearly straight down and yet Michelle didn’t seem to notice the altimeter reading plummeting or hear the warning horn in the cockpit. She also didn’t see that Champ was frantically pulling his wheel back, screaming at her to let go; that she was going to crash the plane. And yet she couldn’t pull her hands from the wheel. It was as though it had been electrified. For a second time she heard herself say, “Goodbye, Sean.”

Finally, through the fog of her mind she heard, “Let go!”

Michelle glanced to the side and saw a white-faced Champ straining with all of his might to pull the wheel back, to free them from the death spiral. Michelle ripped her hands from the wheel. Champ managed to pull the plane level and then took them in for a bumpy landing, the tires kicking off the runway twice before settling firmly down.

They taxied to a stop. For several minutes all each could hear was the other’s strained breathing. Finally Champ looked at her. “Are you all right?”

She could feel acid racing up her throat. “For nearly killing us both, yes, I’m fine.”

“I’ve known other people to freeze up at the controls. I’m
sorry,
I shouldn’t have let you take the wheel.”

“Champ, you did nothing wrong. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”

They were walking back from the plane to Champ’s Mercedes when a motorcycle pulled up to them. It was Horatio Barnes’s Harley. The rider pulled off his helmet, and Sean King said, “Beautiful day to
fly,
isn’t it?”

“What are you doing here?” she demanded.

He tossed her a spare helmet. “Let’s go.”

“Thanks for the flying lesson, Champ. I’m afraid I’m not up to lunch right now.” She climbed on the bike behind Sean.

After they’d left the private air terminal and been on the road for a couple of minutes Michelle told Sean to pull off.

“What’s wrong?”

“Just do it,” she urged.

He pulled off and Michelle ran behind some trees and threw up.

She came back a minute later, white-faced and wiping her mouth. She slowly climbed back on the bike.

“Skies a little unfriendly to you?” he asked.

She said slowly, “No, just chalk it up to pilot error. So what are you doing on Horatio’s precious Harley?”

“Just went for a stroll.”

“And just happened to arrive at the air terminal as we landed?”

He turned and said angrily, “You call that a friggin’ landing? You guys were coming straight down. I thought you’d lost the damn engine. I almost killed myself getting to the runway even if it was just to spatula you off the tarmac! What the hell happened up there?”

“Some kind of engine trouble.
Champ corrected it.” She felt terrible lying to him, but would have felt even worse telling him the truth. And what was the truth? That she had frozen, nearly killing herself and an innocent person?

“I thought you said it was pilot error?”

“Just forget it,” she said. “Any landing you walk away from is a great one.”

“Excuse me for caring.”

“So you’ve been riding this bike all over the countryside watching us fly around?”

“I told you I didn’t want you to go up there with the guy.”

“You don’t think I can handle myself?”

“Oh hell, don’t pull that crap with me. I was just––”

She smacked his helmet. “Sean?”

“What?”

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

They rode on.

Michelle clung tightly to Sean’s jacket. She didn’t want to let go, for any reason. She had never been more terrified in her life. And this time the reason for the fear was not some external enemy. It was herself.