The Black Sun - James Twining

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how I like a challenge.’

      ‘Sure.’ Tom smiled. Amongst her many attributes, Dominique had an amazing aptitude for word games and other types of puzzles. Never one to be outdone, it was partly this which had driven Tom to attempt the crossword. Not that he was making much progress.

      ‘It only took me a few minutes. It’s a jump code.’

      ‘A what?’

      ‘A jump code. Jewish scholars have been finding them for years in the Torah. Did you know that if you take the first T in the Book of Genesis, then jump forty-nine places to the fiftieth letter, then another forty-nine places to the fiftieth letter after that, and so on, it spells a word?’

      ‘What?’

      ‘Torah. The book’s name is embedded in the text. The next three books do the same. Some say that the whole of the Old Testament is an encoded message that predicts the future.’

      ‘And this works in the same way?’

      ‘It’s a question of identifying the jump interval. In this case, it’s every eighth letter.’

      ‘Starting with the first letter?’

      She nodded.

      ‘So that makes this L…’ Tom counted seven spaces, ‘then A…’ He grabbed a pen and began to write down each eighth letter: ‘Then S…then T. Last!’ he exclaimed triumphantly.

      ‘Last seen Copenhagen. Await next contact. I decoded it earlier.’

      ‘And there are others like this?’

      ‘After I found this, I looked back through earlier editions. There have been coded messages using the same methodology every few weeks for the last six months or so. I’ve written them out here –’

      She handed Tom a piece of paper.

      ‘HK cold, try Tokyo,’ he read. ‘Focus search in Europe…DNA sample en route…Reported sighting in Vienna…’ He looked up at Dominique. ‘Okay, I agree that someone seems to be looking for someone or something. But there’s nothing to say it’s Harry.’

      Dominique handed him a newspaper from the bottom of the pile and opened it at the Personals page.

      ‘This was the first and longest message.’ She pointed at a lengthy ad she’d circled in red.

      ‘What does it say?’

      ‘Ten million dollar reward. Henry Julius Renwick, aka Cassius, dead or alive. Publish interest next Tuesday.’

      Tom was silent as he tried to digest this news.

      ‘Did anyone reply?’ he asked eventually.

      ‘I counted twenty-five replies in all.’

      ‘Twenty-five!’

      ‘Whoever’s behind this has got a small private army out there trying to track Harry down. The question is why.’

      ‘No,’ Tom reflected, ‘the question is who.’

       FOUR

       FBI Headquarters, Salt Lake City Division, Utah

       4th January – 4.16 p.m.

      Where had it all gone wrong?

      When had he passed from being a high achiever to an average Joe, a stand-up guy, but one who, according to his superiors, didn’t quite have what it took to go all the way? How was it that people almost half his age were accelerating past him so fast that he barely had time to spit their dust from his mouth before they were a speck on the horizon? When had hanging on long enough to max out his pension become his only reason for getting up in the morning?

      Special Agent Paul Viggiano, forty-one, slipped a bullet into each of the five empty chambers of his shiny silver AirLite Ti Model 342 .38 Smith & Wesson as each question registered in his mind.

      The gun loaded, he snapped it shut and stood contemplating it for a few seconds before raising it to eye-level. Again he paused and took a deep breath.

      Then, breathing out slowly, he emptied the gun into the target at the far end of the indoor shooting range as fast and as loudly as he could, each successive bang magnifying the noise of the one before it, until it seemed that the whole room was echoing in sympathy with his plight.

      ‘Sounds like you really needed that,’ the woman in the booth next to him said with a smile. He managed a tight grimace in response as she turned to take aim. And how was it, her intervention reminded him, that in some misplaced drive for gender equality, the Bureau was falling over itself to promote women? Women like that bitch Jennifer Browne, who’d got moved upstairs while he’d been posted here. Wherever here was.

      One small oversight, that’s all it had been. One little slip in an otherwise spotless career. And here he was, drowning in mediocrity.

      He shook his head and hit the button to retrieve the target from the other end of the gallery. It whirred towards him, the black silhouette ghosting through the air like a vengeful spirit, before jerking to a halt just in front of him. He examined it for holes.

      To his disbelief there were none. Not a single one.

      ‘Nice shootin’, Tex,’ smirked the FBI armourer, sneaking a look over his shoulder. ‘Hell, you’re as liable to blow your own balls off as hit the bad guy.’

      ‘Screw you, McCoy.’

      Viggiano’s distinctive New Jersey drawl somehow suited the Italian ancestry suggested by his thick black eyebrows and hair and permanent five o’clock shadow. His dark looks were complemented by a firm, unyielding jaw that jutted out like a car bumper, giving the impression that, if you threw something at him, it would bounce off like a rock hitting a trampoline.

      The woman next to him squeezed off her shots one by one with a plodding, rhythmic monotony confirming Viggiano’s impression that she probably ironed her husband’s socks. She then carefully placed her gun down in front of her and retrieved her target. Viggiano couldn’t help but peer over.

      Eleven holes. She had eleven holes in her target. How was that possible unless…unless it was her six and his five? He’d been so worked up he’d fired at the wrong target.

      The woman had obviously come to the same conclusion. She looked up at him, her eyes dancing, her laughter only seconds behind. He threw his ear protectors down on the bench and stalked out of the room before she could show anyone else.

      ‘Oh, sir, I was kinda hopin’ I’d find you down here.’ Byron Bailey was an African American from South Central LA, a bright kid who’d made it the hard way, winning a scholarship to Caltech on the back of good grades and an evening job packing shelves in his local 7-Eleven. He had bad acne, which had left his ebony skin pitted like coral, while his nose was broad and flat and his eyes wide and eager. What struck Viggiano most, though, was his tail-wagging enthusiasm, a sickening trait that he shared with most rookies and one which only served to make Viggiano feel even older than he already did.

      ‘So, you found me.’ Viggiano marked his disinterest by fastidiously picking invisible pieces of lint off the lapels of his immaculately pressed suit.

      ‘Er, yessir.’ Bailey seemed momentarily unsettled by Viggiano’s irritable tone. ‘We got a tip-off about that heist from the NSA complex in Fort Meade. You know, the one the boys back in DC are all choked up about. It sounds like it might be for real.’

      ‘What are you babbling about?’ Viggiano caught his reflection in a glass door as he spoke and adjusted his tie so it was centred precisely under his chin.

      ‘You ever heard of the Sons of American Liberty?’

      ‘Who?’

      ‘The

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