Chapter Thirteen
Thirteen
The sun is high overhead, and the noon heat shimmers on the asphalt when we arrive at the Poblenou Cemetery, which consists of aboveground mausoleums and tombs of marble and cement.
We walk in through an ornate entrance of columns and friezes.
Beyond is a marble labyrinth of mausoleum walls.
It reminds me of the hedge mazes on English estates, but the walls are graves.
“What I don’t understand,” I say, “is why ProtoDark is watching me if there are other players.”
He’s strolling, hands in pockets, looking up at the names on the wall tombs. “You’re solving ciphers within minutes. I think the pool of people who can do that is small.”
“I’m an academic. They can just ask codebreakers to work for them or whatever.”
“And if a group of shadowy cybercriminals approached you, would you be receptive?”
“Of course not, but fear is a powerful motivator.”
The crypts are stacked five rows high, and the mausoleums seem endless.
A few trees are incongruously planted in the expanse of stone, a single square conceded to the earth.
Most of the crypts have flowers in little vases fastened to the outside of them, providing greenery on the walls.
We turn down a path that dips under an arch in the wall and emerge into another area of the cemetery with massive aboveground tombs in marble.
Some of them are ornate with gates and sculpture.
Weeds sprout around many of the large crypts, a sign that life prevails.
We walk down to the Kiss of Death statue, El Petó de la Mort, sitting atop a raised and slanted crypt of rocks with a marble slab on top for a Josep Llaudet Soler, who died in 1930.
The stone is almost blinding in the sunlight.
“I wasn’t expecting this,” Dane says. He stares at the statue, which almost feels out of place here in its detailed execution, where the other sculptures feel both imprecise and generically religious.
The intricately detailed, winged Death is a skeleton who bends over a kneeling dead-looking young man, Death’s wings draping to the side.
Death plants a kiss on top of the man’s forehead while clutching his shoulders, his bony finger pressing into soft skin, leaving no question that he has him.
It’s a feat in marble. I walk to the side to see the empty, chilling eye sockets of the skeleton as he kisses the man.
We move around the crypt, scanning for anything out of place. It could really use a neon sign saying Next Puzzle Here with an arrow pointing to whatever it is.
“Weird how we keep finding ourselves at unsettling statues,” I say.
“Well.” He moves around the tomb. “Just in Spain.”
“Are you ever going to tell me whether you caught the guy who came after you with the knife?” I asked him this on the train to Barcelona, but he didn’t answer then.
But this time there’s a hint of a smile on his mouth. “I did.”
“And? Did you murder him? Rip out his spine through his throat?”
Dane slides a look at me. “Is that what you think I do?”
“You seem ready to run and fight, and you’re in shape for it,” I point out. “Did you train with assassins or something?”
“Yes, it was a prestigious murder program that required submitting my application to a review board.” He walks down the steps in front of the grave. “After an intense seven-week interview process, they—”
“Okay,” I say. “Smart ass.”
He grins, and something inside me lights up. He comes back up the steps. “The first Enigma Challenge taught me to be ready for anything. After that, I started working out and running to build endurance. I worked with a guy who trains me on reaction time.”
“So you can rip people’s heads off in a single blink.”
He rolls his eyes, but I see the crinkle at the edges. He moves behind the wings of the statue. He glances down the gallery of graves toward the entrance, perhaps keeping an eye out for anyone after us. If I survive this challenge, I might develop a habit of checking my surroundings constantly too.
“That guy in Madrid,” he says. “He was sent by one of the more powerful players, a woman who has the means and time to eliminate competition. She always plays the game, but not in her own name so she can’t be deleted. She sent him to remove me before the game even started this year.”
“He wasn’t good at his job, then,” I scoff, thinking of how easy it was to kick away the knife.
“No.”
“So what did you do to him?”
“I punched him in the face and left him unconscious in the Retiro’s rose garden.”
I imagine Dane’s fist landing on the man’s nose the way it did on that guy earlier outside the cathedral.
It’s violent, and I should be horrified, but I’m not.
I’m relieved. I’ve never punched anyone in my life, not even Christine when we were kids and she lorded her Halloween candy stash over me when I ran out of KitKats.
“That’s cleaner than ripping his head off. ”
“I’m too busy running around with beautiful academics to rip people’s heads off.”
I laugh, but I feel the heat in my cheeks at the compliment. “I only know foolish ones who get themselves tangled up in risky games that seem like bad ideas.”
“Oh, no question they’re bad ideas.”
I can’t see him—he’s behind Death’s wings now. “I guess bad ideas can be fun.”
“I’m willing to admit there could be a degree of fun, if you squint.” His tone is playful. “Anything? I’m seeing nothing here.”
This circling we’re doing around the tomb is so distracting that I momentarily forgot that we’re supposed to be looking for a puzzle. “No.”
No sooner do I say the word than I spot it—something is written on the marble in the small dark space between the dead man’s knees. I’ll have to clamber up the slab of poor Josep Llaudet Soler’s crypt to get to it, which seems wrong even though it’s just a hunk of stone.
Dane comes around the statue and looks where I’m pointing. He grimaces. “What does it say?”
“It’s too small to read from here.” I glance at him and decide to be vulnerable.
“I don’t think I can get in there. It’s the grave.
It creeps me out to get on top of it.” I struggle to articulate why without sounding like a superstitious fool.
I roll my shoulders in discomfort as though that will explain it.
“Something to do with watching my parents be buried.”
I expect him to refuse, to tell me to just climb up and look, but Dane clambers on top of the slope of the tomb.
It touches me that he didn’t argue or discuss it.
He snaps a photo on his phone of whatever is written in there and tries to rub it off, but I can see it’s not easily removed.
He licks his finger and does his best but gives up when it doesn’t come off.
“You’ve desecrated the grave,” I say. I’m trying to be light about it, to return to the playfulness of a moment ago.
Dane gives me a look. “I wasn’t the one who wrote on it. I would have desecrated it if I’d peed on it or dumped garbage or had sex on it. But clearly, I did not.”
“If I’m interrogated by the authorities, I’ll have to tell the truth and say the guy with all the muscles desecrated it,” I say.
“All the muscles, huh?” He jumps down next to me.
“The guy who trained with assassins,” I clarify.
He laughs, which makes me laugh. He says, “Punk,” and hands me his phone. “Here.”
I take his phone to see two lines in the photo, written in what looks like Sharpie:
L JCXKSCM II NMYUM
1 ELMY, 0922
Again, that excitement at a juicy cipher hits me. We start winding our way back toward the entrance.
“I’ll solve this,” I say, “on one condition.”
“Oh?” We pass a bank of sloped marble crypts in the middle of the walkway.
“I want to hear more about the Enigma Challenge. What made you take the initial leap to play? Share all your secrets.”
“All right.” I see the smile in his profile, in the crinkle of his eyes. “But if I’m telling you my secrets, we’re going to need to revisit the winnings split. I can’t allow you to know everything and take seventy-five percent. Has to be fifty-fifty.”
I laugh. “No. Eighty-twenty.”
“And this after begging me to climb on a grave and get between the poor statue’s knees.” He shakes his head in mock outrage.
“I did not!” I squawk. “I don’t beg.”
He stands aside so I can exit the cemetery and winks at me. “Not yet.”