Chapter Sixteen
Sixteen
Sophie has changed into a sleek gold cocktail dress. Her eyes dart immediately to me, and she smiles broadly. “Glad you can listen to reason, Dane.” She leans in to kiss him on both cheeks, then me, and introduces herself. “Sophie Archambeau.”
“Nice to meet you,” I say. “Zoe Wilder.”
“Enchantée.” Up close, I can see that Sophie must be somewhere in her sixties, judging by the wrinkles around her eyes and a sag in her jowls, but genetics, medical assistance, or great makeup gives her a fresh appearance.
“Dr. Wilder of Chessmont University in California. You are lovely, aren’t you?
” She gives Dane a saucy look, as though my apparent loveliness is his doing.
“You look like my daughter.” She smiles a strange, close-lipped smile, and I wonder if it’s intended to look maternal.
I can’t quite see it—the work children require feels like something Sophie wouldn’t bother with.
I sense she’s the type who’s more into power than family. There’s a ruthlessness about her.
“I didn’t know you had a daughter,” Dane says.
“I wanted to attend your session in Madrid,” Sophie says to me, ignoring Dane. “It sounded fascinating. I was distressed to miss it.”
I suspect this flattery is a trick to throw me off guard right away. Regrettably, it works.
“Thank you,” I say. “I’m told it was well received.”
“Of course it was,” she says. “You’re brilliant at what you do.
Come in.” She steps back to allow us into an absolutely stunning apartment with parquet floors and molded walls that stretch much higher than the outside of the building suggested.
It’s like stepping into the Parisian real estate show that I binge on Netflix.
I cling to Dane’s arm, trying to take in the opulence.
Sophie clocks my grip on Dane’s arm. “Come, Zoe. I want to introduce you. Everyone will want to meet the woman Dane has brought to Paris.” She holds out a hand like a teacher to a reluctant child.
I take it and look back at Dane to reassure myself he’s there as she leads me with surprising strength through a doorway into a large room with lots of people talking as they stand or lounge on sofas.
Wine and food are on small scattered tables.
We head to the huge bank of windows at one end of the room.
In the distance, the Eiffel Tower glitters yellow in the dark.
“I am so pleased Dane brought you tonight,” Sophie says, as though she hadn’t ordered him to. “He’s a very special person. How did you meet?” She hands me a glass of white from one of the tables.
“In a park. I was admiring the statuary.” Somewhat true.
Sophie narrows her eyes slightly. She takes my arm again, still in that tight grip of hers, and turns me so I can see the room. “And did Eric Howland appreciate you running off with Dane at the conference?”
I am not surprised she knows about Eric. I’m not surprised at anything. We knew we were walking into a trap, after all. “Eric Howland doesn’t appreciate much in life, I’m afraid.”
Sophie laughs, and it seems genuine. “We agree there, darling Zoe.”
I’m curious how she’s familiar enough with Eric to say this. Interesting. Eric seems to know a lot more about the Enigma Challenge than he ever let on.
“Look at Dane,” she says, pointing at him.
“He is charming, no? We cannot help ourselves around him.” He’s on the other side of the room talking to a stunningly beautiful woman.
I feel a small spike of jealousy, which shocks me.
I’m in no position to be jealous. I attribute it to the fact that I’ve spent three intense days with him.
I could be jealous of his time, maybe. I’ll buy that.
As though Sophie can sense my inner justification, she gives me a positively reptilian smile and tightens her grip on my arm.
It’s starting to resemble a blood pressure cuff, and minor alarm bells sound off in my head.
I need to keep my deflector shields up. “He’s a handsome, clever man, isn’t he? I have enjoyed working with him.”
I struggle to school my face so I don’t show my surprise. He said they hadn’t worked together. I frame my response carefully. “He said he enjoyed working with you too.”
“Did he?” She laughs that bell-chime laugh as she pulls me through the room.
I’m not sure who to believe here, Sophie or Dane, although I definitely don’t trust anything Sophie says.
This conversation isn’t as straightforward as I imagined.
She’s not even asking about the Enigma Challenge.
But now I wonder if Dane has lied about anything else.
Disappointment courses through me, crushing out that little flare of jealousy from a moment ago. I wanted him to be honest with me.
Sophie wheels me over to a fashionable couple. “Zoe, chérie, meet Delphine and Théo. They are both enigmatologists. I think you will enjoy speaking.”
They’re players too, I’m guessing. Delphine and Théo sit perched on a velvet sofa the color of merlot, or maybe blood.
They hold enormous glasses of wine and are dressed elegantly.
Delphine wears a bright green scarf over a black dress, and Théo wears a tight sweater that is garish but still elegant.
“Dr. Wilder studies ciphers in literature,” Sophie tells them.
“We know who you are,” Delphine says. Her voice is soft, and her English is heavily accented. Sophie drifts away from us to greet another guest. “It’s lovely to meet a fellow puzzler. And, of course, you are working the Enigma Challenge, yes?”
Are we just admitting it aloud now?
“Do not look frightened,” Théo says with a laugh at my expression.
“We are all colleagues and friends here. The game is a celebration of puzzle solving, is it not? I read your thesis, Dr. Wilder, on how early-Egyptian manuscripts contain arithmetical problems. Fascinating work. I loved the cheeky conclusion about how ciphers in modern literature continue, noting the Vigenère cipher in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the infamous forty-two. ”
His smile and clear familiarity with my work are obviously designed to ease my guard, just like with Sophie. Whatever their game, it’s rare to find someone who knows my work, and I’m flattered. “Thank you. What do you work on?”
“Théo edits crosswords,” Delphine says. “And I help curate Swiss-K enigma machines for the Crypto Museum in the Netherlands and organize exhibitions here in Paris.”
I am officially bummed that we’ve met under these circumstances.
Théo leans close, his cologne surprising me.
It’s crisp, instead of smelling like a perfume-lab accident, which makes him seem reasonable.
“This year’s challenge is the most extreme yet, yes?
We enjoyed solving the first puzzle. How did you enjoy the second one in Barcelona?
” He laughs. “We heard you passed a fake version of it to someone.”
Delphine widens her eyes in mock delight, which I suspect is an act. I struggle to keep my face as blank as possible, but I’m freaking out a little. They know about my fake puzzle. They know about the egg. What else do they know?
“Do you happen to know if there was more than one egg puzzle?” I take a gamble and decide to be direct too.
Delphine leans forward, her thick auburn hair swinging. She says, “We heard that shortly after the high mass in the evening, it was replaced.”
It takes everything in me not to ask who got it. But Théo grins and says in the manner of someone sharing secrets, “I heard the Italian professor got it. He was almost arrested.”
Professor Marini. A tightness in my chest that I didn’t even realize was there eases, because even though Marini is a primary competitor, he’s not a cheater. He’ll genuinely solve these puzzles, and I respect it.
“The cathedral was on high alert for anyone else taking it,” Delphine says with a Cheshire cat grin, as though this is all madly fun. “I don’t know how he managed it.”
“We’re both disappointed that we could not obtain our own egg,” Théo says, looking comically downcast. It’s too flamboyant for the reality of the situation.
“But…you’ll be deleted,” I say.
Delphine laughs. “Oh, no. We work on Sophie’s team. We are not worried.”
I can’t make sense of it. If they didn’t get the egg and only Professor Marini and I did, then how will they know about the other puzzles?
Dane’s words in Barcelona come back to me about how it’s easier to steal the puzzles than actually solve them.
Suddenly I feel deeply uncomfortable, but I need to follow the script Dane and I agreed to.
“Well, all of this has just been so amazing to someone like me,” I say, trying to appear impressed. “I told Dane how excited I was to come to Paris for the next puzzle.”
Delphine and Théo seem almost to lean into my words.
“Of course we do not expect you to share your plans for Paris,” Théo says with a wink. As though that would fool me.
My pulse is thrumming. “Oh…we don’t really know what we’re looking for, but we were thinking it could be in Montparnasse Cemetery.”
Delphine’s eyes sharpen almost imperceptibly, but she gives a little shrug. “Ah, yes. We too have heard this.”
Got them.
I need to get away before I mess this up. I say, “It was lovely to meet you, but I should check in with Dane.” I catch his eye across the increasingly crowded salon—apparently more people have arrived—and he raises an eyebrow as though to say Are you okay?
I shake my head the tiniest bit, but he must not see it because he turns to yet another stunning model of a woman who’s approached him.
She gestures for him to follow her, and to my dismay, he does.
They move through a tall doorway into another room.
He doesn’t look back. I’m flooded both with anger and alarm at being abandoned.
The doubt that reared when talking to Sophie sharpens. Grows teeth.
“In any other setting, Dr. Wilder, we would be thrilled to count you as a colleague,” Delphine says. “It saddens us that you are a rival.”