Chapter Twenty-Two
Twenty-two
Outside the Louvre’s glass pyramid entrance, the long, wide plaza leads away to the Arc du Carrousel, a massive monument that still manages to be dwarfed by the plaza and the sides of the Louvre.
I feel like I’m crawling out of my skin with warring needs: the need to be far, far away from here and Allard, and the need to kiss Dane again, to pull him to the side and have a long, private moment with him.
It feels wrong to be focusing on that kiss when so much else is at stake, but my body clearly has its own agenda.
I don’t trust myself to speak. Dane keeps us moving until we’re away from the pyramid, clear across the plaza and into the expansive park beyond.
Ten minutes later, Luca joins us. “I think you threw Allard off. He went into the Richelieu wing. That, or he has no idea where the puzzle was supposed to be.”
I breathe a sigh of relief.
“But he knew we were here,” Dane says, grim faced.
“Yes,” Luca says. “Again, I wish we knew how they’re tailing you.”
“Less talking and more moving,” Xhan says, herding us across the grass.
“Who was the other guy watching you?” Luca asks.
“Never seen him before, but I got a photo,” Dane says. “There was also a woman, and she might have gotten a photo of the QR code.”
We cross through a huge roundabout and walk through to the Seine, where we cross the cobbled Pont du Carrousel Bridge. I don’t know or care where we’re going, but Xhan slows to keep pace with me, letting Luca and Dane walk ahead on the wide sidewalk. We all frequently check behind us.
“You all right?” she asks me.
“Yeah. Thanks.” But I’m not. I’m still keyed up from both the kiss and the chase. “Not exactly how I pictured visiting Paris.”
Xhan sends me a look that feels both sympathetic and knowing all at once.
“I can understand that.” We’re across the bridge now, and I’m glad to put the Seine between us and Allard.
I hope he gets lost in the Egyptian wing and falls into a sarcophagus.
“The next time you two come through the city, you won’t have to be in fight-or-flight mode. It’ll be calmer.”
I open my mouth to say there won’t be a next time, but I realize it was a calculated statement on her part—to see, maybe, how attached I am to Dane. I don’t know what to say.
Xhan calls, “Guys! I think we’re safe. Let’s stop at that fromagerie and get some bread and cheese. We can take it as a picnic over to ?le de la Cité.”
Luca says, “I can always eat.” The guys turn toward a little market and go inside. Luca gives Xhan a little wink just before he goes in.
Xhan lingers slightly at the door of the market and sighs. And maybe it’s the kiss still fresh on my skin, maybe it’s the way she and Luca look at each other, but I’m suddenly unsure of myself.
I touch her arm before she can go in. “I know you mentioned this morning that I was one of you, but I haven’t known Dane that long. I don’t want to make a mistake.” I leave it purposefully vague, like I’m referring to working with him, but I mean more.
She eyes me, and I get the sense she knows exactly what I mean.
“Always trust yourself first. But if you’re asking whether Dane is a good man, the answer is one thousand percent yes.
He’s one of the best.” She gives me a long look, and I feel silly for asking.
She’s not going to tell me he can’t be trusted—she’s loyal to Dane.
“Listen, Luca is my entire sun.” She pulls open the door to the market.
“But Zoe? Some of us get the moon and stars.”
She goes inside, and I am left to ponder that as I follow her in.
By the time we’ve bought a picnic lunch and crossed the Pont de l’Archevêché to the little island Notre Dame sits on, my feet are killing me, as is my wrist. Without saying a word, Luca hands me a pill and a bottle of water.
I can’t find the words to thank him enough for thinking ahead to bring painkillers with us.
We sit on shady benches that afford a good view of the Seine as well as anyone who might approach.
“Did you click the code?” Dane asks me. I take out my phone and open the photo of the green QR code and the website it launches, which has nothing on it except a prompt: Enter PIN.
I punch in the one I set when I entered this challenge.
Thank you, the screen reads. A color photo of a rabbit appears on the screen.
“What is it?” Xhan asks.
“A rabbit again,” Dane says from over my shoulder, where he’s watching. His eyes slide to mine. “It seems to be a theme with her. They’ve appeared in two of the puzzles.”
The rabbit is a tall, proud hare sitting in a field, facing the camera like he gives zero fucks about the photographer. There’s no hint of caution or alarm in the hare’s posture.
And below it is printed in bold font: A TEST OF YOUR SAGACITY.
I blink in recognition and sit up straight.
“You know what that means?” Dane’s watching me carefully, and I know he sees it, sees my excitement.
“Yes.” I chew my lip. “The codebreaking community would recognize the word sagacity because it’s unusual, and it’s used in a specific context.
” It’s found in an 1896 book called Curiosities of Olden Times by Sabine Baring-Gould, a British Anglican priest. The second chapter is titled “Curiosities of Cypher,” with several puzzles.
One of them is a keyless numbered cipher that says it’s “an example to test the reader’s sagacity.
” Members of a Facebook cryptology group my dad belonged to—and to which I also now belong—solved it years ago.
I always liked that word, sagacity, meaning the quality of cleverness or intelligence.
The word is a signal that the cipher in the Baring-Gould book might come into play here.
I zoom in on the rabbit and see that it’s a photorealistic illustration and not an actual photograph.
And arranged around the head of the rabbit is a series of letters and symbols.
I look around our picnic for the little pack that was included in the box Araceli sent.
I’d put in a few scraps of paper and a pen from Xhan and Luca’s apartment.
Dane grabs the pack, which is next to him, digs out paper and pen, and gives them to me. It’s a small thing, but no one has ever anticipated what I need like that before. Our eyes meet as I take the paper and pen.
“Give me your phone,” Luca tells Dane. “I want to see the people who were watching you at the statue while she works on that puzzle.” Dane hands it over.
I jot down the trail of numbers and symbols around the rabbit’s silhouette.
I haven’t looked at the Baring-Gould text in years, but I’m grateful for my photographic memory now as I picture the cipher.
The cleartext ended up being a proverb. The cipher itself was randomly assigned to the letters of the alphabet, which means…
this fourth puzzle is going to be damn hard.
But I have a leg up if I can use the key from the Baring-Gould book.
The code around the rabbit forms a monoalphabetic substitution cipher presented as a series of numbers and symbols. A section symbol and a paragraph mark are used with letters and other symbols.
§32+?3= =9§2 7=?; =3012 §2 =?5=+59 75 ]942+
In the Baring-Gould book, the method for solving was the fact that 2+9 was repeated twice and therefore likely to be the word THE.
Assuming that, one could try starting the four-letter symbol string +§51 as HA or HI, with the word ultimately ending up being HAND.
The other key was 45 and 4=, which were likely two-letter common words like IF/IN/IT or AD/AN/AS/AT.
“This is going to be a few hours of trial and error,” I say.
I can feel the familiar excitement of sinking into the delicious challenge of trying different letters.
I take a swig of my sparkling water and take a piece of cheese.
“The clue is the equal sign here, but in the Baring-Gould chapter it was 2+9.”
“We should move on soon,” Dane says. “If we’re being tracked, I don’t want to stay too long here.”
“Let’s get back to the apartment for Zoe to finish working on it,” Luca says.
He and Xhan begin packing up our food. We leave the little park and cross the Pont Saint-Louis.
As we walk, a warm sense of belonging fills me.
More than that, even—appreciation. Sinking deeply into ciphers is one of the reasons I don’t have a ton of friends, but I get the distinct sense of quiet support here—and respect.
“We’ll clear out at the apartment and leave you to it,” Xhan says.
No one has ever said that either. It’s only ever been exasperation from people, like Eric, who resented when I wanted a night in to work on ciphers or research, or friends who couldn’t understand why I would turn down the opportunity to go out drinking in order to stay in and bury myself in a book.
“Thanks,” I say. “I tend to forget to come up for air when I’m doing these.”
“Tell me about your work and life, Zoe,” Xhan says as we cross another bridge, the Pont Louis-Philippe. “You live in the Bay Area? Did you grow up there?”
I tell her how Christine and I grew up in Alameda and were orphaned as teenagers.
I describe how I finished my PhD in comparative literature at Berkeley and then found myself at Chessmont.
Eric wanted to hire me because his grant was specifically aimed at an exploration of concealed text in literature via ciphers.
I tell them how he wooed me to his program with promises of glory.
“But then our Dane stepped in to whisk you away,” Luca says, a note of teasing in his tone.
Dane looks at Luca, then closes his eyes briefly with a classic inhale of great suffering.
We stop on a street corner to wait for the pedestrian light to turn green. Luca tells Dane, “I don’t recognize the woman in the black sweater who was watching you in the Louvre. You said she may have photographed the code?”
“She had a long lens,” Dane says.
“I don’t like it.” Luca grimaces. “She didn’t try to follow you, did she?”
Dane shakes his head. “It was only the man on the stairs and Allard.”
“My guess is the woman is working for the 1982.”
“She could be Sophie’s too,” Xhan points out.
“I’m surprised you haven’t seen more of the 1982,” Luca says.
“Maybe he thinks he took out the player most likely to succeed already,” Dane says.
“Professor Marini?” I ask. It’s true we haven’t seen any sign of him around the puzzles. I suppress a shiver.
“The 1982’s been quiet this year,” Xhan says.
“I’ve got someone watching the 1982’s apartment here in Paris,” Luca says.
“Of course you do.” Xhan leans into him and throws her arms around him. He looks down into her eyes in a small moment of connection.
I look away, at the Seine behind us, and it hits me how much I want that for myself, instead of whatever poor excuse for oxygen I’d been inhaling before I came to Madrid.
Some of us get the moon and stars, Xhan said.
I glance at Dane, whom she obviously meant.
He’s looking at his phone, but as though he senses my gaze, he glances up and gives me a little smile just as the pedestrian light turns green.
I smile back. Warmth blooms in my chest at the easy exchange.
Luca and Xhan start walking across the street, but we linger for a beat at the corner before following.
It’s easy to forget we’re playing a game and being chased when I’m walking down leafy boulevards in Paris with people I care about.
People I care about.
As we cross to another road, I turn my mind back to the puzzle, but the warmth stays in my chest the entire way back to the apartment.