Local time – 8:35pm, Sunday 17th June, 2011.
Rawalpindi, Pakistan.
Alex no longer felt frightened of the Pakistani. He looked as if he were half asleep, perhaps in shock. His arm, rigidly connected to the truck, was the only part of him not limp and unmoving. He must already have worked out that neither she nor Henry had the code to unlock the vehicle, but he said nothing. Henry was lying on his back under the truck, inspecting the PAL code box that the Pakistanis had found before the gun fight.
‘It’s just a digital screen and there’s 10 plastic buttons, with numbers from zero to nine.’
‘And how many tries to you think it will give us, before it jams?’
‘I have no idea.’ Henry slid back out.
Alex didn’t like the thought of guessing when it came to a gigantic nuclear missile. She opened her satchel and pulled out the iPad. This had given her all the answers so far. Maybe Google or Wikipedia could give her a run down of the workings of a nuclear PAL switch. But just as she reminded herself that the iPad 3G connection was the reason she’d been found, she also realised the Pakistani was speaking. His voice was low and soft, and there was a roughness to it which betrayed his abhorrence at helping them.
‘It’s a Cat F PAL. You get the code wrong, it shuts down.’
‘Fuck!’ Henry looked devastated.
‘How long is the code?’ Alex asked, not ready to give up yet.
‘12 digits,’ the man replied flatly.
‘And you have a code. But there’s another one needed as well?’ The man pointed at the Mossad agent on the ground meters away from them.
‘That’s what he said. Two codes unlock the truck, so the weapon can be moved. The same two codes unlock the weapon, so it can be fired.’
‘We won’t need to do that obviously. But moving it seems like the safest thing to do.’ Alex knelt down close to the Pakistani, far enough away that he couldn’t kick her, but close enough that she could speak softly without scaring him. He turned his head ever so slightly, until their eyes met.
‘I can’t give up. Not after what I’ve done.’ He said this so timidly, Alex felt as if she were talking to a child. A very scared child.
‘We’re not asking you to give up. You need this weapon so the people who took your other weapons understand that you aren’t completely unarmed. Is that right?’ He nodded.
‘Ok, so we’re in the same boat. We need it so the people who have your weapons can’t use them. How about we agree to help each other? We should move it away from here so anyone else who knows where it is can’t find it. And then we can each contact whomever we decide, to let them know we have it. Agreed?’ Again he nodded. Alex looked over at Henry, expecting to see him smiling at her. She had got used to this look of encouragement when she made a breakthrough. But he was too busy glaring bitterly at the man. He still gripped the gun in his hands like a shield, and had it pointed in the direction of the man who had just agreed to cooperate with them. Alex ignored him, and again addressed the man as calmly as she could.
‘What is your name? Mine is Alex, and his is Henry.’
‘Ahmed.’ The word slipped out almost imperceptibly.
‘Ahmed. OK. We’re here because my friend, Bernie, had a contact in Pakistan who was going to help him locate this weapon. Since there are two codes needed, I think we can assume that this contact must have had one of the codes and Bernie the other. Bernie was killed, so we are doing our best to work this out without his help. The only problem is, we don’t know where he put the code. So I guess my next question is, where did you get your code?’ This time the man looked at Henry, and the gun, and chose not to say anything. Alex motioned for Henry to lower the weapon. He dropped it a bit so it wasn’t pointed as firmly. The man looked at it for a while longer and eventually Henry let the gun fall by his side.
‘We were given it. It’s written in my mobile phone. In my pocket. My phone is password protected, so don’t even think of shooting me. You put yours in first and then you can have mine.’ There was no point disagreeing with this request. Alex wasn’t surprised that Ahmed was refusing to give her details of how he came to be in possession of the code. There was also every possibility that he was bluffing. But they needed both codes whether he was telling the truth or not.
She looked down at the iPad in her hands. Switching the 3G connection on for only a moment, she waited for her emails to download. Once they were there, she switched the connection off again so it couldn’t be traced. She was surprised to see fifteen unread messages. Most of them from Gerome, and were one liners asking her desperately to call him. A new email from Laura caught her eye. She flicked it open and scrolled through the words. Trying to take in as much as she could, she worked out that Laura had found notes for Bernie’s Bilderberg story. Nicholas Winton, the Patria and Edmund Maxwell. What on earth did this have to do with the Bilderbergers?
Alex recalled Bernie having a rant about Edmund Maxwell, perhaps a week or so ago. He had been reading about him, and was telling Alex that he wanted to write an article about Maxwell’s secret funding of the Tea Party. He had added that it was a dangerous idea since Maxwell was known to remove anyone who got in his way. Hadn’t Bernie also said Maxwell had attended Bilderberg? Alex was sure Bernie said something about that. Laura was so worried about Alex it was obvious she was clutching at straws to help her. If only Laura knew what Alex was doing now, she’d realise the last thing that would help her were these cryptic notes. Bernie’s toy had given up many secrets that day, but she had no idea how it could reveal a 12 digit number.
Henry walked over to her and stood looking down at the screen too. She could see the tension in his face. And the impatience. Again she could tell he was asking her silently for the answer. She ignored his edginess and tried to clear her mind so she could think. Bernie had one code. His Pakistani contact had the other. She had no idea where Ahmed had got his code and ignored the lingering worry that Bernie’s code was the same as his. Either way, she had to work out where Bernie’s code was. Was it possible he kept it memorised in his head? She recalled the password from the slip of paper in the Bible, which unlocked his itinerary. He didn’t memorise that, and the only reason he needed it was to work out which flights he was on. Or to let someone else know which flights he was on. Someone who had his iPad. The barcode number had many more than 12 digits. She hadn’t seen any numbers in the Conspiracy Bible, nor had she found anything in the Wifi connections that could make up a 12 digit code. The letters KHUDADADVC had brought them to this location. Was it possible this was also the code? Could each letter be transposed into a number? No. She needed 12 digits, and that was only ten. Henry walked away from her, and sat on the ground, his back against the wall.
‘We can’t afford to guess. There’s only one go at this. If we get it wrong, it’s over,’ he said.
Alex didn’t reply. Something had just occurred to her. As she explained to poor dead Josh earlier that day, he would often write his computer login on a post-it note and keep it in his wallet in case he forgot it. But one thing Bernie wasn’t forgetful about was times and places. Alex used to marvel that he didn’t keep a diary. When she ribbed him about it, he always said he didn’t need to write down appointments. He always managed to remember them. And he was right. He was good at dates, times and places. If you made plans to meet him somewhere, he was always there on time, and in the right place. So why would he have a post-it note in his pocket reminding him where he was going to meet Henry? The Wenceslas Square code hadn’t worked for the iPad mSecure app, and she had assumed then that it really was just a reminder of where to meet Henry. Would Bernie really need a reminder for a meeting as important as that? And even if he did, wouldn’t he jot down the time as well? Alex glanced up from the iPad.
‘What time were you meeting Bernie at Wenceslas Square?’ Henry looked at her blankly. ‘Bernie had a note in his pocket that said Wenceslas Square, and I thought that made sense because you were meeting there. So what time were you meeting?’
Henry’s expression didn’t change. ‘I can’t remember. Ten o’clock or something I think.’
Alex’s mind raced forward, ignoring Henry’s puzzled expression. ‘It can’t have been ten, because you said you went to meet him, and not finding him there, came to gates of the conference where you found me. So it must have been earlier, possibly nine.’
Henry shrugged. ‘Maybe it was nine. What does it matter?’
‘The note in his pocket wasn’t about an appointment. I think it was a reminder of the code. When Laura told me about it, she was very precise. She said ‘Wenceslas S Q U. She assumed SQU stood for Square, which it usually would. But it also brings the total number of letters to 12. I tried it on the mSecure app and it was wrong. But maybe I just tried it in the wrong place.’ Alex typed the letters into the iPad. How would Bernie have rearranged them to make a 12 digit number? There were only two ways she could think of. The first was to use the ordering of the alphabet, using only single digits for each letter. So since the letter U was number 21, it became three. Two plus one. This didn’t seem like something Bernie would have done. He didn’t really have a mathematical mind. So the second possibility was more likely. Bernie had a Nokia mobile phone, which now seemed completely out of date since it didn’t have a touch screen. But he always boasted at how fast he could write text messages, having discovered this art relatively recently compared to the rest of the world. His Nokia, being a traditional handset, had 12 buttons, with the numbers one to nine also representing the 26 letters in the alphabet. This would have been an easy way to use the letters WENCESLASSQU to make a number. Alex could picture the handset in her mind. She wrote the numbers on the iPad’s notepad. 936237527778. The silence in the room seemed to be waiting for her to speak. And when she finally did, Henry’s impatience at last gave way to a smile.
‘The note Laura found in Bernie’s pocket. It makes a 12 digit code.’