The Magdalene Cipher (20 page)

“Not yet, sir.”

“When he gets in, would you tell him that his friend is in the restaurant?”

“Of course.”

He'd been ready to sit for hours, watching the river and drinking coffee, but the Russian was on the scene before Dunphy could finish his second croissant
.

“You look like shit,” Max said by way of greeting
.

“Thanks, Max. You're looking well yourself. Have a seat.”

The Russian dropped into the chair across from him. “What I have done for you,” he whispered, “could not have been done by any other man.”

“Then I guess I went to the right guy.”

“You bet,” he said. And with that, Max nudged a manila envelope across the table and reached for the check. “I'll get this,” he said, scrutinizing the bill
.

“Really?” Dunphy exclaimed. “The coffee
and
the croissants?”

The Russian nodded, mostly to himself, and muttered, “Mr. Smart-ass.” Then he took a pen from his pocket and scrawled a room number on the check. “Let's go,” he said, getting to his feet. “We can do business upstairs.”

Dunphy rode with him in the elevator to the hotel's fifth, and uppermost, floor. The suite was at the end of the corridor, with windows overlooking both the river and the lake. Inside, Max's overnight bag rested on the carpet below the window, unopened
.

“I'm whacked,” Dunphy said, as he fell into a wing chair
.

“What's wrong?” Max asked
.

“I've got a cold.”

“So, we finish business . . . I go home . . . you keep room. Get sleep.”

“I think I will,” Dunphy replied. “I'm really out of it.”

The Russian removed a manila envelope from his overnight bag, tore it open, and dumped its contents on the coffee table between them. There were a couple of credit cards, a driver's license, and a passport. Dunphy opened the passport, checked the picture, and glanced at the name. “Very nice,” he said, then did a double take. “Harrison Pitt!?”

Max beamed. “Is good name, huh?”

“Good name? What kind of fucking name—”

“Is American name! True blue!”

“Are you kidding? I don't know anyone named Harrison.”

“No, of course not. In Ireland, this is not popular name. In Canada—America—there are many, many Harrisons.”

“Name one.”

Instantly, the Russian replied, “Ford.”

It took a moment for the suspicion to dawn. “And Pitt?”

“There is also Brad Pitt,” Max replied. “And this is just movie stars. Many average Americans have these names.”

Dunphy sighed. “Right. So what about the other stuff?”

Max removed a letter-sized envelope from his jacket and handed it to Dunphy, who ripped it open
.

A laminated Andromeda pass fell into his lap. In the upper left-hand corner was the hologram, a rainbow image of the black Virgin of Einsiedeln; and at the bottom, on the right side, a thumbprint. Dunphy's own picture was in the middle of the pass, under the words:

MK-IMAGE
Special Access Program
E. Brading
*ANDROMEDA*

“Well done, man! It's very, very good.”

The Russian looked insulted. “No! Is perfect.”

“My words exactly! And the thumbprint? What have we done about that?”

Max unzipped the outside compartment of his overnight bag and removed a hardbound copy of Nabokov's
Ada, or Ardor. “Voilà,”
he said, and handed the book to Dunphy
.

“What do I do with it?”

“Hold it,” the Russian said. Then, returning to his overnight bag, he worked the main zipper and removed a small leather case from the bag's central compartment. Inside the case were a jumble of toiletries—toothpaste, toothbrush, disposable razors, pill bottles . . . and a tube of something called bio-glue
.

“What's that?” Dunphy asked, as the Russian removed the tube from the ditty bag
.

“Bio-glue.”

“I know what it
says
a—”

“Is protein polymer for doctors. Stronger than stitches. No pain. So, is progress.”

“And what are you gonna do with it?”

“Give book, please.”

Dunphy gave him the book, and the Russian opened it. Inside was a glassine envelope. Max pressed the sides of the envelope together, blew into it, and shook out what looked like a translucent piece of skin
.

“Fingerprint,” Max said
.

Dunphy stared at the object, which rested on Max's palm like a surrealist joke. “What's it made of?” he asked
.

“Hydrogel. Same as contact lens—soft kind. Is biomimetic.”

“And what's that supposed to mean?”

“It means human-compatible plastic. Ultrathin. Now, please, wash hands, then dry.”

Dunphy got up and did as he was told, then returned to his seat beside the window
.

Max took Dunphy's right hand in his own and dabbed the bio-glue on the American's thumb, using a Q-Tip. Then he laid the fingerprint on the glue and smoothed it down. “Four minutes,” he said
.

Dunphy studied the appliqué, which appeared to be seamless. “How do I get it off?” he asked
.

The Russian frowned. Finally he said, “Sandpaper, maybe.”

“Sandpaper?!”

“Sure.”

“Okay . . . sandpaper it is. Now, tell me how you made it.”

Max smiled. “Photoengraving. When glue dries, you'll see—finger will be smooth.”

“And that'll get the job done? You don't have to emboss it, or something?”

“
Emboss?
Why emboss? Is building pass! They check with scanner.”

Dunphy gave him a skeptical look
.

“Don't worry!” Max said. “Be happy.”

And, in fact, he didn't have much choice. Max was the best. If the pass didn't work, it didn't work, and that would be the end of it (and me, too, Dunphy thought). There wasn't anything he could do about it except go with the flow and see what happened. Getting to his feet, Dunphy crossed the room to his attaché case. Placing it on the bed, he snapped open the locks and removed six bundles of cash, each of which contained fifty one-hundred-pound notes—altogether, the equivalent of about fifty thousand dollars. As he handed the currency to Max, bundle by bundle, he said, “Tell me something.”

“What?” Max asked, eyes on the money
.

“In Russia, when you were living there—did you ever read about any . . . I don't know . . .”

“Ask!”

“Cattle mutilations.”

The Russian gave him a puzzled look. “You mean . . . dead cows?”

“Yeah. Cows getting cut up . . . in the pastures.”

Max chuckled. “No. I never heard of this. Not while I was there. Why?”

“I was just wondering,” Dunphy replied, and handed him the last of the bundles
.

“But after
glasnost
,
a” Max said, “there are many of these reports.”

Dunphy looked at him. “About cattle mutilations?”

The Russian nodded as he shoved the money into his overnight bag. “UFOs, too. All kinds of craziness. But this is new—with communists, we never have this.”

Dunphy sat down on the bed. “There's one other thing,” he said
.

Max smiled and rezipped his overnight bag. “Always, there is one other thing.”

“I need a second passport—for a friend.” Removing another bundle of notes from the attaché case, Dunphy counted out thirty-five hundred-pound notes, and handed them to Max. Then he gave him an envelope with Clementine's pictures inside. “Her address is on the back. It's kind of an emergency.”

“I'll do it tonight,” Max promised, and glanced at the pictures. “Attractive girl.”

“Thanks.”

“What name you want?”

“Veroushka Bell.”

He smiled and wrote the name on the back of the envelope containing the pictures. “She's Russian?”

“No. Just romantic.”

“Even better.” He looked up, suddenly serious. “Veroushka's passport—it's like yours, okay?”

Dunphy nodded
.

“Is blank—from embassy. I don't say which one. But never issued—so no bad history. Go anywhere, except—maybe not to Canada. Okay?”

“We aren't going to Canada.”

“Then you don't have problem.”

“Do me a favor,” Dunphy asked, walking Max to the door
.

“Ask.”

Dunphy went over to a desk in the corner of the room and, taking out a sheet of hotel stationery, wrote down the number of the room he was in. Finally, he sealed the page in an envelope, addressed it to Veroushka, and handed it to Max. “Make sure she gets this when she gets the passport.”

***

He went out only once over the next three days, buying magazines at a small store on Fraumünsterstrasse. The rest of the time, he rode out his cold in the comfort of Max's hotel room, sitting by the window above the river, listening to the hard little pellets of snow tick against the glass. The only people he saw were the ones who turned down the bed, changed the towels, or delivered room service. There were no phone calls, or only a couple, and both of those were hang-ups. All in all, it would have been an excellent time to be sick, if it weren't for the weakness that he felt, the fever that he had, and the cough that he couldn't seem to shake
.

Of the three, it was the fever that bothered him the most—because it invaded his dreams, imposing a kind of boredom on his sleep. Ordinarily, Dunphy didn't pay much attention to his dreams, but fever dreams were different, as repetitive and monotonous as a test pattern. Waking from them in a sweat, he felt more tired than when he'd first gone to sleep
.

By the afternoon of the fourth day, impatient with his body and for Clementine, as well, he decided to go out. Getting dressed, he rode the elevator down to the lobby and walked out into the little street behind the hotel. He needed a couple of things. In fact, he needed everything—and something to carry it in besides. Once Clementine arrived—and once they got to Zug—the world would shift into overdrive. He just knew it would. And when it did, it would be nice to have a change of underwear
.

So he went out and bought clothes. For two and a half hours, he wandered through the Old Town's cobblestone streets, weaving in and out of some of the planet's most expensive men's furnishings stores. He bought an overnight bag that had more pockets than a pool hall, and which the salesman swore was stronger than the nose cone of a Saturn rocket (nine hundred Swiss francs). There were shirts from France at four hundred francs apiece, a couple of pairs of German slacks for about the same price, Armani T-shirts at one hundred thirty francs a pop, and socks at twenty francs a foot. He found a houndstooth sports jacket that made him want to shoot grouse (whatever they were, and whatever they'd done to deserve it), and the basic necessities for running: shoes-shorts-and-socks
.

And when he was done, it was four o'clock in the afternoon, and he'd learned two things. One: Zürich was a very expensive city in which to buy clothes. And, two: he was definitely being followed
.

There was a pair of them, just as he'd always known there would be. The blond guy in the loden coat was one, and there was a second guy, a thug on a red Vespa. And they weren't being secretive. Though they kept their distance, they did nothing to conceal the fact that they were following him. Which meant they owned him, or thought they did
.

The guy on the scooter looked like a jock. He had the bull neck and bunchy shoulders of a boxer, piggy little eyes, and a flattop shaved around the sides. Lightly dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, he seemed impervious to the weather—or wanted others to think that he was. His pal huffed along the street about fifty yards behind, hands jammed in his pockets, sucking on a cigarette
.

They've been waiting outside the Zum Storchen for three days, Dunphy thought. Which means they're persistent little fucks, and what I oughta do is call 'em out
.

Yo! Fuckhead!

But, no. That would not be a good idea. For one thing, he had too many packages in his hands. For another, he wasn't feeling all that good, or all that brave. On the contrary, he felt a lot like a novice swimmer standing at the end of the high diving board, looking down at the deep and rock-hard water. It wasn't vertigo, exactly, but he did notice a tightening of the scrotum, as if it had just been taken in an inch
.

Which surprised him because he was supposed to be a pro at this. When he'd joined the Agency, he'd gone through the usual surveillance and countersurveillance exercises in Williamsburg and Washington. It was standard procedure, and he'd been pretty good at it. So the situation was not entirely unfamiliar—but neither was it the same. Unlike the instructors that he'd had at the Farm, these people did not mean him well
.