Private Monaco

Chapter 75

I woke with a start, suddenly aware of noise rising from the street. In the distance I could hear powerful engines roaring like wild animals. I was lying with my head on the dining table and must have fallen asleep where I’d been working. I sat up and checked my watch, dismayed at my failure to stay awake.

It was 8:30 a.m. The fuel depot had been open for ninety minutes.

I looked around and saw Justine asleep on one of the couches.

“Jus,” I said, moving toward her.

She stirred as I leaned down to kiss her.

“Justine, come on,” I said. “We fell asleep.”

“Oh my God,” she exclaimed with a start. “Oh, no. What time is it?”

“Eight-thirty,” I replied. “We need to get moving. It sounds like they’re warming up for qualifying.”

Nothing can prepare a person for the sound of a Formula One car, and the noise of the state-of-the-art machines dominated the city.

Justine nodded and stretched as she stood up.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I just had to sleep.”

“Turns out I did too.”

“You find anything?” she asked, gesturing to the mass of paper spread across the table.

“I don’t even know,” I replied. “It all became a blur.”

I returned to the table and looked at the evidence we’d amassed from our investigation into Duval. I picked up the messages we’d pulled off the four phones we’d found in his safe. One device had contained a peculiar set of messages sent by him over the course of a year: a series of numeric codes. I don’t know whether it was the benefit of sleep, or a little distance from the intense focus I’d applied to them, but I finally saw a pattern in them. The first eleven numbers were repeated in each message.

“What is it?” Justine asked, joining me.

“These texts,” I replied. “I think I can crack the code.”

I grabbed a blank piece of paper and wrote out the first eleven numbers.

I assumed it was an alphanumeric and that the larger numbers referred to letters further into the alphabet. Through a process of trial and error, I broke the sequence into:

and then tried to fit letters to each one. After a few minutes I realized it was a simple plus one code that read:

“What’s Eli Carver’s Secret Service code name?” I asked, and Justine grabbed her phone to search the internet.

“According to a Rolling Stone profile, Secretary Carver has mixed feelings about his code name,” Justine read from the article, “‘because he isn’t quite as fleet of foot as the Greek god Apollo.’”

“I bet this is information Duval was supplying on him,” I said. “Can you send these messages to Weaver, while I call Carver?”

Justine nodded and sat at Mo-bot’s workstation.

I dialed the Secretary’s personal line.

“Yes?” a woman said.

“Secretary Carver, please.”

“One moment.”

The line went silent, then I heard heavy breathing and the sound of sheets rustling.

“Mr. Morgan, this is Henry Wilson. How can I help you?”

“I need to speak to the Secretary.”

“Secretary Carver has given strict DND orders,” he replied.

“DND?”

“Do not disturb. He’ll surface just before qualifying, I imagine. You’re very welcome to join us.”

“I have reason to believe the Secretary is a target. We discovered—”

He cut me off. “Mr. Morgan, we’ve discussed this.”

“We found text messages on a conspirator’s phone that mention the name Apollo. I haven’t been able to decipher the rest of the coded messages, but that’s the Secretary’s code name, isn’t it?”

There was a moment’s hesitation.

“Mr. Morgan, do you have any idea how many threats the Secret Service addresses every single day? Do you know how sophisticated our threat matrix is?”

“I don’t give a damn,” I replied, allowing my frustration to get the better of me. I wished I’d controlled my emotions more effectively because I must have sounded a little unhinged. “I’m telling you, this is a real and present threat.”

“Thank you for your concern, Mr. Morgan. I’ll inform the head of the Secretary’s detail. I do hope we’ll see you later.”

And with that he hung up on me.

“That son of a...” I said.

“I’ve sent the messages to Weaver,” Justine responded. “But he probably won’t see them for hours. It’s the middle of the night on the East Coast. What do we do now?”

“We’re going to have to split up,” I replied. “I want you to find Carver. Make him listen to you. He’ll be at the grandstand overlooking the Louis Chiron. It’s one of the most famous features of the course.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to the port to find the boat Roman is using,” I said. “If you can’t get Carver and his people to listen, we’re going to need to stop this ourselves.”