The Old Enemy by Henry Porter (read with me .TXT) 📕

‘And do you think someone tried to kill them on the same day because of this thing they were doing?’

‘Has to be a possibility.’ Then he added: ‘Yes, I do think that.’

‘Then where does Samson fit in? Why was he attacked in the street?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘You must have an idea – you employ him. You’re responsible for him. You figured out what he would be doing with my husband.’

‘As I say, I’m not sure.’

From old, she knew Macy to be evasive. ‘Come on, Macy – tell me. I am running things, don’t fuck with me.’

‘Not on the phone, Anastasia! How’s Denis?’

She shook her head in irritation and said, ‘Some improvements.’ She’d been to see him three hours before. There were fewer tubes and they had raised him a little to guard against pneumonia. His colour was better, too, and a nurse reported that his eyelashes had fluttered as though he was about to open his eyes. His breathing was good and there seemed to be some response when the soles of his feet were gently rubbed. ‘I think we’re going to need to talk, Macy,’ she said. ‘I mean, face to face.’

‘Yes, but I can’t come to you. It’s our friend’s funeral.’

‘Let me look into it, see what I can do. What about Samson?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Does he know I’m running things?’

‘I told him.’

‘Good,’ she said, and hung up.

‘I can go to London, if you’d prefer,’ said Tulliver.

‘No, you stay here, Jim. I need to find out what the hell’s going on, and I’m the only one who has the power to do that. He can’t tell you anything, but he has to tell me.’

‘Are you sure?’

What was he worried about? Her breakdown? Her history with Samson? Either way, she damn well wasn’t going to hear him out. She gave him a cool look that not even Jim could ignore.

The FBI returned in the early evening. Special Agent Reiner and Agent Paula Berg were joined by a man named J. P. Kristof, a Deputy Assistant Director at the FBI and in charge of the Bureau’s operation, who had also been given the role of coordinating efforts across the agencies. She thought he was there to take a look at her, but after a more or less repeat performance by Reiner and Berg, Kristof nodded to Reiner and said, ‘Why don’t you show Mrs Hisami the planner?’

Reiner opened the door and was handed an attaché case by an agent posted outside. It was Denis’s case, the one that Tulliver had carried from the meeting in Congresswoman Ricard’s office to the Rayburn Building and Room 2172. Denis used it for meetings, or on the plane when he needed to bring a lot of papers with him. He had had it with him when she first met him, in a hotel in northern Macedonia.

‘This was by Mr Tulliver’s chair and was left in the room when the hearing was evacuated,’ said Reiner. ‘It was retrieved and checked for contamination and, as it was obviously a crime scene, we went through the contents. We realised this was likely to be Mr Hisami’s case, not Mr Tulliver’s.’ He flipped the hasps. ‘It all seemed pretty straightforward. The papers are related to the hearing and there are the usual items found in a case like this.’ He looked up. ‘Why are you smiling, Mrs Hisami?’

‘The old calculator – it’s his Tandy from the seventies.’

Reiner picked it up. ‘Does that have significance?’

‘Denis bought it when he was a teenager in Kurdistan. It was a big deal for him. Solar-powered, and it still works! He has it to remind himself how far he’s come – something like that.’

‘So, he keeps personal stuff in the case as well as papers?’ asked Reiner.

‘I guess.’

He felt in one of the pockets in the lid of the case and pulled out a small red leather book. ‘Do you recognise this, Mrs Hisami? It’s a two-year planner – two weeks every page? It’s kind of neat. I wish I knew where to get hold of one.’

He handed it to her. ‘If you look through it, there are only a few entries and a few numbers. In all, there are exactly forty-eight.’ He looked at a sheaf of photocopies. ‘We would like to know what it all means. There are just five words in the whole two years – PEARL, BERLIN, PITCH, AURORA, SAFFRON – and a whole lot of entries that we surmise are International Banking numbers with the digits mixed up so that the actual bank account number is hidden. Unless we have the key, it will take a lot of computing power to unravel those. ‘We’re especially interested in the five words, which would seem to be a code, and we wonder if they mean anything to you at all?’

She shook her head. ‘But could you leave the photocopies and I’ll put my mind to this mystery later on? I can ask Jim Tulliver.’

‘We already have. He doesn’t know, and if there is someone who would know, it’s Mr Tulliver, right? He said he’s never seen the planner before, which is odd, wouldn’t you say? Mr Tulliver runs a lot of Mr Hisami’s life, and, well, this looks kind of important, with all the coded IBAN numbers.’ He paused and studied her. ‘Obviously, this is something that has personal meaning only to your husband – like the calculator.’

He handed her the photocopies. ‘You’ll see that the five words appear against certain dates over the last year and a half. We can’t see a pattern, but something may occur to you, and if you recognise one of those numbers, that might be the key to unravelling the others.’ He waited for her to respond. ‘If you’re interested, the words appear with differing frequency. BERLIN appears most often, with PEARL coming second. The others are used less frequently.’

She glanced down and saw the word BERLIN against 2 February of the previous year. She remembered that date from the log of Denis’s movements. On