Acquainted With the Night (9781101546000) (19 page)

After Caro defuzzed and colored her hair, she pulled it back into a sleek ponytail. She stepped out of the bathroom and found Jude gathering their hair clippings into a plastic trash bag. He fished her bloody sweater from the trash can and added it to the bag. She thought he might pitch it over the balcony, but he slipped it into his backpack.

“Why are you keeping our trash?” she asked.

“If MI5 is involved, they'll do hair and fiber analysis. We can't leave our DNA.”

“I hadn't thought about that.” She touched her neck, her fingers glancing over the wounds. They were pulsing. She was having trouble thinking about anything except Jude and her hyperpassionate response to him. She wasn't sure that
hyperpassionate
was even a word, but it was the only thing that fit.

“You'd better get dressed or we won't make it to Romania before dark.”

She swallowed. This was the first she'd heard of a proposed escape route, but it meant traveling north. She needed to head south. “Jude, I can't go to Romania.”

“Are you feeling ill?” He cupped her cheek. “You've cooled down a little.”

“I'm fine. But
you
might not be after I show you something.” She sat down on the bed and patted the space beside her. After he got settled, she reached into her duffel bag and pulled out her uncle's passport.

“The police returned Uncle Nigel's personal effects,” she said. “When I looked in his passport, I found notes.”

She opened the booklet, smoothing the crease between pages fourteen and fifteen, and pointed to the first two phrases.

“What are they?” he asked.

“Anagrams. My uncle wrote them before he died.”

“Secret messages?”

She handed him the passport and explained how she'd deciphered a few clues.

A sharp line creased his forehead. “Why didn't you tell me?'

“I didn't trust you.”

He glanced up. “Now you do?”

“Completely.” She showed him the next set of anagrams.

He frowned. “What do they mean?”

“One says
Meteora, Greece
. The other says
Monk Icon
.”

“‘Meteora'? Isn't that where those extraordinary monasteries are perched atop boulders?”

She nodded.

“I suppose they'd have a monk or two,” he said. “But what's an icon?”

“Religious art. I've got one of those, too.” She pulled it from her bag and unwrapped the plastic. The light hit the icon, glinting on the red-robed saint and the objects she held in each outstretched hand: a gilt-edged book and an ostrich egg. Behind the saint was part of a castle and a hilly battleground that was heaped with wounded men.

“It's a painting,” Jude said. He touched the jagged mountains that rose behind the saint. “Look how the scenery abruptly ends on both sides of the wood. Like the artist's brush slipped off.”

“My uncle always made a huge fuss over this icon. Now he's dead. I know you say those Bulgarian thugs are vampires, but they wanted more than my blood. I'm convinced they wanted this icon.”

“Maybe.” Fresh lines cut into his forehead. “But why didn't they take it out of your bag when you were unconscious?”

“The bag wasn't going anywhere. And they didn't think I was, either.” She ran her finger along the icon and paused at the mitered corner. “I don't know how they found out about it. I might never know.”

“In any case, it must be very valuable,” Jude said. “Why did you bring it to Bulgaria?”

“It belonged to my parents. I take it everywhere. It was one of Uncle Nigel's rules. No matter where I traveled, the icon went. I can't let anything happen to it.”

“Maybe that's why your uncle wrote the anagrams. To warn you. You've got to find the monk. Could his name be an anagram?”

“Let's find out.” She set down the icon, grabbed a ballpoint out of her bag, and lifted the passport. “My uncle added a spin—he taught me to switch the last words in phrases. I'm taking them as he's listed them, in sets of two.” She raised the pen as if it were a candle lighting the page and pointed at
Ellen vumv
. “Here, I'm swapping
canola
and
ice
. The new anagrams are
Ellen vumv ice
and
Bravo canola
.”

She scribbled on her thigh, rearranging letters the way her uncle had taught her. The hotel room dropped away as her concentration sharpened. Nothing existed but twenty-six letters in the Latin alphabet, all of them swirling around her. She switched
ice
and
canola
, and the
V
in
vumv
leaped out along with the double
L
s in
Ellen
.

Vellum.
Her uncle had encouraged her to learn about illustrated manuscripts. When she was a child, she'd drawn her own version of
The Book of Hours
. The obsession had continued into adulthood, when she'd seriously thought of moving to Dublin to do an independent study on
The Book of Kells
, but Uncle Nigel had scotched that idea.

“I've got it,” Jude said, leaning over the passport. “Venice vellum.”

“Brilliant,” she said, impressed that he'd decoded the words without a pen. She smiled and continued writing on her arm, sorting
Bravo canola
into
Lavoro banca
.

“The clues are starting to make sense,” she said. “Uncle Nigel had an account at the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro in Venice.”

“But what's vellum?” Jude leaned closer to the passport.

“Early books. They were written on animal hides—goat and calfskin. They were called vellum leaves.”

“And you just happened to know this?” he asked.

“I told you I was a scholar. I lurked in temperature-controlled rooms at the Bodelean Library. I'm rather passionate about fourth-century Bibles. But I love Psalters and herbals, too.”

“Caro, you're the most interesting woman I've ever known.”

Interesting? So he thought she was a book geek? Any second now he'd run out the door. She pushed away the thought and focused on the next phrases. She switched
foes
and
fit
.
Bark boy toe fit
had two
B
s,
O
s, and
T
s;
Tax by foes
had an
X
. She quickly sorted the letters, scribbling on her wrist.

 

BARK BOY TOE FIT = RABBIT FOOT KEY TAX BY FOES = SAFETY BOX

 

“Rabbit foot key?” Jude asked.

Caro reached into her bag and pulled out a furry brown chain. Dangling from the ring were a dozen brass keys in various shapes and sizes.

“I'm catching on,” Jude said. “And one of these keys fits a safety box at the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro?”

“It better.”

Jude drew his finger over her hand, tracing the ink marks. “You've written all over yourself.”

“An old habit. My uncle taught me to never leave a paper trail.”

“He sounds like he was the 007 of the archaeology world.”

“Go ahead, have a laugh.” She grabbed his chin, giving it a playful tug. “Uncle Nigel's grandfather cracked German ciphers in World War I. He was involved with Room Forty.”

“The British Cryptology Department?” He looked shocked. “His grandfather was a spy?”

“A paleographer. But he had a knack for decryption. All the Cliffords were born with it.”

“I wish I could have met him.” Jude licked his finger, then pressed it against her leg and rubbed out the
f
in
foes
. “So, we're off to Meteora to find a monk, or shall we go to Italy?”

“Meteora. Do you see the line my uncle drew between the anagrams? It was his way of dividing the clues. Placing them in order. He meant for me to go to Greece, then Italy.”

“It's getting late. If we hope to make it to Greece by nightfall, we should leave now.”

“Wait.” She cupped her hand against his cheek. “Are you sure you want to get mixed up in my problems? Too many people are looking for me. If you leave now, you'll have a clean getaway. But if you stick with me, the authorities will assume you're involved.”

“But I
am
involved. I murdered a vampire last night.”

“To save me.”

“You might need my help again, lass.”

“I'm a tour guide, for heaven's sake. Travel is my specialty. I can bribe someone to drive me to Greece.”

“I'm going with you, and that's the end of it.”

While she dressed, he unfolded a map of Europe and marked an
X
over Kardzhali. Then he drew a straight line down to Momchilgrad.

“We're here,” he said, then dragged his finger lower. “Greece is less than an hour away. But the border checkpoint is at Blagoevgrad. The Bulgarians are mildly obsessed with stamping passports. They're the worst in Europe. A checkpoint can take hours.”

“Isn't there a new road to Komotini?” she asked.

“The Makaza Pass? I don't know if it's open. Last I heard, it was complete on the Bulgarian side. The Greeks were procrastinating.”

“We could backpack.”

“Unexploded land mines are all over on the Greek side. Either we go through Turkey—and that border crossing is a nightmare—or we go through Blagoevgrad.”

Caro sighed. “Isn't there another way?”

“I don't think so. I was in Bulgaria last spring and had a devil of a time getting out. The border guards were scrutinizing the holograms on passports. Mine was fake with a bloody awful hologram.”

He picked up their bags and headed for the door. She sat there a moment, thinking how in the space of a breath, lives can intersect and transform. Her uncle had known Sir John Barrett, of Dalgliesh Castle in Yorkshire. His son, Jude, had grown up to write an article that would catch her uncle's fancy. Caro had herded tourists over Dalgliesh's ancestral drawbridge, and she'd bought a duffel bag in the gift shop. Now Jude was carrying that bag out of a hotel room where they'd shared the most intense physical experience of their lives—at least, it had felt that way from her end.

She rose from the bed and hurried after him.

 

Ilya Velikov dialed the British embassy in Sofia and demanded to be put through to Ambassador Williams. While he waited, Velikov spread the bagged credit cards over his desk, adding other pieces of evidence he'd found in the dead man's wallet—traveler's checks made out to Nigel Clifford and part of a wristwatch with
Love, Caro
engraved on the back.

The operator put him on hold. A few moments later, he heard a click. “Ilya, this is Thurston Hughes. May I ring you back? We've got a bit of a kerfuffle with the Clifford girl.”

“That is why I am calling,” Velikov said. “I was at the accident scene last night. When I checked the victim's wallet, I found Professor Clifford's credit cards and traveler's checks. The victim even had the professor's watch. I called the credit bureau and charges have been made to these cards—after Professor Clifford's death. I am waiting for copies of the signature.”

“You're saying that Miss Clifford was chasing her uncle's murderer?”

“Or he was chasing her,” said Velikov. “I have interviewed witnesses who saw the accident and events leading to it. They say that two men grabbed Miss Clifford in downtown Kardzhali—against her will. Another witness claims he was stalled in traffic and the trunk of a brown Dacia opened. A woman matching Miss Clifford's description climbed out. The witness reports that Miss Clifford was chased by a male passenger in the Dacia.”