Ixeos: Book One of the Ixeos Trilogy (23 page)

At the last door on the left, Neahle said, “This one’s locked.”

“I’ll open it before we start on the next hall. Looks like we’re making a run along the perimeter of the building, so I guess there are two sides to go.” He crossed the hall, knelt down, and removed a small leather case from his back pack. Unzipping it, Neahle saw a dozen slim metal tools of various kinds.

“Were you a criminal back home?” she asked, only half joking.

“Nah. My dad’s a locksmith. I went out on calls with him, worked in his shop, made keys. Probably one reason Landon brought me here.” He examined the lock, pulled out two tools, and went to work. In less than half a minute the door clicked open. “These are a piece of cake. Wherever the vault is that’d be a different story.”

Standing, he opened the door and shined his light. “Jackpot…” he muttered. “Come see.”

Inside were rows of black filing cabinets, some obviously from the early twentieth century. There were dozens of them, all four drawers high. Neahle walked to the closest one and slid it open. It was stuffed to the gills with files. She looked helplessly at Monkey.

“Guess we better get the others. This is gonna take awhile,” he said.

Sarah and Clay came to help in the search, leaving Riley and Abacus hunting for the data storage. When Clay walked in the room, he whistled.

“Well this is gonna be fun,” he said, looking around at the wall to wall filing cabinets. “Have you looked at anything yet? How far back do these go?”

“These old ones over here are from the 1920s,” Neahle said. “I guess there’s another room somewhere with the older stuff—they opened in 1766, from what these brochures say.”

“Are they alphabetical or by date or by category or what?” Clay asked.

“By date,” she said.

Clay grinned. “That helps. We need to find 1945. That’s when the war ended. I doubt anyone tried to sell a machine right then, but I’d hate to miss one. Pick a cabinet and dig in. You’ll have to look through every file, unless there are ledgers somewhere. Did you see any?” he asked Neahle.

Neahle shook her head. “But there must be some auction records somewhere. The files in here are really detailed: information on the buyers, including their address; what they bought and where it came from; the history; the seller… There are probably lists from the auctions themselves, don’t you think?”

“Makes sense to me. Why don’t you look for ledgers and we’ll get started on these,” Sarah said, shining her flashlight on the front of the cabinets. “The years are on the front of the drawers. Looks like 1945 is… here.” She stopped in front of an old steel filing cabinet halfway down the left wall and slid the top drawer open. “Guess I’ll start here.”

While the others claimed a cabinet and started methodically going through files, Neahle opened drawer after drawer looking for ledgers. She reached the last drawer, marked 1982. Just files. Frowning, she shined her flashlight around the room and spotted an interior door. Trying the handle, she found it unlocked.

Inside was a much smaller storage room, the size of a large closet. The walls were lined shelves, and the shelves were lined with tall, grey cloth-bound books. Pulling one down at random, she opened it. “Jackpot,” she whispered. It was a ledger containing all the transactions of auctions held in 1934, with a column for the date, the item, the buyer, and the price.

“Guys!” she called out. “In here! I’ve found them!”

Two hours later they were each sitting down with their legs spread out in front of them and piles of files and ledgers stacked haphazardly all around. Riley and Abacus came in and didn’t see them on the floor.

“Hello?” Abacus called out.

“Down here!” Sarah said. “Be careful, don’t trip. We’ve made a mess.”

The men walked over and shined their flashlights around the floor. A few ledgers lay open, but most were in untidy piles.

“Find anything?” Riley asked, squatting down and thumbing through a 1967 ledger.

“A few. What we need to do is go to the filing cabinets and see if they’re the right ones. We’ve got five so far, but in the ledger the description is just ‘WWII Enigma code machine.’ No model or other information. One sold in 1959 for twenty grand.” Clay stood up, groaning. “My butt’s killing me.”

He picked up the open ledgers and handed one to Riley and one to Abacus. “The cabinets are by year, by month, then alphabetical by buyer. Y’all take these and find the files. The rest of them can keep looking.” Neahle groaned, adjusting her flashlight, which was perched on her shoulder and held in place under her chin.

In ten minutes, the men met around the end of a row of filing cabinets, each with their files. Clay slapped his two on the cabinet and flipped the top one open. “We need the Enigma M3. If it doesn’t list a model, then hopefully it’ll say either ‘navy’ or ‘
kriegsmarine
.’ If it’s a different model or from a different branch of the military, we don’t want it.”

Christie’s kept amazingly detailed files, including the history and provenance of each item, detailed information on the seller and the new buyer, and photographs of the pieces sold. The first of Clay’s was an M4. He closed the file and looked at the next one. The description said, “Enigma code machine, used by German Kriegsmarine, WWII. Sold by Heinrich Schmidt.” A lot of information on the buyer, Mr. Leveque, followed. Nowhere was the model of the machine listed.

“Got a potential,” he said. “No model, but it’s navy. And the buyer was French, with a Paris address.”

“Mine’s a bust,” Abacus said, throwing down his file.

“I got ‘WWII German code machine, M3, New York, New York.’ Doesn’t say Enigma.” Riley held up his folder.

“That’s gotta be one, though!” Clay said. “So we’ve got 2 options so far. Did you find the data storage?”

“We think so. There was a fireproof room with microfiche, floppy discs, and larger hard drives dated from 2005 to 2102. We left the microfiche—it’s probably just all this.” Abacus swept his arm around the room. “We’ve got most of the rest, but it’s heavy so we didn’t take it all. We’ll have to come back if nothing works out. It’s not safe to carry too much back through the Tube, in case we run into problems.”

“Hey!” Neahle called out. “I got another one. 1981, M3 German code machine, Michael de Santos, Madrid, Spain. Can you find the file?”

Riley hurried over to the drawer and rifled through it, withdrawing a folder. He set it on the top of the cabinet, shined his light on it, and slid his finger down. “‘World War II era German code machine, Kriegsmarine, model M3…’ Yes! We got one.” He flipped the page. “‘Michael de Santos, 612 Calle de Leganitos, Madrid, Spain,’ and a telephone number. Very helpful.” He grinned. “Vamanos, muchachos!”

Chapter Thirty-One

M
arty was chomping at the
bit, waiting for someone to visit the vault from the tunnels. He had found several older emails on the server from Alex Verestyuck in the same nonsensical style; he printed these off and stuck them in a notebook. After that, he tried to track down the recipient, [email protected]. This guy was using code, too, although his messages were much shorter. The one sent in reply to Alex Verestyuck’s latest email had said, “X back, needs pretty long Monday. Visiting in old garage storage. Says energy quit. Zack to loan John Keller cases designated under Frank. Ready your Xtera, all moved. Vincent on.”

Oh yeah, that made sense. Clear as mud. He scribbled on the white expanse under the printed email.

XBNPL MVIOG SEQZT LJKCD UFRYX AMVO

Sighing heavily, he threw down his pen. All the messages were great, except he had no way to decode them. He’d spent some time trying to decipher them with various kinds of codes he’d learned in school but nothing worked. Of course. If they were made by an Enigma machine, nothing would.

Later that evening, they were eating reheated beans and rice when Hannah came in, wet from a rain storm. She grinned at the sight of hot food.

“Please tell me you have more of that and some hot tea? I’m freezing!”

Travis got her a bowl while Marissa made tea; Hannah pulled off her wet jacket and the sweatshirt underneath.

“How’s things?” she said, digging in.

“I got something,” Marty said, with barely repressed excitement.

“Already?” Hannah asked, surprised.

“Yeah. Actually Travis found the first email. After that it was easy to backtrack into the server. I’ve got a dozen messages, but my guess is that the most recent are the ones we want. They’re being sent by some chick named Alex Verestyuck to someone at LRTD.”

Hannah chewed thoughtfully. “That makes sense. The LRTD part, anyway.” She turned to Marissa. “Isn’t Verestyuck some kind of scientist?”

“Yeah. If Clay’s theory is right, she’s just sending and receiving the coded messages for Lockwell. She doesn’t know what they mean.”

“A layer of protection.” Hannah took another bite. “Makes sense, I guess.”

“When are you going back to the tunnels?” Marty asked.

“Tomorrow morning, before first light. I’ll take the messages back with me. You keep copies, just in case.” Hannah scraped the bottom of the bowl, then blew on her tea.

“In case of what?” Marty asked.

“In case I don’t make it back,” Hannah said, sipping. “You never know.”

Hannah left before anyone was up. Marty spent his first hour awake pacing the floor. Finally Marissa grabbed his arm and pulled him into a chair.

“Chill,” she said. “She’s taken them—it’s out of your hands.”

“I know, but what if she doesn’t make it back. How will we know? For that matter, how will we know if she does, and if Clay and Neahle find a machine, and if the code gets cracked? This makes me nuts!” He stood up and started pacing again.

“Unfortunately we don’t have any way to communicate. It’s like the olden days. You know, the Pony Express and all that. You wait.” At his pained expression, Marissa laughed. “You get used to it. And we’ve got a job to do, beyond your messages. You know where to find Verestyuck and the person at LRTD now, so put that aside and help us. It’s the other’s job to find Darian and free him. If they do, they’re going to need all the intel we can give them. That’s
our
job.”

Marty looked at her serious expression for a long moment, then nodded. He couldn’t help that he’d been born in the era of instant communication. He was definitely going to start a project to give the rebels and outsiders a secure network to call or text or communicate in some way. In the meantime though, Marissa was right. Their job was to collect intel, and it was something he was good at. Time to get back to it.