As soon as I woke up on the 28th, I flipped open my laptop and saw DJ’s email. There were five (that number again) PDF attachments. There was also a separate email from PayPal notifying me that two thousand Euros had been deposited and asking if I wanted it transferred to my bank account. That woke me up fast. If DJ was sending me that much money, how much had there been in the cabin? Where had Grandfather got it? Was it payment for being a spy, or money to carry out some secret operation?
My hand was shaking with excitement when I clicked open the email. DJ’s covering note didn’t tell me much that I didn’t already know. He had no idea what the codes meant—mine or his—and he was sending me money. He did say he was flying to England and was going to stay with his friend Doris, but he didn’t know what he would do there.
The first PDF I opened was a photo taken in Grandfather’s cabin. It showed a hole in the wall beside the fireplace. Bunny was crouched beside it, grinning and pointing into the dark space.
The second PDF was a photograph that showed the table at the cabin covered with piles of money, passports, a hat, what looked like a fake beard and mustache, a small black notebook, a bag of golf balls and a pistol. Bunny was in this one as well, standing behind the table, grinning happily and holding a wad of money. It was all so bizarre, but it had to be true, even if it didn’t make sense. Golf balls?
The third PDF was a scan of an old Spanish passport. It had been issued in 1965 to someone called Pedro Martinez and had been stamped for entry into Spain at Madrid airport on January 10, 1966. There was no exit stamp. I had no idea who Pedro Martinez was, but the photo was of Grandfather, older than in the photo I had of him from 1938 and younger than when I knew him.
The fourth PDF was a scan of an envelope, plus a handwritten page from a notebook. The words You are a traitor and You deserve to die were faintly legible on the envelope. On the page was written: I hoped I’d never have to use this book, but I needed to keep my own record, my own account, in case things ever came tumbling down around me. Maybe I know better than anybody that you can never trust anything or anyone, and I needed proof of who I was and what I did. I just know that I always did what needed to be done. Nothing more, and nothing less.
The fifth PDF had scans of a couple more pages from the same notebook. The pages showed a few letters and some intelligible words, but they were mostly groups of numbers. If this was Grandfather’s record and proof, it meant nothing to me. In fact, since it was in code of some kind, it probably wasn’t meant to mean anything to anyone other than him.
I sat and stared at the PDFs for a long time. I felt as confused as I had in the summer when the things Grandfather had left me tumbled out of the envelope after the will reading. At first they had meant nothing, but with DJ’s and Laia’s help, I had figured it all out. Could I figure out this mystery too?
I doubted it. That first envelope had contained clues from Grandfather that led me to a path to follow to get to the answer. Here, there was nothing to even suggest where to start. Grandfather had kept this record for himself. He’d probably never intended for anyone, least of all his grandsons, to find this stuff.
There was a knock on my door. “Come on, sleepyhead,” Laia shouted. “Felip wants to get on the road early, so you’d better hurry if you want any breakfast.”
“Okay, coming,” I replied. I took the laptop with me and showed the email to Laia as I ate my croissant.
“Quite the mystery,” she commented. “Do you have any idea what the numbers mean?”
“Some kind of code,” I said. “See how most of them are written in groups of four? That’s often how codes are written. That way, it gives no clue to the lengths of the underlying words.”
“These numbers aren’t written in groups of four.” Laia pointed to several lines that were different from the others. I shrugged.
“Why don’t you forward the email to me and I’ll print out the attachments?” Felip suggested. “Then you can examine them to your heart’s content in the car. But be quick. We have to leave soon if I’m to make my meeting with Chad.”
“Okay,” Laia said, finishing off her coffee in one gulp and standing up. “I’ve got some stuff to pack.” At the door she stopped and turned around. “And bring the book of Lorca’s poetry that Sofia gave you. If we get to Granada, it’d be cool to read some there.”
“I’ll bring it,” I said. I’d sent the email to Felip and the printer in the corner was clacking away before I realized what he had said. “Who did you say you were meeting in Palomares?” I asked. How common a name was Chad in Spain?
“A guy called Chad Everet,” Felip replied. “To be honest, he’s a bit too smooth for my liking, but we’ll see how useful he can be.”
I had pulled out the business card the boring guy on the plane had given me.
Chad Everet
Investment Counselor and
International Real Estate Advisor
“I know him!” I exclaimed.
“You know Chad Everet?”
“Well, I don’t really know him. He sat next to me on the flight to Barcelona. He talked nonstop about investments and hedge funds.”
“That sounds like him,” Felip said with a smile. “You’ll be able to renew your friendship.”
I groaned. Now I really wanted to stay in Seville with Laia, but it was too late. I collected the pages from the printer and went to throw my stuff in my backpack.
As we sped west across the dry Andalusian plain, Laia and I examined the printouts. The photos of the cabin and the passport didn’t tell us much. We discussed the fourth PDF at length, but since we didn’t know who had written that Grandfather was a traitor, and since the other message was so cryptic, we didn’t make much progress. For many kilometers, we stared blankly at the mysterious pages from the notebook.
“The simplest number codes substitute numbers for letters of the alphabet,” I said. “A is 1, B is 2, C is 3, and so on. So Laia would be 12-1-9-1.”
“But that’s not what this is,” Laia said. “Your grandfather’s code is written differently. There are no gaps to show the letters, so how would we know if 12 was L for Laia or A-B for about? Besides, each group of four letters begins with one, two, three or four. If those are letters, it’s much too regular to be words.”
“There must be a key. Some codes use a book as a key.”
“Your grandfather’s journal from the war?” Laia suggested.
“Maybe,” I said, unsure. “It’s in my backpack in the trunk. We can check it later, but I can’t see how the letters could possibly relate to it.”
We puzzled over the numbers for a few more kilometers but got nowhere. “What about the line at the top of the page?” Laia suggested. “It’s not numbers.”
“It looks more like a mathematics equation,” I said.
FGL@=5pm
“Maybe five PM is a time,” Laia said.
“How will that help us?” I guess the frustration in my voice came through, because Laia fell silent and gazed out at the countryside.
“Sorry,” I said. “I hate having a problem I can’t solve or a mystery I can’t unravel.”
“Not all mysteries can be unraveled,” Laia pointed out, but she returned her attention to the pages. “So we’ve got the line at the top, which may or may not have a time in it. Below that we’ve got lines of numbers divided into blocks of four, each of which begins with one, two, three or four. Then we have ten lines of numbers not in blocks of four, followed by a large block with the numbers again in blocks of four beginning with one, two, three or four. My guess is that the first line is some kind of key to the groups of four numbers, and I have no idea what the other numbers mean.”
“That sounds reasonable,” I agreed, “but without the key, we’re completely stuck.”
“Maybe we should take a break,” Laia suggested.
“Good idea.” I took out the book of Lorca’s poems and began thumbing through it.
“Read ‘Lament for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías,’” Laia suggested. “It’s Lorca’s most famous poem. Mejías was a friend, a bullfighter who was gored to death in the ring.”
“Okay.” I was looking up the page for the poem when Felip suddenly swerved off the road into a rest area and braked hard. I was thrown against Laia.
“What’s the matter?” she asked.
“Sorry,” Felip said, but he was staring back at the highway. I looked out. There wasn’t much traffic; a couple of large trucks and a few cars. As I watched, a black SUV with dark tinted windows sailed past in the slow lane. I couldn’t see inside, but I had the odd impression that someone was watching us.
“We’re being followed,” Felip said.