Tommy Carmellini 02 - The Traitor Read Free

the surveillance cameras were getting all this. As dark as the hallway was, I doubted it. I would certainly find out soon if they were.
    When the lock opened, I stepped into the room and locked the door behind me. It would be nice if I could find another exit. Two night-lights illuminated the room. A thick carpet covered the floor, and thick drapes obscured the windows. Cool air came from vents high in the walls. I pulled the drapes aside and inspected the win-
    dows. The paint on the sills and sashes revealed that they hadn't been opened since the building was erected.
    The closet was a walk-in. Yes. It went through to a spare bedroom, which was set up as an office. This was my escape hatch if I needed it.
    I flipped on my flashlight and began searching—and quickly found what I was looking for: books. Lamoureux had perhaps two dozen in his bedroom, all in French. One of them, one here or one in the library or perhaps one in his desk or locked up in a safe, he used as a key for a cipher. Since it was based on a random word that appeared somewhere in the text of the book, and that word probably changed with every message, the cipher was essentially unbreakable. Oh, sure, with a big enough computer and years to watch it work, eventually a cryptographer would find which of the billions of possible letter combinations would unlock a message. Then the code breakers could do the drill all over again on another message, and so on.
    That method of cracking the cipher being unfeasible, the wizards had asked for help. I was the help. I was supposed to photograph the title of every book Lamoureux had routine access to and, if possible, figure out which one was the one.
    Since I wasn't anywhere near as smart as Sherlock Holmes, I decided to photograph all the books. I turned on the room lights, all of them, and began clicking away with my camera. Back in the good old days spies snapped away with Minox cameras, but we were digital now. I used a Sony Cyber-shot. When I had photographed all the books, I opened and closed drawers. No books in the drawers.
    He had a desk in the room, and I attacked it. In seconds I knew the drawers were empty. I turned off the lights, then went through the closet to the office. More books. I snapped on the lights and got busy with the camera. On a bottom shelf, lying on its back as if it had just been tossed there, was a well-thumbed paperback, The Sum of All Fears by Tom Clancy, the only book in English I had seen.
    I picked it up. The light wasn't good enough. I turned on the desk
    lamp, held the pages under it and flipped quickly through them. I was looking for pencil or ink marks. Didn't see anything.
    I put the book back on the shelf and looked at it again. The spine was crazed, completely broken down. The pages refused to close neatly. This book had been read and reread.
    Of course the wizards hadn't bothered to tell me how Lamoureux sent his messages, or to whom, or how frequently. I didn't know if he sent letters, postcards, or e-mail, or whether his missives went out in the diplomatic pouch or via snail mail. All I knew was that I was looking for a book that was used as the key to a code.
    Maybe Lamoureux was a Clancy fan. And maybe—
    I heard a noise.
    I had the lights off in a twinkling and strode for the closet. I heard the door opening in the bedroom. That told me which way to jump.
    I went over to the office door and carefully turned the knob. It was locked, naturally, with a Yale that took a key on both sides.
    I immediately looked for a place to hide, just in case the old monsieur decided that right this very minute was a good time to send a coded letter to his mistress in gay Paree.
    There was just enough room behind a large padded leather chair. I hunkered down behind it and tried to control my breathing and heart rate.
    He knocked around in the closet, then went to the bathroom beside the closet—I had forgotten to look in there for books. When the door closed and the water started