"Yeah," said Crosetti, "a small Tudor Bible, 1560, nine by seven. We think it was the basis of the Bracegirdle cipher. But how did you know that? You didn't have the ciphertext."

"No, but we found a Breeches Bible with pinholes in it, in Dunbarton's library, pinholes through random letters. Bulstrode figured out that the selected letters were the cipher key and that a grille must have been part of the cipher. He knew a h.e.l.l of a lot about antique ciphers."

"That's why you stole the grille from that church."

"You know about that?" This with some alarm.

"I know everything. Why didn't you just steal the Bible?"

"Bulstrode did did steal it. And then he got me to swipe the grille. Man, by that time he was so paranoid he thought there were gangs of scholars on the same search and he wanted to slow them down, if they happened to have just the ciphertext. He a.s.sumed that you'd give the ciphered pages to someone, your pal at the library for instance, and a general hunt would be on. That's why he came back to New York. He wanted to get to you and get the cipher pages from you. He had the grille and-" steal it. And then he got me to swipe the grille. Man, by that time he was so paranoid he thought there were gangs of scholars on the same search and he wanted to slow them down, if they happened to have just the ciphertext. He a.s.sumed that you'd give the ciphered pages to someone, your pal at the library for instance, and a general hunt would be on. That's why he came back to New York. He wanted to get to you and get the cipher pages from you. He had the grille and-"

"Shvanov grabbed him up and tortured him. Why was that?"

"He thought Bulstrode was double-crossing him. Someone, I never found out who, called Shvanov and told him that Bulstrode was dealing with another group hunting for the play ma.n.u.script. Shvanov went crazy and-"

"Another group? You mean us? Mishkin?"

She considered this for a moment, chewing her lip. "No, I don't think it's you they meant. Someone else, some other gangsters. A guy named Harel, also Russian. They're all Russian Jews, all related in some way, rivals or former partners. They mainly talk in Russian, so I don't get much information...."

"And what about this Miranda Kellogg that Mishkin is always going on about? What's her story?"

"I only met her once," she said. "I have no idea who she really was, some kind of actress or model Shvanov hired to get the Bracegirdle original away from Mishkin. They sent the real heiress away on a freebie vacation and presented the actress as Kellogg."

"What happened to her?"

"I think she held up Shvanov for more money after she had the thing and he got rid of her."

"Killed her?"

"Oh, yeah. She's dead. Gone." She s.h.i.+vered. "Dead as Bulstrode. Shvanov doesn't like people s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g him."

"Was Bulstrode double-crossing Shvanov?" Bulstrode double-crossing Shvanov?"

"Oh, yeah. Not with any other gangsters, though, as far as I know. But he never had any intention of handing over the play if we found it. Are you kidding? March told me he was planning to give it to the nation, with of course the proviso that he have sole access to it and the right to do a first edition. They'd lock him and it up in the Tower and Shvanov could just go suck a frog. I mean the man was a Shakespeare scholar down to the bones. He used to talk about it, with f.u.c.king stars in his eyes, the poor jerk!"

"Well, no perforated Bible has turned up as far as I'm aware, so we have to a.s.sume that Shvanov has it. What happened to the actual grille?"

"Shvanov has that too, obviously, because Bulstrode took it with him when he left England. And when they put the boots to him Bulstrode must have told him about Mishkin having the original letter and he already knew you must have kept the originals of the ciphered letters. Didn't anyone try to get them from you?"

"Oh, yeah, they tried," said Crosetti, and briefly related the events lately transpired in Queens. He added, "So the basic situation is, we have only the ciphers, he has only the grille: the cla.s.sic Mexican standoff. Or am I missing something again again, Carolyn?"

This last was in response to a peculiar expression that swiftly crossed her face. She said, "Do you have have the ciphers here? I mean right here in this room."

"Well, the originals are safe in a vault at the New York Public Library.

But I have a digitized version on my laptop here. Encrypted, of course. I have a Breeches Bible too. Mishkin bought two of them. And I have a digitized text of the 1560 edition I put in there back in the city before we-"

"I have the grille," she said.

"You do? Where?"

In answer, she stood and pulled the robe aside and propped her foot up on the arm of the chair, exposing her inner thigh. "Here," she said, pointing to a constellation of tiny blue dots on the smooth white skin. He knelt and peered, his face just inches away. The scent of rose soap and Carolyn made his knees tremble. At first the dots looked random, but then he saw the pattern: a stylized weeping willow tree, symbol of mourning. He cleared his throat, but his voice still croaked. "Carolyn, is that a jailhouse tattoo?"

"Yeah. I made it in my room at Ollie's after I swiped the grille. I used a pin and ballpoint ink. There are eighty-nine holes."

"Jesus Christ! Is it accurate?"

"Yeah. I transferred it to tracing paper and compared it with the Bible from Darden Hall. The holes match up."

"But why?"

"Because I figured I might run into you someday, and you might still have the ciphers. And paper gets lost, or stolen, as we well know, not to mention the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds searched me about fifty times. But of course the b.i.t.c.h who searched me wasn't told any details about what she was looking for, only that I wasn't supposed to have anything up my various holes. And lots of people have tattoos. Do you have any tracing paper?"

"No. But I have a fine-point marking pen. We can use the gla.s.s from that little picture frame. It's about the right size."

She lay on the edge of the bed, on her back, with her left thigh flat and at a right angle to her body, while Crosetti knelt on the floor between her spread legs. All the lights in the room were on. He held the gla.s.s against her skin and used the marking pen to place a red dot carefully over each blue dot on her skin. He had to keep his left hand against the warm flesh and his face quite close as he did this. It was the most erotic experience of his life, save one, and he was almost giggling with it. They didn't speak. Rolly was as still as a corpse.

When it was done, Rolly adjusted her robe and said, "Bulstrode figured out from the pattern of the pinholes in the Darden Hall Bible that they started with the second page of Genesis and worked forward in order. You place the outermost grille holes on the lower left and the lower right over the first and last letters of the bottom line on each page-those're the index markers-and you read the letters under each of the holes off in the usual reading order, left to right, top to bottom."

Crosetti was already at the desk with the old Bible opened. His laptop was plugged in and running Word. He placed the gla.s.s plate over Genesis and lined up the index dots over the proper letters. The marker ink was semitransparent, and he could easily read the letters beneath.

"I'll call the letters and you type them in," he said. "D...a...v...o...v..."

It was unbelievably tedious work. Crosetti had, of course, done a character count of the ciphered letters, and there were over thirty-five thousand of them, not counting s.p.a.ces, and there was a nonrepeating Biblical letter key for each one. He did a quick calculation in his head. Dictating at the rate of, say, one character a second, thirty-five thousand characters would require almost ten hours, not counting breaks and checking. This was far too long, if the people Rolly had skipped from were looking for her, and he was sure they were. So they could leave now, and hole up-and as soon as Crosetti thought about this he hit on just the right place to do that-but he was peris.h.i.+ng just then to read the secret ciphers immediately. He stopped dictating.

"What's the matter?" Rolly asked.

"This sucks, is what. There has to be an easier way. We're not Jacobean spies. s.h.i.+t! I'm looking at a computer and it never occurred to me..."

"What're you babbling about, Crosetti?"

"This. Look at the grille. The first letter of the key is the third letter of the first line, then the fifteenth letter, then the twenty-second. Next line: letter two, then seven, then fourteen. The grille generates the same pattern for every page they used. They didn't use t.i.tle pages, did they?"

"No, the only pages marked were ones with solid text. And of course every other page so they wouldn't confuse the pinholes that came through the paper."

"Of course. They'd only use the right-hand nont.i.tle pages. So all we have to do is bring up the digitized version of the 1560, strip out the chapter t.i.tle pages, and the left-hand pages, and then write a simple search to count and list just the characters the grille indicates. We can generate the key automatically. I have a Vigenere solver in there too. If this works, we could be reading Bracegirdle's secrets by morning."

"Could I take a nap while you do that?"

"Be my guest," he said and turned back to the desk.

As with all projects involving computers, it took a lot longer than expected. The first of the dawn had appeared in the bay windows by the time Crosetti mashed the Return key and sent the long string of letters comprising what he hoped was the key into the virtual maw of the Vigenere solver, which had already been charged with the entire string of characters from the Bracegirdle ciphers. The program screen showed "SOLVING..." and in a long blank slit below that word a string of little rectangles appeared one after another like a line of boxcars on a track. Crosetti had been drinking the hotel's do-it-yourself coffee all night and he was dry-mouthed and twitching with it.

"Crosetti...Christ, what time is it?"

This in a mumble from under the quilt.

"Almost seven. I think I'm done. Want to see?"

"I smell coffee."

"There's some left, but it's awful. Come and see this. This could be the solution."

She rolled out of bed and stood next to him, smelling of bed. The last little rectangle appeared and was replaced by a screen showing a single file t.i.tle:

Bracegirdle cipher plaintext.txt

Crosetti placed the cursor on it and said, "You should have the honor. Hit the Return key."

She did. The screen changed to a solid block of single-s.p.a.ced text, the first line of which read: mylfrdithdsnowpascedtwowereksandsomedaitssincgilefmyouphowsa "Oh, no!" she cried, "it didn't work."

"Yes, it did. Remember they were working out of two different Bibles, Bracegirdle's and Dunbarton's, and the average print quality was pretty bad, especially with a ma.s.s market item like the Breeches Bible, so no two copies were exactly alike. And they must have had the same problem back in the day. The grille on Bracegirdle's copy would give a slightly different key letter set than Dunbarton's but it's close enough. Here, let me copy this to a new doc.u.ment-so-and put in s.p.a.cing and punctuation and correct the obvious errors-so-and...here's the first line."

My Lord: It has now pa.s.sed two weekes and some daies since I left your howse "Oh, G.o.d! Crosetti, you're amazing."

There was a smile of delight on her face, the same that had penetrated his dream life for these many months, and he felt a similar grin break out upon his own face. "Not really," he said. "It was obvious to any really transcendent genius. Are you going to kiss me now?"

She did. Soon afterward, he was naked under the quilt and so was she. Crosetti pulled away from her and looked into her eyes.

He said, "I guess we're not going to read the ciphers right now."

She kissed him again. "They've kept four hundred years. Another hour won't hurt. And you're probably too tired."

"Tired of looking at text on a screen, yeah, not too tired for this this." Some more of this this followed and then he pulled away from her abruptly and met her eyes. followed and then he pulled away from her abruptly and met her eyes.

"You're going to stay now, right?" he said. "I mean you're going to be here tomorrow and the next day..."

"I think I can commit to those particular days."

"But not additional additional days? Or is this going to be a continuing daily negotiation?" days? Or is this going to be a continuing daily negotiation?"

"Crosetti, please don't...."

"Ah, Carolyn, you're going to kill me." He sighed. "I'm going to be a dead person if you keep this up."

And he would have gone on longer in this vein, but she stopped his mouth with her tongue and pressed Richard Bracegirdle's long-lost cipher grille against his groin.

"That was fast," he said. he said.

"It was. It was fast and furious."

"I like the way your eyes pop open when you get your rocks off."

"An unfailing sign," she agreed, "so I'll remember who."

"Wise. Now, although I would like to extend this more or less indefinitely..."

"You want to read the ciphers. Oh, so do I but I didn't want to say."

"Lest it be misinterpreted. I understand. So since we're agreed, let us visit the bathroom in turn and then make it happen."

She kissed him briefly and slid out of the bed and he thought, There can't be many things more lovely than watching a woman you've just made love to walk across the room, that way her back and her a.s.s look in the dawn's early light, and he was thinking about how to make that shot on film look like what it actually looked like in real life when Carolyn gave a yelp and dropped to the floor.

"What?"

"They're here!"

Carolyn's face had the fox-in-the-headlights look he recalled from New York, the animal fear in her eyes. In an instant it broke his heart all over again. "Who?" Although it was an easy guess.

"One of them's standing in the garden, Semya. The others must be in the front. Oh, Christ, what're we going to do!"

"Get dressed! And keep away from the window!" She slid into the bathroom like a lizard and Crosetti got up and went to the window naked, stretching and scratching his belly like a man who'd just slept the sleep of the just and had nothing to fear. There was indeed a man in the garden, a broad-shouldered fellow in a knee-length black leather coat and a knitted cap. He looked up, saw Crosetti, stared briefly, and then turned his attention elsewhere. So even if they knew his location, and that Carolyn might come to him, they still didn't know him him. Which was strange, because they had spotted him easily enough on the street in Queens. Unless that was a different group of people entirely. Carolyn had mentioned two rival organizations....

But he couldn't think about that now. He pulled clothes on, yanked the phone cord out of the wall, plugged in a phone adapter for U.K. systems, connected it to his computer, compressed and encrypted the Bracegirdle material and dialed up his Earthlink mailbox. He hadn't used a dial-up connection to the Internet in years, but it still worked of course. It seemed to take eons for the thing to go through-perhaps five minutes-and after that was done he used a disk-scrubbing program to strip the cipher, the key, the Bible, and the plaintext version from his hard drive. He looked up and saw Carolyn in the bathroom doorway.

"What are you doing doing?" she stage-whispered.

"Protecting our secrets. It's funny, I've seen so many movies about this situation that it's like I'm following a script. The guy and the girl have to escape from the bad guys...."

"Oh, f.u.c.k you, Crosetti, this isn't a f.u.c.king movie movie! If they catch us they'll torture us until we f.u.c.king give give them the secrets. They use them the secrets. They use blowtorches blowtorches...."

"That's not in the script, Carolyn. Put it out of your mind."

He sat at the computer again, worked for another few minutes, then switched off the machine and packed it in its case. "Now we have to pack you," he said and dumped the contents of his duffel bag onto the floor. "I hope you're limber enough to do this."

She was, but barely. When this trick is done in movie land, Crosetti knew, the hero doesn't really carry the girl in the bag, but a styrofoam simulacrum. In real life, he now found, hauling a 125-pound woman down a flight of stairs in a duffel bag was a lot harder than he had imagined. He was sweating heavily and breathing hard when he reached the lobby.

There were two of them standing there as he checked out. He was careful not to examine them, but he absorbed peripherally an impression of leather, largeness, and quiet determination. At the front desk, he handed the clerk the note he had prepared: Please don't say my name out loud. I am trying to avoid the people who asked for me. Thank you.

There was a twenty-pound banknote folded into this message. The clerk, a young Asian, met his eye, nodded, and did the checking-out process in silence, with a simple "Good-bye, sir, hurry back," at the end.

Crosetti now opened the duffel bag and removed the rain jacket, m.u.f.fler, and hat he had squashed down on top of Rolly and put them on in full view of the thugs, who regarded him without interest, their eyes on the main stairway and the emergency stairwell at the lobby's other end. He picked up the duffel and walked right by them out to the street. The E-cla.s.s Mercedes he had arranged over the Internet was waiting, as was a Daimler V8 just behind it, with yet another leather thug leaning against the fender, smoking. The limo driver, a Sikh with a white turban, helped him load the duffel bag into the trunk, and when he was seated, he told the driver to take him to the nearest department store. The man suggested Templar Square, which was fine with Crosetti. He thought the place looked like any small-town American mall, with less energy; it made him obscurely sad.

Back at the car with his purchases, he had the driver pop the trunk. Rolly crawled out, groaning, and he helped her into the backseat. She smelled of dampness, canvas, and unwashed clothing. With the car again under way, he handed her a shopping bag. She looked through the clothing it contained.

"You're always buying me clothes, Crosetti. Should I be worried about that? Undies too. That must've been a thrill."