The Caller Read online

Sweldon. I smiled and indicated Emma with a nod of my head.

  "Ms. Sweldon works in the main office and knows almost the entire faculty. She might know or have seen your doctor friend." The blonde looked rather doubtful. "She isn't really as bad as she looks. She is a rather nice woman underneath the stern exterior." Blue eyes studied my face for a moment. I smiled in what I hoped was an encouraging way.

  "Thank you," she said in a slow, almost measured tone. "And good luck with your research. It sounds most fascinating. It has been a pleasure meeting you," she added in a somewhat perkier voice.

  "The pleasure is mine," I replied. I was fairly used to people trying to make polite exits from my lectures. It was my own fault really, so the least I could do was be civil. She turned and walked away from me and I returned to copying down my notes.

  As I prepared to leave the Armory exhibit, I noticed the blonde woman was still there, trying to scan the crowd while remaining inconspicuous. Emma, I guessed, couldn't help her. I let the matter drop from my mind and headed towards the next exhibit. There was after all still so much to see.

  I was one of the last of the visitors to leave the museum at closing time. The others being shooed out by the museum security I knew either by name or sight and like me they would have gladly given several pints of their own blood to be allowed to stay a while longer in the glory of the museum.

  I was somewhat surprised to note that the blonde woman was also in this group of history addicts. She had not struck me as the type who would have to be shuffled out by the guards at the end of the day. She was walking alone so I figured she had never found her friend. I was about to step over to her and ask if this was the case when I heard my name being called.

  Bill Tompkins, a fellow researcher I tended to cross paths with quite frequently was approaching me, a broad grin stretching his face. I smiled back, dismissing the woman from my thoughts as the two of us began swapping who-saw-what stories. We were soon joined by Alex VonStruben, a professor of European history and a good friend of mine. We all soon realized that dinner had been missed and headed off to a nearby restaurant to amend the oversight and continue the discussion.

  Several hours later I returned home, stuffed on Mama Luigi's tetrazzini and history. I had forgotten completely about the "spy mission" until I took off my jacket and found the flash drive. I turned it over a few times, not knowing quite what to do with it. I hung my jacket up. My stomach protested any fast motion and I decided that even though I was quite tired from both my long night and exhausting day the time had not yet come for bed.

  My stomach was too full and would keep me up all night if I even attempted to lie down before it could digest at least a portion of my large and very late dinner. I might as well use the time to see what Kate and Roger had put on the disk. After some negotiation I managed to convince my body that it needed to not only squat down on the floor but actually lay on my stomach so I could wiggle the black case with the laptop out from under my bed.

  I cursed the impulse that had led me to push the case under the bed in the first place. By the time the case was out and the computer opened up on the desk in my bedroom, my stomach was screaming for mercy. I flipped on the computer to let everything set up and went to the bathroom for some antacid tablets. When I returned the computer a message box was waiting for me.

  “Connect drive now," it commanded. I complied and the message box changed. "Type in code name now."

  "You could at least say Please," I told it. What code name should I give it? Well the woman on the phone had called me Philip. Maybe that was my code name. I typed in Philip and hit enter.

  The box disappeared and another took its place.

  "Type in secondary code now." I stuck my tongue out at the computer and on impulse typed in the name LaRue. To my surprise the computer took it and the screen filled up with text. I scrolled down over the text and grinned like a two year old with a new toy. The document in front of me could only have been designed by Roger. It was a mixture of Latin, ancient Greek, old English and thrown in with the mix, my favorite, twelfth century Arabic! This was absolutely wonderful. I scrolled down. There were pages and pages of this. I could happily spend quite a while doing the translation.

  And it was probably stuff that actually needed to be translated knowing Roger. He detested ancient Greek and made an absolute muddle of Latin. He probably figured he could have some fun and get a free translation out of it. After the museum ticket I was more than willing to oblige.

  About the time I finally scrolled to the bottom of the document I heard a scuffling on my back porch. I smiled to myself and quietly made my way to the back door. Kate and Roger, maybe with Randy in tow, were probably coming over to see how I had enjoyed their little joke.

  I decided to surprise them and slipped the latch as quietly as I could from the door. In an instant I flung it wide open, at the same time yelling, "Kate! Roger! I thought you'd never show up!" I smiled, expecting to see the look of surprise on their faces and instead saw the barrel of a gun.

  I straightened my glasses and looked at the gun. It looked almost identical to the one in the case in my bedroom. I followed the gun to a hand, up an arm and eventually to the face of a woman. She was short, had shoulder length black hair and I figured she was the same woman who had dropped the case off.

  "You’re the one who dropped off the case," I said putting my thought immediately into words. She inclined her head slightly to the left. I sighed. "Well you’re a bit early. I just pulled up the document and haven't had time to translate it yet. I'm impressed that everyone thought I could get the translation done so quickly, but it will take a bit of time. Even I have my limits you know. Why don't you tell Roger I'm not ready yet and then come back sometime next week? I should have at least a large section of it translated by then. Do you know how soon he needs it?"

  A frown line formed in the woman's forehead and she stepped forward, the gun still raised and almost touching my chest. Now it was my turn to frown.

  "Inside," she said. I remembered my manners and nearly kicked myself, after all, this woman was merely playing a part in Roger’s game. I stepped aside.

  "I am terribly sorry. Please, won't you come in? Can I get you something to drink?" The woman grabbed my arm and turned me so I was facing the living room. She shut the door with a nudge from her foot and led me to the couch where she told me to sit.

  "You have the flash drive?" She asked. I recognized her voice from the phone.

  "Yes," I told her. "But like I said I haven't had the time to translate it, so Roger is either going to have to be patient or else do his own homework." I had meant that last bit to be funny but she didn't laugh. Instead her scowl deepened.

  "You opened the file?" She asked. "How did you know the code words?" I snorted.

  "We aren't really talking a difficult task here after all," I told her. "With you giving me one code and the blonde woman giving me the other, it was just a matter of putting them together." The woman's eyebrows arched and she nodded.

  "So Elizabeth was there? They were right to send you then. She would have spotted Philip immediately. I'll take the disk now, Dr. Hill." She said abruptly.

  "But I haven't made the translations yet." I told her rather impatiently. Personally, I was rather looking forward to doing the translations and I was not about to let the file go until I had made a copy to work from. "I'm sure Roger would agree with me."

  "Who is Roger?" She asked. I rolled my eyes. This really was taking the game too far.

  "Roger is the man who hired you to pull this little prank on me." I explained, a little annoyed at the woman. She sighed.

  "Roger did not hire me to play a prank." She told me as if explaining matters to a child. "I work for the government." I matched her sigh.

  "Look the game is over okay? So just put down your little toy gun and go home. I'll work on the translations and get them to you. If you
want, I can take your number down and call when I am finished..."

  My voice trailed off as the woman shifted the gun from me to the lamp by the side of the couch. She pulled the trigger and the lamp exploded. My jaw fell open. I watched porcelain dust sift through the air in lazy swirls as it fell to the carpet. She shifted the gun back to me.

  "That lamp was an antique!" I said stupidly, glaring at the small woman with the gun.

  "I was not sent by Roger. There is no prank. This gun is not a toy and I will take the drive now," she said. My brain was screaming, "She's got a gun you idiot, RUN!" But somehow my mouth missed the message.

  "And I suppose you can read old English text?" I shot back before I could get my mouth under control. She smiled.

  "Yeah, it's got a lot of thees and thous in it." She shot back. The historian in me could not let her comment go unchallenged no matter what my brain was screaming.

  "What you are probably thinking of my dear is Elizabethan English." I hear my mouth say in my best lecture voice. "Old English is a dialect so far removed from this as to be almost an