Pirate

“If you’ll just hear me out,” Sam said, slipping his wallet from his pocket, “I happen to need this particular room. And the suite I have at the Savoy, bought and paid for, is sitting empty.” He pulled several hundred pounds from his wallet along with the key card to the room at the Savoy and laid it all onto the bed. “This should cover a few meals, your gas, and the price of this room. Even if you choose not to stay at the Savoy, that should more than cover another room somewhere else.”

“What sort of scam are you running?”

Remi took her cell phone, found the link Selma had sent for their reservation when they’d first arrived in London, and opened it. “No scam. I’ll add you to the reservation. All you need to do is show up. Or take the money and run.” When the mobile Internet site came up, she held out her phone and showed them. “Type in your name and email. You should get a confirmation.”

He hesitated. His wife, however, grabbed the phone and looked at it. “Looks real.”

“It is,” Remi said.

The woman typed the info in.

“Are you crazy?” her husband asked, trying to take the phone away from her.

She held it away from him, then turned so he couldn’t take it from her. “It’s just our name and email. Not like we’re giving them our credit card! I’d like to go to the Savoy for our honeymoon.” She hit send, returned the phone to Remi, then told her husband, “Check your email.”

“But they’re bringing us a bottle of champagne!”

“Yeah?” she said. “It came with the room that cost us less than sixty pounds. How good can it be? Check. Your. Email.”

He pulled his cell phone from his pocket, looking surprised when he opened his email. “This is real?”

Remi nodded.

“But why?”

“Not important,” Sam said. “Just know you’re doing us a huge favor.”

The man looked around the room as though trying to decide if it was worth it. “Fine. Guess it’s enough money to go wherever we want if it’s not there.” They gathered the few things they’d taken out of their suitcases.

“Congratulations again,” Remi said as she walked them to the door.

“One thing,” Sam said. “Might want to be quiet. They’re sleeping.” He pointed toward Ivan and Jak’s room.

The man nodded, both waved, and then they left.

Remi closed and locked the door after them. Less than thirty seconds later, they heard a soft knock at the neighboring door, followed by Fisk’s voice demanding that someone let him in.

Interesting. Fisk didn’t seem the type to dirty his hands with anything but the most important matters. So what exactly did Nigel know? Remi picked up two empty glasses on a tray next to the ice bucket, then motioned Sam over, whispering, “Time to see what’s going on next door.”

Forty-five

Fisk walked into the room. Alexandra sat in the chair next to Nigel while Jak and Ivan were sprawled on the bed. “Mr. Ridgewell. Sorry for the inconvenience. I hope you weren’t too uncomfortable on your ride over. I understand it was a bit cramped.”

Nigel glared at him. “What is it you want?”

“Your translation skills. I understand your specialty is Old English? We’re willing to pay.”

“And that’s why you had me attacked last night, stole my notebook, then kidnapped me?”

“A simple misunderstanding.”

Nigel scoffed. “Like being dumped in the trunk or tied to a chair with the circulation cut off in my hands?”

Fisk nodded at Ivan, who got up, then took a knife and cut the zip tie binding Nigel to the chair. Nigel rubbed at his wrists, watching as Ivan returned to the bed.

“The notebook,” Fisk said to Alexandra.

“Ivan has it.”

He held out his hand, and Ivan tossed it to him. “If you can see it in yourself to forgive my associates for their rough handling, then maybe we can come to some sort of agreement.”

“About what?”

“As I said, a simple translation. There’s a phrase in your notebook you haven’t translated. The person my associates showed it to this afternoon also had difficulty with it. Funny thing, he recommended you as the person to contact.”

“That’s what you were talking to William about at Castle Rising?”

“You know him. A small world in tourism and academia, I see.” He held the notebook out for Nigel, pointing to the words on the last page. Nigel leaned toward it. “Can’t tell.”

“Why not?”

“Maybe there are letters missing. Or it’s completely misspelled. But those aren’t words that I can make out. Except the one. Hole.”

Only then did Fisk realize there were, in fact, letters missing. He’d assumed the list they’d stolen from Nigel was the same as his. Deciphered words taken straight from the map. Then again, he hadn’t looked that close at what was written in Nigel’s notebook. He’d assumed that the Fargos had somehow managed to get a copy of the cipher wheel — and the words were the same as what he had. How else to explain how the Fargos had made their way this far?

Interesting. The Fargos were working from a flawed copy. He, however, was not, and he took out his phone and found the text from the expert that Charles Avery was using to decipher the map.