The Stepping Maze Read online

  Her hobbies typically put her in crowded places—flea markets and farmer’s markets on weekends, theater and the symphony in the evenings. She had a book club but hadn’t attended in months. She went to a kickboxing class frequently, but irregularly, likely as she felt she had time or needed the exercise.

  Red could see why the client wanted her. Taking her would create a great deal of chaos for Dr. Kotler and Agent Denzel. There were still plans and actions in motion—Cameron was currently completing part of his assignment, which was a risky but necessary encounter with the doctor and the agent. Risk was part of the job, however, and Red had trained his brother personally.

  These actions, alongside the abduction of the woman, might be enough to derail the current investigation, which Red assumed was the point.

  He made no pretense at knowing the mind of his client, but he’d been in this business long enough to make some educated guesses. It was pretty clear that the real target in all of this was Dr. Kotler. His name, above all others, had come up most often. These small demonstrations of force, the complications that the Rybas brothers were meant to add, represented some deeper play on the part of the client. Red couldn’t know the overall plan, but he had enough of a role in it to guess at some of it. The client was smart, wealthy, and well-connected. Whatever motives might be at play were unclear, but Dr. Kotler was definitely at the heart of it all.

  Red checked the accounts. He noted that their full fee had been deposited in the form of cryptocurrency. Untraceable. Universal. Crypto was one of the best things to happen for his business since he’d started this work. It eliminated the need to carry large amounts of cash, to deal with offshore bank accounts, and to endlessly launder his income. Though some laundering was always in order.

  Red ran the application that further washed their income, splitting it into multiple crypto accounts, all from automated systems housed in countries around the world. Later these systems would buy into another currency on his behalf, consolidating it for accessibility, and he and Cameron would be several layers removed from the initial transaction.

  The wonders of the internet age.

  Alright then, Red thought. He sipped the remainder of his coffee and consumed the rest of the shawarma, then used a VoIP app on his phone to send a text to his brother. He forwarded the details of their new assignment, and then stood and left the café.

  The chill in the air was pleasing to him. It was a lovely day in Manhattan.

  He popped his earbuds back in and resumed the audiobook where he’d left off.

  5

  FBI OFFICES, MANHATTAN

  “Let’s take a break,” Denzel said, standing from behind his desk.

  Kotler looked up, surprised. “Roland … have you been compromised? Blink once for yes …”

  “Kotler, don’t be you about this. We’ve been at it for hours, and we have to eat. And I know you well enough to recognize that a change of scenery can kick things loose for you.”

  Kotler stared at Denzel for a moment, then stretched, leaning back and feeling a creak in his neck and shoulders and lower back. His partner was right on all counts. He could use a break, and some food. And a change of scenery would definitely be welcome.

  It was just surprising that Denzel was the one suggesting it.

  They grabbed their coats and left Denzel’s office, making their way along the catwalk that overlooked the bullpen. They took the stairs to the cubicle level and were making their way to the elevators when the doors opened. Liz Ludlum rushed out, moving straight ahead at a pace that said she was on a mission.

  She was dressed in gym clothes—skin-tight and revealing her midsection.

  She was amazingly fit, Kotler noticed immediately. He’d noticed before, but seeing her now, her dark skin glistening and the ripples of a six-pack undulating as she moved, the whole picture came home to him all at once.

  She was a phenomenally attractive woman. And perhaps even more attractive, to Kotler, was just how brilliant she was. He’d always had a thing for women who were smarter than he, and Dr. Ludlum was definitely that. She could run circles around him in forensics, for certain. And he was pretty sure that she could master any subject she put her mind to. She was simply stunning.

  “Kotler,” Denzel muttered. “You’re staring.”

  Ludlum sprinted through the office and into her lab, and Kotler felt himself blush.

  He had been staring. It was difficult not to, but he felt a bit of shame over it, as if he’d been caught leering or catcalling. He’d just been ... taken.

  “Right,” he said, as the two of them resumed their walk to the elevator.

  “I may have to talk to her about that,” Denzel said, frowning and sounding a little bemused.

  “Excuse me?” Kotler said, feeling a slight rise of panic.

  “The outfit,” Denzel said.

  Kotler blinked. “Oh. I’m sure she had a good reason. She was probably getting in a workout downstairs and something big came up. Maybe we should check in with her?”

  “Nice try, Kotler. But she has my number. She’ll reach out if she needs us. You can pass her a note in class later.”

  “I …” Kotler started, defensive, and then shook it off. “Right,” he said, and ignored Denzel’s mirthful expression as the two of them rode the elevator down to the lobby.

  “You like her,” Denzel said as they descended.

  “Of course. She’s an amazing woman, for sure. A valuable asset.”

  “Kotler, you’re a grown man. I’m not going to tell you who you can and can’t date. If you like her, ask her out. It might help break the tension, and we wouldn’t have to go through all the gee-gaw and hormones every time the two of you are in a room together.”

  Kotler laughed and shook his head. “I appreciate the permission and all, Roland. I’m just …”

  He let it drift, and Denzel seemed to pick up on it immediately, which was a relief. Kotler wasn’t entirely sure he could explain what he meant.

  “I understand,” Denzel said quietly.

  They rode the rest of the way in silence.

  Denzel’s choice of café was more about location and convenience than quality.

  Just over a block from the FBI’s Manhattan offices, Kotler and Denzel settled into a booth with torn vinyl seats and a questionably sanitized Formica tabletop. The place had the vibe of an old-school diner but was small and a little cramped. A waitress handed them two large menus, wedged into plastic sleeves.

  “You take me to the nicest places,” Kotler said.

  “Good tuna melt here,” Denzel replied, holding the menu at an angle to the table and studying it like it was the Wall Street Journal.

  Kotler smiled and shook his head, opting to try Denzel’s suggestion. They ordered when the waitress returned and talked about anything but the case as they ate. Kotler had ordered an iced tea but had to exchange it for a Coke after a couple of sips. The water, clearly, was not filtered.

  Denzel chuckled. “You can be kind of a snob,” he said.

  Kotler arched his eyebrows. “Snob! You wound me, sir!”

  The waitress brought the check and two cups of coffee, as requested. Denzel paid with a credit card, and the two of them lingered, chatting quietly. The café had a light crowd, and pop music played from dusty speakers hanging in the corners, near the ceiling.

  “I’m getting a little worried,” Denzel said as he poured artificial creamer from a tiny plastic cup, stirring it in with a spoon. “The engineers aren’t making any progress. There’s evidence that the room may be wired with some kind of trap, and it’s stalled us.”

  “I saw the report,” Kotler nodded.

  “You find anything from your granddad’s paper?”

  Kotler shook his head. “If there’s anything helpful there, I’m just not seeing it. I’ve read it, highlighted a few things I thought were connected. But in the end, it’s really just an idea that Daniel had. A suggestion, with some explanation about how to apply it to encoding and decoding a
message.”

  “What about the Bacon thing? Any idea what the passcode could be?”

  Again Kotler shook his head. He sipped the coffee and winced. The same water that had made the tea unpalatable had also made the coffee taste awful, like grounds floating in dishwater. Kotler reluctantly poured in a couple of faux creamers himself.

  They both sat, stirring their coffees, each feeling miserable and frustrated.

  There was the sound of someone entering the café, triggering the little bell above the door.

  Denzel’s eyes went wide. “Kotler! Get down!”

  The agent rose from the table, and in a smooth motion he drew his weapon from under his coat.

  Kotler instinctively turned and saw that a masked man had just entered and had drawn a weapon of his own. He stood, the door braced open against his back, and held the gun on the two of them.

  People screamed and hid behind their booths. The waitress ducked behind the counter.

  “A message,” the man said, his voice low and gravelly. An affect, Kotler surmised. He was disguising his voice.

  He held up a cylinder, something Kotler didn’t recognize and tossed it into the café. He then fired two rounds in their direction.

  Denzel took cover first, and then returned fire, but the man was already out of the door. Denzel rose and sprinted after him.

  Kotler slid out of the booth and was about to join his partner in pursuit but paused when he saw the cylinder. He stooped to pick it up and studied it for a moment.

  Denzel burst back into the café. “Call the police,” he shouted to the waitress, who immediately fumbled with the phone.

  He looked to Kotler, “Was anyone hit?”

  Kotler was ashamed to realize he hadn’t even checked, but he looked around now and saw that no one had been injured. They were cowering and remaining hidden, frightened out of their minds, but otherwise ok.

  He looked up and saw that one of the hanging speakers had been hit by the gunman’s fire.

  He wasn’t aiming at Roland, Kotler thought. He wasn’t here to kill anyone. He was a distraction.

  “Kotler!”

  Kotler held up the cylinder. “He said it was a message. He was here to deliver this?”

  “What is it?” Denzel asked, moving forward.

  Kotler shook his head. He didn’t know, but he intended to find out.

  Something was going on here, running deeper than the abduction of two of Kotler’s former professors. This had always had the earmarks of being personal, aimed at Kotler somehow. But they had been treating it like any other case. They’d been working the details as if the vault and the encryption device were the mystery.

  The real mystery came down to a single question.

  Who was behind all of this?

  6

  HISTORIC CRIMES FORENSIC LAB

  Liz Ludlum was frustrated with the pace of progress, and unsure what to do about it.

  Her team was working around the clock, sifting through everything they’d recovered from the government-sealed room. What they were finding was fascinating, but most of it didn’t seem relevant. Of all the recovered items, only the manuscript appeared to bear directly on this case.

  She’d initially had everyone in the department put other work on pause, to prioritize this case and find a way to save those two men. While it was immensely helpful to have more eyes and minds on the problem, it added a great deal of additional pressure to get results quickly. For every hour her team was working this case, another case was growing cold.

  She shook her head and made a decision. Turning to her laptop, she sent notices to a few of her people, telling them to return to their prior caseload.

  It was a management decision.

  It felt almost like giving up.

  After days of sifting through this mess, they’d gotten nowhere. And each of those days was one day less for Dr. Marvin and Dr. Wiley. Reallocating resources might mean the difference between life and death for them, but there was just no way to know. Keeping resources from other cases, however, made those exponentially more challenging to solve, and might lead to things falling through the cracks. In her position, she couldn’t allow that. Personally, she couldn’t allow it.

  She had to make the tough call.

  This was a higher-pressure scenario than she’d been used to at the NYPD, despite her FBI title and duties being essentially the same. While running a forensics lab at the NYPD certainly had its challenges, rarely did someone’s life depend directly on whether she and her people could quickly uncover key evidence. In most cases, in fact, she was working to solve cases in which the victim was already dead. There was always a time pressure, as Detectives worked to catch the bad guys before they disappeared and took any evidence with them. But this was different. Having two lives depend on her findings was a force multiplier.

  Her first instinct was to throw everything she had at this, to solve it with volume and brute force. But there were other crimes to solve, other bad guys to bring to justice, and other victims to avenge. She had to be a leader in this. She had to be smart.

  Still, the work had to be done, and her resources were finite. That meant she was taking on more of the work herself.

  She decided to approach it strategically.

  Since her team was still sifting through everything in search of new clues, Ludlum decided to go back to the evidence they’d already uncovered. She was scrutinizing everything now—double-, triple-, even quadruple-checking previous findings and assertions. She had new notes from Dan Kotler and Agent Denzel that might give some additional light to the situation, and she was reconsidering her analysis with these in mind.

  It was tedious. But it was …

  Well, honestly, it was bringing no results whatsoever.

  She leaned back and rubbed her eyes with the palms of her hands. She stretched and felt a series of pops in her back and her neck. She was tense. Her muscles sore. She could use some exercise—a few rounds of kickboxing would help. But she barely had the time to go to the restroom.

  Still, she knew better than most that revelations and insights usually came in moments of relaxation and activity and distraction. Intensive focus had its place, but sometimes you had to disengage and do something else, to give your brain something else to think about and let new ideas present themselves. There was such a thing as thinking too hard about a problem.

  She stood, stretched, and made her way to her locker.

  The building had a gym, and it was one of the best that Ludlum had ever used. She grabbed her gym bag and took the elevator down to the workout facility. A quick change, and in moments she was on a treadmill, jogging, focusing on her breathing and form.

  Yoga might have been more relaxing, but Ludlum felt some pent-up energy that she needed to burn. Running felt more active and helped bleed off some aggression. Besides, the rhythmic pounding of her feet on the treadmill became hypnotic after a time, making it easier to let her mind wander.

  She had run nearly ten miles, according to the treadmill’s display, when some of the disparate details of the case started to snap together at random. Some rogue idea dismissed earlier for being implausible, suddenly became significant, after considering Dr. Kotler’s notes. Something clicked.

  It hit her all at once—she’d been overlooking something. There was a detail that nagged at her, and she’d only now connected the dots.

  She stopped the treadmill and paused only long enough to grab a towel from a set of shelves by the door, wiping sweat from her face and neck as she sprinted to the elevator and rode impatiently back to the Historic Crimes level. The instant the doors opened she sprang forward, quickly navigating the rows of cubicles, intent on reaching her lab.

  She got a few quick glances from co-workers as she sprinted through the bullpen. She was wearing tight-fitting workout togs, spandex that stretched over and clung to her curves, and a tank top that revealed her arms, shoulders, and midriff. Not exactly office-appropriate attire, but she was in a hurry
. And, to their credit, her co-workers glanced up and then quickly pretended not to notice.

  Ludlum burst into her lab and went directly to the manuscript, pulling on gloves and one of the clean suits. She wasn’t worried about contamination at this point, but the suit covered her workout clothes—a veneer of modesty that was more for her psychological benefit than the result of protocol. The gloves, however, were always required.

  She opened the evidence bag and placed the manuscript on one of the examination tables. She glanced around and spotted a magnifying glass and held this over the manuscript as she turned to the first page.

  By this time she’d looked as closely at this thing as she could, using every bit of modern scanning technology at her disposal. There hadn’t been much to uncover.

  Fingerprints and DNA had proven fruitless. Chemical analysis of the paper, the ink, the graphite of the handwritten message—all had led them in circles for days.

  They’d tracked down the typewriter manufacturer, which was a dead end. They had records going back nearly a hundred years, but nothing that would help. The place was practically a museum these days, staying afloat via the collector’s market and tourism.

  One of Ludlum’s staff had managed to date the ink on the pages to get the age of the manuscript to within a couple of months in a specific year. This was interesting but also proved useless.

  There just wasn’t much to learn from the components of the thing. They’d analyzed and scrutinized it almost to its atoms and found little to nothing.

  What they hadn’t done, however, was examine the text itself.

  Not the content. Kotler was looking deeper into that, and so far hadn’t found anything that might relate directly to the case. His notes were a shorthand version of Daniel Kotler’s theories, outlining how the Heisenberg principle might be applied to cryptology. Intriguing. Interesting. But irrelevant, as far as Ludlum could determine.