There were spit and hair and semen on the table in front of Graham and empty air where he tried to see an image, a face, something to replace the shapeless dread he carried.
A woman’s voice came from a speaker in the ceiling. “Graham, Will Graham, to Special Agent Crawford’s office. On Red.”
He found Sarah in her headset typing, with Crawford looking over her shoulder.
“Chicago’s got an ad order with 666 in it,” Crawford said out of the side of his mouth. “They’re dictating it to Sarah now. They said part of it looks like code.”
The lines were climbing out of Sarah’s typewriter.
Dear Pilgrim,
You honor me . . .
“That’s it. That’s it,” Graham, said. “Lecter called him a pilgrim when he was talking to me.”
you’re very beautiful . . .
“Christ,” Crawford said.
I offer 100 prayers for your safety.
Find help in John 6:22, 8:16, 9:1; Luke 1:7, 3:1; Galatians 6:11, 15:2; Acts 3:3; Revelation 18:7; Jonah 6:8 . . .
The typing slowed as Sarah read back each pair of numbers to the agent in Chicago. When she had finished, the list of scriptural references covered a quarter of a page. It was signed “Bless you, 666.”
“That’s it,” Sarah said.
Crawford picked up the phone. “Okay, Chester, how did it go down with the ad manager? . . . No, you did right. . . . A complete clam, right. Stand by at that phone, I’ll get back to you.”
“Code,” Graham said.
“Has to be. We’ve got twenty-two minutes to get a message in if we can break it. Shop foreman needs ten minutes’ notice and three hundred dollars to shoehorn one in this edition. Bowman’s in his office, he got a recess. If you’ll get him cracking, I’ll talk to Cryptography at Langley. Sarah, shoot a telex of the ad to CIA cryptography section. I’ll tell ’em it’s coming.”
Bowman put the message on his desk and aligned it precisely with the corners of his blotter. He polished his rimless spectacles for what seemed to Graham a very long time.
Bowman had a reputation for being quick. Even the explosives section forgave him for not being an ex-Marine and granted him that.
“We have twenty minutes,” Graham said.
“I understand. You called Langley?”
“Crawford did.”
Bowman read the message many times, looked at it upside down and sideways, ran down the margins with his finger. He took a Bible from his shelves. For five minutes the only sounds were the two men breathing and the crackle of onionskin pages.
“No,” he said. “We won’t make it in time. Better use what’s left for whatever else you can do.”
Graham showed him an empty hand.
Bowman swiveled around to face Graham and took off his glasses. He had a pink spot on each side of his nose. “Do you feel fairly confident the note to Lecter is the only communication he’s had from your Tooth Fairy?”
“R ight.”
“The code is something simple then. They only needed cover against casual readers. Measuring by the perforations in the note to Lecter only about three inches is missing. That’s not much room for instructions. The numbers aren’t right for a jailhouse alphabet grid—the tap code. I’m guessing it’s a book code.”
Crawford joined them. “Book code?”
“Looks like it. The first numeral, that ‘100 prayers,’ could be the page number. The paired numbers in the scriptural references could be line and letter. But what book?”