* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * SEX, LIES, AND NECROMANCY by Daniel Parsons and Brandi Weed Persons disagreeing with your facts are almost always emotional and employ faulty reasoning. (If, of course, they are facts.) * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Janie and Angel walked back to Grayson's office. His door was open, his hat was hanging from a dead plant, and his feet were resting comfortably on an open file drawer. "How'd tha interview go?" "It went well enough, Mr. Grayson," Angel said. "Mr. Pepper says that Samuels first contacted them to get the bread, about a week after the Caduces disappeared." "Quick of 'im. And what's he up to now?" "He hasn't told them, but he did send a couple of his men to Inverness. He said they were to 'check out' a building there, but he doesn't know the address." Janie, feeling a bit lost and more than a little curious, began quietly looking around the room. Grayson had a lot of books on a lot of different subjects, many of which were probably illegal. Also many small tool kits and disassembled locks, alarms, and devices, but Janie thought it would be impolite to start fiddling with them. "Inverness. Right. Hartree should'a let us move to Scotland." "I believe I submitted a recommendation much like that myself a short while ago. In fact, I believe you have a copy of it right there in front of you. Under your feet, sir." Tom lifted his feet, and glanced over the now-crunched piece of paper. "So ya did. And very neatly too. So it goes. What else ya got?" Angel quietly fumed. "Nothing else came out in the interview, sir. Would you like us to go back and have another go at it, sir?" "Nah. Let's go over this stuff. 'ere, you." Janie looked around. "Me?" "Yeah. Come on over an' join us." Janie grinned maliciously. "What, and make one big MI5 agent? I think you might object to each other on a cellular level." For a quiet moment, Grayson and Angel stared at Janie, who smiled cheerfully. "Ah... maybe not. What do you need me to do?" "Shaddup and listen. I've looked over Finger's stuff, and there's some things I'm want you ta do." "Certainly, sir. What is it?" "First thing, there's this." Grayson brought out Ardrin's copy of the symbols that had been written up on Mr. Samuels' wall. "According to you, this is some Crowleyite code that might translate to 'We are watching you,' or some such load of bollocks." "Yes, Mr. Grayson," Angel wrinkled her nose. "Most succinctly. We have it on a very good authority." Angel seemed to be taking over the discussion again, Janie thought. She sat and looked about the room, then nervously picked up a dusty Rubik's Cube from Grayson's desk and started fiddling with it absentmindedly. "How many authorities? Did you cross-check it?" "Well... no, sir. We went to Cambridge, to one of their premier scholars in the field of..." Grayson leaned back and grabbed a book, opened it to a dog-eared page, and thrust it in front of Angel's nose. "Here's copies of all the ciphers Crowley used. Look at 'em. Do any of them look anything like these symbols here?" None of the symbols bore the slightest resemblance to the symbols from Samuels' office. "They... don't, Mr. Grayson. Are you sure these are all the codes that Crowley ever used?" Grayson took the book back. "Sure as the author of this book. Besides, look at 'em. They're all simple letter-substitution, could crack it in a minute. But your source says each of those symbols is a word. Crowley never used a code like that. Too complicated. Too much like a language." Angel frowned. "Sir, if this were a language, I'm quite certain we would have been able to find it in the library by ourselves. It could only be a code." "Sure, it's a code. But it ain't Crowley's, and it means something else." Janie quietly said, "But Merryweather seemed pretty confident, and he wouldn't have any reason to lie." "Maybe this Merryweather didn't know what he was doin'." Janie laughed. "I'd like to see you tell him that to his face." "There's plenty of tenured idiots in tha world. And what are you doin' with that?" Janie looked down. Without even giving it much thought, she'd solved Grayson's Rubik's Cube. "Oh, sorry sir." She dropped it back on the desk. "I can mess it up again for you if you want." "How the 'ell you do that so fast?" "I bought a book on it, sir." "Oh, yeah, one of them books. Makes it easy." "Oh, had you never gotten it yourself, Mr. Grayson? Here, let me show you this." Janie picked up the cube again, and with some quick twists, presented Grayson with a cube where the center square of each face was a different color from the squares around it. "Ta da!" "Nevah mind. Siddown, ya smart ass. I want you two to go to someone else and find out what these symbols are, and then find out what you can on Merryweather." "But Professor Merryweather couldn't possibly be connected with the case," Angel said. "He's a professor if metaphysics, and would have even less cause than Samuels." "I don't care how unconnected he is. Check him. If he's just senile, I want to know it. And if you stumbled on the leader of some blood-sucking cult of college professors, I want to know that too. But check him, and double-check him. Double-check everything that goes into your case, always. Never only have once source." Janie nodded. "Yes, sir. What else did you find?" Angel stared coldly at Grayson, then looked at the floor. He didn't appear to notice. "This stuff from Garioc. Angel, I think you hit it spot on here. It's his accounts." "How gratifying, Mr. Grayson. Ms. McEwey was balancing his books for him?" "Appears so." Grayson riffled through the papers. "Here's a list of outlays to branches of his organization. He's got sites here, in France, Belgium, and tha Netherlands. Listings under receiving, packaging, shipping, quality control, customer service, research, insurance, and employee benefits. Not bad at all." "That's wonderful, Mr. Grayson." Angel cleared her throat. "Now, perhaps if we were to move on to more important matters. Where might we find Finger now?" "Not a clue. But we can trace his money. Here; look at all these payments out to these accounts." "We can look up those names," Janie said. "They're aliases without a doubt. This is how he cleans his money up so it's presentable. You're going ta trace it." Janie nodded. "All right, sir. What else is in there?" "Finger's living expenses, gifts, a note on a shipping point near Inverness being shut down on tha 19th. Nothin' useful." Grayson handed Janie the list of accounts. "Now get a move on, girls. I'm gonna call Inverness and check up on your partner. He should be getting out today." "Righty-o. Call us and tell us how he is, Mr. Grayson?" "O' course. Now get oudda here." * * * Janie looked over at Angel. Finger's money had been transferred to the accounts, then transferred out to more accounts, and again and again, until they all vanished in the Bank of Credit and Commerce, International, of Sri Lanka. "I think they all go there. The BCCI is under investigation for fraud, isn't it?" Angel laughed, and stared at Janie. "Oh, you might say that. You might say that the place is so corrupt just about everyone has been using it to launder money. Bribery, possible extortion, billions that can't be traced, the most and the biggest financial transactions in the world, and the poorest record keeping. You could lose billions in there, and no one would ever find it again. Not ever." "Angel, are you ok? You look really..." "Oh, never mind. We'll just have to report another failure, I suppose. What's one more? We'll just go up and tell him we couldn't find anything, and he'll say "O' corse ya dinit! Ya gotta look here an here an here" and pull all the answers out of that stupid hat and not even care about it." "What?" "You know what irritates me the most about him? It's that he doesn't care how he does it, anything goes to get the job done. Because that's all this is to him, a job, something to make money and give him some thrills and car chases. He doesn't care about saving people or making the world better, he's just got a job to do. That's all it is to him." "Um... Angel, I don't think he's all that bad. I... think he's different from Mr. Samuels, and maybe he's just been at it so long he kind of does it automatically. I mean, he's been an agent for a long time. It's nothing new to --" Angel sighed. "Yes, yes, you're right. I'm sorry I snapped at you about Mr. Grayson. I'm afraid I have not been giving him very much credit, mostly because I don't really like him." "Well, you two don't have much in common. I think he's kind of funny, but that may be just from being here so long. I'd need some way to deal with the stress if I'd been doing this for years." "Hmmm." Angel frowned at her terminal. "I do know that I don't want to go to him with nothing. It's purely a matter of pride, I know, but I want something we can use." "Well... how? The BCCI is a maze." "No, we shan't go through there... Janie, can we bring up anything on any bank accounts in Inverness?" "Why?" "Well, we know that the money went out through these accounts. We also know that Professor Samuels had sent some of his hirelings to Inverness to investigate some building. Could that be a building of someone who was receiving Finger's money?" Janie thought for a minute. "Probably. They'd have an account or three based in some Inverness bank somewhere, and we might be able to compare the deposits and look for a match." "How much time do you think it would take? We could narrow it down to large accounts; if they own a building, you can be sure they have a great deal of money." "Yeah... we could just do that as a first pass. We... hey!" The computer had made a match almost immediately. It was in the Bank of Britain, a big account belonging to the Benevolent Temple of B'nai B'rith. "The Shriners?" "It can't be. Which account do they match?" "The one under I. P. Freely." Angel stared at the monitor as if she wanted to smack it. "We need to be sure of this. Let's trace the deposits and see if they go back to the BCCI." "Right. Um... they go back through the New York Savings & Loan, Creidite de Macerat, the... National Bank of Djibouti, and then the BCCI. It comes from account #464-803457-2345." "Which is exactly the account number I. P. Freely's money goes into after it leaves Tahiti." "Great! Angel, you're brilliant, ok?" "Someone had better be. The temple of B'nai B'rith, eh? What are they doing up there?" "They're one of those fraternal organizations. I think they're a bunch of middle-aged men who drive little cars and wear strange hats." "Sounds quite eccentric. We should look them up and see if we find anything interesting. And perhaps make an appointment to visit them soon." "Yeah. I think this is good. There's no way anybody could have gotten that." Angel smiled a bit, head tilted slightly to one side. "No, I suppose it wasn't very straightforward, was it? But let's not pat ourselves on the back too much. It seems so terribly strange that Finger would use this fraternal organization." Janie grinned. "Maybe the Shriners are tools of Satan." "Janie... oh never mind. We should go back to Cambridge and check on Merryweather, and the Shriners while we're there. Then we'll go back to Scotland to interview Finger's harem." "And meet Ardrin. I hope he's all right." "Well, of course." Daniel Parsons Brandi Weed Questions or comments to bweed@muddcs.cs.hmc.edu Available for ftp from ftp.cs.pdx.edu, in /pub/frp/stories/SLN -- Brandi Weed "I've got a good mind to join the club bweed@muddcs.claremont.edu and beat you over the head with it." bweed@muddcs.cs.hmc.edu --Groucho Marx