He had been beaten up. That was his first thought upon waking. His ribs radiated pain. His legs ached. He reached up and touched the tender knot on the left side of his head and quickly drew his hand away.
He was sprawled out on a king size bed, which was still made up. The morning sun shone through sheer curtains, blinding him and sparking even more pain in his throbbing head.
He shut his eyes and turned away.
A few seconds later, he slowly opened his eyes again. The nightstand held a silver lamp and a small writing pad. The letterhead read: Concord Hotel, Berlin.
He tried to remember checking in, but he couldn’t. And more: he didn’t know what day it was. Or why he was in Berlin. Or his own name, for that matter. What happened to me?
He rose and hobbled to the bathroom. His ribs ached with every step. He pulled the blue button-up shirt from his khaki pants. A bruise covered his left side; it was dark blue and black in the center, flowing to red at the edges.
He examined himself in the mirror. His face was fit and trim, with high cheekbones. Thick blond hair fell to his eyebrows, curling slightly at the ends. He had a faint tan, but from his complexion and smooth hands, it was clear that he worked inside, in a white-collar profession. He searched for the knot on his head. It was large, but the blow hadn’t broken the skin.
He reached in his pockets and found only a thin piece of paper the size of a business card. He drew it out and examined it: a 20% off coupon from Quality Dry Cleaning for Less.
On the back, he—or perhaps someone else—had scribbled three lines of text.
The first:
ZDUQ KHU
The second:
7379623618
And the third line was simply three diamonds inside parentheses.
(<><><>)
A code of some sort.
His head hurt too much for codes.
He laid the card on the vanity, exited the bathroom, and walked through the bedroom into the living area, where he stopped cold. A man lay on the floor. His face was pale and ashy. He wasn’t breathing.
A single white page lay near the dead man, in front of the door to the suite. It was a bill for the stay, which apparently had begun a week before and included several deliveries from room service and nothing from the minibar.
Most importantly, the guest name was printed at the top. Desmond Hughes. He knew at once that this was his name, but seeing it brought no flood of memories, only recognition.
The man on the floor was tall and slender. His hair was gray, thinning, and closely cropped. He wore a dark suit, a white dress shirt, and no tie. A ring of bruises circled his muscular neck.
Desmond knelt next to the body and began to reach into the man’s pants pockets—then stopped, his instincts kicking in. He grabbed the small wastebasket under the desk, pulled out the plastic liner, and covered his hand, ensuring he didn’t leave any fingerprints or DNA.
The man’s pocket held a wallet and a hard plastic employee ID card for Rapture Therapeutics. There was no job title listed on the ID card, just a name: Gunter Thorne. The picture matched the pale face lying sideways on the thin carpet. His German ID card and credit cards all showed the same name.
Desmond slid the items back into the man’s pocket and gently pulled the lapel of his suit back, revealing a black handgun in a holster.
Desmond sat back on his haunches, which made his legs ache. He stood, trying to stretch them, and scanned the room. It was pristine. Cleaned recently, no doubt. He searched it, but it was utterly devoid of any clues. There was no luggage, nothing hanging in the closet. The small safe was open and empty. There weren’t even any toiletries.
He checked the bill again. No calls.
What did it all mean? It was as if he had only come here to eat. Or to hide. Did he live in Berlin? If not for Gunter Thorne’s dead body in the living room, Desmond would have already called the front desk to find a reputable urgent care facility. He couldn’t now, not without knowing more. And he had only one clue.
He walked back to the bathroom and picked up the coupon with the sequence of letters and numbers on the back. As he stared at it, he realized something about the parentheses. In financial statements, they indicated a negative number—a loss. A deduction from a running balance.
How did he know that? Was he in finance?
He sat on the bed and took the pad from the side table. What was the key here? Deduction. A loss. Negative.
There were three diamonds inside the parentheses. So negative three—subtract three. Yes—the bottom line had to be the key, the first two lines the message. The name of the code popped into his mind: a simple substitution cipher. And more, it was a Caesar shift cipher, used famously by Julius Caesar for his secret correspondence.
Desmond took each of the letters and subtracted three—so Z became W, and D became A. He did the same with the numbers. That yielded:
WARN HER
4046390385
He placed dashes after the third and sixth numbers, producing:
404-639-0385
Warn her. And a phone number. Warn her of what? Through the opening between the bedroom and living room, he eyed Gunter Thorne’s dead body. Maybe Rapture Therapeutics or whomever had sent Gunter to the hotel room was after “her” as well. Or maybe it was all unrelated. Or maybe, Desmond had set all of this up to trap Gunter here. She could be an accomplice of his somehow. Either way, she might have answers.
Desmond picked up the phone and dialed.
On the third ring, a woman answered, sounding groggy. “Shaw.”
“Hi. It’s… Desmond. Hughes.”
She sounded more alert when she spoke again. “Hi.”
“Hi.” He had no clue where to begin. “Are you… expecting my call?”
She sighed into the receiver. He heard her rustling, sitting up perhaps.
“What is this, Desmond?”
“Do we know each other?”
Her tone was sad now. “This isn’t funny, Des.”
“Look, I just, can you tell me who you are? Where you work? Please.”
A pause.
“Peyton Shaw.”
When he said nothing, she added, “I work at the CDC now. I’m an epidemiologist.”