The Pandora Directive: A Tex Murphy Novel (25 page)

“We’re close, Tex! We’ve just got to find the other boxes. And then… we take Manhattan!”

I didn’t really want to put a damper on her enthusiasm, but there were other considerations. “Don’t you think we should find out what the Pandora Device is first? Maybe it’s something we don’t want to let into circulation.”

Regan pulled up, a blank expression on her face. “What are you talking about? That’s why we’re in this. For the money.”

I considered telling her about Fitzpatrick and the warnings he’d given me. Regan only saw the financial possibilities. She needed to be aware of the other ramifications, but I decided to keep Fitzpatrick out of the mix for the time being. “Whatever your father was working on, he wanted to keep it away from the NSA. That tells me it’s the kind of thing that could be bad if it fell into the wrong hands.”

“Then we’ll only sell it to the right people.”

“And what if it’s not that simple? What if it’s something that would be better locked up forever than let loose?”

“That’s not an option. Whoever we sell it to, I don’t care what they do with it, whatever it is. It was my father’s work, so by rights is now mine to do with what I will. I don’t necessarily want the NSA to end up with it, but it’s my birthright, so to speak, and I’m going to cash in on it. And I can work with you or I can do it alone.” She suddenly looked around the office. “Where are the boxes?”

“Not here.”

“Well, where are they? I want to keep them myself.”

“They’re hidden away, someplace safe.”

Regan’s face turned a shade redder. “You don’t have the right to keep them from me. They’re mine!”

“No they’re not.”

She turned on her heel and began pacing around the room. I waited patiently. After several minutes, an abrupt change came over her, like the sun slipping out from behind a cloud. She walked toward me and knelt down on the floor beside my chair. Placing her hand over mine on the arm rest, she peered up into my eyes. “You’re right, Tex. I’m being foolish… and irresponsible. We’ll wait and see what the Pandora Device is. If there’s nothing terrible about it, we’ll make a lot of money and live happily ever after.”

Maybe she was on the level, maybe she was baiting a hook with me. Either way, I reached down and ran my hands through her hair.

“You’ll take care of me, won’t you Tex?”

There were very few things I wouldn’t have done for her at that moment. She kissed my hand then stood up and returned to her chair. “So what we do now?”

Like a sign from God, the Vid-phone beeped. I leaned forward and hit the Receive button. Lucas Pernell’s face appeared on the screen. “Hey, Murphy.”

“What’s up?”

“I’ve got the stuff you wanted. You want to meet?”

“Yeah.”

“Same place?”

“Sure. Give me an hour.”

I flipped the Vid-phone off and turn back to Regan. She wanted to ask who Pernell was, but she was trying desperately to be a good girl. That made me happy. I didn’t offer any explanations. Instead, I thought of an errand she could run that would give her something to do while I met with Pernell. If she got lucky, she might even get some useful information.

“I have to hook up with this friend of mine. In the meantime, there’s something you can do for me.” I pulled a notepad from one of the desk drawers and wrote down Archie Ellis’s name and address. Regan took the address and looked it over.

“I want you to go talk to this guy. Runs a UFO shop called the Cosmic Connection. Remember the EW your father referred to in his notebooks? I think it stands for Elijah Witt.”

Regan picked up a pen from a desktop and jotted the name down. “Who’s he?”

“He was, apparently, a friend of your father. He’s also a big wig in the UFO community. Wrote a book called There are Messages from Outer Space. He almost certainly knows something about the Pandora Device and whatever else your father was working on.”

Regan looked up from writing. “What am I supposed to do?”

“This Ellis guy has been in touch with Witt. He knows where to find him but won’t tell me where. I want you to see what you can find out. Ellis is a lonely guy. He’ll say almost anything to keep the conversation going. With someone like you, he’ll probably trip over his tongue, telling you anything you want to hear.”

“And what if he doesn’t incorporate?”

“I’m sure you’ll think of something. You strike me as being a capable bluffer.”

“I don’t know if I appreciate that. Anything else?”

“Yeah. Ellis received one of the boxes from your father. When I spoke to him, he said it’d been stolen from his shop just after he received it. There was no reason for him to lie about it, so I think she was being straight up. I have a hunch that the box is now with the NSA, but you should see if you can find out who could have ended up with it. We might need it to find this Pandora Device.”

“I’ll see what I can do. Is that all?”

“Don’t tell him that you know me. Keep it casual. He gets suspicious really easy.”

“What do you want me to do after I get the information?” She asked, looking at me suggestively.

“Meet me back here. I shouldn’t be gone too long. Plan on a couple hours.”

Regan nodded and got up from the chair. We walked to the door, and I opened it for her.

She stopped and looked me squarely in the eyes. “I’m sorry for the way I acted. I know I can trust you to take care of things… to take care of me. It won’t happen again.” she reached up and gently slid her cool hand onto the back of my neck. Our lips met softly, then deeply. As she pulled away, she gently bit my lower lip. A previously unused nerve flared into existence, lighting up my entire left side, all the way to my instep. Without another word, Regan ducked out the door and left.

“Here’s the print-out.” Pernell opened a medium-sized valise and pulled out about ten pounds of computer paper. He dropped it in front of me with a resounding thud.

I handed him a smoke. “Is this it? I was expecting something substantial.”

Pernell smiled and turned his head slightly as he exhaled. “Hey, you wanted all the possible anagrams. There are Messages from Outer Space has 30 characters. The guy who does the anagrams down at the Mirror told me that there would be 10 million trillion possible combinations.”

He waved his hand toward the computer print-out. “Those are the only combinations that contain at least four English words with four or more letters.”

I glanced over the first page, then flicked through the rest. The sheer quantity was mind-boggling. Pernell smiling at me. “Shouldn’t take you more than a couple of weeks to get through that stuff.”

“Maybe I’ll get lucky.”

“I’d start of the back and work forward. I always find what I’m looking for at the very end.” Pernell snuffed his smoke and closed up the valise. “By the way, I followed upon the information you gave me. Everything checks out. It’s gonna be one hell of a story.”

“I’m sure the NSA’s gonna love it.”

Pernell grinned viciously. “Yeah. I know.”

He was playing the journalistic kamikaze, pointing his nose straight toward the NSA and damning the torpedoes. I wondered if he knew what he was getting into. To the agency, we were two little bugs. At any time, a huge NSA shoe could descend from the sky and crush us. The difference between me and Pernell was that he wasn’t scared. Apparently he’d never had the pleasure of Jackson Cross’s company.

“You’re in the middle of something big, aren’t you?”

I nodded.

He narrowed his gaze and leaned forward. “How ‘bout letting me in on it?”

“Can’t do it.”

Pernell looked at me thoughtfully. “What’s your price?”

“Don’t have one. Sorry.”

Pernell grimaced. “In my line of work, I have to coerce information out of people all the time. A lot of times, I get it for free. My first offer is cash. If that doesn’t work… sex, drugs, whatever. I’ve gotten pretty good at it, but I can’t get an angle on you. It bugs me. What’s your weak spot?”

“Uh… math.”

“C’mon, you know what I’m talking about. Most weak spots are above the neck and below the waist. But the biggest weak spot is thinking that you don’t have one.”

“We hardly know each other, Pernell. I usually make people buy me dinner and take me out dancing before I confess my fatal flaw.”

Pernell raised his hands in a gesture of resignation. “Fine. Just remember, whether you know it or not, there’s a weak spot in there somewhere. Maybe I can’t see it… maybe you can’t either, but it’s there. And someone will find it eventually.”

“Someone already has. It’s just above my knee. Drives me crazy.”

He stood up and cradled the valise under his arm. “I like you, Murphy. It’s been good knowing you.”

I watched Pernell walk to the door and exit the lounge. The pile of computer paper sat in front of me like the last pie in a pie-eating contest. It looked too big to tackle, but I needed to find that one magical anagram hiding like a needle in the proverbial haystack. This was going to require a distilled beverage. Bourbon, please. No, make that a double. I reached into the inner pocket of my overcoat and pulled out a pen. A drag on a Lucky Strike and a deep gulp of bourbon, and I turned my attention to the anagrams.

I’d always hated English classes. After two hours of poring over the computer print-out, I finally figured out why: I hated the actual letters. My fourth bourbon was a distant memory, and I was out of smokes. I walked across the bar to the cigarette machine with a handful of quarters. Psychedelic patterns consisting of unnatural combinations of vowels and consonants blurred my vision. A harshly attractive woman cast a dog eared smile in my direction. Sorry, honey. No time for romance. I’ve got anagrams on my mind.

I dropped quarters into the machine slot for several minutes, then collected my cigarette pack and returned to my table. Squinting through the smoke, I started round two. The process was like playing a slot machine. Each new combination was a potential winner, but they kept coming up lemon/orange/bell. Occasionally, I’d run across a near-miss, such as FEAR SCHEMERS REMOTE OUTER PASSAGE. I once dated a New Age po-etess who would undoubtedly have found deep significance in this type of random combination, but I was fairly certain it wasn’t what I was looking for.

Hours passed. Except for the occasional trip to the porcelain bank, I was glued to the print-out. Eventually, even the barflies had to admit defeat and head for home. I was about to order from waitress number three when I saw the line I’d been searching for: MERGE THE FOUR RARE CASES TO SEE MAPS.

It had to be the right one. It seemed as likely as anything that the puzzle boxes contained a map of some kind. To what, I couldn’t know for sure. Maybe the Pandora Device.

Suddenly, I thought of the disk I’d found in Malloy’s room. Would this anagram help me break the encryption on the disk I’d found in Malloy’s room? There was only one way to find out.

Back at my office, I slipped Malloy’s disk into the drive of my computer. Once again, I got the message CONTENTS ENCRYPTED. PLEASE ENTER AUTHORISATION CODE. This time, I typed in MERGE THE FOUR RARE CASES TO SEE MAPS. INVALID PASSWORD — TOO MANY PARAMETERS. Damn. I typed it in again, changing the “FOUR” to a “4”. No luck. I tried it again, changing the “TO” to a “2”. Still no good. I sat back and thought it over. Maybe I was being a chump. Maybe the password had nothing to do with the anagrams. Worse, maybe the anagram I need wasn’t the one I’d found. The thought of going through the rest of the anagrams made me want to vomit.

I leaned back over the keyboard. For the hell of it, I typed FOUR RARE CASES. The screen blinked. I was in.

Hello, Elijah. I see you figured out my little puzzle. And since you’re reading this, I’ll assume that something has happened to me. You always said I was looking for trouble. Well, I think I found it.

You should already have received a package from me. I’ve sent similar packages to four others. The five of you are the people I trust most in his back-stabbing, self€“destructive world. Collectively, you are the Council which now holds the key to a locked door, beyond which lies the knowledge of ancient and distant intelligence.

As you know, visitors from other worlds have come to our little corner of the galaxy. You’ve always believed, but now you have a chance to see evidence with your own eyes. Unfortunately, there are others who want what I’ve discovered, and not for the altruistic motives we share.

For that reason, I have created something I have taken to calling the Pandora Device. The contents of the package I sent you must be used with those contained in the packages sent to the others. Together, you will learn what I’ve discovered. Together, I hope that your combined power, influence, and wisdom will determine what should be done.

You know I have a tendency to the labour the point, but let me end by saying this: what awaits you is something the world may not be ready for. If this is your conclusion as well, keep in mind that it’s better to destroy something than allow it to destroy.

Sincerely,

Thomas

I paged down to a schematic drawing of an odd-looking contraption. It vaguely resembled a camera with all the attachments hooked on. Under the drawing was the caption The Pandora Device. Paging down again, I saw that the contraption was comprised of three interlocking pieces. It appeared to have a small control panel.

So this was the Pandora Device. It seemed utterly innocuous. I looked at the diagrams closely, trying to fathom what message, what power, could be contained inside. Malloy had given no further clues.

I read the message to Witt several times, then leaned back away from the computer. Unless Malloy was a terrible exaggerator, the implications were even more serious than Fitzpatrick had led me to believe. For the first time, I wondered whether it was my place to be in the middle of this. Regardless, I was in the middle, and with no way out. And Fitzpatrick was counting on me. I needed to find the other boxes.

Fitzpatrick already had two of the boxes: Regan’s and Emily’s. Archie Ellis had received one, but it had been stolen. I didn’t have high hopes of finding that one, but I had to try. Another box, obviously, was in Witt’s possession. That left one box unaccounted for. Maybe it had been sent to OE. Unfortunately, I have no clue who that was, though his or her identity would probably turn up if I kept looking.