Simple Genius (Sean King & Michelle Maxwell 3) - Page 144

“So?”

“So why did she come back to the river?” she asked again.

Horatio warned, “It’s a little dangerous to try and figure out what Viggie was thinking, Michelle.”

“Why do I think she was trying to tell me something? Why do I think she was trying to get me to come down to the dock?” Michelle stood there looking across the water at Camp Peary. “Something else was really odd. Viggie told me this story out of the blue.”

“What story?”

“That she knew that Alan Turing had killed himself by eating a poisoned apple. She told me how it reminded her of the Snow White story. You know the wicked old queen turns into a hag, takes a boat down the river and tricks Snow White into eating the poisoned apple and Snow White almost died. Like Viggie almost died on the river. She said something like whoever holds the apple is definitely powerful. Why would she tell me that?”

“I don’t know, but how does that help us?” Sean said.

Michelle suddenly exclaimed, “Omigod! Boat? Apple?” She raced to the Formula boat’s stern, leaned over and stared down at the name stenciled on the transom: “The Big Apple,” she read.

“The Big Apple as in New York,” Sean said.

“No, the apple as in Snow White,” Michelle corrected. “Come on, we have to tear this boat apart.”

“Why?” Horatio asked.

“Just help me! Help me.”

An hour later, the three of them sat in the stern seats staring at it. The rolled-up paper had been hidden in the enclosed head of the boat, behind spare rolls of toilet paper in a storage compartment.

Michelle said, “She must’ve come down here that day to hide the document. She probably planned to leave me another clue or maybe just bring the document to me like she did the others if I said the magic words. Only she never got the chance.”

Horatio added, “And the fact that she thought she needed a hiding place suggests she was afraid.”

“Well, her fears turned out to be well founded, didn’t they?” Michelle said bitterly.

“It’s old,” Sean said, as he held the document. “Second World War old. This must be what Henry Fox aka Heinrich Fuchs gave to Monk Turing when he visited him in Germany.”

“It’s a map,” Horatio said, studying it.

“Of Camp Peary or what it used to be when the Navy ran it. I recognize the topography from the map in South Freeman’s office,” Michelle added.

Sean pointed at a line that ran from near the river’s shore into the heart of the facility. “The only thing is there’s no inlet there. The map must be wrong.”

“It’s not wrong if the line isn’t delineating an inlet of water,” Michelle countered.

“A road then.”

She turned the document over. There was written the initials “H.F.”

“Heinrich Fuchs,” Horatio said.

“And there’s writing down here, but it’s in German.”

“Look over there,” Sean said, pointing to fresh writing done in another hand.

Michelle added, “It’s in English. Maybe Monk Turing’s. Look, there are compass points, directions, everything.”

“Right, but to what?”

Michelle flipped the map back over. “To that line, it has to be. Wait a minute. Sean, if you’re right, Fuchs escaped from Camp Peary.”

“Okay.”

Tags: David Baldacci Sean King & Michelle Maxwell Mystery
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