Page 27 of Tightrope

“Why does a nightclub owner care about a missing cipher machine?”

“I’m afraid I can’t answer that question. It comes under the heading of client confidentiality.”

“All right,” she said. “Let’s get back to Dr. Pickwell. You told me his motivation was fame and fortune.”

“Yes.”

“How would a secret sale of the Ares have made him famous?”

“Good question,” Matthias said. “The answer is that it wouldn’t have. I’m sure that was his goal at the start but I think he abandoned the idea because he was overcome with a far more compelling motivation.”

“What?”

“Fear for his life. Obviously his concern was justified.”

“Obviously. Explain, please.”

“If my sense of the situation is right, Pickwell murdered the inventor of the cipher machine in a moment of mad impulse,” Matthias said. “It probably didn’t take him long to realize that the Ares was too hot to handle.”

“Why?”

“There were too many people willing to kill to get it.” Matthias got to his feet and went to stand at the window, looking out into the night. “Pickwell must have realized how dangerous the Ares was very soon after he stole it, because it wasn’t long afterward that he tried to set up a deal to sell it on the black market. The government would have paid a fortune for it but he couldn’t go to the authorities. He would be arrested for murder.”

“So he was left with the underworld market.”

“A very dangerous place in which to do business,” Matthias concluded.

Amalie pondered that for a moment.

“How does a mediocre inventor figure out how to sell a red-hot cipher machine in a rather spectacular manner in a town like Burning Cove?” she asked.

Matthias turned away from the night scene. His eyes glittered with appreciation.

“Another excellent question,” he said. “As it happens, Pickwell had a gambling habit. He made the mistake of asking the owner of an offshore casino ship for advice on how to unload a very hot but extremely valuable item. He was referred to an underworld figure known as the Broker. When the Broker found out exactly what Pickwell wanted to sell, he contacted an acquaintance here in Burning Cove.”

“Who?”

“Luther Pell.”

Amalie took a deep breath. “So it’s true. Pell does have mob connections.”

And that meant Matthias had underworld ties, too. But she did not say that aloud.

Matthias did not confirm or deny. He simply drank his coffee and watched her intently, letting her form her own conclusions. She decided to move on.

“I understand now,” Amelia said. “Luther Pell is one of the people who is after the Ares machine.”

“He definitely has a deep interest in the cipher machine,” Matthias said. “But what he really wants is the man who is believed to have made the deal with Pickwell, an ex-spy who went into gunrunning after the Great War.”

“Gunrunning, hmm? I’ve never considered the career options available for retired spies.”

“Smith didn’t retire,” Matthias said. “He was fired. There are rumors that the spymaster who recruited him tried to neutralize him, but no one knows if that’s true or not.”

“You mean his boss tried to kill him?”

“Smith was considered extremely dangerous,” Matthias said. “But his real crime in the eyes of his employer was that he knew too much.Evidently the spymaster who handled Smith concluded that the country’s secrets would be safer if Smith were dead.”

“I take it the spymaster did not manage to, uh, neutralize Smith.”