Page 8 of Hard to Kill

“Thank you, sir. I’ll look forward to that.” After she saluted, Kellen turned to the door only to hear the general clear his throat. Turning, she saw his hand outstretched toward her.

“The book, Captain.”

Kellen looked down and realized she still held Chester Roy’s masterpiece. She returned and handed over the diary. “Of course, sir, my apologies.”

Slater nodded curtly. “I expect you at my house tomorrow, at 0800 hours. Dismissed.”

4

Kellen shifted her duffel bag on her uninjured shoulder and knocked on the door of the general’s house. The house itself looked quintessentially German—or, at least, what an American would think was German. It had decorative eaves, brightly painted shutters and an enormous oak door carved with pine trees.

A short, plump woman came to the door and welcomed Kellen in accented English. She introduced herself as Greta, General Slater’s housekeeper and cook. She was clearly good at her job—Kellen could not see one speck of dust as Greta showed Kellen around the house.

“This is the breakfast nook, where the general takes most of his meals. The dining room is used for dinner and special functions. Over here is the library, where you will be working. See, we’ve set you up with a desk. The general’s office is next door, if you need to consult with him,” Greta continued as she led Kellen up the stairs. “Here, at the end of the hall, is your room and toilet.”

“This is lovely, Greta, thank you.” Kellen wasn’t being facetious. Not only did her room smell of lemon and beeswax, but she had windows looking out toward the river and a beautiful four-poster bed covered in handmade quilts.

Greta beamed at the compliment. “I’ll leave you to put your things away. The general would like to see you in one half hour.”

Kellen busied herself by pulling her few belongings out of the duffel bag and arranging them around the room until it was time to head back downstairs. As she descended the stairs, though, she could hear General Slater ripping someone to pieces. She realized it must be over the phone because she couldn’t hear any responses.

Major Aimes popped into the hallway from the library, and seeing her surprised look (she had never heard the general so angry), Aimes leaned in conspiratorially and whispered, “He’s frustrated by the code breakers. He was hoping to get you more information to get you started on Chester Roy’s code.” Aimes paused dramatically. “He’s very invested in getting that painting.”

Aimes flinched when Slater slammed down the phone in his office. “Excuse me, I’d better get in there before he blows up again.”

Kellen was left alone in the hallway, wondering if she’d made a grave mistake by accepting this “quest.”

* * *

Kellen had such a headache.

Apparently her injuries weren’t going to heal quickly through her sheer force of will. Her shoulder didn’t feel like it was being pulled out of the socket by a giant anymore, but still, she was in a huge amount of pain, and her left temple was constantly pounding where she landed during the Humvee crash. It was impossible to get anything done while taking the pain pills the Army’s medical team had prescribed her. Instead, she lay in bed with a pillow over her eyes, blocking out the light, and breathed calmly through her nose, as the doctor had ordered her.

But remaining calm was hard for Kellen. She’d spent too long imprisoned on Gregory’s estate to ever be calm when her vision was obstructed.

She had started the coding job by thumbing through Chester Roy’s diary and trying to get a sense of how he organized his thoughts. The parchment contained no lines or denoted margins, but nevertheless, he wrote in straight lines, with straight margins. He clearly had good spatial reasoning.

Because of that, Kellen started by studying the maps Roy had carefully drawn into the text on a few of the pages. They were simplistic drawings and contained no place names to orient her, only numbers, which did not appear to coincide with anything in the lettered code. From what Benjamin Roy had told General Slater, the cave was in Germany, but Kellen refused to rule out that the location was somewhere else in Europe.

Chester Roy’s diary seemed even older than its seventy-five years. The cracked leather cover held pieces of parchment, brittle from age. But the lettering itself was exquisite calligraphy with miniature paintings within the text.

Exquisite and tiny. Even with a magnifying glass, studying the diary was killing Kellen’s eyes. With her head aching all the time from her injury, she had to limit the amount of time she spent staring at the lettering.

Still, General Slater treated her well. He never reproached her for her lack of progress. She sat down every evening with him and Major Aimes at 1900 hours for a hearty dinner. The things Greta could do with a potato!

The general did seem lonely. His wife had died two years prior, and the house still showed her decorating influence in the thick, deep red and gold carpets and the still-life paintings of red apples and golden pears. It was certainly easy to tell what Mrs. Slater’s favorite colors had been.

But for all his loneliness, the general stayed carefully hands-off with Kellen. In fact, she couldn’t think of one time he had actually touched her since she moved in. He did get a little too close for comfort when she was working on cracking the code in the diary, but then again, she was very sensitive to older men hovering over her. Gregory had taken care of that.

Besides, Slater was clearly interested in her code work. He asked after her progress every night at dinner, and he was charmingly enthralled by the smallest movement in the direction of cracking the code. Regardless of the lovely meals and the hospitality, she felt trapped, held in this house until she cracked the code.

General Slater was incredibly dedicated to the work. If she asked for reference materials, Major Aimes provided them the next day. If she needed access to confidential documents about Chester Roy, they appeared as if from thin air. Shelikedworking with General Slater on this mystery. If only he would back off a little.

The person she was less enamored with was Major Aimes.

He was constantly underfoot, running messages to and from base, with the help of General Slater’s driver, Eugene, and racing around the house to make sure the general had everything he could possibly need to work and live.

It was impossible to lose Aimes. Even when he wasn’t near Kellen, she could hear him practically running down a hallway somewhere in the house.

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