The Prophecy

47

Jones walked into the tiny room, shaking his head. ‘Bad news on the phone.’

Payne looked at him. ‘How bad?’

‘The mystery text came from a prepaid cell phone. It was purchased last week at Charles de Gaulle Airport. The buyer, who obviously paid in cash, could have been arriving in Paris or flying to just about anywhere in the world when he bought it. Also, according to computer records, only one text was sent from the phone — the message sent to Megan.’

‘How about phone calls?’

‘Nope. Not a single call to anyone.’

Megan frowned. ‘In other words, someone bought the phone to text me.’

Jones nodded. ‘It sure seems that way.’

‘Why not call from a payphone? Or send me an e-mail from a public terminal? Buying a cell phone seems pretty extreme.’

Jones smirked. ‘If you think that’s extreme, what do you consider armed gunmen?’

She conceded his point. ‘You’re right. I guess I need to change my standards.’

He glanced at Payne. ‘Hey, Jon, it’s your lucky day. If she lowers her standards, you might have a chance with her.’

She snickered at the comment, which brought an immediate reaction from Payne. ‘Please don’t encourage him. If you laugh at his wisecracks, he simply won’t stop.’

She smiled. ‘You have to admit, it was kind of funny.’

‘No,’ Payne said, ‘I’ll admit nothing. One time back in the mid-nineties he said something mildly amusing, and I barely cracked a smile. The guy hasn’t shut up since.’

Jones stroked his chin, as if deep in thought. ‘You know what? I remember that day. That was during my Eddie Murphy phase. First I made you laugh, then I picked up a transvestite prostitute in West Hollywood.’ He paused for effect. ‘No, wait, that was Eddie who did that, not me. Come to think of it, that was actually the day my Eddie Murphy phase ended.’

Payne shook his head as he looked at Megan. ‘See what you did? You got him started. Now I have to listen to him for another decade.’

She covered her smile with her hand, not willing to say anything else.

‘Anyway,’ Payne said, trying to change the subject, ‘it’s pretty apparent that someone is going to great lengths to send you a coded message. If it weren’t for the violence, my advice would be to ignore them until someone picked up the phone and called you like a normal person. However, since people keep trying to kill us, I think it’s probably best to play his little game and figure out the meaning of the letter.’

Megan frowned. ‘I thought we already did that. The poem is about me.’

Payne shook his head. ‘Actually, we figured out half of the poem. You’re from the city of brothers, and you’re a filly with no mother. But what about the other two lines? What do they mean?’

She asked, ‘What were the lines again?’

Jones walked behind the desk and wrote the poem in black in the centre of the dry-erase board, allowing them to examine it as a group.

Payne immediately grabbed a red marker from the tray and wrote asterisks on both sides of lines one and three. He did it to signify they had already figured them out. ‘If we’re correct, these two lines are about you. Now all we have to do is decipher the other pair.’

Megan nodded in understanding. ‘I’m pretty good with word games and puzzles. If you ever feel like losing, challenge me to Boggle or Scrabble.’

Jones looked at her. ‘Decipher now, talk smack later.’

She gave him a mock salute then focused on the words. ‘How confident are you with the translation? Do you trust the person who did it for you?’

Payne answered. ‘Do we trust him? Definitely. He’s a good friend of ours. Are we confident in his ability? I’d say 90 per cent sure. In his original translation, he had the word mare instead of filly. Not a grievous mistake, but a mistake nonetheless.’

‘In Petr’s defence,’ Jones added, ‘we asked him to do a word for word translation of the message. We didn’t know it was a word puzzle where we were supposed to look for puns and other sorts of twists.’

She scrunched her face. ‘What pun are you talking about?’

Payne tapped on the word filly. ‘An abbreviation for Philadelphia.’

‘Philly! I get it. Very clever. And you think there might be more puns?’

Payne shrugged. ‘At this point we don’t know. Could be anything.’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘at first glance I don’t think lines two and four go together.’

‘Why? Because they don’t rhyme perfectly?’

She shook her head. ‘Actually, that doesn’t bother me. If you want to get hypercritical, lines one and three aren’t perfect, either. Brothers is plural, and mother is singular.’

‘True,’ Payne admitted. ‘Then what troubles you?’

‘The verb.’

‘What verb?’ Jones asked.

‘What do you mean?’ Megan grabbed a green marker and underlined chosen. ‘It’s the only verb in the whole poem. Don’t they teach grammar at the service academies?’

Jones reread the quatrain. ‘You’re right. One verb. But why does that bother you?’

She made a giant circle around lines one, two, and three. ‘I’m pretty sure the first three lines are supposed to be describing me. I’m from the city of brothers, and I’m a filly with no mother. And just because of the context of the poem, I think they’re saying that I’m a lover from the lost line — although I don’t know what that means.’

‘And the fourth line?’

Megan answered. ‘It’s not talking about me. It’s telling us why I was selected. It’s actually giving us an explanation.’

Payne nodded in agreement. ‘I think you’re right. The first three lines go together.’

‘If that’s the case,’ Jones concluded, ‘then there’s a good chance we’re missing something in the second line.’

‘Like a meaning?’

‘Well, yeah,’ Jones admitted as he removed the cap from his black marker. ‘A meaning would be nice, but I think the reason we don’t understand the line is because we’re missing a word trick. Remember what Petr told us? He felt the author of this piece was a brilliant puzzle maker, so it stands to reason the three lines that go together would utilize similar tactics.’

‘Oh,’ Payne said, ‘I see what you’re saying. Lines one and three used word tricks, so line two probably does as well.’

Jones nodded. ‘Let’s hope so, because I have no idea what it’s talking about.’

To help them focus, Payne erased the other three lines, leaving line two by itself.

Megan scrunched her face as she focused on the words.

‘What’s wrong?’ Payne wondered.

‘Two things off the top of my head. I realize old guys like you haven’t been in school this millennium, but are you familiar with alliteration?’

‘Ouch! Why so mean?’ Jones demanded.

Payne ignored her jab. ‘Alliteration is the repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of a word. In this case, lover, lost, and line. What’s your point?’

She answered. ‘For some reason, alliteration is used in this line but none of the others. That seems fishy to me.’

‘Bad fishy, or good fishy?’

‘What’s the difference?’

‘Wow,’ Payne said sarcastically, ‘I was beginning to think you knew everything. DJ, please tell her the difference.’

‘With pleasure,’ he said. ‘Bad fishy is when you get a girl naked and—’

Payne interrupted him. ‘On second thoughts, I’ll explain it myself. Bad fishy means we did something wrong. In other words, our translation is off. Good fishy means the author used alliteration on purpose in order to attract our attention to this line.’

She nodded in understanding. ‘In that case, I’m going to go with bad fishy.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Because there’s something about the word lover that just seems off to me.’

‘Off in what way?’ Payne asked.

‘I don’t know. It’s just a gut feeling. I get those sometimes, and I’m normally right.’

Payne smiled at her comment. ‘Trust me, I know the feeling. No pun intended.’

Jones sighed. ‘Awwww, isn’t that sweet? You’re both psychic. In that case, why don’t you put your freak brains together and figure out how Petr screwed up his translation? Meanwhile, I’ll focus on the end of the verse. I think I might know what “the lost line” means.’