The Zombie Game by Glenn Shepard

whole bottle of wine. He belched, knowing belching was unbefitting the Minister of Finance of Haiti or any gentleman anywhere. So, too, was wiping his mouth with his dirty shirtsleeve, but he did that, too. And laughed aloud at his childish behavior.
    His captors had left a wash basin filled with hot water, fresh soap, and a towel. They’d also brought him a clean white suit, shirt, and tie, all neatly pressed, as well as a pair of clean socks and shoes. Duran examined the clothing. They were his own, undoubtedly taken from his home. He removed the T-shirt and jeans and bathed the dirt and blood from his body. Then he dressed. The clothes, of course, fit him precisely. The only problem was the cuff links they’d provided him were the awful-looking pair his wife Ingrid had given him for their last anniversary. Holding his sore body erect, he finger-combed his hair.
    For the first time since his captivity, he could think and plan his escape. Baccus would soon return with more papers. His signature on the papers would transfer more money from the Haiti Relief Aid Fund. He didn’t know how much money Baccus had already moved from the National Treasury. Baccus had concealed the numbers, and Duran’s mind was so tortured, he’d been unable to think rationally.
    With his right hand, he cradled the still painful and badly bent left hand that Baccus had slammed with a hammer. Duran was left-handed—a fact unknown to Baccus and his first error. Duran had signed all papers with his right hand, which might alert those who knew him that he had been coerced into authorizing the money transfers. Nobody knew where Duran was, and few people knew of the jail under the National Palace. But he would tell them—with his signatures.
    Baccus returned with the papers, and this time Duran was eager to sign. Duran glanced quickly at the document before Baccus placed his hand to block the account information. With his mind for numbers, Duran committed it to memory: Bank of Scotland, account #352698.
    Duran took the pen in his right hand and carefully wrote each letter of his name: Julien R. Duran. To the N he added a tail that looked like crude versions of the letters W and H. Then, he underlined his name, pressing hard under the letters J, L, I, and A. Perhaps an astute observer, such as his son, would transpose the underlined letters and see J A I L and recognize that the squiggly-lined W H meant White House. It was the term he and Tomas had coined for the Haitian Presidential Palace, after they were guests of the President of the United States a year earlier during a trip to Washington, DC, to seek relief aid for Haiti.
    Yes, Tomas would pick up on those clues.
    As Duran handed the signed document to Baccus, he smiled for the first time since his incarceration.
     
     

    Lake Ullswater
    Glenridding, England
    10:00 a.m.
    Helen Hart sat in a fourteen-foot boat powered by an antique, five-horsepower Sea King outboard motor. She’d just spent two hours in an internet cafe browsing the web, looking for temporary administrative jobs requiring computers skills. Despite the fact that she’d sequestered fifty million dollars from a dead hospital administrator’s bank in the Cayman Islands, she liked to stay busy. She’d recently completed a two-week job using a computer in the same café in Howton, about five miles up Lake Ullswater from her rented house in Glenridding.
    A London newspaper reporter had offered ten thousand euros to anyone who could hack into Prince Andrews’ personal computer and dig up dirt on the royal family. Instead, Helen had hacked into the reporter’s computer and uncovered that the reporter was having an illicit affair. She then anonymously released this data to the Times and walked away from the deal with no money but with a good deal of satisfaction from what she’d done.
    Helen’s mobile phone vibrated in her pocket. There was a brief e-mail. She frowned for a moment and then smiled. Dr. Scott James had contacted