1AN: Y'all. This is so late and I don't even have a legitimate excuse except that the muse slapped me with four ideas at once in June and I had to scramble to get them down on paper. That, and the amount of cipher research I did for this one fic was quite frankly ludicrous.
I hope you enjoy what I've been calling the 'boiling point' fic of this series, where it all comes to a head. It got (predictably) much longer than planned and might even get longer still! Thanks for coming along on this silly headcanon journey.
Bon apetit!
"The fingers on his flesh told him he was loved, that he had always been loved, and that the world was a place where above all else things that were good would find a way to burrow into you."
~ Steven Galloway, The Cellist of Sarajevo
For certain professions, eighteen months is a long time.
Bus drivers, for instance. Eighteen months constitutes a lot of trips across the Arlington Memorial Bridge, numbers in potentially the tens of thousands. In eighteen months, a construction crew can build a ground breaking new skyscraper. Eighteen months is a season and a half of a hit TV show.
In FBI speak…eighteen months isn't nearly long enough. Not long enough to have finished processing the Cibola fiasco, either individually or paperwork-wise, and not in the same time zone as long enough to dissipate the office gossip and retelling of it.
Sadusky is aware that he should know this. He should have prepared Ben better, that law enforcement has the memory of an elephant and most certainly will have been following along with his case even after it left their hands. That Spellman and Hendricks come into Sadusky's office at least once a week to badger him about the polar bear thing—and that itself was a year ago—or show him a newspaper article about some lecture one of the Gates family gave.
Which is a moot point. Peter usually knows about their travel plans long before the press does, because sometimes Abigail calls to hash out the details of a speech, or Riley asks him to try out some new code he designed, or Patrick wants to know which tie looks best with his new sport coat.
But that's beside the point. If the Gates family seeks out Sadusky's advice whenever the wind blows, then it's none of his underling agents' business. He'll continue to act surprised so as not to arouse suspicion.
Still, Sadusky can't help a twinge of guilt when he meets Ben in the Bureau lobby. Mainly due to the fact that, well…
Everyone walking by Ben has stopped walking upon recognizing him and security are staring. Hands resting on their side arms.
At a professional level, Sadusky can't say he blames them—this man kidnapped their current president, after all. At a personal level, Peter's hackles bristled the moment he stepped foot out of the elevator.
"Good morning, Ben." Sadusky keeps his tone buoyed and amiable. "Thanks for agreeing to come to the belly of the beast."
Ben doesn't shake his hand, long past any formality in this relationship, instead eyeing the hands on guns around the room. "No problem…don't suppose I'm allowed through security this time, am I?"
Sadusky frowns. "Of course you are. I wouldn't have personally invited you here if I wasn't prepared."
Ben glances to the side at him, brow quirked, seeing right through that to Sadusky's chagrin. "Uh-huh. Is a badge going to cut it? I know for a fact I'm on three separate watch lists now."
Sadusky opens his mouth, shocked all the way down to his toes about how Ben could possibly be aware that. Some of those lists are eyes-only levels of classified. Hell, he's personally vetted half of the people on one of them. Then Ben mimes typing on a keyboard.
Peter huffs, handing him a visitor badge. "You're rapscallions, the lot of you, you know that?"
"How can I forget…" Ben's attempts to dampen a mischievous grin are almost successful. "When you keep reminding us?"
"It's my civic duty," Sadusky deadpans.
He lets Ben get away with the teasing, mostly because it seems to have eased some of the potent fear off his face. Real, gut rationed fear. Sadusky resists a sudden impulse to growl at the two security guards who buzz Ben in through the metal detector and mandatory radiation ordinance scanner.
Anyone who makes the Gates family scared is on his own private watch list.
They ask Ben a series of questions that are most definitely not regulation, about where he's been in the last week and why he's here—"Just around DC or Maryland" and "to help Agent Sadusky with something case related"—but doesn't seem as unnerved by these as Sadusky himself feels. Some of the probing looks are borderline prejudiced.
After a tedious fifteen minutes, they reluctantly let Ben through, though Sadusky has a feeling that it's only his presence and considerable clout that gets Ben past the doors at all. Ben clips the badge to his blazer lapel, not daring to peer back over his shoulder.
"Sorry for the hostility, Ben."
"I'm guessing this is why you didn't ask Riley to come too."
"Absolutely. I wasn't sure how he'd take it."
Ben not-so-subtly lowers his ears away from his shoulders once they're alone in the elevator. "It's okay, I get it. If I met me in one of the top government agencies in the world, I'd be suspicious too."
Sadusky shakes his head with a small chuckle. "Oh, trust me—it's not just suspicion."
Ben startles, puzzled by the wry look on Sadusky's face.
"Get ready," he says, when they stop off at the fifth floor. "You're still something of a novelty around here. Some of us worked late nights because of you."
True to form, the instant Ben rounds the bullpen door, all work screeches to a halt. Ben halts too, out of that human instinct when faced with an impenetrable wall. Even if—especially if—that wall is two dozen armed federal agents, all gawking at Ben as if he just popped in with a bomb strapped to his chest. Soft gasps fail in their attempts to be stifled.
Hendricks recovers first, waving a folder at Sadusky. "Oh come on. Don't tell me you're actually going to read him in on the case. I thought that part was a joke."
"He's our best shot." Sadusky steps in front of Ben and keeps his tone firm. "Anyone who has a problem on this decision can raise it with me immediately. Any takers?"
Nobody moves. Ben taps Sadusky's shoulder with a small laugh, though he tries to cover it up as a cough.
"Good." Sadusky nods, both to Ben's wordless request to calm down and relief that his team isn't suicidal enough to try something with Gates present. "We have a serial killer to track—get back to work."
They do, mercifully, before he even finishes. The incessant rustle of paper, typing, and ringing phone lines resumes.
They make it to Sadusky's office without incident, open gaping notwithstanding, but not before Ben stops when he sees an agent and waves. "Agent Dawes."
The woman blinks, paused in the act of packing up her desk into a cardboard box. She'd recently been transferred to the Chicago office. "You remember me? You remember my name?"
"Of course." Ben smiles. "You're the one who took care of the glasses when you inventoried my belongings."
"The ones that Benjamin Franklin made." Dawes grins too, shaking his hand. They both unwind. "Good to have your input, Gates."
Sadusky mouths a 'thank you' at her before closing the door.
"You'd think the novelty would have worn off," says Ben, folding his long legs into the chair in front of Sadusky's desk. "I was here once before."
Sadusky flicks his knee on the way by. "That was before you kidnapped the president."
He checks on Ben's face, the way it's regained some colour after this trial by fire. He doesn't look scared anymore, trading that in for something amused.
"I thought you were going to strangle an agent. Or two."
Sadusky doesn't laugh, dead serious. "So did I. They had no right to treat you like that."
"Peter." Ben leans forward, amusement gone. "I'm fine. Besides, you must be desperate to risk it all on someone like me, with the criminal reputation I've gained over the years in your circle."
Sadusky's frown almost becomes a scowl at that insinuation, that Ben is somehow of lesser worth because of his choices. That he's a risk to Sadusky's career or that Sadusky wouldn't give it up in a heartbeat if they needed him to.
"Ben, it's an honour to have you here. Do you understand that?"
Ben doesn't, clearly, but he offers a tiny smile in return.
"I have to ask…" Ben tears Sadusky from the dark thoughts with a curious tone. "Why did you get assigned a serial killer case? I know you've worked in other departments before but I thought you mainly worked with theft cases now."
Peter unlocks the bottom left drawer of his desk and pulls out an evidence bag, containing one small slip of hotel paper. His heart thumps faster just looking at it. Something so minuscule, used to cause so much pain.
"Because of this."
Ben accepts it with the careful, spidery fingers of someone accustomed to handling delicate documents. He holds it up to the light.
"It's the same reason you had to come in person," Sadusky explains. "This note from the killer is critical evidence, forbidden from leaving the building."
"Like the Zodiac Killer, taunting police with notes."
Peter nods. "So far he's kidnapped and killed three victims, no discernable choosing pattern that we can see, but this is the first time he's left a note pinned to the chest of his third victim that's legible. The others were water damaged or torn."
A familiar panging lurches through Sadusky's chest, at the reminder that those victims could have been prevented if the notes were usable.
Practiced eyes read the lines of handwriting on the page once, then start again at the top. The words seem like gibberish, English letters smashed together. A crinkled line of frustration creases Ben's brow faster than Sadusky expects, no sudden wide eyes of epiphany. There's no eureka! moment or hastily drawn conclusions. Sadusky doesn't let any of the disappointment show on his face, waiting out Ben's whirling brain in silence.
"It's a cipher," Ben finally says. "But surely you have people for that. Riley told me some of the best code breakers in the world work here."
"They do." Peter studies the darting of Ben's eyes, how he's mentally sifting through something. Not surprising, given that he basically has a textbook for a brain. "But this is old, Ben. This is so old that when we consulted an eighty-nine year old retired code breaker, he didn't recognize the typographical style."
Ben's eyes sharpen. "How old are we talking?"
"That's why I brought you here. I don't need a code breaker, Ben. What I need is a historian, hence my phone call yesterday."
"Sounds like a Ricky McCormick case to me."
Peter works hard not to startle. "How do you know about that?"
"Riley." Ben shrugs, not quite hiding a grin. "It was a discarded chapter in his book that the editors made him take out because it was deemed 'almost solved.' He ranted about that for days."
Leaning back, Sadusky's brows go up. "Solved? Certainly not! We get calls from amateur code breakers about that case at least once a week. Never been cracked."
Ben hums his agreement but his attention is back on the page. Sadusky doesn't take the zone out to heart. Now that Ben understands how old the code is, he seems to be trying a different tactic—strangely, he tilts it upside down. There's a spark in his eye too, one Peter knows like a favourite pair of shoes. He's witnessed this particular flicker of madness before, usually before he did something stupid like jumping two stories into the Hudson or leaping into the back of a moving SUV while being shot at.
"What? What is it?"
"Could be a Vigenere Square."
Sadusky shakes his head. "They tried that. Without a key word, it's a useless exercise. There wasn't enough data to make the block."
An undulation in Ben's fingers has Sadusky sitting back upright, watching the minutia of Ben's excitement. Slow, gaining traction, his smile is the best thing Sadusky has seen all day. It's a lick of white fire across the fuse line of his mouth.
"Peter, do you have a stick?"
He's lost for a moment. "A stick? Why?"
"Just go with me on this one. I need something of a tubular shape and a pair of scissors."
Peter hesitates in the act of retrieving a pack of Mentos on his shelf. "Why? Are you going to cut up my evidence?"
Ben hardly has any seat left at the rate he's jittering off it. "Maybe. How about a photocopy?"
In three short minutes, Sadusky runs back in with a printer copy of the cipher. A cluster of captivated agents hover at the door in an effort to catch a peek of the man who's apparently much better friends with their boss than they realized. Their wariness and shock are mostly gone, replaced by intrigue. Some of them are holding their breaths, on tiptoes to see what Ben is doing.
Sadusky finds Ben pacing around the chair in a loop, muttering to himself and twisting the note this way and that.
Spotting Peter, he lights up. "It's a scytale."
"A what?"
"An ancient scytale!" Ben's hands wave, his words tumbled over top of each other. "Although we don't know the correct diameter needed for sure, see how your killer wrote a teeny tiny oh-five in the top right corner of the stationary?"
Understanding begins to dawn. "Half an inch. Like my Mentos."
"Exactly!" Ben takes the paper from Sadusky's hand and begins to slice it into strips. "I think, based on the Saxon thorn added randomly in the middle here, it's a clue that he's mixing codes."
Sadusky is fascinated by the delicate scissor work. It's almost mesmerizing to watch. "So…he's using this scytale in combination with another one?"
Ben points to the bottom left corner. "What do you see?"
"We catalogued this under a microscope—it's the number forty-nine, placed there with a thumb nail sized stamper."
"Yes! And the mirroring of certain letters on the diagonal implies that it's meant to be flipped. Ergo, forty-nine becomes ninety-four." Standing back, ever the enthusiastic professor, Ben raises a brow at Sadusky. "Get it?"
Sadusky can't help but smile. An indulgent, fond smile. "No, Ben, I don't. Enlighten me."
"Have you ever heard of the Ptolemy Germania Map?"
"I have. But I thought they solved that."
"They did." This tennis-match back and forth is a little too fast for Sadusky to follow but he trusts Ben's mind, however hard it is to catch. Ben finishes his orange peel style coiling of the paper, beginning to carefully wrap it around the roll of Mentos. "But that code centered around the number ninety-four. It referred to ninety-four towns on an antiquated map of Germany."
He cuts off with a choked noise of surprise and the crowd at the door isn't even pretending to not be listening anymore. En mass, they shuffle closer.
Hendricks cranes to see. "What did he find, boss?"
Sadusky comes around to see the tube from Ben's perspective. The letters are a jumble at first, all confusing lines and angles. Then they begin to pop. "I'm not sure…wait…is that a name?"
Ben's smile grows so wide it reveals teeth. "Right here, see? He hid the letters of his victim's name in the mess of nonsense words, only to be seen when you split it at an angle: Henry Johnson."
Sadusky snaps his fingers. "Spellman, get me a list of all the Henry Johnsons in the DC area."
"On it!" She scurries off.
"Pulford, where are we on that favoured victim profile?"
"Uh…" Their office rookie consults a tablet. "There's nothing, boss. The only thing the two men and one woman had in common is their age, over fifty. She was a law professor, one man was a retired sheriff, and our latest victim, he—"
"Ran a boarding school." Sadusky sighs. "Yes, I know."
"It doesn't make sense." Hendricks looks as frustrated as Sadusky feels. He scrubs a hand through his bristled hair. "Even their ethnicity was different, their looks. Their lifestyle. She and the cop had kids and he didn't. One came from a rich family and two were self made. I mean, how is he picking his victims?"
Spellman returns just when the party starts to break up. "Sir?"
Peter stares at her. "That was fast."
"That's because there are over two thousand Henry Johnsons in this state alone. And that was just me typing it into the DMV database."
"What?" But Peter knows she's right, both by her grim eyes and the dense A3 print out she hands him. Sadusky had no idea how hard this was going to be. "We'll never make it in time. Our killer could be out there scouting or enacting his plan right now while we narrow down the list."
Ben, silent up to this point while watching the machine at work, taps the print out. "Maybe not. Do any of those men live in a house numbered ninety-four?"
The agents stiffen, expressions eager while Sadusky flips through until he's at the third page. The scrolling line of his index finger stops.
"Just one. And what do you know—he's over fifty." Sadusky's pulse hammers in his throat. "Pulford?"
"I'll phone our guys on the ground!"
"Tell them to get a tactical team ready."
"You got it, boss!"
Sadusky perches on the edge of his desk, a little weak kneed by the fact Ben saved a man's life in under twenty minutes. Ben himself is oblivious to this heroic moment, still studying the ink and paper, holding it up to the light again while muttering about handwritten Germanic letters versus typed ones.
A rush of warmth floods down Peter's spine.
"Well done, Ben. Thank you, really. It means a lot that you agreed to come today in the first place. You don't exactly have the best memories surrounding what we do."
"Of course." Ben glances at him with earnest eyes. "I'm honoured that you asked for my help at all. Although…I do have one little favour to ask in return. I mean, I would have helped anyway even if you said no…"
Sadusky chuckles. "I get the picture, Ben. What is it?"
Ben's mouth sharpens into something stormy. He's flushed with a mixture of embarrassment and emotion, something Sadusky is not as accustomed to seeing on his face.
"That bad, huh?"
"No, just…" Ben steps to the door and back. "You can't tell Riley."
"Oh?"
Ben puts a hand on his hip and gestures with the other one. "I know what you're going to say because Abigail already said it—while laughing at me. It's probably illegal and you probably aren't allowed to do it…but could you run a background check on a Rebecca Abbot?"
Someday. Someday Ben Gates will run out of things to say and do that shock Sadusky. Not today, but surely this can't represent the rest of his life, fated to be kept on his toes by this academic-brained scarecrow of a man.
"Peter? Where did I lose you?"
Sadusky finally stops choking back laughter. "Ben. Did you seriously just ask me, behind your best friend's back, to check up on a girl?"
"They started dating last month. And I still haven't met her." Ben's voice strays just close enough to defensive that Sadusky can't hold back this time. Ben talks louder to be heard over the snickers. "It's a legitimate concern! What if she's gold digging?"
It takes a lot of effort and appreciating the wounded puppy look on Ben's face, but Sadusky gets his mirth under control. He puts a hand on Ben's shoulder. "I mean this in the kindest way possible. It's astonishing to hear, so prepare yourself."
Ben eyes him with a warning look.
"Ben." Sadusky inhales a big breath. "Riley is a grown man who can date whomever he wants."
"Tell me you're not also the least bit concerned."
Sadusky is genuinely confused now. "Why would I be worried about Riley dating?"
"Because…" Ben struggles, a visible pinch around his eyes and down-turned lips. "Because he needs to be careful. It might go wrong."
"Or it might go very well. That's the whole point of dating, in case you've forgotten from being out of the game for so long."
Ben opens his mouth for a comeback—Sadusky himself has no grounds to stand on in that department—and then seems to realize the absurdity of his fear. "I just don't want to see him get hurt."
"Neither do I, but smothering him will only lead to him shutting you out." Sadusky takes pity on his friend. "But if I look into this Miss Abbot, will you let him live his life?"
"No promises."
"Ben…"
"I haven't so far and I don't plan to start now, is all I'm saying."
"Ben."
"Alright, alright." Ben holds up his hands in defeat. "I get the picture. Thank you for humouring me, Peter."
"I've had lots of practice."
Ben scoffs but takes the jab in good spirits and a quick side hug before leaving the way he came. "Let me know how the case goes, if you catch your killer."
"Will do." Sadusky walks him to the elevator. "Don't get into any trouble."
"It's my civic duty!"
He's gone, timing this quip with the closing of the elevator doors, before Peter can berate him for the sass. Peter shakes his head, still laughing a little. When he checks his phone, Emily has already texted him during that time, asking if he's finished the new book. (He hasn't—two chapters left to go.) His wallpaper hasn't been changed since Christmas, Riley's terrible tree topper.
Something in his chest softens.
"Life is crazy sometimes, huh?" Hendricks draws up beside his boss, staring in amazement. "It's pretty neat that Gates doesn't resent you, after all we did."
Peter goes still, phone in one hand, image of Ben's smile at the front of his mind. He can't swallow for a moment and his ears burn. "Yes, yes it is…"
