THE NUMBERS, A KISS, AND A SCREAM | 42

                                    

                                          
THE NUMBERS, A KISS, AND A SCREAM
42
"IS SOMETHING wrong?"
The prince carefully shuts the door behind him, so as not to draw any unwelcome attention to us up on the balcony. And for even more security, he checks behind the columns and the large, protruding pilasters. When he's confident no one's around, he finally turns back to me. He still proceeds with caution. "Your stalker is getting a little ballsy."
My eyebrows furrow. "What do you mean?"
"For background, I do have a few contacts in Central Intelligence..." He breathes in deeply, and speaks on the exhale. "Last night, there was a distress call pushed straight through to the CIA. Whoever was on the other line kept asking for you, desperately, it seemed. They tried to track the location, but they hung up before they could get anything out of 'em."
"What do you mean they 'tried' to get a location? They don't need them to stay on the line to do that."
"They were using a throwaway with a mock-up number. The number doesn't exist anywhere in the world; it wasn't even in proper format."
"What was it?" He slips me an appearing business card with seemingly random numbers written in blue ink on the back. Lo and behold, a pretty random arrangement of numbers, not in any phone number format of any country actually. 23153135-3215. "Ay..."
"Exactly."
"What's this...?" My voice drifts off. Underneath the first set of numbers is a second set; also seemingly random and not even in the same format:
8-412916-121916-1612.
"They kept repeating this number. Kept telling them to give it to you."
"So you did?!"
"I don't see any harm or foul."
I shake my head, though I'm glad he's keeping me up to date on his remorseful search for my stalker. "I don't think these numbers mean anything..."
"Well, they wouldn't give us just a random set of numbers for no reason. Obviously, the fake phone number is just a ploy, but...the numbers must mean something."
"Well, if they do, I can't imagine what. What would they even have to say to me? And what's with the mystification?" And what could be so important they'd have to code it?
"It could be Morse."
I look at him, wondering if he's serious, and lean back against the balustrade.
He doubles down. "I've got an inkling it could be."
"There are numbers in Morse code, but Morse code isn't written in numbers."
"Maybe they don't know that."
"...Yes. Because them creating a fake language out of a real communication system is very helpful to us."
He wets his lips. "Maybe it's Tapcode." He motions back to the numbers with a flat hand. "It's similar, and it's actually written using numbers." He sounds hopeful.
"Still unhelpful. I don't know how that works, and I don't know anyone else who does."
"It's written using a table."