Code to Zero Read Online Free PDF Page A

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    Daylight crept stealthily over the cold city. Men and women came out of the houses narrowing their eyes and pursing their lips against the biting wind and hurried through the gray streets, heading for the warmth and bright lights of the offices and stores, hotels and restaurants where they worked.
    Luke had no destination: one street was as good as another when none of them meant anything. Maybe, he thought, he would turn the next corner and know, in a flash of revelation, that he was someplace familiar—the street where he was brought up, or a building where he had worked. But every corner disappointed him.
    As the light improved, he began to study the people he passed. One of these could be his father, his sister, even his son. He kept hoping that one of them would catch his eye and stop and embrace him, and say, “Luke, what happened to you? Come home with me, let me help you!” But perhaps a relative would turn a cold face to him and pass by. He mighthave done something to offend his family. Or they might live in another town.
    He began to feel he was not going to be lucky. No passer-by would embrace him with glad cries, and he was not suddenly going to recognize the street where he lived. Simply walking around fantasizing about a lucky break was no kind of strategy. He needed a plan. There must be some way to discover his identity.
    He wondered if he might be a Missing Person. There was a list, he felt sure, of such people, with a description of each. Who kept the list? It had to be the police.
    He seemed to remember passing a precinct house a few minutes earlier. He turned abruptly to go back. As he did so, he bumped into a young man in an olive-colored gabardine raincoat and matching cap. He had a feeling he might have seen the man before. Their eyes met, and for a hopeful moment Luke thought he might have been recognized, but the man looked away, embarrassed, and walked on.
    Swallowing his disappointment, Luke tried to retrace his steps. It was difficult, because he had turned corners and crossed streets more or less at random. However, he had to come across a police station sooner or later.
    As he walked, he tried to deduce information about himself. He watched a tall man in a gray homburg hat light a cigarette and take a long, satisfying drag, but he had no desire for tobacco. He guessed he did not smoke. Looking at cars, he knew that the racy, low-slung designs he found attractive were new. He decided he liked fast cars, and he was sure he could drive. He also knew the make and model names of most of the cars he saw. That was the kind of information he had retained, along with how to speak English.
    When he glimpsed his reflection in a shop window, what he saw was a bum of indeterminate years. But when he looked at passers-by, he could tell if they were in their twenties, thirties, or forties, or older. He also found he automatically classified people as older or younger than himself. Thinking about it, he realized that people in their twenties seemed younger than he, and people in their forties older; so he had to be somewhere in between.
    These trifling victories over his amnesia gave him an inordinate sense of triumph.
    But he had completely lost his way. He was on a tawdry street of cheap shops, he saw with distaste: clothing stores with windows full of bargains, used furniture stores, pawnbrokers, and grocery stores that took food stamps. He stopped suddenly and looked back, wondering what to do. Thirty yards behind him, he saw the man in an olive-colored gabardine raincoat and cap watching the TV in a store window.
    Luke frowned, thinking, Is he shadowing me?
    A shadow was always alone, rarely carried a briefcase or shopping bag, and inevitably appeared to be loitering, rather than walking with a set purpose. The man in the olive cap matched the specification.
    It was easy enough to check.
    Luke walked to the end of the block, crossed the street, and walked back along the other side. When he