Read Playing the Game for Free Online

think most of it is just random garbage, translating as more random garbage for each algorithm you apply to it. But we had Bradshaw run his code-breaking software on it, and after a couple of hours, well, we think we have an address.’
                The couple of seconds silence on my end must have relayed how stunned I was. ‘Patton? You there?’
                ‘Yeah I’m here …. Give me the address!’ Something didn’t sit quite right with me. Were we supposed to break part of the code so soon? We’d had guys working round the clock trying to break the previous two but with no success. Or was Bradshaw really that good?
                   ‘Well the address we’ve got from the code is 22 Sutherland Boulevard. It’s about ten minutes from the Kavannagh’.
                   ‘Got it Fergs’, I thought I knew where Sutherland Boulevard was. ‘Keep going on the rest of that code, there may be something else’.
                   I turned to Charlie, who was holding another sheet of paper in his hands. Shaking his head, he passed it to me. It only took a second for me to read over, but seemingly longer for it to sink in.
                   ‘The game has only just begun’ , printed in large bold type. Then underneath; ‘I have only just begun’ .
                   ‘There was also this …’Charlie handed me a small aluminium key. ‘Maybe a deposit box or a locker or something, there’s no engraving on the key but there is a number, three sixteen. Could be for anything really’. He paused for a couple of seconds. ‘We’re getting played here man, you know that, right?’
                   He was right, of course, but what choice did we have? We had no leads, no idea who was doing this and all we could do, was to ‘play the game’ and hope that whoever The Chemist was, slipped up and somehow gave us something we could use. One thing I did know, when we had our break, we were taking no prisoners.
                   ‘Yeah I know that’, I nodded, ‘but I’ll tell you this Charlie boy – we’re gonna get this bastard one way or another’.
                   I just had no idea how.

10

                After leaving Patton and Holland at the Kavannagh, especially after that nice policeman had held the door open, The Chemist almost felt happy. Now, cruising at a steady 70mph down the Ventura freeway, The Chemist was audibly laughing.
                Well, what was not to be happy about? The skies might have been overcast, but it was dry, bright and surprisingly warm for this time of year. The open freeway stretched out invitingly, and on any other morning The Chemist might have taken full advantage of new-found freedom by driving from city to city committing unspeakable acts. The calming strains of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers’ ‘Scar Tissue’ played in the background. Most importantly, The Game was on track. The Chemist didn’t know whether or not any of the code had been broken but that was not important. They should be able to break the code. After all, the previous two were unbreakable, simply due to the fact that there was no code to break. They were test runs, practice runs for Patton, and now Holland, but also practice runs for The Chemist as well. Response times had been checked. Procedural ambiguities ironed out. The Chemist also had to check that Patton was still worthy of attention, despite what he had done, which he was. Holland had been a surprise. Patton was always going to have had a partner, a confidant, a policeman friend he would call upon during a particularly nasty investigation, but Holland was surprisingly assured. At around six two, and, at The Chemist’s best guess, around two-twenty, two thirty pounds, and with a deceptively quick speed about him, Holland could prove to be a formidable adversary if and when the time came. It was obvious by the