There was a knock on the door, and as it swung open, Aubrey's face, brimming with gloating joy, revealed, "Jack, two reporters from the New York Times want to see you. Both are beautiful!"
"Two?" Jack looked puzzled. He seemed to know only one New York Times reporter. Suddenly, a flash of inspiration struck him: no, he did know two.
"Jack!" Upon seeing someone enter the meeting room, Taylor pounced like a gust of wind, dribbling into them.
With a gentle tap of his heel, Jack blocked out the prying eyes of the operations center outside, finally plucking the woman off him.
"Why are you out here when you can't stay in the editorial office?"
He waved at Anne Hathaway—oh no, in this world, Angelia Sykes—whose eyes, already wide and now bulging with surprise, had reached cartoon proportions.
"Andy, long time no see." He noticed the engagement ring on the girl's middle finger with a sharp eye. "Congratulations."
"Huh?!" Andy's eyes followed Jack's gaze and landed on her own hand. Then, realization dawned on her, a faint blush spreading across her cheeks as a happy smile spread.
"Paul proposed to me the same night he became second chef at the restaurant. I'm grateful for the recipes you gave me."
Andy has a boyfriend who aspires to be a chef at a prestigious restaurant.
As the former assistant to fashion icon Miranda, Andy helped Jack a lot during the "Runway Murders." Jack later compiled a French recipe book for her as a thank you.
"Andy is my partner now. We'll be covering this mayoral campaign scandal from start to finish, as well as the subsequent... uh, follow-up coverage."
Taylor instinctively covered his mouth, swallowing back the words "special campaign."
Although Landon Walker, who had just won the mayoral election, was already doomed to fail due to his imprisonment, the special campaign hadn't yet been announced. As a participant and "accomplice" in the entire affair, Jack had to keep her mouth shut.
"Aha." Jack immediately understood the two men's intentions and tore a piece of paper from the table, writing down Erin Reagan's contact information.
The Commissioner's campaign manager was his daughter, Erin, an Assistant District Attorney, and the only third-generation member of his family with any political experience.
"Did you forget something?" Taylor put the note away and winked at Jack.
"I owe it to you for now." Jack scratched his head. He'd always had time to relax and cook a nice meal, but the current situation didn't allow it.
"A friend's in trouble, and I think I'll be busy for a long time."
The "HR" case was temporarily closed. While the subsequent legal proceedings could drag on for three to five years, Jack had at least fulfilled his promise to Commissioner Reagan and his female boss.
But the big trouble of "POI" seems to have just begun. The locator on Finch has not been working.
After sending off Taylor and Andy, who looked like he was looking forward to the show, Jack handed over the work at hand to his friends and drove to the abandoned library.
After passing through the first floor, which always looked like a ruin, to the second floor, they saw Reese with a messy hair, writing and drawing on a whiteboard. There was a thick book "Standard Computing Procedure Code" on the table next to him.
"Family, Alpha, Mike." Jack looked at the words written on the whiteboard and asked puzzledly, "Haven't you found the corresponding social security numbers for these words yet?"
"Just like what that guy always says, 'I'll give you a job, Mr. Reese, but I never said it would be easy.'
I've used up all the cryptography knowledge I learned in the CIA, but as you can see, I've gained nothing so far."
Reese's face was visibly tired, and a thick layer of oil was on his face due to staying up late.
"Go wash your face, eat something, and then get some sleep." Jack placed a bag of sandwiches on the table, his tone unwavering. "Finch must have his reasons for not turning on his tracking device, and lack of sleep will only make your brain go haywire."
Reese dropped his pen with a slightly dejected look. "Well, maybe you're right."
Jack fished his car keys from his pocket and tossed them to him. "Jessica's waiting downstairs. Leave things here to me for now.
Oh, by the way, my sports car's been repainted, and now I'm driving a Suburban. It's government property, don't damage it."
In fact, the Audi R8, seized from an East Asian drug lord, had also been government property, but it had long since been transferred to Jack's name through an anonymous auction as a token of gratitude from the International Department.
Knowing his girlfriend was waiting for him, Reese's movements became noticeably more agile. After washing his face and finishing his sandwich with a bottle of mineral water, he was about to go downstairs when he saw Jack, using a ladder, searching for a book among the shelves filled with rare and valuable books.
"Damn it, I should have thought of that earlier." He froze in his place, his face etched with regret.
"Get going! You'll still have to continue your search when you come back." Jack, without even looking up, waved his hand away like a fly, urging him to get out.
The words the "machine" gave him weren't actually complicated. Jack had encountered similar codes before, and even someone like Danny Reagan, who had never even touched cryptography, could guess them (Chapter 1208).
The murdered female reporter had simply used a set of numbers to hide the clue, but Jack hadn't guessed it at the time because 95% of public libraries in the United States use the Dewey Decimal Classification system, abbreviated as DC or DDC.
The DC system is characterized by a combination of letters and numbers.
The "machine" read out a total of nine words in its call to Reese, each grouped by the first letter.
The first three words, "Family," "Alpha," and "Mike," formed "F," "A," and "M."
Among them, "F" represents the first letter of the book title, and "AM" represents the abbreviation of the author's name.
As long as Jack finds this book, he can find the corresponding number "013" on the label on the spine. The three groups of 9 words are "FAM", "URK" and "RJO", and the corresponding numbers are "013", "006" and "062".
The three numbers together form a social security number that is uniquely bound to an individual - "013-006-062".
But after Jack entered this number into the system, he couldn't help but frowned.
"What does this Leon Tao have to do with Finch's disappearance?" Reese, who had regained his energy after a good sleep, also frowned when he looked at the information Jack handed him.
(End of this chapter)