Free Final Turn: A story of adventure, intrigue and suspense. by maurice engler Page B

find is the place where the unloading took place. If I subtract the distances from the compound to the bank and the distance from where the armored car was found to the compound I have left 140 kilometers."
    Sam watched Roger's eyes shining with that light which said, 'this is only the preamble, just wait'. He would stretch it; he would present all the information and then hit her with the conclusion. Instead of re-filling her wine glass she put hers down and began to drink Roger's. He kept going.
    "Now I'll take a string like this," producing a length of white string from his pocket, "which has been cut to represent 140 kilometers, at the same scale as this map. I can find all the places that the truck could have gone to use up those 140 kilometers."
    Roger stuck a pin into the map at the spot where the storage compound was and another where the bank was. There was a small loop in each end of the string that he slid over each of the pins. He then took a pencil and pulled the string away from the pins until it became taut in two lines running from the pencil tip. One went to the compound, the other to the bank.
    "Remember, the string is 140 kilometers long. On the map it is! So if I move this pencil everywhere I can, keeping the string tight, I will mark all the places where the sum of the distances from that place to the bank and to the compound is 140 kilometers. Agreed?" He looked at her.
    "Agreed. Go on." Sam knew he would be drawing an ellipse around the bank and the compound. He drew it while she sipped. This was no briefing for an invasion; it was just a high school geometry lesson.
    "Clearly the truck did not travel in a straight line between these points. It had to stay on the roads. That eliminates most of the line. Also, the truck made small excursions to get on a main road on off again. This means the actual spot is somewhere inside this area. Somewhere closer in."
    "Granted." Said Sam to indicate she was not yet in a coma.
    "So I make a few assumptions. One, I will look about 15 kilometers inside of the ellipse to account for the excursions. Two, I will look to the north of the city because that is the direction of the storage compound. If seems unlikely someone would chose to drive twice through the entire city. Three, I look for places which are reasonably remote, yet near good roads. A place that might offer the cover of some trees. That eliminates most points east."
    Roger looked about for his wine glass and saw an empty one on the table. Sam was drinking hers.
    "Just a second. I forgot to pour myself a glass." Roger filled the empty glass and set the bottle back onto the map. "Now look at this. To the north there are only two main roads that lead directly away from the city. This one goes to the east crossing mostly open country, no trees, valleys or other cover. This one goes northwest and runs into rolling, nicely treed farmland."
    Sam sipped her wine. She began to get a feeling of some familiarity looking at that map. It might have just been the colors or the shapes of things on it but she was quite sure she had seen it before.
    "Is that one of the maps out of your car?" Roger always had maps out when they went driving in the country. He liked to know where he was in geographic sense. He liked to be able to tell people where they had been, something more than 'just out for a drive'. To Sam it never seemed important where they'd been. What they had done and seen, whom they had met, yes, but not where they'd been.
    Roger ignored the question. That told Sam she was either right or very close to right. He went on. "Over here there are a lot of smaller roads leading away from the freeway. Some of them lead to small towns and are probably well traveled. Some lead to farms in this area." He indicated a patch on the map. "I have a strange notion about this spot here." Roger put his finger on the map where someone had drawn an 'X'.
    Sam looked causally at the spot and then at Roger. "Why that particular spot?"
    "Do