I had mocked him mercilessly for it. No one memorizes numbers in the digital age, Martin, I had teased him, in a conference room, years ago.

And Martin, utterly without humor, had looked at me and replied: Exactly. I sat on the edge of a bed in Phuket, six thousand miles from home, with no phone and no passport and no money, and I found that I still remembered every digit.

Including the Cincinnati area code.

Chapter 6 — Blue Lantern

I threw on a pair of linen trousers, and I went back down to the lobby, and I asked the receptionist, whose name I would learn was Knock, if I might borrow a house phone for an outgoing international line.

She pushed a sleek black handset across the granite toward me, her eyes wide with concern.