Eleven Numbers

by Lee Child

Lit majors could tell Faulkner from Hemingway. Same for mathematicians. Math was abstract and eternal, unchanging, discovered not invented, but when human beings used it, they always left a fingerprint. Not exactly a voice, like literature. More like an X-ray, of the way someone’s mind worked. The cogs and the gears.

It started with a strange little cluster of five, coming immediately after the hundred million mark. First came 100,000,007, which was followed by 100,000,037, and 39, and 49, and finally 100,000,073. A tight little span, five numbers just sixty-six apart, out of a hundred million. The other six were more evenly spaced. Next came 188,888,881, followed by 213,161,503, and 310,248,241, and 383,838,383, and 696,729,579, and finally 999,999,937.