The Book of Spies (13 page)

JUDD RYDER
was puzzled. He walked west down the wide boulevard in front of the Meridien hotel and crossed Piccadilly Place, then Swallow Street, studying traffic. According to his electronic reader,
The Book of Spies
was in the middle of the boulevard, still moving, but more quickly than the vehicles. How could that be? He checked the altitude--and swore.

The bug was belowground. Sewer lines ran beneath the boulevard. Whoever had
The Book of Spies
had flushed the bug Tucker had planted on it.

He turned on his heel. It was possible the book was still in the hotel. As he hurried back, he took out his Secure Mobile Environment Portable Electronic Device--an SME-PED handheld computer. With it he could send classified e-mail, access classified networks, and make top-secret phone calls. Created under guidelines from the National Security Agency, it appeared ordinary, like a BlackBerry; and while either on or off secure mode, could be operated like any smart phone with Internet access.

Keeping it in secure mode, he speed-dialed Tucker Andersen's direct line at Catapult headquarters.

"I've been waiting to hear from you, Judd," Tucker said. "What have you learned?"

He crossed Piccadilly Street to where he could watch the hotel's entrance. He settled back into the shadows. "I've got a shocker for you. Charles Sherback didn't die in that car crash. He's still very much alive." He described what had happened in the museum, following Eva Blake from the police station, and witnessing Sherback's attempt to run her down. "The bottom line is planting
The Book of Spies
worked--we got a bite. But what it means that Sherback is alive I sure as hell don't know yet.
There's another big wrinkle--
The Book of Spies
has been stolen, and the thieves dumped the bug."

Tucker's voice rose. "You don't know where the book is?"

"It may be in the Meridien hotel. The bug was there until a few minutes ago. Sherback was taking photos or making a video of the book in the museum, and the way things are going, it seems likely to me he and the book are together or he knows where it is. According to Blake, he's had cosmetic surgery. As soon as I hang up, I'll e-mail you the video I made at the Rosenwald show. I've keyed it on him. See if his new face is in any of our data banks. And find out who's buried in his grave in L.A. That could lead us to whoever helped him disappear."

"I'll make both priorities."

"You also need to know I had to tell Blake I'm working for you and the connection to Dad and the Library of Gold."

There was a pause. "I understand. What do you think of her?"

"She seems as functional as you or me. She's smart and tough."

"She's also beautiful and athletic. And vulnerable. Just your type. Don't like her too much, Judd."

Ryder said nothing. Tucker had researched him more than he realized.

When Ryder continued, his voice was brusque. "Blake is going to a hotel for the night. Whether I do anything more with her depends on what I find out next."

"With luck you can send her home," Tucker decided. "She did a good job, but I don't like employing amateurs."

Ryder wanted to see her again, but Tucker was right. It would be better for her if he did not. He had a lousy track record for keeping those he cared about alive. As he thought about it, he checked the other bug his reader was tracking--it was moving, too, but not toward Chelsea. It was headed north . . . toward him?

DRESSED IN
their black trench coats, Robin and Charles took the elevator down to the hotel's garage. From there they walked up a driveway and out into a shadowy cobblestone alley. Pulling their big roll-aboard suitcase, Robin glanced at Charles, who was looking handsome and intense. He wore the backpack in which
The Book of Spies
was secured, his hands gripping the pack's straps possessively.

They emerged onto the boulevard, away from the vast hotel and its bright lights. Side by side they continued on, at last stopping where Preston had told them to wait.

"I'd hoped Preston would be here by now." Charles stared at the traffic. "Maybe it's taken him longer to find Peggy than he thought."

"Are you all right?"

He took her hand and kissed it. "I'm fine. How are you?"

"Oddly, I'm fine, too." And she meant it.

A sense of inevitability had settled inside her. It was not simply that Preston had taken on the job of getting rid of Eva, or that she had high hopes Preston would not tell the director, but that some old resource--courage, perhaps, touched with foolhardiness--had risen to return her confidence. Whatever happened, she would figure out a way to handle it.

Charles focused on her. "Does Preston strike you as an
abnormis sapiens crassaque Minerva
?" An unorthodox sage of rough genius.

"He does. But then he's also a
helluo librorum
." A bookworm, a devourer of books. "Do you think we can trust him?"

"We don't have a choice."

They straightened like Roman tribunes, alert for Preston's Renault. Horns honked. Vehicles rumbled along the boulevard. A few people strode on the sidewalk, swinging closed umbrellas under the cloudy night sky.

For a few moments the sidewalk was empty. When a taxi stopped down the block, Robin only glanced at the red-haired woman who stepped out and leaned over to pay the driver.

"Merda
." Charles tensed as the woman turned toward them.

"What is it? What's happened?"

"That's Eva. Take care of
The Book of Spies
." He slung off the backpack and laid it at her feet. He slid out his Glock.

"Are you insane? You already tried to kill her once and failed. Someone could see your gun." As she spoke, she watched Eva stare at Charles. "She sees you."

Charles's face was flushed. He nodded and hid the weapon again. "I'll follow her and call Preston. Hail a taxi and take
The Book of Spies
to the jet."

As Charles finished talking, his wife turned on her heel and rushed away, toward Piccadilly Circus. He hurried after her.

AS CHARLES
moved past other pedestrians, he put on his headset and called Preston, telling him about Eva.

"I'll be there in twenty-five minutes," the security chief said. "How did she know to be at the hotel?"

"I have no idea. Unless . . . but it doesn't seem possible. Our scanner found a tracking bug on the cover of the book."

"Jesus Christ. What did you do with the bug?"

"I flushed it. But it makes no sense that Eva would've planted it."

"Don't lose her, dammit. Keep the line open."

He saw Eva had joined a crowd at the corner with Piccadilly Circus, waiting for the light to change. But before he could reach her, she crossed with them to the plaza and merged with the crowd there.

He craned and ran. Where was she?

THE NOISE
and chaos of Piccadilly Circus reverberated inside Eva's head as she sped onward, her cell phone dug into her ear, talking to Judd Ryder.

"It's Charles. He's following me. I'm in Piccadilly Circus, heading toward the Criterion. Are you close? He's got a gun."

"I'm already moving. Leave your cell on."

Five streets flowed into the speeding roundabout encircling the busy plaza. Gaudy neon and LED lights advertising Coca-Cola, Sanyo, and McDonald's cast the area in manic red and yellow light. She watched for a bobby. Now that Charles was near, she wanted a policeman.

"I'm passing Lillywhites," she reported to Ryder. When she saw her reflected face in the glass of the sporting goods store, the strain on it, she looked away. Six of the tourists with whom she had crossed the street peeled off toward the Shaftesbury Fountain and statue. She went with them, peering around their shoulders. "Charles is still behind me. He's wearing a phone headset, and he's talking to someone on it."

"So now we know he's got a friend. Is there anyone with him?"

She checked. "Not that I can see. My group is climbing the steps to the fountain, and I'm going with them. I'll move to the other side. The fountain will be good cover to block me from him."

"I'm at the crosswalk with Piccadilly Street. Can you circle back to meet me?"

"He'll spot me."

"Okay. Go to the Trocadero Center. I'll be there."

The bronze Shaftesbury Fountain shone nickle gray in the night's lights. A scattering of people sat on the steps. At the top, Eva rushed around to the far side and looked down on the plaza, congested and rimmed by a waist-high iron fence interrupted by the crosswalk she

needed. There was no sign of Charles or a policeman. But across the teeming traffic stood the London Trocadero Center, a huge building where people thronged for food, alcohol, theater, and video games. That was where she would meet Ryder.

She joined a young couple as they sauntered down the fountain's steps, holding hands. At the base, they headed right, and she moved straight ahead.

Suddenly something hard and sharp pressed into her left side. "That's a gun you feel, Eva." Charles's voice. "You're caught, old darling. It was logical you'd come this way.
Sic eunt fata hominum
." Thus goes the destiny of man.

"Bad grammar, Charles.
Homina
. The feminine in my case, you bastard." As they continued along the street, she looked down and saw his trench coat pocket bulged with his hand aiming his weapon.

In her ear, Ryder ordered, "Hide your cell. Leave it on."

But as she slid the cell phone inside her jacket, the gun's muzzle jammed her side again.

"No," Charles snapped. "Give it to me."

She froze, then looked back at him, saw the frosty expression, the hard black eyes. The anger and frustration that had been building in her burst out in a torrent. "I loved you. I thought you loved me. I want to be glad you're alive, but you're making it really hard. What in hell do you think you're doing?"

"Keep walking, and lower your voice. Hand over the phone. Now." A few people were glancing at them. "If you think I won't shoot, you're going to find yourself dead on the pavement."

Her heart was pounding, and a cold sweat bathed her. She handed him the cell. "Don't call me old darling again. I never liked that, you son of a bitch."

He turned off her cell and spoke triumphantly into his headset. "I've got her, Preston. I'll hold her so you can take care of her. Where do you want to pick us up?"

AS CHARLES
walked beside her, the gun held against her side, Eva repressed a shiver. She tried to mute the outrage and hurt in her voice: "Why did you fake your death and disappear? I thought we were happy. But because of you I spent two years in prison--and now you want to kill me. After all those years together, don't I mean anything to you?"

"You meant a lot . . . once," he said impatiently. "You'll never understand. You were always too much in the world."

"And you weren't enough in it. Is this about the Library of Gold?"

"Of course it's about the library. I was invited to become the chief librarian," he said reverently. Then he announced into his headset, "It doesn't matter, Preston. She's not going to tell anyone now."

"I don't recognize you. What have you become?"

He waved his free hand, dismissing her. "Some things are worth any cost."

"The Library of Gold was more important than the friends and colleagues you left behind to grieve? More important than me?" She ached for the love she had lost.

"You've got a petty mind, Eva. Thank God a few people over the centuries were bigger. They kept the library alive, and not just physically but completely in spirit."

She was silent, working hard to control her emotions. She needed to find out as much as she could while she looked for a way to escape.

"Where is the library?" she asked.

"I don't know."

"You must be kidding."

He shook his head. "You'll never understand," he said again.

Charles had always enjoyed the sound of his own voice, the brilliance of his logic, the forceful power of his personality.

"Who kept the library alive?" she asked, hoping to trigger his passion for holding forth.

His face broke into a smile. "When Ivan the Terrible lost the last war with Poland, he gave the library secretly to King Stephen Bathory as war tribute. The next ruler passed it on to Cardinal Mazarin of France, who had a famous library of his own. Eventually it went to Friedrich Wilhelm of Brandenburg, the Great Elector. Peter the Great had it, too, and so did George II of England. Later it was in the care of Napoleon Bonaparte, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Carnegie--all selflessly devoted to the library. That sort of commitment has never wavered through the years, and the secret of the Library of Gold's existence has always been sacrosanct."

Nervously aware of his gun, Eva glanced over her shoulder, hoping to see Judd Ryder--but he had been heading toward the Trocadero, a completely different direction. To make matters worse, Charles now took her around the corner and onto Haymarket Street. Was this where the man named Preston was going to meet them--and "take care of her"?