The Overseer (26 page)

Most troubling, though, was how they had been groomed to express that passion. The sniper’s gun, the demolitionist’s explosives, the computer hacker’s manipulations—all vividly documented.

The blueprint for Eisenreich’s assault on Washington. The blueprint for the world beyond the
first trial.

Alison remained silent. She looked at Sarah.

“Now you see the process,” she said. “Now you see why I asked you to come. You have to tell Anton to stop it. He must stop the
process
.”

Sarah waited before answering. She looked into the frightened eyes, aware for the first time that perhaps Alison understood far more than she had let on. “How did you get a hold of this?” she asked.

Alison stared at her, then spoke. “You have to
tell
him to stop it.”

Sarah nodded. “I’ll tell him to stop … the process.” The mention of the last word seemed to calm Alison. “May I have the tape?”

Alison stared into Sarah’s eyes for several seconds, a penetrating look, something Sarah had not expected. “What makes
you
so sad, Sarah?” Alison held her gaze for a moment longer, then leaned over and placed the tape on the table. “Maybe you do understand.” She picked up the tray and stood. “I’ll get some more lemonade.”

It took Sarah a moment to recover. “Actually … I should be going.”

Alison stopped at the swinging door. When she turned, a strained smile creased her lips. “You’re welcome to stay. I have other—”

“No,” smiled Sarah, now standing. “I should be going.”

A momentary pause; Alison placed the tray on the sideboard. “You’re not a doctor, are you.” Again, no accusation, only statement. Sarah said nothing. The smile tightened on Alison’s lips as she moved to the closet and retrieved Sarah’s coat.

A minute later, they stood at the front door, Sarah no more easy with her newfound confidante than she had been half an hour ago. The look of
tender
helplessness in the eyes was too long ingrained to find release in the gentle squeeze of a hand. “Things will be all right,” Sarah heard herself say.

“Will you come back for me?”

The words tore through her, a simple request, but it was all Sarah could do to find an answer. “Yes … I will come back for you.”

Again, Alison stared into Sarah’s eyes. A moment’s recognition and then a nod. Sarah squeezed her hand and turned for the garden path.

Halfway down the block, a sedan slowly began to inch its way toward the house, Sarah immediately aware of its presence. Gradually, she quickened her pace. A man in his early twenties—a broad-shouldered boy stuffed into a plain gray suit—appeared from behind a tree. He remained still, hands crossed at his front, eyes lost behind a set of dark sunglasses.
Requisite Justice attire.
Sarah stopped. Tommy had evidently been more careful than she expected. And quicker. The sedan pulled up behind her car as the man in the glasses started toward her.

For an instant, she considered running. The thought of Alison alone, however, made the idea of escape impossible. Sarah knew the woman was too fragile for the scrutiny to which the men from Washington would subject her, too close to the men of Eisenreich not to be held accountable. Another life drawn in. Another life Sarah would not allow herself to dismiss so easily.

She slowly turned toward the house.

What she saw took her completely by surprise. Alison was standing next to a third man, the smile wide on her face, her hand resting in his. Sarah froze, the scene strangely serene.

“Look who’s here,” cried Alison. “It’s Willy and John.”

Before Sarah could react, the man from behind her slipped his hand tightly around her arm. In a whispered voice, he said, “Mr. Votapek doesn’t want Alison upset in any way. Do you understand?” His grip tightened.

Votapek
. Sarah could only nod.

 

After two and a half hours of misdirection and incompetence, Xander held the essential pages in his hand, ripping them from one of the library printers. The odyssey had begun at the desk of the assistant librarian, who, at first, had sent him halfway across town to an annex; there, he had been told that the books he was looking for were never permitted to leave the main library.
Wonderful
. He had returned to Russell Square, only to receive a somewhat embarrassed apology—“I thought you wanted the
Dillman
Collection”—and another hour’s worth of ineptitude before he had insisted on seeing the head librarian. Mrs. Denton-Fiss, far more apologetic than her colleague for the “unfortunate mix-up,” had then taken him to the back office and the private computer files. Now, ten minutes later, Xander scanned the few pages he had been looking for all along.

The Danzhoeffer family had been quite generous, according to the list, donating four filing cases of documents, each with perhaps forty listings—letters, pamphlets, manuscripts—in no specific order. That meant he would have to plow through each case individually in order to find Eisenreich. Any sense of annoyance from the further delay, however, quickly
disappeared
as Xander’s eyes came to a stop about a third of the way down the page, where two small words stared back at him:
On Supremacy.
He passed his thumb over the print. Caught up in the chase, Xander felt the same sense of exhilaration he had sensed in Carlo’s notes. A slight tingling licked at his throat.

It was only then that he noticed the asterisks on the page. Some ten to twelve entries, including the manuscript, sported little stars alongside their listings. He quickly flipped to the bottom of the second page. No note to explain. The asterisks simply sat there, causing a momentary tightening in his stomach.
What now?
There was only one way to find out. Xander picked up his briefcase and headed for the stacks.

Three minutes later, his eyes took a moment to accustom themselves to the dimly lit area of the fourth floor. Typical of so many research libraries, the books lay hidden within dark recesses, pale screens of light slanting this way and that from the few overhead lamps. Directly in front of him, a long, thin alley ran the length of the floor, its black-speckled tiles crisscrossed by shadows cast from the row upon row of shelves on either side. Each row stood within a wall of black, waiting for that one passerby to switch on its private light and break through the somber pall of the place.

Slowly moving down the corridor, Xander read each of the catalog numbers tacked hastily to the topmost shelf brackets. Once or twice, he checked the number he had written down just to make sure he hadn’t missed it. Two rows from the back wall, the listing 175.6111 CR–175.6111 FL brought him to a stop. He shoved the piece of paper into his pocket, and with a quick click, ignited the narrow tunnel in light, his eyes racing by the numbers printed on the books’ spines. Halfway to the wall, he nearly tripped over four large cases protruding from the edge of the bottom shelf. He looked down and read the inscription, the tingle once again in his throat. He then squatted to the floor and pulled the Danzhoeffer Collection from the shelf.

The state of the documents was far better than he had anticipated. Granted, no one had done a thing except catalog them and then place them back in their respective cases, but at least care, if not logic, was
evident
in the ordering of the small stacks. Xander began to read.

The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries commingled in the first case—some rather forthright letters from a Cardinal Vobonte to several Popes, demanding dispensations for various French aristocrats. Tax cuts for his constituents, mused Xander.
Some things never change.
Next, he found a collection of poems by an Italian court musician, homage to Boccaccio’s
Decameron
. Flipping quickly past it, Xander lit upon a large assortment of pamphlets on religious practices—guides to proper observances for any number of saints’ days.

At first glance, the second case seemed equally unpromising. More poems, more pamphlets on the saints. Two-thirds the way through, though, the titles took a dramatic turn away from saint-day rituals to the heated topic of papal authority—someone’s idea of a natural progression from
fifteenth-century
primers to sixteenth-century treatises. Whatever the rationale, Xander knew he was close—
very
close. Sifting through seven or eight dreary tracts on church jurisdiction, each with endless counterarguments to Marsilius’
Defensor Pacis,
Xander finally uncovered a small leather volume, the Medici crest still discernible on the weathered leather binding. For a moment, he stared at the little book resting comfortably among the various other papers. Nothing to distinguish it. Nothing on its surface to explain the sudden rapid-fire pounding in his chest. Letting the other manuscripts drop into the case, he brought the book up to within two inches of his face. Its edges long ago frayed, a strange smell of apple vinegar rose from its pages. Gently, he pulled open the front cover and saw the simple Italian staring at him:

The dedicatory letter—written in thick sixteenth-century script—continued on to the next page. Xander ever so delicately turned the page, less taken with the text than with the tangible reality of the book in his hands. It was here, in front of him, the key to the riddles, the answer to the skeptics.

Almost of its own will, the manuscript moved on to the next page, the title straightforward, the name in large bold print, the year 1531 below it, and, for some strange reason, the letters v.i. in the lower-right-hand corner. It took Xander a moment to tear himself from the joy of discovery and try to decode the odd inscription: v.i. Undaunted, he thumbed through to the next page and found the table of contents, an ordered outline in twenty chapters. Machiavelli had needed twenty-six. How like the Swiss, he thought, to pick a nice round number. But no explanation.
v.i.
It continued to nag at him as he fingered through the pages, more so as he neared the middle of the book and had reached only chapter five. A distinct sense of unease began to displace the rush of only moments ago.
v.i. Volume one?
Three pages from the end, his fears were confirmed.
Chapter IX—The Roads to Chaos.
Then nothing. Xander immediately looked back in the case. No luck.
Two volumes—why?
The answer dawned on him as he eyed the little book.
Clement
. The Italian version, the one for the Pope, had been the
first
version. Eisenreich had been clever to send only an excerpt, one that included only the first nine chapters. The other eleven, volume two. A safety precaution. So where were they?

Xander slumped back against the wall, his mind racing to find an answer. It made no sense. Why would the library have only the first volume? And why were the crucial chapters missing? Up through nine, the headings were daring but not earth-shattering. Xander glanced back at the contents page:
III. How to Achieve Stability; VI. Those Components Which Make Up a State; VIII. How a State May Be Made Ready for True Supremacy.
Eisenreich would have his own personal prescriptions, but the titles themselves were only slightly brazen. Ten through twenty, on the other hand, were extraordinary:
X. The Road to Political Chaos; XI. The Road to Economic Chaos; XII. The Road to Social Chaos;
and most extraordinary,
XV. Why It Is Important to Cultivate Hatred.
The shift at chapter ten was clear. Eisenreich had kept the best for last.

And yet nowhere in Carlo’s notes had there been any mention of
two
separate volumes. Hope was telling Xander that the two had found each other at some point in the sixteenth century.
So why the separation now?
He closed his eyes and began to rock.
Think, damn it.
Two minutes into the strange ritual, his eyes suddenly bolted open. From his pocket, he fished out the now-crumpled listing he had ripped from the printer downstairs.
The asterisks.
Quickly, he began to rummage through the filing cases,
glancing
every so often at the list so as to find another name. Fifteen minutes later, he had his answer. None of the ten marked titles was in any of the cases. Which meant that someone at the information desk would know why those volumes were missing. And that
someone
would be able to tell him where to find volume two of the Eisenreich manuscript.

Only then did Xander notice the figure standing at the end of the row, face and body obscured in dim light. Xander froze, his hand tightening around the manuscript. For what seemed an eternity, the two men stared at each other, neither moving. His knees seemed to lock in their crouching position as he gazed up at the man with slicked-back hair.
Slicked-back hair?
Xander’s memory flashed on an image of the small figure, the thin, sunken smile, the hard stare of lifeless eyes. The alcove.
My alcove.