Behind the Veil

by Kathryn Nolan

  I was a rare book librarian, not a secret agent.

  “Sheila discovered that the manuscript was missing late this evening, responding to an email from that professor whom you never answered,” she said. “She called me right away.”

  “I thought it was important to confront Bernard first,” I said.

  “Yes, and in the time it took you to act out that charade, it’s been hours since it went missing. Hours we needed to get it back,” she snapped.

  I leaned against the wall, crossing my arms. “Bernard has been stealing books for some time. It could have been missing for months now.”

  Louisa stopped searching, throwing her hands in the air with exasperation. “Henry, you and I have known each other for a long time. And that is the single most absurd story I have ever heard.”

  “But I have notes on his actions and his movements,” I protested. “We need to inventory the collection—”

  With an exaggerated flourish, she slapped a black-and-white business card down on the desk. She tapped the word CODEX with her fingernail, took out her phone, and began to dial the number listed on the back.

  “We need to call the police.”

  “No,” she said sharply. “Let me see what these people can do first.” She dropped her voice even though we were the only two in the building. “We don’t need the media spectacle of a stolen Tamerlane right now. Donors would be furious. I’ve heard excellent things about this company. They specialize in the recovery of stolen manuscripts. Quickly and quietly.”

  I forced myself to take one steady inhale. “Where is Bernard now? If he was innocent, wouldn’t he be here?”

  “Bernard has been dragged away last-minute for a speaking engagement in Greece. In fact, he was about to call and tell me when I called him about the missing Tamerlane.”

  “He doesn’t have a last-minute event,” I fumed. “I know his schedule inside and out. Bernard is lying to you.”

  “And Bernard Allerton has done more for the field of rare books than any man or woman who has come before him.”

  Louisa wasn’t lying. The antiquarian community was small but powerful, and if we had monarchs, then Bernard would be king. Years ago, he had founded this very library’s collection of rare and specialty books. He was a professor at Oxford, he gave speeches around the world advocating for the power of libraries, the vitality of stories, and the democratization of library materials. Each year, the Bernard Allerton Research Fellowship was a grant awarded to the most promising scholar in our field—and this man gave tours to schoolchildren and lectures to presidents alike.

  “I know you’ve worked with Bernard for ten years, but I’ve worked alongside him for twenty. The thought that he could steal the Tamerlane is so beyond ludicrous there are no words to accurately describe it.”

  “He also threatened to turn me in to the police. He forged letters with my signature! And did you know he has a bodyguard? With a gun?” I said frantically.

  There was a spark of indecision in her eyes—but she suppressed it.

  “I don’t know what happened between the two of you this evening,” she hissed, “but there isn’t a single universe where Bernard Allerton is a book thief.”

  “You look like hell.”

  I squinted up into the fluorescent light to find a sharply dressed man leaning against the door. He had black hair peppered with gray at the sides and a scowl that appeared permanent.

  “Excuse me?” I asked. “Who are you?”

  The man smoothed down his tie and dropped into the chair across from me. “Abraham Royal. I’m the CEO of Codex.”

  “You’re the company that Louisa hired.”

  Abraham nodded, tapping his pen against a pad of legal paper. It’d been about ten hours since my conversation with Louisa, and I’d spent most of that time holed up in one of the smaller study rooms at the McMasters Library. Beyond this door was a 350-year-old library with vaulted ceilings and carved sculptures and some of the oldest books in human history.

  But this room was claustrophobic, without windows and filled with stale air. My file and notes were spread around me, the table littered with scraps of paper.

  “You got here quickly,” I said.

  “For certain names, I will drop everything.” Abraham assessed me cooly. “Louisa tells me you have quite the story to tell.”

  “She didn’t believe me.”

  “Louisa suspects you,” he said simply.

  “Of course she suspects me.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. Who would she believe? Me, or the most famous, well-respected man in the profession?

  “Who are you, anyway?” I asked.

  “We’re a small team of private detectives,” he explained. “All three Codex agents have a law enforcement background. But all three of us are now fairly…disenchanted with law enforcement. Clients like your library hire Codex to track down rare manuscripts without alerting the authorities. Usually.” He pressed his lips together into a grim line. “Without the red tape and bureaucracy of an FBI field office or a police department, Codex agents are pretty nimble. And highly successful.”

  “I’ve never heard of you.”

  “Exactly,” he replied.

  I turned that information over in my mind, more intrigued with Codex than I cared to admit.

  “Do you know what a codex is?” I asked.

  “I know it’s Latin for book.”

  My foot tapped an anxious rhythm beneath the table. “The codex is the style of bookmaking now universally popular in the Western world. It replaced the scroll because it was so compact and you could read it more easily while traveling. In Central America, their codices were printed on fig bark.”

  The man from Codex was listening to me patiently, but there was an urgency to the way he gripped his pen.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I’m a little shaken up. The librarian in me wants to give you a lecture on scrolls now.”

  “It’s been a tough night for you,” he said softly. “But why don’t you start from the beginning, okay?” Abraham flipped open his legal pad to a clean page. “Tell me who you think is responsible for the Tamerlane.”

  The ten hours I’d spent in here—and lack of sleep—were warping my memories. Had I been enjoying an evening of refined academic discussion with Bernard just last night? I scrubbed my hands down my face and hoped that the stranger in front of me was prepared to believe every mystifying word.

  “About a month ago, I started to suspect that Bernard Allerton had stolen something from our collection,” I began slowly. “A seventeenth-century book of Latin poetry that hadn’t been viewed or on display in years. When I asked him about it, he told me it was on loan to the Cardinal Madrid Museum in Spain.”

  Abraham scribbled quick notes. “And why did that make you skeptical?”

  “At first I thought it was missing the proper paperwork. Bernard is known for being meticulous, but an honest mistake wasn’t out of the picture, or maybe an intern filed it improperly. So I called the museum.”

  Abraham’s brow lifted.

  “It wasn’t there.”

  His pen stopped.

  “You’re sure of that?”

  “I am,” I replied.

  He almost smiled, but then said, “Continue.”

  “I went right back to him, concerned that the museum had lost our book in transport. Bernard was irritated. Told me he’d facilitated the loan himself and the person I’d spoken to must have been an idiot.” I grimaced at the memory of that day—not once in the ten years I’d worked for him had he ever been angry with me.

  And he’d been furious with me that day.

  “What did you do?”

  “I believed him.” I plucked at the edges of my notebook, uncomfortably guilty.

  But Abraham’s face was neutral. “Next?” he prodded.

  “After that, I kept a careful eye on him. He was keeping some strange hours. Requesting to clean some of the manuscripts himself, even though at this stage in his career he’d usually have
someone else do that for him. A few times…” I shifted in my chair, feeling uneasy. “A few times I’d see him with people he swore were interns but I didn’t recognize them. And they wouldn’t come back again.”

  “You gathered all of this information yourself?” He glanced at my stacks of scribbled notes with interest.

  “It was the only thing that kept me grounded,” I admitted. “Because if you told me a month ago that Bernard Allerton was systematically stealing manuscripts from this library I never, ever would have believed you.”

  “Is that why you didn’t report this sooner to the police? To Louisa?” he asked.

  I rubbed my jaw. In the last hours, guilt and I had entered into a symbiotic relationship. “You have to understand. I’ve looked up to this man my entire career. No one garners more respect, more accolades, more admiration than Bernard. To accuse a man like that of doing the unthinkable…” I shook my head. “I didn’t fully believe it myself until tonight. I thought…I hoped I was wrong.”

  He nodded.

  “I know it was stupid of me to wait,” I confessed.

  “Men like Bernard are experts in manipulation, Henry,” he said. “Take it from someone who’s spent his entire life chasing people like him.”

  It didn’t make me feel better.

  “Well,” I continued, “everything came to a head a couple days ago when I discovered two missing things. The first was page seventeen of Isaac Newton’s Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. We own an extremely rare copy that contains his handwritten notes in the margin. It’s usually displayed, flipped open for viewers to see. It was scheduled to be cleaned, and that’s when I noticed the missing page. Like it was cut clean off.”

  Abraham leaned forward. “Go on.”

  “I didn’t say anything for a day, trying to come up with some strategic way to confront Bernard. I was also trying desperately to prove myself wrong, searching our index. Like maybe…maybe this copy had always been missing page seventeen.”

  “I’m guessing that wasn’t accurate.”

  “You would be correct,” I sighed. “And then the next day I discovered the missing Tamerlane.” I fanned my hands out over the scattered pages. “I hoped it would all be this great misunderstanding. Surely the most famous librarian in the world wasn’t a…”

  “Criminal,” he finished.

  “Yes,” I said softly. I told him the rest of the story—every bizarre bit of it, up to this current moment. To his credit, he stayed expressionless and nonjudgmental, even as I grew more and more furious.

  “I know Louisa doesn’t believe me,” I said at the end. “And I’m not sure if you do. But that’s everything.”

  Abraham was silent, eyes wandering over my notes. “That was very thorough.”

  “One of the things I do best,” I said dryly. “Research.”

  His eyes narrowed, like he was about to say something, but stayed quiet. So I asked, “Bernard’s on the run, right?”

  “It’s looking like. A man like that can hide out in any number of countries without arousing too much suspicion. Not for long though.” He leaned back, crossing one ankle over his leg. “I believe you may have done the one thing both the FBI and Interpol have been trying to do for years.”

  “What is that?”

  “Make Bernard Allerton afraid.” His lips twitched in an almost-smile. “I’ve been hunting your mentor for a long time, Henry. Before I founded Codex, I was an FBI agent, working in their Art Theft department for more than a decade. I always had a gut feeling that Bernard was not the person he appeared to be. To be honest, I pegged Bernard as a criminal mastermind.”

  The words Bernard and criminal mastermind couldn’t belong in the same sentence. My pulse skipped a rapid beat stomach twisting into more knots. “Then why hasn’t he been arrested sooner?”

  “Same story,” he replied. “Bernard was always on a short list of suspects but entirely based on my gut. No hard evidence at the time. This, however”—he tapped my notes—“could be evidence.”

  “Those letters he showed me. I didn’t sign them, Abraham. They’re forged. Is there a way…”

  “Professionals can discredit forgeries,” he added, avoiding my eyes as he wrote something down. “Interpol should be able to clear your name once they’re analyzed.”

  All the breath left my body.

  “Can I have this?” he asked, indicating my folder.

  “Of course.” The guilt I felt was being replaced with exhaustion. I wanted to lie facedown on the floor until all of this faded away. “What’s next?”

  “For you? Sleep.” He tapped the pages together and slid them into a briefcase. “I’ll call if I need anything.”

  “And what are you going to do?” I asked.

  “Simple,” he said, standing up and extending his hand for me to shake. “I’m going to find that damn book.”

  3

  Henry

  I leaned against a column at the back of the library, the glorious greens of Oxford stretching before me. It was early November, and frost dotted the blades while students rushed across the grass to make their classes in time.

  Two days had passed since Bernard had fled and I’d confessed my story to the man from Codex. Louisa had instructed me to stay absolutely quiet about the theft to allow Codex the best chance to succeed. Which I’d done, however reluctantly. During the day, I pasted on a fake smile when people asked where Bernard had gone. Even though his excuse sounded flimsy to my ears— “A sudden speaking engagement cropped up and he had to leave quickly.”—students and staff didn’t bat an eye.

  Bernard Allerton could come and go as he pleased in this world.

  My mind rattled constantly with the information I’d learned in the last forty-eight hours: Bernard had forged my signature to make me complicit in his crimes. Bernard had fled the country. According to Abraham, Bernard had been suspected of being a book thief for a long, long time.

  And through it all, my body thrummed with a feeling I didn’t yet want to address.

  I watched two students stroll across the frost-covered green, holding science textbooks to their faces and laughing.

  How strange that the world in front of me spun cheerfully forward even as my understanding of it disintegrated.

  How strange that I was still convinced that what was happening right before my eyes wasn’t real.

  “Beautiful view.”

  I turned to find Abraham behind me, dressed in a black pea coat and leather gloves, his scowl firmly in place.

  “It never gets old,” I admitted. “You’re not here to arrest me, are you, Abraham?”

  “You should call me Abe. And no, I’m not.”

  I nodded, still wary. “How can I help you?”

  Abe slid his hands back into his pockets. “You did fine work, Henry. Your notes were invaluable these past couple of days—the behavior you noted, the way you tracked Bernard’s movements and actions. You have an eye for detective work.”

  “I’m a librarian.”

  He held my gaze. “Louisa is reporting the theft of the Tamerlane to Interpol as we speak. They’re partnering closely with the FBI on this one. I gave her all the evidence you had provided to me. Louisa is also reporting the other thefts you had listed in your notes. The staff are inventorying now, and the extent of his crimes is becoming rather obvious.”

  My brow furrowed. “You’re joking.”

  “I’ve never been a man with a sense of humor.” He looked down for a moment, as if analyzing each blade of grass. “You’ll be called in for questioning, of course. Because of your connection to Bernard, the notes you took, and the forgeries.”

  “Am I a suspect?” I asked.

  “I doubt it,” he said. “But you’re certainly a person of interest. You should bring a lawyer, just in case.”

  My neck felt hot. I toed the grass with my shoes, both heartened by Abe’s news but also terrified. “So Codex isn’t working this case any longer?”

  “Louisa canceled our
contract. I was unable to work fast enough for your boss. The single lead I was following dried up almost immediately.” He stared into the horizon, spine rigid. “On the bright side, Bernard Allerton is likely to become the FBI and Interpol’s main suspect.”

  “I still can’t truly believe that.”

  “You will,” he promised. “With time.”

  His business card appeared between his fingers.

  “I was an FBI agent for a long time,” he said. “And I watched us fail, continually. The expanse of theft in the world of antiquities is more massive than you’ll ever know.”

  Bernard had alluded as much to me—his woefully naive successor.

  “The thefts got bigger, our resources got smaller, and through it all, rare manuscripts and valuable art slipped through our fingers like grains of sand. We were steadily failing. Private detectives don’t have legal powers—they can’t arrest suspects or bring someone to trial. But we have the unique capability to slip into a situation undercover and gain someone’s trust.” Abe squinted against the autumn sun. “A book thief will confess to a world of sins when there’s trust involved.”

  Images flew up in my imagination: shadowy figures, cloaked daggers, secrets whispered in the night. I found myself turning fully toward Abe, desperate for him to keep talking about Codex.

  But instead he asked, “How do you feel right now?”

  “Relieved,” I lied.

  “Bullshit,” he said.

  We stood for a minute while I untangled the complicated mess of emotions that had lodged itself in my chest, made more complicated by my response to Codex.

  “Angry,” I finally said through clenched teeth. “I’m fucking furious with Bernard. With myself. With everything.”

  “And what else?”

  I faced away—this was the feeling I hadn’t wanted to face. But it was there, steady as my pulse. “I want revenge. I want to catch the bastard myself. Wipe that smug look off his face.”