by Susan Mann
Without missing a beat, James grinned, waved at the clerk with one hand, and took Quinn’s hand in the other. “We will.”
Once outside, they skipped down the front steps to the sidewalk. James lifted their still-entwined hands out a little as they walked. “I hope you don’t mind, but I’ll need to do this a lot. It’s good for our cover and I don’t want to take the chance of us getting separated.”
He held her hand tight as they threaded their way through a crowd walking in the opposite direction.
“I think I can handle it,” Quinn said once they emerged from the pack. The evening air was cold against her cheeks and she was more than happy to have one hand warmed by his while the other was stuffed deep inside the pocket of her coat.
“And you’re sure you’re okay with our”—he cleared his throat and said barely above a whisper—“marital status and living arrangements?”
“I am and quit asking.” She squeezed his hand. “I appreciate your sensitivity, but you’ve asked me that, like, five times now. I know it’s for my protection and the best way for us to be together at all times without anyone questioning it.” While the idea of pretending to be married had rattled her at first, she’d seen plenty of evidence throughout the day that proved it had been the right call.
Plus Quinn couldn’t deny the unadulterated satisfaction that burned through her when she dealt with a flight attendant who chatted with James a little too long. Without saying a word, Quinn smiled sweetly at the interloper, reached across James with her left hand, and making sure her rings were plainly visible, handed the woman an empty soda can. The sparkling rings worked like a charm. James gave no indication he’d noticed her not-so-subtle rebuff. Even if he had, she didn’t care. James might only be her pretend-husband, but no one else knew their true status. It was only right she respond to any potential poachers accordingly.
“I trust you. There’s no reason to walk on eggshells around me, okay?”
His uncertainty vanished and was replaced by a quiet confidence. “Okay.”
“Okay,” she repeated with finality. Now more relaxed, they walked at a brisk pace, past restaurants and pubs, American fast-food joints, tiny retail shops, and a bank. “I take it it’s not a coincidence that we’re able to walk to Ben’s flat from our hotel?”
“You’re right. It’s not.” James practically hurtled over a bicycle locked to a rack on the crowded sidewalk. “Ben needed to look like he could afford to live in a nice area, but not be über-wealthy, so his place is small. And Fitzhugh’s house is only a couple of Tube stops from here.”
When they reached a wine-and-cigar shop, James pulled her inside and bought a bottle of German Riesling.
“What’s up with that?” Quinn asked.
“In case anyone is watching, we’re just a couple joining a friend in the building for dinner.”
“You think Ben’s flat is being watched?”
“I have no idea, but it can’t hurt to look like we belong there.”
They rounded a corner and started down a narrow residential street. On both sides were unbroken stretches of tan brick, three-story Georgian buildings. At regular intervals, white columns adorned sets of steps that led from the sidewalk to the two side-by-side front doors.
“How well do you think those neighbors get along?” Quinn asked, pointing at one particular duplex on their right. On one side, the exterior was pristine, sporting power-washed bricks and a coat of white paint that brightened the window frames. The other side was grungy, with chipped paint and dirty, dilapidated steps.
“I’m thinking the British version of the Hatfields and the McCoys.”
“Accurate,” she said with a laugh. “Ben didn’t rent an entire town house, did he?”
“No. A lot of these places have been converted into individual apartments.” He slowed and looked up at the door with the number 25 on it. “And here we are.”
Quinn noticed the four-buttoned intercom panel to the right of the door. “Do you have a key to the front door?”
“No.”
“How do we get in?”
He gave her a knowing smile, led her up the steps, and pressed the button next to the name tag for flat C, “Baker, B.,” Ben’s cover name. Unsurprisingly, there was no response. He pressed it again with the same result. Next, he punched the button for flat A. While they waited for an answer, Quinn peered down at a basement window she hadn’t noticed from the street.
“Yeah?” came a man’s voice from the speaker. He sounded bored.
“Good evening,” James said. “My wife and I are here to have dinner with a friend. We’ve rung a couple of times, but he hasn’t answered. Could you let us in so we don’t have to wait for him in the cold?”
Out of the corner of her eye, Quinn saw the sheer curtain below move. “Yeah,” the voice said again a few seconds later. James opened the door when it buzzed.
They stepped through the door into a small entryway. To their immediate left was a door with a brass B affixed to it. “I think we’re up one flight,” James said. He took the lead and they climbed the narrow flight of carpeted stairs. They reached a small landing and the door to Ben’s flat.
“Now what?” Quinn asked barely above a whisper.
“You hold this,” he said and handed her the bottle of wine. He took a small black case from his coat pocket and unzipped it, revealing a lock pick set. “Keep your eyes and ears open.” He dropped to his knees in front of the door, took out a couple of tools, and set to work. “If anyone comes up or down the stairs, nudge me.”
“Why? What are you going to do, pretend you’re proposing?” She instantly cringed. Her brain-to-mouth filter had utterly failed.
“Actually, I’m going to pretend I’m tying my shoe. Any man who proposes on a staircase landing in an apartment building would be deserving of public humiliation.”
Quinn leaned back against the wall and recovered from her mortification. “I gotta agree with you on that. This staircase isn’t exactly the height of romance.”
“Not even close.”
“Pretending to propose got Chance Stryker out of a jam in The Tango Protocol, though.” In actuality, what had saved Chance had been the pulse-pounding kiss that hid his face from his pursuers after the fake proposal. Not wanting to put her size sixes in her mouth again, she kept that last bit of information to herself.
“Chance Stryker? What happened to Edward Walker?”
“He’s still there. You don’t think I only read one book series, do you?”
“Now that you mention it, I don’t think that for even a second. And, if it worked for Chance Stryker, I’m sure it would work for us, too.” James grimaced as he turned the picks in the lock. There was a click and Quinn could see the tension in his body dissipate. He turned the doorknob and pushed the door open a crack. “There.” After returning the implements to their case, he rose to his feet and slipped the case into his pocket. He stepped back and swept his arm toward the door. “After you.”
She pushed herself away from the wall and walked into the dark apartment. Once they were both inside, James quietly closed the door behind them.
“We’ll need to keep our voices down and walk lightly to keep anyone from knowing we’re here.”
Quinn nodded, set her purse and the bottle of wine on top of the short bookshelf next to the front door, and waited for her eyes to adjust to the dark. She glanced at the front window and noted the weak light from the street lamp filtering through the closed mini blinds. “I guess we can’t turn the lights on if someone might be watching the flat.”
“Hang on,” he answered. James disappeared and returned a moment later with a quilt slung over his shoulder. “I need your help.” He picked up a dining room chair, carried it across the room, and set it down on one side of the window.
She tiptoed across the floor and climbed up onto the chair. At the same time, James bounded onto the couch and stood on the arm. It took a couple of minutes and some binder clips he’d found in a desk drawe
r, but they eventually secured the quilt over the window.
Quinn didn’t move until James maneuvered blindly to the switch next to the door and flicked it on.
Once her eyes adjusted, she quickly surveyed the room. It was a bit smaller than her apartment with only enough room for a sofa against one wall, a small TV on a stand, and a round glass dining room table. Two sets of built-in bookshelves ran the height and length of the wall opposite the couch. A small gray fireplace separated the two sections of shelves.
“No wonder Ben picked this flat. It’s like librarian heaven.”
From her vantage point atop the chair, she could easily skim the titles on the top two shelves. The very top shelf held several computer manuals and the rest was filled with books on library science. She nearly squealed out loud when she saw Ben owned the same book on acquisitions and collection development she’d studied in library school. She lightly stepped off the chair, moved it closer to the bookshelves, and remounted it.
There were books on research methods, reference work, cataloging, metadata, and information storage and retrieval systems. She couldn’t wait to talk to Ben about library stuff in person.
Which reminded her of why she and James were in Ben’s flat in the first place. She climbed off the chair and wandered down the short hallway to the bedroom. There she found James rummaging through a dresser drawer.
“I’m sorry, James. The agency flies me all the way to London and all I’m doing is nerding out over Ben’s books.” She glanced around the room. Besides a double bed and the dresser, a very small desk sat against the wall. “Where do you want me to start?”
He straightened, looked over at her, and shook his head. “I’m not going to tell you where to look. I don’t want to filter you or direct you on what or where to look for anything. You’re here to search this place as a librarian. I trust that mojo of yours. Use your instincts.”
“So, you want me to be part Sherlock Holmes and part Melvil Dewey?”
“Sure, as long as you’re 99.98% Quinn Ellington.”
“That, I can do.” Deciding the desk seemed to be as good a place to start as any, she sat, opened a drawer, and pulled out a packet of receipts paper-clipped together. She studied each one by one and learned that Ben’s trips to the grocery store resulted in him buying breakfast cereal, milk, and a variety of fresh fruits. He was partial to eating dinner at the local pub and had recently suffered from a head cold.
Nothing about the receipts jumped out at her, so she left them on the top of the desk and pawed through the rest of the contents of the drawer. It contained pencils, pens, rubber bands, paper clips, and a few postage stamps. She rapped her knuckles on the bottom of the drawer to check for a false bottom. It sounded solid. She closed it and moved to the next one.
She smiled when it revealed a bottle of book glue, several rolls of book tape, and a box of cotton pull fasteners that looked a little like shoelaces. She knew they were used to strap books with their pages falling out together. “Once a librarian . . .” She lifted out a pH pen and examined it, never having seen one in person before.
James came to stand next to her. “That’s a weird-looking pen.”
“It’s used to check the pH level of paper. Paper high in acidity turns yellow, gets brittle, and crumbles when it gets old.” She snickered. “And in my head, I just heard my grandpa say, ‘So do I.’” Quinn returned the pen after tapping the bottom of the drawer and slid it closed. She craned her neck to look up at him. “Any luck?”
“No.” He raked his fingers through his hair. “You?”
“Nope, although we might want to check out the pub Ben eats at all the time.”
“That’s a good idea. Find out what he’s been telling the regulars.”
“The food must be pretty good, too, if he eats there a lot.”
“Or maybe he enjoys the service more than the food.” He wiggled his eyebrows for emphasis.
“Oh, are you admitting to the James Bond stereotype—hooking up with at least one woman during every op?” she asked, narrowing her eyes at him.
He threw his shoulders back and raised his chin. “I’m no more like James Bond in that regard than you are an old lady librarian who wears her hair in a bun and goes around shushing people all day.”
“Touché,” she said, chastened. “You’ve been nothing but a complete gentleman and I apologize.”
“It’s okay. We both have stereotypes to battle against. Are you finished with the desk?”
She raised her arms over her head and stretched, twisting first one way and then the other. “Not quite. I’m going to check the undersides of the drawers to see if anything is hidden.” Her hands dropped to her lap and she rolled her shoulders. She sagged back in the chair and stared at the receipts piled on the desk.
“You look whipped. Let me do that. Why don’t you go take a break for a few?”
“We need to keep up the search.”
“We will, but five minutes won’t make a difference.”
He was right. Five minutes wouldn’t make a difference. “Okay.” She left the bedroom, went to the kitchen, and found a bottle of water in the refrigerator. The cold liquid revived her somewhat, but the effects of the day that wouldn’t end were beginning to catch up with her. Her legs ached. She knew if she sat down, there was a good chance she wouldn’t get back up again until sometime next week, so she ambled back out to the front room and headed toward the bookshelves.
She picked up where she’d left off, starting with the writings of the great philosophers throughout history, from the ancient Greeks to the modern era. Next came a couple of Bibles, a stretch of books on Christianity, the spiritual life, Church history, comparative religion, and monographs of the sacred texts of various Eastern religions.
When the subject of the books jumped from philosophy and religion to politics, she laughed out loud and shook her head. “Ben, you’re a bigger library geek than I am.” He’d arranged his books in perfect Dewey decimal order.
The way the rest of the shelves were ordered came as no surprise to her. After politics came different foreign language dictionaries, books on astronomy, symptoms and diseases, opera, and a large section of fiction. Finally, there were some old atlases, a few biographies, and a number of history books.
Curious about what kind of fiction Ben read, she went back to the beginning of the section and examined the titles more closely. Overall, he seemed to have pretty highbrow taste. Most of the novels were American and British classics. He also appeared to be a huge Stephen King fan.
“That’s weird,” she murmured when she spotted a book that was clearly out of place. A copy of Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, Second Edition, known in the library world simply as AACR2 had been shelved between the tomes Different Seasons and Dolores Claiborne. “That doesn’t belong there. Not by a long shot.” She took the book from the shelf and studied the cover. She’d never seen such an old copy before. Curious, she flipped the book open.
Excitement thrummed through her. “Hey, James?” she called out in as loud a voice as she dared.
His voice floated from the bedroom. “Yeah?”
“Have you ever seen the movie The Shawshank Redemption?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“You know the part where after Andy Dufresne escapes from prison, the warden opens the Bible and finds the pages perfectly carved out in the shape of a rock hammer?”
He stood next to her and responded with a puzzled, drawn-out “Yeah.”
Quinn moved the open book so he could see the small, perfectly edged rectangle hewn into the pages. But it wasn’t empty. Securely secreted inside the obsolete book was a USB flash drive.
Chapter Eighteen
“I’m not complaining, but I have to admit I never thought my first meal in London would be from Burger King,” Quinn said before she took another bite of her chicken sandwich. She stood directly behind James who sat at the desk in their hotel room. When a few rogue crumbs sprinkled down onto his back and shoulde
rs, she brushed off the offending bits with her fingers. “I’m sorry. I’m giving you sesame seed dandruff.”
“That’s okay,” he replied as he stuck the flash drive they’d found in Ben’s apartment into the USB port of his laptop. “The pigeons will love me.” He took a pull of his drink through the straw and then another bite of his Whopper. “And I promise at some point, we’ll eat food that doesn’t come wrapped in paper.”
“We’re not here on vacation and finding out what’s on this flash drive takes priority over the time it’d take to eat at a restaurant.” Given the angry growls that had come from her stomach as they’d walked back to the hotel, Quinn was happy to eat anything.
A window on the laptop opened to show there was only one file on the thumb drive.
“I’m surprised it’s not encrypted,” Quinn said.
“It is. This computer has the same encryption/decryption algorithms as Ben’s.”
“What would happen if we put that drive in my computer?”
“It would explode.”
“Really?”
After a pause, he snickered and said, “No, not really.”
She pushed at the back of his head with a hand, which made him laugh harder. “You’re a doofus.”
“Sorry.” Still chuckling, he tapped at the keyboard. “I couldn’t pass up the chance at a little spy humor.”
“Very little.”
“Oh, burn,” he said, drawing out the second word. “To answer your question, your computer would recognize a drive had been inserted, but it wouldn’t be able to open it. You wouldn’t see anything.” As he finished speaking, a spreadsheet opened on the screen. James looked at the document for a few seconds before he sighed and said, “Nothing is ever straightforward with Ben. This is just another incomprehensible mess of letters and numbers.”
Quinn bent forward and with her head next to James’s, examined the page. The spreadsheet contained two columns. The one on the far left was a list of three-digit numbers. After a quick scan, Quinn noted the same numbers—082, 100, 850 and sometimes 852—repeated as groups. There were about a dozen of these sets in total.
