The Librarian and the Spy

by Susan Mann

  It had stopped raining, but the air was still cold and damp when they exited the Rolls, which did nothing to help the chill of nerves that shot through Quinn. When the massive front door swung open, her knees nearly buckled.

  James kissed her cheek and gave her an encouraging smile. “I’ll be here when you come out.” His smile turned wistful. “You’ll be great.”

  With a fleeting smile, she said, “See you soon.” She left James to wait outside with Bruiser and was escorted by Ms. Badass to the entrance of the house.

  Standing just inside the doorway was an older gentleman in worn brown corduroy slacks and a wool sweater. “Ms. Ellington. Roderick Fitzhugh. I’m so pleased you agreed to meet with me.” She shook his soft, warm hand in greeting. He then swept it toward the house, inviting her inside.

  “I do hope the inclement weather didn’t hamper your travels,” he said, as he closed the door behind them.

  “No, it was fine, thank you.” Her first impression of him was that he looked more like an emeritus professor than a nefarious weapons dealer. She’d expected him to be more like a smug, soulless James Bond villain with a nasty scar over one eye, not a genteel country squire who reminded her of her grandfather. “Rain is what I’d expect in England in December.”

  “Indeed.”

  Directly in front of them was a central staircase that split and turned both left and right at the first landing. On either side of the staircase were hallways that went farther back into the house. He led her, with Ms. Badass following at a discreet distance, down the left hall. At the first open doorway, they turned into a large family room. The walls were tan with white wainscoting and crown molding. Rustic paintings of bulls and horses decorated the walls. The furniture was homey, comfortable-looking, the exact opposite of his house in Pacific Palisades. Quinn detected the faint scent of evergreen in the air and immediately spotted a tall Christmas tree in one corner of the room. It was all very cozy and frankly, disconcerting.

  “I hope you don’t mind, but since you are a librarian . . .” After a brief pause, he asked, “You are a librarian, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Very good. As I was saying, since you are a librarian, I thought you might enjoy taking tea in the library.”

  “That sounds lovely, thank you.”

  They walked through another door in the back corner of the family room and into the library. Quinn almost gasped at its size and beauty. Dark wood shelves packed with books covered one entire wall from floor to ceiling. Although it was dusk outside, Quinn could imagine the natural daylight streaming into the room through the two windows in the adjacent wall.

  “From the admiration shining on your face, I see you approve of my humble reading nook.”

  “I do. I could see spending days in here, curled up with a book and a cup of tea.”

  “Something I myself have done on many occasions.” Fitzhugh motioned to two burgundy leather wingback chairs situated in front of the fireplace. “Please, sit.”

  She sat on the edge of one of the chairs, slipped off her coat, and set her bag on the floor next to her feet. “Is it wrong to admit one of my life’s goals is to one day own a library that needs a rolling ladder to get to the top shelves—like the one you have over there?”

  “Not at all,” he said with a chuckle. He picked up the silver teapot from the small round table between them and filled two porcelain teacups. “Feel free to fix your tea as you like,” he said, indicating the milk and sugar. Crumbs tumbled down his sweater when he picked up a biscuit from a plate and took a bite. “This yearning for a large library of your own. Did you plan to use my manuscript as the cornerstone upon which to build your collection?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “I must confess, you don’t look the part of a hardened criminal.” Fitzhugh settled back in his chair, crossed his legs, and sipped his tea, a signal to her things would move along according to his terms. “Tell me, Ms. Ellington. How does a young librarian come to be a part of a syndicate of thieves?”

  How she got mixed up with James was a perfectly believable story, so she decided to tell the truth, minus the part about the CIA. “I work at a library in Los Angeles. A couple of weeks ago, a man came in with a picture of a brooch and asked me to help him find out more about it. As my reference interview moved along, he told me he worked for a company that insured an art collection. He wanted to make sure the valuations the appraisers gave him matched up with his independent research.” She shrugged and brushed at a strand of hair falling across her forehead. “What he said made sense. I didn’t question it and helped him.”

  Fitzhugh nodded thoughtfully. “Yes. It was about that time my business associate, Paul Shelton, mentioned to me Mr. Lockwood was spending a lot of time at a library.”

  “James and I enjoyed working together. The research was challenging, and great fun for me. Then he asked me to go to your house in the Palisades with him on Saturday morning to examine some pieces there. That’s when I stumbled across the ring and the letter hidden in the drawer in the clock.”

  “You didn’t know he’d taken them when you left my house that day?”

  “No. I didn’t know anything about any of this until we got back to my apartment after dinner that night and found two men rifling through my stuff. One tried to steal my laptop and the other had my great-grandmother’s cameo shoved in his pocket.”

  Fitzhugh’s nose wrinkled, like he’d just caught a whiff of rotting fish. “Contractors.” After another sip of tea, he said, “I suppose you wanted to ring the authorities and James stopped you?”

  She nodded. “That’s when he told me the truth.”

  “So you ran. With him.”

  “Yes.”

  “Aren’t you furious with James, that you’re now involved in criminal activity?”

  “I was.” The memory of her anger at the cabin flared in her mind. Her scowl was very real.

  “And now you’re not,” he stated.

  “No.”

  Fitzhugh smiled and picked off a piece of lint from his pants. “No, it’s clear your feelings toward Mr. Lockwood are anything but negative.”

  Quinn dropped her gaze and stared into the fire.

  “Now you find yourself here, more deeply entrenched than ever in this plot gone wrong.”

  “I’m hoping once everything gets straightened out, I can go back to my normal life.”

  “With James?”

  “I don’t know.” She turned her face away from the fire and looked at Fitzhugh. “Perhaps.”

  He gave her a look of sympathy, or pity. “Oh, my poor dear girl. I hate to be the one to tell you, but I don’t think that will happen.”

  “What? Why?” This genuinely surprised her. A rock lodged in the pit of her stomach.

  “Because he continues to lie to you. He’s not a thief.” Fitzhugh waved a hand dismissively and said, “Well, yes, he is a thief. He is also a member of a black market weapons organization.”

  Tea sloshed over the rim of her cup and splashed on her jeans when she bolted upright in her chair. “What? What are you talking about?”

  “I’m British Intelligence. MI6.”

  She stared openmouthed at Fitzhugh and the hand holding her half-empty teacup began to shake. Had James been playing her? She set the cup down, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. No. James had a badge. She spoke to his boss. They got her a fake passport in just a few hours. But a large criminal syndicate could probably do the same thing. Was she the most gullible person on the planet? She blinked and gazed at Fitzhugh, her eyes blurred with tears. “I don’t understand.”

  “I’m very sorry to be the one to tell you this, but it’s true. James and Ben are looking for a rumored secret weapon of some kind. If it exists, information about its location is believed to be hidden somewhere in the art collection I recently purchased. That’s why they didn’t steal something infinitely more valuable, like my Fabergé egg.”

  “They think something is in th
e manuscript, or the letter,” she finished for him. She slumped back in her chair, dropped her chin to her chest, and rubbed her fingers over her forehead. It couldn’t be. Had her feelings for James blinded her to the truth all along?

  Then it hit her. MI6 would never allow items with such valuable intelligence out of their control. They’d be kept under lock and key in London with a cadre of analysts studying them. No, it was Fitzhugh who was lying to her. The fact she’d doubted James’s veracity for a split second compelled her to say, “I’m an idiot.”

  “No, you were dazzled,” Fitzhugh said, clearly believing she bought his load of crap. The burning logs in the fireplace crackled in the silence. Finally, he said, “Tell me, do you think James learned anything after your meeting with the professor last night? Once you were alone, did he ask you to find any hidden meanings in the manuscript?”

  She’d play the naïve girl he thought her to be. Her cheeks pinked and she dropped her gaze to her hands. “We didn’t discuss it at all. Once we got back to our hotel, we were, um, busy with other things all night.”

  “Ah, I see,” he said with a perceptive smile. “Well, you can set things right by helping me find this weapon. Tell me everything you may have learned about the manuscript during your time with James.”

  “I want to know what will happen to him.”

  “He’s a criminal. He is currently being detained by my associate, Joseph, and will later be handed over to the authorities.”

  “Detained. A nice way of saying he’s tied up somewhere?”

  “Yes.”

  Her stomach dropped to her shoes. It was clear if they were going to get out of this alive, it was up to her. What she was about to do was gutsy, but it was her only play. “From what I heard from the professor last night, I’m pretty sure what you’re looking for is in the manuscript.” She shifted in her chair to look at him dead-on. “I’ll help you under one condition.”

  “I don’t have to meet any conditions. If you don’t help me, I’ll charge you with the same crimes as James—or worse.”

  She thought back to Ben’s weak voice on the phone and Fitzhugh’s promise to hurt him further if they didn’t give up the manuscript. She knew he was fully prepared to follow through with his threat. “Killing me won’t get you answers.”

  “Perhaps, but you witnessing Joseph breaking James’s fingers, one by one, should be sufficient motivation.”

  Her stomach churned. “Look, you don’t have to hurt him. I’m willing to help you. All I want in return is for James, Ben, and me to walk out of here, free and clear. No arrests. No charges. No physical damage.”

  “You’re willing to put your freedom, your very life on the line for a blackguard? You do realize you are doing this for a man who has lied to you and used you.”

  “Yeah, I know. And the stupid thing is I still love him anyway.”

  She stared back at him impassively as he considered her for a moment. The affable Roderick Fitzhugh returned. “The things we do for love,” he said with a mock sigh of defeat. “Agreed. Now, tell me what you learned.”

  Quinn removed the manuscript from her bag and handed it to Fitzhugh. He eagerly took it and immediately began to turn through the pages. “It’s the story of a man, a knight, who goes to war, is captured, escapes and then has adventures on his way back to his home kingdom. The places he traveled to aren’t mentioned specifically, though. For instance, one is called, ‘Blizzard Village.’ Last night at the pub, we thought maybe the knight was a Crusader. Now I wonder.”

  Fitzhugh leaned forward. “You wonder what?”

  She had to make it seem to Fitzhugh she didn’t already know the answer, but she also wanted to tell him what he wanted to know as soon as possible so they could get out of there. Her gut told her it probably wasn’t going to be that easy. “Could the locations mentioned in the text be some kind of secret code as to where these weapons are hidden?”

  His eyes flashed with interest. “Where are these places?”

  “See, that’s the problem. Everything is in medieval Latin. I don’t know what country it’s talking about.” She stopped and thought for a moment, trying to figure the best way to lead Fitzhugh to the answer. “Like, if I knew the knight in the story was in California and the text said he was at ‘the beach of the king,’ I’d know it meant Playa del Rey. It’s right by LAX.”

  Fitzhugh sat so far forward in his chair, literally on the edge of his seat, Quinn thought he might slide off and end up on the floor.

  He wasn’t there yet, so she fed him another line. “The other thing is, I don’t think we’re talking about a stash of trebuchets. So it must be the manuscript is referring to something and someplace modern. We haven’t been able to date the manuscript, so we could be completely wrong, but it’s just a hunch.”

  His eyes widened, apparently putting everything she’d been saying together. “It might be the former Soviet Union. The man who owned the art collection before me was Russian.”

  Finally. “Hmmm. That might be a good place to start.”

  Quinn jerked when James’s voice came through her earwig. “Try not to react,” he said. Too late, she thought when Fitzhugh shot her an odd look. Trying to cover for her jump, she said, “I just thought of something. If you could find me a piece of paper and a pen, I’ll write down the names of the places Professor Dudley told us about. We can go from there.”

  Fitzhugh stood and went to the large desk in front of the windows.

  As Fitzhugh searched for her requested items, James said, barely above a whisper, “I’m not tied up and I found Ben. There’s no way Fitzhugh’s gonna let us go once he gets the locations. We have to make a break for it. Clear your throat if you copy.”

  A noise rumbled from the back of her throat.

  “Good. We’re on our way to get you. Just hang tight until we get there.”

  She cleared her throat again as Fitzhugh returned with paper and pen. She took a sip of tea, and patted her chest. Pen in hand, she wrote the location names as slowly as possible, pretending it was hard for her to remember them all.

  “Do you speak Russian?” she asked Fitzhugh.

  “No, but I believe I have a Russian-English dictionary.”

  He doesn’t speak Russian? MI6, my ass, she thought.

  They both rose and she followed him to the wall of books. She tipped her head back and stared openmouthed at the hundreds of books before her. “Do you have them organized at all?”

  “Not really. Most of these books came with the estate when I purchased it from an impoverished earl.”

  The librarian in her wanted to cry.

  “We’ll have to hunt about,” Fitzhugh said. When they’d first entered the library, Ms. Badass had crossed the room and taken her post at a second door that led to the hallway. She’d stood there during the entire confab, stone-faced and motionless. Now, Fitzhugh addressed her. “Lucy, if you could assist us. We need to locate a Russian-English dictionary.”

  “Yes, sir.” Lucy moved to the section of the bookcase closest to the door. Quinn took the middle, next to where the rolling ladder stood while Fitzhugh, his hands clasped behind him, scanned the books at the far end.

  Quinn was about to check to see if the four volumes in the set of Winston Churchill’s A History of the English-Speaking Peoples were first editions when she heard shouts and the crack of a gunshot.

  In her earwig, she heard James yell, “Run, Quinn! Run!”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  At the sound of the gunshot, Lucy whirled toward the door to the hall and reached for her firearm. Quinn grabbed the ladder and yanked on it with everything she had. It flew along the front of the bookcase and crashed into the back of the bodyguard. The force sent her sprawling. Her pistol skidded across the Oriental rug when she hit the floor.

  Quinn bolted for the door that led to the family room.

  “Stop her! I’ll get the gun,” Fitzhugh shouted.

  Quinn was most of the way across the room when Lucy, having scra
mbled to her feet, lunged at Quinn’s lower legs and wrapped her arms around them like a defensive back making an open field tackle.

  The floor raced up toward Quinn’s face. Her hands shot out instinctively to break her fall. Pain raced up her left arm and exploded in her shoulder when it took the brunt of her fall. Her chest and stomach slammed against the floor, forcing the air from her lungs.

  Her eyes clamped shut and watered in pain as she gulped for air. She rolled onto her side and kicked to break the death grip Lucy had on her ankles. She jerked one foot free and blindly kicked in Lucy’s direction. She caught nothing but air. Quinn drew her knee up and opened her eyes. Target sighted, she drove the heel of her boot into the center of Lucy’s face. There was a sickening crunch followed by an indignant cry. Blood gushed from Lucy’s nose as wild-eyed, she let go of Quinn’s ankle, rolled onto her back, and cupped her hands over her face.

  Quinn scrambled to her feet and sprinted toward the door. She grabbed the door frame with a hand and slingshot herself into the family room. She darted across the room, dodging furniture, and burst into the hallway.

  A gunshot rent the air and the large vase on the table next to her exploded. She ducked and dove for cover. Crouching, she peeked around the end of the bench she hid behind and saw Fitzhugh coming toward her with Lucy’s pistol in his hand.

  Quinn lifted the hem of her jeans and grabbed the Baby Glock from the holster strapped to her calf. When James had handed her the firearm he’d told her to only use it in case of emergency. She figured this counted as an emergency.

  She whipped the Glock around the end of the bench and fired off a shot in Fitzhugh’s direction. He let out a surprised bellow and disappeared through the doorway of the family room.

  “James! Fitzhugh has me pinned down in the entryway.”

  “On our way!” James replied through the earwig.

  Fitzhugh popped into the hallway and squeezed off another shot. The bullet ripped into the wall behind her, raining down bits of plaster.

  James appeared from behind the staircase with another man, his arm slung over James’s shoulder. Quinn couldn’t see his face well, but it had to be Ben. James leaned him against the newel post at the base of the stairway and let go of him long enough to spin around and fire off two rounds down the hall from which they’d just come.