by Gayle Lynds
“The problem is we didn’t get The Book of Spies.” Preston’s lips thinned as he described what had happened. “I managed to wound Judd Ryder.”
“How did you identify Eva Blake?” Chapman asked.
“At first I didn’t. Then when the Metro stopped, she passed me at the exit, and I thought I recognized her walk from when I studied her in L.A. I watched from the window as she went outside. She took a duffel bag big enough to hold The Book of Spies from the kid who’d been sitting next to her, and then a man met her—he was the right size and age to be Ryder.” He filled in more details.
Chapman’s mind worked furiously. “In Istanbul you found out from Yakimovich that the old librarian wrote the library’s location in the book. As long as the book’s in circulation, we could have serious trouble. And God knows whether there are other clues out there somewhere. We can’t take the chance Ryder, Blake, or someone else will find the library. Phone Carolyn Magura to get ready. How long will it take to move the library?”
Ten years ago the book club had decided that electronic monitoring and international communications were advancing so rapidly that discovery of the island could become a problem. It was time to find a backup home. A remote area in the Swiss Alps on a glacier-fed lake north of Gimmelwald had been perfect. The place had been ready for years, managed by a skeleton crew.
“Yes, sir. I’ll get everything ready,” Preston said. “Figure a day and a half.”
“Tomorrow night’s banquet will be our last on the island. A fitting end to a good long run. Plan to move out the next morning.” For a moment nostalgia swept through him. Then worry returned. “What about the Carnivore. Have you found him?”
“Mr. Lindström’s computer chief hasn’t been able to track him.”
“Christ. Has your man in Washington eliminated Tucker Andersen yet?”
Preston paused. “Both have vanished. We’re looking for them.”
Chapman controlled his temper. “You do that. I’m going to move against Catapult. We can’t afford to let the situation in Washington get any worse than it is.”
60
Washington, D.C.
IT HAD been a long day at Catapult, and Gloria Feit was clearing her desk to leave. The usual office chatter sounded from the corridors. As she folded her reading glasses, she noticed a soft sound as the door behind her opened. She turned.
“I need to see you, Gloria.” Hudson Canon’s bulldog face vanished back inside his office.
With a quiver of uneasiness, she walked after him.
“Close the door and sit down.” He was already settled behind his desk, his big hands splayed on top.
She thought for a moment about the man in the basement who had tried to erase Tucker, but she had taken the spare keys to the door from the lockbox and they were safely in her purse. There was no way Canon or anyone else knew the man was down there. He would not talk, but he was eating like an elephant.
She settled herself into one of the chairs facing the desk, crossed her legs casually, and put a pleasant smile on her face.
“What can I do for you, boss?”
“Where’s Tucker?” The question was abrupt, the tone full of authority.
She gave a little frown. “He hasn’t returned. That’s all I know.”
“When he called in, what did he say?”
That took her aback. How did Canon know Tucker had phoned from the grocery store to have her pick up his attacker, and later from the Baltimore airport? Then she realized he could have checked Catapult’s automated phone logs.
“He asked whether I wanted a sandwich from Capitol City market,” she lied. “I told him no. He called a second time, but I don’t know from where. He asked if there were any important messages for him. There weren’t. That was the last I heard. Are you worried something’s happened to him? I don’t think you need to be. He would’ve told me if he was in trouble and needed backup.”
He leaned forward. “What’s he up to?”
“I haven’t a clue.”
“Is it more of this nonsense about the Library of Gold?”
“Well,” she said carefully, “it is the operation he’s focused on. But it’s not the only one he’s managing, of course.”
“That operation is over. You and I both know that that’s what he’s working on. He’s disobeying a direct order.”
The force of his intensity shook her. “I haven’t heard anything about any of that.”
“So Tucker didn’t tell you he had a deadline. Now you’re informed. It’s your duty to help find him. The Senate subcommittee on intelligence is investigating waste in the CIA. They’re meeting tomorrow. I had to tell Matt about Tucker. It’s minor in some ways, but it’s the sort of thing they’re looking into. It won’t be good for Tucker. He needs to report in.”
Matt Kelley, head of the Clandestine Service, was an old friend of Tucker’s. It seemed impossible he would report or reprimand Tucker for something so small.
“It’s less than minor,” Gloria insisted. “My God, if we held our breath over every incident like this with one of our officers, we’d all die of asphyxiation. We have to rely on their being self-starters, entrepreneurial.”
Canon shook his big head. “One of the senators knows about it. She sits on the subcommittee. She’s got a bone between her teeth, and she’s not letting go. She wants Tucker.”
“How did she hear?” she asked, shocked.
“God knows,” he snapped back. “But that’s the situation. We don’t want Tucker to be burned. Where is he? What’s he doing?”
She was silent, remembering her long history with the spymaster. She had always trusted him, and he had always trusted her. And all the evidence pointed to Hudson Canon’s being dirty. Still, he did not sound dirty.
She took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Hudson. If I knew where Tucker was, I’d say so.”
He stared. “You’d damn well better tell me if you hear anything. Go home and think. Think hard. We’ve got to find Tucker.”
HUDSON CANON stood in front of the mirror in his office, adjusting his tie. His face seemed pale. He slapped both cheeks. When the color returned, he cracked open his door. Gloria was gone. Good. He marched down the corridor, stopping in offices, asking whether anyone had had contact with Tucker or knew where he was. All claimed ignorance. Finally he went into Tucker’s office and closed the door. He searched the desk and the file cabinets. In the bottom drawer, he found a bottle of whiskey. He opened it and drank deeply. At least he had uncovered something useful.
Wiping his mouth, he went down the corridor again, repeating his questions and again getting nothing. Then he stepped inside the communications center and stopped at every desk until he reached Debi Watson.
“Where’s Tucker?” he asked her.
She peered up, her large eyes wide. “I don’t know, suh.”
“When’s the last time you talked with him?”
“Yesterday. It was just the usual instructions.”
He fought impatience. “What were they?”
“To track a cell phone number. I turned it over to NSA.”
“Call NSA.”
Quickly she picked up her phone and dialed.
“I’ll take that.” He snapped the phone from her hands. “This is Hudson Canon. Tell me exactly what you’ve been doing for Tucker Andersen.”
“Just a minute. Let me get into that file.” The man on the other end of the line paused. “All right, here it is. We traced a cell phone number for him. It was last turned on in the Acropolis Metro station in Athens. I reported the information to Judd Ryder. Then I got a call to locate an island for them. I found four.”
An island? That was something Canon knew nothing about. Still, he felt a moment of relief. At least he had something to tell Reinhardt Gruen: Judd Ryder was in Athens and had received information directly from NSA. “You obviously have Tucker Andersen’s and Judd Ryder’s mobile numbers. I need to know exactly where both are.”
“I’ll have to get
back to you. I’ve got to go through NRO, you know, and if Ryder and Andersen are using secure mobiles, it’ll take some time.”
Canon gave him his number. “As soon as you get the information, call me immediately. And I mean immediately.”
61
Athens, Greece
DAZZLING MORNING sunlight illuminated the quiet hotel room. As Judd slept, Eva lay back down on her bed, dressed again in her jeans and green shirt. Tense, she threw her arms above her head and stared out the window as a redtail hawk circled lazily against the blue sky. She’d had a restless night, awaking and drowsing, then awaking again, haunted by a sense she already knew where in The Book of Spies the librarian had likely written the Library of Gold’s location—if she could just figure it out.
“How long have you been awake?”
She turned her head. Judd was staring at her, gray eyes sleepy, bleached hair messy. She studied him for any signs of fever.
“Not sure. An hour maybe. How are feeling?” She handed him aspirin, painkillers, and a glass of water.
“Much better. You’ve been thinking.” He propped himself up on an elbow and took the medication.
“Yes. About where in Spies the librarian would’ve left a message. I’ve been going over everything Charles told me again and again, and what I remembered from his notebook. I know I’m close to the answer.”
He was silent. “Too bad Charles didn’t leave a different clue.”
She frowned. “Say that again.”
“Too bad Charles didn’t leave a—”
“Different clue. That’s it.” She sat up excitedly. “I was looking for what we hadn’t used before. Big mistake.” She hurried to the big Book of Spies, which lay closed on the table.
“What are you talking about?” In his T-shirt and shorts, Judd pulled up a chair and sat beside her.
“The reason we shaved Charles’s head was the story about Histiaeus and the slave messenger. So maybe it wasn’t a clue just to check Charles’s scalp; maybe it’s where we’re supposed to look inside Spies, too. I know I saw the story here somewhere.”
She turned pages quickly. Finally, in the middle of the big book, she found the tale on a single page as ornate as the others, decorated with Persian and Greek soldiers along the outside margin. Black Cyrillic letters filled the rest of the space, the text block recounting the ancient narrative.
“I don’t see anything unusual.” Judd stared.
“Me neither. I’m going to translate the story quickly to myself.” As she read, it was soon clear the recounting was much as Herodotus had chronicled it centuries before. Finished, she sat back.
“Nothing?”
She shook her head, then picked up the book. “I need light.”
They sat on the side of her bed, where sunlight streamed through the window. Holding the book open on her lap, she leaned close. In her life as a curator she had learned an old adage was true—the devil was in the details. Now that she had an overview, she studied the spaces between the letters and words and the brushstrokes. When nothing struck her, she moved on to the paintings of soldiers.
She sat up straight. “I think I’ve found it. Look at these, Judd.” She pointed to tiny letters beneath some of the colors.
He leaned close. “They’re almost invisible.”
“They’re meant not to be noticed. They stand for the Latin words the artist who painted them was instructed to use to fill in the line drawings. This v means viridis, or green. So the robe on the slave is painted various shades of green. The r is for ruber, or red—the apples on that tree behind him. And of course the sky is a, azure, for blue.”
He frowned, puzzled. “Then what do lat and long and the numbers with each mean?”
She grinned. “That’s the same question I asked myself. In the first place, I’ve never known anything like three or four letters strung together to indicate a color on a manuscript page. In the second place, neither is a Latin word.”
He grinned back. “Since we’re looking for the location of the island, I’m guessing they’re abbreviations. Add in the fact there are numbers—latitude and longitude.”
“As Archimedes said, eureka!”
He grabbed his mobile and activated it. “This is where being online gets really useful. Read what you have to me, and we’ll see whether we’re right.”
He lowered the mobile so she could watch the screen. As he tapped the keyboard, Google’s world map appeared, shifted, then shifted again, shrinking to the south Aegean Sea.
His forehead knitted. “Nothing. No island. No atoll. Not even a pile of rocks.”
She felt a chill. “Try again.” She gave him the digits, one at a time.
He entered each carefully. Again the map zeroed in on empty sea. Her shoulders slumped. He tried other public domain maps. The only sound in the room was the clicking of the keyboard. But each map showed the same disheartening results.
They were silent.
“It doesn’t make sense,” she insisted. “The easiest, most direct explanation for the abbreviations and numbers in the book is they’re meridian points. Even if those are old maps, they should show an island.”
He stared at her. “Not true. By God, if I’m right, it’s a real display of the power of the book club.” Again he tapped the keyboard. “Because of terrorism, the government mandated Google and other online map services not show certain places in the world. Sometimes it was a government facility. Other times it was an ‘area of interest’ that was clandestine for one reason or another. Private companies doing defense work could ask the government to make spots off-limits, too.”
“How could the book club get the government to hide their island?”
“An inside source, or maybe someone they bribed. Let’s check this.”
He called up the text message he had received yesterday from NSA, and they read the list of islands that had come close to fitting Robin’s description.
“My God,” Eva breathed as they stared. “One of the islands has the same coordinates as the book has.”
Relieved excitement rushed through her. She flung her arms around Judd’s neck, and he hugged her tight. Feeling the steady beat of his heart, his breath spicy against her ear, she lingered for a moment.
Then pushed away. “You’d better call Tucker.”
The spymaster arrived in minutes, wearing the same rumpled chinos, button-down blue shirt, and sports jacket from the day before. Eva saw the lines on his face were deeper, and the large eyes behind his tortoiseshell glasses were red-rimmed from lack of sleep. But his light brown mustache and gray beard were neat, and he radiated hyper alertness.
“You’ve found it?” he said as he bolted the door behind him.
“Damn right she did.” Judd pointed at Eva.
She smiled, pleased. “Took me a while, though.”
They sat around the table, and she explained how they had discovered the answer.
“I’ll get back in touch with NSA for the latest satellite photos and data about the island,” Judd said brusquely. “Eva, is your laptop still working, or did it get doused when we were on the yacht?”
“It was in the main pocket of my satchel, so it’s fine.”
“Good. I’ll forward what NSA sends to it.”
“Does the island have a name?” Tucker asked.
“Just a number,” Judd told him.
“Do it,” Tucker ordered. “Now.”
62
Khost Province, Afghanistan
AFTER A large breakfast, Syed Ullah walked out to the front porch of the redbrick villa where he, his wife, and remaining children and grandchildren lived with the wives and children of his four brothers, all of whom had died fighting the Soviets, the Taliban, al-Qaeda, or local clans and tribes.
Restored from rubble on land his family had long owned, the sprawling villa stood two stories above the hard-packed earth. A satellite uplink dish was behind it next to a rusty Soviet T-55 tank. There was a vegetable garden to one side, with apple, peach, and m
ulberry trees just as there had been when he was a child. He had planted everything in the last few years. The young trees were like the future, he had told his youngest and last remaining son—strong, but they must be protected.
Wearing turbans and wraparound sunglasses, his gunmen prowled around the rebuilt stone wall that surrounded the expansive property. A dozen tribal elders—striking old men with high-bridged noses and the beards of patriarchs—were lining up in front of the porch to pay their respects. At fifty-four, Ullah had fought off and killed his rivals for this position, but that was the way it had been for decades. Men had little food for their bellies but plenty of rounds for their guns. He could hardly remember when it was otherwise.
The warlord sat down on his tall-backed wood chair on his brick front porch. Adjusting his girth, he nibbled sugared almonds as he greeted the elders courteously, accepted their respectful sentiments, adjudicated neighbor disputes, and assured them of his protection. These were men with large families and sons and grandsons and great grandsons whom he needed.
“It is tomorrow night?” the last elder said. There was impatience on his leathery face, indicating he had expected someone to have asked earlier.
“Tonight,” Ullah corrected him, then he addressed the others. “Stay in your houses with your wives. Your sons know what to do.”
And then they were gone, scattering the chickens and marching off into the mountains and down toward the town of some three thousand. In the hills he could see a small U.S. army patrol driving along a dirt road in two armored HMMWVs—Humvees—painted in camouflage colors. A donkey with a high bundle was being led down a treacherous path.
The warlord stood up, a giant of a man, burly and strong, with a fierce face that could easily break into a smile. But that was the strength of the Pashtun—resilience. He took great pride in his heritage of warriors, poets, heroes, jokesters, and warm-hearted hosts. They loved the land and their families. Centuries of being conquered and occupied had changed nothing, only hardening their devotion. His devotion. His family must survive, after that his clan, and then his tribe.
