Дэвид Балдаччи - The Collectors

“Boss, please, we gotta keep a handle on this. The money guy’s in the hospital along with the wire punk. And you whacked the IT geek yourself. That’s a lot for one day. The lawyers say it’s gonna be hard keeping the police out of it as it is.”

“I’m going to find her,” Bagger said, looking back out the window. “I’m going to find her. And I’m gonna kill her slow.”

“From your lips to God’s ear, boss,” the muscle said encouragingly.

“Forty million dollars of my money. Forty million!” Bagger said this in such a deranged tone that the burly security chief backed toward the door.

“We’ll get her, I swear, boss.”

Bagger finally seemed to calm a bit. “I want everything you can dig up on the bitch and the jerk-off with her. Pull all the tapes off the cameras and take it around and get an ID. She’s not some walk-off-the-street con. And get some of the cops we have on the payroll to go over her room with the fingerprint crap. Call in every marker I have.”

“You got it.” The man started to hustle out.

“Wait!” Bagger said. The man turned hesitantly back. “Nobody knows that I got scammed, you got that? Jerry Bagger is nobody’s mark. You got that?”

“Loud and clear, boss. Loud and clear.”

“Well, get on it!”

The man fled the room.

Bagger sat down at his desk and looked at the tiny shreds of Annabelle’s business card lying on the carpet. She’s going to look just like that, he thought. After I finish with her.

“You’re looking unusually happy this morning, Albert,” Seagraves said as they sat sipping coffee from Styrofoam cups in Trent’s office on the Hill.

“Stock market had a big rally yesterday; my 401(k)’s looking good.”

Seagraves slid a sheaf of papers across the table. “Good for you. Here’s the latest from Central Intelligence. We have two senior levels that’ll give the formal briefings. Your guys can take a week to digest the report, and then we’ll schedule the face-to-face.”

Trent took the pages and nodded. “I’ll check the members’ schedule and get back to you with some dates. Any surprises in here?” he added, tapping the pages.

“Read ’em for yourself.”

“Not to worry, I always do.”

Trent would take the pages home and shortly thereafter would have everything he needed to pass the stolen NSA secrets on to the next stage.

Outside, Seagraves jogged down the steps of the Capitol. And to think, spies used to just drop stuff in the park and pick up their money in cash either at the drop spot or from a P.O. box. And either place was usually where the arrest took place. Seagraves shook his head. No way was he ever ending up on the wall at CIA with the likes of Aldrich Ames and other busted stooges playing at being spies. As a government killer he’d agonized over even the smallest detail. As a spy he saw no reason to change his M.O.

Seagraves was obsessing over a detail right now. His mole at Fire Control, Inc., had called with some unwelcome information. Two guys had been caught sneaking into the storage facility last night, but the rental cops had had to turn them over to the FBI. Seagraves had checked with some of his contacts at the Bureau. According to them, no such arrest had ever happened. His mole had also told him that the rental cops had spotted another guy running away from Fire Control’s storage yard. He’d gotten into an old piece of junk, a Nova, his guy had told him. The description of both the car and the man fit someone well known to Seagraves, though he’d never met him. Now, he decided, would be a good time to remedy that situation. And in Seagraves’ world of sweating the details, you just never knew when a face-to-face might come in really handy later on.

Caleb arrived at work early to find Kevin Philips, the acting director, opening the doors to the reading room. They chitchatted a bit about Jonathan and ongoing projects at the library. Caleb asked Philips if he’d known about the new fire suppressant system going in, but Philips said he hadn’t. “I’m not sure they even kept Jonathan apprised of that information,” Philips told him. “I doubt he knew what gas was being used.”

“You can say that again,” Caleb whispered under his breath.

After Philips had left and before anyone else arrived, Caleb rummaged in his desk and withdrew a small screwdriver and a penlight. With his back to the surveillance camera he slipped these into his pocket and went inside the vault. Quickly making his way to the top floor, he stopped next to the air vent, his gaze averted from the spot where his friend had died. He used the screwdriver to open the vent, noting with satisfaction that the screws came out very easily, as though someone had removed the covering recently. He set the vent down next to the shelf column and shone his light inside the opening. At first he didn’t see anything unusual, but when he swung his light around a third time, he saw it: a small screw hole in the rear wall of the duct. That could have been used to suspend a camera. He held the vent cover back up and eyeballed it. Judging from the position of the screw and the bent grille, the camera would’ve had a clear field of vision of the room.

Caleb screwed the vent cover back on and left the vault. He called Stone and reported what he’d found. He was just settling down to work when someone came in.

“Hello, Monty. What’ve you got there?”

Monty Chambers, the library’s top book conservator, was standing by the front desk, carrying several items. He still had on his green work apron, and his shirtsleeves were rolled up.

“The Doctrina and the Constable’s Pocket-Book, ” he said succinctly.

“You’ve been busy. I didn’t even know the Doctrina was out for preservation work.” The Doctrina breve had been written by Juan de Zumárraga, the first bishop of Mexico. It dated from 1544 and had the distinction of being the oldest complete book in the Western Hemisphere that has survived the centuries. The Constable dated from 1710.

“Kevin Philips ordered it,” Chambers replied. “Three months back. The Constable too. Minor stuff, I just had a backlog. You in the vault? Or me?”

“What? Oh, I’ll take them. Thanks.” Caleb carefully accepted the wrapped books from his colleague and set them on his desk. He tried not to think about the fact that between the Doctrina and the Constable he was in possession of a small fortune’s worth of history.

“I’ll get to your Faulkner soon,” Chambers muttered. “Might take some time. Water damage, tricky.”

“Right, that’s perfectly fine. Thank you.” As Chambers turned to leave, Caleb said, “Uh, Monty.”

Chambers turned back around, looking a little impatient. “Yeah?”

“Have you checked our copy of the Psalm Book recently?” Caleb had had a horrible thought while in the vault, and taking the rare books from Chambers had forced this nightmarish theory to take the form of an awkward question.

Chambers looked suspicious. “The Psalm Book ? What for? Anything wrong?”

“Oh, no, no. I just mean, well, I haven’t seen it in some time. Years, in fact.”

“Well, neither have I. You don’t just walk in and check out the Psalm Book. It’s in the national treasures section, for God’s sake.”

Caleb nodded. He had authority to look at virtually any book in the vaults, but the Psalm Book and some others were designated as “national treasures,” the library’s most important category of possessions. These works were numbered and housed in a special section of the vaults. In the event of war or natural catastrophe they would be whisked away to designated secure locations. Hopefully, there would be people left to enjoy them.