Дэвид Балдаччи - The Collectors

However, if one read between the proverbial lines, as Seagraves knew that Trent would do that very evening, the briefing book’s pages also revealed something else: the names of four very active American undercover agents and their current locations overseas, all in coded form. The right to the delivery of these names and addresses had already been sold to a well-financed terrorist organization that would knock on these people’s doors in three countries in the Middle East and blow their heads off. Two million dollars a name in U.S. dollars had already been wired to an account that no American bank regulator would ever audit. Now it was Trent’s job to move the stolen names on down the food chain.

Business was booming for Seagraves. As the number of America’s global enemies continued to pile up, he was selling secrets to Muslim terrorists, communists in South America, dictators in Asia and even members of the European Union.

“Happy reading,” Trent said, referring to the file he’d just given him. It was here that the encrypted identity of the “thunderstorm” would be revealed to Seagraves along with all the whys and wherefores.

At his home later that night Seagraves stared at the name and began plotting the mission in his usual methodical way. Only this time it would take something far more subtle than a rifle and scope. Here Trent came through like a gem with a piece of intelligence on the target that simplified things greatly. Seagraves knew just whom to call.

Punctually at six-thirty on a clear, cool morning in Washington, D.C., the front door of Jonathan DeHaven’s three-story home opened, and out he stepped dressed in a gray tweed jacket, pale blue tie and black slacks. A tall, spare man in his mid-fifties with a carefully combed head of silver hair, DeHaven inhaled the refreshing air and spent a few moments gazing at the row of magnificent old mansions that lined his street.

DeHaven was far from the wealthiest person in his neighborhood, where the average price of a towering brick structure would set the purchaser back several million dollars. Luckily, he’d inherited his place from parents savvy enough to be early investors in the choicest D.C. real estate. Although much of their estate had gone to charity, the DeHavens’ only child had also been left a sizable amount to supplement his government salary and indulge certain whims.

Even though this windfall had allowed DeHaven to pursue his life without worrying about earning money by any means possible, this was not true of other dwellers on Good Fellow Street. In fact, one of his neighbors was a merchant of death — though DeHaven supposed the politically correct term was “defense contractor.”

The man, Cornelius Behan — he liked to be called CB — lived in a palatial space that cobbled two original dwellings into a fifteen-thousand-square-foot behemoth. DeHaven had heard rumors that this had been accomplished in the strictly controlled historical area by well-timed bribes. This conglomerate not only boasted a four-person elevator but also had separate servant’s quarters with actual servants living in them.

Behan also brought an assortment of ridiculously beautiful women to his manse at odd hours, though he did have the decency to wait until his wife was out of town, often on one of her shopping sprees in Europe. DeHaven trusted that the wronged woman enjoyed her own dalliances while across the Atlantic. This summoned up an image of the elegantly attractive lady being mounted by a young French lover while perched nude on an enormous Louis XVI dining table with “Bolero” playing in the background. And bravo for you, DeHaven thought.

He cast aside thoughts of his neighbors’ peccadilloes and set off to work with a lively bounce in his step. Jonathan DeHaven was the immensely proud director of the Rare Books and Special Collections Division at the Library of Congress, arguably the finest rare books collection in the world. Well, the French, Italians and Brits might debate the point, but the obviously biased DeHaven knew that the American version was the best.

He walked about a quarter mile along a series of rumpled brick sidewalks, with a precise tread learned from his mother, who’d meticulously marched every step of her long life. On the day before she died DeHaven was not completely sure his famously imperious mother wouldn’t simply skip the funeral and stalk right up to heaven demanding to be let in so she could commence running things. At one corner he boarded a crowded Metro bus, where he shared a seat with a young man covered in drywall dust, a battered ice cooler wedged between his feet. Twenty-five minutes later the bus dropped DeHaven off at a busy intersection.

He crossed the street to a small café, where he had his morning cup of tea and a croissant and read the New York Times. The headlines, as usual, were very depressing. Wars, hurricanes, a possible flu pandemic, terrorism, it was enough to make you crawl in your house and nail the doors shut. One story dealt with a probe into irregularities in the defense-contracting arena. There were allegations of bribery and corruption between politicians and weapons manufacturers. What a shock! A dollars-for-influence scandal had already brought down the former Speaker of the House. And then his successor, Robert Bradley, had been brutally murdered at the Federalist Club. The crime was still unsolved, although a domestic terrorist group, heretofore unknown, calling itself Americans Against 1984 — a reference to Orwell’s masterpiece of fascism — had claimed responsibility for the crime. The police investigation was not going well, at least according to the media.

DeHaven occasionally glanced out the café window at government workers striding with great purpose down the street ready to take on the world, or at least a nebbish senator or two. It really was the most unusual place, he thought. Here you had epic crusaders dancing alongside sleazy profiteers coupled with more than a fair sampling of idiots and intellectuals, with the former, unfortunately, usually holding higher positions of power. It was the only city in the United States that could declare war, raise your federal income tax or reduce your Social Security benefits. The decisions reached in these few square miles of monuments and mockeries made legions of people either furious or euphoric, and those sides kept switching depending on who was in control of the government at any given time. And the fights, spins and conspiracies concocted and then carried out to hold or regain power consumed every ounce of energy that enormously bright and talented people could give it. The swirling, ever-changing mosaic had too many frenetically moving parts for any outsider to even come close to comprehending what was really going on. It was like a lethal kindergarten that never ended.

A few minutes later DeHaven trotted up the broad steps of the massively domed Library of Congress’ Jefferson Building. He signed for the alarmed door keys from the library police and headed up to the second floor, quickly making his way to room LJ239. Located here were the Rare Books reading room and the honeycombed series of vaults that kept secure many of the nation’s paper treasures. These bibliophilic riches included an original printed copy of the Declaration of Independence that the Founding Fathers had labored over in Philadelphia on the march to freedom from England. What would they think of the place now?

He unlocked the massive outer doors of the reading room and swung them back against the inside walls. Then he performed the complicated keypad procedure allowing him to enter the room. DeHaven was always the first person to arrive here each day. While his typical duties kept him away from the reading room, DeHaven had a symbiotic relationship with old books that would be inexplicable to a layperson and yet a bond immediately understandable to a bibliophile of even modest addiction.