The Book of Spies

16

DRESSED IN their black trench coats, Robin and Charles took the elevator down to the hotel's garage. From there they walked up a driveway and out into a shadowy cobblestone alley. Pulling their big roll-aboard suitcase, Robin glanced at Charles, who was looking handsome and intense. He wore the backpack in which The Book of Spies was secured, his hands gripping the pack's straps possessively.
They emerged onto the boulevard, away from the vast hotel and its bright lights. Side by side they continued on, at last stopping where Preston had told them to wait.
"I'd hoped Preston would be here by now." Charles stared at the traffic. "Maybe it's taken him longer to find Peggy than he thought."
"Are you all right?"
He took her hand and kissed it. "I'm fine. How are you?"
"Oddly, I'm fine, too." And she meant it.
A sense of inevitability had settled inside her. It was not simply that Preston had taken on the job of getting rid of Eva, or that she had high hopes Preston would not tell the director, but that some old resource--courage, perhaps, touched with foolhardiness--had risen to return her confidence. Whatever happened, she would figure out a way to handle it.
Charles focused on her. "Does Preston strike you as an abnormis sapiens crassaque Minerva?" An unorthodox sage of rough genius.
"He does. But then he's also a helluo librorum." A bookworm, a devourer of books. "Do you think we can trust him?"
"We don't have a choice."
They straightened like Roman tribunes, alert for Preston's Renault. Horns honked. Vehicles rumbled along the boulevard. A few people strode on the sidewalk, swinging closed umbrellas under the cloudy night sky.
For a few moments the sidewalk was empty. When a taxi stopped down the block, Robin only glanced at the red-haired woman who stepped out and leaned over to pay the driver.
"Merda." Charles tensed as the woman turned toward them.
"What is it? What's happened?"
"That's Eva. Take care of The Book of Spies." He slung off the backpack and laid it at her feet. He slid out his Glock.
"Are you insane? You already tried to kill her once and failed. Someone could see your gun." As she spoke, she watched Eva stare at Charles. "She sees you."
Charles's face was flushed. He nodded and hid the weapon again. "I'll follow her and call Preston. Hail a taxi and take The Book of Spies to the jet."
As Charles finished talking, his wife turned on her heel and rushed away, toward Piccadilly Circus. He hurried after her.
AS CHARLES moved past other pedestrians, he put on his headset and called Preston, telling him about Eva.
"I'll be there in twenty-five minutes," the security chief said. "How did she know to be at the hotel?"
"I have no idea. Unless . . . but it doesn't seem possible. Our scanner found a tracking bug on the cover of the book."
"Jesus Christ. What did you do with the bug?"
"I flushed it. But it makes no sense that Eva would've planted it."
"Don't lose her, dammit. Keep the line open."
He saw Eva had joined a crowd at the corner with Piccadilly Circus, waiting for the light to change. But before he could reach her, she crossed with them to the plaza and merged with the crowd there.
He craned and ran. Where was she?