The Book of Spies

58

TUCKER ANDERSEN paced the room in the Hotel Hecate. Judd had left an envelope containing the card key at the front desk for him. After checking in to a room for himself, he had come here to theirs. Waiting two hours, he had been reading Charles Sherback's notebook. When he heard the click of a card key in the lock, he pulled out his Browning, slipped into the bathroom, and stood behind the door.
Watching through the crack, he saw the door open slowly and the head of a bleached-blond man appear, gray eyes surveying the room.
Tucker stepped out. "Where the hell have you been?"
"Sightseeing." Carrying a paper sack from a pharmacy, Judd walked in, his gait easy. But there was a sea of blood down the side of his brown jacket.
Eva slipped in behind him and closed and bolted the door. "Glad you're here, Tucker. We've had a few problems. Preston shot Judd, but we got The Book of Spies. Robin Miller had it stored in a Metro locker."
She set a large black duffel bag on the table, then took the sack from Judd and dumped out bandages and other supplies. The aspirin and over-the-counter painkillers had been opened.
"That's very good," Tucker said. "Congratulations. Don't lie down, Judd. Let's have a look at your side."
As Judd removed his jacket and peeled off his polo shirt, Tucker took in Eva's black hair and darkened skin and peered from one to the other and back again, assessing the atmosphere. They radiated tired urgency--and they had become a close team.
As soon as Judd's torso was exposed, Tucker and Eva converged. The injury was a raw red gash through the fleshy part of his waist--long, a good half inch deep, and weeping blood.
"You got lucky, Judd." Tucker saw Eva head for the medical supplies on the table. "Have you ever cleaned and sewn a wound?" he asked her.
She turned. "No."
"Okay. Judd, take off your jeans and come into the bathroom. Let's get started." He wondered whether Eva would turn out to be squeamish.
He grabbed sterile latex gloves, sterile cotton, anesthetic spray, and antibiotic soap. In the bathroom, he told Judd to sit straddling the edge of the tub. As Eva watched, he put on the gloves, sprayed on the anesthetic, waited, then squirted the soap inside and around the gash, patting and rubbing gently. Judd made no sound, although Tucker knew it must hurt like hell. He poured glasses of water over the injury, washing it for three minutes. Then he dried Judd's side with cotton and his leg with a towel. He glanced up at Eva. She was following intently.
When they returned to the room, Judd sat on a chair and swallowed more painkillers. His face was pale. Tucker sprayed on more anesthetic, found the right size needle from the supplies, and held it over the flame of a match. After threading fishing line into it, he ran the antibiotic cream over it and laid a thick line of cream inside the wound.
"Time for more pain," he warned.
Judd nodded. "Do your worst."
"The idea is to sew as far away from the cut as the injury is deep," he told Eva. "Then you cut the line and tie a knot every quarter inch."
He heard small noises in Judd's throat as he worked, but Judd did not move. When he finished, the younger spy's face dripped sweat.
Judd sighed deeply and looked up at Eva. She smiled at him.
Tucker taped on a thick sterile bandage. "Go lie down," he ordered.
Judd did, stretching out and propping up his head on pillows. Eva took the quilt off her bed and covered him.
"You look comfortable," she said.
"I'm enjoying myself." He grinned, but his sweaty skin was pasty.
"Good," Tucker said. "Let's get to business. Report."
Going to the duffel bag, Eva described Robin's phone call, Judd's meeting her at the Theater of Dionysus, and Robin's running off.
"Eva got the key to the Metro locker from Robin." Judd gave Eva a proud glance. "She pickpocketed her, did it so well Robin didn't have a clue."
"What happened to Robin?"
"We don't know." Eva opened the duffel. "She wasn't with Preston when he arrived at the Metro with three men."
"I suspect once he got the information from her about where she'd stashed Spies, he killed her," Judd said.
They were silent a moment.
"A nice Greek boy was helping me with the duffel on the Metro," Eva said. "Judd and I were split up, and the ride turned out to be safe. After that the men followed us out. We were escaping when Judd was shot. I'm not sure how they identified us."
"I doubt it was electronically," Judd said.
"He's right. My cell phone's gone, and there's no way Preston could've bugged either of us. He was never close enough."
"Training of some kind," Tucker decided.
Eva opened the bag and with both hands lifted out a foam-covered bundle. "This is The Book of Spies." She carried it to her bed and removed layers of foam. "Robin told us the library was on a private island, only one other island visible in the far distance. Three buildings, tennis courts, a swimming pool, and a helipad. She was flown from Athens with a hood on, but at least that gives us a radius. The problem is it's a big radius. The island could be anywhere from the Black Sea to the Aegean, Ionian, or Mediterranean seas. And there's a vast number of islands; Greece has more than two thousand, and many are private. The other piece of information you should know is tomorrow night is the library's annual banquet, so there'll be a lot of security on the island, wherever it is."
She went into the bathroom and washed her hands.
Moving slowly, Judd sat up on the edge of the bed to watch as she unwrapped transparent polyethylene sheeting. His color was returning to normal, and a sense of hope infused the room. Tucker joined him, leaning forward, hands clasped between his knees. At last only the archival polyester film remained. The golden cover of the illuminated manuscript shone through.
Eva peeled back the film. "Ah," she breathed.
They stared, silenced by the dramatic artistry of the softly glowing gold, the pearl dagger, the ruby drop of blood, the emerald border. The first time Tucker had seen the book, he had been bowled over. He was still awed.
"I can't believe you took off one of the emeralds so you could bug the book, Tucker," Eva scolded.
"I've still got it. We can glue it back on."
"It's a desecration. If the bug hadn't helped us find the book, I'd really be mad." But she smiled.
He found himself smiling back. "Being a heathen goes with the job."
Eva sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the men, her back to them, facing the book. "Tell me, oh Book of Spies, where inside you is the secret to the Library of Gold?" She turned the pages slowly.
They studied the progression of extravagant pictures, beautiful Cyrillic letters, stunning borders. As time passed, Tucker stood up and stretched, then sat again to focus. More pages turned until at last they reached the end of the book--four hundred parchment pages. There was nothing unusual, no contemporary writing, no sign the book had been tampered with at all.
Tucker paced. "I was reading Charles's notebook before you got here, hoping he'd left the answer there."
"I know. Both of us have studied it, too." Eva stood up and went to Judd's jeans, fishing out a billfold. "This is Robin's. Maybe she was lying to us about not knowing where the library is."
"I'm going to call NSA," Judd announced. "Hand me my mobile please, Eva."
Eva reached into his jacket pocket and carried it and the billfold to the bed. As Judd phoned and gave a description of the island, she spread out the billfold's contents--euros, a photo of Charles, and a photo of Edinburgh. Tucker and she inspected everything closely but found nothing useful.
Judd ended the call. "They'll get back to me as soon as they have some information."
"How are you feeling, Judd?" she asked.
"Better. Definitely better," Judd said. "How about another hit of pain pills?"
Shaking his head at Judd's lie, Tucker got them for him. "I'm going to order food. We need to eat. It'll help us to think."
"I'm hungry, too," Eva said. "I'd love a bottle of retsina with dinner. I'll take my shower now." She studied Judd a moment then went into the bathroom and closed the door.
Tucker picked up the phone. "What do you want to eat?"
"Anything. Just order."
As Tucker did, Judd closed the book and examined the binding and spine. At last he shook his head and set it back down. Then he lay on the bed again, pulling the quilt over him.
"Good thing Eva's with us," he said. "She knows what to look for."
"How's everything going between you two?"
"Fine."
"You like Eva."
"Not the way you mean. Don't worry. No fraternizing."
Tucker thought about how he had met his own wife. "That's not what I mean."
"I won't let it interfere with the job." His expression toughened. "They killed Dad."
"I remember. I also know you lost a woman who was very important to you in Iraq. You almost got busted out of the army for going after her killer."
Judd gazed evenly at him. "That was a long time ago."
"Was it?"
The bathroom door opened, and Eva walked out, so clean she glistened. Her cobalt blue eyes seemed brighter, and her lanky frame more curvaceous. She exuded sexuality but seemed unaware of it.
"Is dinner here yet? I'm starving." She gazed happily at both men.
Judd looked away.
LATER, AT the table beside the radiator, they ate braised cuttlefish fresh from the docks at Piraeus, the city's seaport a few miles away, accompanied by mushroom pilaf, grilled red and green peppers, and fiery kopanistopita, filo triangles stuffed with spicy cheese. The wine was retsina, as Eva had requested.
"Tastes like pine resin." Tucker rotated the glass in his hand, inspecting the deep red color.
"It's the wine of Greece," she said. "I haven't had any this good in years. The reason for the name and the taste is the ancient Greeks knew air was the enemy of wine, so they used pine resin to seal the tops of the amphorae and even added it to the wine itself."
"I like it, too." But Judd had hardly touched his. He turned to Tucker. "What's the situation in Washington?"
Tucker put down his fork. "I talked to Gloria before I took off from Baltimore. The fellow who tried to wipe me is in Catapult's basement. She managed to get him downstairs without anyone's seeing. She's the only one who knows what's going on."
"Thank God for Gloria," Judd said. "Eva, let's talk about Charles, about what he told you in London. Maybe he gave you another clue to where the Library of Gold is, but you just didn't recognize it at the time."
She repeated their conversation, and the two men listened closely. At last they sat back.
Tucker shook his head. "Nothing."
Continuing to analyze, they finished dinner. Afterward, Eva sat on her bed, again going through The Book of Spies. NSA called Judd and gave him a list of four islands in the Ionian, Aegean, and Mediterranean seas that met or were close to Robin's description. But which of the four?
As they were puzzling over the list, Judd's mobile rang. They watched as he snapped it up.
"Hello, Bash. What's happened?" Judd's square face grew grim as he listened to the Catapult man in Rome. Then: "Stay on it. Let me know as soon as you learn anything."
Tucker and Eva were silent. It was obvious the news was bad.
When he ended the connection, Judd told them, "Yitzhak and Roberto are missing. Bash called every morning in case they needed anything, but they didn't answer today. He went over to their flat. It'd been torn apart, searched. At least there wasn't any blood. He talked to the neighbors. One saw Yitzhak and Roberto walking away with two men who fit the description of two of the janitors who were outside Yitzhak's house when the Charboniers attacked us. Then Bash checked with the university where Yitzhak is a professor. The department secretary told him he had phoned yesterday for her to find a teaching replacement because he was going out of town. She had a package for him from the Vatican Library, so she sent it with a student. Yitzhak met him outside a trattoria. That's the last time anyone from the university saw him."
"No," Eva said.
"Jesus." Tucker sat back in his chair. "The Library of Gold people have them."