The Book of Spies

59

THE EVENING was just beginning. It was only ten o'clock, but Alexander's was already packed with patrons. The leather bar stools were filled, and people stood behind, drinking. Voted by Forbes magazine the best hotel bar in the world, Alexander's boasted marble-topped tables, beach-umbrella palms, and an eighteenth-century tapestry of victorious Alexander the Great, hanging across the wall behind the long bar. Of course the clientele was the best in the city and from abroad. The aroma of rich liquors and designer perfumes scented the air
Martin Chapman was drinking Loch Dhu, the only black whiskey with a mellow charcoal aftertaste. He savored the rich flavor, felt the heat. After dinner in Churchill's with his wife and Keith and Cecilia Dunbar--investors in shopping malls Chapman & Associates was building in Moscow--the four had moved to a central spot in the bar where they could be seen. Chapman estimated some $30 billion was sitting around their table alone.
"Ah, no," Keith was saying. "The Grand Caymans are perhaps fine for the untutored. But I far prefer Liechtenstein for my money."
"What about Britain's Channel Islands?" Shelly asked with a glance at Chapman, showing him she knew a thing or two herself.
But as Keith launched into an explanation, Chapman's cell phone vibrated. He looked at the screen and saw Preston was calling. Excusing himself, he wound off through the crowd, feeling Shelly's dark look on his back.
"Yes?" he answered, hoping for good news.
"I'm outside the hotel, sir. I'll be waiting."
The connection went dead. Chapman's lungs tightened, and he marched through the lobby. The massive front doors opened, and he hurried out and down the steps. The dark night air enveloped him. Preston was across the street, in the plaza.
"How bad is it?" Chapman asked as he joined him.
Preston showed no signs of a fight--his clothes neat, his hair combed, his face and hands clean--but he radiated disgust as he stood between pools of lamplight. They walked off together.
"It's not an entire disaster," Preston said. "I terminated Robin Miller with the Rauwolfia spray. I thought you'd enjoy that."
The drug was a derivative of Rauwolfia serpentina, developed at Bucknell Technologies under Jonathan Ryder. It depressed the central nervous system and killed in seconds. Vanishing from the body in minutes, it was named for Leonhard Rauwolf, a sixteenth-century German botanist whose notes Jonathan had discovered in one of the Library of Gold's illuminated manuscripts on trees, plants, and herbs. Preston was right. It was appropriate one of Jonathan's creations had been the instrument of a successful step in a business deal he had tried to stop.
"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. Lindstrom'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."