The Book of Spies

8

London, England
THE WORLD seemed excitingly new to Eva--no handcuffs, no prison guards, no eyes watching her around the clock. It was 8:30 P.M. and raining heavily as she hurried across the forecourt toward the British Museum. She hardly felt the cold wet on her face. London's traffic thundered behind her, and her old Burberry trench coat was wrapped around her. She looked up at the looming columns, the sheer stone walls, the Greek Revival carvings and statues. Memories filled her of the good times she and Charles had spent in the majestic old museum.
Dodging a puddle, she ran lightly up the stone steps, closed her umbrella, and entered the Front Hall. It was ablaze with light, the high ceiling fading up into dramatic darkness. She paused at the entrance to the Queen Elizabeth Great Court, two sweeping acres of marble flooring rimmed by white Portland stone walls and columned entryways. She drank in its serene beauty.
At its center stood the circular Reading Room, one of the world's finest libraries--and coming out its door were Herr Professor and Frau Georg Mendochon.
Smiling, Eva went to greet them. With glances at each other, they hesitated.
"Timma. Georg." She extended her hand. "It's been years."
"How are you, Eva?" Georg's accent was light. He was a globetrotting academic from Austria.
"It's wonderful to see you again," she said sincerely.
"Ja. And we know why it has been so long." Timma had never been subtle. "What are you doing here?" What she did not say was, You killed your husband, how dare you show up.
Eva glanced down, staring at the gold wedding band on her finger. She had known this was going to be difficult. She had come to accept that she had killed Charles, but the guilt of it still ravaged her.
Looking up, she ignored Timma's tone. "I was hoping to see old friends. And to view The Book of Spies, of course."
"It is very exciting, this discovery," Georg agreed.
"It makes me wonder whether someone has finally found the Library of Gold," Eva continued. "If anyone has, surely it's you, Georg"--now that Charles is gone, she thought to herself, missing him even more.
Georg laughed. Timma relented and smiled at the compliment.
"Ach, I wish," he said.
"There's no word anyone's close to its discovery?" Eva pressed.
"I have heard nothing like that, alas," Georg said. "Come, Timma. We must go to the Chinese exhibit now. We will see you upstairs, Eva, yes?"
"Definitely, yes."
As they crossed the Great Hall, Eva headed toward the North Wing and climbed the stairs to the top floor. The sounds of a multilingual crowd drifted from a large open doorway where a sign announced:
TRACING THE DEVELOPMENT OF WRITING
SPECIAL EXHIBITION FROM THE LESSING J. ROSENWALD COLLECTION
She found her invitation.
The guard took it. "Enjoy yourself, mum."
She stepped inside. Excited energy infused the vast hall. People stood in groups and gathered around the glass display cases, many wearing tiny earphones as they listened to the show's prerecorded tour. Museum guards in dress clothes circulated discreetly. The air smelled the way she remembered, of expensive perfumes and aromatic wines. She inhaled deeply.
"Eva, is that you?"
She turned. It was Guy Fontaine from the Sorbonne. Small and plump, he was standing with a huddle of Charles's friends. She scanned their faces, saw their conflicted emotions at her arrival.
She said a warm hello and shook hands.
"You're looking well, Eva," Dan Ritenburg decided. He was a wealthy amateur Library of Gold hunter from Sydney. "How is it you're able to be here?"
"Do not be crass, Dan," Antonia del Toro scolded. From Madrid, she was an acclaimed historian. She turned to Eva. "I am so sorry about Charles. Such a dedicated researcher, although admittedly he could be difficult at times. My condolences."
Several others murmured their sympathies. Then there was an expectant pause.
Eva spoke into it, answering their unasked question. "I've been released from prison." That was what Tucker had told her to say. "When I saw there was a manuscript from the Library of Gold here, of course I had to come."
"Of course," Guy agreed. "The Book of Spies. It is beautiful. Incroyable."
"Do you think its appearance means someone has found the library?" Eva asked.
The group erupted in talk, voicing their theories that the library was still beneath the Kremlin, that Ivan the Terrible had hidden it in a monastery outside Moscow, that it was simply a glorious myth perpetuated by Ivan himself.
"But if it's a myth, why is The Book of Spies here?" Eva wanted to know.
"Aha, my point exactly," said Desmond Warzel, a Swiss academic. "I have always maintained that before he died Ivan sold it off in bits and pieces because his treasury was low. Remember, he lost his last war with Poland--and it was expensive."
"But if that's true," Eva said reasonably, "surely other illuminated manuscripts from the library would've appeared by now."
"She is right, Desmond," Antonia said. "Just what I have been telling you all these years."
They continued to argue, and eventually Eva excused herself. Listening to conversations, looking for more people she knew, she wove through the throngs and then stopped at the bar. She ordered a Perrier.
"Don't I know you, ma'am?" the bar steward asked.
He was tall and thin, but with the chubby face of a chipmunk. The contrast was startling and endearing. Of course she recalled him.
"I used to come here a few years ago," she told him.
He grinned and handed her the Perrier. "Welcome home."
Smiling, she stepped away to check the map showing where in the room each woodcut book, illuminated manuscript, and printed book was displayed. When she found the location of The Book of Spies, she walked toward it, passing the spectacular Giant Bible of Mainz, finished in 1453, and the much smaller and grotesquely illustrated Book of Urizen, from 1818. It was William Blake's parody of Genesis. A few years ago, on a happy winter day, Charles and she had personally examined each in the Library of Congress.
The crowd surrounding The Book of Spies was so thick, some on the fringes were giving up. Eva frowned, but not at the imposing human wall. What held her was a man leaving the display. There was something familiar about him. She could not see his face, because he was turned away and his hand clasped one ear as he listened to the tour.
What was it about him? She set her drink on a waiter's tray and followed, sidestepping other visitors. He wore a black trench coat, had glossy black hair, and the back of his neck was tanned. She wanted to get ahead so she could see his face, but the crowd made it hard to move quickly.
Then he stepped into an open space, and for the first time she had a clear view of his entire body, of his physicality. Her heart quickened as she studied him. His gait was athletic, rolling. His muscular shoulders twitched every six or eight steps. He radiated great assurance, as if he owned the hall. He was the right height--a little less than six feet tall. Although his hair should have been light brown, not blue-black, and she still could not see his face, everything else about him was uncannily, thrillingly familiar. He could have been Charles's double.
He dropped his hand from his ear. Excited, Eva moved quickly onward until she was walking almost parallel to him. He was surveying the crowd, his head slowly moving from right to left. Finally she saw his face. His chin was wider and heavier than Charles's, and his ears flared slightly where Charles's had laid flat against his skull. Overall he looked tough, like a man who had been on the losing end of too many fistfights.
But then his gaze froze on her. He stopped moving. He had Charles's eyes--large and black, with flecks of brown, surrounded by thick lashes. She and Charles had lived together eight intimate years, and she knew every gesture, every nuance of his expressions, and how he reacted. His eyes radiated shock, then narrowed in fear. He tilted back his head--pride. And finally there was the emotionless expression she knew so well when confronted with the unexpected. His lips formed the word Eva.
The room seemed to fade away, and the chattering talk vanished as she tried to breathe, to feel the beat of her heart, to know her feet were planted firmly on the floor. She struggled to think, to understand how Charles could still be alive. Relief washed through her as she realized she had not killed him. But how could he have survived the car crash? Abruptly her grief and guilt turned into stunned rage. She had lost two years because of him. Lost most of her friends. Her reputation. Her career. She had mourned and blamed herself--while he had been alive the entire time.
As he scowled at her, she pulled out her cell phone, touched the keypad, and focused the cell's video camera on him.
His scowl deepened, and with a jerk of his head, he cupped his left ear and dove into the crowd.
"Charles, wait!" She rushed after him, dodging people, leaving a trail of disgusted remarks.
He brushed past an older couple and slid deeper into the masses. She raised up on her toes and spotted him skirting a display cabinet. She ran. As he elbowed past a circle of women, his shoulder hit a waiter carrying a tray of full wineglasses. The tray cartwheeled; the glasses sailed. Red wine splashed the women. They yelled and slipped on their high heels.
While guests stared, security guards grabbed radios off their belts, and Charles dashed out the door. Eva tore after him and down the stairs. The guards shouted for them to stop. As she reached the landing, a sentry peeled away from the wall, lowering his radio.
"Stop, miss!" He raced toward her, pendulous belly jiggling.
She put on a burst of speed, and the guard had no time to correct. His hands grabbed at her trench coat and missed. Stumbling forward, he fell across the railing, balancing precariously over the full-story drop.
She stopped to go back to help, but a man in a dark blue peacoat leaped down three steps and pulled the guard back to safety.
Cursing the time she had lost, Eva resumed her pell-mell run down the steps, the feet of guards hammering behind her. When she landed on the first floor, she accelerated past the elevators and into the cavernous Great Court. Thunder cracked loudly overhead, and a burst of rain pelted the high glass dome.
She saw Charles again. With an angry glance back at her across the wide expanse, he hurtled past a hulking statue of the head of the Egyptian pharaoh Amenhotep III.
She chased after, following him into the museum's Front Hall. Visitors fell back, silent, confused, as he rushed past. Two sentries were standing on either side of the open front door, both holding radios to their ears and looking as if they had just been given orders.
As Charles approached them, she saw his back stiffen.
His words floated back to her, earnestly telling the pair in Charles's deep voice, "She's a madwoman. . . . She has a knife."
Enraged, she ran faster. The guards glanced at each other, and Charles took advantage of their distraction to lunge between them and sprint out into the stormy night.
Silently Eva swore. The two guards had recovered and were standing shoulder to shoulder, facing her, blocking the opening.
"Halt," the taller of the two commanded.
She bolted straight at them. As their eyes narrowed, she paused and slammed the heels of her hands into each man's solar plexis in teish karate strikes.
Surprised, the air driven from their lungs, they staggered, giving her just enough of an opening. In seconds she was outside. Cold rain bled in sheets from the roiling sky, drenching her, as she rushed down the stone steps.
Charles was a black sliver in the night, arms swinging as he propelled himself across the long forecourt toward the museum's entry gates.
"Dammit, Charles. Wait!"
The shriek of a police siren was growing louder, closer. Breathing hard, she raced after him and out onto Great Russell Street. Vehicles cruised past, their tires splashing dark waves of water up onto the sidewalk. Pedestrians hurried along, umbrellas open, a phalanx of bobbing rain gear.
As she slowed, looking everywhere for Charles, hands grabbed her from behind. She struggled, but the hands held fast.
"You were told to halt," a museum guard ordered, panting.
Another one ripped away her shoulder satchel.
A Metropolitan Police car screeched to the curb. Uniformed bobbies jumped out and pushed Eva against the car, patting her down. Frustrated, furious, she twisted around and saw Charles step into a taxi near the end of the block. As she stared, its red taillights vanished into traffic.