6.
On Thursday, Bruce and Noelle slept late, had breakfast on the terrace, and eventually showered and dressed and returned to the Old Town. They strolled through the flower markets and marveled at the spectacular varieties, many of them unknown even to Noelle. They had an espresso at another café and watched the throngs around the baroque cathedral at Place Rossetti. As noon approached, they eventually drifted to the edge of the Old Town, to a street that was slightly wider with a few vehicles jostling about. They ducked into an antiques store and Noelle chatted with the owner. A handyman led them to the rear, to a small workshop packed with tables and armoires in various stages of repair. He pointed to a wooden crate and told Noelle it had just arrived. She checked the shipping tag stapled to one corner, and asked the handyman to open the crate. He found his drill and began removing two-inch screws that secured the top. A dozen of them, and he worked slowly, methodically, as he evidently had for many years. Bruce watched him closely while Noelle seemed more interested in another old table. When he finally finished, he and Bruce lifted the top of the crate and set it aside.
Noelle said something to the handyman and he disappeared. Bruce removed thick packing foam from the crate, and suddenly he and Noelle were staring at Mercer’s writing desk. Below its surface were the facings of three drawers that had been removed to create a hidden space. With a claw hammer, Bruce gently pried open the surface. Inside were five identical cedar boxes, all custom built to his specs by a cabinetmaker on Camino Island.
Gatsby and friends.
7.
The meeting convened at 9:00 a.m. and gave every impression of becoming a marathon. The long table was covered with paperwork already scattered as if they had been working for hours. At the far end, a large screen had been set up, and next to it was a platter of doughnuts and two pots of coffee. Agent McGregor and three more FBI agents took one side. Carlton, the Assistant U.S. Attorney, took the other, flanked by his entourage of unsmiling young men in dark suits. At the other end, in the hot seat, sat Mark Driscoll, with his ever faithful lawyer, Petrocelli, at his left elbow.
Mark was already savoring delicious thoughts of life on the outside, of freedom in a new world. He was ready to talk.
McGregor went first and said, “Let’s start with the team. There were three on the inside, right?”
“That’s right. Me, Jerry Steengarden, and Denny Durban.”
“And the others?”
“Right, well, on the ground outside the library was Tim Maldanado, went by Trey. Not sure where he’s from because he’s lived most of his life on the run. His mother is a woman named Iris Green and she lives on Baxter Road in Muncie, Indiana. You can go see her but I doubt if she’s seen her boy in years. Trey escaped from a federal pen in Ohio about two years ago.”
“Why do you know where his mother lives?” McGregor asked.
“It was all part of the plan. We memorized a bunch of useless stuff to convince ourselves to remain silent in the event somebody got caught. The threat of retaliation, which sounded real smart back then.”
“And when did you last see Trey?”
“November 12 of last year, the day Jerry and I left the cabin and drove to Rochester. We left him there with Denny. I have no idea where he might be.”
On the screen, a mug shot appeared and Trey was smiling at them. “That’s him,” Mark said.
“And what was his role?”
“Diversion. He caused the commotion with his smoke bombs and fireworks. He called 911, said there was a guy with a gun shooting students. I made two or three calls myself, from inside the library.”
“Okay, we’ll get back to that. Who else was involved?”
“There were only five of us, and the fifth was Ahmed Mansour, an American of Lebanese descent who worked out of Buffalo. He was not on the scene that night. He’s a hacker, forger, computer expert. Long career with government intelligence before he got booted and turned to crime. He’s about fifty years old, divorced, lives with a woman at 662 Washburn Street in Buffalo. To my knowledge, he has no criminal record.”
Even though Mark was being filmed and recorded, all four FBI agents and all five grim-faced young men from the U.S. Attorney’s office scribbled furiously as if their notes were important.
McGregor said, “Okay, if there were only five, then who is this guy?” Bryan Bayer’s face appeared on the screen.
“Never seen him before.”
Petrocelli said, “That’s the guy who slapped me around in the parking lot a few weeks back. Warned me to tell my client to keep his mouth shut.”
McGregor said, “We caught him with Denny in Florida. A career thug, name of Bryan Bayer but went by Rooker.”
“Don’t know him,” Mark said. “He was not part of our team. Must be someone Denny picked up to look for the manuscripts.”
“We don’t know much about him and he’s not talking,” McGregor said.
“He was not a player,” Mark said.
“We’ll get back to the team. Tell us about the plan. How did it get started?”
Mark smiled, relaxed, took a long sip of coffee, and began his narrative.
8.
Deep in the Left Bank of Paris, in the heart of the 6th arrondissement on Rue St.-Sulpice, Monsieur Gaston Chappelle ran a tidy little bookshop that had changed little in twenty-eight years. Such stores are scattered throughout the center of the city, each with a different specialty. Monsieur Chappelle’s was rare French, Spanish, and American novels of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Two doors down, a friend dealt only in ancient maps and atlases. Around the corner, another traded in old prints and letters written by historic figures. Generally, there was little foot traffic in and out of these stores; a lot of window-shopping but few customers. Their clients were serious collectors from around the world, not tourists looking for something to read.
On Monday, July 25, Monsieur Chappelle locked his shop at 11:00 a.m. and stepped into a waiting taxi. Twenty minutes later, it stopped in front of an office building on Avenue Montaigne, in the 8th arrondissement, and he got out. As he entered the building, he gave a cautious look at the street behind him, though he expected to see nothing unusual. There was nothing illegal about his mission, at least not under French law.