Library of Gold (17 page)

Johannesburg, South Africa

Thom Randklev stood before the floor-to-ceiling window in his office, hands clasped comfortably behind, and stared out at the rocks and shales of the Witwatersrand—“White Water’s Ridge” in Afrikaans. As clouds drifted past and the sun blazed through, pockets of quartz glittered, attracting his gaze. For a moment he felt a fierce sense of pride.

The Witwatersrand was the source of 40 percent of the gold ever mined on the planet, and it had provided his family’s first small fortune. Then his lazy father had lost everything in drink, divorces, and wild spending. But now Thom had all of it back and more, including homes in San Moritz, Paris, and New York City, which was where he had met Senator Leggate and begun cultivating her. As he had assured the director, she was the one who could handle the first step in resolving the problem of why the CIA wanted to exhume “Charles Sherback.”

As his mind roamed over his accomplishments, he turned to stare at the books stretching across two long walls of his office. He had been disturbed by the director’s information, but at the same time he had complete confidence the situation—whatever it was—could be resolved.

What mattered was the Library of Gold had remained secret for centuries because of careful attention to detail, and that secrecy was the hallmark of those who had inherited the library. In today’s world, the biggest wars were fought inside boardrooms behind closed doors, and the book club knew exactly how to train, fight, and win every skirmish. And that was what this was—a mere skirmish. As he ruminated about that, he remembered what Plato had written: “Thinking is the talking of the soul with itself.” How true, he decided as he poured himself a drink.

When the phone rang, he snapped it up.

As he had hoped, it was Donna Leggate. “Gloria Feit is chief of staff for Catherine Doyle. Doyle has some special assignment, but there’s no record of what it is. Since I know something about these matters, I believe Doyle has a team—and it’s deep black. And that means there may be no official record of employees or missions. Ed wouldn’t tell me more. Frankly, I doubt he knows more, because it’s above his security grade. Doyle appears to me to be a NOC.” Nonofficial cover officers, NOCs, were those highly talented and daring officers who operated without the official cover of their CIA identification. If arrested in a foreign country, they could be tried and executed as spies.

“Thank you, Donna. I appreciate it. I’ll put my people to work filtering in the money to your reelection campaign. We want good friends like you to stay in office.”

As soon as he got rid of her, he phoned the director and relayed the information.

Stockholm, Sweden

It was noon in Stockholm, and Carl Lindström was sitting in the leather recliner chair in his office, reading financial reports, when the director called. Once he understood what the director wanted, Carl went to his desk, checked his e-mail, and found the note forwarded to him that contained the information the Washington break-in artist had uncovered from Ed Casey’s secure e-mail to Langley.

Now he had a record not only of the routing, the message, and the address to which it was sent, but also the clandestine codes used.

With that, he phoned his chief of computer security, Jan Mardis. A former black-hat hacker herself, Jan was in charge of uncovering and stopping attacks on their worldwide network. She also kept her staff’s expertise honed with regularly simulated assaults on their systems, designed hacking tools, and drafted network-infiltration tactics.

Upon occasion, she did special jobs for him. Through him, the Library of Gold’s director had used her several times over the past few months.

“I have a challenge for you, Jan,” Lindström told her. “And when you accomplish it, you can count on a generous bonus. I need you to crack into the CIA’s computer system. There’s a particular team I want you to find. It’s run by Catherine Doyle. One office employee is Gloria Feit. The unit is probably black, which means they’re going to appear to be unlisted, but we both know there’s a record somewhere. I’ve sent you an e-mail with the information you’ll need.”

“Interesting.” Jan Mardis’s voice was usually bored, but not now. “Okay, I’ve read your e-mail. Barring complications, this should be fun, a dip in Lake Mälaren on a hot summer day, as it were. I’ll route my signals through multiple countries—China and Russia, for sure. That’ll stop the digital cops cold. I’ll get back to you.”

Carl Lindström stood and stretched. Cyber crime was the fastest growing criminal enterprise of the twenty-first century, and his software corporation, Lindström Strategies, was one of the fastest rising in the world. It had been attacked time and again. But because of Jan Mardis, no one had ever breached the firewalls. He had complete confidence in her not only because of her skill, but also because of human factors: He had saved her from a jail term by pulling strings in the judicial system, which included his promise to hire her. The occasional side job he secretly gave her allowed her to exercise her love of taking on some of the most highly secure organizations on the planet. And he paid her excessively well. As Machiavelli wrote, to succeed, it was critical to understand what motivated an individual—and use it.

As he waited to hear back from her, he walked to his bookcase, which was filled with leather-bound and embossed volumes. He pulled out a collection by August Strindberg, one of his favorite modern authors. He opened the book, and his gaze fell upon a passage: “A writer is only a reporter for what he has lived.”

He thought about that, then he applied it to himself. His entire life’s work, rising from the slums of Stockholm to create and head Lindström Strategies, was a reflection of what he had learned about the need to go to any length to armor against the indignities of poverty. With pride, he decided his corporation was his book, the book
he
had written.

An hour later, he was reading financial reports in his recliner again when the phone rang. He reached for it.

“It’s me, boss,” Jan Mardis said. “I’ve got a bonus for you. I’ve got access to Catherine Doyle’s office computer. Is there anything you want me to look for?”

He sat up straight, and his pulse sped with excitement. “Send me a copy of all Doyle’s e-mails for the last twenty-four hours. Then get the hell out of there.”

25

Aloft over Europe

The Gulfstream V turbojet soared through the night, its powerful Rolls-Royce engines humming quietly. Above the aircraft stretched an endless canopy of sparkling stars, while far below spread gray storm clouds punctuated by jagged bolts of lightning. From his window Judd Ryder studied the skyscape, feeling a sense of suspension between two worlds, uncertain and somehow dangerous. He wondered what his father had been involved in, and how much he was his father’s son.

Shaking off his emotions, he sat back and focused. The Gulfstream had been waiting at Gatwick Airport at a private hangar, one of the aircraft Langley regularly rented for transporting federal employees and high-value prisoners. He and Eva were the only passengers, sitting together near the middle of the cabin. Each armrest contained a laptop and hookups for electronic devices. On their tables stood steaming cups of coffee brewed in the galley. The rich aroma scented the air.

He peered at Eva’s tired face, the rounded chin, the light California tan. Her red hair lay in a wreath of long curls around her head where it rested back against the seat. The lids of her blue eyes were at half-mast. At the moment she showed none of the fire and combativeness that had aggravated him, instead looking soft and vulnerable. He was still unsure what he really thought of her. In any case, it was irrelevant. What mattered was he needed her for the operation. He hoped to be able to ship her back to California soon.

Her eyes opened. “I should try to reach Peggy.”

“You can’t turn on your cell while we’re flying, but you can borrow mine.” He plugged his mobile’s connecting cord into the armrest, tapping into the plane’s wireless communications system. He explained about its secure mode, then showed her how to make what would appear to others to be a normal call.

She dialed Peggy’s cell phone number. Listening to the voice on the other end, she looked at him and frowned. “May I speak to Peggy, please?” There was a pause. “I’m not going to tell you who I am until you tell me who you are.” Another pause. Abruptly she cut the connection.

“What happened?” he asked instantly.

“A man answered. He kept asking questions.” As she dialed again, she told him, “I’m calling information for the Chelsea Arms’s number.” Once she had it, she phoned out again. “Peggy Doty’s room, please.” She listened. “I know she has a room there. We were going to share it. . . What? She
what
?” Her face stricken, she hung up and stared at him. “Peggy’s dead. The clerk says the police think she shot herself, but there’s no way she’d take her own life. Someone had to have killed her.” She shook her head, stunned. “I can’t believe she’s dead.” Tears slid down her cheeks.

Watching her, he felt again the awful loss of his father, his conflicted emotions. He went to the galley and returned with a box of tissues and handed it to her. As she wiped her eyes and blew her nose, he said, “My guess is Charles told Preston that Peggy was your friend, and Preston went to her in hopes of finding you. He’s her killer. I’m sorry, Eva. This is horrible for you.”

He had a sudden vision of his father when he was about his age, towering over him as he rode the carousel at Glen Echo Park. The full head of blond hair, the strong nose and chin, the happy expression on his face as the music filled the air and he stood beside his son protectively. About five years old, Judd had been riding a palomino horse with a flowing silver mane. As the horse rose and fell and the carousel circled, he felt himself slipping. His mother waved, her face beaming with pride. As he raised a hand to wave back, he fell, his legs too short to reach the floor to steady himself. He dangled half off the horse.

“Hold on tight and pull yourself up,” his father had said calmly. “You can do it.”

He had grabbed the pole hard, his little arms aching as he slowly righted himself.

“You can do anything, Judd. Anything. Someday you won’t need me to stand beside you anymore.”

Suddenly he realized Eva was talking.

“Those people are unspeakably evil.” She was staring at him, her expression cold. “Those bastards. We’ve got to find them.”

“We will.” He grabbed his peacoat from the seat across from them. “Ready to do some work?”

“Absolutely.”

He removed the items he had taken from her husband—disposable cell, small leather-bound notebook, billfold, and Swiss Army knife. Leaving the Glock pistol in his pocket, he heaved the peacoat across the next seat. Then he took off his corduroy jacket and tossed it on top. He sat back and adjusted his shoulder holster.

She had the notebook in her hand, turning pages. He thought about it, then decided to let her have a go at the notebook first.

He checked Sherback’s cell, looking for phone numbers. “He’s coded his address book. What would he use for a password?”

“Probably something classical. A Greek or Roman name. Try Seneca, Sophocles, Pythagoras, Cicero, Augustus, Archimedes—”

“Okay, I get the idea.” He tapped in one after another.

“This is interesting,” she said at last. “I’ve looked at all the pages, but there aren’t any lists of names with or without phone numbers or addresses. There seem to be only his thoughts and various quotations. Each entry’s dated, going back six years. That means he had it while we were living together, but I never saw it.”

“He kept it hidden from you, so there was already a pattern of secrecy.”

She nodded. “Listen to this—it’s the first entry, and it’ll give you a taste: ‘In ancient times, worshiping a god occurred in some beautiful grove, holy place, or temple. It’s no accident almost all libraries were in pagan places of worship, just as in later Muslim, Jewish, and Christian times they were in mosques, tabernacles, and churches. The written word has always had a magical, divine power, unifying people. Naturally religion wanted to control that. But then books are another name for God.’”

“See whether he mentions the Library of Gold or Yitzhak Law somewhere.”

“I’ve been looking. Here’s another one: ‘There are books I will never be able to find, let alone read.’”

“Poignant.”

She nodded and resumed reading silently.

Judd was running out of names to break Charles’s cell phone code. He stopped, his fingers poised above the keypad.

She gazed up. “I’ve just found one of Charles’s favorite quotes. It’s from Aristotle. ‘All people by nature desire to know.’ That seems appropriate. Try ‘Aristotle.’ ”

He typed the letters of the Greek philosopher’s name, and the screen revealed the address book. “I’m in. The bad news is that it’s empty. He must’ve memorized the numbers he called. Okay, time to check the ingoing and outgoing calls.” The list was coded, but ‘Aristotle’ worked again.“There are only two. Both are London numbers. Do you recognize either?” He read them to her.

She shook her head. “Try them.”

He dialed. The first number rang four times, and an automated voice invited him to leave a message. He considered, then ended the connection. She was watching him.

“A machine answered,” he reported. He tried the next number and got the same response. “Nothing again.”

“When I spotted Charles on the street outside the hotel, he was with a blond woman. Those two cell numbers could belong to Preston and her. I didn’t recognize her, but Charles and she were obviously together.”

“Describe her.”

“Long blond hair and bangs. Pretty. Early to mid thirties, I’d say. Maybe five foot six. She had a large rolling suitcase. He was carrying a backpack and left it at her feet just before he started chasing me. The backpack was fat and solid-looking, so it could’ve contained
The Book of Spies
.”

“That’d account for the book’s being in the hotel.”