The Book of Spies (9 page)

He laughed, his eyes crinkling with good humor. "I like a woman who can speak Latin and who knows the ancient gods and goddesses. Will you join me for a cup of coffee?"

Colleagues, critics, and art lovers had admired him, and women had thrown themselves at him. But she was the one who had caught him. She had never suspected she was marrying a man who could pretend to be dead and send her to prison. But then, she like many others had been dazzled by him, by their lifestyle, and by her own dreams and ambitions.

As she moved along the street, the rain was a constant tattoo on her umbrella. She must find Charles. All she had was the short video. The inspector was right. It was not going to be enough. She took out her cell phone again and dialed Peggy Doty. Peggy had gotten back her old job at the British Library so she could be close to her boyfriend, Zack Turner, and Eva was staying with her while in London.

When Peggy's sleepy voice answered, Eva apologized, then said, "Remember the time I covered for you at the Getty when you took off for Paris to meet Zack for a few days? And the time I showed you the secret glue that's invisible and never fails? And then there was the time I blocked the sex-fiend tourist who was putting the moves on you."

There was a chuckle. "You must be desperate. What do you want?"

"It's a big favor, and I wouldn't ask if it weren't vital. I need a copy of the security videos for the museum's opening tonight. Particularly those that include the people around
The Book of Spies
."

"What?"

"And I need them now. Right away. I'm walking toward the museum. I wouldn't ask unless I really did need them." With luck, they would show Charles chatting with someone she knew. Maybe he or she would have learned something useful.

There was a long silence. Finally Peggy said, "You want me to ask Zack." He was the head of security at the museum.

"He'll do anything for you. Please phone him."

On the other end of the line, a sigh sounded loudly. "I'll call you back."

Eva thanked her, following Theobalds Road, clasping her shoulder satchel to her side. But as she walked, she had a strange feeling. She peered back. A man in a blue peacoat was striding along about thirty feet behind. His face was in shadows. The man who had saved the museum guard from toppling over the staircase had also worn a blue peacoat. She looked again, but he was gone.

She headed north onto Southampton Row, then west onto Great Russell Street, where she found herself glancing at the cars speeding past. For a few heartbeats a bronze-colored Citroen slowed and paced her; then it rushed off. Uneasily she realized she had noticed it earlier. There was no one in the passenger seat, and she had been unable to see the driver.

At last the museum was in sight. She turned onto Montague Street, which ran along the massive building's east side and connected with Montague Place. The street was just a block long, one of the narrow lanes winding through Bloomsbury. There was no traffic, although parked cars lined the sidewalk. She peered back and thought she saw movement beneath the darkness of a tall tree.

Her cell rang. It was Peggy. Swiftly she asked, "Do you have good news?"

"Honey, Zack says he can't have copies made for you. It's against the rules. I'm so sorry. Come home. It's real late."

Eva closed her eyes, disappointed. "Thanks for trying. I'm sorry I disturbed you. I hope you can get back to sleep quickly." She touched the Off button.

Trying to decide what to do next, she was heading across the street when she heard the noise of a car's engine and felt the pavement vibrate beneath her feet. She peered left. The vehicle was rushing toward her, headlights off. Terror shot through her. She accelerated, but the car angled, keeping her targeted.

Ahead was the towering iron fence that surrounded the museum. Dropping her umbrella, she slapped the strap of her satchel across her chest and sprinted. With a silent prayer, she leaped high in a
tobi-geri
jump. Her hands closed around two wet rails, and her feet found two more for a precarious foothold.

Then she looked again. The car was a bronze-colored Citroen like the one that had paced her on Great Russell Street. But who--? She stared into the windshield. Charles? Oh dear God, it
was
Charles. His thick features looked frozen, his gaze vacant, but emotion showed in his hands. They were knotted around the steering wheel as if it were a noose.

With an abrupt movement, the Citroen jumped the curb and slammed along the fence. Sparks flew. The noise of the hurtling car, of metal screeching against metal, seemed to explode inside her head. She scrambled higher. The rough iron rails shook in her hands. As she fought to hold on, the Citroen blasted past beneath, enveloping her in a stench of exhaust.

As it careened off on the rain-slicked street, she released her hold on the fence and dropped to the ground, trying to absorb the fact that Charles had just tried to kill her. Filled with horror, she sprinted, her muscles pulsing as she pumped harder and harder, Charles's cold face burned into her mind.

BY ELEVEN
o'clock the British Museum was a dark fortress, massive and seemingly impenetrable. Surrounded by a great iron fence, it filled a full city block, dominating the narrow, quaint streets of the Bloomsbury neighborhood of London. Rain fell lightly. Nearby traffic had eased except on Great Russell Street, where it would thunder all night. There were no pedestrians in sight.

Four men in single file ran alongside the museum on Montague Place. They wore black nylon face masks and were dressed in black body suits, with large black waterproof backpacks snug against their shoulders. As they approached the iron gate, Doug Preston touched the electronic communicator on his belt. The click of the gate's lock was audible. He slipped swiftly inside, followed by the others.

The team hurried past grassy plots and open space until they reached a side door in the North Wing. It swung open, pushed by a man in a museum guard's dark blue uniform. They stepped inside, the door closed with a clang, and in unison all four pulled out towels from one another's backpacks.

"Hurry, Preston," the guard, Mark Allen Robert, said as they dried themselves. "I've bloody well got to get back."

"Is everything handled?" Preston demanded.

Robert peered nervously at his watch. "They'll be starting up rounds again through this wing in about twenty-five minutes. They'll be checking the floors and galleries for an hour. To be on the safe side you need to be back here in twenty minutes. No more. I'll control the security apparatus from downstairs." He rushed away, his flashlight beam preceding him through macabre shadows created by dim amber lamps installed high on the walls.

Silently the men changed into crepe-soled shoes. They mopped rainwater from the floor.

"We've got seventeen minutes," Preston told them quietly.

They raced off through the gloom without the benefit of flashlights. The museum's security lamps were enough, and each man had memorized the route.

But at the top of the north stairs, Preston smelled an acrid whiff of cigarette smoke. He gave a brusque hand signal that told his people to stand back. Besides being the chief of security at the Library of Gold, he was a highly regarded expert in both break-ins and wet work, and this could be a minor interruption. He hoped like hell it was minor. His orders were to go in, grab, and get out without leaving any hint that intruders had breached the museum stronghold.

Crouching, he found his nightscope, bent the neck, and aimed it around the corner until he could see. A guard, smoking languidly, was sauntering along the shadowy hallway toward them. Smoking was not allowed in the museum, so Preston thought the man likely had come up here to escape the rain, hoping no one would notice.

Preston frowned and settled back on his heels, warily watching as the guard closed in on the stairwell. He was about to signal his men to retreat to the next floor when the guard put out the cigarette, lit another, and ambled around in a semicircle to retrace his path.

Preston shook his shoulders to relieve tension. Beneath his mask, sweat greased his face. He hated not being able to take out the guard.

Another five minutes passed while the man strolled the corridor. At last he extinguished the second cigarette, punched the button for the elevator, boarded it, and vanished.

"Ten minutes left." Preston saw his men stiffen. "We can do it."

With a snap of his wrist, he signaled, and they sprinted to the events hall where the Rosenwald collection was being exhibited. As expected, the security gate was lowered, but the light on the electronic lock was green, signaling it had been deactivated. Preston liked that--it increased the chances the motion sensors inside the gallery had also been turned off.

Together they raised the gate three feet, slid under, and sped toward
The Book of Spies,
peeling off their backpacks. No alarms went off.

"Nine minutes," Preston said, relieved.

The high-security display cabinet had a frame of titanium without
corner joints that could leak air. The top consisted of two pieces of tempered, antireflective glass, each three-sixteenths of an inch thick and fused with polyvinyl butyral, which would hold shards together and away from the manuscript if the panes shattered. The seals were made of Inconel, a nickle-alloy steel, and shaped like a
C
in cross section so the arms of each
C
fit into grooves to create a high seal. If someone did not know what they were doing, it could take hours to figure out how to open the case.

Their movements were slow but choreographed. Using special hand tools, two men opened the top seals and removed the first pane of glass and set it on the floor, while Preston and the fourth man slid a fake illuminated manuscript out of a backpack and unwrapped its covering.

As soon as the second pane of glass was hiked out, one man carefully closed the jeweled
Book of Spies
and secured it in clear archival polyester film and clear polyethylene sheeting, then wrapped it in foam. They slid it into Preston's backpack.

Keeping his breath rhythmic, Preston studied the display cabinet's interior, which had a jet-black finish. He was looking for the small pegs that indicated correct placement. Satisfied, he set down the fake book and opened it to the only two pages that were real--color copied and touched up by hand from photographs Charles Sherback had taken during the evening's showing. There were small seams where the pages had been glued into the book, but unless someone examined them closely, they were unnoticeable.

When he looked up, his men were wearing their backpacks. As he slung on his, the first two returned the panes of glass and closed the seals.

With a burst of satisfaction, he checked his watch. "Four minutes."

One man chuckled; another laughed. Preston gave an experienced look around to make certain they had left nothing behind, and they raced away.

AS THE
Citroen sped around the corner, Judd Ryder ran up the narrow street, following Eva Blake as she raced into the falling mist. Working for Tucker Andersen, he was in London to keep an eye on her and had learned two important pieces of information: First, she was alert to her surroundings--several times she had glanced over her shoulder, indicating she sensed she was being tailed. She had definitely spotted him once. And second, the man she believed to be her husband had just tried to kill her.

Still running, she hurled something beneath a bush. He looked and saw a faint glitter. Scooping up a wedding band and a pendant on a gold chain, he dropped them into his jacket pocket and accelerated past the Montague Hotel and around the corner. Traffic cruised past, and a scattering of people were on the sidewalks. He spotted her as she dashed into Russell Square Gardens.

Darting between cars, he entered the garden park, a manicured city block of lawns and winding walkways beneath the branching limbs of old trees. Although April had turned chilly, the trees had leaved, creating black swaths where not even the park's ornate lampposts could shed light.

Blake was nowhere in sight. But he saw the Citroen on the east side of the park with the other traffic. It was circling. He took out his mobile and dialed her number.

A woman's breathless voice answered. "Tucker?"

He knew she thought only Tucker had her phone number. "My name is Judd Ryder. Tucker sent me to help. I've been following you--"

She hung up on him.

Swearing, Ryder hurried along a path, checking the shadows. Had he just seen movement near the Garden Cafe, inside the square's northeast
corner? He stepped behind a tree. For a few seconds a wraith in a tan trench coat flitted in and out of the cafe's dark shadows. It was Eva Blake.

He kept pace as she exited through the park's wrought-iron gates and slipped behind an old-fashioned cabman's shelter to hide as the Citroen passed and turned west. As it continued around the park again, she ran across the busy intersection toward the historic Russell Hotel.

He left the park, too. She slowed as she passed the hotel and wove through the throngs around the Russell Square Underground Station.

Stepping off the curb, he sprinted along the gutter. Once he was in front of her, he hid in the lee of the
Herald-Tribune
newspaper stand and pulled out his black watch cap. As Blake rushed past, he grabbed her arm and used her momentum to swing her close.