The Map Thief (3 page)

THE EXPLORER AND THE THIEF

FIGURE 1
JOHN SMITH. “NEW ENGLAND,” FROM
ADVERTISEMENTS FOR THE UNEXPERIENCED PLANTERS OF NEW ENGLAND
. LONDON, 1631.

June 8, 2005

E. FORBES SMILEY
III couldn’t stop coughing. No matter how much he tried to suppress it, the tickle in the back of his throat kept breaking out into a hacking cough, drawing glances from the patrons sitting around him. The glass fishbowl of a reading room at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University was quiet except for the low hum of the air-conditioning and the clicking of fingers on keyboards, making Smiley painfully aware of the noise he was making. At one point, he pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket to muffle the sound. As he
did, an X-Acto knife blade wrapped inside fell softly onto the carpeted floor. He folded the cloth and put it back in his pocket, oblivious to what had just happened.

Smiley was in the Beinecke this morning to study some rare atlases in preparation for the London Map Fair, an annual gathering of hundreds of map collectors who came to the British capital to buy, sell, and trade antiquarian maps. As one of the top dealers in the field, Smiley hoped to use the event to climb out of the financial hole into which he’d recently sunk. Over the years, he’d become expert at recognizing different versions of the same map from subtle typographical variations, an ability that could translate into thousands of dollars when deployed at the right moment. By refamiliarizing himself with some select maps, he hoped to be ready for any opportunity in London.

So far, the trip hadn’t gone well. The previous night, he’d woken up miserable in a cheap hotel. It wasn’t the kind of place he’d usually stay. He favored luxury hotels, where he could see the look of surprise and interest flit across the faces of people when he let it be known he was a map dealer. He looked the part, too, with graying hair swept back over his ears and a long, oval face ending in a narrow, patrician chin. A pair of silver wire-framed glasses perched on his nose, and he invariably wore tweed or navy blue blazers. That, along with his Yankee-sounding name, usually caused people to assume he was from “old money,” an impression Smiley did nothing to correct.

When people thought of Forbes Smiley—as he was universally known by friends, dealers, librarians, and clients—a few words inevitably sprang to mind: gregarious; jolly; larger-than-life. He spoke with the resonance of an Italian tenor mangled by a nasally Waspish affectation. His voice, like Daisy Buchanan’s, was “full of money.” When he made phone calls, he made sure to announce that he was calling “from the Vineyard.” His upper-crust affectations, however, were tempered by a charming self-deprecation. He’d ingratiated himself with many a librarian by inquiring after her spouse or children, and reciprocated with entertaining stories of travels around the world or the progress of the new home he was building on the Vineyard.

Most of all, people thought of his laugh. For years, friends had reveled in Smiley’s laugh, which rolled up out of his belly and wracked his body in a cackle that only increased in volume the longer it went on. It was the kind
of laugh that in college had earned him free tickets from theater producers, who sat him in the front row to egg on the audience. And it generally caused people to excuse the pretension that crept into his voice when he was expounding on any of his obsessions—architecture, New England history, the blues, and, of course, maps. Whether they liked him or not, his colleagues and rivals in the map business had all been seduced by his knowledge, which in certain areas exceeded that of anyone else in the world.

On the morning of June 8, 2005, however, none of the librarians at the Beinecke’s public services desk recognized him. Had they known him, they would have been shocked at the transformation he’d undergone. In addition to the cough that had developed overnight, he was suffering from a splitting headache left over from a night of drinking. Smiley had been drinking a lot these days—it was the only thing that took his thoughts away from the problems that multiplied in his mind whenever he was sober. As gifted as he was at remembering details about maps, he was abysmal at managing the details of the business through which he earned his livelihood. No matter how entertaining his stories, the truth was that he was overextended and hemorrhaging money.

The stress had taken a physical toll, leading to a constant pain in his back for the past two years. This morning, it was particularly awful. Each time a cough wracked his body, fresh bullets of pain rocketed up his spine. Smiley made two phone calls that morning: one to his wife and one to a client; neither ended well. His spirits were already sinking as he headed across town to Yale’s campus. If anyone had stopped to wonder, they might have thought he looked strange in a tweedy olive blazer on this warm summer day. Then again, Yale was full of eccentric professors who might be found doing just that. Probably no one gave him a second glance as he crossed the Beinecke’s broad plaza to enter the building.

—

THE
BEINECKE LIBRARY’S
modern architecture is an anomaly among Yale’s predominantly Gothic-style buildings. A heavy granite lattice creates a series of squares on its façade, each framing a thin, octagonal sheet of translucent white marble. On a sunny day, the sun bathes the interior mezzanine in a soft, church-like light. Inside, the library resembles nothing so much as a giant literary aquarium, with a rectangular tank of steel and glass stacked with five stories of weathered bindings—a literal tower of
knowledge. Completed in the 1960s, the Beinecke remains one of the largest libraries in the world devoted exclusively to rare books. Nearly two hundred thousand volumes fill its tower, with space for a half million more in its subterranean stacks.

Smiley entered at the mezzanine and headed downstairs, where a much smaller aquarium tank houses the library’s reading room. On his way, he passed by one of the jewels of the Beinecke’s collection: a six-foot-long framed
world map by Henricus Martellus dating from 1489. As Smiley—and few other visitors—knew, the one-of-a-kind map is the closest representation we have to Europeans’ worldview on the eve of Christopher Columbus’s first voyage. Smiley stopped at the public services desk to request the books and atlases he’d come to see, then headed into the reading room, where he sat at a window table looking out on a sunken courtyard of white marble sculptures. For a while he worked, leaning over books hundreds of years old, carefully taking notes in pencil.

As studious as he looked, he was feeling a fresh sense of desperation by the time he left to get lunch around eleven. Sitting in a coffee shop around the corner, he turned his options over in his mind. He could take the train to New York today and fly to London a day early in hopes of putting together a deal before the map fair began. Or he could abandon the whole plan and head back to the Vineyard, saving the expense and hoping to find another way out of his financial mess.

While he sat pondering his predicament without reaching a conclusion, the situation in the reading room had changed radically in his absence. Smiley may have missed the X-Acto knife blade that fell from his pocket, but a librarian named Naomi Saito had not. The Beinecke’s librarians make regular sweeps of the room to ensure that materials are handled properly—and to subtly alert patrons they are being watched. As Saito had entered to make her check, she immediately spied the blade on the floor. Few objects could be more disturbing to someone who works in a building full of rare books than a tool that can separate the pages of a book from its binding. Saito picked up the blade in a tissue and walked back out of the room.

When her supervisor, Ellen Cordes, arrived shortly after noon, Saito showed her what she’d found. Cordes knew that custodians had cleaned the room in the morning—so whoever had dropped the blade was probably still there. She scanned through several dozen reader cards and immediately
focused on Smiley, who had by now returned to examine more books. Looking up his website and seeing he was a dealer of rare maps made her even more nervous. Cordes called over to Sterling Memorial Library, which houses Yale’s main map collection, and wasn’t reassured. The head of the department told her that Smiley had recently looked at some folders later found to be missing several maps, but the matter had been dropped for lack of proof. Finally, Cordes contacted the Beinecke’s head of security, Ralph Mannarino, who kept watch over Smiley at the front desk while Cordes went into the back room to look at the materials Smiley had examined.

Smiley continued his research, oblivious to the attention he’d attracted. He requested more items, among them a dark brown leather case with raised ridges along the spine. He slid it open in the middle, a musty odor wafting from an olive-green cloth case inside. Smiley folded out the sides into an irregularly shaped cross, uncovering a sheaf of rough-cut manuscript pages inside.

On its title page were the words:

A D V E R T I S E M E N T S

For the unexperienced Planters of

New England
,
or any where.

O R,

The Path-way to experience to erect a

P
L
A
N
T
A
T
I
O
N
.

Below them was written an even more unwieldy subtitle:

With the yearely proceedings of this Country in Fifhing

and Planting, fince the yeare 1614. to the yeare 1630.

and their prefent eftate.

Alfo how to prevent the greateft inconveniences, by their

proceedings in
Virginia,
and other Plantations,

by approved examples.

With the Countries Armes,

a defcription of the Coaft,

Harbours, Habitations, Land-markes, Latitude and

Longitude :

and, to Smiley’s purpose:

with the Map, allowed by our Royall

King C
H
A
R
L
E
S
.

Below that, finally, was the name of the author:

By Captaine I
O
H
N
S
M
I
T
H
, fometimes Governour of

V
I
R
G
I
N
I
A
,
and Admirall of N
E
VV
-
E
N
G
L
A
N
D
.

—

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH
was a soldier, explorer, writer, and part founder of Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in North America. He’s probably best known, however, for his association with the story of Pocahontas, the Powhatan Indian maiden who supposedly saved him from death. The truth of that story has been hotly debated over the years—especially since the only source for it is Smith himself, who first told it seventeen years after the supposed event. One fact seems clear, however: The two never had a romantic affair, despite numerous depictions to the contrary. Smith was twenty-eight and Pocahontas only eleven, and nothing in the historical record suggests they were ever anything more than chaste friends.

The real-life story of John Smith, in fact, is more colorful and complicated than a Disney-fied tale of interracial love. The son of a yeoman farmer, he pined for overseas adventure from a young age. After a brief sojourn as a teenage mercenary for the Dutch, he designed his own crash-course curriculum in the military arts, covering everything from Roman military strategy to demolitions. From there (again, according to Smith) he fought in European battles against the Turks, earning the rank
of captain before being captured and held as a slave in Istanbul. After killing his master, he escaped into Transylvania and briefly sojourned through Russia and North Africa, returning to England in late 1604.