The Overseer (24 page)

Walter Pembroke, sixteen.

Pembroke, the golden boy, third youngest VP in history
. Somehow, he was a part of Tempsten.

There had to be more. She turned to the next page, hoping for further confirmation, but found only the updates the commission had so diligently prepared. Paragraph after paragraph on each child—each new address and number carefully noted, but nothing on Pembroke.
Nothing
. She read more closely and discovered that the paragraphs described only those
children
who shared one disturbing trait: they were all dead—some from injuries sustained at the compound, but most from car accidents. Checking the dates, she realized that only four of the fourteen had survived beyond his or her nineteenth birthday.

Sarah quickly scanned the names of the survivors. It took her a moment to make the connection. There was something familiar, something
recognizable
in the last two names … Grant, Eggart.

And then it hit her.

The shooting of the Dutch diplomats during last week’s mayhem. Eggart, the assassin—gunned down at a farm in Virginia; Grant, the state trooper who had killed him, and who had then lost his own life.

Eisenreich’s
first trial
confirmed yet again.

The simple facts she had wanted, the facts that would tie everything together, were staring her in the face. And yet all she had were names.
Disturbing
names to be sure, but still …

Sarah looked at the last name on the list. Alison Krogh. Next to it, a
ten-digit
phone number. No update. No change. No apparent connection. A six-year-old girl now in her mid-thirties. Somewhere.

Sarah wrote down the number and placed the piece of paper in her
pocket
. She then returned the folders to the shelves and walked back to the door.

Alison Krogh—that was where she would start; that was where she would begin to put the pieces together.

 

Xander had opted for a once-familiar tea shop near the library. He needed to take some time with Carlo’s notes, and perhaps, more honestly, to distance himself from the Institute. The memories had all been a little too real, too vivid. He needed a few minutes of release. To that end, he had bought a copy of the
Trib
. The puzzle. Certainty in a fifteen-by-fifteen grid.

But he never made it beyond the front page. Walking along Store Street, he glanced at the lead article, the grain debacle—the panic that had hit the streets of Chicago sometime in the early hours of the previous morning. Sources described farmers in Iowa already arming themselves to keep
government
assessors from determing levels of available stock. In response, Cargill Agricultural had issued a statement: All shipments of grain from the United States were to be halted for an undetermined period of time. Xander scanned the piece, not wanting to admit to its connection with Eisenreich; he had no choice when a single name forced him to stop in midstride. Martin Chapmann. Dead, suicide, the investor responsible for the fiasco.

Xander stared at the words, recalling the files he had read in Florence. Chapmann. Sedgewick’s cabal:
“What he intends to do with them is left to the reader’s imagination.”
Not anymore. The only question remaining was how far the first trial would extend. More frightening, if Washington and Chicago were merely
experiments
, how devastating was the chaos
Eisenreich
meant to unleash? How many other markets would Sedgewick send his associates to destroy?

The answer, Xander knew, lay in the manuscript. First, though, he had to understand it as it was, not as three madmen were using it now. That meant understanding its context, its lineage. And that meant Carlo’s notes. He tucked the paper under his arm and proceeded to the shop.

Within minutes, Xander was deep into the manuscript’s history.

“Eisenreich titled his manuscript
On Supremacy.
But who was to know that this innocuous little title was the beginning of something so daring, so bold?” Evidently not one eighteenth-century cataloger who had placed it among a group of fourteenth-century diatribes on spiritual supremacy. Not exactly the most likely spot for a document bent on redefining the nature of power. “Had this Ludovico Buonamonte taken even a moment to read the letter of dedication, he would have seen the mistake, and the manuscript might not have been lost for another two hundred years.” Reading his friend’s comments, Xander sensed both the elation and the frustration. There were a good four paragraphs on the incompetence of Signore Buonamonte.

Not surprisingly, the path Carlo followed to the German version of the manuscript had been anything but simple. In fact, it had taken him almost eight years just to find the
name
of the original. The difficulty was that what few references there were to the manuscript had invariably been either to the
Science of Eisenreich
or, more disparagingly, to
The Swiss Delusion.
“The second,” the notes fumed, “is of no help. And the first—any child knows this is useless.” No mention of
On Supremacy.

As fate would have it, Carlo had come upon the title by dumb luck. While checking a few citations from a student’s thesis on church courts during the Inquisition, he had run across a correspondence between two Spanish bishops, one of whom, rather intrigued by an unknown short tract, had described it as “an uncanny theory that describes how best to place full temporal authority in the hands of the Church.” At the time, it had meant nothing to Carlo, until he had read the second bishop’s
assessment
, describing the manuscript as “nothing more than a piece of Swiss intrigue.” Its name,
On Supremacy.
Its author, evidently Swiss. A bit more digging, a few more letters, and Carlo finally located the author’s name. One Eusebius Iacobus Eisenreich. “Today,” the entry concluded, “we drink champagne.”

Finding the name, though, had provoked greater difficulties. Why would two Catholic bishops have had access to the manuscript? And how could they have possibly thought it had anything to do with church supremacy? It was about power and chaos, authority and manipulation. “The pieces do not fit together. The church and Eisenreich? This makes no sense to me. No sense at all.” The notes charted two shattering days, Carlo sitting and drinking cup after cup of coffee, nearly convincing
himself
that he had run into an insurmountable dead end. Nonetheless, three days later, the entry in the notes began, “This cannot be coincidence. I will not let you beat me again.” Xander wondered how many times his friend had written the same challenge to himself, how many times he had forced himself back into the fray. So, taking time away from the university, Carlo had spent over two months combing through the endless volumes of archival listings at the Vatican Library. “Naturally, the idiots who
compile
these roles of paper find it too much to offer a single author’s name. Only titles! When will these clerics learn?” The omissions had caused Carlo no small amount of inconvenience; they were a relief to Xander. No names, no cross-references. No cross-references, no easy access to a
manuscript
tucked neatly within the pages of a medieval collection.

Carlo had ultimately found six manuscripts on church policy titled
On
Supremacy
. One had been the German version he had discovered in
Belgrade
. That volume, however, had been damaged considerably, water stains and torn pages leaving only bits and pieces from which to decipher the theory. Carlo’s enthusiasm at the discovery had naturally been
tremendous
, but the book’s condition had left him far from satisfied. “It is as if you are testing me, seeing how far you may stretch my will. But have faith, my Eisenreich. I will find you.” Unfortunately, none of the next four
On Supremacy
titles from the Vatican list had proved to be by the Swiss monk. Three were eighteenth-century treatises, the other a tract on divine
intervention
. Carlo had found the last in Milan four days before Xander’s arrival in Florence. “There is only one left. It must be the one. Of this, I am certain.”

The sixth waited in the Danzhoeffer Collection, buried somewhere in the dark recesses of the Institute of Historical Research.

That it was now a reasonably simple task to find those documents and extract the manuscript had at first excited and then alarmed Xander. By his third cup of tea, he had begun to wonder, If it was all so clear, wouldn’t it be the same for Tieg and his cohorts? They had found Carlo’s copy, why not this one? And they had the name. Had had it for years. A quick search at the Vatican … The answer had struck Xander in midswallow. Tieg had only learned of the
third
copy a few days ago. There would have been no reason for a quick search at the Vatican, because they wouldn’t have
known
there was something to search for. Even aware of the third version now, Tieg would never be able to draw the connection between Eisenreich and the church documents. That had been a fluke. Even Carlo had described his discovery of the bishops’ letters as “a gift from God. I will thank Him in full when I have the manuscript in my hands.”

Those playfully irreverent words were the last Carlo had written. The lightness of style, the little jabs, the digressions on the best cappuccino in Florence—all reminded Xander of the man he had known since his first days with Lundsdorf. “That emotional Mediterranean,” he had often called him. “Wonderful mind, but it gets all cluttered with … too much
enthusiasm
.” If there had ever been a phrase to define the difference between the Teutons and their neighbors to the south, Lundsdorf had found it. When Xander had told Carlo of Lundsdorf’s remarks, the Italian had at first
dismissed
them with a wild hand to the air, as if sweeping away an annoying bee. Then with a shrug, he had smiled, “Of course, he is right. Then again, what marvelous clutter it is.” A quick wink, the slightly nasal laugh.
Vintage
Carlo.

More telling, though, was the detail. For a man who had seen only small pockets of a damaged version of the manuscript (selections of which were scattered throughout the thirty-odd pages of notes), Carlo showed an uncanny sense for its totality. Even more so, he allowed Xander to see Eisenreich in a light that challenged the stereotype that too many scholars had accepted. Granted, the theory of power and supremacy (from Carlo’s extrapolations) made Machiavelli’s approach look tame, even inviting, but Xander couldn’t help but marvel at the apparent genius. If Carlo was right, Eisenreich displayed an understanding of statecraft that was at least two centuries ahead of its time.

The notes offered so much. It was now time to see how well the
manuscript
lived up to that promise.

 

Sarah had expected to find a disconnected number, or, at best, a
forwarding
address. What she found, however, came as a complete surprise.

She called from a phone on the corner of Eighth and D.

“Hello.” The voice on the other end was a woman’s, quiet, hesitant.

Sarah waited, uncertain.

“Hello … Anton, is that you?”

The question was enough to force another silence. “
Alison?
” Sarah asked.

Again nothing. “Who’s speaking?” The tone carried no mistrust, no hint of insecurity, only a kind of innocent curiosity. “Hello?”

“Yes, hello. This is … Sarah.”

“Hello, Sarah.”

“Am I speaking with Alison … Alison Krogh?”

Another pause. “Yes. … Yes, this is Alison. Sarah who?”

“Sarah …
Carter
. Were you expecting to hear from Anton?”

“He has the number.” Silence. “Did Anton ask you to call?”

Again, Sarah waited before answering. “Yes. He asked me … he wanted me to come and talk with you. Would that be all right?”

“I see.” Another silence. “Anton gave you the number?”

“Yes.”

“He said he wanted you to come?”