The Overseer (28 page)

“You are familiar with this place, then?”

“I’ve spent some time there. A conference about six years ago. It’s not the sort of place to have changed. My guess is that the book is already there.”

“I see. We should fly tonight, then.”

Xander paused, then nodded. “Right. I … could probably use a few hours to read through it … maybe find something helpful for Sarah.”

Feric understood. It was all moving a bit too fast for the academic. “That is true.” He nodded. “All right. A few hours.”

“And you know how to reach her?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” Xander was hoping for a little more, even if he knew it was in his own best interest to be kept in the dark. “I’ve been answering all the questions, haven’t I?”

“Yes.”

“And I’ll learn how
not
to do that.”

“Perhaps.”

Xander took a sip of his beer and began to gather his things. “Then I should probably get back to the library.”

“For what purpose?” This time, the question was not for clarity’s sake.

“The
manuscript
? Remember? I need to spend time—”

“You did not take it
with
you?”

“Of course not,” answered Xander. “You can’t simply walk out of a library with—”

“
You
—” Feric’s tone remained controlled, only his eyes showing utter disbelief. “Dr. Jaspers, I do not think you quite understand what this is all about. That bald man would have been happy to do a great many things one is not
supposed
to do in a library in order to get that little book.”

“I put it in a safe place.”

“I am sure that is what your friend Pescatore thought, as well.” The words had the desired effect. “Now, so there is no more confusion, you and I are going to return to the library and take the book with us. You will then have your few hours with it, after which time I will get in touch with Ms. Trent; we will then find our way to Wolfenbüttel, find the second part of the manuscript, and remove it to a safe place. Have I made everything clear?”

The first lesson. Xander nodded. “Perfectly.”

Feric rose, leaving a few coins on the table. “Beer is always overpriced in this country.” Xander had no choice but to follow.

 

Pockets of grass and fence slipped by, the New York countryside blurring against the backdrop of a saffron sky. The limousine shot along, maneuvering the two-lane road with surprising ease, only once or twice encroaching the thin line in its quest for greater speed. The driver seemed unconcerned with his three silent passengers, each content to stare aimlessly at the
vanishing
horizon, to play their assigned roles with quiet resolve.

Sarah’s was simply to wait. She knew there was little she could learn from the two men with her. They were nothing more than envoys, men sent to retrieve, unaware and uninterested in the deeper significance of their quarry. There was no reason to upset the stilted calm with
unnecessary
chatter. She would take the time to plan. A bit more information from Jaspers would have been nice, but she would have to make do with what she had.

The thought of him brought a smile to her face. It had been difficult to let him go to London by himself.
Choices. Always choices.
And even though she knew Feric would be there to protect him, she couldn’t forget the
concern
in his eyes as they had left the café. And the embrace. A surprise to be sure, yet one more inviting than perhaps she was willing to admit.

The limo slowed and turned off the highway onto a road running
parallel
to the outlying fence of a private airstrip; fifty yards down, a solitary booth rose from the wire fencing, a separate entrance reserved for the
airport’s
special clientele. Once again, the car slowed to turn, no exchange as the guard recognized the plates and waved the black Lincoln through, nodding at the smoked glass as the limo bumped its way up onto the
tarmac
. A hundred yards to the left, a private jet waited, two red lights
flashing
under each wing. Sarah’s attention shifted to the man sitting directly across from her. He continued to peer out the window, aware of her gaze, happy to ignore it. She would find no answers there.

Five minutes later, she sat belted comfortably in one of six chairs in the plane’s main cabin, her two companions at either side. She wondered if her exploits in New York were responsible for their caution.
Unknown and out of control. Capable of anything.
They would watch her, but from a distance. It was a long drop from six miles up.

The quick acceleration of takeoff helped to relieve some of the tension in her shoulders, g-force strapping her against the soft cushioning of the upright chair and allowing her back to realign itself from the sheer physical pull. Even as a child, Sarah had loved the moment of explosion, the engines revving beyond all measure, and then the slight uplift as the nose broke free, the soft climb that seemed to stretch an unseen rubber band, drain it of its elasticity, until, with a final surge, all thoughts of a ground below would disappear in the soft blanket of clouds and sunlight. Now, as the plane leveled off, Sarah turned her head to the left and peered out the small oval window. A yellowed mist dusted past them, a cold sun bathing the wing in a metallic glow. They were heading southeast. She had always had an uncanny sense of direction. She closed her eyes.

Votapek.
A first line of attack.

 

Stein was managing on very little sleep. They had picked up Trent through Jaspers, then lost them both somewhere in Florence due to “unforeseen complications” near the San Marco monastery. The on-site analyst had been unclear as to the snafu, even less helpful as to why the two had visited a Professor Pescatore in the first place. Of course, there hadn’t been time to set up full surveillance in Europe, which meant that Jaspers had slipped conveniently out of the picture. Luckily, they had reestablished Trent at Dulles sixteen hours later, solo and on her own passport. Her message clear: Follow me; leave him alone.

Bob had done just that, even though some rather alarming news had begun to float in from Italy several hours later. Pescatore was missing, thought dead, his office in shambles, bloodstains in evidence. Early Italian news reports made no mention of the two unlikely visitors, but the police were playing everything close to the chest. Even well-placed Committee sources had been unable to unearth specifics. Bob found it very difficult to believe that either Trent or Jaspers had had anything to do with the
disappearance
; then again, he was having trouble understanding why a virtually unknown Italian political theorist would be linked with Schenten and his associates. Too many variables were bouncing around to prompt any
meaningful
conclusions.

Those sorts of twists and turns, however, were par for the course. What was causing trouble was the way he had been
instructed
to handle the op: the breakfast meetings with O’Connell—all off-line—the hedging
whenever
Pritchard asked for an update, the sudden overuse of his office safe for materials he would have happily left on his desk only a week ago. He couldn’t be sure if he was getting caught up in some high-level power play, or if there was reason to suspect an internal breach. And to add to it all, O’Connell had become tight-lipped, mulling over reports, never inviting the usual dialogue that brought meaning to the otherwise-lifeless words on the page.

For some reason, the Irishman was pulling back. Bob had lived through similar mood swings—the worst after Amman. Then, Stein had chalked it up to a strange sort of empathy. O’Connell had been too close, too much aware, the onetime operative seeing himself reflected in the lost expression of a woman fighting her way back from the edge. He had retreated into himself—a two-week
vacation
, far longer than the usual two-day binge. Bob hadn’t asked; O’Connell hadn’t discussed it. And now Stein had to wonder: Would the Irishman slip away again?

That was why Bob had shut himself in his office, staring at his computer terminal for hours on end, bags of cheese balls littering the area around his wastebasket. Not that concentrated periods of seclusion weren’t the norm, but this time he felt completely isolated, all links to the two other offices on the sixth floor severed with a strange sort of finality. Rattled by the recent shake-up, Bob had allowed himself to get lazy, step away from the information, consider the personal side of it all. Now, he was trying to find his
customary
indifference to turn the real-world intrigues into an insulated and anonymous game. He was letting too many factors compromise his
capacity
to play.

The answer had begun to fall into place about forty minutes ago when he had decided to refocus the search. Instead of tying everything into Schenten, he began to trace even the most remote connections among each of the central players. The cross-referencing had provided one very bizarre possibility: Eisenreich, a hypothetical manuscript that Pescatore had spent half his life researching and which seemed to unravel the girl’s dying word in Montana. Somehow, the connection among Tieg, Sedgewick, and Votapek was wrapped up in a little book that no one had ever proved to exist.

Uncharacteristically, Bob had decided to keep things to himself.

The price for such resolve, however, was the burden of responsibility—the onus to piece together information that somehow explained the probable death of one academic, the disappearance of another, and the reemergence of an operative so fragile that she might not come back this time round.

It was a role he was not accustomed to playing.

 

The gentle drop of descent woke her, the slight shift in her stomach enough to unsettle a light sleep. She hadn’t dreamt—at least nothing to get in the way—but she knew her subconscious mind had continued to sift through the pieces that had begun to come together. Always sifting. Always alert. She maintained a curious faith in her subconscious, recognizing that she, like everyone else, used no more than 3 percent of her brain at any one time. She trusted the other 97 percent to get the job done if left to itself. That’s why sleep had always been so important.

The trouble was that, most of the time, her subconscious kept the answers hidden, so much so that she would have to rely on instinct to reveal the necessary truths at the appropriate moments. That meant
working
on her feet, trusting herself to tap into the arsenal waiting just below the surface.

It was the way she had always worked. She recalled Berlin nine years ago, an arctic night when she had discovered one Oskar Teplic, a diminutive
lieutenant
in the East German Stasi, a man who had slipped through, evaded the Soviet net drawing in its faithful as the wall came tumbling down. Even then, Teplic had given the empire only two years. He had tracked her, told her he needed a way out, but not to the West—just out, to a life he could control on his own. And he would be grateful. Sarah had seen the
possibilities
at once. Three days later, Teplic had died at her hands, and Feric had been born. A plan of simplicity in the abstract, of pure instinct in practice. Invented intrigues,
official
papers—information revealed at crucial moments to confuse the easy dupes of a crumbling East German secret police.
Facts
—incomplete as they might be—with which to prod, surprise, weaken her opponent. They might be only distant reflections of a greater truth, but they were enough to convince an adversary that he stood at a disadvantage. Enough to create fear and self-doubt.