“Good afternoon, lad.”
“Good afternoon, sir.”
“Would you be so kind as to do an old man a favor?”
“Sure. What is it?”
“I think I’m having an asthma attack, so I’m afraid to climb these stairs. I need to give this envelope to one of the librarians in Augustinerlesesaal. Would you mind doing it for me? It’s just one flight up.”
“Sure. I’m going there myself.”
Zeki picked the manila envelope off the step and handed it to him.
“The lady’s name is Elizabeth. She has a lazy eye.”
The boy nodded as he took the envelope and continued up the stairs. Zeki waited until he was out of sight and then dialed his cell phone as he walked away.
“Patrick. I’m still in town. I cancelled my meeting in Amsterdam. How would you and Sally like to have dinner?
><><><
“Excuse me, I am looking for Elizabeth, one of the librarians here.”
Without even raising his head, the man behind the counter motioned to the opposite corner of the room with that lassitude peculiar to civil servants. He turned to find a young woman straightening books on a shelf, and walked over to her with a smile.
“Excuse me. Elizabeth?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
He noted immediately the physical feature that confirmed she was the intended recipient.
“This is going to seem as strange to you as it did to me. On my way up here, a fellow stopped me on the stairs and asked me to give you this envelope. He said he was having an asthma attack and couldn’t climb the stairs.”
He held out the bulging, oversized, padded manila envelope. She took it from his hand and looked at the front. It said simply ‘For Elizabeth.’
“What is it?” she asked cheerfully.
“I have no idea.”
“Well, thank you for bringing it up here.”
“Not at all.”
She watched the young man walk towards the counter and request a book from her colleague.
What a hunk
. She breathed a heavy sigh.
And, I have a lazy eye.
She walked back to her desk and opened the envelope. Inside she found two seemingly identical and strangely familiar volumes with a sticky note on the front cover.
Have discovered and foiled, at great personal risk, a plot to steal your library’s copy of the Gospel of Barnabas. The two volumes you hold in your hand are the fakes prepared for this very purpose. Recommend heightened security for this important work, as well as repositioning the security camera at the front desk and installation of a metal detector. G. O. B.
A shiver went down her spine, followed immediately by a wave of panic. Spinning around in her chair to look at books on their way back to the archives, she quickly located the codex that had been returned that same morning and removed it from its gray cardstock cover. Then, she laid the three books on the table side by side. They all looked identical. She picked up the phone and dialed the archive director, and then with her free hand began flipping through the library sign-in sheets to see who had checked out the book last.
“Hello.”
“Hello, Director. This is Elizabeth in the reading room. If you have a moment, there has been a delivery I think you should see.”
“Sure. I’ll be down in a few minutes.”
She hung up the phone and looked down at the registry. The person that had checked out and returned the book that same morning had identified himself as Gilbert O’Brien. G.O.B.
CHAPTER
84
R
URAL
E
AST
T
EXAS
The buzzing insects were no more monotonous than the droning country preacher’s sermon, which she found more irritating than the flies and mosquitoes she swatted at with her fan. It was a fan she had thrown in her suitcase on a whim, inspired by popular tales of the American south and romantic notions of what a Southern belle was like. Now, she realized that a hand fan was not an accessory in the South. It was part of any woman’s personal survival kit. That anyone would have a graveside service in this heat was, to her mind, positive proof that these people were perverse in their adherence to tradition. The heat was stifling for the natives, but for Judith Heron, the professor in the ankle-length black dress who had flown from London to attend the funeral, the situation bordered on life-threatening. A pavilion had been set up to provide shade, but it was barely big enough for family, so she stood with everyone else in the sun, sweat pouring into her eyes, dripping from her nose and drenching her underclothes.
Her elegant wrist whipped the fan like a dragonfly’s wings while the preacher’s canned consolations for the grieving family wafted over the crowd on heat waves billowing up from the ground. She was surprised at how many people were in attendance, given that Ian had spent most of his life abroad. In addition to friends and family, there were also a number of academicians present. Professor Jones from King’s College had cornered her before the service with questions about forming a search committee to replace Professor O’Brien. He hinted at her coming back to the university and probably would have pressed the point, but she was rescued from his tedious torrent of questions by the arrival of the family.
She had walked up to Randolph O’Brien, who bore a striking resemblance to his older brother Ian, and introduced herself as a colleague and intimate friend from King’s College in the UK. He had been polite but cool. When she had inquired about Professor O’Brien’s children and said she would like to offer her condolences, the man’s wife broke down sobbing, at which point Randolph had simply thanked her for coming and begged to be excused.
There was a ripple in the crowd. She noticed that the preacher’s sermon had ended and his tone had become more conversational.
“The family has requested that Brittany Kirkpatrick read a Scripture.”
He moved away from the podium that had been set up behind the casket where Ian’s body lay, and a young woman stepped up to the microphone.
“Losing someone we love is always tough; losing a man as kind, compassionate and wise as Uncle Ian is tougher, but the toughest thing of all is knowing that this gentle soul was murdered, taken away from us prematurely. Our heart goes out to the family. The situation is made even worse by the fact that his children cannot be present. My dear friend Gwyn O’Brien and her brothers Gilbert and Gary should be here today, comforted by the support of friends and family, allowed to grieve and mark the passing of their father. I don’t know why they’re absent, where they are, or even whether or not they’re safe.”
Her voice cracked. Judith could tell the young lady was fighting to keep back the tears. They came anyway, but through some tremendous exertion of willpower, she managed to keep her voice steady.
“Two days ago, I received a message from Gwyn. She asked that I read Psalm 2 in loving memory of her father. For some of us, it is particularly meaningful given the circumstances.”
She cleared her throat, and began reading.
“Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth rise up and the rulers band together . . .”
Judith’s thoughts turned to Ian O’Brien, the man she had tried so desperately to win because there were so few people who had as much to offer the cause as he did. The problem had been simple. The man had been an idealist with no political aspirations, an intellectual with no passion for the practical application of his scholarship. Early on she had learned to mask her own political convictions. Professor O’Brien had been so buried in the past and mankind’s failures that he couldn’t comprehend the new world she and her friends at the UN wanted to build.
Though she didn’t hear it, someone must have said ‘Amen’ to a closing prayer because the crowd relaxed and began to stir. Some people began picking their way through the gathering to greet friends, most moved off in search of air-conditioning. There was no point sticking around, so Judith walked quickly back to her rental car. She opened the door and sat down in what was a veritable sauna, cranked the car and turned on the air-conditioning. Then, she pulled out her cell phone and dialed the number Senator Giovanni’s office had provided.
“Hello.”
It was a rough, masculine voice.
“Hi Tate, it’s me, Judith.”
“What happened?” his voice softening immediately.
“None of O’Brien’s kids showed up at the funeral. We’ve hit a dead-end.”
“What about Connor?”
“I didn’t see him either.”
“Damn!”
“We knew they wouldn’t be here.”
“Yeah, well, Fatih called this morning and said he can’t afford to pay us our share of the Libya deal unless we can help him recover the money the O’Brien brothers stole.”
She could feel the strain in his voice.
“The Senator’s not going to like this,” he added quickly.
“He should be thanking his lucky stars that the info the brothers sent to the Metropolitan Police didn’t implicate him. But, if I’d known Ian’s sons were going to screw things up this bad, I would’ve killed them in London when I had the chance.”
He loved the detached professionalism she exhibited when referring to her work.
“What’s Cairo doing?” she continued.
“Relocating their entire operation to Istanbul. They’re too compromised to stay in Cairo. Gülben isn’t happy about it either.”
“As long as he funds the initiative, I don’t really care if he’s pleased with his harem or not. That’s the price he pays for tolerating incompetence in his organization.”
“Well, at least they kept the Gospel of Barnabas connection from being exposed.”
“So, their team destroyed the document as soon as they recovered it?”
“That’s what they said.”
“I sure hope they’re telling the truth . . .”