8

  “Good morning, Miss Stevenson. What can I do for you today?”

  Dilya ignored Jimmy’s shock as she greeted the receptionist. It looked as if she might even be enjoying the moment at his expense. Did everyone in DC know her? How far out of his league was she?

  “We’d like to speak with the ink librarian, if we may.”

  “The what?” Jimmy whispered, but the receptionist was already dialing.

  Moments later the receptionist had signed them in, then pointed. “Take the elevator to the fifth floor. Do not let him speak to anyone or should I arrange an escort? Can he keep quiet?”

  Since she was looking at him as he slipped the lanyard of the visitor’s badge over his head, he replied with a simple, “Understood, ma’am.”

  When the elevator arrived and the door opened, Dilya squealed like, well, a girl, and threw herself at the person exiting into the lobby.

  She’d wrapped her arms around a massive black man who towered above her.

  “Hey there, Little One.” His whisper was kind but inside of the first second, his surprise at Dilya’s effusive greeting had shifted—to fully focus on Jimmy.

  “Mr. Martin,” the greeting offered no hint of his thoughts.

  “Mr. Adams.” Jimmy couldn’t believe that Frank Adams knew his name. He was sure they’d never met. The man fit Dilya’s stories too perfectly for there to be any question as to his identity. A towering black dude who could make you want to shrivel up and hide with a simple glance. Had Dilya told the head of the former President’s Protection Detail all about Jimmy? He couldn’t imagine why she would, yet Adams knew him.

  “You two have met?” Dilya looked up at the towering man.

  “Read his file after I saw this morning’s flag that he entered the White House with you last night.”

  “The flag?”

  He looked down at Dilya. “You think I don’t know every time you step out of my White House? You went AWOL from the President’s entourage in Tennessee five days ago and have been covering some interesting ground since. Do not,” he held up a finger that looked as big around as Dilya’s wrist, “be thinking of telling me you simply wanted to catch up with your old Chef’s Club pals.”

  Dilya, who had opened her mouth, now closed it. She glanced at Jimmy, but he could offer no more than a shrug.

  “I, uh, lost someone.”

  “Looks like you found him.” Frank flashed a brief grin over at Jimmy. He attempted to return it, but imagined that it came out more sickly than pleased. Then Frank crossed his arms, telling Dilya that she wasn’t going anywhere until she was a whole lot clearer.

  After yet another long pause, she whispered, “Miss Watson.”

  It wasn’t as if they hadn’t touted her name all over DC’s libraries this morning.

  Frank’s expression went dark. “You lost her?”

  Dilya nodded. Frank’s gaze flicked to him as if Jimmy was some authority. He could only nod.

  “Well, shit.”

  “You knew about her?” Jimmy thought nobody did.

  “She was in my White House, Mr. Martin. I didn’t bother her, but don’t I know something saved our asses a couple times when nothing should have. Her being gone is not good news. What can you tell me?”

  Dilya dug the translated code out of her back pocket and handed it to Frank.

  He read it quickly but returned it slowly. “I’d best let you two get on with it. Little One, you have my number.”

  “On speed dial, Frank.”

  “Damn right. I’ll fill in Beat, but she’s at the UN Geneva for a meeting.” And with no further ceremony he walked off.

  When Dilya didn’t move, Jimmy pressed the call button for the elevator.

  She kept turning to look in the direction Frank had departed.

  “Don’t you trust him? You sure acted like you do.”

  “The way he just left was odd and I’m wondering what he’s up to. He and Beatrice are sort of my third set of parents. They’d take a bullet for me, I guess.”

  Jimmy suddenly wished he was back in New Hampshire. He didn’t want to be in DC where someone might have to take a bullet to protect Dilya. He didn’t want to live in a place where mothers were gunned down by a drunk wife when the cops restrained the husband beating her. He didn’t want any part of murdered librarians and missing master spies.

  Which meant he didn’t want to be any part of Dilya’s life either.

  And that thought royally sucked.

  9

  Dilya was sure that the Secret Service Ink Library would fascinate Jimmy. Their shelves held sixteen thousand samples of ink, markers, printer toner, and everything else used for writing over most of the last hundred years. Handling over five hundred cases a year, the librarians here investigated everything from counterfeit money to signatures forged with the wrong kind of ink. They’d helped crack cases like the DC Sniper in 2002 by the ink he left on the Tarot cards he used to claim each kill.

  She and Jimmy then visited the US Mint, National Postal Museum, and the US Forest Service. The EPA was a little creepy. The number of Superfund sites in desperate need of clean up from toxic dumping or manufacturing was staggering.

  She persevered and visited every special librarian she could think of. There were a ton of academic and corporate ones as well. They oversaw special collections from museums to the White House, wrote the indexes at the backs of books, and tracked everything from the medals issued to soldiers from every war all the way back to the Revolution to the progress of genetics research.

  Dilya timed it so that they were back at the White House at noon to pick up her car. The CIA headquarters lay ten miles away in Langley, Virginia. Miss Watson had said to go there last.

  She didn’t think it was necessary as someone had picked up their trail while talking to the head librarian for the Marine Corps Band. He was stationed at the Marine Barracks in Southeast DC. He knew nothing of Miss Watson and had never been to the White House except for performances, but was so incredibly excited to show them through his the band’s history and their music collection that she hadn’t had the heart to brush him off.

  The tail was felt not seen, but Miss Watson had trained her too well to mistrust that instinct. She considered alerting Jimmy. It might be safer, but she didn’t want to spook their shadow as it would defeat what she guessed was the purpose of the entire morning.

  Her exhaustion ran core deep. Not just because she’d slept three hours and then spent the next six visiting libraries all over DC. It was because Jimmy had barely said a word in the last three hours.

  She’d tried talking to him about dog training, but not even that engaged him. When she suggested he could wait in her room, he’d roused himself enough to refuse. It was just as well, she wasn’t sure how security would feel about him being there alone.

  The drive out to the CIA campus turned painfully silent.

  The dogs felt it too. Shelties were a very active breed. They wouldn’t play as long as a Golden Retriever, nor were they as non-stop hyper as a Malinois, but they never ever drooped. Zackie and Merle curled up on opposite sides of the back seat for the drive.

  The CIA’s library and museum was no more public than many of the ones she’d been to today, but again her White House, Yankee White clearance opened even these doors. Though it certainly hadn’t budged the librarian who had regarded their standard question with a grim glower. It radiated his hatred that they were permitted to intrude upon his hallowed ground.

  She made a point of ambling through the historic exhibits they were permitted into. The more modern ones lay in an area restricted to active agents only, perhaps for training purposes.

  Jimmy had reengaged a little, but the exhibit had ended just as it became interesting with the end of the Cold War. In the library itself, she recognized a large number of titles from Miss Watson’s collection. For a few minutes she wondered if the CIA had snatched her collection and inserted it into their own. But then she began finding gaps. Their Russian language originals section of tradecraft was pitiful; Dilya had honed her limited childhood Russian to fluency on Miss Watson’s books and knew it well.

  “Why are we lingering here so long?”

  Dilya considered. Jimmy might have gone silent, but he’d stuck by her. And she had some guesses as to what might happen next. If she was right, it would be unfair to Jimmy to let him follow her in blind.

  “Exactly as Miss Watson predicted. Someone is tailing us.”

  Despite her expectations, Jimmy didn’t spin around to scan behind them. “I figured that out for myself.”

  “How? I haven’t actually seen the tail yet though I’m sure someone is there.”

  “I watched you, Dilya. You slowed down by half after the music soldier.”

  “They’re Marines, not soldiers. Don’t ever call them that unless you want to pick a fight.”

  “Okay. So why are we going even slower here?”

  Dilya half smiled. “I thought I was delaying the inevitable a little bit for your sake, but now I’m not so sure. I’ve spent half my life studying this,” she waved a hand at the library that surrounded them. “It always seemed so important. Now it feels…” she shrugged her shoulders but the itch of a target between her shoulder blades didn’t go away.

  Now that she’d come to a stop, Zackie laid down across her toes.

  “It’s never felt this real before. And I don’t think I like it. I watched my parents die. At least you were spared that with your mom.”

  Jimmy started to protest but she quieted him with a touch. She liked how easily they communicated.

  “Trust me. Imagining it the thousand ways you probably have, it’s still less awful than the reality.”

  Jimmy rested his hand over hers on his arm and clasped it tightly.

  She liked that too. “The real danger starts when we leave here.”

  “Figured that out for myself too.”

  “And you’re sure you want to see it through to the end?”

  “With you? Yes.”

  And there was the answer nothing in her life had prepared her for. With her? She’d always felt it was her alone against the world. But what if she wasn’t?

  10

  The Registration Desk was unmanned except for a box with a handwritten sign Leave Badges Here. Even as they watched, a group leaving the conference stripped off their name badge holders and tossed them into the box on their way out the door.

  Jimmy walked up and shuffled through the box for a moment, dredging up two badges. “I guess you’re Cheryl unless you’d rather be Ursula. And I’m, oh wait, here’s a James. That’s close enough.”

  He kept Cheryl’s hand in his as they entered the conference. A few remaining posters said this was the last day of the Special Library Association’s annual conference.

  Jimmy wanted to smack his forehead. Miss Watson’s coded message had said to go to the CIA library last. Then meet me at SLA trade 1pm. Before today he’d never heard of Special Librarians, but he’d had a morning’s masterclass in what they were.

  And while he’d bet the booths were different, Comic-Cons had massive tradeshow floors selling signed books, costumes, and light sabers.

  That meant Miss Watson was here somewhere. And they’d dragged a tail, other than the two belonging to their Shelties, straight to her. Exactly as Miss Watson had planned like they were pieces in her 3D chess game.

  For a brief moment he wished he’d taken Dilya up on her offer to leave him at the White House. But even though there was no hope for them to be together, some part of him hadn’t given up. Holding her last night as they slept. Holding her hand now. He wanted more of that not less.

  Past the entry doors, Jimmy couldn’t believe what he was seeing. It blew away every concept he’d ever had about librarians.

  Groups of them lounged in comfortable sitting areas talking intently. Others filtered in and out of rooms that must have different lectures occurring. And yet more stood in the halls chatting in twos and threes. None of that was odd.

  The weirdness was the variety.

  Despite it being the last afternoon of a multi-day conference, some still wore immaculate business suits and dresses. But these were in the minority. Jeans and t-shirts were common. Earth mothers wearing wild batik muumuus mixed with goth-clad guys and Hawaiian-shirt-and-board-shorts-clad women wearing flip-flops or Birkenstocks. It was like they’d let all of the crazy ones out of their book-caves and put them in one place.

  Overheard snatches of their conversation came peppered with words that sounded as if he should understand them, but he’d wager he was wrong: adjacency, false drops, expanders, and grey literature. He almost stopped to ask about that one but Dilya tugged him toward a pair of double doors standing wide open as if none of this was foreign to her.

  The doors admitted them to a mid-sized ballroom. It wasn’t like a Comic-Con with its vast spread of booths, sometimes filling multiple convention center ballrooms. Instead there were fifty or so tables. Some displayed software, others advertised binding and restoration, yet others consulting services. The SLA had a large table, as did National Public Radio—they hadn’t made it to NPR’s library. There were Now-hiring headhunters, and he spotted the Western Association of Map Librarians. In a different life he could be at that table himself.

  He stopped at the ASME desk. Though he was a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, he’d never thought about their library. He could have talked to them for hours but he wasn’t a librarian nor had he paid for the conference, so he kept it brief but couldn’t help smiling as they moved on.

  Dilya led them halfway around the room before pausing at the Oxford University Press Table. She pointed at the floor and Zackie sat tight against her left leg. Merle looked at her, then at Zackie, then at him. Jimmy tried jabbing a finger toward the floor with equal authority. He wasn’t sure which of them, he or Merle was more surprised when his dog sat at his side.

  The person behind the table was busy chatting with another librarian.

  With her free hand, Dilya picked up a copy of Hacker, Influencer, Faker, Spy: Intelligence Agencies in the Digital Age. She freed her other hand from his and began turning the pages. Jimmy would far rather be reading the latest issue of the Journal of Applied Mechanics that he’d snagged from the ASME table.

  There had to be some way that two people from such different worlds could—

  “He’s in,” Dilya said in a perfectly normal voice, one that didn’t draw anyone’s attention except his.

  Jimmy resisted looking toward the door, instead doing his best to appear interested in the true implications of a cyber war. He’d played enough online war games in high school for that to majorly creep him out. When he couldn’t stand it any longer, Jimmy looked around the room.

  There was a casual ebb and flow. He’d seen it at the Comic-Cons he’d been to. The last day, nothing happened too quickly. Everyone was run down but reluctant to leave before they absolutely had to.

  He didn’t see any anomalies. Everyone belonged here except themselves.

  “You sure?”

  “I didn’t watch directly, but I saw a break in the traffic flow by the door. Then they blended in. Trust me. He, she, or they are here.”

  Or they? He hadn’t considered that. He’d figured that Dilya could protect them from one bad guy, but multiple? This wasn’t something he had any training in.

  “Any sign of Miss W?”

  Dilya shook her head. “But then she can look like anything she wants.”

  For half an hour, they stopped at one table after another. Jimmy got the hang of pretending he was a software geek looking for a job. Since the only untrue part of that was any desire to change jobs, he could play it well. Dilya’s fascination with printed books in every form also worked well.

  They were deep in the middle of the room when Zackie’s head popped up. She began scanning around. Her nose had picked up some scent. But since her eyes were level with people’s knees, there wasn’t much for her to see. Merle was looking as well, but only because Zackie was doing so.

  “Dilya?” he asked to draw her attention to her dog.

  “She’s here. Let’s go.” Dilya snapped her fingers to get Zackie’s attention, then flashed a sign as she whispered, “Faigh.”

  “What’s that one?”

  “It means seek or fetch. It switches her mode and all she’ll care about now is finding a familiar scent. I didn’t train her on explosives, but rather on people. She picked up the scent of someone she knows, so I’m hoping she leads us to Miss Watson.”

  And indeed Zackie set off in the lead. They went up the middle aisle. At the end of the row, she veered right toward the entry door then veered left so suddenly that Jimmy almost tripped over her.

  Halfway down the back aisle, as far as possible from the exit door, Dilya whispered without quite looking up, “The scarf. It’s her knitting.”

  There was no question who she was talking about. A tall woman with sunlight bright blonde hair and an impeccable business suit, the kind that always looked so good in magazine ads, wore an incongruous scarf—wide with bright color bands that reached her knees. “That’s Tom Baker’s Doctor Who scarf.”

  “Who?”

  “Exactly,” he half hoped they’d slip into the old Abbot and Costello Who’s on First? routine so that he didn’t scream to release his nerves.

  He remembered Miss Watson as a small hunched woman in her seventies or eighties, not this magazine-ad model in a crazy scarf. But if Dilya and Zackie were sure, then he’d accept that.

  Mere feet from the woman, Zackie turned to look back the direction they’d come from and let out a happy yip.

  11

  Something slammed Jimmy aside—hard.

  He crashed into a table, knocking aside dozens of copies of children’s board books before upending the table itself onto the two elderly women seated behind it.

 

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