Tales From the Black Chamber, page 10
On the second-floor balcony rail facing the door hung a picture of President Coolidge, looking on impassively.
“This is … amazing,” said Anne.
“Most book people have that reaction. It’s sort of a dream library, isn’t it?”
“Oh yes,” Anne said. “I’ve had sex dreams that weren’t this good.”
John led Anne up the right-hand staircases to the third floor. Anne instinctively scanned the shelves for titles. He led her to a small three-room office above the front door. Windows looked out over the Potomac and the Jefferson Memorial on the other side.
“You should see the view when the cherry blossoms are out,” said John. Anne just nodded. “Okay, these are the three offices. There’s only this one entrance, so you have to walk through, like a shotgun apartment. Yours is the farthest back there, mine’s in the middle, and the librarian’s up here. Nice old-fashioned furniture, Silent Cal on the walls, phones, new Macs.” He took a book off a low bookcase. “Here are the complete holdings.”
Anne skimmed it and raised her eyebrows. “This is very nice. I mean, this must run into the millions of dollars.”
“We’ve had good people running it for almost a hundred years,” John said humbly. “And we have a good alarm system.”
“So what about the occult volumes?” Anne asked. “I don’t see many unusual ones in here.”
“Excellent point. Those, especially the really weird ones, are kept in the Chamber’s archive in the basement below the office. If, as occasionally happens, some library or scholar wants a look at one, you make an appointment and hand-carry it over here for them to look at. The excuse you tell the librarian is that you’ve either got them at home or in a special storage unit, or something. We don’t advertise those holdings, though, so it’s usually a book we’ve acquired at a public auction that someone was following.”
“So why did the bad guys kill Mrs. Garrett at her house, rather than just make an appointment and steal the book here? Or try and break in here some night?” Anne asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe they were in a hurry?” John said, frustration in his voice. “On a cheerier note, do you know anyone who knows rare books and might like a quiet, very well-paid job?”
“Do you require any credentials? Master’s in library science?” Anne asked.
“What do you mean ‘you’? You’re the Foundation now, Anne.”
“So I am. Well, I do have a friend, sort of a former colleague, who knows a hell of a lot about rare books, because she’s the daughter of a senior partner in my firm, so she grew up around them. She’s quite young, though, just out of college, and hasn’t got much of a résumé yet. B.A. in English Literature from Yale, though. Spenser, Chaucer, Marlowe, Shakespeare. Knows Latin, French, and I think some Old Norse.”
“Hey, if you think she’s up to it, it’s entirely your call,” John said amiably.
“Okay,” said Anne, and picked up the phone on the desk. She dialed H&E and when the receptionist answered, she smiled involuntarily and said, “Hey, Linds, it’s Anne. Want an awesome job?”
Late that afternoon, returning to the Black Chamber, as Anne now thought of the subterranean offices, John told Anne, “Okay, now you get to spend an hour or so with Steve. Try not to hold his laconic manner against him. He’s actually pretty hilarious and kind, although very, very dry.” He walked her down a side hall to a staircase leading down. It was secured by a very impressive electronic lock on a heavy steel door. At its foot was another seriously locked, impregnable-looking door. “This, incidentally, is where we all run to make our last stand, if anyone ever invades the office,” John explained. “Not that that’s ever happened, but just FYI. I’ll give you a list of combinations when you get back. You can start memorizing them—but you can’t take the list out of the office.”
Upon passing through the door, Anne realized why this was the stronghold. It was one long concrete room, with a two-lane, one-hundred-foot shooting range running down one side. The rest of the room was given over to racks and racks of weaponry, from pistols, through submachine guns, combat shotguns, and assault rifles, to—although Anne was no expert—some elaborate-looking ones she thought she’d seen in movies as grenade and rocket launchers.
“Hi, Anne,” said Steve McCormack, standing at a workbench, cleaning some pistols, grinning uncharacteristically. “Ready for some fun?”
“I guess so,” Anne said, thinking that this would probably be the least weird thing she’d done all day.
“I’ll leave you crazy kids alone. I’ve got some breviary pages to look through,” John said.
“Any excuse to stay off the range,” said Steve. “No wonder you didn’t take out those guys in New York.”
John gave a sarcastic wave and headed up the stairs.
Steve turned to Anne. “I’ll kill you if you ever tell him, but he’s actually a good, natural shot. He just doesn’t like practicing, so I take it on myself to force him to every week. Okay, look around you, welcome to Steve’s Basement of Fun.”
Anne laughed. “You’re a lot funnier than Agent Hunter.”
“Yeah, I know. When I’m posing as a lawman, I tend to overdo the Joe Friday bit, but it keeps people at arm’s length, and they don’t ask too many questions of me. So it has its uses. And, of course, we never expected you to get professionally involved with the Chamber. You were just an expert John was hoping to add to his Rolodex. But congratulations and welcome.” He offered his hand and Anne shook it.
“Thank you. Um, everyone else seems to have a warning for me when they welcome me. I’d have thought you’d be the first one to tell me that I’d probably die in the line of duty or whatever.”
“We’re all going to die, Anne,” he said softly but plainly. “What we’re doing here is serving our country. There are worse ways to die.” He paused, then saw something in her face and felt compelled to add, “But you’re the Librarian. Mostly, you’ll have to worry about putting Neosporin on your paper cuts.”
Anne laughed. “Okay, that I can do.”
“Safety first, Miss Wilkinson,” Steve joked. “But now, let’s work on your personal safety. These are Glock handguns. We use them because they’re ridiculously reliable under the most extreme conditions. And we occasionally find ourselves in quite extreme situations. Once I get you up to speed on the weapon, you should carry this at all times. You’ll never lack identification establishing you as law enforcement of some stripe, so you can carry anywhere in the country, on airplanes, et cetera. Now, have you ever shot a gun before?”
“Yep,” Anne said. “I’m from New Mexico. Big-time gun country.”
“Excellent,” said Steve. “I’m from Colorado.”
“Hey! Go, Broncos,” Anne said.
“Your mouth to God’s ear.” Steve smiled. “I was worried that you were a native New Yorker. So, I don’t have to worry about your being afraid of them, or being taken aback by the big bang?”
“Nope. Dad and I used to shoot targets and varmints with .22s and later .223s. I’ve fired a couple pistols: my grandfather’s old .45 from Korea, a nine-millimeter Beretta that a boyfriend brought back from the Marines, and a .357 revolver of some sort one time. That was a big bang. Almost broke my wrists, too.” McCormack laughed. “But I shot the whole cylinder, popped in a speedloader and fired another six.”
“Were you any good?” he asked.
“Pretty,” Anne said.
“Great. So, all I have to do is get rid of the bad habits you picked up as a recreational shooter. And get you used to the idea of shooting someone, rather than something.”
“I can’t say that sounds fun,” said Anne.
“Getting rid of the bad habits is, because you become a better shooter,” Steve said philosophically. “Shooting at people is never fun, even if you do it perfectly. Maybe especially if you do it perfectly.”
“I take it you’re the voice of experience there.”
Steve nodded and the impassive Agent Hunter mask slipped over his face for a moment. He relaxed again and said, “Okay, well, that answers my question about what caliber to give you. We’ll go with a .45 GAP that’ll give you the stopping power of Grandpa Wilkinson’s .45 with a lot more control.”
He picked up one of the Glocks on the bench, and handed it and a full magazine to Anne. The Glock’s slide was back, so Anne pointed it at the floor, and pushed the magazine home. The slide snapped forward, chambering a bullet with a quiet click.
Anne spent the next hour on the firing line, shooting at targets at various distances, trying to learn the new two-handed grip Steve recommended and, eventually, trying to eject and reload magazines smoothly and quickly. When she finally fumbled one completely and it went skittering across the floor, Steve took off his ear protectors and signaled for her to follow suit.
“Okay, great, Anne. I think that’ll do it for now. You’ve been tired for the last fifteen minutes, but I wanted to see how you did tired. And mostly, you did very well for someone who’s inexperienced. You’re a pretty good shot out of the box, and you’ll only get better. I’m available for tips anytime I’m around here, and the range is yours to use anytime.”
Anne was, in fact, exhausted, both physically and mentally. Her muscles had been trying hard to pick up the new positions, and she’d been concentrating so intently she only realized how tired she was when she stopped. “Okay, thanks, Steve,” she said, wiping her brow. She held out the gun to him.
“Nope, that’s yours,” he said. “I’ll give you the case and cleaning kit, although frankly, you can just bring it to me for maintenance. That’s my job. For now, just keep it in a purse or a coat pocket or someplace fairly handy. Sometime this week, I’ll give you a holster and we’ll practice drawing. I’d rather you didn’t shoot yourself in the spleen trying to draw and shoot.”
“Sounds like a plan. And I don’t have to worry if I drop it?”
“Well, you should never drop a gun, period, but the Glock is very, very safe in that regard. There’s almost no chance it would go off. But I wouldn’t try playing the percentages.”
“Comprendo,” said Anne, involuntarily recalling her New Mexican roots. “So, do I get to play with these sometime?” she asked, indicating the racks of small arms.
Steve’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “You want to?”
“Sure. It’d be fun. And this is the Basement of Fun, right?”
“Hey, anytime you want, Anne. I’ll give you as much weapon training as you like on anything you see here. Most of them,” he gestured upstairs, “do it once or twice, but lose interest because it’s a skill that takes practice. But if you want to, I’ll make you as good as an average SWAT team officer within a year.”
“Wow, well, let’s see how it goes,” said Anne. “But I am definitely interested, after what happened in the Marriott with John. I’d much rather find myself behind one of those than in front of one again.”
“Amen, sister.” Steve grinned. “And going back to what I said about John earlier: what he did there, as I understand it, was some terrific gunfighting. He was massively outgunned and had an unarmed civilian to protect, and he managed to pin those two guys down long enough for you to escape with almost all of your printouts. Of course, if the guys he’d been up against had been real professionals,” Like you, Anne thought, “there’s no way either of you would still be alive. So we’ll have that in our favor when we run up against them again.”
Steve gave Anne the combinations to the stair locks, and she let herself out.
She arrived back at the bullpen-style office to find people still working hard at their desks. She sat down at an unoccupied one and stared off into space, not really thinking about much but struck by the immense oddity of what she’d been drawn into.
“John!” said Mike Himmelberg in a loud baritone. “John!” Anne looked lazily at John’s open office door. He stuck his head out.
“What’s up, Mike?”
“Anne here is obviously wiped out,” he said, concern in his voice. “Take her home and let her sit in a tub or something.”
“Just don’t forget to cover your mirrors for modesty,” Claire chuckled over her computer. She must have been the one to have covered the ladies’ room mirror pre-emptively, Anne thought.
“No, really, I’m ok,” Anne objected weakly to John.
“Nope,” John said cheerily. “Mike’s right. This place can be overwhelming even after you’ve been here a while. Let’s go!”
On the car ride up Rock Creek Park, John was mercifully quiet, and just put in a New Order CD, which made a pleasant aural backdrop to the ride, its electronic ambiance contrasting pleasingly with the natural beauty of the park. Anne thought she saw a deer walking through an old cemetery up the side of a hill, and suddenly they were pulling into the garage of the safe house in Kensington.
“I think I fell asleep,” Anne said, running her fingers through her hair and reaching for the visor. John pushed the visor back up to the ceiling. “Ah, ah. Mirror,” he said.
“Oh geez.”
John turned in the driver’s seat. “You look great. Wait, wipe the corner of your mouth. No, the other one. Just a little drool.”
Anne rolled her eyes and groaned. “Dignity, dignity, my kingdom for some dignity!”
“Tell you what,” said John. “You go inside and take a nice hot bath. I’ll run up to the China Gourmet on Connecticut and get us some dinner and bring it back. There’s a liquor store right there, too, so I’ll grab a bottle of wine. And we can skip the breviary tonight. I don’t know that we’ll be all that productive.”
“Get two bottles,” said Anne imperatively. “And, no, I think with a bath and some food—how’s their kung pao chicken?”
“Great.”
“Okay, get me some hot and sour soup, some pot stickers, and some kung pao chicken.”
“Pot stickers?”
“You know, the little dumpling things?”
“Oh, sure. Steamed or fried?”
“I’ll leave that up to you.” Anne smiled and climbed out of the car.
8
The bath was heaven, and Anne fell asleep in it. She woke feeling terrific, aside from the bathwater in her mouth. She dried off, enjoying the thick, fluffy towels someone had outfitted the place with (Claire? Wilhelmina? Mrs. Garrett?), and got dressed in some Redskins sweats she’d picked up at the mall. It felt disloyal to the Broncos, but they were thick and warm and they hadn’t had any Broncos gear. She pulled on a pair of thick socks and padded down the stairs. She wasn’t halfway to the bottom when the smell of Chinese food hit her, and she went down the rest of the way double-time.
“I am famished,” Anne said, moving very quickly to the table.
John was pouring white wine. “I hope you like it.”
“I think I would like fiberglass insulation at this point.”
They had a very pleasant dinner, chatting casually, but mostly Anne enjoyed the tasty food and the wine, which John had chosen well. After dinner, Anne opened a bottle of red wine and poured them each a glass. “Okay,” she said, not tipsy but mildly euphoric, “Let’s talk about the breviary.”
“You sure you wanna talk shop?” John asked.
“Well, it’s that or watch some TV.” Anne got up and sprawled her long body on a couch, wineglass in hand.
“Honestly, I wouldn’t mind some TV,” shrugged John, following her into the living room.
“No, no, no. I’m feeling good and I’d really love to see what we can do with the breviary. Let’s just talk a bit about it without getting into the weeds. What’s in the book?”
John plopped down into an armchair, closed his eyes, and thought. “Well, the text, of course, the marginalia, and that doodling and laundry list and stuff in the back.”
“Right. And outside?”
“Binding, glue, no lettering or design on the cover.”
“Now, we’ve verified the text, right?” Anne asked.
“Yep. And most of the marginalia we’ve seen is pretty pedestrian and doesn’t have any of the oddness you sometimes see in encoded messages,” John said. “Although we’re not experts.”
Anne was curious. “Does the Black Chamber have a code expert?”
“No,” John said. “Joe McManus is probably pretty knowledgeable about them, I’d guess, though electronic encryption is more his thing; but he’s not a cryptographer. And I don’t think he can read Latin.”
“But if we gave him some words we suspected were code, he might be able to discern some sort of pattern that’d indicate there was a text to decipher?”
“That hadn’t occurred to me,” said John, opening his eyes. “He well might be able to. It’s math at bottom, right? We could get him a frequency distribution of letters in Latin from somewhere—hell, it’s probably on the Internet.”
“Now, what about that stuff on the endpapers? Do you think that list of sundries he scribbled in there could be a cipher? Or the prayers? Or the names of people and their addresses?”
“It could be,” said John. “I mean, there’s no weird capitalization or underlining or odd words interpolated, but you never know. Maybe we can transcribe that tomorrow and give it to Joe.”
“Why not tonight?” Anne asked. “I mean, there are guys with machine guns and creepy magic spells out there looking for us—looking for me, really. We really shouldn’t give them more time to find us—me.”
“I agree, Anne,” said John, “but look, it’s late in the evening, Joe’s a family man, and I don’t think a few hours will make a difference. Let’s let him rest, we’ll rest, and we’ll all attack it fresh in the morning. We can also run it by our scientists. You didn’t meet them today. I think they were working on something in their lab. Or playing Halo over the LAN, knowing them. They’re very, very smart. We’ve got Raphael Stoll, a physicist, and Eulalia Park, a biologist—and medical doctor, as well. They sort of overlap on chemistry. Lily takes the organic, I guess, and Rafe the inorganic.”
Anne took a big sip of wine. “Eulalia?” She found herself almost giggling.
John gave an amused snort. “I know. I guess it sounded American to her parents when they came over from Pusan. She’s from Portland and is probably a genius, so don’t hold her name against her.”
