The Abdul Rahman Pazhwak conference room was a hermetically sealed space on the thirty-eighth floor of the UN with cracked wood paneling that had been installed in the midsixties. With the gathering darkness outside, the windows acted as mirrors until Alan lowered the blinds.
Collecting all twelve wasn’t unprecedented, but it was rare. Invariably a few patrons either bowed out or chose to join through video chat. Even the elusive Beatriz Almeida, assistant deputy to the Portuguese ambassador, sauntered in chatting quietly with Said Bensoussan. Milo approached them and welcomed Almeida, a small woman with a perpetual smile, then caught Said’s eye. Together, they stepped into the bland corridor.
“So?” Milo asked. “Egorov’s mistress.”
He frowned, rocking his head. “She spoke for two hours with your friend Colonel Rahmani, but I’m afraid nothing came of it.”
“What’s her name?”
Bensoussan hesitated, then said, “Gazala Mokrani. But it appears she knows nothing. Nor, I’m afraid, does Colonel Rahmani. He’s one of our better public servants, you understand, and Egorov’s death troubles him. The Russian acting consul has declined an invitation to enlighten us.”
“Did Gazala Mokrani explain why she and Egorov changed their daily pattern after Paris?”
“She only said it was Egorov’s wish. Otherwise, their liaisons remained the same. From what I understand, Ms. Mokrani is a singer. Worldly, a sophisticated woman. Rahmani believes she is telling the truth. I’m sorry I don’t have more information for you, Milo.”
By the time they returned to the room, everyone was seated and waiting. Bensoussan took his place beside Almeida, and Milo settled in a chair at the head of the table, Alan to his right.
Looking over his dozen patrons, he wondered again if he’d made a fatal mistake when, soon after taking over, he’d expanded the patron count from seven to twelve. At the time, he’d discovered too many holes in their globe-spanning intelligence network of forty-two librarians. They needed more staff, and a bigger support budget, but in a world where a global recession had been brought on by a toxic mix of fiscal and real estate malfeasance, demanding more from the seven his father had assembled—Germany, Luxembourg, Iceland, Kenya, Bangladesh, Ghana, and Portugal—was out of the question. So he’d gone hunting, and in consultation with the original patrons settled on five more—Algeria, South Korea, Lebanon, Botswana, and Chile.
That had solved the immediate budgeting problems, and with the larger staff he’d had to alter his father’s organization by creating a stable headquarters, the office in Escher Wyss, which was how he preferred it. He had no interest in the nomadic life his widowed father had led. But by nearly doubling the patrons he had doubled his political headaches. Building consensus among all twelve was like playing Whac-A-Mole, and the possibility of insurrection was an ever-present threat.
“Before we get started,” Milo said, “I wanted to share some information from Manila, where I recently came from.”
Eyes lit up around the table. It was rare when he shared intelligence with them as a group, which was why he’d chosen to do it now. To put them off their guard. The political unrest that he described to them would be of particular interest to Katarina Heinold, the German patron and the largest power at the table, whose country traded heavily with the Philippines. Yevgeny had brought on Germany at the start the way an American mall brings on a Macy’s to anchor the entire enterprise, and all the others noticed the way she leaned in and focused on Milo’s words.
When telling them about the incidents of piracy, he posed the same question he’d put to the UN lifer and his lover in Manila: Why would pirates sink vessels? The point of piracy was booty—how else did you pay for your enterprise? “This is what I find most disturbing. We know how to deal with piracy, but not a group that is willing to sacrifice both lives and profit.”
“Competition,” Almeida said. “It’s clearly for the benefit of competing transport companies.”
“Possible,” he said, “but no competing companies made a bid on their shipping lanes. Apparently, they’re all terrified of the same thing happening to them. They ended up being bought out by a company on the other side of the world, Oman.”
“Islamists,” Katarina Heinold suggested. “The Bangsamoro terrorists set off a bomb in Isulan two weeks ago. Or Abu Sayyaf.”
Milo was impressed by her breadth of knowledge but said, “No one has claimed responsibility.”
She accepted that with pursed lips, and as he wrapped up his disclosures Milo tried to read the patrons’ expressions. It was impossible, though, for these diplomats had spent their entire adult lives learning how to mask their feelings behind the shell of their faces. Some of them, he knew, were under significant pressure from home; some were at the end of their careers; others were eagerly vying for power on the home front. Some were backstabbers, others fatalists. Many were eyeing upcoming elections, populist challengers biting at their parties’ heels, and didn’t know if they would have a job next year. Which was another way of saying that whatever they did to him tonight was not personal; he just happened to be in their way.
“We hear you were in Algiers,” said Alfred Njenga, the Kenyan representative. “To meet Kirill Egorov?”
“The late Kirill Egorov,” Katarina Heinold corrected.
Milo wasn’t sure how they’d come across this information so quickly—either the Algerians or the Russians had let it out. He glanced over at Bensoussan, who gave him a very faint shrug, feigning ignorance.
“So, what was that about?” asked Beatriz Almeida, smiling.
“I don’t know,” Milo said. “He asked for a meeting, but we never got a chance to speak.”
Katarina Heinold looked over at Alfred Njenga, a subtle communication. Almeida looked at some papers she’d brought with her, while beside her Bridgette Tlhabi of Botswana checked her watch. That was when Elias Kanaan of Lebanon cleared his throat, brought his hands together on the shining surface of the table, and said, “We have gone through the new budget.”
Milo straightened in his chair, waiting for it. Waiting for the arguments over each item on the list—the travel expenses or the computer budget or the librarians’ per diems—preparing himself to fight for each euro.
But to Milo’s surprise, Beatriz Almeida said, “You’ll have your money.”
Though he should have felt relief, he didn’t, because her expression only hardened. Milo said, “Thank you,” and waited as she looked off to the side, at Hilmar Jonsson of Iceland sitting with Sanjida Thakur of Bangladesh, then back.
“There is, however, a caveat. We need to change the distribution method.”
Milo blinked. “Go on.”
“We need complete access.”
Beside Milo, Alan leaned back in his chair and sighed loudly.
“What does that mean?” Milo asked.
“It means you give us the files,” Hilmar Jonsson cut in, his face pink.
“The database,” said Pak Eun-ju of South Korea. “Give us our own access. We no longer wish to receive piecemeal information from you.”
“Christ,” Alan muttered.
Milo opened his hands. “Let me be sure I understand this. You want unredacted access to the entirety of the Library’s files.”
“Yes,” Almeida said.
“I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
“Of course you fucking can,” said Jonsson.
Alfred Njenga raised a finger for patience. “Milo,” he said. “Every penny you spend comes from us. There are no other countries in the world that would be stupid enough to make a deal like the one we’ve made. Yevgeny—he convinced us. Some of us here, some of our predecessors. But after sixteen years we believe it’s time to renegotiate the terms of our support.” He exhaled through his nose. “It’s an entirely reasonable request.”
Milo scanned each of their faces, seeing in their expressions that they were of one mind. While he’d expected something like this, he had underestimated their unity. So he took a breath, thought, and said, “Do you know why my father set up the Library this way?”
“Because he wanted control,” Almeida said, a smile on her face.
“Sure,” Milo said. “He always liked control. But that wasn’t the reason. He didn’t trust any of you.”
Silence. Jonsson frowned deeply, and even Almeida’s smile faded away. The rest settled back into their diplomatic cocoons, watching.
“Yevgeny knew that if you had complete access to the files, the Library would die within a year, possibly its employees, too. The Library, he understood, could only exist if it was secret. It can’t exist if anyone outside of this small circle knows it exists. It can’t exist in the outside world.”
“You think we don’t know this?” Jonsson demanded.
“If you knew it,” Milo countered, “then you wouldn’t ask for this. If you knew it, you would understand that as soon as you had open access to the Library, and put that intelligence to use, people outside this small circle would grow curious. How did you learn this, or that? America would start peeking into your files, start triangulating intelligence, and realize that you’re getting your information from a third party. Then the big nations add two and two and realize that all of you are using the same organization. Where on earth would all of you have come to the same trough to drink? Well, maybe on the thirty-eighth floor of the United Nations Headquarters—maybe there? And then…” Milo shook his head. “And then America and Russia and France and the UK—they figure it out. And they shut down the Library before you can say ‘It’s your world.’”
Milo leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest. Ending with the UN motto was a rhetorical flourish, but he didn’t care. The important thing was that their faces, that wall of unyielding expressions, had cracked. Said Bensoussan, maybe the smartest of the bunch, had taken on a reflective pose. Jonsson had had the wind knocked out of his anger, but he was still bubbling inside. Almeida pursed her lips, staring at the surface of the conference table. Pak Eun-ju, though, wasn’t ready to be dissuaded.
“We appreciate your concern, Mr. Weaver. Frankly, though, we’d hoped that you would have shared less of your father’s paranoia. After a lifetime in the KGB, he could be excused for it. But you grew up in a different time.” She sniffed. “The fact is that this isn’t a negotiation. We are your investors, and we expect more from our investment. I understand that this might be a shock to you, though I don’t know why it would be. And you don’t have to answer yet. Take a few days to think it through. See it from our perspective.”
“I’ve done my thinking,” Milo told her. “The answer is no.”
“Jesus, Milo.” That was Gaston Majerus of Luxembourg, speaking for the first time. “You have no oversight. No transparency. You give us chicken feed for the millions we invest, and you don’t even share the information evenly. You can’t just say no.”
Milo focused his next words on Majerus, speaking slowly so that he would understand. “In 2008, a foreign power discovered not only the existence of my CIA department, but also the identities of its field officers. They killed almost every one of our field agents.” He snapped his fingers. “Like that. If anyone got access to the Library database, we would be open to precisely the same kind of violence. I’m not putting my people in danger. The answer is no. Tomorrow it will be the same.”
“Fine,” Majerus said, still calm. “Then I’m afraid we have to reject your budget in its entirety.”
“What?” Alan said, leaning forward, hands on the table. “You don’t fucking know—”
He stopped because Milo had held up a hand. This was Alan Drummond now, quick to anger, the polar opposite of the administrator he’d once been.
Milo said, “I suggest you rethink your position.”
Gaston Majerus’s eyes narrowed, noticing the easy confidence Milo was trying to display.
“You’re right about my father—he was paranoid. In the deepest recesses of the Library he set up a small section devoted to patrons. It’s automatically updated every month. It was his protection against a coup. Since 2002, we’ve never needed to use the information.”
Milo stopped. He could have gone on, because he had looked at those files, which chronicled misdeeds and crimes by not only the patrons themselves but the presidents and prime ministers of the countries they represented. But he didn’t need to go into all that, because each of these people knew their own weaknesses better than he did. Beside him, Alan had calmed again, an impolite grin spreading across his face. He was enjoying this.
“Wait,” said Jonsson. “You’re blackmailing us?”
Milo looked back at him, feigning surprise. “Didn’t you just blackmail me? I’m not sure what you expected.” He turned to look at Majerus. “Don’t tell me this is a surprise. Don’t tell me anyone here is surprised.”
But they all were … except, perhaps, Said Bensoussan, who was fighting back a smile of amusement.
“You don’t have to answer yet,” Milo said, rising from his chair. Alan followed suit. “Take a few days. Think it through. See it from our perspective.”