“What?” Alan called, then shut off the noisy blender, opened it, and added two tablespoons of protein powder to his morning mix.
“Can you make it?” Penelope called from the living room.
“To what?”
“The Met.”
Right, the gala charity dinner, five hundred dollars a plate, all proceeds going to a legal fund for Honduran refugees stuck in southern-border cages run by private prison companies—it was boom time for the incarceration business. “Thursday, right?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Sure. Okay. But I can’t stay long.”
Penelope appeared in the doorway, her clothes looking slightly off. “You have to come.”
“Why?”
“Because we just got the best news—Gilbert Powell confirmed he’s coming.”
“The Gilbert Powell?”
“Is there any other?”
What were the chances? Gilbert Powell had only come to their attention in the last forty-eight hours, and now he was showing up at Penelope’s charity evening?
“See?” she said. “I deal with important people, too.”
He came close, eyeing her, then reached out and adjusted a shoulder strap on her complicated blouse—a mildly S&M mix of sheer fabric and dark straps. Half an inch to the right, and everything settled into place. “Very nice,” he said, then kissed her on the lips.
“You’re diverting,” she said. “I know you don’t like these people, but they’re no worse than UN diplomats.”
“That’s not a compliment,” he said, “but I’ll be there.”
Once she left, Alan drank his smoothie and looked through the news. It was all hell in a handbasket, but he was still optimistic. Despite insurgent patrons and a temporary headquarters move, the Library remained solid, and the fact that Washington hadn’t revived the Department of Tourism was stellar news after having lived the previous week looking over his shoulder, always expecting to find one of those dead-eyed monsters on his tail.
He had changed into sweats for a morning jog when the buzzer rang. A familiar woman’s voice said, “Mr. Drummond, may I come up?”
Beatriz Almeida was one of the less diplomatic diplomats he worked with, but she had never crossed the line by appearing at his home. Just as he would never consider heading over to the Portuguese complex of apartments on Madison. But he said, “Of course,” and buzzed her up.
He was waiting at his open door when she stepped out of the elevator and looked around hesitantly before finding him. Noting his old sweats, she gave him an awkward smile, and when he asked if she’d like some tea her wary expression suggested she’d never been offered a drink before.
“No, thank you. I’ll only be a minute.”
“Have a seat, then,” he said, motioning her to a chair.
As she settled in, Almeida crossed her hands on her knees and gave him a stiff smile. “Alan,” she said with finality. “I have come to ask you about Joseph Keller.”
He and Milo had never revealed that name to the patrons. “Who?”
“Please, Alan. We are not stupid. Milo Weaver gives us information, we compare notes, and we realize that he has found Egorov’s man in Algiers, and his name is Joseph Keller.”
Alan wondered how he should reply. Play dumb? He’d done that plenty of times, but in this case he sensed it would be self-defeating. Milo had gotten Keller’s name from the Germans, and Almeida had probably gotten it from Katarina Heinold. So: “He’s being kept safe.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know,” he lied.
“Is he with Milo?”
“Like I said, I don’t know.”
“Then where is Milo?”
Alan blinked slowly at her. “There was an attempt on his life.”
“Yes,” she said, impatient, “but where is he?”
“In hiding.”
“And you don’t know where.”
“I don’t need to know,” he said, then switched gears. “But one thing I do know is that you have made our work far more difficult.”
She touched a hand to her chest, all innocence. “Me?”
Christ, but these people could be trying. “You picked up Diogo Moreira. We were very clear—none of those people should be taken into custody. You just raised the stakes unnecessarily. You’ve increased the danger to Milo, to myself, and the entire Library.”
The accusation didn’t have much of an effect. Almeida lowered her hand to her knee and said, “Are you sure about that?” When Alan didn’t reply, she went on. “Yes, we took him. We were afraid of what NATO secrets he had given, and could still give, to Putin. We interrogated him. We searched his home and office. Brought in his wife and daughters. Went through every bank account associated with anyone in his family. And do you know what we found?” She didn’t wait for a guess. “Nothing.”
“These people are good,” Alan told her.
“Not that good. We left no stone unturned.” She sniffed. “Perhaps there was a mistake?”
It didn’t make sense to Alan. Certainly they would find evidence of payments to Diogo Moreira—you can’t just hide the three quarters of a million dollars Keller’s list documented. Sistema de Informações da República Portuguesa, or SIRP, knew its job. “I don’t know what to tell you,” he said, which was true enough.
“It turns out Mr. Moreira is actually very upstanding. He takes a strong stance against the tide of chaos spreading across the globe.”
“Then I suppose you made a mistake, didn’t you?”
She glared at him, then glanced down and picked something—lint?—off her knee and flicked it away. “How can Mr. Weaver run the Library if he’s in hiding?”
Alan tried for a nonchalant shrug. “It can be done.”
“But not well,” she said, as if she knew. “Shouldn’t you take over for him? As his deputy that would be natural.”
“When it becomes necessary, I will. But it’s not necessary yet.”
She nodded with satisfaction. Everything, apparently, was clear now. She raised her chin, looking down her broad nose at him, and stood. Another stiff smile, and then she headed back to the front door. He followed. She paused at the door and looked up at him. “The next time you speak to him, let Milo know that the patrons are worried for him. We offer all our resources to help. Do not hesitate to ask us.”
“We won’t,” he assured her.
He opened the door. After giving him one more stiff smile, she took the hint and left. Alan sighed. His morning run was now out of the question.
An hour later, he watched two high school groups, one from Harlem and another from Queens, fill the UN lobby with chatter and cell phone alerts. Four teachers tag-teamed, running around the students, pointing forcefully and demanding a silence they would never get. Alan grinned at the sight as he showed his ID to the guard and headed through to the elevators.
While Milo had an innate fondness for Said Bensoussan’s sense of style, that very quality made Alan wary. He’d spent much of his early career working with politicians from the Midwest, where slick old men learned how to charm you to the gills while laying traps that sprang to life as soon as you left their Capitol Hill offices. The sweeter they were, the more you had to fear, and in Said Bensoussan he sensed a North African twist on the same thing, from the compliments upon his arrival—“Look at you! You really have been taking care of yourself”—to the obsequious way he offered a drink.
“No, no,” Alan told him, holding up a hand.
“Well, then,” Bensoussan said, settling in his chair and giving him an I’m-very-serious-now expression, “what can I do for you?”
“You can tell me what’s going on with Beatriz Almeida.”
Bensoussan arched a brow. “How do you mean?”
“She showed up at my home this morning. She’s trying to talk me into staging a coup against Milo.”
“A coup?” Utter shock. “Did she say that?”
“Without saying the words, yes. What’s going on?”
Bensoussan leaned back in his chair and pinched his lower lip. “Well, Beatriz is famous for her impatience, yes? And you’re not the only one she bothers. She was in that same chair yesterday. Impatient.”
“Tell me.”
“She wants to go back to the budget fight. Demand Milo come to New York so that we can present new arguments.” He pinched his lip again, thinking. “Strangely, though, she doesn’t have any new arguments.”
“But she knows his life is under threat.”
“That she does.”
“And that forcing him to come to New York would be extremely risky.”
“She knows all this.”
Alan nodded—they understood each other. “What did you say?”
“I told her I would take it under advisement.”
“And have you?”
“Not yet,” Bensoussan said. “I’d like to see where things go before committing myself to rash action.”
Did this mean that Almeida was actually trying to get Milo killed, or was that just his myopic way of looking at it? Was she angry about the arrest of Diogo Moreira, which had probably cost her some goodwill back in Lisbon? Or was it really just impatience? “Who else?” Alan asked. “Are other patrons on board?”
“I’m not sure,” Bensoussan said. “She has been lunching with Hilmar and Aku, Katarina as well. Are they discussing Milo? I don’t know. But one question I would ask: Who was in her envelope?”
“How do you mean?”
“I just want you to understand,” Bensoussan said. “When I received my two names, I was surprised. I knew one of them. He was an old friend, many years ago. No longer. But if I’d been given his name five years ago, when things were better between us, I don’t know how I would have acted. Would I have tried to protect him by any means necessary?”
Bensoussan left that question unanswered, and Alan wondered, as he often did, about this patron’s motivations. Had Bensoussan told him this in the interests of full disclosure, or was it a play of his own, something to throw suspicion on Beatriz Almeida, to weaken her position?
That was the problem with diplomats and politicians: Nothing they said could be taken at face value. They were worse than spies in that regard, but it was Alan’s cursed fate that he would forever work with them.
When he reached the lobby, the children had cleared out, and he was wondering what kind of threat Beatriz Almeida represented. That she was a threat wasn’t a question—she was. But what kind? It was still so hard to say. Crossing UN Plaza, he called Heeler, one of six librarians who roamed North America. Last he’d checked, she was upstate. “How fast can you get to Manhattan?”
“Three hours, give or take.”
“Good,” he said. “Check into someplace out of the way and keep an eye on Beatriz Almeida.”
“She’s a patron.”
“I know.”
“But the—”
“I know the rules, Heeler. But we’re moving into uncharted territory.”