“Someone’s coming,” Dalmatian said, trotting down the stairs. “Just over the hill.”
Milo looked across the kitchen table at Tina, whose eyes were damp and red. He’d made a mistake telling her about Kristin and Noah. She’d known the reference librarians, had made dinner for them on occasion, and on other occasions they’d gotten drunk together in the living room on Hadlaubstrasse, and now she’d been asked to accept their murders with a swiftness that she wasn’t built for. Better to just walk in, say, “We have to leave now,” and get into the details later. He’d tried that, of course, but failed. Tina was done being the uninformed one; it was a role that had never suited her. And here she was, sitting frozen at the table, dealing with the consequences of knowledge.
“Who?”
Dalmatian checked his old Makarov pistol. “No idea.”
Milo grabbed his SIG Sauer from the living room, and out front he and Dalmatian waited on either side of the wide gravel driveway until the front end of a BMW slowly rolled forward. Sun glinted off the windshield, then passed, and he could see Leticia sitting inside. He lowered his gun and nodded at Dalmatian, who approached, still wary, as Leticia parked.
“So?” she asked as she opened her door and got out. “What the hell’s going on?”
When Milo told her about the betrayal, she raised her head to look down at him, as if she were going to dispute the story, but said, “So what does he have on that computer?”
“We don’t know everything Noah kept on there. Certainly our codes and legends—that’s the first thing he would look for. Maybe safe houses. It’s why I sent everyone away.”
“Library files?”
“It can get to the database, but without the passcodes no one can access it.”
“How good is the encryption?”
Milo opened his hands. “The best we could buy.”
“Just a matter of time, then,” she said, and rubbed her temple, clearly frustrated. “Still, though. One asshole, and you throw everything away?”
“Do you remember 2008?” Milo asked, and she straightened. Of course she did. She was lucky to have survived. They both were. “I’m not letting that happen again,” he told her.
As they entered the cottage, Alexandra was trotting down the stairs, her face red as sunburn. She nodded at Leticia; Leticia nodded back. In the kitchen, Milo used Kristin’s laptop to pull up the security footage from Milan. At 11:12 a.m., the tall, dark-skinned man approached their street-side door, entered a code, and walked into the building. Twenty minutes later, he exited with Keller—but a different Keller than Milo had known. Not irritable or scared. Relaxed, satisfied, at peace.
“That’s Gary Young,” Leticia said, pointing at the other man. “From Wakkanai and Hong Kong.”
When Dalmatian hurried into the kitchen, no one looked at him until he pointedly said, “We have to go.” They looked up, and at the phone he was holding out. On its screen was Milo’s face, the old photo he’d used for his UNESCO documents, and his name. Then: Wanted by China, Russia, United Kingdom, United States. Pasted at the corner of his picture was the Interpol logo in red above the words RED NOTICE.
But Leticia didn’t want to be hurried. She settled into a chair, then slowly took them through what she’d learned in China. She described the interconnectedness of the companies they’d been tracking, and seemed surprised that no one in the room disagreed with her. They’d all reached the same conclusions by different paths. “Now that we know who they are,” she said, “how do we take them down?”
It was almost quaint, remembering his state of mind only a few weeks ago, his fear of turning the Library into an active-measures organization. Now that it was their only option, he’d waited too long. There was no Library to activate.
“What about the patrons?” Alexandra asked.
“We don’t know who we can trust. Portugal is a no, and maybe Germany, too. I don’t know about Said Bensoussan.”
“Any contact is going to be a risk,” Dalmatian pointed out.
Tina was standing in the doorway, quietly listening. How long had she been there? He didn’t know. She said, “There’s nothing you can do, is there?”
Milo considered this seriously, then shook his head. “Not by ourselves.”
“No,” Leticia said, stiffening. “We get your family safe, and then we go after him,” she said, nodding at Gary Young, frozen on the computer screen. “Or we go after Grace Foster. There are a lot of people we can get our hands on.”
Alexandra disagreed. “What makes you think any of these people are the head of the snake? They built it like this on purpose; the organization is diffuse. One link won’t bring down the edifice.”
“Then we go after two, then three. Until it does start to crack.”
“I’m with her,” said Dalmatian. “Enough hiding.”
Milo leaned against a counter, because the exhaustion—the real exhaustion, the psychological exhaustion—was taking hold. Every time they took a step forward, they were knocked back five steps. Things might be clearer, but not better, not for any of them. He wondered what the point was of moving forward. He’d disbanded the Library, and by doing that had made his family even less safe.
His pocket vibrated; it was his encrypted phone. He took it out and checked the screen: Alan’s number. Even Alan had known. Back in New York, he had pestered Milo to make the Library more active—we would do it best. Everyone had understood this, but not him. He’d been led by his fears, and that fault was going to be their downfall. But when he answered the phone, Alan wasn’t on the other end. Penelope was, and she was crying.