After a night’s sleep in Erika Schwartz’s too-soft guest bed, Alexandra climbed into a Mercedes that the Germans had confiscated from Montenegrin smugglers. It stank of cheap cigarettes, so she cracked the windows, letting in cold mountain air during her three-and-a-half-hour drive that cut through the pristine, tiny kingdom of Liechtenstein on her way south.
She stopped short of Davos, in Serneus, and checked into a bed-and-breakfast as Vivian Wall. In her room she opened her laptop and streamed the World Economic Forum’s pre-event: the International Monetary Fund’s World Economic Outlook—and it was a gloomy one. The world economy was slowing, leading to higher volatility and heightened risks of sharper decline in global growth. One ripple effect was geopolitical: If vulnerabilities weren’t addressed, the world could see an increase in the advance of authoritarian regimes. Milo, who was still reconsummating his marriage in the Black Forest, had been onto something after all.
She didn’t leave until eight o’clock, about the same time Li Fan found Leticia on the Promenade, and before getting into the car she checked in with Poitevin, who was renting a room south of Davos. He was already in town, he told her, and was ready.
She parked near the Davos Platz train station on the southern end of town, and from there she walked up the lower Promenade, where some stores had been taken over by countries eager to show off their investment possibilities. Benetton had become a display for Saudi Arabia, which, only three months after they had butchered Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in their Istanbul consulate, was probably a tough sell. She passed camera crews for Deutsche Welle and Russia Today, and even spotted a man with a microphone speaking American English to a pedestrian—his clip-on name tag identified him as working for NPR. And when she looked up, she caught a glimpse of movement on the rooftops: white-clad snipers with long rifles.
The Chämi Bar looked like the front of a traditional village house that had been slammed against a modern apartment building, but Alexandra recognized it by its sign: a ladder and a top hat. She didn’t go inside immediately, though. Instead, she continued on, peering into its unhelpfully curtained windows as she passed, then waited by the window of a clothing store called Blue Lemon.
Only now did she see Poitevin, on the other side of the Promenade, almost parallel to her. He looked tired, which she imagined he was. After trading boats with Milo, he’d piloted the old fishing boat north along the African coast to Ben Khlil, where he’d waited in vain for Griffon to pick him up. The next morning, he’d caught a half-day bus to Agadir, then waited a day in Al Massira Airport, sleeping outside on the curb, until a Lufthansa flight brought him to Frankfurt at about the same moment Alexandra picked up Milo, Leticia, and Abdul Ghali in Spain.
They met eyes, but only briefly, and once the pedestrians around her had moved on she entered the Chämi Bar, with its sloped ceiling, red walls, Christmas lights, and exposed beams. It was busy and loud with multilingual chatter and rock music. To the right, on one side of the bar, a three-piece band was setting up, and on the other side of the bar was the man Erika had told her was named Francis, identified by the copy of The Daily Mail on his table—probably the only person in Davos who would dare to be seen with a copy.
As she approached, she noticed he was eating a hamburger and drinking from a tall glass of pilsner, so she stopped to order an eighteen-year-old Chivas Regal on the rocks. By the time she reached his table, Francis was cleaning his face with a napkin, half rising, holding out a hand. “Hello, hello,” he said. “Ms. Primakov?”
Friendly. Maybe a Home Office clerk giddy to be handed a plane ticket. But they wouldn’t have sent someone like that, would they? He pumped her hand, then settled down. “Have you tried the burgers here?”
“No,” she said, and sipped her Scotch. “How much have you been read in on?”
“Oh,” he said, sounding disappointed they wouldn’t discuss mountain cuisine. “Well, there was nothing on paper, understand. But this little mustached German came by the embassy in Berlin.”
“Oskar Leintz.”
“Yes, exactly. BND. Talked us through it.” Francis hesitated, chewing the inside of his lower lip. “Hard to swallow, to be honest. Still, I did my due diligence, and everything he reported was confirmed. But my colleagues asked, did these facts really add up to his conclusions?”
“What about Oliver Booth?”
He raised his brows, rocked his head. “That was interesting, wasn’t it? Nasty bit of insider trading. The feeling at home is that this is a case that can be pursued, and will be in due time.”
“Due time?”
“Years, I’m afraid,” he said, smiling with his eyes. “Have to separate the wheat from the chaff.”
“And Tourism?” Alexandra asked.
He cleared his throat, his smiling eyes shifting to take in the people around them, then leaned closer. “Very interesting. Now, this was news to me, the American department. Not to the higher-ups, of course, and when the file was shared with me I frankly found it all hard to believe.” He raised a finger. “At first. Again, our people were able to verify a lot of what Mr. Leintz reported.”
“So you believe it,” she suggested.
He leaned back again, opening his body with spread arms. “What’s belief? The evidence does suggest, yes, that what he says is true. And so follows the question: What now? And why should the Home Office be bothered?”
“Mr. Leintz didn’t tell you why?”
A short shake of the head. “He did not.”
Now she was the one who pushed her Scotch to the side and leaned in. He followed suit. Their faces were close, and his breath smelled of overcooked beef. “For its bother, the Home Office would receive fifteen years of secret intelligence reports from all around the world.”
“From this Library?” he asked in a high whisper.
“Exactly.”
“And what, might I ask, must we do for this treasure?”
“Help us bring down these new Tourists.”
He pursed his lips, as if preparing to kiss her, then sipped his beer. He began to count on his fingers. “Britain. Germany. And…?”
“We’re meeting with China and Russia.”
“The United States?” he asked, his speech quick, as if it were a question he’d arrived ready to ask. She remembered Erika’s warning.
“We are in discussions with them now.”
“How are they leaning, if you know?”
“Oh, they are in,” she lied. “We’re just settling details.”
He nodded approvingly. “Well, I can certainly put this to my people. How shall I get in touch with you? Through Mr. Leintz?”
She shook her head. “If you can help, then join us. Thursday night. A restaurant outside of town. I’ll give you the address.”
“Thursday?” he asked, frowning. “The Forum ends on Friday. Isn’t that … cutting it short?”
“We want everyone to have enough time to consider the offer. The consortium’s annual meeting will occur on Friday.”
“Where?”
“We’ll know by Thursday.”
“Hmm,” he hummed, then chewed his lip. “So this is an intervention, yes?”
“Something like that.”
Out in the street again, Alexandra worked her way back down to the train station, and on quieter Tobelmühlestrasse Poitevin caught up with her. “Good to see you,” she told him, which, after Griffon’s unexpected death, was even truer than usual. A month after the Library disbanded, she’d posted the recall message at the IP address that each librarian had learned upon joining, but which had never been recorded in the files. It was a simple advertisement, the kind you would find in small, local papers, asking for volunteers for a study of transcontinental library classification systems. Sixteen librarians had replied, but in order to avoid exposing them all over again, she’d only brought in Poitevin, who, along with Dalmatian and Leticia, would suffice for now. The other fifteen had been useful in other ways, gathering intelligence and redistributing the Library’s physical assets to safe spots all over Europe.
Poitevin, sounding a little out of breath, said, “How did it go?”
“I don’t know,” she told him. “I really don’t.”