9

The London office of InterCentro was a single cavernous room off the lobby of a two-star hotel in Chelsea, in a space that had once been a barbershop. The glass front was draped in heavy brocade that I can only describe as faded imperial red. It was 10:30 when Jean-Paul opened the door and preceded me in.

Two big men, body builders from the look of them, stopped us from getting more than a few feet inside. Except that one was black and one was Asian, they could have been twins in their matching black polo shirts with PX4 embroidered on identical places on their similarly exaggerated pecs. We gave them our business cards and didn’t argue when they asked us to hang our coats on a rack. Very politely, they asked me to open my bag so they could peek inside, and for Jean-Paul to open his suitcoat and raise his sweater so they could see that he wasn’t hiding a gat under his waistband. They smiled during the entire process. When they were finished, the black man turned and walked across what looked like half an acre of red carpet to the back of the room and handed our cards to a man who was seated behind a desk in the far corner. After they exchanged a few words, we were signaled to come.

The man behind the desk rose and walked to meet us. He was as Philippe described him, short and round. Wearing a beautifully tailored Harris tweed suit, he presented a fair imitation of a traditional Englishman, until he spoke. Looking from our cards to us, he said, “Miss MacGowen, Mr. Bernard, how can I help you?”

“We’re a little early,” I said. “We have an appointment at eleven.”

“Ah.” Flicking the edges of the cards with his pinkie, he studied us for a moment, clearly unsure about trusting us. “We share an interest in fine books?”

“I think we share an interest in some very particular books, Mister Barkov.”

His eyebrows rose when I said his name. “Please, have a seat, and let’s talk about these books.”

I checked on the guards at the door as we followed Barkov to an arrangement of chairs and a low table opposite the desk; one guard watched us, the other the door.

The room was sparsely yet comfortably furnished to accommodate one man and two guards. I got the impression that Barkov did not have many visitors. We were offered tea from an electric kettle, served Russian-style in tall glasses.

“Now, then,” he said when we had settled in. “You first. What brings you?”

I opened my bag and took out the little book of Psalms, freeing it from its protective wrapper: a square cut from an old white cotton T-shirt I found in Philippe and Robert’s room. When Barkov saw the book displayed across my palms, beads of sweat appeared on his upper lip.

“One moment,” he said, rising. He opened a cupboard at the back and took a pair of white cotton gloves out of a box. He pulled on the gloves before he asked to examine the book. Reverentially, he caressed the cover, turned it over, examined the back and the spine. And then, after a hesitation, he lifted the cover and carefully turned the pages, sometimes taking longer to examine a page before turning to the next. When he reached the end, he closed the book and looked up at us. “I can’t believe I have this in my hands. I can’t believe it exists.”

“What do you know about it?” Jean-Paul asked.

He opened the cover again and turned to the elaborately illustrated title page, and held it for us to see. “We know that Tsarevna Sofia Alekseyevna commissioned a Polish calligrapher named Petrus to produce a set of books for her personal use. She was unusually well educated for a woman of her time and her place: seventeenth-century Russia. But, then, she was altogether a remarkable woman.”

“How can you be sure that this book was hers?” Jean-Paul asked.

“There is an inscription to her worked into the design of this capital. Do you see?” His fingers hovered over the outlines of a charming rabbit and lamb intertwined with ivy that artfully formed a series of Cyrillic letters. “There is no mistaking that this is the work of Petrus, or the name of the original owner. I had the privilege of seeing two of the other books from the tsarevna’s collection. One was on exhibit at the Beinecke Library at Yale University. And the other was on offer at a Paris auction house about a year ago. A Book of Gospels. It fetched an amazing price, but for a book so rare and so beautiful, I wasn’t surprised.”

“Did you bid on the book?” I asked.

He smiled sadly as he shook his head. “I am not a collector, Miss MacGowen.”

“Your message to me suggested otherwise,” I said.

“Forgive me for misleading you. But it did have the desired effect: You’re here. And I now know for a fact that this beautiful volume exists.” He closed the book, wrapped it back into the scrap of fabric, and handed it to me. “You see, I found it highly unlikely that an item of this caliber, of this significance, would be listed on Internet sites along with used cars and vintage clothing. I was curious. I suspected that the seller was perpetrating a fraud.”

“We could play cat-and-mouse for a bit longer about how you happened to notice this treasure among the old car listings,” I said. “But let’s get to the purpose for our visit, Mr. Barkov. We know that your son, Val, had something to do with posting four very valuable books for sale, even though he and his friends did not have the books in their possession and did not have permission to sell them. Someone has gone to great lengths to keep me and Mister Bernard away from our property in Paris, where the books are under lock and key. We have very good reason to believe that was done to give the person, or persons, who posted the books an opportunity to break in and steal them in order to deliver them to a buyer. I need you to tell us what role you had in that plan.”

Barkov turned bright red and half rose from his chair. “I know of no such plan. I am not a thief.”

“What, exactly, are you?” Jean-Paul asked quietly, deflating the rising tone of the meeting.

Barkov needed a moment to settle back down. He wiped a hand over his brow, sweeping back some wispy strands of hair that had dislodged from the arrangement across his nearly bald pate by his sudden movement. After a breath or two, he said, “I am an advisor to collectors. The collection of rare books is quite new in Russia. Very few tsarist-era volumes survived the Soviet purges. With very little material to work with, there are also very few of us who are considered experts on Russian rarities. When I find a book, or other object, I alert clients who might be interested. If they wish to acquire the object, I broker the sale for a commission.”

Jean-Paul cocked his head a few degrees as questions formed. “Might these be clients who, for whatever reason, preferred not to bid themselves in order to keep the purchase anonymous?”

“On occasion, yes. There are very good and legitimate reasons to do so. At other times, clients bring me objects that they wish to divest, and for similar reasons don’t want it known that they are selling.”

“Private sales,” Jean-Paul said.

“Sometimes, yes.”

“Of objects without certified provenance or permission of previous owner?”

“I do not deal in stolen objects, if that’s what you are asking.”

I held up the little psalter. “This book was not offered with permission from the owner.”

“Nor did I attempt to buy it,” he said. He got as far as saying, “My son…” before he could get no further.

“Your son and my nephew, Philippe, attend the same school,” I said. “Or did until recently. Your son first saw this book during a visit to my apartment in Paris. What do you know about that?”

He needed a few moments to compose his answer. “Yes, my son visited Paris with his friend Philippe over the New Year. While he was there, he sent me photos of several books and asked me if I knew what they were and how much they might be worth. After he assured me that he and his friends were merely curious, I gave him an answer. I was hopeful that Val, at last, had found something that interested him. But—”

We waited for him to finish the sentence. Instead, he looked from me to Jean-Paul and asked, “Do you have children?”

“We both do, yes,” I said. “Around the same age as Val.”

“We all try to do the best we can for them, but sometimes they don’t agree about what is, in fact, the best thing.” Again, he paused before continuing. “My son is susceptible in some ways to the influence of his friends. And sometimes he gets carried away with someone else’s idea and doesn’t know when to stop. Twice now, my wife and I have moved him to new schools to get him away from situations created by more assertive friends.”

“I was told that you took him out of school around the time he asked you about the books.”

“Not long after, yes.”

I made sure the bodyguards were still at the far end of the room before I said, “I noticed the logo on your guards’ shirts. It’s ProtX4, isn’t it?”

He hesitated too long before agreeing that it was.

“Two men hired through ProtX4 by your company’s London office—that is, I believe, you alone—aggressively stalked Mr. Bernard and me until they were arrested. You can’t tell us you didn’t know about it.”

When he sat stone-faced and mute, Jean-Paul said, “Sir?”

“This is very difficult for me. I assure you that, if you were harassed in some way, I had no hand in it. I don’t know what it is you want from me.”

“Some truth,” I said. “Did you hire men to come after us?”

“No,” he said sadly.

“But you know something about it.”

“Kids and their pranks.” He shook his head. “What can we do? Last week an invoice came from ProtX4 for additional services I did not order. When I inquired, they gave me a telephone number for the contact listed on the order form. I called the number and Val answered. I challenged him. He told me that he was being bullied at school. Knowing the way people react when I show up with Marc and Troy, he hoped to stop the bullying by having some muscle shadow him.”

“Surely he needed your help to hire the men,” I said.

He shook his head. “It is all done online. When I need additional services, I fill out a form on their web page telling them what I want, they deliver the personnel and bill my account. We never speak.”

“Did you believe Val?” I asked.

“I knew he was lying.” He waved a hand toward the guards. “I need protection because I frequently courier items that have great value. Their presence deters anyone from trying to relieve me of those items. When I learned that Val had hired bodyguards, I immediately thought of those books he asked about and went online to search for them.”

“You did more than that,” I said. “You went to Paris and inquired about the books in the library at number seven, rue Jacob. How did you know to look there?”

“Because I know my business,” he said. “Think of me as a detective in a very narrow corner of the book market. When a very beautiful volume from the collection of Sofia Alekseyevna showed up on the market last year, coming out of Paris, I went to work, looking for its mates.”

He tapped the psalter in my hands. “Let me give you a little history. I told you that Sofia Alekseyevna ordered a set of books. Religious books, because anything else would be inappropriate. The collection passed through the Romanov family, generation after generation. The last known owner was a cousin of the last tsar, a Prince Oleg. In 1917, when the tsar and his family were arrested, later to be executed, Oleg filled his personal railroad car with possessions, and fled Russia. Records show that he made it as far as Paris, where he had been educated. In 1918 he fell victim to influenza during the pandemic, and died. And there the record ends.

“There has been speculation and rumor in the book world about what happened to the collection, but there was no solid information. Then, about twenty years ago, one of the tsarevna’s books resurfaced mysteriously and was sold at auction, in Paris. The Beinecke acquired it. Then, over the years, three or four others appeared. Always in Paris. Always an anonymous seller, though one who could adequately provide provenance to the auction house.

“And then Val showed me a photo of a book, and I knew right away what it was. He was in Paris, staying at a friend’s family apartment. I had the address; Philippe’s father had given it to me when he asked if Val could stay over New Year’s. So, I did some research and discovered that a library of rare books was housed at that address. And that it included a collection of Russian texts. There was a catalogue, but it excluded the Russian collection. I tried to find out what was there. Were these the lost books of the tsarevna? The curator at the Louvre was no help, so I went to the Sorbonne, was shunted from office to office, and also found no help. In all, a dead end.”

“Where is Val now?” I asked.

“At home, working with a private tutor under the watchful eye of my wife and a very expensive Harley Street shrink.”

Jean-Paul had been listening with quiet intensity. “Hiring a psychiatrist for your son was a smart move, Mister Barkov. It will help establish a history. Finding him an excellent barrister would be another. Because of what he set in motion when he hired thugs from ProtX4, a young woman is dead, an old woman was assaulted, and you can see by looking at the fresh scars on my face that we are not talking about child’s play.”

Barkov stood and gestured to his guards. “Our conversation is over.”

Marc and Troy took two paces toward us and stood, arms crossed over the bulwarks that were their chests, and waited for us to leave. I put the book back into my bag and rose with Jean-Paul. Looming over Barkov, he said, “Interpol has been in touch with the London police. You’ll be hearing from them.”

We gathered our things and headed for the door. He stopped us before the guards parted to let us pass.

“Miss MacGowen, Mister Bernard.” We turned. “What price would make Sofia’s psalter available?”

I took Jean-Paul’s arm and we walked out the door.

We crossed the street and headed for the nearest Tube station. When we turned, I pulled out my phone, reversed the camera lens, and shot the street behind me, making sure no one followed. Jean-Paul, smiling, nudged me. “Anyone there?”

“I can’t see anyone. Maybe the hired help slipped locators into our coats again.”

“I hope they did,” he said. “It would make them easier to spot.”

We ran into the early lunch-hour crowd when we headed underground to catch a train. I felt more comfortable with masses of people around me than I had out in the open. Standing on the platform, waiting, I looked up at Jean-Paul.

“When you said that a young woman was dead,” I said, “he didn’t ask questions, challenge you, or defend his son. Do you think he already knew?”

“I don’t. We can’t know for sure, of course. But if he knew there was a murder involved, I can’t believe he would have spoken with us at all. I suspect he thought his son was involved in nothing more than a big prank or a bit of larceny and needs some counseling.”

“What do you think will happen to the kid?”

“Depends on where he’s tried.” He took my arm. “Now what?”

I looked at my watch. It was just past noon. “Our train is at two. Shall we check with Roddy Combes and see if the Great Spitalfields Pancake Race is on? Could be fun.”

He smiled and bobbed his head, meaning, I thought, Why not? I texted Roddy, told him we were in London, and got an immediate return answer. “Runners are warming up. Half an hour until first heat. Tube is jammed, forget parking. Chopper best way in. Meet for dinner after? Married yet?”

Staying for dinner would mean either a very late return to Paris, or getting a hotel for the night in London. We asked for a rain check. And answered the last question with, Not yet. France had a forty-day residency requirement to get a marriage license. That left two choices: wait until after I was back in France after finishing the unexploded bomb film in L.A., or marry in California. We had a nice lunch in Mayfair, and caught the two o’clock Eurostar to Paris.

We checked on Madame Gonsalves when we got home. She had hobbled around her kitchen to get a pot of chicken soup simmering on the stove, and seemed happy enough to just sit in her big chair with her sore knee propped on an ottoman to watch her television programs.

Guido had carried every lamp in Isabelle’s apartment down into the library to use as spots and filler lights so he could film the room. He was in the process of hauling lights back up the stairs when we came in.

“Yo,” he said, handing me the two bedside lamps he had taken from the master bedroom. “I think you have mice.”

“In the library? That can’t be good.”

“No. In the wine cellar. You might want to arm yourself with a broom or something next time you go in there.”

“Did you look?” I asked.

“Hell no. I hate mice.”

“We’ll talk to Madame Gonsalves about an exterminator.” I followed him down the stairs for the next load. “Other than the vermin, how do you like the apartment?”

“It’s cool here. This is real Paris, you know? I went out for a walk and must have shot frames of a hundred great doorways. I love the doors.”

“Do you think you could live here?”

“In Paris? Definitely.”

“Yes. But could you live in this apartment?”

“If we sign on to work here, Maggie, I’ll have to.” He handed me a reel of heavy cable. “While I was out, I picked up some rental listings. We’ll have to get paid a hell of a lot more than I think we’ll be offered to afford both a work space and another apartment. So, though I know it isn’t ideal for you lovebirds, looks like we’ll be roomies for the duration.”

“Do you think you could manage here alone? With or without mice.”

“Where would you go?”

“Jean-Paul’s house.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.”

“If we persuade the museum to come and claim their books, we could use this space. And if they don’t, Jean-Paul tells me there’s still plenty of room in the basement to set up a work room.”

“Wow.” He looked around the library with new eyes. “Yes. Absolutely, yes. You want to grab that gaffer’s tape?”

The tape was on a table near the stack of Russian books that had been left out. As I reached for it, I noticed something, and stopped. “Guido, did you move some of these books? Put them away, maybe?”

“I shifted their angle to get a better shot. I didn’t put anything away, though. Don’t know where they go.”

“I left a knife here.”

“Mag, what’s up?”

“Was anyone in here with you?”

“No. You’re scaring me.”

“Let’s lock the door and go up. We can finish this later.”

“Maggie, for chrissake. What?”

“There should be three more books on the table,” I said, nudging him toward the door. “A very particular three books. And I don’t think we have mice. Let’s go.”

I hefted the roll of cable over my shoulder, grabbed the gaffer’s tape, and headed for the door with Guido close behind carrying Isabelle’s desk lamp and a collapsed tripod. In the passageway outside, he had to set down the tripod to lock the door. That’s when I heard his mice. Only, it wasn’t mice.

“What the hell?” he said and pushed the new key into the lock on the wine cellar door.

“Don’t!” I said as the door flew open, thrusting him against the wall as a streak all in black shot out with the boning knife in his upraised hand. I threw the roll of gaffer’s tape at him, but he deflected it with his forearm and came for me. I dropped, dumped the cable, grabbed the tripod, and swung it at the knife in his hand. Guido clipped him from behind with the desk lamp, sending him sprawling flat onto his face. Guido is small, but wiry. And he’s a pro with cable. He grabbed an end and started wrapping the thick wire around the guy’s legs, hobbling him as he struggled.

“Dammit, kid,” I spat, pressing the end of the tripod against his head. “You might as well hold still. It’s over. All over.”

I still hadn’t seen his face, but I had a fair idea who he was from the reek of vomit that followed him out the door. When Guido put his knee between the kid’s shoulder blades and pulled back his elbows, the kid lay still and started to whimper. I yelled up the stairs, “Jean-Paul, call the cops.”

He appeared at the top, looked down, saw what was happening, and pulled out his phone.

I kicked the knife out of our captive’s hand, sending it spinning into the darkness beyond the open wine cellar door. The passageway was small and the black-garbed bulk on the floor took up most of it. I had to step over him to hit the light switch inside. The chandelier over the door still swayed from the rush of air made by the kid’s fast exit past, shooting arrows of light into the gloom beyond. Jean-Paul was down the stairs by then. He and Guido rolled our captive over and sat him up.

“Hello, Cho,” I said. He hung his head, defeated, chagrined. “Tell me those very valuable books aren’t as soaked in wine as you are.”

He shook his head.

“How did you get in?” Jean-Paul asked.

“A key.”

I started to challenge him, because we had changed the locks the day before. But then I got a look at him in the light. He was dirty, he reeked of wine and vomit. I asked, “How long have you been down here?”

“Since Sunday night.”

“You got locked in?”

He nodded. “I don’t get it. The key worked before.”

“Before the locksmith came,” I said. “You must be hungry.”

The mention of food made him retch.

Jean-Paul stifled a laugh. “How much did you drink, man?”

“Too much. I thought I’d die locked in down here, so why not?”

“You’re not going to die, but you might wish you had. Police are on the way.”

I asked a question I was afraid I knew the answer to, but wished I didn’t. “Where did you get the keys?”

“A guy I know.”

“Philippe?”

“Hey look, don’t blame Philippe. None of this was our idea.” He let out a breath as if he was deflating.

“And yet,” I said, “here you are, caught with the goods. Want to explain how that came about?”

“No, not really.”

Jean-Paul said, “It’s better if we hear your version now, before you have to tell it to the police. If you help us understand how you got into the mess you’re in, we may be able to soften the consequences. Or we can throw you to the wolves and let them feast on you. Your choice.”

Cho thought that over, and then launched his defense. “Over New Year’s, we were just goofing around.”

“And drinking,” Jean-Paul said.

He acknowledged that by retching again.

“And?” I said.

“Philippe got fed up with this other friend of ours—”

“Val,” I said.

“Yeah. Val has a big mouth. Kept bragging about his father and his father’s books, and all his money. Philippe just wanted to shut him up, so he told him that his grandmother had books that were more valuable than anything Val’s dad had. We didn’t believe him. So, he brought us down here and showed us this one bunch of books he said no one knew about except his grandmother, and she’s dead. Then he said that when his dad needed money, he just took one and sold it, and no one noticed. We didn’t believe him, so we posted some of the books on the Net, and fuck me, man. It was incredible. All the money people would pay for one stupid little book.”

“And so you decided that you would go ahead and sell them,” I said.

“No. Not exactly. Philippe took them down off the site. But, later, he found out that Val put them up again.”

“What happened then?”

“They had a big fight, and Philippe kicked us out.”

“And?” I prodded.

He shrugged. “And nothing. We just went back to school.”

“Something must have happened, because here you are trussed up like a Christmas goose and some of the books are missing,” Jean-Paul said. “I figure you have maybe three, four more minutes before the concierge escorts the police through our front door.”

“Okay, okay. Val came in one day at school and said that he had sold the books and we had to go get them, like now. He said that if we didn’t these really hard-asses were going to come after us. Philippe told him to screw himself. And maybe two days later, Val’s parents came and took him out of school. He told me that they were putting him in protective custody because of those guys that wanted the books, and that the guys were after us and our families unless we got the books. But a friend of ours saw him in London, just hanging out, so we knew he was lying.”

“When was that?” I asked.

“Maybe two weeks ago. Val kept calling, so Philippe blocked his number. Wouldn’t talk to him.”

“Two weeks ago?” I said, fitting what he said into what I already knew about the timeline of events. “Why did you break in Sunday?”

“Philippe called me on, like, Saturday night.” He looked up at each of us, checking our reactions, I thought, before continuing. “He told me that he heard his aunt and her boyfriend talking to the police. Someone had hurt the boyfriend really bad; broke his bones, cut him up. And the same guys were chasing his aunt, this American movie star he talks about a lot. He was really scared. So he called Val, and Val told him that, yeah, the same guys had beaten up his father and that they’d go after Philippe’s dad and mine next. Unless we got the books to him. Philippe called me and said I had to come and help him.”

“And that’s why you’re here,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“How did you get into the apartment?” Jean-Paul asked.

“Philippe had keys.”

I remembered the table in the salon where Philippe had put his keys when he came in Sunday morning. They weren’t there any more. He must have pocketed them again before we left for lunch.

“What time did you get here?” I asked.

“Kinda late. Philippe said everyone went out, probably to dinner. You got back before we got out again.”

“We?” I repeated.

His eyes elided toward the wine cellar. Jean-Paul caught it, too. Someone pulled the door shut from inside; the key still dangled from the lock. We heard banging on the front door. Jean-Paul handed the tripod to Guido, who had been quiet during all this, listening intently, and said, “Police. I’ll let them in.”

After a few minutes of explanation about what the kid was up to and who they should call—specifically, Thierry Dusaud, assistant to the Directeur Général—two of the four fit-looking officers who responded hauled Cho, still trussed like a goose, up the stairs. The two who stayed behind watched their colleagues get through the kitchen door before addressing Jean-Paul.

“You think there’s another one inside?” the more senior of the two asked, nodding toward the wine cellar door.

“Be careful,” I said. “I think it’s my nephew. He’s scared and he may have a very sharp knife.”

They shooed us up the stairs, out of their way. We found Cho seated on the stone floor of the vestibule with plastic restraints on his hands as the officers unwound Guido’s film cable from his legs. Jean-Paul watched from the salon while he talked with Dusaud on the phone.

I went into the kitchen to watch the activity below. I heard the wine cellar door open, I heard the officers shout, and the scratchy sound of a radio response, some swearing, and then feet pounding up the stairs. I backed up against the counter, out of their path as they laid Philippe, trailing dark red blood from his slashed wrists, onto the floor.

One officer grabbed kitchen towels off the counter and used them to make tourniquets on my nephew’s wrists. Philippe was deathly pale.

“Forgive me, Aunt,” he whispered as I dropped to the floor beside his head. I caressed his cheek and put my lips against his ear.

“Shh,” I said. “Don’t talk.”

“But—”

“Philippe, don’t talk. Don’t talk in the ambulance, don’t talk to the doctors, don’t talk to anyone. Do you understand?”

Clearly, he did not.

“The next person you talk to will be your lawyer. Your avocat. Promise me.”

Tears rolled down his cheeks. “You’re in danger.”

“Not anymore. It’s over. I promise you. All of it. Finished.”

“The books.”

“Fuck the books, Philippe.” I smoothed his hair and kissed his cheek, tasting salt tears. “Val lied. No one is coming to hurt us.”