time I’d let him in on my secret. He didn’t like books all that much. A character flaw that I, unfortunately, never held against him.”
“The spying?” Stone prompted.
Trent screamed at Chambers, “You old fool, shut up!”
“Okay, that’s it, bedtime, junior.” Reuben slugged Trent flush in the jaw, knocking him out. He straightened up and said encouragingly to the book dealer, “Go right ahead.”
Chambers eyed the unconscious Trent. “Yes, I wonder that I am an old fool. Little by little, Albert told me how there was money to be made in selling what he called minor secrets. He explained that it wasn’t so much spying as just the normal course of business. He said in his position on the committee staff he’d met a man who had contacts in all the intelligence agencies and who was very interested in doing business with him. It turned out later that this man was very dangerous. But Albert said lots of people sold secrets, on both sides. It was almost expected.”
“And you believed that?” Stone said.
“A part of me didn’t. A part of me wanted to because book collecting is an expensive passion and the money could come in handy. I see clearly now that it was wrong, but back then it didn’t seem that bad. Albert said the problem was that all spies eventually got caught when they did a drop. He said he’d figured a way around that that depended on me.”
“Your skill as a conservator with rare books; you had expertise and access to the library,” Caleb said.
“Yes. And Albert and I were old friends, so there was nothing suspicious about him bringing me a book; that was my specialty, after all. Inside the books, certain letters were marked with a tiny dot. I’d take the coded letters he’d given me and put them in the library books using the chemical stain. With incunabula works I always loved the beautifully highlighted letters that the craftsmen created during the cradle of printing and beyond. To me they were really paintings in miniature, hundreds of years old, and with proper care they can look as vibrant today as the day they were first done. In my own way I’d been experimenting with materials like that for years, just as a hobby. There’s no market for that sort of thing anymore. It actually wasn’t too difficult to come up with a chemical to make the letters react under the right type of lenses, which I also constructed. Along with old books, chemistry and the power and manipulability of light have always fascinated me. I do so enjoy my work at the library.” He paused. “Well, at least I did enjoy it, as my career is now, of course, over.” He sighed heavily. “On the other end, Albert and his people arranged for people to come to the reading room with these special glasses. I understand they came in on a regular basis, not always simply to get the coded messages, so as not to raise suspicion.”
“Little old ladies and men coming in and reading rare books would never incite suspicion anyway,” Stone added. “They could take the secrets, put them in an old-fashioned letter to a ‘relative’ living out of the country, and not even the mighty NSA, with all its supercomputers and satellites, would ever know. It really was a perfect plan.”
“I would tell Albert which book was ready to go, and he would place little phrases on certain Internet sites that would tell them when to come in and what book to ask for. I’d deliver that book on the morning of their visit. I had an endless supply of volumes in for repair that were freely circulated in the reading room, so that was no problem. They came in, copied down the highlighted letters and went on their way. Some hours after that, the chemical wash evaporated and the evidence with it.”
“And you get paid very well, with the money sent to a foreign account,” Annabelle said.
“Something like that,” he admitted.
“But like you said, Vincent Pearl was a big success. Why not go with that identity full-time?” Stone asked.
“As I said, I loved the work I did at the library. And it was fun fooling everyone. I guess I wanted the best of both worlds.”
Caleb spoke up. “Spying is bad enough, but murder! Bob Bradley, Cornelius Behan, Norman Janklow, probably Jewell English? And Jonathan? You had Jonathan killed!”
“I didn’t have any of them killed!” Chambers protested fiercely. He pointed at Trent. “He did that; he and whoever he’s working with.”
“Mr. Foxworth,” Stone said slowly.
“But why Jonathan?” Caleb asked bitterly. “Why him?”
Chambers nervously rubbed his hands together. “He came into the conservation room unexpectedly after hours one night and saw me doctoring a book. I was just applying the chemicals to the pages. I tried to explain it away, but I’m not sure he believed me. I immediately told Albert what had happened, and the next thing I know, Jonathan was dead. Albert told me later that because the reading room was our base of exchange, they had to make the death seem natural. If we lost the reading room, we’d be out of business.”
“But you knew what had happened, and yet you still didn’t come forward?” Caleb said accusingly.
Chambers exclaimed, “How could I? I’d rot in jail.”
“Which you will now,” Stone said firmly. “And him,” he added, looking at the slumped-over Trent.
A voice said, “Or maybe not.”
They all whirled around and watched as Roger Seagraves stepped toward them, a pistol in each hand.
“Mr. Foxworth?” Caleb said.
“Shut up!” Seagraves said impatiently. His gaze settled on Trent, who was just coming around.
When he saw Seagraves, he said, “Thank God, Roger.”
Seagraves smiled. “Wrong deity, Albert.” He fired, hitting Trent in the chest. The man gasped and slipped off the chair onto the floor. Seagraves aimed his other pistol at Stone and Reuben, who’d made a move toward him. “I don’t think so.” He leveled his other pistol at Chambers. “Your services are no longer needed either.” As Chambers braced for the impact of the bullet, Stone stepped between him and Seagraves.
“I’ve already called the police, they’re on their way. If you’re planning to escape, now would be an excellent time.”
“That’s really touching; one Triple Six looking out for another?”
Stone stiffened slightly.
Seagraves smiled. “So it’s true. Then you know the first rule of our business: never leave any witnesses. But I am curious, how did you end up working in a cemetery? That’s a long fall for somebody like you.”
“I actually considered it a promotion.”
Seagraves shook his head. “I would have saved myself a lot of trouble by just killing you when I had the chance. You destroyed a great operation. But I’ve got enough cash to live very well.”
Annabelle said, “If you get away.”
“Oh, I’ll get away.”
“I wouldn’t be too sure,” Stone said as he started to ease his right hand toward his jacket pocket. “The Secret Service and the FBI are involved now.”
“Whoa, that really scares me. And at the very least I need to collect a few items for my collection,” Seagraves said. “Hold it!” he cried out, and Stone’s hand froze where it was, his fingertips near his jacket pocket. “Hands up, old man!”
“What?” Stone said, appearing bewildered.
“Hands up, Triple Six, where I can see them! Now!”
Stone jerked both hands straight up in the air.
Seagraves gasped and staggered forward. Dropping his pistols, he attempted to pull the knife out of his throat. But the blade Stone had tossed while throwing his hands up had severed the man’s carotid artery. The blood was pouring out so fast, Seagraves was already crumbling to his knees. Then he was on his belly. He slowly rolled over on his back. As the others watched horrified, Stone calmly walked over to Seagraves and pulled the knife free.
The last person he’d killed with the underhanded knife toss had been just like this man. He’d more than deserved it.
Milton looked away while Caleb turned pale and seemed wobbly on his feet. Annabelle’s and Reuben’s gazes were locked on the mortally wounded man.
Stone looked
down at the dying man without a trace of pity. “If you’re going to kill someone, kill him, don’t have a conversation with him.”
As Roger Seagraves quietly expired, they heard sirens in the distance. “I called Alex Ford when I realized that Chambers’ house backed up to the bookshop,” Stone explained.
“That’s why I did this, you know,” Chambers said, finally pulling his gaze away from the now dead Seagraves. “For books. To acquire them, keep them safe for the next generation. With the money I earned I’ve purchased some amazing specimens. I really have.” He looked up to see them all staring at him in disgust.
Chambers slowly rose. “I have something to give you, Caleb.”
A suspicious Stone followed him over to the counter. When he reached in a drawer, Stone grabbed his hand. “I’ll do that.”
“It’s not a weapon,” Chambers protested.
“We’ll see, won’t we?” Stone pulled out a small box, opened it, glanced inside and closed it. He handed it over to Caleb. Inside was the first-edition Bay Psalm Book.
“Thank you, God!” Caleb screamed in relief. Then he looked at Chambers in amazement. “How did you get this? You didn’t have the code or key to the vault.”
“You recall that I felt ill as we were about to leave the vault and you offered to fetch me a glass of water from the bathroom down there? As soon as you left, I opened the small safe. I’d watched you unlock it and saw what the code was: the number of the reading room. I took the book and put it in my jacket. When you came back with the water, you closed up the vault and we left.”
Reuben groaned. “You dork; you left him in the vault all by himself?”
Caleb snapped, “Well, I didn’t expect him to steal the damn thing.”
Chambers stared down at his hands. “It was just an impulse on my part. Once I’d taken it, I was both terrified and thrilled. I’d never done anything like that before; I’m scrupulously honest with my clients. But that book. To even hold it!” His eyes gleamed for an instant and then dulled just as fast. “At least I can say I had it, if only for a little while. I kept pushing you to get the book evaluated because I thought that would throw suspicion away from me when the loss was discovered.”
Annabelle looked in the box. “Oh, that book! So he did keep it.”
Caleb stared at her in disbelief. “What? You know about this?” he demanded.
“Oh, it’s a long story,” she said hastily.
CHAPTER 68
ALEX FORD AND AN ARMY OF agents arrived a minute later. Surprisingly, Albert Trent was still alive, though badly wounded. His bundle of travel documents inside his jacket pocket had partially blocked the bullet. He was taken away in an ambulance. Chambers gave a detailed statement to the police, recounting all that he had already told the others. As Chambers was being led away, he said to Caleb, “Please take care of the Psalm Book.”
Caleb’s reply surprised everyone, maybe himself most of all. “It’s just a damn book, Monty or Vincent or whoever the hell you really are. I’d much prefer to have Jonathan alive and well over this lump of old paper.” He held up the priceless Psalm Book before dropping it unceremoniously in the box.
As the story unfolded over time, most of the deductions made by Stone and the others proved correct. Bradley was killed because he was about to force Trent to leave the committee staff, making it impossible for him and Seagraves to continue their seemingly innocent relationship. And Behan was murdered because he’d uncovered that Jonathan had been killed using the CO2 stolen from his company.
They also learned from Chambers’ account that one of Trent’s men, who had gotten a job at Fire Control, Inc., had gone into the reading room vault and placed a small camera in the air duct under the pretense of adjusting the gas nozzle located there. Annabelle and Caleb hadn’t seen this on the tape they’d reviewed because it occurred on a Saturday, when the room was closed, and the tape machine wasn’t turned on. Yet they, of course, had seen something even more critical: Jewell English’s sleight of hand with the glasses, which had ultimately led them to the truth.
A man had been posted in the basement halon storage room waiting for DeHaven to draw into the kill zone. On the second day he unfortunately had, and his life ended before he told anyone what he’d seen. Chambers had admitted to having gone into the vault later and retrieving the camera.
Milton had given the coded letters to representatives from the NSA, and they had already decrypted it. From the little Stone and the others learned, the code was based on a centuries-old encryption formula. It was easily breakable by modern-day decryption techniques with their massive computing power, but Seagraves had no doubt assumed that no one would ever suspect Monty Chambers, Norman Janklow and Jewell English of being spies. And modern-day ciphertexts were all electronically generated, requiring keys consisting of massively long numbers to remain secure against brute-force assaults and other attacks by computers, which would have been impossible to replicate in an old book.
Trent had recovered from his wounds and was busily talking, especially when he learned that the government was trying mightily to pin the death penalty on him. This information included Roger Seagraves’ prominent role as the head of the spy ring. Now that they knew of Seagraves’ involvement, the FBI was investigating everyone remotely connected to him; other arrests seemed imminent.
They’d also searched Seagraves’ house and found his “collection” room. While they hadn’t quite figured out what these items represented yet, when they eventually did, things would really get complicated, since many of them belonged to victims killed by Seagraves as part of his past CIA duties.
Stone had met at length with Ford, members of the FBI and the same two D.C. detectives who’d confronted Caleb at the library.
An FBI agent said, “We knew there was a spy ring operating in the city, but we could never run it down to its source. We certainly never figured the Library of Congress to be involved.”
Stone said, “Well, we had an asset you didn’t.”
The agent looked surprised. “What was that?”
Alex Ford answered, “A highly skilled librarian named Caleb Shaw, that’s who.”
One of the D.C. detectives’ eyes twinkled. “Right, Shaw. Good, is he? He struck me as a little, uh, nervous.”
Stone replied, “Let’s just say his lack of personal courage is more than outweighed by his—”
The detective cut in, “Dumb luck?”
“Attention to detail.”
They’d thanked Stone for his help and left the door open for future cooperation.
“You ever need any help, just let us know,” one of the FBI agents had said, handing Stone a card with a phone number on it.
Stone put the card in his pocket thinking, I hope to God I never need help that badly.
After things had calmed somewhat, they all met at Stone’s cottage. And that’s when Caleb had held up the Psalm Book and demanded that Annabelle tell him the truth.
She took a deep breath and started explaining. “I knew how much Jonathan loved books, and one day I asked him that if he could have any book in the world, which one would it be? He said the Bay Psalm Book. Well, I read up on it and found that all of them were in institutions, but one seemed the best choice to hit.”
“Let me guess, Old South Church in Boston?” Caleb prompted.
“How’d you know?”
“Easier to crack than the Library of Congress or Yale, at least I hope.”
“Anyway, I went up there with a friend of mine and told them we were college students doing a paper on famous books.”
“And they let you look at it,” Caleb said.
“Yes. And take pictures of it, all that. Then I had another friend who was really good at making bad pa—I mean, good at making things.”
“So he forged a Bay Psalm Book?” Caleb exclaimed.
“It was great, you couldn’t tell them apart.” Annabelle’s excitement faded when she saw the furious look on his face. “Well, anyway, we went back up t
here and did a little switcheroo.”
“You did a little switcheroo?” Caleb said, his face turning very red. “With one of the rarest books in the history of this country you did a little switcheroo?”
“Why didn’t you just give DeHaven the excellent copy?” Stone asked.
“Give a fake book to the man I loved? I don’t think so.”
Caleb collapsed into a chair. “I don’t believe what I’m hearing.”
Before he got more wound up, she hurried on with her story. “When I gave him the book, Jonathan was stunned. But of course, I told him it was just a copy I’d had made for him. I don’t know if he believed that or not. I think he might have called around to different places to check. And I believe he’d concluded that what I did for a living wasn’t exactly on the up-and-up.”
“Really? What a stunner that must’ve been,” Caleb snapped.
She ignored him. “But since the church didn’t know their book was a fake and no Psalm Books were missing, I guess Jonathan finally assumed I was telling the truth. It made him so happy. And it was just an old book.”
“Just an old book!” Caleb was really about to erupt when Stone put a hand on his shoulder. “Let’s not beat a dead horse, Caleb.”
“A dead horse?” Caleb sputtered.
“I’ll put it back,” Annabelle offered.
“Excuse me?” Caleb said.
“I’ll take the book back and do another switcheroo.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I’m completely serious. I switched it once, I can switch it again.”
“What if they catch you?”
She looked at Caleb with pity. “I’m a lot better now than I was back then.” She looked over at Milton. “Want to help me do it?”
“Sure!” Milton exclaimed enthusiastically.
Caleb looked apoplectic. “I absolutely forbid your participation in a felony!”