Finding North Read online

  “You told him to find her at Le Fée Verte?” Dominic said.

  “I . . . didn’t know he’d . . .” the bookstore owner said. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know. I didn’t know.”

  The bookstore owner’s voice rose with hysteria. His hand rubbed his heart.

  “You have to believe me,” the bookstore owner said. “I didn’t know.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Dominic said. “I think the man who wanted the book terrified you. I think you told him where to find her to get him off your back. I think you didn’t care about her or the boy from Mexico or Sergeant Tilly or any of them. You cared only that this terrible and frightening man was off your back. Better he takes his rage out on them than on you — right?”

  “They betrayed me,” the bookstore owner said. Enraged, his entire body flushed red. “They were supposed to come back! Don’t betray yourself, I thought when I saw the book. Don’t let them know how much you want it, or they will . . .”

  The bookstore owner pointed his index finger at Dominic.

  “They betrayed me!” The bookstore owner’s head went up and down in a nod.

  “I guess you showed them,” Dominic said.

  He nodded at the gruesome images on the wall. The words hit the bookstore owner harder than any punch. He went white.

  “I need his name,” Dominic said.

  The bookstore owner gave another vehement shake of his head.

  “Fine,” Dominic said. “You’ll beg for me before they even get started.”

  Dominic walked to the door. He tapped, and the door opened. He was gone before the bookstore owner could say another word. The bookstore owner began to shake with fear. His hands went to his heart again. He looked up into the video camera and then at the door.

  He stared at the video camera for a moment. He mouthed: “C’est sur votre ancienne carte du monde.”

  “What did he say?” Joseph hopped to his feet. “I missed it. Anyone?”

  “Something about a map,” Trece said.

  “An ancient map,” Margaret said.

  “‘It’s on your ancient map of the world,’” said Homeland Security Agent, Alex’s brother, and retired Special Forces medic, Colin Hargreaves. “Do you think that’s the map on your wall, Alex?”

  “He was told I’m dead,” Alex said. “There’s no reason to believe he’s aware that I survived.”

  “Then who was he talking to?” Raz asked.

  “Whose map?” Matthew asked. “What’s ‘it’?”

  The bookstore owner swallowed hard. His head rotated as he looked at the images again. He took a step toward Paul and collapsed. His lips moved before he passed out.

  “What did he say?” Joseph asked.

  “Je suis désolé,” Margaret said. “I’m sorry.”

  The guards rushed into the room. They dragged him out of the room.

  “You sure it’s not yours?” Troy asked. “You’re the only person I know who has ancient maps of the world.”

  “I have a couple old maps,” Alex said. “They were gifts. I’ve never been able to afford one. They are seriously expensive. My Dad gave me the one in my office. I got the one upstairs . . . somewhere. They’re copies, I think. But . . . my memory is so screwy now . . .”

  Alex shrugged.

  “He must have written something on your map, Alex,” Vince said.

  “He thinks I’m dead,” Alex said.

  “Maybe he thinks someone else is watching,” Raz said.

  “Who?” Alex asked.

  “One or both of your fathers,” said US Marine Sergeant Michael J. “MJ” Scully, the team’s personnel medic. The team turned to look at him. MJ had a traumatic brain injury, which meant he usually didn’t speak in meetings. He shrugged and gave a sly smile. “Just popped into my head.”

  “Who else?” Joseph asked. “Who do we know who also loves maps?”

  “Max?” Alex shrugged.

  “I hate to point out the obvious, but this guy was terrified of someone,” Leena said. “What if he’s in intelligence?”

  “You mean, what if the guy who wanted the book was watching?” Alex nodded.

  “Oh, that’s creepy,” Matthew said.

  “I’ll get the names of everyone who was invited to watch,” Sergeant Dusty said.

  Joseph’s cell phone rang, and he answered it.

  “Yes, sir,” Joseph said. “I’ll tell her.”

  “Well?” Troy asked.

  “He’s not dead,” Joseph said. “Unconscious. Looks like a massive heart attack. Dominic thinks they can keep him medically alive, but we probably won’t get much else from him — that is if he survives the infirmary or hospital. Dominic is sending a team to guard him, but . . .”

  “Shit,” Alex said. “We were so close.”

  “They had a team going through his bookstore and records,” Raz said. “But someone’s beat them to it. The store has been torn apart. His computers are wiped clean. They couldn’t find his written records.”

  “Let’s get X on it,” Alex said. “Who knows? Maybe we’ll get lucky and the bookstore computers are backed up somewhere on the Internet.”

  “You think that’s wise when . . .” Matthew started.

  “X” was the nickname of a Belgian computer hacker turned security expert. Yvonne was the love of his life. He hadn’t recovered from her death.

  “He’d like to be involved in any way he can,” Alex said. “This is something he can do.”

  “I’ll call him,” Joseph said.

  “So, what do we have?” Matthew asked the team.

  “The guy sold every copy of The Gadfly to some mystery buyer,” Margaret said.

  “Someone he was afraid of,” Colin said.

  “Why continue to do business with someone you’re afraid of?” Alex asked.

  “It’s a good question,” Joseph said. “Find the reason, find the man.”

  “I’ll make a list of questions,” Sergeant Dusty said.

  “Royce?” Joseph pointed at Sergeant Dusty so that Royce would go to help him. Royce nodded.

  “Alex, do you remember going to the shop?” Raz asked.

  “Sure,” Alex said. “Jesse and I found it the first time we were in Paris as a team. Just like he said — I looked at maps, and Jesse wanted to know about churches. The place was a fabulous mess. Thousands of books, maps, pamphlets, collected over more than a hundred years. During the war, the owner’s father would buy anything anyone brought to him as a way of saving books from the Nazis and keeping people alive. Every time we went, we found something neat under a pile of old books or a dresser or a couch cushion.”

  “Did you buy anything?” Colin asked.

  “No,” Alex said. “It was too expensive, especially when we first went there. John and Max were in college, and Jesse had just gotten married. We were pretty broke. We found this awesome map tucked up on top of a bookshelf. It was stuck between the wall and the top of the bookshelf. Mike sometimes came with us. Like MJ, he was really tall. He saw the map. The bookstore had owned it for . . . fifty years, if not more. The owner had never seen it. I went to look at it every time we were in Paris. Then we didn’t come in for a year. We’d been too busy chasing after Cee Cee Joiner to come to Paris. He’d sold it, and I was crushed.”

  Alex chuckled.

  “Now, it’s hard to imagine being that upset about a map,” Alex said.

  “Why that map?” Vince asked. “You have lots and lots of maps. Why were you so interested in that map?”

  “It was beautiful, of course. It was also different,” Alex said. “Unusual. It depicted a round world, not a flat world. We like to believe that, in the ignorant past, people thought the world was flat. This map clearly shows that people knew the world was round in the sixth century. People were a lot smarter than we give them credit for. The map in my office is similar, but, like I said, it’s a copy.”

  “I thought Columbus sailed to prove the world was round,” Leena said.

  Alex shook her head
.

  “When did people realize the world was round?” Colin asked.

  “500 B.C., Pythagoras of Samoa,” Troy said. “A much-quoted-by-daddy-dearest fact.”

  “Didn’t Pythagoras go to Crete?” Vince asked. When everyone turned to look at him, he added, “Amelia studied the Greeks last fall.”

  “Yes,” Troy nodded.

  “That’s a great point,” Alex said. “Linear A is from Crete.”

  “We have a link between Crete and Linear A,” Matthew said. “Did Pythagoras draw a map of the world?”

  “Not that we know of,” Troy said.

  “His mentor and teacher did,” Alex said. “Anaximander is considered to be the first cartographer. Of course, we’ve lost his map, as well as Hecataeus of Miletus’s more accurate, later map. We have estimates of what it looks like, but . . .”

  Raz put his hand on her back. She looked at him and blushed.

  “The bookstore map?” Raz asked.

  “Sorry, got lost in cartography-geekdom,” Alex said. “The bookstore map . . . uh . . . no. It was not Anaximander or Hecataeus’s map. It wasn’t a reproduction, either.”

  She furrowed her brow for a moment. Her throat constricted, and she started to cough. MJ came to her side to see if he could help. When the coughing subsided, she looked around the room again. She saw the strain of worry on her team’s faces. She smiled.

  “The map wasn’t that old, but . . .” Her voice was ragged after the coughing fit. Alex nodded, and looked off into the distance. “I need to look at the map on my wall.”

  “Do you think it’s the map he’s referring to?” Raz asked.

  “No,” Alex shook her head. “No way. Mine’s some kind of reproduction. My father gave it to me as a joke, or that’s what he said.”

  Alex shrugged.

  “What do we have?” Matthew asked.

  “The bookstore owner told the buyer to look for me, Paul, and Jesse at Le Fée Verte,” Alex said.

  “Samantha told the Senator the Fey Special Forces Team storage was under Le Fée Verte,” Raz said.

  “Right,” Alex said. “And Cooper let them in. One, two, three. That’s how they knew about the storage vault and entered.”

  “And we know why,” Joseph said. “They wanted the book.”

  “But . . .” Vince said and then stopped. The team looked at him.

  “But what?” Alex asked.

  “Why now?” Troy asked. “Or then, right?”

  “Right,” Vince said. “We’ve discovered how they found you, but we don’t know why the buyer got so paranoid. The book’s been missing to him for more than a decade. Why would he care if a month or two went by?”

  “Why put the Boy Scout on the team?” Colin asked.

  “Why manipulate the Fey Special Forces Team bank account?” Troy asked.

  “That’s a lot of effort all at one time,” Joseph said. “Why then?”

  “Who are ‘they’?” Leena asked. “Eniac? This mysterious group led by the Russian scientists? Or . . .?”

  “How are the mysterious ‘they’ connected to the bookseller?” Troy asked.

  “Good questions,” Alex said.

  “We don’t have good answers,” Matthew said.

  “Yet,” Alex said. “Yet. Piece by piece, we will . . . we are putting this thing together.”

  She looked from intelligent face to intelligent face.

  “We’re getting there. Piece by piece,” she said. “I should get home. I need another round of antibiotics. I can check whatever maps I have. Raz, can you call Ben to see if maybe he has antique maps?”

  “Done.” He nodded and took out his cell phone.

  “Rasmussen? Go with her,” Matthew ordered. “Trece?”

  “On it,” Trece said.

  Raz stood with her.

  “We’ll continue to work on this end,” Matthew said.

  “Thanks.” Alex gave him a soft smile.

  They were in the hallway when she heard Matthew say, “I want to know where Pythagoras and Anaximander and Hecataeus went, what they did, and anything else we can find. Talk to experts. Call universities. We’d be fools to believe they are not connected — even tangentially — to our situation here.”

  They stopped by Alex’s office to get her jacket and left the building.

  “Did we stumble onto something?” Trece asked as they reached her Jeep CJ. He got in the driver’s seat.

  “I think we did,” Alex said, as she got in the back seat.

  “About time,” Raz said when he got into the passenger seat.

  F

  Chapter Five

  Sunday afternoon

  May 15 — 4:32 p.m. MDT

  Denver, Colorado

  “I’m home!” Alex said when she closed the front door to her side of the rooming house.

  Her voice was met with an expectant coo from her daughter, Máire Wafa Drayson. Her son, Joseph Amir Drayson, laughed at his sister’s response to Alex’s voice, and Máire laughed at him. The door to their private living room was open to the entry, and her twins were lying on a blanket where they were playing with her mother and their nanny. Maggie, their English Springer Spaniel, came to greet her. Alex leaned down to give her some love. Alex looked at Raz.

  “Uncle Raz, too,” Raz said.

  The babies laughed and squealed. Alex beamed. This was her favorite part of every single day. They went into the living room.

  “Alex! Raz!” Alex’s mother, Rebecca Hargreaves, said.

  The nanny plucked Máire from the floor and brought her to Raz. Alex picked up Joey. They kissed the babies in greeting and swapped kids.

  “How was today?” Alex asked their nanny, Sergeant Quince Davies. Alex kissed her daughter’s cheeks and held her close.

  Alex had met Sergeant Davies last year in November at the wife-swapping party she and John had attended by mistake. When the Taliban learned that Alex-the-infidel had adopted the babies, they made a video filled with vague threats, hundreds of AK-47 rounds fired into the air, and lots of bravado. It was enough for Colonel Gordon to allocate a Sergeant to care for and protect the kids. Alex had asked Sergeant Davies if she would like to be their nanny. As the oldest of seven, Quince had jumped at the chance. She passed round after round of tests in the care and protection of infants. Less than a month after the twins came home, Quince had moved into the house and taken up her role as a nanny.

  “Today was fun,” Quince said. “We ate and napped. We played with Grand . . .”

  “Meema,” Rebecca said.

  “Meema.” Quince suppressed a smile. “Can I help you with the antibiotics?”

  “Nah, I’ll get it,” Alex tapped the cannula taped on her arm. “I just have to hook in.”

  “Yes, sir,” Quince said. “Grace was here this morning. The twins love Grace.”

  “Everyone loves Grace,” Alex smiled. Her younger sister, Erin, and Matthew had a shy little girl who could charm the spots off a leopard.

  “She’s starting to show,” Quince said.

  Alex nodded and put her fingers to her lips.

  “What was that?” Rebecca asked. She came to the doorway to the living room. “Is Erin pregnant?”

  Quince gave Alex a guilty look.

  “No idea, Mom,” Alex said.

  “Erin took Hector James and Hermes with her,” Quince said of Troy’s sons. “She’s bringing a cake to Sunday dinner, and they wanted to teach her their favorite recipe.”

  Alex smiled. Cian had made Troy’s sons, Hector James and Hermes, bakers-in-training. Their baking training helped carry them through the long days and nights after their mother was murdered. Over the last few years, they had become good cooks and great bakers. Plus, they liked playing Matthew’s video games.

  “And John?”

  “He called to say he has one last case, and he’ll be home,” Quince said. “I haven’t seen Ooljee at all today.”

  “Today’s one of her spiritual training days,” Alex said. “Her grandfather picked her
up last night.”

  Sergeant Margaret Peaches’ daughter was on the spirit way when she lived on the Navajo Reservation. Once a month, her grandfather either arranged for a Native American shaman to continue Ooljee’s training, or he picked her up himself.

  “That’s so cool,” Quince said.

  “It is cool,” Alex smiled. “If you want to, you can take the rest of the day off. I’m sure between everyone, we’ll have fun.”

  “You remember we’re going to Santa Fe tonight,” Quince smiled.

  “You and the handsome Jason,” Alex smiled.

  Quince had met Jason at the wife-swapping party, where they had been hired to help the catering company. Both soldiers were stationed at Fort Carson. The ridiculousness of the entire thing had made them fast friends. By the end of the year, they were dating. Alex thought Jason might propose during their weekend away. But having married John after knowing him for thirteen hours, she had no idea how “regular” people managed the timing of their relationships. Quince beamed with excitement for her overnight trip.

  “It’s a long drive,” Alex said. “Go.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Quince said. “As always, my duty is with you. If you need me, for any reason, just call, and I’ll . . .”

  “Have a wonderful time,” Alex said. “That’s what I want.”

  Her son laughed at something Raz had done, and the child in her arms giggled. For all of the pain, struggle, and sorrow surrounding their mother’s last days, Máire and Joey were happy babies. They laughed easily and cried only when provoked. Their delicate build and light-brown skin made them seem like exotic birds plucked from the desert wilds to live in the high-altitude mountains of Colorado.

  Quince leaned in and kissed Máire. She went to Raz and said goodbye to Joey. She gave Alex a wave and went downstairs to her room. Alex wandered into their private living room, where Raz was talking to her mother and cuddling Joey. When Máire saw her brother, she cooed in greeting. Joey looked up at her voice and laughed.