Book of Souls

“When did you find that out?”

“A minute before you went in.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I knew you’d be okay.”

DeCorso angrily folded his arms across his heaving chest and clammed up.

Frazier shook his head. Could a simple operation get more screwed up?

Frazier had been biding his time in the bar by composing a list. Now, he tossed it to DeCorso, who was looking shaky in the driver’s seat, parked at a curb a few blocks from the hotel. “Look up these DODs for me.”

“Who are they?”

“Will Piper’s family. All his relatives.”

DeCorso worked quietly, still seething and breathing hard.

In a few minutes, he said, “I just outputted it to your BlackBerry.”

The device chimed as he spoke. Frazier opened the email and studied the dates of death for everyone in the world who mattered to Will.

“At least this is good,” Frazier said. “This is very good.”

EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, Will slipped out of bed to get in a run before his family awoke. The sun was already so bright and inviting it shone like a golden sword through the gap between the bedroom curtains.

He turned on the coffeemaker and hypnotically watched the liquid drip through the filter into the pot, so lost in his thoughts that he didn’t notice Nancy until she opened the fridge to get orange juice.

“I’m sorry about last night,” he said quickly. “They got their book, and they left.”

She ignored him. That’s the way this was going to go.

He gamely pressed on. “The book was the real McCoy. It was incredible.”

She didn’t want to know about it.

“There was a poem hidden in the book. They think it was written by William Shakespeare.”

He could tell she was struggling to look disinterested.

“If you want to see it, I scanned it on the printer and left a copy in the top drawer of the desk.”

When she didn’t respond to that, he changed his tack and gave her a hug, but she kept her body unyielding, her juice glass in her outstretched hand. He let go, and said, “You’re not going to be happy about this either, but I’m going to England for a couple of days.”

“Will!”

He had the speech rehearsed. “I already called Moonflower this morning. She can give us all the time we need. Henry Spence is paying for it, plus he’s giving me a slug of cash, which we can definitely use. Besides, I’ve been itching for something to do. Be good for me, don’t you think?”

She was furious, pupils constricted, nostrils flared. She came out of her corner, throwing big hooks and crosses. “Do you have any idea how this makes me feel?” she fumed. “You’re putting us at risk! You’re putting Philly at risk! Do you honestly think these people in Nevada aren’t going to find out you’re fooling around in their sandbox?”

“I’m not going to be doing anything that bumps up against my agreements with them. Just a little research, try to answer a few questions for a dying man.”

“Who?”

“You saw him in his wheelie thing and oxygen. He knows his date. It’s in a week. He’d do the trip himself if he were healthy.”

She was unmoved. “I don’t want you to go.”

They stared at each other in a standoff. Then Philly started crying, and Nancy stomped away, literally stomping her feet on the kitchen tiles, leaving him alone with his black coffee and matching mood.

It infuriated Frazier that with the vast resources of the US government at their disposal, he had to double up in a hotel room because New York City hotel rates busted through their departmental per diems. It was a second-rate hotel, at that, with a grimy, squishy carpet harboring a lord-knows-what-brew of old emissions. Frazier was sprawled on his twin bed, drinking an awful cup of room-service coffee in his boxers. On the other bed, DeCorso was working away at his laptop, his head wrapped in a good pair of acoustic headphones.

His mobile phone rang and displayed Secretary Lester’s private line at the Pentagon. He felt his small intestine clench in involuntary spasm.

“Frazier, you’re not going to believe this,” Lester said with the controlled anger of a lifelong bureaucrat. “That Cottle guy worked for the Firm! He was SIS!”

“That’s what they get for spying on their friends,” Frazier said.

“You don’t sound surprised.”

“That’s because I knew.”

“You knew? Before or after?”

“Before.”

“And you still had him killed? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“I didn’t have him killed. He attacked my man. It was self-defense, and anyway, it was his day to die. If it weren’t us, it would have been a steak sandwich or a fall in the shower. He was dead anyway.”

Lester paused long enough for Frazier to wonder whether the call had dropped. “Jesus, Frazier, this stuff can make you crazy. You should have told me, anyway.”

“It’s on my head, not yours.”

“I appreciate that, but still, we’ve got a problem. The Brits are pissed.”

“Do we know what his mission was?”

“They’re being cagey,” Lester said. “They’ve always had a chip on their shoulder about Vectis, at least the old-timers.”

“Do they knew the book was from the Library?”