He was back in the role of trapped miner, only he wasn’t so sure about the rescue party. His voice held steady, but he was a little scared. He considered bolting, since he probably knew these corridors better than his adversary did. But without his own light he would soon wind up facedown, or smashed against a shelf.
“We’ll discuss details outside.”
“Maybe I should call 9-1-1, in case a campus cop is on patrol outside. Wouldn’t want him seeing us coming out of a locked door after hours and overreacting.”
“It won’t work.”
“What won’t?”
“Your phone.”
He was right. Nat couldn’t get a signal. For that matter, how had he gotten one to begin with? Never before had he been able to make or take a call this deep in the stacks. Library officials were content to let the place remain a cell phone dead zone, and he had only rarely heard one ringing. How had the two calls gotten through, then? And what had become of his miraculous signal? This was beginning to feel like one of the scenes he reconstructed a bit too luridly in his books. Some doomed hero of the resistance, cornered at last by the Gestapo. Fear crept a little higher in his chest, and his voice tightened.
“What is this? What are you doing?”
“Sorry for the spook act, but we’re wasting time. I’ll explain outside.”
Assuming they made it.
“Let me get my things.”
Nat groped for a pen and a sheet of paper as he rose from his chair. He scribbled blindly: “1 a.m., 5-18-07, Am being abducted.”
Whoever found it would know who left the note because this was Nat’s assigned carrel. Then he had another idea and laid down his cell phone. “Last call on phone has his number,” he scribbled, hoping he wasn’t writing over the previous message. He then added a postscript.
“Pls tell Karen Turnbull,” he wrote, jotting her number. His daughter. Probably the only person on the planet other than his department head who would care enough to follow up. A sobering realization when you were about to walk off into the dark with a stranger, and not much of a comment on the life he had built.
“What’s taking so long?”
“I’m making sure I’ve got everything.”
It was partly true. Other than the note and his phone, Nat believed it was important that he not leave behind a single item. For one thing, it was his usual careful way as a researcher. For another, he had a feeling he wouldn’t be returning for quite a while.
TWO
NAT’S ESCORT NUDGED HIM FORWARD through the darkness like a border collie, brisk and insistent. He knew all the back corridors and obscure stairwells. Either he was lucky or had scouted the route, and Nat didn’t want to dwell on the implications of the latter.
Neither man spoke until they pushed through a fire exit into the starlight. No alarm sounded, another anomaly. But it was a relief to be outdoors, where the air smelled of mown grass and spring blossoms. Nat stared up through a canopy of new oak leaves while the sweat cooled on his back. He was weighing the odds of running when his escort produced an ID in the beam of a flashlight.
“Neil Ford, FBI.”
“You might have told me.”
Nat’s shoulders relaxed, and he saw now that the guy was practically a kid, a buzz-cut rookie. Amazing how much menace you could project as a disembodied voice.
“Sorry. Protocol.”
“You have a protocol for apprehending people from libraries?”
Neil glanced around, as if there might be someone in the hedge eavesdropping.
“There were extenuating circumstances.”
“Such as?”
The agent cleared his throat.
“We should get moving.”
“Where? What’s this all about?”
“You’re needed on an expert consultation, a matter of some urgency. Voluntary, but we’d have to leave now. It’s up at a place called Blue Kettle Lake, five hours from here.”
“More like six. They must want me to review Gordon Wolfe’s files.”
“You already know?”
“Viv—Gordon’s wife—called just before you did. How’d you find me?”
“Your daughter. She said the library was your second home. Sometimes your first.”
Ouch.
“No offense, sir, but she sounded like she’d been, well, hoisting a few.”
“End of exams. She’s entitled. How’d you do that thing to my phone?”
“Excuse me?”
“Make the signal disappear.”
“I didn’t. Lost mine, too.” He glanced around again. Something was making him nervous. “I would have ID’d myself right away, but I wasn’t certain the line was secure. Frankly, I wasn’t even sure we were alone.”
“Are you sure now?”
“To my satisfaction.”
“Shit.”
“What?”
“I left my cell on the desk. With a note saying I’d been abducted.”
“We’ll take care of it.”
“You better, or this place will be in an uproar. Small campus. Bad news travels fast. And make sure my daughter gets word that I’m okay.”
“Like I said, we’ll take care of it. I’m supposed to tell you that you’ll be compensated for your services. Whatever your going rate is.”
“I don’t have a going rate.”
“Then make one up. Think big—it’s the government’s tab.”
“Good idea. We taking your car?”
“Have to.”
“Protocol?”
Neil nodded.
“Then I can sleep on the way up. How will I get back?”
“We’ll provide transportation. You should also be apprised that the Bureau has rented a car for your exclusive use while you’re up there.”
“Consider me apprised. Sounds like they expect this to take a while.”
“A few days, tops. We can stop by your house to pick up your things.”
“I should probably clear this with my department head.”
“He’s already signed off.”
“You work fast.”
“Your name was at the top of our list.”
“Figures. I was Gordon’s protégé.”
“Was?”
“Long story.”
Actually it was fairly short, but Nat didn’t feel like telling it for the umpteenth time. He had once been far more than a protégé. He was Gordon Wolfe’s heir apparent, anointed years ago by the great man himself, when Nat proved to be the best and brightest of several graduate assistants.
At first it was an unspoken arrangement, a natural progression. For five years Gordon and he attended conferences together, coedited research papers, and collaborated on articles for the popular press. Eventually he began fielding Gordon’s cast-off requests for speeches and interviews. The old fellow’s temperament didn’t make it easy. But Nat persevered, mostly because the work was so damned exciting. Part sleuth and part scholar, he was always eager to track down the next lead, even when it meant forsaking his duties as husband and father.
On a snowy afternoon ten years ago he finally attained the ultimate level of trust and acceptance when Gordon took him aside in an off-campus tavern to confess that he was driven by more than just a lust for knowledge.
“Money, old son,” Gordon said tipsily “Let’s face it, the swastika sells. Always has, always will. Nobody did it quite like those bastards, and everyone still wants to know why. Hell, I still want to know why.”
Gordon had to shout to be heard above a neighboring table of undergrads, who were loudly discussing Simplicissimus, the prewar German satirical magazine. Or was it The Simpsons? Wightman wasn’t exactly covered in Ivy.
“Stay the course,” Gordon said, “and you’ll always be assured of a paying audience.”
At one level it was disillusioning. At another it was comforting—Hey, you could actually make a living at this! So Nat and the old man clanked mugs to seal the deal just as a student shouted, “Doh!” quoting Homer.
Not long after that, Nat began receiving congratulatory e-mails, indicating that Gordon had passed the word. And so it was ordained: Nat would become America’s next great university authority on all aspects of Germany’s wartime resistance movements, small as they were, just as Gordon had been for the previous thirty years.