Ruth took the card, tucking it into her purse. She came to her feet.
“Thank you very much, Sir Mortimer,” she said with a smile that thanked him more than her words had. “But I really don’t have time for tea. And I don’t want to use the library, but the map room. But I do appreciate your kindness.”
“Any time, Ruth.” Sir Mortimer ushered Ruth to the door, a fatherly hand under her arm. “I’m glad you stopped in.” He paused and smiled at her, a wise look in his eye. “I gather you’d rather not talk about the Schliemann treasure? Or what the Metropolitan plans to do about this auction?”
Ruth nodded humorously. “You’re quite right. I’d rather not — anymore, I assume, than you would regarding the plans of the British Museum?”
Edgerton laughed. “I suppose we’ll all be glad when this beastly auction is over and done with, and we can all go back to being friends again. Or at least until the possibility of a new major acquisition comes along, I suppose.” He opened the door for her. “Good-bye, Ruth. It was nice seeing you.”
He closed the door behind her, leaving her with two secretaries busily typing. Ruth sighed as she walked through the corridor and into the upper main corridor of the museum. Another nice man, Sir Mortimer, but also another rival for the Schliemann collection. And speaking of the collection, she’d better get on with trying to trace it from that Bad-something place. She knew she was being romantic. She was well aware that it was not only improbable but most likely impossible for her to discover anything new, especially after all the intervening years. But it would be good therapy, and that was what she needed.
She climbed the steps to the landing where the map room was located, and rang the bell. An elderly uniformed guard answered, studied the card she presented with a suspicious eye as not being the standard form, but finally seemed to concede that it might possibly be genuine, and allowed her to enter. He handed back the card.
“Do you know how to use the map room?” he asked, as if anyone with less than a standard reader’s card would most probably not.
“Yes, I had a card here years ago.” She tucked the precious card into her purse and walked into the file room. She located and withdrew the notebook containing listings for maps beginning with the letters GER and began leafing through it. There were maps for every section of Germany from the time, ages back, when the country was merely a loose federation of states and cities, up to the present, including several that had been issued that same year. Ruth located one that was cross-referenced to SCAN, and read the description. It was for northern Germany and southern Scandinavia, and was dated 1945. Precisely what she wanted! A good omen, she thought, and filled out the necessary slip to have the map brought from the files. This done she replaced the notebook and went to the desk, handing her slip to the girl there. The girl started to leave the room and then returned, leafing in a basket on the desk. She nodded as she located a slip there, and looked up.
“I thought that number was familiar,” she said. “I’m afraid you’ll have to wait. That map is in use by that gentleman in the corner.”
Ruth looked across the room and felt a shock, a tingling that seemed to start at her toes and run up her entire body. Gregor Kovpak was at a table in the far corner of the large room, leaning over a large map spread before him, studying it intently, oblivious to anything other than the map. Ruth walked across the room and stood behind him.
“Hello.”
He swung about, his eyes widening in surprise, and then hurriedly came to his feet, smiling, his pleasure at seeing her evident in every facet of his expression. Why, he seems to be as happy to see me as I am to see him, Ruth thought. What an idiot I was this morning!
“I said, hello.”
“I’m sorry. It was such a surprise.” And I’m acting like a dolt, he thought. “What are you doing here? What about your conference?”
“You haven’t heard?” Ruth made a small grimace. “The conference is over. A monumental failure.”
Gregor shook his head and then ran a hand through his unruly hair. “I was afraid it was doomed to be. But” — the act of her presence was still not understood, even though he was very pleased that she was there and not someplace else — “what are you doing here?”
Ruth smiled happily. With Gregor before her, as attractive as she had remembered him, everything was all right with the world. He had not left the city without saying good-bye; he had not avoided the conference that morning for any such stupid reasons she had worked herself up with so needlessly. He was here and that was all that mattered.
“I’m here for the same reason you are,” she said cheerfully. If Gregor thought the treasure could be traced, then maybe there might really be a possibility. “To see where the treasure could have gone to, from that Bad-whatever — wherever that is.”
Gregor nodded, trying to keep the profound admiration he felt for her from becoming apparent. He certainly didn’t want to look gauche, not before this woman. It would be very nice if she was as happy to see him as he was in seeing her, but of course, why should she? To her he was simply a fellow scientist with whom she had had dinner once. And she was a beautiful woman, while he — well, he was a good archaeologist, if he said so himself, but that was about as far as it went. And an old, or at least ageing, archaeologist at that. He suddenly remembered his manners and pulled out a chair.
“Here, sit down.” He sat down beside her. Obviously he couldn’t tell her she was wasting her time, that the treasure was in Langley, Virginia; or at least it had been all these years. Now that she was in front of him, he no longer felt the need to investigate how the treasure had gotten there. Still he didn’t want to waste the opportunity of spending the day with her. “So you’re another detective, eh?” He decided to take a chance, prepared for failure. “I’ll make a deal with you. I’ll tell you where Bad Freienwalde is, and I’ll even share my map with you, if you’ll have lunch with me.”
I thought you’d never ask, Ruth thought, although if you hadn’t I should have managed it somehow. “It’s a deal,” she said.
“Good.” Gregor leaned over the map, pointing, hiding his pleasure at her acceptance. “Here — that is Bad Freienwalde.”
“Oh.” Ruth sounded disappointed. Gregor looked at her questioningly. “I mean,” she said, explaining, “it’s almost due east of Berlin, a bit to the northeast. If they were planning on taking the treasure to Denmark or Sweden, which seems to me the logical place to go, especially since one of them was Swedish, why would they have arranged for the treasure to be put on a train that let them off in Bad — well, Bad whatever. It’s certainly not the most direct way to the Baltic ports.”
“The treasure ostensibly was on its way to Russia, and the trains that went to Russia did not go by way of the Baltic ports,” Gregor said dryly. “That may have been the reason.”
Ruth looked a bit sheepish. “Chalk one up against the lady detective,” she said with an attempt at lightness, and bent over the map, irritated with herself for being so stupid in front of Gregor, especially when attempting to impress him. “So where do you think they went from Bad-whatever?”
“Bad Freienwalde. Bad is a watering place; actually, a bath, or a place to bathe. Frei-en means to woo, or to court. Walde is a woodland, or forest. So you might call it the Watering Place in the Courting Forest.”
“The courting forest? But I thought frei means free. Why not the Watering Place in the Free Forest?”