Tom cleared his throat again, and Jon surmised he hadn't used his voice in a long time.
'The examples of events and coincidences began to pile up,' Tom went on. 'And finally we could no longer ignore the fact that there was a strong possibility that what we had invented as a private joke might be a reality. For a long time we dismissed the idea, but our eyes had become trained to see possible connections in the stories, and we found more and more events that indicated the existence of such an organization.
'What did the others say?' asked Katherina.
'We kept it to ourselves,' said Tom with regret in his voice. 'I suppose we were seized by some sort of persecution complex. One of our assumptions was that if such an organization had been kept secret from the Society, that must mean only one thing: that we had spies among us.'
'Who?' asked Katherina.
Tom shook his head. 'There were several candidates, but we never found any concrete proof. That was why we devised "the plan" to flush them out.'
Jon stopped pacing back and forth across the uneven floor and once again sat down on the sofa next to Katherina. Tom shifted his glance to Jon. There was sorrow in his blue eyes.
'The plan was that if one of us was thrown out of the Society for sufficiently unpleasant reasons, that person would end up being recruited by the Shadow Organization shortly afterwards.' Tom sighed. 'Simple and straightforward.'
He looked away from Jon and began surveying the room. His eyes scanned the ceiling, moved down the bookshelves and then across the worn floorboards. He seemed to be reorienting himself after a sudden awakening. He looked down at his hands.
'The first part of the plan was a resounding success,' he went on with a little smile. 'My supposed crime was so repulsive that everyone distanced themselves from me, and I think they were privately grateful that Luca was the one who took responsibility for banishing me. No one questioned the authenticity of the cover story, because who would make up something like that?' He let the question hover in the air for a moment. 'Then it was just a matter of waiting,' he continued, throwing out his hands. 'So that's what we did. And something happened all right, but it wasn't anything that even in our wildest imagination we would have-'
At that moment both Katherina and Tom got to their feet. They tilted their heads and looked up at the ceiling, as if they were listening for sounds on the roof.
'What?' asked Jon, looking from one to the other. Tom closed his eyes, his forehead deeply furrowed.
'No trespassing,' whispered Katherina, putting a finger to her lips. 'The first sign.'
Jon discovered he was holding his breath. Even though he couldn't hear anything, he could tell how tense the other two were. Katherina had closed her eyes, and very slowly she raised her hand towards Jon, to indicate he should stay seated. He didn't move.
'They're gone,' said Tom after more than a minute. He opened his eyes at the same moment as Katherina did, nodding in agreement.
'They?' said Jon.
'There were at least two people who read the sign,' Katherina explained. 'After that, nothing.'
'It happens often,' Tom reassured them. 'Folk get lost or try to take a short cut. Most of them turn round when they see the first sign.' He sat down again, and Katherina followed his example.
'I don't know many who can receive from such a distance,' said Tom, giving Katherina an appreciative nod. 'Luca told me about your powers.'
'He deserves all the credit,' said Katherina.
'That's one thing we have in common,' said Tom with a smile. 'I was his pupil, just like you. But we all have a natural limit, beyond which we can't go, no matter how zealously we train. For some people the limit is set much lower than what you've just displayed.'
'Can we get back to what we were talking about?' asked Jon impatiently.
'Yes, of course,' said Tom, but then he stopped.
'You were saying that something happened after you were banished,' said Katherina.
Tom nodded solemnly. 'Several things happened. First of all, the number of events increased. They were now so obvious that others in the Bibliophile Society also realized that something was wrong. But instead of looking outside the Society, they turned their attention on their own ranks. The accusations became rampant, and distrust grew between the two divisions of transmitters and receivers.' He fixed his eyes on Jon. 'Luca tried to keep the whole thing together, and he succeeded for a long time, even though factions arose, wanting to split the Bibliophile Society in two.'
'Kortmann?' Jon interjected.
'He was the spokesman for the transmitters, yes,' Tom confirmed. 'Kortmann was an ambitious man, but as long as Luca was at the helm, the group stayed together, however tenuously.' He stopped again and looked down at his hands.
'Then what?' asked Jon.
'Then… then your mother was murdered,' said Tom quietly.
In the back of his mind Jon had somehow known this would come. Ever since the reason behind Lee's suicide had been suggested, the possibility had been nagging at his subconscious. But he'd managed to suppress it. Now Tom's dry statement that the same thing had happened to Marianne struck Jon like a blow to the chest. He gasped for air and bowed his head as he concentrated on his breathing. Next to him Katherina shifted position. He nodded to indicate that he was okay.
'Luca was devastated, of course,' Tom went on. 'He blamed himself for what happened, as if he were the one who had pushed her from the sixth-floor window. Of course he knew that in a purely physical sense he hadn't had anything to do with it, but he was convinced that it was our investigation of the Shadow Organization that had provoked the murder. He couldn't use the knowledge. He didn't have the resources to do anything with it. Instead he opted out. Out of the Bibliophile Society, out of his family, out of life beyond the walls of Libri di Luca. The bookshop became his refuge during all his waking hours.'
'Yes, I know,' said Jon tersely. 'That part I remember very clearly.'
'He sent you to a foster home to protect you,' said Tom earnestly. 'He knew they wouldn't go after him; they'd go after the ones he loved. Marianne and you. After losing your mother, he wanted to do everything he could to protect the family he had left, even if it meant never seeing you again.'
Jon's feeling of nausea was getting worse. He heard what Tom Nшrreskov was saying, registered the words and attempted to assign some meaning to them. In the world that Luca found himself in back then, there was probably some degree of logic to what he'd done. But compared with Jon's own memories from that period, the whole thing made no sense. The leap was too great from believing that his father hadn't wanted anything to do with him to accepting that he had practically sacrificed himself for his son's sake.
'Why didn't he ever say anything?'
'Out of fear. He didn't dare say anything to anybody. The risk that the Society had been infiltrated kept him from seeking help from the group. For a long time after Marianne's death he didn't even come to visit me. Where was he supposed to turn?'
'What about Iversen?' said Katherina. 'Couldn't he help?'
'He certainly did,' replied Tom. 'More than he knows himself, but only by offering support, as a friend and assistant in the bookshop. He made sure that Luca remembered to eat, and he kept him updated on what went on in the Bibliophile Society. The break between transmitters and receivers quickly became a reality after Luca resigned, and apparently that helped. The events stopped, or at least they were no longer as blatant for those who didn't know what to look for. Kortmann became the head of the Society on the transmitter side, while Clara took charge of the receivers. There was an idyllic sense of peace for a while.'