The shim was through and he now worked it down, encountered the latch, gave it a sharp downward tug. There was a click and he grasped the handle, getting ready to throw it open.
Suddenly he paused. A door had slammed. The kitchen door to the backyard. He heard footsteps crunching on the gravel of the drive, coming around the corner. He ducked down, crouching behind a bush next to the patio door, and through the screen of leaves he saw her striding to the garage, keys jangling from her hand. She disappeared inside. A
moment later came the roar of a car engine and the International Scout nosed out, went down the driveway and out the gate in a swirl of dust.
Maddox felt an impotent fury take hold, a mixture of frustration, disappointment, and anger. The bitch didn't know how lucky she was. And now he'd have to search the house without her help.
He waited five minutes for the dust to settle, then he stood up and slid open the patio door, stepped inside, shut it behind him. The house was cool and smelled of roses. He controlled his breathing, calmed himself down, focusing his mind on the search ahead.
He started in the kitchen, working swiftly and methodically. Before he touched anything he noted where it was, then returned it to its original position. If the notebook was not in the house, it would be a mistake to alarm them. But if the notebook was there, he'd find it.
16
DR. IAIN CORVUS strolled to the lone window of his office facing Central Park. He could see the park pond, a bright sheet of metal reflecting the afternoon sunlight. As he watched, a rowboat drifted across the water-a father and his son on an outing together, each manning an oar. Corvus watched the oars slowly dipping as the boat crept across the water. The young son appeared to be struggling with his oar, and finally it hopped out of the oarlock and slipped into the water, floating away. The father rose and gestured in wrath, all of it taking place in silent, distant pantomime.
Father and son. Corvus felt a faint sickness in his gut. The charming little scene reminded him of his own father, late of the British Museum, one the most famous biologists in England. By the time his father was thirty-five, Corvus's present age, he was already a fellow of the Royal Society, winner of the Crippen Medal, and on the Queen's birthday list to receive a K.C.B.E. Corvus felt a shiver of old anger as he recalled his father's mustachioed face, veiny cheeks, and military bearing, his spotted hand perpetually closed around a whiskey-and-soda, his voice offering sarcastic correction. The old bastard had died ten years ago of a stroke, fell over like a dead mackerel, scattering ice cubes on the Aubusson carpet of their town house in Wilton Crescent, London. Sure, Corvus had inherited a bundle, but neither that nor his name had helped him get a job at the British Museum, the only place he'd ever wanted to work.
Now he was thirty-five and still Assistant Curator in the Department of Paleontology, hat in hand, awaiting tenure. Without tenure, he was only half a scientist-half a human being, really. Assistant Curator. He could almost smell the odor of failure clinging to it.
Corvus had never fit into the American academic perpetual-motion machine; he wasn't a member in good standing of the
milling gray herd. He knew he was prickly, sarcastic, and impatient. He hadn't joined in their playground games. He had come up for tenure three years before but the decision had been deferred; his paleontological research trips to Tung Nor Valley in Sinkiang had not borne fruit. For the past three years he'd been running around like a blue-arsed fly with precious little to show for it. Until now. He glanced at his watch. Time for the bloody meeting.
THE OFFICE OF Dr. W. Cushman Peale, president of the museum, occupied the southwestern tower of the museum, and it commanded a sweeping view of Museum Park and the neoclassical facade of the New-York Historical Society. Peak's secretary ushered Corvus in and announced his name in a hushed voice. Why was it, Corvus wondered, as he stood before the august presence with a genial smile sculpted on his face, that one always whispered in the presence of kings and cretins?
Peale came from behind his desk to greet Corvus, gave him a firm, manly handshake with the second hand grasping his upper arm, salesman-style, then seated him in an antique Shaker chair before a marble fireplace-unlike the one in his own office, this one worked. Only when he was assured Corvus was comfortable did he take his own seat, in a display of old-world courtesy. With his leonine mane of white hair brushed straight back, his charcoal suit, and his slow, old-fashioned way of speaking, Peale looked like he had been born a museum director. It was a show, Corvus knew: underneath the genteel exterior was a man with all the refinement and sensitivity of a ferret.
"Iain, how are you?" Peale settled back into his armchair, making a tent of his fingers.
"Very well, thank you, Cushman," said Corvus, tugging the crease on his pants as he crossed his legs.
"Good, good. Can I offer you anything? Water? Coffee? Sherry?"
"No thank you."
"I myself enjoy a small glass of sherry at five o'clock. It's my one vice."
Right. Peale had a wife thirty years his junior who was making an ass of him with a young archaeology curator, and if playing the doddering old cuckold wasn't exactly a vice, marrying a woman younger than your daughter was.
The secretary brought in on a silver tray a small crystal glass filled with amber liquid.
Peale took it, sipped fastidiously. "Graham's '61 tawny. Nectar of the gods."
Corvus waited, maintaining a pleasantly neutral expression on his face.
Peale set down the glass. "I won't beat around the bush, Iain. As you know, you're up for tenure again. The department begins deliberations the first of next month.
We all know the drill."
"Naturally."
"This second time around is it, as you know. The department makes a recommendation to me. Technically, I have the final say, although in my ten-year stint as president of the museum I haven't once gone against a departmental tenure decision and I don't intend to change. I don't know which way the department's going to fall on your case. I haven't spoken to them about it and I don't intend to. But I am going to give you some advice."
"Advice from you, Cushman, is always welcome."
"We're a museum. We're researchers. We're lucky we're not at a university, burdened with teaching a gaggle of undergraduates. We can devote ourselves one hundred percent to research and publishing. So there's no excuse for a weak publication record."
He paused, one eyebrow rising slightly as if to signal the subtlety of his point, which as usual was about as subtle as a blunderbuss.
Peale picked up a piece of paper. "I have here your list of publications. You've been here nine years, and I count eleven papers. Roughly one per year."
"What counts is quality, not quantity."
"I'm not in your field, I'm an entomologist, so forgive me if I can't comment on the quality. I've no doubt they're good papers. No one has ever questioned the quality of your work and we all know it was just bad luck that the expedition to Sinkiang didn't pan out. But eleven? We have curators here who publish eleven papers a. year."
"Anyone can knock out a paper. Publication for the sake of publication. I prefer to wait until I have something to say."
"Come now, Iain, you know that's not true. Yes, I admit there is some of that publish-or-perish stuff going on here. But we're the Museum of Natural History and most of what we do is world-class. I'm getting off the point. A year has gone by without you
publishing anything. The reason I called you in here is because I assume you're working on something important."
The eyebrows went up, indicating it was a question.