He turned away from the old man and smiled at her. “It has to be unanimous, you know. Doesn’t it, Yorick? When the Patriarchs vote to have someone killed, I mean. What’s one life when there are dollars to be made, empires to build? It’s always about the money, the power. And in your father’s case, they rewarded him for his vote.” Dig turned back to her father and moved his face inches from the old man’s nose. “You earned first chair with that vote, didn’t you, Yorick?”
“Dig, shut up and get out of here.” Her voice came out in a whisper.
“Couldn’t do the dirty work yourself, though, could you, Yorick? You always had me to call on. Well, all that’s finished now. I’m not your janitor anymore. Today, I’m taking your chair.”
Riley turned to the housekeeper. “Mrs. Wright, call the police. Tell them we have an intruder.”
Dig straightened up. “Silly girl,” he said.
The woman glanced at Dig and a look passed between them. Mrs. Wright came up behind her and clamped a large hand around Riley’s arm.
He laughed. “She works for us. Always has, you know. Someone had to keep an eye on this demented old fool — make sure he wasn’t babbling about former projects or trying to confess his part in his son’s murder.”
Dig clutch ed a handful of her father’s white hair and jerked his head back. “That was a stupid move, Yorick.”
Riley lunged forward, but the housekeeper grabbed her other arm and held her.
Diggory leaned in close and spoke in a hushed tone. “Death bed confessions won’t do your soul any good, old man. If there is a hell, your reservation is confirmed. And you know what? You’re about to find out —”
Riley struggled to free her arms.
The old man’s good eye stared at Dig. He hissed one word. “Bastard.”
Dig’s open hand smacked across her father’s face so hard the old man’s head bounced off the handle of the wheelchair.
“No! Stop!” Riley broke free and launched herself at him, but Dig was too fast.
CHAPTER SIXTY
The Library of Congress
March 28, 2008
Earlier that morning
10:55 a.m.
Cole Thatcher climbed out of the cab at the corner of Independence Avenue and First Street, pulled the collar of his yellow rain jacket tight around his neck, and hoisted his small duffel bag onto his shoulder. Even with his old fisherman’s knit wool sweater on, he was freezing in this weather. And though he had relented and put socks on, his boat shoes weren’t working to keep the cold out, either.
He stepped gingerly onto the icy sidewalk that led over to the foot of the steps and then looked up at the massive edifice: the Library of Congress. He’d told Theo he needed a bigger library, and this was the biggest library in the world. That it happened to be located in the same city where Riley was had not influenced his decision to drive Shadow Chaser from the Saintes to Pointe-à-Pitre all night in order to catch a predawn flight to San Juan then on to DC. Not a bit.
He trotted up the steps, eager to get inside out of the cold. Cole knew the library building well. His work on the Ocracoke Shipwreck Survey at East Carolina had brought him here on many occasions to search old maps, ships’ logs, personal accounts, newspaper articles, etc. as they’d worked to identify the thousands of ships that had foundered off Cape Hatteras.
Today was different, though, he thought as he nodded to the librarians behind the counter in the Main Reading Room. He headed for the stairs to the second floor and the Hispanic and Early American collections. Today, he was here to learn what he could about this End of Days business.
An hour later, Cole leaned back in his chair and sighed. This was getting him nowhere. There was far too much information on this Mayan Calendar. Most of what he’d been reading here had little to do with the sky-is-falling-mania he had read about on the Internet. He’d learned that the Mayan Calendar was also sometimes called the Aztec Calendar and it was all based on the Aztec Sun Stone that was discovered in Mexico City in 1790. In fact, though, the Mayan Calendar was really three calendars: the 260-day religious calendar, the solar calendar, which divides the years into 365 days, and the long count calendar. That’s the one, Cole discovered, that is supposed to end on 12/21/12. That calendar started counting off the days on Day One and continued to an end date. The Mayans noted all the important days in their history by that long count calendar. By correlating some long count dates inscribed in stone monuments of known Mayan historical events, archeologists were able to fix the start date for the long count as August 11, 3114 BC.
But how did that help him? It was all too confusing. He didn’t see how the Mayan long count calendar could relate to the 40-years calendar they had found on Dominica. He rubbed his hand across his forehead. His temples were throbbing and he hadn’t eaten anything since the night time run on Shadow Chaser up to Pointe-à-Pitre. They no longer served anything resembling food on airplanes.
He wanted to talk to Riley about this Mayan Calendar stuff. But more than that, he needed to know that she was okay. He reached into the pocket of his rain jacket and fingered the business card he had picked up on her boat. It only had an email address and a cell phone number. He checked his watch and saw that it was almost noon. He wasn’t sure she wanted to see him, so he was reluctant to call. She might be at the hospital. Probably was. But he could find out where she was staying. He knew that her father had worked for the US Foreign Service, and it was a good bet his name was Riley, too. How difficult could it be to locate his address? After all, here he was in the largest repository of information in the world — and there were plenty of computers available.
Twenty minutes later, Cole was riding in another cab, and he asked the driver to let him out a block past the address he had found for Richard Riley. The street was lined with two-story attached houses that looked like they were at least a hundred years old. He wanted to get a good look at their place first, so he would be able to watch it from down the street. He wasn’t sure yet what he intended to do. He wouldn’t be able to stay out here in this cold very long. Should he walk up and knock on the door? What if she answered? What would he say?
He paid the driver and climbed out onto the sidewalk. Theirs was the brick front with the bay window upstairs and the black iron gate that separated the little front yard from the street. He supposed it was a lovely neighborhood in the summer, but now the trees that lined the street stretched their bare black branches towards the sky like spindly thorns. It had started snowing during the drive, so Cole dropped his duffel and pulled the hood of his rain jacket up over his head. He cinched the string tight under his chin.
He was still standing there staring down the street at the house he presumed belonged to Riley’s father, when he saw a black Lincoln Town Car pull up from the opposite direction. The door to the back seat opened, and he recognized the man who got out. The man walked up to the front porch, and the door opened before he even knocked. It was the same man Theo had photographed on board the Brewsters’ boat, and the man Cole had last seen on Dominica ushering Riley into that taxi van.
He crossed the street and walked down closer to the two-story house, hoping to see something through the windows. He tried to look nonchalant so the neighbors wouldn’t think he was some kind of peeping tom. Through the upstairs window, he could make out the form of a person, a man he thought, sitting in a chair facing the window. There was another figure behind him. Cole swung open the gate and stepped into the front yard of the house. He could make out the old man clearly now. He was sitting in a wheelchair, and he appeared to be crying.
Then Cole recognized the hair and the profile of the woman standing behind him. Riley.