He wanted it so badly!
The library doors were closed, but they weren’t locked. He slipped inside and shut himself in.
Where was it? He was sure Schwartz had a complete or nearly complete copy of The Book of Torment. Denton had pictured the whole thing in a drawer, bound in blue ribbon, somewhere in this library. Or it might be on a shelf in a place of honor, like a trophy. And he, Denton, would help himself. Of course he would take it. Schwartz would never be able to prove it was him. It could be any student, for example, or one of the cult members stealing it for his own nefarious purposes. Why not? Schwartz would have other copies, just as Denton had had copies of what had been taken in Stuttgart. Tit for tat. Tat for tit. I tawght I taw a titty tat.
Denton giggled hysterically. He turned on his flashlight and swung it around the room.
Most of the bookshelves he could dismiss out of hand. They were full of standard-looking texts, and Kobinski’s work would not be in such lowly company. The long library tables were clean and shone in the beam of his flashlight. He was surprised to find that the library was different than he’d remembered it—smaller. The area he thought he’d remembered the men standing in was not some secret niche, as it turned out, or any kind of niche at all. On that side of the room there was only another long table by the window. Denton scanned the walls and furniture nearby.
There was an old-fashioned writing desk, the kind that had a fold-down lid. It was huge, as such things went. Dozens of drawers, small and large, surrounded the lid. Denton knew in his gut that if the Kobinski material was in the library, that was where it would be. He began to search the drawers, pausing every few moments to listen, head lifted, ears perked. He could picture Schwartz (in slippers and house robe now), silently approaching down the hall, gliding like Nosferatu. No, he wouldn’t think about that.
He wanted that moment, that exquisite moment, of laying his fingers on the manuscript. He wanted to get the hell out of here. The thought of being in his car, on the freeway to New York, with the manuscript in the passenger seat, made him continue no matter how badly he was quaking.
In the drawers he found: paper, ink, pens, twine, rubber bands, Post-its, staples, a Hebrew-English pocket dictionary. In one small drawer he found several pairs of long, flat-pronged tweezers and a magnifying glass. He did not find the manuscript or any fragments thereof.
He searched twice, growing more frantic and feeling a leaden knowing descend. When he was done, he wiped his face. There was sweat on his brow and Denton Wyle never sweated. He was sweating now all right, because he knew where it was. He knew exactly where! It was inside the desk, under that lid. And the closed lid’s most prominent feature was a large, ornate keyhole.
That, of course, didn’t mean it was locked.
But it is! You know it is, because that’s just freaking like him!
Denton put the flashlight down on a nearby shelf, beam pointed toward the desk, and tried the lid, pulling wherever he could grasp with gloved fingers. Yup. It was locked.
“Crap!”
He was on the verge of losing it. He tried to slow his breathing using a technique he’d learned from his psychoanalyst. Slow inhale, one-two-three-four, exhale in a ha ha ha ha pattern, jerking his lungs like fish on a line. Repeat. Again. Repeat. Again.
Now. Key. Where would the key be kept? Schwartz’s office at best, on the man himself at worst. Denton knew where the office was, though it meant possible exposure. Still, the school was asleep, right? And he would be very, very careful. He turned off his flashlight, tucked it into his belt, and went back into the hall.
The door to Schwartz’s office was easy to recognize. It was at the end of the hall and had a sunken curved arch. It was closed. It was locked.
Denton pounded the stone wall impotently, sobbing under his breath. There was no point in breaking in here. The key might not even be in the office, and the whole point of the key was to avoid breaking into something. Why the hell were they buttoned down so tight? Didn’t that paranoid bastard trust his own people?
“Of course not,” Denton said hatefully. “Not that megalomaniac.”
None of this got him anywhere. Even while he indulged in a momentary pity party, in his gut he knew what he had to do. He would have to break the damn desk. No choice. It wouldn’t be easy. It wouldn’t be quiet. He’d need tools. He hadn’t brought a crowbar or anything, hadn’t wanted to admit to himself that it might come to that.
In the hall he listened. It was absolutely quiet and dark. He went back to the coat closet.
Predictably, he did not find a crowbar in there, or even a screwdriver. What he did find was a massive old umbrella, of the kind built before World War Two. It was large, with a narrow tip, and it looked like a steamroller couldn’t bend it.
Umbrella in hand like Mary-freaking-Poppins, Denton crept back to the library. He checked his watch: 12:45.
He began to work at the desk lid. By 1:00 he had pushed, pried, and prodded enough of a gap in the wood near the lock to fully insert the umbrella’s tip. He knew what came next. He paused, shaking out his aching hands and doing the ha-ha breath again, rolled his neck, considered strategy. Strategy, however, was not his thing.
He inserted the umbrella into the divot and pulled back hard. For a long suspended moment, nothing happened. Then he felt something give, ever so slightly, and with an enormous crack the desk lid opened about an inch and then stopped. Denton grabbed his flashlight and examined it quickly. The wood that held the lock had splintered but not completely. He shoved the flashlight between his legs and rammed the umbrella in deeper, pulled back with all his might. There was another groaning, splintery sound and the desk lid flew open. Denton went reeling. The flashlight slipped from between his thighs and rolled away. He dived after it. The noise from the breakage was still loud in his ears, but he thought he heard other sounds as well, footsteps upstairs. Frantic, he trained the light on the open desk.
There were loose papers in Hebrew, a few books, and a large black binder. He flipped the binder open. Inside, he recognized Xerox copies of Kobinski pages. There were several hundred pages in there. He grabbed the binder and ran for the library doors.
Now there were definite footsteps overhead, at least two sets, and deep voices. He sprinted down the hall and into the foyer, seeing no one, heart tripping like a jackhammer. He hit the front doors at full tilt, only realizing now that they might be locked. He had a flash of himself banging at the doors while Schwartz entered the foyer with his clan of side-locked, black-garbed cultists, all of them stumbling toward him, arms out in front of them, eyes glassy, like a bunch of Jewish zombies and…
But the doors were institutional doors, with a large horizontal push bar at waist level. As he hit the bar, the heavy door swung open and the night air was on his face. He barely had time to feel relief when an alarm bell blared. He fled across the wide driveway, across the lawn, onto the main road. He opted for the trees, sure they were right behind him. He crashed through the woods, heading north toward his parked car. He hazarded a glance back.
Lights were blazing from one downstairs window and—now—the lights in the foyer went on. But no one was after him, not yet.
Denton ran. He had done it! He had the manuscript!
9.3. Jill Talcott
Jill Talcott was home with the flu. She’d been up twice in the night vomiting. Between heaves, she’d thought about Nate’s warning. They were at 75 percent power on the negative one pulse. Was it making her ill? But no, a lot of people were down with the flu—most of the people in their department. It didn’t necessarily mean anything.