by Thomas Perry
“Bravo,” said the man. “And why do you suppose nobody knew it was there?”
“I don’t know. John of Gaunt and Chaucer died in 1399 and 1400, very close to each other. The next generation of the Lancaster family were dispersed all over Europe when John of Gaunt died. One daughter was queen of Portugal, and one was queen of Castile. The son Henry was exiled for life, returned to fight for the throne, and then became King Henry IV. It’s possible that when John died, some servant was tidying up and put the manuscript in a cubbyhole with a hundred others. John of Gaunt would have been horrified, but most common people were still illiterate, and wouldn’t have known what it was.”
“I can see I selected the right expert,” said the man. “I had considered Bethune at Harvard, and a few others, of course. But you know medieval people as though you meet them on the street every day.”
“Thank you,” said Hallkyn. Maybe he had misjudged this man, based on a mistaken impression of his manner. “I assume you brought the manuscript to my attention because you’d like my advice, and I’d be happy to help. Are you planning to donate it to a library or a university?”
“No, I’m not,” the man said.
Hallkyn’s heart sank. “What, then? Are you putting it up for sale?”
“Not quite,” said the man. “I’m holding it for ransom. If I don’t get the right price, I’m going to kill it.”
“What?” said Hallkyn. “I don’t understand.”
“Sure you do,” the man said. “There are rich men who want to own things—a Rembrandt, Da Vinci’s sketches, Lincoln’s letters. Ordinary, serious men such as you never expect to be the sole owner of an essential piece of our culture. All you care about or need is that it exists. For scholars like you, the manuscript of a great work is only of value because it bears the clear authoritative text. Once the text is reprinted, you can study the work, no matter who owns it. So regrettably, the people I’m threatening directly are those like you. If I don’t get my price within a week, The Book of the Lion will go back to not existing. It will die.”
“But then you’ll have nothing.”
“No, you’ll have nothing. I’ve read it,” the man said. “I’ll call you again soon.”
“How soon?”
But the man had hung up.
The next call came two days later, and this time Hallkyn had prepared and rehearsed. As soon as he knew whom he had on the line he said, “I’ve made some effort to come up with an alternative. I would like to buy the manuscript from you and donate it to Oxford or Cambridge—either one, if you have a preference.”
“No.”
“I’ve collected a fund for the purpose—five million dollars. You can have it in cash.”
The man laughed. “What does five million dollars in cash even look like? Do you know?”
“I imagine like fifty thousand hundred-dollar bills,” Hallkyn said. “It’s a ridiculous amount of money. I’m told it will arrive in five large boxes, a million dollars to a box.”
“I won’t sell anyone the manuscript,” the man said. “But I’ve decided that the ransom will be five million dollars.”
“That was an offer to buy.”
“You’re a genuine expert on this piece of merchandise, and you believe that it would be rational to pay five million dollars to own it. It’s actually worth more, but I follow your reasoning. But you’ve tipped your hand a bit. I believe you will pay five million to keep the work in existence. You won’t have it, but it means that there is a possibility that some day it will be published, rather than burned right away.”
Hallkyn felt sweat forming on his scalp and his forehead. He had bid too low. “If we could increase the price, would you sell?”
“No. It’s not for sale. Five million dollars keeps it in existence for now.”
“Please,” said Hallkyn. “It’s worth so much more than one person’s whim.”
“I’m glad you think so,” the man said. “Get the money together, and have it in the city of Boston, loaded in a black Cadillac Escalade before seven a.m. on the day after tomorrow. Please repeat what I said.”
“You want the money in a Cadillac Escalade in Boston at seven the day after tomorrow.”
“Don’t sound so hang-dog. I’m giving you what you really want.”
“What makes you think I want that?” “It’s what you should want. You could never own such a priceless object under any circumstances. You have backers, and the work would be under their control, not yours. The important thing is that the world won’t lose it. A scholar of medieval literature should be better at taking the long view.”
Hallkyn said, “I’ve spent a lifetime studying these works because I love them and have a great deal of curiosity about them, even the ones I know well. I want to read this one.”
“Good answer,” said the man. “I’ll call on Wednesday to tell you where to bring the Cadillac.”
“Me? I wasn’t planning—”
“Then all is lost. The driver has to be someone who knows what is at stake—you.”
“All right,” Hallkyn said.
Hallkyn tensed, waiting for more patronizing patter, but all he heard was absence. The man had said all he wanted to.
When Hallkyn called Spanner, he was both afraid to tell him and afraid not to. He repeated, as well as he could, everything that the man had said.
Spanner was silent for a moment. “All right, Dominic. You’ve done as well as anyone could. It was always possible that this man would turn out to be a lunatic. You still believe that he has the real manuscript?”
“I do,” said Hallkyn. “The work that’s summarized in his email is exactly the work that Chaucer would have done just at that time of his life. The style of writing in the passages I could read is right. Even the physical manuscript is right for that period of his life—thin vellum written in a fine court hand. Chaucer was already rich and well-known. It all fits too well to be a fake.”
“Then let me take over from here and make a few arrangements. You fly to Boston. Stay at the Lenox, so I’ll know where to find you.”
“But what are you planning to do?”
“For one thing, get a Cadillac Escalade to Boston with five million dollars in cash inside it. Just get settled in Boston, wait for his next call, and do what he says. Whatever happens, we’re going to try.”
“But what are you thinking?”
Spanner sighed. “I’m thinking that we’ve reached the point where we can use some professional help. I know some people who will be useful in this situation.” Spanner seemed distracted. “Excuse me for a second.” In a moment he was back. “Okay. We’ve got a flight for you and a reservation at the Lenox. Be at the airport tomorrow morning and take the 11:15 flight to Boston.”
“But are you sure that’s—”
“Yes, I am,” he said. “Extorting money in exchange for not destroying a missing piece of the world’s cultural history is undoubtedly illegal. Destroying it would be worse. In any case, we have to fight this and preserve it. Get packed.”
The next evening, Hallkyn was in his room at the Lenox Hotel when his cell phone rang. He looked at it as though it contained a poisonous snake, but he reached for it anyway. “I know what you thought,” said Spanner. “But it’s only me. I’m downstairs in the lobby. Come down.”
Hallkyn put on his sport coat and hurried to the elevator. When the shining brass door opened he charged out, turned right past the front desk, and spotted Spanner sitting in an easy chair in the lobby, alone.
He realized that he had almost forgotten the most distinctive part of Spanner’s appearance—his ease. His elbows rested on the chair’s overstuffed arms, and his legs were extended, crossed at the ankle, and his head rested against the chair’s back.
When he saw Hallkyn he jumped up and shook his hand. “Dom!” he said. “So glad you could make it.”
And then there was an extraordinary thing. He said, “Let me introduce you.” He turned his head and two men on a nearby couch stood. �
��This is Mr. Hanlon, Mr. Stokes.” He turned his head the other way. “Mr. Garner. Miss Turner, and Miss Day.”
Hallkyn realized that the entire lobby was, at this moment, occupied by Spanner’s operatives. The five all seemed very different at first. Hanlon was at least fifty, with gray hair and the build of an old football coach. Stokes and Garner were shorter, one light-skinned with reddish hair, and the other black. The two women were about thirty and both slim but unremarkable looking. Then the five began to seem alike to Hallkyn. They all had the eyes of police officers—patient and observant, but not optimistic, as though they expected everyone they met to do something disappointing very soon.
Hallkyn made a point of going to each one and shaking hands, not only because he knew it would help him remember their faces, but also because of a sudden urge to prove to them that they were wrong about him. He saw that it didn’t change their opinion of him. The eyes were still on him, waiting for the inevitable disappointment, and it occurred to him that everybody probably tried to persuade them of his innocence.
Spanner said, “Come out with us,” and headed for the door.
Hallkyn hurried to catch up with him, and in a moment they were through the circular door out on Boylston Street. As they walked, Hallkyn looked over his shoulder, wondering if all of them would be walking along Boylston Street like a parade. He was instead mystified by the fact that the others had already faded into the landscape. The two women were walking along talking animatedly to each other, both now unaccountably equipped with shopping bags from nearby stores. They stopped to look in a shop window. Hanlon was lumbering along by himself twenty feet ahead of them. Garner and Stokes came last, and it was difficult to tell whether they were together, much less that they had anything to do with the others. Garner was talking on a cell phone, and Stokes seemed to be looking for a cab.
Hallkyn asked Spanner, “Are they police?”
“Not at the moment. They all have been, of one sort or another. Now they work for a security corporation. They’ve all handled kidnappings and ransom exchanges, mostly in other countries. That’s one of their specialties.”
They walked two blocks before Spanner said, “Up here at number 800 is the Prudential Center parking garage. The Escalade is parked there.”
They entered the lobby of the building and took an elevator down to the second level. When they got out, the Escalade was in front of them. “An ungainly, ugly car,” Spanner said. “But it’s all yours for a day.”
As they walked closer, the others of their party arrived. Mr. Hanlon began the tour. He opened the back door. “Here are the boxes. The suspect probably won’t keep the Escalade because he’ll expect that it’s bugged, wired, and packed with transponders so he can be located. He’ll dump it. The only thing we can be sure he won’t dump is the money.”
“Wait,” said Hallkyn. “You’re planning to follow me?”
Hanlon looked at Spanner.
Spanner said, “Of course.”
Hallkyn felt desperate. “But if he sees he’s being followed, he’ll destroy the manuscript.”
Hanlon said, “We’re fairly certain that this man is not going to be there himself. He’ll have an accomplice drive the car. He’ll be someplace safe, far away. But you’re right. If his co-conspirator doesn’t perform some prearranged signal at a certain time, he may very well destroy the property. We’ll be sure to stay out of sight, and we have no plan to interfere with the co-conspirator’s actions.”
“What is the plan, then?”
“To find out where the accomplice takes the money,” Hanlon said. “We expect that the money will be moved to a second vehicle, and probably this man is smart enough to leave the boxes in the Cadillac and take the money in some other method of containment. And that is why—” He paused to build suspense. “The money itself holds the transponders.”
He reached into his coat pocket and handed Hallkyn a stack of hundred dollar bills with a paper band that said, “$10,000.” Hallkyn wasn’t accustomed to handling banded cash, but it looked about the way he had imagined, black printing on a white band, with the numerals apparently embossed, slightly raised. He held it out to give it back to Mr. Hanlon, but Hanlon only pointed at the band. “The chip containing the circuitry is in the first of the zeros, the other zeros are power storage batteries, and the dollar sign is a thin wire antenna. There are five hundred of these bands, of course.”
The “of course” caught Hallkyn by surprise, but he remembered that five hundred wasn’t really a choice, just the number of ten thousand dollar stacks in five million dollars. “Yes, I see.”
“No matter how many times they change vehicles, or what the new container is, the money is sure to find its way to this extortion suspect.”
“What if the co-conspirator takes the money to a bank?” said Hallkyn.
“If he puts it in a bank’s safe, we’ll know which bank. If he deposits it in an account, the bank has to report the transaction to the federal government. Even if he deposits it in five hundred banks, they’d all have to file reports.”
“The money could be traced,” said Spanner. “It’s another of their specialties.”
Hallkyn spent most of the next day waiting for the call, sitting alone in his hotel room. He had brought nothing with him to read. He barely dared to watch the television, but after he had set the volume so low that he could be sure he would hear his phone ring, he tried. He had not watched television in years, and found that the picture was much better than it used to be, but the programs were still of little interest to him. Late in the afternoon, the phone rang.
“Are you still interested in paying me five million dollars not to destroy my manuscript?”
“Yes,” Hallkyn said.
“Then drive the money across the Charles River to Cambridge.”
“That’s it?”
“Yes. When you’re there I’ll call you again.”
Hallkyn practically ran to the Prudential Building garage where the Cadillac was parked. As he approached it, he saw Mr. Stokes and Mr. Garner both sitting in cars in different parts of the garage.
He started the Escalade and drove. He knew that the other security people would be somewhere on the streets, watching for the man. Hallkyn had been told that the man wouldn’t see the security team, that they would be following the signals that five hundred paper bands would be transmitting.
When he had crossed the bridge to Cambridge, his cell phone rang again. The man told him to drive west, and when he had driven nearly to Waltham on Route 20, the man called to tell him to go down to the Massachusetts Turnpike and drive east.
As Hallkyn drove, cars passed him on the left and on the right, and sometimes the people inside seemed to be studying him. It occurred to him that maybe the man wasn’t just sending him on a crazy drive. Maybe he was one of those men driving along beside him, studying the Cadillac, or looking for signs he was communicating with a security team. Maybe the man had helpers searching the traffic lanes for followers.
He had no choice but to follow the man’s orders. None of this mattered, he knew, because Spanner’s people were following him electronically. He took the exit the man told him to. He drove up one street and down the next as the man directed, and then the man said, “There’s a bus stop a block ahead to your right. Pull to a stop there.”
When he did, an older man in a coat sweater and brimmed hat who was sitting on a bench there got up, ran to the driver’s side, and flung the door open. He said, “Go around to the passenger side and let me drive.”
This was not at all what Hallkyn expected. As the man climbed in he retreated to the other seat, and got out the other door. “You can leave me here,” he said.
“No. Get in.”
Hallkyn obeyed.
The man pulled the car out and accelerated down the street. He turned abruptly without signaling, sped up, turned around, went up an alley, then across several intersections that had no traffic lights, and then into another alley. Hallkyn was both intim
idated by the skill of the maneuvers and frightened by their recklessness. He wanted to tell the man that he was risking their lives for nothing. His allies were following them electronically.
The second alley was long and narrow, and seemed more like a conduit than a possible destination, but the man passed a big garage door, stopped beyond it, and backed into the garage. The garage door hummed and came down in front of Hallkyn’s eyes. A man stood beside the door, where Hallkyn noted there was a box with two buttons that controlled it. The driver said, “Stay in the car,” and got out.
Three younger men ran to the back of the Escalade and the driver unlocked the tailgate and then joined them in the job of removing the five boxes of money. They worked fast, taking the boxes to the side wall of the building, where there were five business machines and five duffel bags waiting.
The machines looked familiar to Hallkyn. They were gray with a texture to their housings. There was a small digital display near the top, and a small tray-like surface in front. And then the men began to work and he remembered where he’d seen machines like that—at his bank. They were counting machines, like the ones that tellers used.
Each man would pick up a ten-thousand dollar stack of money, slip off the band, and place the stack on the machine. The machine whirred as it counted the bills, and the man took the stack off and dropped it into a duffel bag at his feet.
A man a bit older than the others, with graying hair that was trimmed in a buzz cut, stepped up to the window beside Hallkyn. “You look surprised. Didn’t you think I’d count it?” The voice was unmistakable. Hallkyn hated it even more now than he had before. He thought he caught a slight resemblance to the driver. Were they a pair of brothers?
“Of course,” Hallkyn lied. “Not like this, maybe. Not right away.”
“Did I strike you as a trusting soul?” He stared hard at Hallkyn. Then he turned his head and called to the others. “Find anything wrong yet?”
“Not yet,” said one. “Nothing,” said another. None of them looked up. They were working at a furious pace.