Irene nodded. “Qing Song’s overplayed his hand. He might be prepared to risk death, but he won’t risk his family. And that’s how we’re going to retrieve your daughter.”
Evariste nodded slowly—not quite convinced yet, but wanting to believe. “But we’re going to get spotted sooner or later, and Qing Song will track us down,” he said. “I don’t know whether he can trace me directly. That’s why I had the wards up. But even if he can’t find me that way, then he has—or rather, Hu has—contacts with the mobs. Not the main man round here, Lucky George, but some of the smaller contractors.”
“‘Lucky’ George?” Kai asked.
“It was Giorgio Rossi originally, but these days he’s George Ross if you know what’s good for you,” Evariste explained. “He started with the Mafia and branched off on his own, and he took a lot of his Mafia associates along with him too. These days he’s very all-American. Land of the free, home of the brave. And on the not-so-legal side, importer of alcohol from across the world. Anyhow, Hu’s hired gangsters will be out watching for us. And even if you can blackmail Qing Song to make him give my daughter back, he’s not going to want to let us go. We’ll know way, way too much. Especially if he realizes we’re a threat to his family, from what you’re saying. So what are we going to do?”
Irene glanced at Kai. Her heart sank as she realized that he was looking at her as if she’d be able to sort things out. He wasn’t even trying to make a contribution. He shouldn’t just be depending on her to come up with answers. As his teacher . . . she’d failed him.
This was something she needed to correct. And at the back of her mind, an idea was beginning to come together that might fill several objectives at once.
“Where is the book?” she asked. “I’m assuming you tracked it down.”
“It’s in the archives at the Metropolitan Museum of Art,” Evariste said promptly, his syntax shifting as if he were reporting to his Library supervisor. “It was in a collection donated by Judge Richard Pemberton in 1899. He inherited it from his father, Colonel Matthew Pemberton, who brought it back after the invasion of China. Professor Jamison’s currently curating the collection.”
“Good work,” Irene said. “Next question: have you made sure it’s there, or is this an assumption based on research?”
“I didn’t dare go find out,” Evariste admitted. “I hid the research on it in all the rest of the documents I was pulling. And I took them when I escaped.”
A horrible thought seared through Irene’s mind. “You didn’t leave them in your apartment, did you? If Qing Song’s searched it by now—”
“Yeah, that would have been bad, wouldn’t it?” Evariste said coldly. “What with you knocking me out and dragging me away, and all that.” Clearly certain things weren’t quite forgiven and forgotten yet. “But we’re safe so far. I burned those papers once I was safely away. I didn’t need them to remember the important facts.”
Irene relaxed. “That’s a relief.”
“Was there anything else in the apartment that we should have brought?” Kai asked. “I suppose I should apologize if we dragged you out of there and left your favourite books behind.”
Evariste looked as if he would have liked to list any number of things, but after a moment he shook his head. “Yeah, there were some books there that I’d have liked to keep. But most of them were for a Library ward. I figured it might slow Qing Song down, if he had some . . .” He waved a hand vaguely. “Some sort of dragon way of trying to find me. But I guess I can live without the books. And I was almost out of dollars anyhow.”
“He probably can’t pinpoint you directly,” Kai said comfortingly. “If he was arriving in this world, then Qing Song could locate your general vicinity, but he wouldn’t be able to arrive right on top of the house where you were staying. He hasn’t taken any tokens from you? Blood, breath, whatever?”
“Hell no,” Evariste said. “He was having enough trouble getting me to cooperate without that sort of weird dragon stuff. Er, no offence.”
“I suppose Qing Song funded your research,” Irene said before Kai could take offence.
“Right. But I didn’t want to risk drawing on the bank account he gave me, after I’d skipped out on him. If the bank got in touch with him . . .”
“All right. The main priority here is Miranda. Is Qing Song holding her in this world or somewhere else? Or don’t you know?”
Evariste frowned. “I don’t know,” he said. “I think he’s keeping her at his home base, wherever that is. He hasn’t let me see her.” His shoulders sagged.
“Right.” Irene’s voice hardened. “So first of all, we’re going to get our hands on that book, in order to make Qing Song listen to us. We’ll need to promise some sort of bribe to get him to negotiate—even if we don’t plan to deliver on it. And besides, if he does find the book himself, he’d leave this world behind and the Library would be left smeared by rumour. So we need to get hold of it, whatever happens. And then, Evariste, we are going to make it absolutely clear to him that he will hand over your daughter and he will leave you and the Library alone in future. Because if not, his whole family will be going down in disgrace, once we reveal what he’s done. I’m not going to give him the book. I’m not going to give either of them the book. I’m going to get your daughter back, and then you and she will be returning to the Library.”
Anger was giving focus to her thoughts—but this felt right. Even if her plan was successful, losing her position as Librarian-in-Residence could be just the start of the price she’d have to pay. But when she looked at the personal consequences to her, balanced against the life or death of Evariste’s daughter . . .
It was no choice at all.
“Are you both in agreement with that?” she asked. “Because if so, I have a plan.”
Evariste clenched his fists on the edge of the table. “Will it work?” he asked. He turned to Kai. “You’re the dragon. You’d know how Qing Song thinks. Will this actually work?”
Kai’s eyes glittered red for a moment, a flash of crimson deep in the pupil. “Oh yes,” he said softly. “Qing Song will have no other options. And I cannot bring myself to feel sorry for him.”
CHAPTER 14
The Plaza Hotel was a great square building, as pale and ornate as a wedding-cake and as big as some castles. It overlooked an elegant plaza with tastefully arranged statues, trees, and fountains. And despite its urban location, it sat alone and impressive amidst carefully manicured lawns and gravel paths. The pillared main entrance was flanked by a whole rank of waiting taxicabs, mirrored by a set of horse-drawn carriages on the other side of the street.
Irene walked through the main door without a moment’s hesitation and headed directly across to the front desk. Her heels clicked confidently on the mosaic tiles that covered the floor.
The desk clerk was a polished young woman whose sleek blonde hair gleamed under the light of the overhead chandelier. She sat behind a desk whose top was a single piece of marble, and the wall behind her had a six-foot array of inset buttons and speaking tubes. Two presumably lesser clerks sat on either side of her, murmuring into telephone mouthpieces and taking notes.
“Yes, madam?” she enquired politely.
“I wish to take a suite for the night,” Irene said, letting her English accent show. She needed to be as visible as possible now. “Possibly for several nights. I can’t be sure how long I’ll be staying in New York.”
“Of course, madam,” the desk clerk agreed obsequiously. “Do you have any preferences?”
Irene waved a hand vaguely. “Oh, just something that’s suitable for human habitation. I’ve been told that this is the place to stay in New York. I trust you not to disappoint me.”
“Our rates, madam—” the woman began.
Irene looked down at her and raised an eyebrow. “Do not concern me,” she cut in. “You may rest assured that money is
not an issue. My comfort is.”
“If I might have your name, madam?” the desk clerk asked.
“Jeanette Smith,” Irene said. And she smiled.
The desk clerk’s eyes widened. She swallowed. “Yes, ma’am,” she said quickly. “Certainly we can arrange a suite for you. Will there be anyone else in your party?”
“Some friends may be joining me later,” Irene said carelessly. “Now, if you don’t mind, I would like that suite so that I can freshen up. Then have someone call a cab for me. I need to go shopping.”
She turned and leaned against the hotel desk, scanning the lobby. The pale floor-tiles and cream walls made the room seem even larger than it already was. Hotel staff in brass-buttoned uniforms trotted back and forth, criss-crossing the room on constant silent errands, like electrical current—or was it voltage?—whizzing around a circuit. (Physics had never been Irene’s strong point. In fact, it was on her list of weak points, along with visual art, human anatomy, and the ability to maintain a convincing American accent.) Hotel guests drifted in and out, few of them paying attention to her. For the moment, at least.
The desk clerk murmured into one of her speaking tubes, then turned back to Irene as a hotel porter came trotting up to grab her bags. “We have a suite on the twelfth floor, ma’am, which I hope will be acceptable. About the question of payment—”
Irene reached into her handbag, took out a roll of bills, and dropped it on the hotel desk. “You will understand that discretion is paramount,” she said. “Also, it is possible that certain friends of mine may be trying to reach me here. They will be asking for someone by the name of Marguerite. I imagine you can handle that?”
“It will be our pleasure, madam,” the desk clerk said, her hand sweeping out as quickly as a hungry crab’s pincer to secure the money, making it vanish under the desk.
Irene smiled again. But the smile didn’t reach her eyes.
• • •
Irene sat down on her very elegant bed after the hotel porter had left the equally elegant suite, and spent a minute just breathing deeply and allowing herself to relax. Tension had knotted itself permanently into her spine and her shoulders, and coiled around her throat with the thought of the plan ahead. Everything had to go just right.
She reminded herself that she was a professional and opened her suitcase. Inside was the rather battered tourist map of New York. She arranged the map on the quilted counterpane and repeated her now-practised manoeuvre with the Language and the locket. It indicated an area in the Bronx. Good. That was where they’d agreed Kai and Evariste would spend a few hours lying low.
This all felt deeply wrong. Normally Irene’s policy was to work undercover. But this time she was about to go out on the town and see just how much attention she could attract while Kai and Evariste accomplished the actual book theft behind the scenes.
It was a calculated risk, based on the fact that she was the person everyone had seen so far, while Kai had remained mostly in the background. Qing Song would hope that she could lead him to Evariste, or that he could use her to find the book. With any luck he’d go for her as the easy target, taking the pressure off the other two. As for the local gangsters on the one hand, and Captain Venner on the other, Irene would just have to avoid being assassinated or arrested. But she was used to that.
Time to go ahead with the next step of the plan and focus on drawing attention without getting killed.
Time to shop.
• • •
When Irene left the hotel, she noticed a second taxicab following hers. She was pleased. If she wasn’t directing attention from Kai and Evariste, she wasn’t doing her job.
She’d spent half an hour in her suite, freshening up and having a quick meal. It was mid-afternoon by now, and she was hungry. That had been quite long enough for hotel staff to make discreet phone calls about her identity. She’d been on edge walking out through the lobby to the waiting cab, just in case someone was going to try another assassination, but nothing had happened. Every instinct in her body was screaming at her to dress more unobtrusively and sneak out of the hotel via the staff entrance. It was hard to fight the habits of a lifetime.
“Somewhere that I can buy some decent clothing,” she ordered the driver. “My own luggage was held up. And then a good bookshop. And then I need to visit the New York Public Library.”
That should put the cat among the pigeons. Qing Song’s watchers would see her doing something, but they wouldn’t know what. Would Qing Song think she was going to collect the Journey to the West? Or that she was going to report in to the Library?
As it turned out, she didn’t even reach the library before trouble came calling.
She’d made her first stop a very expensive clothing shop. Jeanette Smith would not wear off-the-rack clothing. Jeanette Smith was more in the silk-dress and fur-coat line—and, most important, shoes that fitted perfectly and wouldn’t give Irene blisters.
She came out of the shop in a little cream cocktail dress that waved around her knees, cut up to her neck in front and down to her shoulder-blades at the back, only just avoiding showing her Library brand. It was patterned diagonally with scarab beetles in shades of ultramarine, to go with her turquoise necklace and bracelets. Her coat was wide-sleeved black velvet, collared and cuffed with chinchilla fur, and her hat matched it perfectly. And even though she didn’t like to admit it, the whole experience of being fussed over and properly dressed had improved her mood. She felt more integrated into this New York now. More in character.
Her second stop was the area known as “Book Row” on Fourth Avenue. It covered six blocks and housed at least forty bookshops. Possibly more. Irene could happily have spent days there, but the plan was for her to keep moving around New York, keeping the watchers busy.
She noticed the men closing in on her as she walked back towards her cab. She wasn’t surprised when they crowded in around her and two of them hustled her into the backseat, squashing her between them, while the third jumped into the front with the cabbie and murmured instructions.
She could feel the men’s holsters through their suits. “Are we going somewhere?” she asked.
“Ain’t nothing the matter, lady,” the man on her left grunted. “You just sit quiet and we’ll be there in a few minutes.”
Her driver’s forehead was beaded with sweat. He stamped on the accelerator, and Irene was knocked back in her seat by the car’s sudden jump forward.
“I can pay, you know,” Irene offered. She was trying to work out who these men were working for. Were they Qing Song’s minions, random gangsters, specific gangsters, or undercover police? So many enemies, so little time.
“Now, there ain’t no need to get worried,” the man on her left went on, as if he were reading from a pre-prepared script. “There’s just some people as want to talk to you—”
“Pay quite a lot,” Irene said meaningfully. She glanced out the window. The geography of the city told her nothing. Curbside trees and tables, and lower buildings with shops and delicatessens, gave way to colder skyscrapers and more anonymous streets. She could wait and see where she was being taken. But she might be on her way to her very own gangland execution.
The driver stood on the brakes as the car made a right-angle turn, its wheels screeching on the roadway. In the back of the car they all slid sideways, the man on Irene’s right crushing her against the one on her left and grunting an apology. They both smelled of tobacco and cheap aftershave. Irene could hear the angry shouts of other drivers as they braked in response.
“Lady, the sort of money you could offer ain’t enough to cross the boss.” Her kidnapper tried to sound reassuring, pulling himself back to vertical and straightening his lapels. “Look, they just want to talk. It’s not like you’re gonna turn up in a sack. It’s just business.”
“How reassuring,” Irene muttered. She directed her next words at the driver. “
If they’re going to shoot me, they’ll probably get rid of you, to make sure there aren’t any witnesses.”
Clearly this had occurred to the driver. He chewed nervously on the ends of his moustache. But he didn’t slow down or stop. “Lady, I don’t like doing this,” he muttered. “My mother’s brother Josef, he always said, you get a job as a cab-driver, boy, you’re going to end up working day and night for all sorts, no way to call your soul your own, driving your cab all the hours God sends just to pay the rent . . .”
“Shut it,” the man in the front seat directed him. “You didn’t see nothing. Just drop us off, then go find some new fares. And you, lady. You oughta know how these things work. There’s no call to get the help nervous. If he don’t squeal, he’s got nothing to worry about.”
The car came to a sudden jolting stop, which nearly threw Irene and her guards into the partition. Irene could have lifted one of their guns during the confusion, and the thought reassured her. They weren’t that competent; they were just average thugs doing their jobs.
“Right,” the man in the front said. “Lady, you go through the brown door there and down the stairs, and you do it fast before the cops catch up with us. There’s someone down there who wants to talk.”
Irene scrambled into a deeply shadowed back alley. The buildings on either side rose high enough to block out direct sunlight at this hour in the afternoon. Crumbling mortar filled the gaps between decrepit bricks, and trash cans were spaced irregularly along the sidewalk, odours leaking out of them to fill the air. The doorways along the alley were all in shades of grey, brown, and black, as if they were trying to find the most unobtrusive shade possible. If New York was a piece of music, then this was the ominous pause leading up to an intense climax.
The specific brown door that her kidnapper had pointed out was noticeably different from the others. Vale would probably only have needed a single glance to mark it as worth investigation. Someone had taken care to sweep its door-step clean, and there were no Dumpsters nearby.
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