Page 141 of The Atlas Maneuver

The sequence of events from the past few days had reordered itself into a clear, horrible memory. One he’d never forget. So many memories had lain dormant for so long. All troublesome. So much that he’d chosen not to recall. But now only ugly lewd images reared up, and the pain of his thoughts was not easily brushed aside. True, he’d accomplished her goal and made things right, but he felt no triumph. Only uncertainty and a brooding unease.

He turned back to the shelves and brought more books to the floor. The shelves all required a periodic cleansing, with him removing duplicates and reorganizing what was left into some semblance of order. Customers liked order.

He liked order.

The bell on the front door tinkled. It had been doing that quite a bit all day. Business had been brisk. Out the plate-glass windows he’d noticed that Højbro Plads was busy with people enjoying a glorious late-summer day in Denmark. He went back to work and heard some conversation occurring at the main desk. Then footsteps across the hardwood floor and Trinity Dorner appeared at the end of the aisle.

Nothing about this could be good.

“What brings you by?” he asked.

“I was on the way back to Washington.”

“This is not on the way from Luxembourg to DC.”

She shrugged. “I’m flying private, so I can go wherever I want.”

He wasn’t fooled. This woman didn’t do a thing without a reason.

So what was her angle here?

“I’m sorry about Kelly Austin,” she said. “Though you knew her a long time ago as Suzy Baldwin.”

He went back to sorting the books on the floor for reshelving.

“Koger told me all about it,” she said. “He learned it all from Cassiopeia. And she’s a keeper, by the way.”

“I agree.”

“You and Suzy Baldwin were close?”

“I knew her when I was young and stupid.”

“We’ve all been there.”

“As much as I would want to explore that subject, I’m a little busy.”

“President Fox stopped Neverlight. But not before they killed a woman name Kyra Lhota.”

He knew that name. From the airport in Basel. She’d taken Suzy to Morocco. “She’s a paid assassin.”

Trinity nodded. “And was quite good. Or so I hear.”

“Apparently not good enough. Why did they feel the need to take her out?”

“That was a question that bothered me too. So I ordered a deep dive.”

He looked up from the books. “And?”

“All we found was an encrypted file that had been sent from Catherine Gledhill, the head of the bank, to Lhota. Our people broke the encryption and decoded the file. It was background information on a young woman, who seems to have no connection here whatsoever. But the file was sent just a few hours before Lhota arrived.”

“Who is this woman?”

“That’s a good question.”

“Since you’re here, telling me this, I assume this somehow involves me.”

His voice was unusually deep from fatigue, and he had to concentrate to keep his thoughts together. Some sleep would be good.