Page 90 of The Last Kingdom

He was curious. “You’re being quite open with a perfect stranger.”

“But you are not a stranger. Ludwig III left precise instructions with my grandfather long ago. Cooperate with whoever utters the words you spoke. They vouch for your authenticity. Which means you have solved the first part of the game. So it is my duty to follow those instructions, not to question or change them.”

He got it. “I’m a lawyer too.”

“Then you understand what I am saying.”

“All too well.”

She pointed at the books on the table. “I caught the interest in your eyes. During the last war, though much was evacuated, over a half million volumes in this library were lost. Nearly ninety percent of this building was destroyed by the bombers.”

“What do you do here?” he asked, genuinely wanting to know.

“I make things right.”

A curious comment.

“I head the restitution project for illegally acquired materials.” She reached across and lifted a volume sheathed in plastic. “This book is a good example. The library bought it innocently at auction in 1973. We now have learned it was stolen by the Nazis in 1940. We are working to find its owner, or at least the descendants of its owner, so it can be returned. My law firm funds that research.”

She seemed proud of that fact.

“We are checking all of the collections for illegitimate purchases. So far, about sixty thousand books have been examined. From what we have found, the acquisition of nearly five hundred could be regarded as unlawful. We have managed to return over half of those to their owners.”

“That’s important work.” And he meant it.

She smiled. “It does give me a great satisfaction. And it occupies an old woman’s busy mind.”

She was trying hard to be disarming, and he wondered why.

“There are so many mysteries here,” she said. “A few years ago an Italian scholar discovered among our Johann Jakob Fugger manuscripts an eleventh-century Greek codex containing twenty-nine ancient homilies, previously unpublished, by the theologian Origen of Alexandria. Can you imagine? What a treasure.”

She was definitely posturing, feeling him out. Lawyer to lawyer. Trying to learn what she could without seeming interested.

So he obliged her and asked, “How long have you been waiting for somebody to say those words?”

“All my adult life. My father passed the duty on to me, as his father did to him. No one came to any of us, until today.”

“What is going on here? Why all this secrecy?”

“My grandfather had the honor of being the personal lawyer for King Ludwig II, then the prince regent Luitpold, and finally King Ludwig III. The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were an exciting time in Bavaria. So much happened. Some good. Some wonderful. Some awful.”

“You haven’t answered my question.”

“Nein, I have not.”

“I suspect you had me brought here to see what I know.” He hesitated. “And, too, perhaps, to satisfy your own curiosity. Despite the fact you’re supposed to be a disinterested lawyer. A mere messenger.”

The old woman grinned. “Perhaps you may be right.”

* * *

RIFE STARED OUT THE WINDSHIELD AT THE BAVARIAN STATE LIBRARY.Terry Knight drove the car as they sped down the wide expanse of Ludwigstrasse, heavy with midday traffic. Malone’s phone was still centered at the library’s location. From what he’d been able to learn, the building itself was massive, shaped like a closedHat the top and bottom. Tens of thousands of square feet over multiple floors, and, contrary to television and movies, no amount of remote tracking could narrow down the search to one particular spot within that building. And though he knew where Malone was, he had no idea why he was there.

Which was even more troubling.

He knew what Koger would do. Search for Paul Bryie, knowing Bryie had sold him out. Which he had. But good luck finding the man and proving anything. Bryie had gone to ground and would stay there until Koger was dead. Then he’d baskin the protection from his friends within the agency. Friends who did not care for Koger, and who would work with him to hold Koger responsible for what happened to Randy Miller. Thankfully, the issues with Miller were solved and all of the materials he’d managed to accumulate on the last kingdom were now confiscated. The archives definitely needed a visit and a purge, but he could not worry about that right now. Malone was the immediate threat. He’d not counted on this level of involvement. Everything he knew about Malone pointed to a highly competent, well-trained field officer who could definitely hurt you. Koger stumbled into that stroke of good luck on purpose.

One or the other on their own seemed containable.