Page 65 of The Librarians
Upon Hazel’s return to Singapore the humidity immediately wraps her in a moist blanket.
It takes her a couple of days to adjust to the tropical heat, the metric system, and the cars coming from the wrong side of the road.
And then she is back in the flow of things, buying coconut rice from holes in the wall and freshly squeezed guava juice from her favorite stalls.
She has not gone back home, however, for a change of climate and the abundance of street foods. Or even to see her mother and grandparents.
The day after her flight lands, she greets Detective Chu of the Singapore Police Force in her penthouse apartment.
Not in the soaring two-story reception area in which he’d interrogated her in spring, but in a more modest living room on the other side of the building, overlooking, a little further northwest, the Singapore River, which meanders through the heart of the city.
Hazel stands with her back to a glass wall, a cup of tea in hand, bleary-eyed from jetlag. Halfway across the room, Detective Chu, a pair of cotton gloves on his hands, examines the old books spread out on a large coffee table, a doubtful look on his face.
“This one is worth at least five million American dollars, you say?”
He gingerly lifts the cover on The Birds of America by John James Audubon, one of the 119 complete copies known to exist.
“Five million is a conservative estimate,” Hazel informs him. “Most likely it will go for at least eight million at an actual auction.”
Yesterday her mother met her at the airport with three bodyguards in tow.
They drove directly to her grandparents’ house, where two antiquarian experts waited to authenticate the books, which included, among others, three fifteenth-century volumes of the Yongle Encyclopedia , not one but two copies of the First Folio, a mostly complete copy of the Gutenberg Bible, a 1478 edition of The Canterbury Tales printed by William Caxton, and a Quran handwritten on paper that seems identical to the gold-flecked reams beloved by Chinese calligraphers.
“Altogether, these books should fetch thirty-three million US dollars—again, by conservative estimate.”
Detective Chu, who has read the affidavits signed by the antiquarian experts, carefully lowers the cover of The Birds of America . “So you allege that your husband exchanged his Bitcoin for these books?”
“It’s the best conjecture we have at this point.”
That Kit, whether because he felt the law breathing down his neck—cryptocurrency can be seized like any other assets—or because he was worried about crypto’s volatility, decided to exchange his cache for rare and highly valuable books.
There is a non-negligible likelihood that the books had been held by criminal elements looking to turn them into more liquid assets—art has been in use as collateral in drug deals for a while; it’s only a matter of time before the same happens with antiquarian books.
Detective Chu reaches toward a volume of the Yongle Encyclopedia , a much smaller and slenderer treatise, but changes his mind: The great Ming Dynasty work once comprised over twenty thousand volumes, only four hundred or so of which have survived—and each of the three volumes on the coffee table can command more than two million dollars on the open market.
“My mother is a booklover and a casual collector,” says Hazel, “not of books of this caliber, but she spends a few thousand dollars here and there. I’ve been trying to make a book-themed tabletop game for a while.
From time to time, I would borrow a stack of books from my mother’s rare book collection for inspiration.
“This past spring, my grandmother in Austin contracted COVID. When I went to look after her, I took a bunch of those titles with me.”
Detective Chu stands up and retreats to where he placed his cup of coffee, the breakfast table by the glass wall where Hazel and Kit used to sit over their scrambled eggs, at first in affectionate banter, then, as time went by, in greater and greater silence.
“The books your American colleague found in the storage room of the library where you’ve been working? ”
“Correct. My husband, who visited me in Austin and left before I did, asked if he could help me pack away the books, since I wasn’t working on the game. I said, ‘Yes, thank you.’ He then said he had plenty of room in his luggage and could lug them home for me. I said, ‘Sure, why not.’
“When I got here, I heard from my mother that he’d gone to her house when she was out and entrusted a box of books to her staff. Given what happened soon after that, it was probably the last time anyone gave any thought to the books for a while.”
How strange to think that the stranger before her, an even greater stranger then, had witnessed two of the most trying events of her life—the raid of her apartment and the news of her husband’s death.
“After I went back to Austin in autumn, I saw that I didn’t bring my game in progress. My mother said she hadn’t bothered to unpack the books Kit returned on my behalf in spring, so if I would have someone bring over my game, she would have her staff ship the game and the books to me in Austin.
“I took a look at the package when it arrived, but I only looked at the game, not the books. My American colleague found my mother’s books at the library and brought them to my attention. If Kit donated my mother’s books, then what was in the unopened box I received from her?”
Detective Chu gestured at the books on the coffee table. “These.”
Or rather, some of them—her mother’s staff had chosen not to send the largest and heaviest volumes.
Raindrops pitter-patter against the glass wall—monsoon season isn’t here yet, but the cloud cover hasn’t lifted since her arrival.
Has Conrad ever visited Singapore? In her younger days she used to stand on the bridges that spanned the river and imagine him wandering by, a new ex-pat in a city teeming with them.
“Precisely,” she says. “Perhaps at some point Kit wanted to leave these books at my grandmother’s place, but he changed his mind and decided that my mother’s house would work better. In any case they escaped the search of this apartment.”
“And now you have brought them back.”
“To hand them in to your keeping, as the only right thing to do for an extremely law-abiding resident of our great city-state.”
Hazel smiles. She can tell her smile makes Detective Chu nervous, because he understands she is about to set conditions.
And he is correct about that.
Hazel is not conversant with how long seized—or surrendered, in this case—assets typically remain in police custody, but with her grandfather’s lawyers acting as go-betweens, they quickly broker a deal.
Kit’s former employer accepts five of the rare books as repayment for the money Kit embezzled.
The rest will find buyers through private channels—with some of the proceeds going to repay Conrad, who took over Perry’s loan; some to compensate customers of Kit’s art galleries who bought the fake pop art he peddled; and the remainder to fund scholarships both in the UK and in Singapore.
Originally Hazel thought she would have to budget for the retrieval of Kit’s body. But Kit’s parents do not view a watery grave as an undignified end—both families have sacrificed young men to the wars of the twentieth century and lost a number of them at sea.
“He didn’t live the life we hoped for him,” says his mother, “but maybe his money can still do some good in the world.”
Hazel donates an additional million dollars of her own in the UK, not in Kit’s name but in Perry’s.
Her librarian friends keep her apprised of what they learn about the investigations still going on in Austin, but—not so surprisingly—it is her grandfather who tells her that Alina Kadeev, aka Ayesha Khan, is now answering questions for the NSA, and will later face MI5.
“Don’t put yourself as bait next time. And absolutely stay away from firefights.”
She doesn’t ask how he knows—she’s said not a word about either. “Sorry, Gonggong. At least it didn’t become news here.”
“I’m not worried for my old face,” says Bartholomew Kuang, shaking his head slightly, “but for your safety. What am I going to do without my little girl?”
He places a large spoonful of stir-fried pork and wood ear mushrooms—her favorite—in her bowl. “Eat more.”
Popo, her grandmother, follows with a scoop of marinated bamboo shoots—another perennial favorite. “And this too. It has hardly any carbs.”
Hazel eats a great deal that night.
The day before Hazel’s flight, her mother stays over at her apartment. They cook together while streaming a glass-blowing competition.
“How’s Robbie?” Hazel asks.
Her dad’s been gone almost a quarter century and Lillian Kuang has had several significant boyfriends. Hazel really likes the latest guy, who’s been around a solid five years.
Her mother smiles slightly. “He’s planning a vacation for us in December. Told me that it will be somewhere less hot and rainy. I suspect we were headed to Austin to see you, but he’s a bit stumped now that you came back unexpectedly.”
“Nainai would be happy to see you.”
“I should pay her a visit. She’s getting up there.” Lillian pours soup into a pale green porcelain tureen. “What about you, Hazel? What are you planning to do?”
“I finally figured out the playing mechanism for my new game,” enthuses Hazel, waving stems of fresh cilantro in the air.
“There’s going to be a criminal element.
Some of the books in each round will have been stolen and players will be able to check one another’s acquisitions to see if a book is of questionable provenance.
It’s a gamble, of course. If a challenger is right, they receive an amount from the bank equal to half of the book’s value and the owner has the book confiscated.
But if they’re wrong, they have to pay pretty sizable penalties. ”
“It does sound interesting.” Lillian laughs and shakes her head. “I’m still amazed—and delighted—that this is what you do. I would never have imagined it for you.”
Hazel sprinkles chopped cilantro on top of the soup. She hesitates a little—she thought Nainai would have broached the subject for her, but Nainai has left the choice and the timing of it to her.
Is she ready?
“Actually,” she says, “I never imagined it for myself either. Someone suggested it to me, someone I met long ago.”
Dear Hazel,
I have a stack of postcards from all over the world that I never got to use to write to you. I looked them over and decided to buy a new one of Austin instead. Hope it finds you well in Singapore.
Yours,
Conrad
Dear Hazel,
I write from London, as you can see. I brought Perry’s body back.
Astrid decided not to come, but to visit his grave at some point in the future.
It will be a sad day tomorrow at his funeral.
Yours,
Conrad
Dear Hazel,
Greetings from Edinburgh, where I brought my stepmum and my younger siblings over for a short holiday. They’ve never visited Scotland before.
I’ve had to refrain from introducing myself to the locals as your dream lover.
Yours always,
C.