Page 91 of The Secret of Secrets (Robert Langdon #6)

Outside the U.S. embassy, Sergeant Kerble stood on the sidewalk, freezing in his dress blues as he scanned the street for an approaching vehicle. When he finally spotted the ambassador, he was startled to see her only ten yards away.

She’s on foot?! Alone?!

“I know, Scott, I’m sorry,” she said, arriving and rushing past him. “I just needed some air.”

“Where’s your vehicle?!”

“Everything’s fine. Really. Follow me.”

Kerble had been Ambassador Nagel’s lead security detail for two years now, and he had never known her to be careless or difficult—or erratic. The death of Michael Harris had clearly shaken her deeply.

After climbing the stairs to the ambassador’s office, Kerble waited as Nagel dumped her coat, grabbed a bottle of water, and then, to his surprise, began typing on her computer, meticulously consulting a paper she had extracted from her coat pocket.

Finally, the computer swooshed with an outbound email.

Your attaché is dead, and you’re sending an email?

“Okay, Scott,” she said, turning her full attention to him. “I trust the envelope’s clean?”

“Full scan,” he assured her, having already run it through the embassy’s safety protocol for incoming mail. “No foreign substances.” He extracted the envelope from his breast pocket and laid it in front of her.

Nagel picked it up. “A basket of kittens?”

“Ma’am?”

“The killer wrote to me on kitten stationery?!” She pointed to the logo of a basket of kittens on the envelope.

“Yes, ma’am. He took the stationery from Ms. Vesna’s apartment. She seems to like cats.”

Nagel grabbed her letter opener and carefully ran the blade under the envelope’s seam. Then she pulled out a sheet of matching stationery, which had been folded once.

Sergeant Kerble couldn’t see what the letter said, nor could he read the ambassador’s reaction, but the message was apparently short.

Moments after laying eyes on the letter, she laid it facedown on her desk and walked to the window. After ten full seconds of silence, she turned and faced Kerble.

“Thank you. I’m going to need some privacy.”