Return (Matt Turner Series Book 3) (36 page)

“Hey, Peter,” Joss said gently, “it might not be a good idea standing in the window there.”

“That’s an excellent suggestion,” Matt said as he strode toward her from the reception area.

Relief deflated the wad of tension in Joss’s chest, despite her denial of its existence.
“Phew!”
must have flashed across her forehead, because Matt frowned at her curiously as he came to a stop just short of Pete’s office. He gave her a reassuring
“everything’s fine”
face, just as Pete’s vertical blinds rustled shut.

“You son of a bitch!” Pete thundered on his way around his desk, then softly appended, “… apologies to Beth. But what the eff, man?!”

He went around Joss, stepping right up to Matt, though was careful not to touch him. His arms fidgeted at his sides—his whole upper body, in fact. Joss recognized the dithering posture. She, too, had done a version of this when meeting Matt again, for the first time, in front of Cam’s merch table.

And like at UPenn, Matt allayed the obsolete fear with a warm embrace. “It’s really great to see you, Pete. Sorry about everything.”

Pete floundered. “Oh hey, ah, your skin-”

“Nah, it’s all good now,” Matt said as he clapped his friend’s back, then pulled away, holding Pete’s shoulders for a beat. “Listen, before we get into everything, is there anyone else in the building?”

Pete mulled. “Um, yeah … that is, besides us, Gram down the hall … The undies should still be here. They’re in the next suite over. Étienne’s supposed to be in later for another meeting.”

Matt said, “Undies?”

Pete chuckled. “Ah, apologies. The Euro guys working on Thonis in the bay. I say ‘undies’ since European Underwater Archaeology Institute is a right mouthful, and
Yoo-aii-ee
makes for a shite acronym. Worse, since I’m managing the new museum, some-”

Matt cut him off. “Sure, sure. Later. What’s the most secure area or room in the building?”

“Oh, that’d be the scroll vault, by far. Reinforced doors, plating in the walls, access code lock-out, law enforcement notification-”

Matt, intrigued: “You have a ‘scroll vault’ here?”

Pete let out a dramatic sigh. “Man, if you would call a brother back some time!”

Matt clutched his forehead. “No … You didn’t … Don’t tell me-”

Thus far excluded, Joss sidled up to them. “What scrolls are we talking about exactly?”

Matt ignored her. “You said they were on their way to Cairo three weeks ago!”

Exasperated with Matt, Pete turned to Joss. “The Library collection. Well, 78,000 pieces of it.” Back to Matt: “She doesn’t know about any of this? Do you talk to
anybody
about
anything?
”

Matt groaned with anguish, pacing circles as Pete went on grousing, “One call, man,
one
call and I could’ve told you what happened! An email—a secure email, encrypted or something! A fax! You said not to say
anything
about them on the phone, or ‘any other electronic means,’ that you’d get back to me. Not even in code, you said. I followed
your
rules. That sort of system only works if
that
bloody side of it actually gets back to
this
bloody side when
this
side is obviously desperate to reach you! Like, what did you think, man? I was just being a pest?”

Defeated, Matt sank against the wall and closed his eyes. “Why didn’t you move them when you said? That Thursday, you said the trucks had already arrived. The first one was inside the shipping bay being loaded. Now I’ve led Ostrovsky’s men straight to them.”

Mirroring Matt, Pete slumped against the opposite wall, his head set in an endless no-nod as he rubbed his eyes. “Environment control was absolute rubbish. The company’s rep had crowed on about his brilliant system with integrated dehumidifiers and monitoring.” Matt raised his eyebrows. “Yeah. Digital thermostat and an off-the-shelf needle hygrometer velcroed to the side of this little box. Monitoring? The driver slides open a wee door by his head, shines a flashlight in, and all’s marvelous. I discover all this when I come down to the dock to ask the supervisor for the monitoring URL and how to setup alerts. Laughed in my face … wanker.”

Joss took another stab. “So these are the scrolls Patra and everyone were hiding?”

“Who’s Patra?” Pete said.

Matt stood up straight and heaved a deep, cleansing breath. “I’ll get back to that. Where’s this vault?”

* * *

After fetching Grandma Bubsy from her office, the four took the elevator back down to the basement parking level, but instead of exiting the lobby into the garage, Pete swiped an access card through a reader on the wall, and entered a code on the pad. The double doors unlocked with a resounding
thunk
, and he led them into a brightly lit, albeit windowless hallway with a glossy white tile floor.

A hydraulic arm pushed the heavy door closed behind them, and it slammed and rattled.

Matt stopped and grabbed one of the door’s push bars, shaking it back and forth. “You call that reinforced? They open
in
. A solid shoulder outside there and this thing’ll pop right open.”

Pete glanced back and sneered. “Sheesh, man, you aren’t going to let up, are you?”

“When the men outside march into this building, they will not let up.”

“Well, those aren’t the doors anyway. Give me a
little
credit, buddy.” He pivoted on the slick floor, continuing down the wide hall.

“Here’s an outlandish question,” Grandma Bubsy said. “Why in the screaming heck hasn’t anyone called the police?”

“The men outside haven’t yet committed a crime,” Pete said. “They’ll simply leave when the officers arrive, and return once they’ve left.”

“And they’ll be more careful next time,” Matt added. “We have the edge at present. The smallest advantages often decide the victor.”

“All right, Sun Tzu,” Grandma scoffed. “But calling the cops means your crooks run off, and no more crooks means the good folks in this building all get to go home safe.”

Matt didn’t answer right away. Only the shuffles and clicks of their shoes filled the hall as they passed unmarked doors on either side. Painfully bright overhead lights. The pleasant aroma of cleaning chemicals.

Walking beside Grandma, Joss leaned close to her and whispered, “Believe it or not, I’d trust him with my life over some random Egypt cops.”

“My-my,” Grandma murmured. “You carrying a torch, or are you two carrying on?”

A shriek-laugh burst from Joss, choked off the instant it chirped out. Matt and Pete peered behind them with matching, speechless expressions.

“Carrying on”
had caught Joss off-guard, and she chortled inside even as she felt her cheeks flushing at both of Grandma Bubsy’s inferences—loud enough for all present to consider.

Joss swallowed and cleared her throat, turning to her. “No, Grandma. Neither. I simply know what one is capable of, and not the other.”

Pete and Matt mercifully moved on.

Reaching the double doors at the corridor’s end, Pete dared, “Now, try and force your way into
this
one.”

The doors before them were equally unremarkable.

Matt snatched the card from his friend’s hand, swiped it through the slit in the access pad, and punched in a code.

“Hey! Not fair!” Pete protested.

A red light flashed three times in sync with beeps.
Denied
. Pete crossed his arms, smiled, and sniffed with pride.

Matt held the card in front of him a moment, and said, “Oh,” before punching in another, longer code. Double beep and a green light, followed by humming, and impressive, deep
shunks
, as if massive beams were sliding out of a big castle door’s metal beam-holder things.

All the sounds halted.

Pete’s head wobbled from the weight of excessive smug. “Now what, cheater?”

Matt ran his fingers down the right-hand door, stopped at a particular spot, and pushed in. A cylindrical bar popped out a couple inches, and he began spinning it counterclockwise, gloating eyes fixed on Pete’s.

“Yeah, yeah,” Pete grumbled. “Guess we have to return the bloody vault.”

“I’m impressed, actually,” Matt said as he tried to pull the door. “You weren’t messing arou—what the hell?”

The door wouldn’t budge.

“It’s the ventilation,” Pete said. “Just pull it slow.”

A high-pitched whistle grew louder and more sucky as the door inched open. Just before the vacuum released its grip, the widening sliver hissed, deepened, and emitted a creepy, final howl. A thick, brushed metal frame was exposed, also revealing the left-hand door to be a useless fake.

“Nice façade,” Matt said. “The first step in securing valuables is to hide the fact that there’s anything valuable to find. This should work well.” He glanced at his watch. “We need to speed this up. If you’re security guy up front activates the alarm, will we hear it down here?”

“Of course, man,” Pete said. “And the perimeter lights in here all flash red. Don’t worry. We’ll know if anyone’s coming in.”

“Regardless,” Matt replied, “we don’t know how long we have.”

Pete motioned inside. “Just give me this one minute, okay? Just one damn minute?”

Matt pressed his lips together tightly, resignedly waving him in.

A dozen or so feet past the vault door’s steel frame, Joss spotted their reflections in a glass door. She followed the others inside an enclosed chamber the same width and height of the entryway, but illuminated only with light from the hallway behind her.

Pete struck something on the wall, and cool-toned LEDs brightened above them, but
high
above them. They were essentially standing inside a big transparent shoebox inside a giant warehouse, and all around them, thick columns of ethereal light shone upon individual tables or desks, lined up in neat rows, and on those tables lay thousands of scrolls.
Seventy-eight
thousand, evidently.

Some of the surfaces held divided clusters of rolled papyrus—five here, a space, thirteen there—while others featured a single, contiguous collection from end to end, resembling some giant pan flute or bamboo fence laid on its side. A few tables were littered with little tools and magnifier lights on mounted arms, and unrolled papyri laid out flat. The majority of the scrolls, however, sat atop the desks piled inside big open-top containers with a sort of thread netting for sidewalls.

Joss tried to take it all in—not just the impressive display, but the fact that these scrolls were anywhere from 1,700 to 4,000 years old, and that, for all these days, Matt had pretty much been
living
the story of their escape. “Wow,” she breathed.

Grandma was equally staggered. “Ho-ly shit … excuse my French. How long has … Peter Sharma, how in dangnation have you kept this secret from me?”

“Just following
orders
, Gram.” Scorn flung Matt’s way.

Matt motioned to the door separating them from the rest of the warehouse. “I gather you want to keep that closed.”

“Yep. None of them have been treated in any way. We’ve got chemicals circulating to handle any critters, but mold is a bigger concern. We’ll have plenty of time for you to peruse them after everything’s been certified. All of this is nice, but it’s still not a proper environment for them.”

“Well, obviously I’m not looking for a tour just yet,” Matt said. “I meant for everyone to hide behind your glorious mega-door. The upstairs people, too. Probably wouldn’t shove more than eight in your little airlock here, though. How many do you think there are in the whole building?”

Pete counted in his head, mouthing names. “Eight, actually. Oh, plus the security guard. Oh, and
us
. Not sure if anyone’s on the third floor today.”

“I saw a few cars in the garage I recognized as third-floorers,” Grandma said.

Pete shrugged. “Hell, there could be anywhere from twenty to thirty. I mean, honestly, if the vault door is shut behind us, we don’t need to wait for the airlock to dehumidify. People can file in, shut the door, next batch of folks. I’d only try to avoid a wide-open airway, and in the grand scheme of things, if lives are at risk, to hell with the climate, right? We do what we have to do.”

“Perfect,” Matt said, then turned to Grandma Bubsy. “Would you mind staying here to guard the door until we gather everyone up? I have more confidence in your ability to keep the wrong people out than Pete’s fancy door.” He winked.

“You’re sweet. And my knees appreciate you not making them walk all the way up there.”

Heading back to the elevator, Pete grinned and said, “Guess what’s on the tables in the far back left?”

Stepping into the elevator, Matt shook his head, amused. “You really can’t wait for a moment when armed thugs
aren’t
a hundred feet away, preparing to raid your office? You wouldn’t happen to have a master key to this place, would you?”

Pete slapped a button and the doors slid shut while he dug in his pants pockets. “Multiple full collections of the Epic Cycle.
Multiple
. All one hundred percent complete, and pristine condition. Table next to it? Aristotle’s dialogues. Table next to that? Wait for it …” A
ding
signaled their arrival on the second floor. “Socrates!”

Joss observed Matt’s sudden inability to resist the thrill. Besides knowing the names, and that they were famous philosophers, she hadn’t a clue why they were so excited. As they hustled down the hallway to another suite, Pete answered a few clipped questions from Matt, and Joss surmised there were writings that modern people knew existed once, but that no one had ever found.

Matt swatted Pete’s elbow. “… but you haven’t had anyone besides Linus inspecting them, right?”

“
Pshh
, of course not, man! But hey, if you’re questioning his−”

“No, no, not at all. Just thinking in terms of exposure.”

Pete checked a knob and, finding it locked, he rapped on the door. “… ‘cause he might be young, but the kid’s Greek bona fides are beyond reproach.”

“And he believes they’re by Socrates’ hand?”

Pete knocked again with greater urgency. “If not these, then he thinks they were copied straight from some originals. Let’s the try the other door.”