Tales From the Black Chamber (13 page)

“He never turned it over to Section 6?”

“Eh, well, we don't exactly know.”

“What? How is that possible?” she said, getting genuinely irate at the thought of a lost book.

“Okay, remember the last scene in
Raiders of the Lost Ark
?”

“Sure,” Anne said, “wheeling the crate into the giant, anonymous storehouse.”

“Well, our Archive,” he pointed to the floor, and presumably a further sub-basement, “is kind of like that. There are a lot of sealed, plain wood boxes with file numbers on them. And a lot of those files are sealed, pending a direct need on a current case to learn the details of their contents.”

“So you could have the lost Ark down there and you'd have no idea.”

“Almost. I mean, I think if we had the Ark, over the years we'd have had some Librarians struck dead by God for bumping into its crate.”

“You know what I mean.”

John shrugged. “The short answer is yes. We do have comprehensive indexes with cross-references on hundreds of topics, but there are no details whatsoever in the indexes. It's a deliberately inefficient system designed, in some bizarre way, to keep anyone from compiling too great a knowledge about our holdings and their contents.”

“Why is that?”

“I suspect because whoever designed it thought he was protecting us from some very, very dangerous things.”

7

Anne and John spent several more hours discussing what, exactly, Anne would do as Librarian. She'd be asked to acquire, maintain, and index all the Black Chamber's rare books, as well as keep the Archive's indexes current. Anne thought that perhaps they might be reorganized and investigated further, but John flatly ruled it out. They were interrupted only once by Claire Krakauer, who came in with a digital camera and took a few pictures of Anne.

By noon, Anne was overwhelmed. She tried to keep her end of the conversation at a high level, but was beginning to get confused. She welcomed the knock that came at the door.

Claire strode in, wearing Armani. “Hey, John, I'm taking Anne to lunch.” She put her hand on Anne's shoulder. “You guys can talk more later.”

John grinned amiably. “Great idea, Claire.”

Claire clipped a photo ID onto Anne's jacket's breast pocket and ushered her out of the room. “Want to see something
really
cool?” she whispered conspiratorially.

“Sure,” Anne said with as much enthusiasm as her befogged wits could muster.

Claire walked her over to the little elevator door in the wall with the Coolidge portrait and pushed the Bakelite button. “It takes a second to come down,” said Claire. A long minute or two later, the door slid slowly and silently open.

“Come on in,” said Claire, waving her into a tiny space, only about six feet wide and no more than two feet deep. The door slid closed in front of them. “Okay, here's the drill. Do not touch the walls, and keep your feet about eighteen inches apart. How's your balance?”

“Mental or physical?”

Claire laughed. “The latter. No inner-ear imbalances or the like?”

“No, I'm good. I actually did some gymnastics in high school before a growth spurt made me the towering specimen before you. Why do you ask?”

“Because some people don't do too well in here.” Claire pushed the sole button on the elevator panel, and slowly they began to rise. Anne immediately noticed that the walls didn't rise with them. Looking down, she saw that what she'd taken as the floor was a platform that didn't quite touch the walls. Looking up, she saw a long shaft, paneled in dark wood. She got a twinge of vertigo and was happy to feel Claire's hand grabbing her arm.

“Steady,” Claire laughed. “It's a little weird the first couple times.”

“Thanks,” Anne said. “Boy, you couldn't get a fat guy in here.”

“You're right. Phil Hendrickson was a heavy guy working for us a few years ago, and he couldn't use this door. We sometimes like to come in through the OEOB, but he never could.”

“Where's he working now?” Anne asked, wondering what kind of career path former Black Chamber people took.

Claire was quiet. Anne looked over to see her twisting a watch around her wrist unconsciously. After a moment, she said, her voice rough, “There was a thing with an, um, thing in northern Nevada. Phil didn't come back.”

“I'm sorry,” Anne said.

Claire said nothing.

When the platform stopped rising, they were in a small, dark wooden space with a little light leaking through a pair of double doors in front of them. Claire counted, “One, two, three …” and a click sounded from the doors. Claire reached out and pushed them outward, revealing a lovely, nineteenth-century-style salon. “Watch out, the first step's a big one,” Claire said.

Anne looked down to see that they were a foot or two above the carpet. She stepped down onto the soft rug, watched Claire follow, then stepped back to take in the strange elevator. It was a large, ornately carved piece of cabinetry, with shelves to either side holding decorative antique books, pieces of porcelain, and a few pictures of presidents. Her mouth fell open as the platform they'd been standing on rose up further, revealing itself to be the top of a third set of shelves, lined with books. They reached the top of the surrounding cabinet, aligning with the side shelves, and stopped with another click.

“That's so—” Anne started and left off.

“What?” Claire said.

“I wish I could come up with a more articulate way of saying ‘cool,'” Anne said, “but, damn, that's really cool.”

Claire laughed. “It is, isn't it?” She reached forward and closed the double doors in front of the books. Claire led her out the door on the far side of the room. On the other side was a small brass plate reading:

J
OHN
Q
UINCY
A
DAMS
S
ALON
.

R
ING
333
FOR RESERVATIONS
.

Claire pulled the door shut and a very modern electronic pass-card lock fired a bolt home. Anne looked around and saw that they were in an enormous Beaux Arts corridor with a ceiling that must have been twenty feet high. Men and women, mostly in dark suits, walked by purposefully, some nodding friendly acknowledgement.

Claire said, “This way,” and strode down the corridor.

Anne caught up and whispered, “Where are we?”

“This is the Old Executive Office Building; didn't John tell you we were under it?”

“Yes, but …” Anne didn't really know what to say. A sudden thought struck her and she looked down at the photo ID she was wearing. It bore her picture, name, the Presidential Seal, and the legend W
HITE
H
OUSE
—OEOB.

A few minutes later, they'd come out the back of the OEOB and were walking up a path towards the White House past reporters and cameramen who were set up under little semi-permanent tents at ten-foot intervals. Anne feared she was fairly wide-eyed when Claire led her into the White House Briefing Room—which was a tiny little dump of a place in person—and down a few hallways.

“Is the White House Mess all right?” Claire asked with a slightly ironic grin.

“Lovely!” Anne replied in her best cheery-ditz tone.

They got a table. Anne leaned over and said, “Okay, this is incredible, but, seriously, what are we doing here?”

Claire said softly, “We work here, so we're entitled to dine here. We don't do it too much as a rule, as we try not to get too familiar with anyone else who works around here, but once in a while, it's fun. And the food's surprisingly good.”

They ordered food in the small dining room and it was, in fact, tasty. Eventually Claire said, “Okay, Anne, let me level with you. This is a hard, hard job. It's more interesting and more fun and more terrifying than anything you'll ever do. But you need to commit to it completely. There aren't many of us, and our lives will inevitably end up in your hands on more than one occasion. You've got to be ready for that, and you'll have to trust that when yours is in our hands, we won't let you down.” She lowered her voice. “Also, there's a chance that you'll get killed. Maybe in some genuinely awful way.”

“You're serious,” Anne said.

“Completely.”

“I have to admit, I'm intrigued. But at the same time, the life expectancy and income in the auction world is pretty good.”

“I won't argue with you. However, we do pretty well, income-wise. By whatever bizarre means we're budgeted, we have great salaries. Probably because there are so few of us. And usually get a pretty hefty yearly bonus.”

“Bonus?”

“Yep,” Claire nodded. “Not exactly usual for the government, but we tend to confiscate a lot of stuff, including money. The Chamber puts aside much of it in a general-use fund, but a portion of it gets divided up among the rest of us, and the next of kin of anyone killed that year.”

“Do people really get killed that often?” Anne asked, putting her utensils down.

Claire looked away, fighting off a scowl, and unconsciously twisting her watchband around a finger. “Don't get the wrong impression. It's not like we drop like flies. But it happens. Too often.”

“So you're saying I need to consider this before I sign up.”

“No,” Claire said, locking eyes with Anne. “You've already signed up. And we don't take resignations. What I'm telling you is that you have to commit to this completely, every day, or you'll get yourself or someone else killed.”

After lunch, John said, “Okay, Anne, time to take a ride.” They retraced their vaguely fantastic route back to John's car, and he took K Street to Fourteenth, then down across the Fourteenth Street Bridge to the George Washington Parkway. When the Parkway turned from a scenic, limited-access highway to a street in a charming little downtown, Anne asked where they were.

“Alexandria, Virginia. The home of the Coolidge Foundation.”

“Wait, I thought you just made that up as a cover.”

“Oh, it's a cover, all right,” John said, nodding, “but it's a real foundation with actual assets and so forth. Heck, you can donate to it and write it off on your taxes, if you want. It's a very, very
good
cover. We're headed to its library. It's closed. Our last small-l librarian resigned when Mildred died. He was her grandson, so we closed the Foundation while he was mourning. Turns out Mildred left him quite a lot of money, and he decided he'd rather be a freelance expert on rare books. He was quite smart, so I expect he'll do well. Whenever you feel like getting around to it, you'll have to hire a new librarian. Let me mention right out that the Foundation's librarian never knows that the Foundation is a cover. It's a small, well-funded, slightly eccentric foundation dedicated to the preservation of rare and strange books. You, as the Black Chamber's Librarian, are
ex officio
president and CEO of the Foundation. As the Chamber's Historian, I'm vice president. The Foundation's librarian should be a smart pro who loves books. That's really all we're looking for. The Foundation's library has all state-of-the-art climate and humidity control, lighting, and so forth. We hire outside contractors for maintenance. If the librarian is a conservator, great, they can do some conservation, otherwise, we've got a budget to fly in conservators or to ship books around the world for repair and conservation. Oh, and we have a bonded cleaning company which comes in and has special instructions how to clean around rare books. So that's really it. Staff of three. Minimal paperwork. A nice additional salary for you, and you stay in rare-book circles.”

They drove down to an unusual, three-story, octagonal stone building across a street from the Potomac. Its architecture might have been characterized as Gothic Deco. There were five parking spaces in a tiny lot next to it. Signs indicated three were reserved for employees and two were marked
GUEST
.

John unlocked the heavy, bronze double doors and ushered Anne inside. He flipped some light switches and Anne gasped. The interior was a single large atrium under a filtered-glass skylight. The perimeter of each upper floor was a balcony with old-fashioned built-in bookcases with rolling library ladders. Their dark, lacquered hardwood glowed with reflected light. On the enormous Persian rug in the center of the ground floor sat two huge desks, each with a couple comfortable-looking padded-leather chairs pulled up. Brass-and-mahogany spiral staircases ran up in the corners of the side walls perpendicular to the front door. On the right-hand wall, a spiral staircase rose along the near corner, on the second floor, the farther. On the left-hand wall, the arrangement was reversed, providing a nice sense of balance.

On the second-floor balcony rail facing the door hung a picture of President Coolidge, looking on impassively.

“This is … amazing,” said Anne.