“Of course, sir. Perhaps I’ll arrange a nightcap later, some brandy perhaps, or some port. Yes, that’s what’s needed, the port to go with the pear tart I’ve made. They’ll go together nicely.”
Nigel was smiling, the bloody sod. He was loving playing the formal English butler, watching Nicholas turn red and tongue-tied. He saw Mike was grinning, quite enjoying herself.
“Oh, bugger off, both of you.” He stomped up the stairs, the sound of Mike’s and Nigel’s laughter following him.
34
2 United Nations Plaza
8:30 p.m.
Sophie closed down her computer. Done at last. She’d filed her request for an official leave of absence, effective immediately, and sent a few personal e-mails to the members of the Chinese delegation, so they would understand why she was leaving them so suddenly.
The rest of her work had been distributed among the other translators. She picked up a photo of her father and Adam on her desk. She wanted to grieve for her father, but knew she simply didn’t have the time. And there was Adam, gone who knows where, and her father’s files, and at the end of the rainbow, the key. If Adam had indeed found the submarine, it was only a matter of time before the Order could retrieve the key, and the book, and then what would happen? Manfred Havelock was what would happen. He’d do anything to get ahold of the key and the book, at least that’s what her father believed. Anything. Had Havelock ordered her father murdered? She didn’t know.
She gently put the photograph in her large leather bag and straightened and remembered Drummond in that stingy FBI interview room. The bastard, the pushy, cruel bastard with his arrogant clipped British accent, and she’d ended up caving. Maybe Drummond and Caine had been right, maybe telling where they could find Adam was the right thing to do. But she still hadn’t heard from her brother. Where was he? Had they found him? And were they keeping quiet about it? She didn’t know.
She needed to find Adam, needed to arrange her father’s funeral as well. She’d called their lawyer, who was shocked by the news, and promised to start the paperwork immediately.
Most of all, she needed to access her father’s computer files. But how? She realized he’d given her all his bank codes when he’d left for a short trip to Leningrad two weeks before. He’d also given her his passwords. Had he changed them when he’d gotten home? Would the FBI know if she accessed his computer? She didn’t know, but it was worth a try. What would they do?
The key is in the lock.
She had to know what those dying words meant, since Adam had refused to tell her. If Adam had really found the sub, then everything would change. Was Havelock the one behind this?
She turned on her laptop again and logged in to her dad’s private e-mail account. He hadn’t changed the passwords. She didn’t see anything unusual—orders from abroad, a few newsletters from his favorite nautical history magazine.
She searched through it all, but there was nothing that screamed Havelock’s behind everything, Sophie, he killed me. Start reading, it’s all here.
She went to his correspondence. Maybe he’d written someone, even in code, to tell them about Adam’s finding the sub, maybe he’d mentioned Havelock.
She found hundreds of letters, all neatly filed and organized by person, month and year. He kept up a rich correspondence with a number of people all over the world, about philosophy, naval history, particularly World War I, even about the loss of his wife, Sophie’s mother, to cancer ten years earlier. But nothing about the submarine.
She scrolled through bits and pieces of her father, recalled happy as well as sad memories, but nothing about the submarine, nothing helpful.
She glanced at the clock, surprised at how late it was. She wasn’t getting anywhere. She needed to find Adam, he was the only one who could tell her what was happening.
As she left her office, her cell rang.
She didn’t recognize the number, but went ahead and answered.
“Sophie?”
“Adam. Where are you?”
His voice was garbled, she knew he’d have her on a cell repeater, sending the signal through multiple cell towers, trying to mask his true location.
“. . . killed Allie. They killed her, Sophie.”
She felt the words like a fist. Adam was crying. She’d never heard him cry before.
“Soph, they shot her, she didn’t do anything, she was innocent.”
“Who killed her? Do you know?”
He tried to pull himself together, she could hear deep, ragged breaths. “I hacked the FBI facial-recognition database. There were two guys, they were German. You know what that means. Havelock was behind it, Sophie, he must have been. He’s behind Dad’s death as well, and Mr. Stanford’s. And now they’re going to put him in the Order in place of his father—the meeting is tomorrow.”
Her voice sounded off, even to her. “Who is getting Dad’s spot?”