I raised my pistol in readiness as with eerie predictability the hatch blew inward with an almighty concussion. I was vaguely conscious of firing off one shot, probably by accident, and the next moment I was lying on my back among shards of wood, cobwebs and dust. Ears ringing, I struggled to sit up. I even halfheartedly raised my pistol, only to have it removed from my hand by a smiling face that I recognized. It was Jack Schitt.
We’d crossed swords many times in the past, and I kind of thought we had reached something of a truce when his wife died and I returned her locket to him. In fact, the last I heard, he was retired. But the odd thing about this was that Goliath wasn’t really into violent assaults on libraries—they always favored stealing stuff by persuasive arguments “for the greater good” and, when that failed, veiled threats, legal action and sneaky behavior. This wasn’t their style, and, to be honest, Jack was getting a bit long in the tooth for fieldwork—as was I.
“Shit and ballocks,” I said, more through frustration than anger.
“Language, Thursday.”
Jack dropped the magazine from my pistol, pulled back the slide to eject the unfired round and tossed the empty weapon to the other side of the room. He paused to bolt the door to the lower levels of the scriptorium and then looked thoughtfully about the room. He didn’t seem to be in much of a hurry.
“We’ve not even begun to catalog it yet,” I said. “I hope you’ve got some time on your hands.”
He ignored me and moved past the shelves, his fingertips brushing the spines of the books. He wasn’t choosing a book by reading the spines; indeed, there was nothing written on many of them. It appeared that he was sensing the book he was searching for, and after a moment he stopped, paused and drew out a volume.
“Goliath stealing antiquarian books?” I said. “Bit of a comedown, isn’t it?”
He had opened the book and answered without looking at me. “What are you doing here, Next?”
“Playing silly buggers,” I told him, slowly crawling into a position from where I might be able to get to my feet.
“I meant in particular,” he said with a smile, “not in general.”
There was more gunfire from the floor below. It looked as though the diversionary attack had been utterly successful—in that it was diversionary. I got to my feet and staggered across the room to where he had thrown my pistol. He saw what I was doing but didn’t seem that put out by it. I picked up the weapon, then glanced around to see where he had thrown the clip.
“Over there,” he said, still not looking up from where he was leafing though the book. I moved to the other side of the room to where the clip lay, in some dust by the door. I tried to bend over, but when that failed, I grasped the door handle and used it to lower myself.
“You’re pretty much trashed, aren’t you?” said Jack, tearing two pages out of the book and letting the rest of the volume fall to the floor.
“It’s early days,” I said, grunting with the pain and effort. “Physiotherapy will see me as right as rain in the fullness of time.”
“There aren’t enough years left in the universe,” he said, staring at the pages he had torn out, “the weak will not survive.”
“Personal opinion?” I asked, my fingers just touching the magazine.
“Corporate policy. Crabbe? Would you?”
A foot descended on my hands from a second assailant, one whom I had not seen. I would have cried out in pain if I weren’t already in pain.
“Okay, okay,” I said, handing him the pistol, “let me keep my fingers.”
“It’s good news for you that you’re Protocol 451,” Crabbe breathed close to my ear. “It would give me immeasurable pleasure to put an end to the once-magnificent Thursday Next.”
“Why don’t you tell me what you’re looking for? I might be able—”
I stopped, because when I turned back to look at Jack, he had gone.
“Time to go,” said Crabbe. “I hope we don’t meet again— next time I won’t be so charitable.”
He took my arm, twisted it until I crumpled in a heap, then walked across to where Jack had been standing. The book was lying on the floor, splayed downward, pages crumpled against the stone.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a plastic sack, much like an evidence bag. He cracked it open, dropped the two pages Jack had been reading inside, zip-locked it, then broke a large phial that was inside the bag. There was a hissing noise, and he shook the bag twice, then let it fall to the floor, where it bubbled quietly to itself.
“Time to go,” he said again, and moved to the center of the room, where the shattered trapdoor was positioned. He fired a flare gun through the aperture and then jumped up, grabbed the parapet and was out in an instant. I heard his footfalls on the roof t a k i ng severa l long paces, t hen a pause, t hen t he high-pitched whine of a fast rope descender. I frowned. Now that I’d heard Crabbe’s descender I realized that I hadn’t heard Jack’s.
As the light from the parachute flare flickered red through the narrow window slits, the diversionary gunfire abruptly stopped, and within a few minutes it was calm once more, the only noises those from nuns who’d been wounded in the action.
“Shit,” I said, to no one in particular.
18.