Contents

The Gutenberg Rubric

Four

“IT’S YOUR JOB to know where she is, Joey. How goddamned hard can it be to keep track of a librarian?”

“She’s somewhere in California,” Yousef answered. The imposing frame of his former brother-in-law towered over him and it made him nervous. “She’s my sister. She doesn’t tell me everything.”

“And you couldn’t follow her?”

“I figured I could track her cell phone later, but she’s off the grid. She must have shut it off for the flight and never turned it back on. You know how she is.” Yousef was getting tired of the role of being Derek’s watchdog over his sister. Of course he’d wanted to be close to her after the explosion, but it irritated him every time Derek asked for information about her.

He couldn’t remember what had drawn them together in college in the first place, and regretted a little having ever introduced Derek and Maddie. Derek was everything Yousef was not—tall, tan, muscular, and rich—a man who took pride in his body and expected everyone else to admire it. Yousef was short and slight. His father’s genes had left him light-skinned with a spray of freckles across his nose. Sometimes he wished he looked more Persian like his mother. It would fit his name better.

Derek had been a year ahead of Yousef in college and had all but adopted him the first week of school. If Yousef had difficulty with physics, Derek tutored him. In exchange Yousef helped Derek with Latin. When Yousef’s computer was stolen, Derek bought him a new laptop, much better than the desktop model that was stolen. He said he did it because he could do it and that Yousef should never think of the giver, but focus on what the gift would enable Yousef to contribute to humanity one day. It made Yousef focus on his studies and even strive to understand the programming that engaged Derek. It was all for the greater good of humanity. Somehow, that seemed to have changed.

Yousef wasn’t the only student to benefit from Derek’s generosity. Many people who had received something from Derek, though, were shunned by him in a few months. They seemed to feel that they could go back for whatever they wanted whenever they wanted. Yousef never presumed on Derek’s generosity and that seemed to please Derek immensely. When Yousef introduced Derek to his sister, it had cemented a relationship that far outlasted the short marriage.

“She was traveling with Keith Drucker.”

“That dude is like a lightning rod for trouble,” Derek answered. “How can your sister’s boyfriend be the only one hurt in an explosion that took off the entire front of the library? She could get killed hanging around him.”

“She likes him. He’s a nice guy.” Yousef defended Keith, even though they had never met.

“That didn’t keep him from sleeping with my wife,” Derek muttered.

“Ex-wife,” Yousef corrected. “You’re divorced.”

“Yeah, whatever” Derek said, tapping keys on his computer. “Okay, they’re near El Centro, California.”

“How do you know?”

“It isn’t what you know, it’s who you know that counts,” Derek said. “I still have some sources that you don’t.”

“Why bother to have me follow her?”

“I want you near her.”

“Now?”

“No. It would be too suspicious if she walked down the street in Almost-Mexico, California and saw her brother coming toward her,” Derek said. “There must be some spa out there that they went to for the guy’s health.” Derek poured himself a drink, but didn’t bother to invite Yousef to join him. His mother’s aversion to alcohol had rubbed off on Yousef and he never touched it. But as Derek drank, Yousef scanned the room, looking for any sign that they were being watched. It’s Derek’s office. Of course we’re being watched, Yousef thought. That’s what Derek does.

“Remember playing ‘gossip’ back in college?” Derek asked. Yousef nodded. It was Derek’s game, but Yousef had discovered that he was quite good at it. They collected names of people, places, and activities. On the weekend they drew one of each. “Charles Crawford scored in Hartford,” could be a sentence. The task would be for each to find the right place to plant the gossip in such a way that it would become an accepted fact by the next weekend. If the gossip was traced back to the originator, however, the game was over. Permanently.

The trick, Yousef discovered immediately, was not to be malicious. There were multiple definitions of the word “scored,” for example. Scored a point in a game, scored with a girl, scored some pot, scored on a test, scored a sheet of paper. If Yousef chose the right combination of meanings, the subject might pick up the gossip himself and begin to believe it.

“The kids are all clumsy today,” Derek continued. “They batter each other on Facebook and text messages until no one believes anything or someone kills herself. Either way, everyone knows who is responsible. When we work our magic, we have to make sure no one knows it’s us casting the spell.”

“I don’t play anymore,” Yousef said.

“Yeah. That’s too bad,” Derek said. “You were the best. So you just keep track of the pieces and I’ll play the game. Keep your phone on and watch for your sister to come back on the grid. There’s nothing interesting in California. She’ll be safe there. But I want to be the first one to know when she moves. Tell Sophie. I want the two of you ready to go wherever they head next. I’m willing to give them a couple of days, but the clock is ticking now and we need another demonstration soon. We’ll take the jet if we need to.” Yousef nodded his head and turned to leave. “Don’t worry, Little Brother. I haven’t forgotten my promise, and neither should you. We keep those we love safe.” Yousef turned back to look at Derek who smiled warmly back at him. He left the office and went home. Derek was right. Yousef felt safer when he was near.

Derek watched the door for a minute after Yousef left, just to make sure he wasn’t coming right back in. Finally satisfied he picked up his phone and said brusquely, “Sophie, get in here.” The slender blonde that entered from a side door to Derek’s office was really nothing like the nymph that attached herself to him years ago. At ten feet, she could make you believe she was still a teenaged California surfer girl. But closer, you saw the hardness and fanaticism of a much older woman.

“Are you going to keep me safe?” she asked mockingly.

“Who said I loved you? I’m more concerned about keeping people safe from you.” Derek said. “You were supposed to wait until everyone was clear of the library before you set off that blast. You’ve set us back a week already.”

“Yeah, yeah. You gave me that lecture already. Use fewer explosives and make sure people are further away,” Sophie said. “You are such a pussy. If we are going to make people afraid to go to a library, then someone’s going to get hurt.”

“What were you doing inside? These books you checked out aren’t relevant to anything. You could have been recognized. Your picture is all over the security cameras.”

“Not a one got a look at my face. Do you think I’m that careless? And even if they look up my student ID they won’t see me. I know how to keep from being recognized. People who are afraid of libraries depend on the Web for information. We own the Web. Get focused,” Sophie lectured him.

“I’m focused on the goal. You’ve forgotten that. You’re so focused on blowing things up you’ve forgotten why.”

“The great altruist speaks,” Sophie said. “We’re going to have a dictatorship, but it will be a benevolent dictatorship. Hypocrite! We’re inciting a revolution, and in revolutions people get killed. Or did you forget our little escapade in Tunisia.”

“You’ve spent too much time with video games,” Derek snapped. “Just be ready to travel when Drucker reappears. And don’t hurt him. I need him to solve the codex. The more heat we put on him the more he will be compelled to finish the job. Left to their own devices these academics would sit around and think about the problem for a few years instead of actually trying to solve it. We need an incontrovertible source of religious history. That’s the key to bringing down religious and national boundaries. I knew the first time Yousef showed that letter fragment to me that it was the map to that source.”

“Poor Yousef—a pawn in your little game who gets nothing for all his efforts to find the family treasure.” Sophie poured herself a drink and swallowed it at once. “Nothing but me.”

Yousef stepped inside the darkened entry of Sophie’s apartment, closed the door and stood listening. It was a habit he developed while serving in Iraq. He listened wherever he went. If there was a voice—even the slightest whisper—it could be trouble. But other things made noises, too. Extra clocks, a different hum in the heating vents, a rattle in the refrigerator motor. Any of these could indicate a listening device or even an explosive in the apartment. He inventoried each sound and checked it against his memory. He heard a faint click from the direction of the kitchen. He stood in silence, straining to hear it again.

He felt guilty about telling Maddie he’d been in Japan. She wouldn’t understand why he’d been in the same town as her for so long without telling her. She would be especially upset when she found out he was living with someone and hadn’t told her. But Derek said it was better that way for now.

Yousef didn’t really like sharing an apartment. It wasn’t so much the idea of sharing with Sophie, as the fact that it was her apartment and he had no control over it. Anyone might have been here since he left this morning. Of course, having Sophie in the apartment with him went a long way toward mitigating his discomfort.

Derek had introduced his assistant to Yousef and Yousef was smitten. She was their age, or maybe a little older—she wouldn’t say—but she was young and intense at heart, and still a beautiful woman. She was nothing at all like the women he had known most of his life, and she proved it to him the first night they were together. She burned with a fervor that overwhelmed him. Where Yousef was cautious and shy, Sophie was bold to the point of being reckless. Yousef’s heart still jumped when he thought about her racing a train to the railroad crossing and flying across it just ahead of looming death. In general, he avoided riding with her now if he could help it. She brought the same boldness of her driving to their bed. Yousef was overwhelmed and a little scared by her passion.

There was the click again. Yousef reached behind him and pulled the door slowly open. He slipped out as narrow a gap as he could and closed the door silently behind him. He stood in the hall waiting for an explosion from the kitchen that would rock the building and blow the exterior wall out of the third story apartment. He tensed as he edged toward the stairwell a few steps away.

Derek sat in his darkened office. Sophie had finally left. For as much as she drank, she scarcely showed signs of inebriation. He watched from his office window for her motorcycle to pull out of the garage eight floors below before he finally relaxed. Palming her off on Joey had given him the first peace he’d known in ten years. How could a man as rich and powerful as Derek be so weak around this woman? Even his father had been wrapped around her finger.

When Derek’s father died, Derek inherited the business and his father’s corner office. The first time he sat at his father’s desk, the second door in the office opened and Sophie walked in. Derek had always assumed it was an executive washroom for his father’s use only and had not yet had time to investigate. She introduced herself as his personal assistant. He said he had an admin in front of his office and Sophie should see her to make an appointment. But he had quickly been disabused of that notion.

Sophie had been his father’s personal assistant—mistress?—and was determined to be his as well. Her office had a separate door and both locked from inside. She was not employed by the company. She was employed by the president of the company. She gave adequate reasons to Derek to let him know that her employment was not negotiable. She came with the office.

Derek still wondered if his father’s sudden death had something to do with Sophie. Had he displeased her? Derek fully believed that she was capable of anything. Most of his master plan came from her files. He was accustomed to manipulating information to his advantage, but it had grown and changed. The stakes had gone up and he would have to decide what to do about Sophie soon.

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