The Cartographers(15)
Nell swallowed hard and tried not to cower. Before, when she’d been an intern, she’d been able to bluff her way through project updates, argue her case to senior researchers, even step in and take a meeting for one of her superiors who was late on a paper to shield them from the chastisement. Now, it was hard to even look Irene in the eye. Had her confidence really been so shaken seven years ago that anything related to maps still turned her into a mouse?
“I’m sorry,” she finally said. “I wish I knew. We really didn’t speak again after I left the library.”
“Oh no, it’s me who’s sorry,” Irene replied quickly. “I didn’t mean it like that. I shouldn’t have said anything at all. You just lost your father, and I’m complaining about business. Forgive me.”
Nell tried to smile. In the back of her mind, the gears were already turning. A secret project. She thought of the portfolio, and what she’d found inside.
She had absolutely no idea how that map could be the subject of a secret project, but after the strange missing copies in the catalog and today’s robbery, she was going to stop at nothing to find out. If it really could somehow help fix the NYPL’s budget crisis, if she were the one to be able to figure out why . . .
Suddenly, Nell spotted Swann as he emerged from the back offices, flanked by police still asking questions. He looked even more haggard than yesterday, like he might faint at any moment.
“Please excuse me . . .” She was already moving toward him even before she realized it, arms outstretched as if to catch him.
“Of course,” Irene replied. “He needs you right now.”
The tea mug was hot to the point of pain, but Nell cradled it in her hands instead of holding it by its handle anyway, feeling the prickling, stinging heat on her palms. It felt good. Or rather, it didn’t feel good, but it was so intense it was numbing everything else in her body, and that was good.
They were huddled in Swann’s office, struggling through their shell shock, for the second time in two days. In the chair on the other side of his desk, Swann looked devastated. He’d just lost his friend, and now this violation. The Map Division was his career, his passion, his home. His life. She didn’t have to imagine the depth of his grief, because she felt it, too.
“I’d forgotten all about that silly little secret compartment,” Swann finally said, wiping his eyes, after she’d finished telling him everything she’d discovered so far. “You have the map with you now?”
“No,” she admitted. “I was going to bring it, but I couldn’t find the safety sleeve.” It was true, she hadn’t brought the map, but the excuse was a lie. The plastic slip had been sitting right next to it on the table, beside the portfolio. She’d been afraid that if she brought it with her, she would have to hand it over to Swann immediately, and she wanted more time with it. Especially now.
Swann sat back and massaged his temples, a gesture she had long ago learned meant that what he was about to say was nothing good.
“Do you really think this is what the burglars broke in for?” she asked. “It just makes no sense.”
This was the New York Public Library’s exclusive historical cartographic collection. An archive assembled over centuries of careful curation and research. There were thousands of pieces far more rare and valuable than the map in question. It would be like breaking in to a bank vault of diamonds to take the light fixtures.
“I know, but I can’t think of any other explanation that does make sense,” Swann said, pointing to his computer. “Look.”
On his screen was a checkerboard of all the security camera live feeds in the Map Division. Nell crouched beside his chair and surveyed each one, eyes combing every chaotic surface, until she’d examined them all.
Every glass case. Every display. Every cabinet that had been opened, every drawer that had been pulled out, every frame that had been pulled down from the walls and sat crookedly on the floor.
All of it—they really had looked through all of the maps and taken nothing.
“I have my assistants triple-checking the inventory, but so far it seems true—that what the burglars were looking for wasn’t here,” Swann said. “Because it must have been the map that you took out of your father’s office yesterday. They must have been searching the database during the few hours last night that the entry existed or set an alert for any new entries with similar keywords. When they saw your addition, they struck.”
It sounded ludicrous. Who would set keywords for such a useless item? But then again, something had happened to the other 212 of them.
Nell stood up and began pacing. “Okay. Fine. Say it’s true. Why?”
Swann gasped. “We need to tell the police!”
“Wait,” she said, before he could pick up his phone. “They’ll just take the map into evidence, and we’ll never see it again.”
“Nell,” Swann began.
“This is the last thing my father worked on. The thing that ruined my life, and that he kept for years after, for some inexplicable reason. I can’t just let it go like that, without knowing why.”
The old man hesitated. “I understand, I do. But I really think . . .”
“Just for a little bit,” she begged. “Just give me a little time to see if I can figure out what’s going on. If I can’t, we’ll go right to Lieutenant Cabe. I promise.”