The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections(22)

“I understand.”

“Do you? Do you understand what this does to the reputation of not just the library but the university?”

“I do,” Liesl said. As the people in the room had crept closer to the private zone that Liesl and Garber had established around themselves, the volume of their conversation had dropped lower and lower, and the volume of the “I do” was almost imperceptible.

“To my reputation, Liesl.” He dropped all pretense of looking cheerful in front of the crowd. “We are in the middle of a billion-dollar fundraising campaign.”

Liesl pictured Christopher’s office; the doubt crept in. When she imagined the office now, the red volumes were there. Stacked up on the filing cabinet. Mixed with others on his desk. On the other hand, she had already convinced herself that the Plantin was stolen. Liesl thought of the odds that she and Dan could have looked right past it. Unlikely. But impossible? She thought of all the empty wine bottles in her recycling bin.

“We’ll begin to systematically go through the stacks today. Today.”

“You will, Liesl. Because a loss of this magnitude doesn’t just impact our ability to buy fancy old bibles. It impacts our ability to find money for telescopes, for lab facilities. It’s all the same money.”

“No one will know. Not from me.”

They turned to open themselves up to the room once again. The turnout for the event was good, the suits delighted by their proximity to historical artifacts.

“Who else would have had access?” Garber asked. “Who would have touched it?”

“As a bible, it falls within Max’s collection area.”

“Max is a good man, but he’s a man with secrets,” Garber said.

“His secrets aren’t secret anymore. He lives with his partner openly now.”

“You don’t know everything,” Garber said, his eyes still scanning to make sure they weren’t being overheard. “And you don’t have to defend the character of everyone we discuss. We’re taking an inventory.”

“Francis, too, then,” she said, showing that she too could remove emotion from their discussion.

“If it’s in Max’s area of collection, and Chris arranged the purchase, and that Miriam woman was the one who shipped the thing, then where does Francis fit in? Why would he have touched it?”

One of the suits waved at Garber from across the room. Garber smiled back at him.

“The text has Syriac and Aramaic. Francis has a reading knowledge of those languages and Max doesn’t, so it’s likely Francis would have taken a look at some point.”

She felt like she was testifying before Joseph McCarthy. Listing the names of her friends and colleagues and thinking about all the ways they could have stolen the book, all the reasons they would have stolen the book. Garber was putting every accusation in his mental ledger. She wanted to stop, but she couldn’t. Because if they weren’t guilty, then she might be.

“Remind me if you were alone when you opened the safe,” Garber said.

“I wasn’t alone.” She shook her head, a little girl indignant at being accused of dipping into the cookie jar, and then she regretted the break in composure and began to answer more slowly and purposefully. “Marie was with me. She called me at home when she heard that we couldn’t get the safe open. When she couldn’t reach me, she just came in.” She looked at him. His mouth half-open with the question that she answered before he could ask it.

“Embarrassed, I think that Christopher had shared the combination with her. I think she was overly helpful because she was embarrassed on Christopher’s behalf at the break of policy. Useful though it was. So she came in and gave me the combination and was standing behind me when I opened the safe and saw it was empty. Marie can attest to all that.”

Garber looked past Liesl’s head, and she turned to see that Max was standing behind them.

“Sorry to interrupt, President Garber,” Max said with his quiet, buttered-up energy. “It’s almost time for your speech, sir. I wanted to make sure you had time for a sip of water and to look over your notes before things got started.”

“No notes, but thanks all the same, Max.”

“I’m happy to help,” he said. “It sounds like you and Liesl are discussing the Plantin. Terrible, isn’t it? That such an important artifact in our church’s history would be misplaced. Once we recover it, it will really be a cornerstone of our collection. I predict that it will attract donations of other religious publications from the same period.”

Liesl stood, half in and half out of their circle of conversation, her core engaged to try to mimic the rigidity of Max’s posture, her hands suddenly moved to cover the few inches of exposed skin at her throat. Misplaced? she thought. Misplaced. Max wasn’t just brownnosing; he was taking Garber’s temperature about the missing Plantin.

“We’ll have to recover it first,” Garber said. “I trust that you and the rest of the team are providing whatever support Liesl needs in that regard. We are in a defining moment for our institution, and the people here will be remembered by how they weather it.”

“As soon as Liesl provides direction about how she’d like to proceed, the team and I will provide whatever support she needs.” Max’s hand tapped his collar as he spoke, a tic from a previous life. “While acting with great discretion of course. It’s 9:59, sir. You said you wanted to speak promptly at 10:00.”