DeHaven sighed wistfully as he unbuttoned the front of his jacket and smoothed down his tie. It had quite possibly been the happiest twelve months of his life. He had never met a person like her before, and he was certain he wouldn’t again. Yet I just let her go because my mother bullied me into it. He’d written the woman for years afterward, apologizing any way he could. He sent her money, jewelry and exotic items from his trips around the world, but he never asked her to come back. No, he’d never done that, had he? She wrote him back a few times, but then his packages and letters started being returned unopened. After his mother died, he considered trying to find her, but finally decided it was too late. In truth, he didn’t deserve her anymore.

He took a deep breath, put the door keys in his pocket and gazed around the reading room. Patterned after the Georgian splendor of Independence Hall, the space had an immediate calming effect. DeHaven particularly loved the copper domed lamps that sat on all the tables. He ran his hand over one lovingly, and the sense of failure in losing the only woman who’d ever given him complete happiness began to fade.

DeHaven walked across the room and pulled out his security card. He waved it in front of the computer access pad, nodded to the surveillance camera bolted into the wall above the door and walked into the vault. Coming here each morning was a daily ritual; it helped to recharge his batteries, reinforce the notion that it really was all about the books.

He spent some time in the hallowed grounds of the Jefferson Room leafing through a copy of the work of Tacitus, a Roman that the third U.S. president much admired. Next he used his keys to enter the Lessing J. Rosenwald Vault, where incunabula and codex donated by Rosenwald, the former head of Sears, Roebuck, sat next to each other on metal shelves in a room that, at great cost, was climate–controlled 24/7. Though the library operated on a very tight budget, a constant temperature of sixty degrees with a relative humidity of 68 percent could allow a rare book to survive for at least several more centuries.

For DeHaven it was well worth the extra money to a federal budget that had always allocated more to war than it ever did to peaceful purposes. For a fraction of the cost of one missile he could purchase on the open market every work the library needed to round out its rare books collection. Yet politicians believed that missiles kept you safe, whereas actually books did, and for a simple reason. Ignorance caused wars, and people who read widely were seldom ignorant. Perhaps it was an overly simplistic philosophy, but DeHaven was sticking to it.

As he looked over the books on the shelves DeHaven reflected on his own book collection housed in a special vault in the basement of his home. It wasn’t a great collection but a very satisfactory one. Everyone should collect something, DeHaven felt; it just made you feel more alive and connected to the world.

After checking on a couple books that had just come back from the conservation department, he headed up the stairs to the vaults that stretched over the reading room. It was here that an early collection of American medical books was kept. And on the mezzanine level just above, a large array of children’s books were housed. He stopped to affectionately pat the head of a small bust of a man that had sat on a small table in a corner for as long as anyone could remember.

A moment later Jonathan DeHaven collapsed into a chair and commenced dying. It was not a pleasant or painless death, as evidenced by the convulsions and silent screams as life was squeezed from his body. By the time it was over a mere thirty seconds later he was stretched out on the floor a full twenty feet from where he’d started. He seemed to stare at a collection of stories that had girls in tea dresses and sun hats on the covers.

He died without knowing what had killed him. His body had not betrayed him; he was in perfect health. No one had done him blunt injury, and no poison had touched his lips; he was, in fact, completely alone.

And yet dead Jonathan DeHaven was.

• • •

About twenty–five miles away Roger Seagraves’ phone rang at his home. It was the weather report: sunny and clear for the foreseeable future. Seagraves finished his breakfast, grabbed his briefcase and headed to work. He loved it when the day started on a positive note.

Chapter 6

Caleb Shaw entered the Rare Books reading room and strolled to his desk against the wall at the back, where he deposited his knapsack and bike helmet. He took a moment to undo the strap around his ankle that kept chain grease off his pant leg, and then settled down in his chair. He had a lot to do this morning. The previous day a prominent American scholar had requested over six hundred books to prepare a complex bibliography, and it was Caleb’s job as a research specialist to gather them together. He’d already looked the works up in the library’s directory; now came the laborious task of plucking them off the shelves.

He smoothed down his rumpled gray hair and loosened his belt a bit. Caleb had a slightly built frame, but as of late he’d experienced an uncomfortable weight gain around his waist. He hoped that riding his bike to work would adequately address this problem. He avoided anything approaching a sensible diet, immensely enjoying his wine and rich food. Caleb was also proud of the fact that he’d never seen the inside of a gym after his graduation from high school.

He walked to the vault entrance, placed his card over the security pad and pulled the door open. Caleb was a little surprised not to have seen Jonathan DeHaven when he came in. The man was always here before anyone else, and the door to the reading room had been unlocked. Yet Caleb assumed the director was either in his office or perhaps in the vaults.

“Jonathan?” he called out, but received no answer. He glanced at the list in his hand. This task would easily take him the entire day, if not longer. He grabbed a book cart from against one of the walls and set about his work, methodically going through each of the vaults containing books he needed. A half hour later he came back out of the vault to get another list he needed as a woman he worked with entered the reading room.

He exchanged pleasantries with her and went back into the vault. It was very cool inside, and he remembered that yesterday he’d left his sweater on the vault’s fourth floor. He was about to take the elevator up when he gazed down at his middle–age spread and decided on the stairs instead, actually running up the last few steps. He passed by the medical collection, took another flight of steps up and reached the mezzanine. He strode across the main walkway to the place where he’d left his sweater.

When he saw the body of Jonathan DeHaven lying on the floor, Caleb Shaw gasped once, choked and then fainted.

• • •

The tall, wiry man walked out of the plain cottage and into the small cemetery where he worked as caretaker. There was a lot of work to be done in making sure that the homes of the dead were maintained properly. Ironically, he himself “officially” resided in a grave at Arlington National Cemetery, and most of his former mates in the government would have been surprised to learn that he was still alive. In fact, it still surprised him that he wasn’t dead. The agency where he’d worked had tried its best to murder him for no reason other than his no longer wanting to kill for his government.

He saw the creature’s movement from the corner of his eye and checked to make sure no one was watching from the nearby apartment building. Then with a fluid motion he slipped the knife from the sheath on his belt and turned. Creeping forward, he aimed and let the blade fly. He watched as the copperhead writhed, the knife pinning it to the ground through the snake’s head. The damn thing had almost bitten him twice over the last week while hiding in the high grass. After it was dead, he pulled the knife free, wiped it off and disposed of the serpent in a trash can.