Gold checked an Oyster Rolex. “A little over an hour. Will it take longer? If so, I can make arrangements.”

“It’s complicated.”

“That’s grand,” Gold said. “The more complicated the better.”

Decker said, “I’ll start with my involvement and then Detective Mulrooney can tell you what he’s doing.”

“Splendid.” Gold paused. “How is Tyler McAdams doing? I was horrified when you told me about the shooting.”

“He’s fine and should make a total recovery,” Decker said. “Do you remember him?”

“Five ten, slender build but not wimpy, long face, brown hair, hazel eyes. He dressed in sweaters and jeans and was always prepared. Now, I would very much appreciate a full story.”

“Absolutely.” Decker pulled out his notebook and the two other detectives did the same.

“My handwriting is atrocious.” Gold pointed to his head. “I may ask you to repeat something just to encode it into long-term memory.”

“Not a problem,” Decker said.

The recitation took twenty minutes. Gold interrupted three times asking for clarification. After the recap was finished, Mulrooney took out his copy of the codebook and said, “Did you have a chance to look at the pages?”

“I always like to hear the complete picture before I embark on any new project.” Gold took out copy given to him by Mulrooney and put on his glasses. “So the answer is no.”

“Tyler cracked part of it,” Decker said. “The Cyrillic letters are actually Latin phrases. The Hebrew letters are Latin phrases as well.”

“Ah yes. Very good. Please tell him I’m impressed.” Gold’s eyes continued to study the pages. “That poor boy. He must have been ill-prepared for police work of this sort.”

“He didn’t expect to get shot but who does? As far as the work, he’s been a quick study.”

“Yes, I remember that for a nonmath major, he caught on quite well. Quiet boy, but he always knew the answers.”

Decker watched Gold’s eyes bore into the text. “Do you have a photographic memory?”

“Yes, I do. But also I’m one of those weird people with high superior autobiographical memory.”

“I read about that.” Decker smiled. “Uh, I don’t remember where I read it but it was an article about people who remember daily details about their entire lives.”

“Correct.”

Oliver said, “Is that a blessing or a curse?”

“I do remember the bad as well as the good. Lucky for me that most of the emotional valance is long gone. I can tell you the day and the date of what was happening for the last sixty years. But only in relationship to myself. If something historical had occurred and I wasn’t aware of it, I’ll have no direct memory of it. I remember Tyler McAdams well not only because I remember the boy, but also because I knew his father, Jack McAdams. I went to law school with him.”

“You’re a lawyer.”

“I’ve done everything except medicine. Poor kid. Growing up with a father like that could not have been easy.”

“He’s aware of his father’s peccadilloes,” Decker said. “He handles him very well.”

“Good. I admire people with spine.” Gold went quiet. “The Eastern letters and symbols—the Chinese, the Japanese, the Korean . . . this is Amharic . . . whoever wrote this is really all over the place . . . anyway, the symbols and sounds point to Latin phrases as well.”

“What about the Roman alphabet?” Decker asked. “They appear to be nonsense words but they must mean something.”

“They are actually transliteration for Russian words . . . Greek words as well. If I translate from Russian into English, the words mean nothing. But . . . if I translate from Russian into German, they appear to translate back into Latin phrases.”

The three men nodded solemnly. Mulrooney turned to Decker and Oliver. “You men ever work a case like this?”

“Never,” Oliver said. “Hardly ever worked with the FBI.” He looked at Decker. “What about you?”

“I worked with the spooks once in a multinational child porno ring back in Foothill. I remember it well because believe it or not, they did wear sunglasses. My involvement was minimal.”

“This is a first by me.”

“Anything else you notice, Professor?”

“A few things here and there.” Gold looked up and folded the codebook. “The parsimonious thing for me to do would be to translate all of what I can into Latin and then I can try to break the Latin code and see if it makes sense in English or German or Russian or whatever language the code was originally written in. I’ll tell you one thing. This was either done by a polyglot or more than one person. There are a lot of idiomatic phrases. And while I recognize most of the idioms, it would take me a while to write them up in code.”

He smiled and stood up. “I’ll do my best, gentlemen.”

“Thank you for helping, Professor Gold,” Mulrooney said.

“You realize that this may be something you might not want to deal with. That it may be beyond police work.”

“Tyler and I were targets,” Decker said. “Before I relinquish control, I want to have a better idea of what’s going on.”

“It’s a safety issue,” Mulrooney said.

“Exactly,” Decker agreed. “We have to know who the bad guys are. And once the spooks get it, they’ll cut us out of the loop.”

“I understand. But do be careful.” Business cards were exchanged as well as handshakes. “This would be amusing for me except I know that real people were murdered.” Gold shook his head. “I’ll do whatever I can. Do send my best to Tyler. I hope his recovery is swift.”

“I’ll do that.” Decker strolled over to the window and took one last look outside. The campus must have been ten times bigger than all the Upstate colleges put together. “Must be a great place to work.”

“It is,” Gold said. “Although in all honesty, despite all the trappings of this office and the prestige of Harvard, I could work in a closet and be happy. People like me . . . we live in our heads.”

CHAPTER 29

WHILE SCHULTZ KEPT watch, Rina pushed McAdams’s wheelchair up to the historical reference desk, located on the third floor of Rayfield Library. It was in a separate, caged area where books of value and historical significance were kept, a step back into another time with musty red carpeting and walnut tables and chairs. The librarian in charge was a woman named Susan Devry. She was in her sixties with a curly nest of short, gray hair that framed a round, mocha face. Her frame was thin, her oversized sweater draping over a free-flowing midi skirt and black boots. She regarded Rina’s request for the Petroshkovich book and frowned. “I have to see if it’s back for loan.”

“Back from where?” McAdams had to look up to talk.

“Pretoria College in Marylebone.” She regarded the pair. “I suppose I don’t have to tell you two about the art theft of the Petroshkovich icons.”

Rina nodded. “We’re aware of the heist, yes.”

“How tragic,” Susan said. “There used to be a lot of interest in Petroshkovich—a lot of papers and theses—especially right after the icons were pilfered. But Nikolai seemed to have had his day in the sun. And since the artwork was never recovered, students lost interest.”

“Not everyone lost interest in him if his book went out on loan,” Rina said.

“Yes, but it’s usually more from an amateur detective point of view than from something scholarly.” Susan smiled sheepishly. “I’m not saying that’s bad . . . to be interested in the theft. I suppose anything that generates enthusiasm.”

“I’m surprised that the library loans out something so valuable,” McAdams said. “The book is worth six figures.”

“It’s not really on loan to Pretoria.” Susan gave another sheepish smile. “It’s actually coowned by the two libraries.”

“How does that work?” Rina asked.

“We just courier it over when it’s requested.”

“How’d it come to pass that the libraries coowned it?”

Susan seemed apprehensive. Rina waited her out. Finally, the librarian said, “Long ago each library had a copy. There are only around ten original copies left. It’s a very long story.”