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Nine minutes later she’d gone over every square inch of the room and the few belongings he’d left behind and come up with a total zero. Well, not exactly. In the pocket of a jacket she’d found a sales receipt for a book purchase in Dublin. But that wasn’t terribly helpful.
She walked along the perimeter of the room and stopped by the desk, her gaze ru
“A
And then something clicked in her memory. She looked at the sales receipt she’d found in his jacket pocket.
“An Historical Examination of Police States,” she read. Again, something was percolating in her mind.
She left the room and called the phone number of the bookshop on the receipt. She didn’t expect anyone to answer at this hour, but a woman’s voice came on. Katie asked if they carried that book. They did, she was told, but they only had one copy left. “And the author’s name?” she said. “I can’t remember.”
“A
CHAPTER 26
ANNA FISCHER WALKED SLOWLY along the streets of Westminster in London. Many tourists tended to congregate in this area of the city, craning to catch a glimpse of the Queen or other royal at Buckingham Palace or visiting the graves of long-dead monarchs at the famous abbey. The West End theater district was also here, as well as Lord Nelson looking pensive in Trafalgar Square on the giant granite shaft even as the birds crapped all over him.
She entered St. James’s Park, passing foreign na
A
Had she been too hard on Shaw? Part of her said yes but the other part held forth with a resounding No! Marriage, at least for A
She’d had other suitors over the years, educated, articulate men who held important positions in the world or had obtained considerable wealth. None of them, she had to admit, not a single one, had stirred in her the tender, far-reaching emotions that Shaw did. Yet would he even go to Wisbach to see her parents?
She rose and sat on a park bench. Next to her was a discarded newspaper. She picked it up. The Guardian was having a good run with the evil Russia story. The headline indeed said it all: “Return of the Red Menace?”
And something called the “Tablet of Tragedies” had just been received by select major news outlets and world leaders. The rudimentary packaging and grainy photos of allegedly murdered Russians, their tragic stories written in simple language, carried a potency a million-copy glossy release could never have inspired. A
The Russian president had put his military force on full alert as mass demonstrations were breaking out across the country. It seemed like the place was imploding. A
Yet had anyone bothered to verify any of it? Unlike some other people who might have these same questions, A
She walked to her office, a 175-year-old row house nestled in a quiet dead-end street near Buckingham Gate. The buildings on either side of hers were empty, but scheduled to be renovated in about six months. She would cherish her peace and solitude for now until it was destroyed by jackhammers and the sounds of sawing. The smell of fresh paint was in the air. Her building had just gotten a face-lift, including a fresh coat on all the windows and doors.
She unlocked the thick front door on which a gold-plated plaque a
She locked the door behind her and headed up the stairs. Her cluttered office was at the end of the hall on the top floor. She passed other rooms, all empty save one near hers where a coworker, Avery Chisholm, a crusty old academic, toiled away on a project, his circle of white hair barely topping the piles of books in front of him. He lifted a hand in response to her greeting and she hurried on.
A
She went online and entered some chat rooms. Whenever she raised any questions about the culpability of the Russians, or the “real” origins of the Red Menace, she was attacked by all sides with people questioning her religious faith and her patriotism, though they didn’t know if she even had a religion or what country she was from. She was also labeled a Gorshkov ass-kisser, a traitor to humanity, and a royal bitch.
She retreated from that world and expanded her search until she focused on one obscure blogger in a far-off galaxy of the cyberworld. He was raising some of the same questions and doubts that A