Library Of Gold

Annja slipped the report back into the envelope and passed it across the table to Charles. “I want to see it for myself.”

He smiled. “I was hoping you would say that.”

Chapter 4

Sir Charles Davies had a house outside the city in Greenwich, just across the Connecticut state line, and it was there Annja found herself early the next morning. She’d wanted to see the journal for herself before listening to the rest of Charles’s proposal and he’d readily agreed. Doug hadn’t been so thrilled when she’d called to let him know she wasn’t going to make the day’s voice-over session.

“We’ve still got a ton of work ahead of us, Annja. We can’t afford to take a day off.”

“And yet that’s exactly what we’re going to do,” she said with a mischievous grin. “Unless, of course, you want me to tell Sir Charles I couldn’t possibly continue the discussion we started last night about his funding an expedition to find the lost library of Ivan the Great.”

“We can’t afford to waste any more…wait. Did you say Ivan the Great?”

“I did, but you’re right. We couldn’t possibly take a day off. I’ll tell Sir Charles I can’t make it and…”

“Wait!” Doug cried, a hint of panic in his voice. “You can’t tell him that.”

“But I thought you wanted—”

“Never mind what you thought. I’m telling you I want you to spend whatever time you need with Sir Charles. Make that expedition a reality and make sure you get broadcast rights for Chasing History’s Monsters.”

Annja had barely been able to keep herself from laughing as she’d solemnly agreed to follow Doug’s instructions to the letter before she hung up the phone.

She’d taken a taxi from the Greenwich train station and now stood outside the property’s gates, staring at the mansion just beyond. The place was enormous; at least as expansive as Roux’s place outside Paris.

Well, you knew Charles had money, right? Just what did you expect?

Definitely not this.

She was reaching for the intercom when the gates swung silently open. Clearly, someone had been watching the closed-circuit security cameras for her arrival. She glanced up at the black eye of the camera pointed at her from on top of the nearby gatepost, gave it a little wave and headed up the drive toward the front door.

Charles was waiting there in his wheelchair, a smile on his face. Next to him stood a good-looking man in his late twenties, with a mop of curly brown hair and big brown eyes. He was dressed in jeans and a button-down Oxford, Italian loafers on his feet.

This must be Gianni.

“Annja, so glad you could make it,” Sir Charles said, reaching out and shaking her hand. “And this man, my dear, is the reason I dragged you all the way out here this morning. Annja Creed, Gianni Travino.”

Bingo.

They shook hands.

“Good to meet you, Gianni.”

Annja didn’t miss the fact that he seemed to hold her hand a fraction of a moment longer than necessary.

They followed Charles inside.

“I suspect you’re eager to get started so we’ll save the tour for later and I’ll take you to the room we’ve set up, if that’s all right with you…?”

They made small talk as he led them through the house. She could feel Gianni’s gaze on her as they walked, and she assumed he was sizing her up. Her long auburn hair, athletic form and decidedly feminine curves were likely a far cry from the stuffy museum heads he’d been dealing with about the library.

Then again, he might just be admiring her for totally different reasons. And wouldn’t that be nice?

Yes, it would. She hadn’t had a date in what felt like forever; she been too busy dashing here and there around the globe on behalf of Chasing History’s Monsters, never mind her unofficial role as champion of the innocent.

Charles took them to a small room off the second floor. The diary was waiting for her in the center of the table like a long-lost friend and she went to it eagerly, pulling on the pair of white cotton gloves Charles gave her. Then he and Gianni excused themselves to go back to the meal they’d been sharing. Annja didn’t want a thing. She was too excited.

The journal was thin, bound in dark leather and tied together with a red ribbon that had seen better days. Maybe that’s why Charles Davies had tied his invitation with a ribbon. Cute. It rested on a glass platform designed so she could observe the specimen from all sides. It came equipped with two lamps, one shining down on the book from above and the other shining up on it from below. A legal pad and pencil lay on the table, in case she wanted to take notes.

Annja unzipped her knapsack, removing both her laptop and her digital camera. Booting the laptop, she connected it with a thin white cable to the camera and, after verifying the link between the two devices was working properly, began taking photos. This was so much a part of her standard procedure that it had become second nature to her. She always made a visual record of the artifact first, before beginning a more hands-on examination, and she had no intention of taking shortcuts now just because she wasn’t in the field. What she was doing was simply good science, and if there was anything she prided herself on, it was being thorough. That way, the client couldn’t ever accuse her of being sloppy or, worse yet, unprofessional. Her reputation was all she had in this line of work.

Finished with the camera, she turned her attention to the journal itself. She untied the ribbon and set it gently aside. With anticipation thrumming through her veins, she opened the book and stared at the crisp, clean handwriting on the first page. The Italian unfurled smoothly in her mind.

The morning began with a personal summons from the czar.

Three uninterrupted hours later she closed the journal and sat back. Charles and Gianni must have looked in on her, but she hadn’t noticed them and fortunately they’d let her be. The legal pad beside her was covered with notes, and a fresh set of pictures, this time of some of the journal’s pages, were displayed on the laptop. The journal was just what Gianni and, by extension, Charles had claimed it to be—a firsthand account of the design and construction of the vault commissioned by Ivan the Terrible to house the Library of Gold.

At first Fioravanti’s excitement at being chosen for such an important project had practically leaped off the page and he’d been clear and direct in his language. This changed once he began to suspect that he might never live to see the finished result. By the last several pages he’d become downright evasive in his wording.

But what had interested Annja the most was the final page of the journal. Unlike all of the others, this one was clearly in code, with a series of letters laid out in a rectangular arrangement with eleven rows of eighteen letters.

CAECPARTIZSNAIIYOI

AETPCIOUIRCIEIEUTC

WRRWODTOAAEEINMOFN

NTWTBAURYTIOHUPSUO

SNROTWESUVTKUAIASR

AECTMTSIBUNRASHYAR

LDEREGOWOTSWONIUHT

TTCUDUSIHOOASISELE

RMNINEEEREUNNGPFYD

MNOGAPIOOADTSDETUL

IEEUEFGSENRSSTOETO

It was a form of substitution code and, luckily, one she was familiar with. The trick was to lay out the message with the proper number of rows, each with the right number of letters, until something made sense when you read down the vertical rows.

After a little bit of trial and error, Annja settled on twenty-two rows, each with nine letters.

CAECPARTI