Sam Bourne 4-Book Thriller Collection

Will fumbled to press the right buttons. All three of them were watching and waiting.

Primers’ domain discovered in the orchard of fruit

‘Christ. What the hell’s that? Just when I thought we were getting somewhere.’

‘It’s worded like a crossword clue. Or perhaps there’s a room in the library that has a painting of an orchard?’

‘TC, what do you reckon?’

‘Your father’s right. It’s a cryptic crossword clue. But I can’t quite see—’

‘Come,’ said Monroe Sr, calling a halt to proceedings. ‘You can make the next train if you hurry.’

Once on board, Will watched as TC got to work. She bit her nails, then twitched her leg, before finally stroking her eyebrow with her right index finger, over and over. She borrowed Will’s notebook and made a series of scribbled attempts at codebreaking – trying to write the words backwards, forwards and broken up into pieces. Nothing.

Occasionally she broke off for more of the conversation that had consumed them since their unscheduled reunion on Friday night. They tried to untie the logical knot which events and the succession of riddles had handed them. They went back and forth, trying to tease out any clues they might have missed, again and again.

Finally, as they clattered past Flatbush Avenue and Forest Hills, TC had a breakthrough.

‘It works like a clue for those crosswords I used to like doing whenever you bought the British papers.’ Will had a fleeting memory of the two of them in his college room, lazing away a Sunday morning. ‘When it says “discovered in”, that’s code for an anagram. Like when they say “messed up” or “hidden in”. So the fruit orchard is somehow “discovered in” primers’ domain.’

‘In those two words?’

‘Yep. Primers’ domain is an anagram.’

‘For what?’

‘For Pardes Rimonim. It means “Garden of Pomegranates” in Hebrew; an orchard of fruit.’ She was smiling.

‘OK, but what on earth is it?’

‘We’re about to find out.’

THIRTY-SEVEN (#ulink_317b222f-c860-5ad7-8383-c448221cdb67)

Sunday, 2.23pm, Manhattan

Patience and Fortitude were gazing elsewhere, as always. Apparently uninterested either in the volumes of learning behind them or the hordes of knowledge-seekers marching towards them, they maintained their poses: stone sentries, silent guardians of the house of wisdom.

Will had always loved this building. As with all young men, the discovery of his own conservatism had come as a shock. But shortly after his arrival in America, Will found he had a great affection – no, it was more than that – a need for old buildings. He was more English than he realized: he needed the solidity of aged walls and stones. He had grown up in a country where the most unremarkable village boasted a church that was six, seven, eight hundred years old – if not older. When it was all around him, he had barely noticed it. But now, in a country that was still so new and unformed, the absence of such agedness almost made him feel queasy, like a sailor on an unsteady ship.

New York was different. Like Boston or Philadelphia, it had enough mature masonry to reassure Will. And the Public Library was a perfect example, a structure that could have been plucked from London or Oxford and dropped onto Manhattan island from the air.

On their way in, Will’s phone had buzzed once more. The message: 3 times I kiss the page. It seemed obvious that this was the final instruction they needed. Pardes Rimonim was the name of the book, that much TC had worked out. This was telling them where to look, perhaps even the page.

TC fairly galloped up the two flights of stairs to the Dorot Jewish Division. She told the librarian which book she wanted to see, prompting a sharp intake of breath. ‘You mean the 1591 manuscript of Pardes Rimonim?’ TC and Will looked at each other. ‘You do appreciate that that is an extremely rare and precious book. Only the manager of the reading room or her deputy is authorized to bring out that manuscript. Could you come back tomorrow?’

‘I really need to see it right away.’

‘I’m afraid a book such as this needs special permission. I’m sorry.’

‘Who’s that woman there? The one drinking coffee.’ TC was nodding towards a back office.

‘That’s the deputy manager. This is her lunch break.’

‘Hello! Hello!’

Will could have cringed with embarrassment. TC had all but shoved the librarian aside and was leaning across the counter, shouting and waving to catch the deputy manager’s attention – here, in the solemn quiet of a library. Scholars at the reading room’s five tables were craning to see the cause of the commotion. If only to restore order, the woman in the back office put down her mug of coffee and came over.

It worked. TC was asked to write her name and address in the visitors’ book, fill in a form and leave ID. Still huffing, the woman disappeared to retrieve the manuscript from a locked cabinet inside a locked room – twenty long minutes in which Will paced, studying the faces of the weekend researchers all around him.

‘Here it is,’ said the woman eventually, standing over the table where Will and TC had pitched camp. She did not hand them the book, nor did she lay it on the table. Instead she propped it up on a pair of wedge-shaped black Styrofoam blocks, so that the spine did not fully open. TC pulled out her notepad and reached for a pen.

‘Pencils only, I’m afraid. No pens near a book of this quality.’

‘I’m sorry. Pencils it is. Thanks very much. I’m sure we won’t be too long.’

‘Oh, I’m not going anywhere. I’m staying right next to this book until it’s back in its cabinet. Those are the rules.’

TC began turning the pages with slow deliberation. The manuscript was a relic from a vanished era; hand-crafted in Cracow, its pages were thick with four centuries of history. TC was wary even of touching it.

Will sat at her side, staring at the latest text message. Mindful of the woman watching over them, he whispered, ‘Is that some religious thing, to kiss the page?’

‘Jews do kiss their prayer books when they’re closed, or if they drop them on the floor. But not three times. And not specific pages.’ TC was speaking without looking away from the book. She seemed to be in awe of it.

Will took out his notepad. Maybe this was an exercise in mathematics; perhaps if it was expressed as arithmetic. Will wrote ‘3 times’ as ‘3 x’. Perhaps I was the figure 1. What would that give him? 3 x 1 = 3. No good.

Then he took a second look at what he had written. Hold on. Will’s mind suddenly went back to the Wednesday afternoons he had spent as a nine-year-old boy, in Mr McGregor’s Latin class. McGregor was an old-school schoolmaster, all black gown and hurling the blackboard eraser, but every word he taught had stuck. Including the games he used to play with the Lower Remove to teach Roman numerals.

Hurriedly now Will wrote out ‘3 times’ as three x’s in succession: xxx. Now for ‘I kiss’. Of course. The I was an i. And how did you denote a kiss, except with the letter x? (For only a flash, Will remembered the first time Beth signed off a text message with an x. Just one x, after her name, but it thrilled Will. They were in that brief, delicious overture of a relationship, falling in love, but not yet having said the L-word out loud. That x of Beth’s was a taster.)

Now he wrote it out: xxx for ‘3 times’, ix for ‘I kiss’: xxxix.

‘Turn to page thirty-nine.’

TC was slow, handling the text before her with solemn care. Will wanted to tear at the pages so that he could just see whatever they were meant to see right now.

‘OK,’ said TC finally. ‘This is it.’

Before them was a page dominated by a graphic: ten circles arranged in geometric fashion and linked by a complex series of lines. Will had a faint memory of such drawings and it took him a while to place it. This reminded him of the chemistry textbooks of his youth, depicting molecular structures in two dimensions.

Except each circle had a word written inside it. Will had to squint to see that the script was Hebrew. It was jarring, geometry and scientific neatness in a drawing that was medieval.

‘What are we looking at?’

He could see TC did not want to answer. She was hunched over the image, her shoulder all but blocking Will’s view. ‘I’m not sure yet. I need to look.’

‘Come on, TC. I know you know what this is.’ Will was shouting in a whisper. ‘Tell me.’