The Arms Maker of Berlin - By Dan Fesperman Page 0,3

mind.

But more practical matters beckoned. He was already dreading the long drive. Six hours minimum, meaning he would have to stop for breakfast, maybe a nap. Good thing he’d nodded off here. With any luck he would make it in time for the arraignment, although he realized now that Viv hadn’t given him a time or place. He tapped the desktop like a blind man, groping for his things. Then the phone throbbed again. Viv with the logistics, no doubt.

“Yes?”

“Don’t be alarmed.”

A man’s voice this time, calm and deliberate, with an odd echo as if it were bouncing off the far wall of the stacks.

“What?”

“Don’t be alarmed. I’m on your floor, over by the stairwell.”

So the man was in the stacks. Nat felt like leaping from his seat, but in what direction? For all he knew, the fellow was only a few yards away.

“Are you a campus cop?”

“No. A friend. Or that’s how I hope you’ll think of me.”

“Me, too.”

“C’mon. We need to get moving.”

There was a metallic snap as the caller hung up, which made Nat flinch in his chair. Across the room, a tiny light switched on, casting a narrow white beam that scoped down the long aisle before coming to rest on Nat’s right knee, where it waggled briefly.

“This way,” the man said.

“Do you have a name?” Nat answered.

He was back in the role of trapped miner, only he wasn’t so sure about the rescue party. His voice held steady, but he was a little scared. He considered bolting, since he probably knew these corridors better than his adversary did. But without his own light he would soon wind up facedown, or smashed against a shelf.

“We’ll discuss details outside.”

“Maybe I should call 9-1-1, in case a campus cop is on patrol outside. Wouldn’t want him seeing us coming out of a locked door after hours and overreacting.”

“It won’t work.”

“What won’t?”

“Your phone.”

He was right. Nat couldn’t get a signal. For that matter, how had he gotten one to begin with? Never before had he been able to make or take a call this deep in the stacks. Library officials were content to let the place remain a cell phone dead zone, and he had only rarely heard one ringing. How had the two calls gotten through, then? And what had become of his miraculous signal? This was beginning to feel like one of the scenes he reconstructed a bit too luridly in his books. Some doomed hero of the resistance, cornered at last by the Gestapo. Fear crept a little higher in his chest, and his voice tightened.

“What is this? What are you doing?”

“Sorry for the spook act, but we’re wasting time. I’ll explain outside.”

Assuming they made it.

“Let me get my things.”

Nat groped for a pen and a sheet of paper as he rose from his chair. He scribbled blindly: “1 a.m., 5-18-07, Am being abducted.”

Whoever found it would know who left the note because this was Nat’s assigned carrel. Then he had another idea and laid down his cell phone. “Last call on phone has his number,” he scribbled, hoping he wasn’t writing over the previous message. He then added a postscript.

“Pls tell Karen Turnbull,” he wrote, jotting her number. His daughter. Probably the only person on the planet other than his department head who would care enough to follow up. A sobering realization when you were about to walk off into the dark with a stranger, and not much of a comment on the life he had built.

“What’s taking so long?”

“I’m making sure I’ve got everything.”

It was partly true. Other than the note and his phone, Nat believed it was important that he not leave behind a single item. For one thing, it was his usual careful way as a researcher. For another, he had a feeling he wouldn’t be returning for quite a while.

TWO

NAT’S ESCORT NUDGED HIM FORWARD through the darkness like a border collie, brisk and insistent. He knew all the back corridors and obscure stairwells. Either he was lucky or had scouted the route, and Nat didn’t want to dwell on the implications of the latter.

Neither man spoke until they pushed through a fire exit into the starlight. No alarm sounded, another anomaly. But it was a relief to be outdoors, where the air smelled of mown grass and spring blossoms. Nat stared up through a canopy of new oak leaves while the sweat cooled on his back. He was weighing the odds of running when his escort produced an ID in the