A shoe box full of old IDs.
Blueprints for a very large bank written almost entirely in Japanese.
Background information on every guard at the Tower of London in 1980.
“Do you know if Uncle Eddie keeps anything about the other families?” She slammed the top drawer shut and jerked open the next.
Shipping manifests for a tanker out of Stockholm.
“What about them?” Simon asked.
Blank letterhead from the ambassador to Ecuador.
“Names? Addresses? Any information about the other families—how to track them down.”
A ring of keys labeled Property of Montreal World’s Fair, DO NOT DUPLICATE.
“I don’t know,” Simon said. He sounded almost afraid, standing there, watching Kat slam the second drawer then step back and look at the piles and the boxes and the dust. Looking for answers.
“Simon, I need you to tell me if Uncle Eddie keeps a computer anywhere. Have you ever built him any databases or an address book or—”
“Kat.” Simon cut her off. “This is Uncle Eddie you’re talking about.”
She pulled the chair out from behind the desk, pushed aside a perfectly-to-scale model of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, and took a seat.
“Kat, what is going on?” Simon said in the manner of a boy who had given up on trying to understand anything that wasn’t made of ones and zeros. “What are you looking for?” Kat pulled open a desk drawer and ran her fingers through a million dollars in fake chips from a hotel that had never existed in Las Vegas. “What’s wrong?” he asked as she thumbed through a book about the catacombs and passageways that still ran beneath Vatican City.
“Kat!” Simon yelled this time. He pulled the book out of her frantic hands. “Kat, where is Hale?”
And suddenly Kat knew she couldn’t hide. Couldn’t run. Couldn’t lie.
“Hale is…” she started slowly.
“I’m right here.”
And there he was, standing in the hallway at Simon’s back. When Gabrielle appeared at his side, Kat didn’t know what she was feeling: relief or embarrassment. Shame or guilt.
She tried to smile. “I thought you were heading to Paraguay.”
He dropped the duffel bag to the ground and leaned against the door frame. “Yeah, but then I saw the most interesting thing on the news.”
There was only one chair in the dusty office, little light, no food, but those weren’t the reasons why they left. The kitchen was simply where these things were discussed, so the kitchen was where they went. Well, all of them but Katarina. Kat stayed by the door.
“So how was Paraguay?” Gabrielle asked as she and Hale and Simon took their places at the table.
“There were mosquitoes. I hate mosquitoes.” Simon scratched at his leg, but his gaze drifted from Gabrielle to Hale and finally to Kat. “What happened?”
Hale and Gabrielle looked at Kat. Kat looked away.
“We have a sort of…situation,” Hale said.
To Hale’s right, Simon winced. “Here,” Gabrielle said, reaching for the burn cream Uncle Eddie kept over the stove. She grabbed the younger boy by the top of the head and said, “Hold still.”
“Was it the Russians?” Simon asked. No one answered. “Brazil?” His voice was rising higher. “Don’t tell me someone from the Henley finally—”
“It’s Romani.” Kat’s voice cut him off. “Or…we thought it was Romani—I thought it was him. But then…”
“Kat.” Hale was up and crossing the room. In a split second he reached her. “I believed them too.”