just happened? A victory, a defeat? Wrong yardstick, son. Here's what happened. You almost died, and you learned what it was to live."
CHAPTER TWELVE
A heavy white lorry carrying a load of semi-finished lumber swung off the busy Mil highway and onto Queen's Road, Cambridge. There it pulled up beside several parked trucks bearing construction equipment for a major renovation project. That was the way with a large and aging university like Cambridge - something was always being rebuilt or renovated.
After the driver pulled in, the man he'd given a ride to thanked him warmly for the lift and stepped out onto the gravel. Instead of going to work, though, the man, who wore a taupe work suit, ducked inside one of the Polyjohns near the building site; the West Yorkshire company's motto, Leading Through Innovation, was molded on the blue plastic door. When he emerged, he was wearing a gray herringbone jacket of Harris tweed. It was a uniform of another sort, one that would render him inconspicuous as he strolled along the "Backs," the wide swath of green that ran along the oldest of the Cambridge colleges: King's, Clare, Trinity Hall, and, his destination, Trinity College. In all, just an hour had elapsed since Paul Janson arrived at the Stansted Airport, now a blurry memory of glass and quilted-steel ceilings.
Janson had spoken so many lies, in so many accents, over the past twenty-four hours that his head ached. But soon he would meet someone who could sweep all the mist and mystification away. Someone he could talk to in confidence, someone who was in a singular position to have insight into the tragedy. His lifeline would be at Trinity College: a brilliant don named Angus Fielding.
Janson had studied with him as a Marshall Fellow back in the early seventies, and the gentle scholar with the amused eyes had taken him on for a series of tutorials in economic history. Something about Fielding's sinuous mind had captivated Janson, and there was something about Janson, in turn, that the savant found genuinely engaging. All these years later, Janson hated to involve Fielding in his hazardous investigation, but there was no other choice. His old academic mentor, an expert in the global financial system, had been a member of a brain trust that Peter Novak had put together in order to help guide the Liberty Foundation. He was also, Janson had heard, now the master of Trinity College.
As Janson walked across Trinity Bridge and over the Backs, memories swept over him - memories of another time, a time of learning, and healing, and rest. Everything around him brought back images of that golden period in his life. The lawns, the Gothic buildings, even the punters who glided along the Cam under the stone arches of the bridges and the branch curtains of the weeping willows, propelling their small boats with long poles. As he approached Trinity, the wind chime of memory grew even louder. Here, facing the Backs, stood the dining hall, which was built in the early seventeenth century, and the magnificent Wren library, with its soaring vaults and arches. Trinity's physical presence at Cambridge was large and majestic but represented only a portion of its actual holdings; the college was, in fact, the second-largest landowner in Britain, after the queen. Janson walked past the library to the small gravel lot abutting the master's lodge.
He rang the bell, and a servant cracked open a window. "Here to see the master, love?"
"I am."
"Bit early, are you? Never mind, dear. Why don't you come round the front and I'll let you in?" Obviously, she had taken him for someone else, someone who had an appointment at that hour.
None of it was exactly high-security. The woman had not even asked his name. Cambridge had changed little since he had been a student there in the seventies.
Inside the master's lodge, the broad, red-carpeted stairs led past a portrait gallery of Trinity luminaries from centuries past: a bearded George Trevelyan, a clean-shaved William Whewell, an ermine-collared Christopher Wordsworth. At the top of the stairs, to the left, was a pink-carpeted drawing room with paneled walls that were painted white, so as not to compete with the portraits that adorned them. Past this room was a much larger one, with dark-wood floors covered with a number of large Orientals. Staring at Janson as he entered was a full-length portrait of Queen Elizabeth I, painted during her life, with meticulous attention to the details of her dress and