Read Online Eternal Empire by Alec Nevala-Lee - Free Book Online Page B

over the years.” Kneeling, the librarian withdrew a pair of cumbersome cartons from the bottom shelf. He handed them the boxes, which were quite heavy. “Follow me, please.”
    He led them from the archives to an unoccupied office at the end of the floor, where he smiled politely and left, closing the door behind him. Wolfe counted down three seconds, knowing that this was all the time Asthana needed to make the inevitable remark: “You know, I think he fancies you.”
    Wolfe smiled as she lifted off the top of her carton. The mess inside was exactly what she had feared, a jumble of knickknacks and junk thrown together without any thought for order. The second box was more of the same, but in the end, they had no choice but to dive in. Donning gloves, they began to sort through the cartons, working slowly and methodically, with Wolfe checking anything in English and Asthana focusing on items in Russian.
    An hour later, they emerged with a dishearteningly small stack of items, including an old address book and a stack of floppy disks in a format that would require a considerable amount of trouble to read. Wolfe, her back and eyes aching, was about to pack up the rest of the materials when she noticed something lying under a stack of magazines. “What’s this?”
    Asthana looked over. “Oh, that? I saw it earlier. It didn’t seem very useful.”
    Wolfe picked it up. On inspection, it turned out to be an ordinary London street atlas. Leafing through it, she observed that it was last year’s edition, and at first glance, nothing seemed to have been marked or underlined.
    She was on the point of setting it aside when she paused, frowning, and flipped back a page. Looking more closely, she saw that a leaf of the atlas had been torn out of its spiral binding. It was probably nothing, but in the end, she tossed the atlas onto the pile. “Let’s go. I’m starving.”
    On their way out, in the library’s reference section, she asked for a copy of the same edition of the atlas, which she brought to a study carrel in the reading room. The absent leaf in Rogozin’s copy turned out to contain maps for Acton and Hammersmith, at a scale of three inches to a mile.
    Looking over Wolfe’s shoulder, Asthana frowned. “That isn’t much to go on.”
    â€œI know.” Wolfe turned to the next page, feeling it between her fingertips. “Thin paper, though. I wonder—”
    Switching on the lamp in the carrel, she lifted Rogozin’s copy of the atlas and held it at an angle to the light. As she studied the page along one edge, she pulled out her phone and dialed. A second later, it was answered by a man who seemed pleased to hear from her. “Rachel. How are you?”
    â€œI’m good,” Wolfe said, still examining the atlas. “Lester, I need a favor—”
    A few hours later, they were on Western Avenue, driving through heavy traffic. They had taken the atlas to the police laboratory at Lambeth, where her friend Lester Lewis, a Home Office pathologist, had expedited their request. Electrostatic detection had found indented writing, evidently in Rogozin’s hand, on the page beneath the one that was missing. The faint letters left by the pencil’s impression had turned out to be an address in East Acton.
    Asthana was clearly less than enthused about the errand. As she sat behind the wheel, she turned, as if to cheer herself up, to a favorite subject. “It’s obvious Lewis likes you. You should grab that one while you can—”
    Wolfe did her best to deflect the topic. “Lewis and I are good friends. If nothing else, we’ve been through a lot together.”
    â€œI’ll bet you have,” Asthana said, smiling, as they left the main road. “I keep saying you need to bring him to the wedding—”
    As she listened, Wolfe realized with a start that Asthana’s wedding was less than two weeks