‘Have you found what you were looking for?’ she asked.
‘No,’ Matt answered, hoping his frustration wasn’t showing too much. ‘Is it possible there are items in the collection not catalogued?’
She hesitated. ‘Everything is catalogued, but there’s always a possibility that some items are held in the private collection. These are items that are to be accessed with special permission or under certain circumstances.’
‘Who makes the decision of what counts as a special circumstance?’ Matt asked, a glimmer of hope returning.
‘That would be the Special Collections Manager.’ She smiled again. ‘In fact, this is him coming our way right now.’
‘Good morning,’ the friendly looking man said, reaching out his hands to shake those of Matt, Julia and Andreas. ‘My name is Mischeler.’
‘Good morning, Herr Mischeler,’ Andreas said, before Matt had a chance. ‘I’m Andreas Bosshard. These are my colleagues, Dr. Matthew Cameron and Julia McKenzie.’
‘Bosshard.’ Mischeler repeated. ‘Not any relation to…’
‘Michael Bosshard.’ Andreas smiled, glancing sideways at Matt. ‘Yes, he’s my father.’
Matt realised what Andreas was doing. Clearly this was no time to interrupt.
‘I know your father well. We’ve worked together on many a project over the years.’ He looked Andreas up and down. ‘Yes, I can see a family resemblance.’ He paused, and smiled a warm and welcoming smile. ‘Well, master Bosshard, what can we do for you today here at our humble library?’
‘We were hoping to make a visit to the Kirstein Collection.’
‘Anything in particular you’re looking for?’
‘It’s hard to say, we aren’t exactly sure ourselves what we’re looking for, but it would have been an item submitted following Kirstein’s final journey. An item he picked up in New Zealand.’
‘Ah.’ Mischeler nodded. ‘About ninety percent of that submission, the findings of that journey, are part of the private collection. Never been published, and most likely never will be. Can I ask for what purpose you need to find this item?’
‘It’s a long story,’ Matt said, hoping it was OK to put his bit in now. ‘But if what we think is there is actually there, then the history of New Zealand may possibly need a full revision.’
‘Sounds exciting.’
‘It is exciting,’ Andreas agreed. ‘If there was some way we could access the collection, those items, it would be greatly appreciated.’
Herr Mischeler looked down at the red counter. He tapped his lip with his finger. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity to Matt, he lifted his head again and smiled.
‘Alright,’ he said. ‘Since your father has done me so many favours over the years, I’ll return one now.’
‘Great,’ Matt said. ‘Thank you so much Herr Mischeler.
‘That’s OK, but I want to come with you, it sounds like there might be some adventure hidden in this. Give me two hours to organise things. I need to advise the director that I’ll be taking guests down to the archive and to arrange the appropriate access passes.’
‘Alright,’ Andreas said. ‘We’ll go and find lunch somewhere and see you back here at…’ he looked at his watch, ‘Thirteen hundred.’
‘I suggest you try the Mensa, student cafeteria, down on floor B, under the Polyterasse. That’s the large terrace out front. They have a few meal options on there and it saves a trip back down into the city centre.’
They said their goodbyes and made their way down to the Mensa. The building was a rabbit warren, with stairs and corridors leading all over the place, but eventually, after passing by a sweaty-smelling gymnasium, they were greeted with the smells of food, and joined the queues at the student cafeteria.
CHAPTER 58
Matt placed his knife and fork next to each other across his plate. He wasn’t sure if it was the processed meat in the Schnitzel, or the anticipation of finding some hard evidence of a Spanish discovery of New Zealand that left him feeling a bit sick in his stomach. Either way, it was 12:50pm, time to get back upstairs.
‘Welcome back,’ Herr Mischeler greeted them. ‘Everything’s arranged. If you’d like to follow me, we can make our way to the archives right now.’
Matt, Andreas, and Julia followed Mischeler through a sliding glass door at the back of the collection room. He took a key from his pocket and the group passed through the door he unlocked. It was a different world.
They passed through corridors lined with rolling shelves stacked wall to wall, floor to ceiling. Large steel chests of files and wide drawers crowded another hall. A conveyer system ran overhead, books frequently going past to an unknown destination. There were even yellow boxes running around on an overhead track, turning corners, crossing intersections, and going down through the floor. Matt was suitably impressed. The whole place had a familiar smell of old books. They took a cargo lift down to floor D.
Matt was amazed that anyone could find their way around this building. As they went down a flight of stairs, he completely lost his bearings. Herr Mischeler led them to another small stair against a wall. Here, they passed through a door that Matt would never otherwise have noticed; it was concealed so subtly in the wall panels.
‘This is quite some place you have here,’ Matt said, intending to compliment Herr Mischeler, as they started down a long, narrow, flight of stairs that the door had hidden.
‘Thanks, we make do with the space we can find. It’s an old building and wasn’t designed to house a library. Most of the building is taken up by smaller offices and some auditoriums. It makes squeezing in a library a bit of a challenge, but then this is just one of our many book storage facilities.’
At the bottom of the stairs, the slightly ajar door opened out into a triangular room. Sitting at a desk on the other side of the room, by a large opening into the next room, was a stern-looking, silent man. Herr Mischeler simply nodded at him as they walked past. Matt wasn’t sure if he was a guard of some sort, or just someone having a coffee break. They walked past and through the opening beyond him. Matt’s mouth dropped open but words didn’t come out.
In front of him, Matt stared at a huge space, full of floor to ceiling shelves running in perfectly ordered rows as far as the eyes could follow. Off to the sides of these shelves were further openings into other large chambers which also housed rows and rows of shelves. Continuing along in Herr Mischeler’s footsteps, Matt saw that both Julia and Andreas were also struggling to take in what they were seeing.
‘Is your Dad’s library like this?’ Matt asked Andreas.
‘Not even close.’
‘It’s incredible,’ Julia said.
‘Not many people get to see this,’ Herr Mischeler said with a proud grin. ‘It’s always nice to hear happy reactions like yours. Here we are… the Kirstein Collection.’
Matt looked at the shelves they had stopped at. Nothing here told him that this was the Kirstein Collection. The shelves looked like all the rest. The only thing different was the shelf number, printed in bold letters at the top right.
‘So…’ Herr Mischeler continued. ‘…we’re looking for the content of his last journey, the journey to New Zealand.’
Herr Mischeler pulled a card from his jacket pocket and looked at a number he had written on it. He moved along the shelves, his finger tracing the reference numbers that appeared on each shelf, under each row of books and small carton boxes. Eventually he stopped, four shelving units further along, and looked up at Matt, smiling.
‘The content of these three shelves is everything Kirstein brought back from New Zealand with him. This content was stored days before his death. Everything here was catalogued, but nothing has been made public or properly investigated. We had no reason to believe there was anything special beyond what he had noted in his journals. He certainly never made mention of anything that could change history, but who knows, huh?’
‘Perhaps he also wanted to look into things a little before he went public,’ Matt suggested.
