“Of course.” Eve diligently took notes in an arcane shorthand of her own invention. If the boss was worried about eavesdroppers, this was serious. All this beating-off banter by way of beating around the bush was just cover for the real message. But … a book? “I’ll tell Bernard to look up your wish list. Do you have a price in mind, Boss?”
“Whatever it costs,” he said flatly.
Eve felt a cold sweat wash over her. “Whatever it costs?” she echoed, seeking confirmation.
“Whatever.” He dismissed the topic as casually as if he was discussing the weather, rather than giving her carte blanche to spill blood or money like water. “I’ll be back next week. You might as well take it easy until then. Except for the book, of course.”
“Yes, Boss.” She stared hungrily at her notes, then double-underlined a squiggly glyph that in her own internal notation signified more work for the Komatsu in the subbasement, more quick-setting cement to fill the shallow graves, more money to silence those who could be bought and to buy the permanent silence of those who couldn’t. “I’m on it.”
He hung up on her, and Eve fanned herself. Her skin suddenly felt a size too small and prickled with a sullen heat. Whatever it costs was Rupert-code for do whatever it takes to win. A controlling interest in a software company, a shiny new Gulfstream, a stolen Michelangelo, an assassination, a kilo of weapons-grade plutonium from North Korea: whatever he wanted, whatever the cost.
As a rule, Rupe negotiated his less savory acquisitions carefully, confining himself to ambiguous verbal agreements, then delegating execution to someone else. Someone like Miss Evelyn Starkey, executive assistant extraordinaire. She was the one who worked the long hours, buried the bones, and painted over the cracks in Rupert’s veneer of legality. She was under no illusions about why he worked this way: if he ever got caught it was his intention that she, not Rupert, would take the fall. But beggars couldn’t be choosers, and Rupe had got the drop on her.
As a condition for hiring her on special terms (which included paying off her student debt and providing gold-plated family medical insurance), he’d imposed a geas on her, a magical binding to enforce the non-compete clause in her contract. Eve had thought it amusingly weak, so pathetic she’d never bothered to break it. And the work he gave her was interesting, if morally dubious and intermittently illegal. But when, after a couple of months, he showed her the file he’d been keeping on her, she realized it was a snare. The very weakness of the geas meant that it wouldn’t stand scrutiny as a mitigating factor if she was ever charged with any crimes—crimes she’d committed at his direction, but which she appeared to have initiated. Every time he pulled this trick on her the file got fatter, like a cursed magical tome feeding on the life energy of the sorcerer who thought he was using it, not vice versa. The geas was irrelevant: if she didn’t want to be subjected to the full might and majesty of the law, she’d continue to fetch and carry and suck like a dead pig’s face—until he slipped, of course.
She only needed to get lucky once.
Eve sat in silence for a while, pondering. A concordance? The Inquisition banned it even though it was just an index to another book, then hid it in a secret appendix to the list of banned books so nobody would even know it existed? And Rupert is willing to sanction wet work to get his hands on it? She shook her head. Rupert did not sanction murder trivially, not unless at least eight digits of profit were in play. It was a purely pragmatic risk/benefit trade-off: Rupert was ruthless but not rash. The index had to be immensely valuable in the right hands. And he’d heard about it in Cyprus, from one or other of his dodgy oligarch business partners.
After taking a minute to compose herself, Eve put through a call to Bernard Harris, an overpriced and eccentric antiquarian book dealer with whom the boss was oddly thick.
“Mr. Harris? Hi, it’s Evelyn Starkey. The boss just told me about a rare book he’s heard is up for auction somewhere in London this week, and I was wondering if you could look into it and get back to me? Handwriting only, yes please, courier it over ASAP if you don’t mind; yes, yes, something from his, ah, Amazon wish list, last up in 1888, Vatican-prohibited, a concordance, one of a kind. Yes? Absolutely! That sounds like it. Mr. Bigge wants it, yes, definitely, he says price is no object. Will you let me know? Splendid! Ciao.”
Good things come to those who wait, Eve told herself, and turned back to her PC’s screen with a secretive smile.
Once Bernard put out feelers and identified the item that was up for auction, she’d authorize him to place a bid on Rupert’s behalf and set up the necessary machinery to transfer the (undoubtedly enormous) sum of laundered funds from one of the black accounts. And if there were rival bidders who wanted to play hardball, maybe go outside the rules? She’d be ready for them, too.
Meanwhile, there were plastic surgeons to evaluate for their potential to give her the chilly face of corporate perfection. The face she’d wear once she completed her takeover of
