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the perfect cover.”
    People were now being fed through the stanchions to where the guards had set up a makeshift screening area, behind a bookcase draped with a heavy curtain. Those who had been searched were being led into another holding area, the two groups kept separate. The room remained sealed in steel.
    Several people were continuing to protest, and the temperature in the room was climbing. “We’re going to be here all afternoon,” Julia said. The novelty was starting to wear off. She had a long drive back to Bryn Mawr. Maybe she should stay in the city and drive back on Monday. She would miss morning classes, but at least she had a good excuse. She glanced over at Gideon and wondered, idly, if he had an apartment in the city.
    “Seriously, I don’t see any obvious crooks in here,” he told her. “Just a lot of boring old white people with names like Murphy and O’Toole.”
    Suddenly there was a shout. One of the guards, who had been searching the room, was calling out and gesturing frantically. He was kneeling at a bookcase, the glass door of which was open. The commander and other guards went over, and they all bent down to examine something. It looked to Julia like a piece of paper shoved between two volumes. More activity, discussion, and finally—with gloves—the thing was removed. It was a sheet of vellum, and it looked very much like a page from the Book of Kells. It was brought over to the volume, now back on its stand, and a long examination and a second whispered confabulation ensued.
    Once again, the commander gestured to the crowd for quiet. “It appears,” he said, “that we’ve recovered the page cut from the Book of Kells.”
    A large murmur of relief.
    “I’m afraid, however, that we’re still going to have to question and search each and every one of you before we can open that security door.”
    A smattering of angry expostulations.
    “The sooner you all get with the program,” the commander said wearily, “the sooner all of us will be out of here.”
    A collective groan. “Oh, God,” said Julia. “At this rate, I won’t get back to Bryn Mawr until midnight. How I hate driving at night.”
    “You could always stay with me. I’ve got a suite at the Gansevoort Hotel, with a view of the High Line.”
    She looked at him and, to her mortification, found her heart rate accelerating considerably at the thought. “Is that some sort of indecent proposal?”
    “As a matter of fact, yes. We’ll have a wonderful dinner in the hotel restaurant with a good bottle of wine, talk about nuclear physics and French literature, and then we’ll go up to my room and make passionate and indecent love.”
    “You’re awfully direct.”
    “ Vita brevis ,” he said, simply. And the Latin, more than anything else, was why she said yes.

8
    I T WAS A fresh summer morning as Gideon walked the block from his hotel to the offices of Effective Engineering Solutions on Little West 12th Street. Dr. Julia Thrum Murphy. He felt more than a twinge of regret. As much as he’d enjoyed her company, he couldn’t allow himself to get entangled in any sort of relationship with anyone, not with a death sentence hanging over his head. It wouldn’t be fair to her. For her part, she seemed quite happy with a one-night stand and had said good-bye to him with no tone of regret. He would have loved to have seen her again—but it was not to be.
    He angrily swiped his card and the unprepossessing doors of EES whispered open; he traversed the cavernous lab spaces, with their shrouded models and setups, the white-coated technicians whispering among themselves or making notations on clipboards; and he made his way to the conference room on the top floor of the building. There he found only the dour, nameless man who served coffee, waiting in his uniform. Gideon took a seat, threw his arms behind his head, and leaned back. “Double espresso, no sugar, thanks.”
    The man vanished. A moment later, Glinn came in,