Finding North (32 page)

On the other side of the
case, there was both a mariner’s astrolabe and a sextant. Both used
in navigation of ships, it held the practical tools of navigation,
including a lead and line.

“
What a shame,” Eloise Le
Grande said and pointed to the box. “The directional compass is
gone. Looks like it’s been missing for a long, long
time.”

Alex looked up at her. She
was tempted to tell the woman-dragon, or whatever she was, that the
compass had been in Ben’s safe for all these years. But her natural
reticence to talk kept her from saying a word. The elderly woman
gave her a bright smile.

“
Gosh, the book is gone as
well.” Eloise Le Grande pointed to a slot behind the drafting
tools. “That’s a shame. I wonder what it was.”

“
Notebook of some kind,
I’d guess,” Alex said.

“
Was that common?” Eloise
Le Grande asked.

Wondering what the woman
was asking, Alex gave her a puzzled look. Eloise Le Grande
smiled.

“
Common?” Alex asked. “I’d
guess so. Most of these kits came with a journal to write on. We’d
have to take this to an expert to find out how old the set was.
That would determine whether the book was in calfskin or in paper.
Then it depends on how the book was stored as to whether it would
be readable now.”

Alex nodded.

“
Any idea who this
belonged to?” Alex asked.

“
Why the bookstore owner,
of course,” Eloise Le Grande said. “I’m sure it was a family
heirloom.”

Alex felt Raz’s hand on
the small of her back. Feeling the book, he slipped it out from
under her shirt and tucked it into his back pants pocket. Alex
shifted toward him for comfort.

“
Thank you for sharing
this with us, Ms. Le Grande,” Raz said.

Eloise Le Grande
smiled.

“
Too bad it’s missing a
few items.” Eloise Le Grande’s fingers touched the spot where
Alex’s caliper and Ben’s compass would go. “This is a very useful
set. But only when it’s complete and used together.”

Alex smiled.

“
Oh look,” Eloise Le
Grande said. She gestured to the inside of the glass counter the
cartographer’s set was sitting on. “Isn’t that the same
symbol?”

Alex bent over to get a
better look. Raz knelt down. A man’s ring with the compass rose and
distinctive eye was sitting on a shelf. Surprised, Alex took a
quick breath. The cufflinks sat next to the ring.

“
May I take a look at that
watch?” Raz asked.

He pointed to what looked
like an antique, gold-covered pocket watch. The watch’s gold cover
had a multi-colored gold image of the compass rose and
eye.

“
You have good taste,”
Eloise Le Grande said.

She went around the
cabinet and took out the antique pocket watch. Raz gave Alex a soft
smile. He turned the watch over to show that the compass rose
design was duplicated on the back in the same multicolored gold. In
the center of the eye was an empty monogram space. Raz pressed the
stem, and the cover opened to show a simple watch face with a
smaller dial for the second hand.

“
Wind it,” Eloise Le
Grande said. “It keeps time. Not perfect time, but you know how
these antiques can be.”

Raz nodded. He wound the
watch and then held it to his ear to listen to it tick. He
smiled.

“
Are we able to purchase
items from the store?” Alex asked. “I’d love to get the ring and
cufflinks for my father, and I know Agent Rasmussen would love to
add this watch to his collection.”

“
I don’t see why not,”
Eloise Le Grande said. “I can write them up right
here . . .”

Vince hooted, and Leena
cheered.

“
We found some maps!”
Margaret yelled.

The team
cheered.

“
Looks like they found
something important,” Eloise Le Grande said. “Why don’t you hang
onto these?”

She set the cufflinks and
ring in Alex’s hand.

“
For safe keeping,” Eloise
Le Grande said. “Keep the watch, too, Agent Rasmussen. You never
know what could happen.”

Raz looked confused, but
stuck the watch in his pocket.

“
Why don’t you go see what
they found?” Eloise Le Grande asked. “I’ll close up the case and be
right there.”

Alex and Raz walked to the
back of the store, where MJ was lying on his stomach under the
bookshelf on the end of the alcove. Alex glanced at the molding
where Eloise Le Grande had gone and then back at MJ. A lanky man,
MJ’s entire body was under the wide oak bottom shelf. Margaret held
onto his bony ankles while Vince and Leena grabbed rolled-up maps
from MJ’s finger tips.

“
Uh,” Alex gasped and then
covered her mouth with her fingers.

Surprised, Margaret,
Vince, and Leena looked at her.

“
What did we do?” Margaret
asked.

“
It’s not you,” Colin said
as he walked past Alex and Raz to where Margaret was standing.
“It’s the maps.”

“
The maps?” Vince
asked.

Vince held up a rolled-up
map and raised a questioning eyebrow. The team had gathered behind
Alex and Raz at the end of the alcove.

“
They are rolled up.”
Colin shook his head. “Very bad. Very bad.”

Colin knelt
down.

“
Do you see any maps that
are not rolled up?” Colin asked.

“
They’d be lying flat in a
stack,” Alex said.

“
Yeah, give me a second to
get over there,” MJ said.

“
We should check under the
bottom shelf of all three alcoves,” Alex said. “It looks like there
is a deep space there.”

“
You heard the Fey,”
Matthew said. “Troy, you work with Colin and Joseph. Royce, you
work with Zack and Cliff.”

“
Who goes under?” Zack
asked.

“
Work it out,” Matthew
said. “Sergeant Dusty?”

“
Sir,” Sergeant Dusty came
out from a closet opposite where they were standing.

“
Where are we with our
search?” Matthew asked.

“
We’ve looked everywhere,”
Sergeant Dusty said. “We found the cartography tools and this stash
of maps. Margaret found . . . well, we’re not sure
what she found. The bookshop assistant said she should hold onto
it. We’ve taken a cursory look at the books, but without an idea of
what we’re looking for, they’re just old books.”

Matthew nudged Alex with
his elbow. He nodded his head to where Jesse was looking at books.
Alex walked over to Jesse.

“
Did you find something?”
Alex asked in a low voice in Spanish.

“
I thought I bought this
book.” Jesse’s glowing finger pointed to a book on ancient
churches. “God, I could swear I own this book. And look, it’s next
to . . .”

He pointed to an old book
on beekeeping.

“
I’ll be damned,” Alex
said.

Alex took the book on
beekeeping off the shelf. She flipped through the pages before
turning the book over and shaking it. Nothing came out. She took
down Jesse’s book on ancient churches and shook it. An index card
flew out of the book and skidded across the floor. Raz bent down
and picked it up. He looked at the writing and scowled.

“
It’s your handwriting,”
Raz said. He gave the card to Alex. “How did these books get
here?”

Alex shook her head. She
looked at the card and scowled.

“
What is it?” Raz
asked.

“
It’s the longitude and
latitude of the valley where Nazo, Farooq, Felicia, and Emal
lived,” Alex said. “This is the exact location of their
home.”

“
What?” Raz asked. “Let me
see that.”

She gave him the card. He
looked at the numbers and nodded.

“
This is the location that
you used to set up the satellite to make sure the opium dealers
don’t move in,” Alex said.

Raz widened his eyes and
gave her a firm nod.

“
Look in the book of
ancient churches,” Jesse said. He jumped up and down. “Look in
the . . .”

Alex picked up the book
Jesse had owned. She flipped through to Afghanistan.

“
There was an ancient
church on that site,” Alex said. Reading from the book, she said,
“In the days after Christ’s death in Jerusalem, pilgrims fled to
Ultima Thule.”

Alex shook her
head.

“
What is it?” Raz
asked.

“
Just this weird feeling
of
déjà vu
,” Alex
said.

Chapter
Twenty-three

“
I was
standing . . .” Alex walked to where Margaret was
kneeling.

“ 
. . .
here,” Alex said. “Jesse was there.”

Raz went to where Alex
pointed. Jesse floated to his right.

“
He was reading from that
book,” Alex held out the book to Raz.

“
In the days after
Christ’s death in Jerusalem, pilgrims fled to Ultima Thule,” Raz
read.

“
I said, ‘That’s weird
because Ultima Thule is a mythological land,’” Alex
said.

“
Borders of the known
world,” Raz said. “Virgil described it as a far-off land or an
unattainable goal.”

“
That’s right,” Alex said.
“It was on every medieval map. No one knows if it was shorthand for
the places they hadn’t explored or if they actually thought it was
a place.”

“
It’s Sweden, isn’t it,
sir?” Margaret asked.

“
Norway,” Alex said. “But
that’s just a guess. It could have been Sweden or Scandinavia in
general. It’s the Latin name for the island of Greenland while
‘Thule’ is Latin for the island of Iceland.”

Alex nodded.

“
We bought these books
because of that passage,” Alex said. “Read the next
line.”

“
Christian pilgrims found
a safe haven in Ultima Thule,” Raz read. “Christianity blossomed in
the safe harbor, and pilgrims went out into the world to spread the
Christ’s word. Joseph of Arimathea left Ultima Thule for England,
where he consecrated the Chalice Well with a few precious drops of
Christ’s blood, which he’d preserved in a tube he wore around his
neck.”

“
And Jesse
said . . .” Alex started.

“
That’s ridiculous,” Jesse
said. “Joseph of Arimathea was never in Ultima Thule.”

“
What did Jesse say?” Raz
asked. His eyes searched her face to see if she was all
right.

“
Joseph of Arimathea was
Jesse’s favorite saint,” Alex said. “He knew everything about him.
We went to every known site, including the Chalice Well. Jesse said
that he was never in Ultima Thule, Norway, Scandinavia, Greenland,
or whatever. He was dubious about the Chalice Well story,
too.”

“
It’s a long way from
Jerusalem, where he’s buried,” Raz said.

Alex nodded. She turned
around to look at the alcove and then turned back to
Raz.

“
Check and see if this is
right,” Alex said. “The book says that Joseph of Arimathea went on
to what is now Afghanistan and started a church in the valley where
Nazo and Emal were raised.”

Raz read the book. He
looked at Alex and nodded.

“
We bought these books,”
Alex said. “There’s something in this bee book about that valley,
too.”

“
Had you
been . . .?”

“
No,” Alex said. “That’s
the thing. We’d never been to the valley. A year or so after we
found these, we were in Afghanistan looking for someone who’d been
kidnapped in Pakistan. Because Jesse wanted to find this church, we
went to that valley and met Nazo’s father, the twins’ grandfather.
He kept bees.”

Alex looked at
Raz.

“
The border at that time
was almost non-existent. People moved back and forth at will. There
were enormous Pashtun refugee camps in Pakistan left over from the
Russian war. The camps served as home base for every kind of tribal
commerce — legal and illegal. We needed a place to gather intel,
and Nazo’s father welcomed us. He’d heard about the work we’d done
in the tribal areas and wanted to help. He was so proud of his
family, his land . . . Emal, the doctor, and his
amazing Nazo. That’s what he called her.”

Alex gave a sad
smile.

“
He was a wonderful man,”
Alex nodded.

“
Did you find the church?”
Raz asked.

“
We found something,” Alex
said. “Nazo’s father showed it to us. He loved Jesse.”

Alex smiled at the
thought. Then she scowled. She cocked her head to the side and
thought for a moment.

“
I think Farooq is the one
who was kidnapped,” Alex said.

“
What?” Raz put his hands
on his hips in disbelief.

“
Joseph?” Alex
asked.

Joseph stuck his head out
from an alcove.

“
Did we stay at Nazo’s
father’s farm while we were looking for Farooq?” Alex
asked.