The Alexandria Link (Electronic book text)

ONE
Copenhagen, Denmark
Tuesday, October 4
The present
1:45 am
Cotton Malone stared straight into the face of trou- ble. Outside his bookshop's open front door stood his ex-wife, the last person on earth he'd expected to see. He quickly registered panic in her tired eyes, remembered the pounding that had awoken him a few minutes before, and instantly thought of his son.
"Where's Gary?" he asked.
"You son of a bitch. They took him. Because of you. They took him." She lunged forward, her closed fists crashing down onto his shoulders. "You sorry son of a bitch." He grabbed her wrists and stopped the attack as she started crying. "I left you because of this. I thought this kind of thing was over."
"Who took Gary?" More sobs were his answer. He kept hold of her arms. "Pam. Listen to me. Who took Gary?"
She stared at him. "How the hell am I supposed to know?"
"What are you doing here? Why didn't you go to the police?"
"Because they said not to. They said if I went anywhere near the police, Gary was dead. They said they would know, and I believed them."
"Who's they?"
She wrenched her arms free, her face flooded with anger. "I don't know. All they said was for me to wait two days, then come here and give you this." She rummaged through her shoulder bag and produced a phone. Tears continued to rain down her cheeks. "They said for you to go online and open your e-mail."
Had he heard right? Go online and open your e-mail?
He flipped open the phone and checked the frequency. Enough megahertz to make it world-capable. Which made him wonder. Suddenly he felt vulnerable. Hojbro Plads was quiet. At this late hour no one roamed the city square.
His senses came alive.
"Get inside." And he yanked her into the shop and closed the door. He hadn't switched on any lights.
"What is it?" she asked, her voice shredded by fear.
He faced her. "I don't know, Pam. You tell me. Our son has apparently been taken by God-knows-who, and you wait two days before telling a soul about it? That didn't strike you as insane?"
"I wasn't going to jeopardize his life."
"And I would? How have I ever done that?"
"By being you," she said in a frigid tone, and he instantly recalled why he no longer lived with her.
A thought occurred to him. She'd never been to Denmark. "How did you find me?"
"They told me."
"Who the hell is they?"
"I don't know, Cotton. Two men. Only one did the talking. Tall, dark-haired, flat face."
"American?"
"How would I know?"
"How did he speak?"
She seemed to catch hold of herself. "No. Not American. They had accents. European."
He motioned with the phone. "What am I supposed to do with this?"
"He said to open your e-mail and it would be explained."
She glanced nervously around at the shelves cast in shadows. "Upstairs,