CHAPTER 31
Stephanie entered the Kungliga Biblioteket, the Swedish Royal Library, an impressive collection of eighteen million objects.
As with the Library of Congress back home, Swedish law required that publishers of printed material send one copy of every book to the national library.
Creators of music, film, radio, and TV were similarly required.
The collections dated back to the mid–seventeenth century and the days of King Gustav, who acquired a multitude of books on a variety of subjects.
Eventually they were expanded through seized war booty.
Those treasures included the episcopal library of Würzburg, the University of Olomouc library, and the royal library of Prague, where the Codex Gigas, the Devil’s Bible, was acquired.
In the beginning the royal book collections were kept in the old Tre Kronor palace.
But after it burned to the ground in the late seventeenth century, changes were made.
The current building, a masterpiece of stone and iron, was built in the nineteenth century, later remodeled and expanded.
Two large underground stacks, built into the bedrock below the building, now contained the bulk of the collection, while library patrons, visitors, the main collection, and employees shared the space in the upper main building.
She’d come straight from the palace. The king and prime minister were still not convinced on the allegations made against Princess Lysa.
Outrageous, was how the king kept describing everything.
It was a hard pill to swallow, but she’d assured him that they would conduct a detailed investigation and find the truth.
But how?
She had a few ideas on that one. All of them made more complicated by the fact that Westlake was either lying, at least on parts of the story, or not telling them everything.
Tops on the list?
If Princess Lysa was a tacit accomplice, ignorant of the fact that she was being manipulated, how had they managed to get her to cooperate?
The lack of an answer there advised caution when dealing with Westlake.
She’d charged Cassiopeia with trying to find an answer, which would go a long way toward determining whether Westlake was worthy of belief.
Stephanie’s task? Deal with the Devil’s Bible.
She’d read the book Koger had supplied and learned quite a bit.
There were 320 folios. More than a hundred lines of text on each page, each composed in a tight small script with colorful additions.
All on vellum, which would have taken about 150 animal hides to create.
That meant there’d been money behind its origins.
Somebody had to pay for all that. In thirteenth-century Bohemia, that kind of wealth would have come from only two sources.
Royalty or the Church.
The story behind its creation was more legend than fact, most of it fashioned once the codex made its way to Sweden.
Supposedly a monk, sometimes named Herman the Recluse, was sentenced to death by being walled up alive for breaking his monastic vows.
As a last gasp for survival, he made a deal with his captors that he would create a single book filled with the world’s knowledge in return for his life.
The proposal was accepted, but his pardon from death would only be granted if the monk managed to complete the task in one night.
The only way the monk could see himself completing that insurmountable endeavor was with the help of the devil.
So he sold his soul, wrote the book in one night, and gained his freedom.
The reality of the Codex Gigas was far less intriguing.
It would have taken a single person, working continuously, maybe three decades to produce the wording and illustrations.
That there was only one scribe seemed evident, as there was an amazing uniformity in the script from start to finish.
It was known that the completed manuscript was pawned by the monks of Podlazice Monastery in 1295 in an effort to raise money.
They’d wanted to repay the loan and obtain the book back but never did, and it eventually made its way to B?evnov, near Prague.
The next mention of the codex was when the Bohemian Emperor Rudolf II acquired it in 1594.
In 1697 a fire broke out at the Tre Kronor that devoured seventeen thousand books and more than one thousand manuscripts.
The codex was saved when it was thrown out a window, but its binding was destroyed.
It wasn’t until the nineteenth century that it was rebound, becoming a central part of the Swedish Royal Library.
Where it had remained.
Until tomorrow.
She was led to an elevator and descended to the subterranean levels.
Two weeks ago the codex had been brought down from its main-floor display case.
It had long been kept inside a sealed glass container filled with nitrogen.
No need to display the individual pages as every one of them had been photographed in high resolution, available on the library’s website for public inspection.
The staff here was aware that the book would be leaving, but was unaware the move would be permanent.
There were almost certainly SVR eyes and ears everywhere, so she’d decided to use that potential liability to their advantage.
The library was closed for the night, only the few staffers readying the codex for transport were there.
It lay atop a stainless-steel table, exposed to the air, waiting to be packaged in a nearby wooden crate.
Its outer binding was made of wooden boards covered in leather, decorated with ornate metal guards and fittings.
She wondered about its practical usage. Why create such an unwieldly tome?
For anyone to even be able to peruse the folios, the codex would have had to be placed atop a reinforced reading desk.
That effort alone would take several strong men to accomplish.
So what was the purpose of a book, whose content was obviously intended for reading, that was physically impossible to read under normal circumstances?
Hard to say. But perhaps its size was its main appeal.
She imagined the effort it had taken to transport it the seven hundred miles from Prague to Stockholm in the seventeenth century.
No easy feat.
She introduced herself to the curator and asked where they stood relative to shipment. The prime minister had called ahead and told everyone to cooperate with her in every way.
“The plan is to crate the codex over the next few hours and transport it tomorrow morning.”
The question remained, though, whether it would be headed to the airport for a flight south to the Czech Republic or be handed over to the kidnappers.
Prime Minister de Ciutiis had made it clear that the government would like to move forward on the deal with the Czechs.
First and foremost because they did not cave to criminals.
Even more important, if Westlake was telling the truth and Princess Lysa was in the slightest way complicit in her disappearance, whether consciously or not, all the more reason to proceed forward.
But the question remained. Was she?
“How will it be moved?” she asked.
“By van. With no escort. We do not want to draw attention. It’s about a half-hour drive to the airport north of Stockholm. A private plane will then fly it to Prague.”
She understood the need for discretion. Neither government wanted the scent of a quid pro quo to emerge in the press.
The whole idea was to make the exchange seamlessly.
The official story? Another loan of the book to the Czechs.
It just would never return. Then a few months down the road Sweden would reapply for NATO membership and the Czech Republic would vote in favor.
All nice and easy.
Wrapped in a pretty bow.
Or was it?