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    Condor in the Stacks
    Condor in the Stacks
    Condor in the Stacks
    Ebook74 pages57 minutes

    Condor in the Stacks

    By James Grady

    2.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Short tales about deadly books, by top mystery authors
     
    A thrilling Condor novella from the bestselling author of Six Days of the Condor.
     
    Vin, a name of convenience for the agent known as Condor, has been released from psychiatric care and it’s back to work. Unfortunately, he’s been assigned the mundane job of sorting through books meant for the incinerator instead of the high-adrenaline rush of being a covert spy for the CIA. Struggling to separate hallucinations from reality, Condor attempts to immerse himself in the task at hand, but his acute sense of danger soon overwhelms him. While wandering the labyrinth of the Library of Congress’s subterranean tunnels, he encounters a damsel in distress. Someone is following her, and Condor can’t resist the lure of covert ops—or placing his own life in jeopardy.
     
    James Grady revolutionized the thriller genre with his CIA analyst codenamed Condor, immortalized by Robert Redford in Three Days of the Condor, and currently portrayed by Max Irons in the all-new TV series Condor.

    The Bibliomysteries are a series of short tales about deadly books, by top mystery authors.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMysteriousPress.com Open Road
    Release dateFeb 23, 2016
    ISBN9781504030380
    Condor in the Stacks
    Author

    James Grady

    James Grady is the award-winning author of more than a dozen novels and three times as many short stories. His first novel, Six Days of the Condor, became the classic Robert Redford movie Three Days of the Condor and the current Max Irons TV series Condor. A Mystery Writers of America Edgar finalist, he has received Italy’s Raymond Chandler Medal, France’s Grand Prix Du Roman Noir, Japan’s Baka-Misu literature award, and two Regardie's magazine short-story awards.

    Read more from James Grady

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      Book preview

      Condor in the Stacks - James Grady

      First Day

      Are you trouble? asked the man in a blue pinstripe suit sitting at his D.C. desk on a March Monday morning in the second decade of America’s first war in Afghanistan.

      Let’s hope not, answered the silver-haired man in the visitor’s chair.

      They faced each other in the sumptuous office of the Director of Special Projects (DOSP) for the Library of Congress (LOC). Mahogany bookcases filled the walls.

      The DOSP fidgeted with a fountain pen.

      Watch me stab that pen through your eye, thought his silver-haired visitor.

      Such normal thoughts did not worry that silver-haired man in a blue sports jacket, a new maroon shirt and well-worn black jeans.

      What worried him was feeling trapped in a gray fog tunnel of numb.

      Must be the new pill, the green pill they gave him as they drove him away from CIA headquarters, along the George Washington Parkway and beneath the route flown by 9/11 hijackers who slammed a jetliner into the Pentagon.

      The CIA car ferried him over the Potomac. Past the Lincoln Memorial. Up the Hill past three marble fortresses for Congress’s House of Representatives where in 1975, he’d tracked a spy from U.S. ally South Korea who was working deep cover penetration of America by posing as a mere member of the messianic Korean cult that provided the last cheerleaders for impeached President Nixon.

      The ivory U.S. Capitol glistened across the street from where the CIA car delivered Settlement Specialist Emma and silver-haired him to the Library of Congress.

      Whose DOSP told him: I don’t care how ‘classified’ you are. Do this job and don’t make trouble or you’ll answer to me.

      The DOSP set the fountain pen on the desk.

      Put his hands on his keyboard: What’s your name?

      Vin, said the silver-haired stranger.

      Last name?

      Vin told him that lie.

      The DOSP typed it. A printer hummed out warm paper forms. He used the fountain pen to sign all the correct lines.

      Come on, he told Vin, tossing that writing technology of the previous century onto his desk. Let’s deliver you to your hole.

      He marched toward the office’s mahogany door.

      Didn’t see his pen vanish into Vin’s hand.

      That mahogany door swung open as the twenty-something receptionist yawned, oblivious to the pistol under her outer office visitor Emma’s spring jacket. Emma stood as the door opened, confident she wouldn’t need to engage her weapon but with a readiness to let it fill her hand she couldn’t shake no matter how long it had been since.

      The DOSP marched these disruptions from another agency through two tunnel-connected, city block-sized library castles to a yellow cinderblock walled basement and a green metal door with a keypad lock guarded by a middle-aged brown bird of a woman.

      This is Miss Doyle, the DOSP told Vin. "One of ours. She’s been performing your just-assigned functions with optimal results, plus excelling in all her other work."

      Brown bird woman told Vin: Call me Fran.

      Fran held up the plastic laminated library staff I.D. card dangling from a lanyard looped around her neck. We’ll use mine to log you in.

      She swiped her I.D. card through the lock. Tapped the keypad screen.

      Now enter your password, said Fran.

      "First," CIA Emma told the library-only staffers, you two: please face me.

      The DOSP and Fran turned their backs to the man at the green metal door.

      Vin tapped six letters into the keypad. Hit ENTER.

      The green metal door clicked. Let him push it open.

      Pale light flooded the heavy-aired room. A government-issue standard metal desk from 1984 waited opposite the open door. An almost as ancient computer monitor filled the desk in front of a wheeled chair. Rough pine boxes big enough to hold a sleeping child were stacked against the back wall.

      Like coffins.

      Empty crates in, said Fran, full crates out. Picked up and dropped off in the hall. It’s your job to get them to and from there. Use that flatbed dolly.

      She computer clicked to a spreadsheet listing crates dropped off, crates filled, crates taken away: perfectly balanced numbers.

      Maintenance Operations handles data entry, except for when you log a pick-up notice. They drop off the Review Inventory outside in the hall. Fran pointed to a heap of cardboard boxes. "From closing military bases.

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