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of these eyes was in full command of his faculties. But on one score the Johannes Book was in a class by itself. Johannes the priest described several people who suffered from various diseases. When it came to knowledge of anatomy, treatment of disease, and surgery, the Johannes Book surpassed most of what was available at that time. For the Nordic corner of Europe it was unique, and most scholars were of the opinion that Johannes the priest studied at a university in the southern part of the continent at one time.
    Vatten vaguely recalled thinking that Gunn Brita Dahle had read this book more thoroughly than most, and that she discovered something she didn’t want to disclose. But before he could question her in depth about this, she started talking about something else. She said it was sad that the two of them hadn’t gotten better acquainted, and that made her feel even worse that she was leaving.
    As she talked, he drained the last drop of wine from the mug that said “World’s Best Mom.” Both of them concluded that he was tolerating the wine fairly well and that the experiment had been a success. To celebrate she divided the rest of the bottle between the two empty mugs. He managed to take just one more gulp before everything went black.
    Afterward he remembered only fragments—unfocused glimpses of the hideous linoleum, something that could have been Gunn Brita’s blouse, and hands that were not where they should have been. A few glimpses of what might have been the inside of the book vault also surfaced, even though he hated confined spaces. Finally, there were some fuzzy images of a raised toilet seat and the acrid taste of vomit.
    Otherwise there was only this dreadful headache.
    He looked at the clock. It was almost eleven, and it was still Saturday. So it was nighttime, not morning. It took him an eternity to get up from the easy chair. When he was finally on his feet, he staggered, feeling nauseated. With a sense of anxiety bordering on panic he went to the elevator and took it down to the second floor. He went straight to the offices. To his great relief he found that everything looked normal. Someone, probably Gunn Brita, had removed the wine bottle and the mugs. Any spilled wine had also been cleaned up. He made sure that the book vault was closed and locked, but didn’t know if he should be relieved or worried. Unfortunately, he couldn’t open the vault to check, because that required two different pass codes, and he had only one of them. The second code was held by his boss, Hornemann, as well as by a trusted librarian. Gunn Brita had been that person until now. Since she was leaving, the plan was to change the code on Monday. All he could do was hope that everything was as it should be. Most of all, he hoped that his memory of being inside had nothing to do with reality.
    Vatten began breathing a little easier. He went into his office and sat down in front of the computer, which was connected to the closed-circuit cameras. It was turned off. Next to the monitor was a DVD burner that had stored the images that had been taken. He removed the DVD and put in a new one. He put the old DVD in the pocket of his raincoat. There was even a surveillance camera in the book vault itself. He didn’t really want to know what had happened in there; this anxious sensation, like a tough coating on his skin, was bad enough.
    He found his bike and rode off into the boisterous, drunken Saturday night. Hadn’t Gunn Brita promised to accompany him home? Wasn’t it a bit odd that she’d just evaporated? One of the last things he could recall from earlier in the evening was that she had been to the Poe Museum in Richmond. That wasn’t exactly a destination for Norwegian tourists. Perhaps it was the almost improbable nature of this coincidence that made him forget to tell her that he’d been to that very same museum last summer.
    On the way across the old city bridge he stopped abruptly, took the DVD out of his