Free Eternal Empire by Alec Nevala-Lee Page B

number of whose paintings the foundation had recently acquired. On the spine, in a transparent plastic sleeve, was a descriptive label printed on a square of white cardboard. Keeping an eye on the door, Maddy slipped this label out and set it aside.
    From her pocket, she took a second label of the same size, a close copy of the ones used for the cash journals, which she had prepared after discussing her plan with Powell. She slid this label into the sleeve on the binder’s spine. Then she picked up the binder and headed for the door.
    Outside, the corridor was deserted. Maddy went up the hallway, binder in hand, until she was a few steps away from the file room. Up ahead was a pair of offices occupied by other foundation employees, and beyond that, the reception and security desks, both out of sight from where she stood.
    Maddy paused. If she turned left, she would be in the file room; right, and she would enter the archives. It was her last chance to do nothing. She already had the job. If she liked, she could simply stick to the work she had been contracted to perform, and Powell couldn’t do anything about it.
    For a moment, it seemed like a tempting idea. In the end, however, she turned left instead of right, moving invisibly past the point of no return. Because part of her, she realized, did care after all.
    As she had expected, the file room was empty. Without turning on the lights, Maddy went to the shelves, already knowing which binder she needed. Reaching up, she slid it out with her left hand, then, in the same motion, replaced it with the duplicate binder in her right. Then she turned and left the room.
    Walking up the hallway at a casual pace, the binder tucked under one arm, she did not think that she had been seen, although her heart was pounding. Back in her office, she shut the door, regretting that there was no lock on the inside. Through the window, she could see the two accountants finishing their smoke.
    Maddy opened the binder on her desk. She had been careful to pick a journal from an earlier year, one she didn’t think the back office would need that day. Inside was a thick stack of papers organized into sections with dividers and tabs. She began to flip through it, scanning the numbers and unrecognizable words.
    At first, not finding what she had been expecting to see, she feared that she had taken the wrong binder. Finally, she saw a page with the layout she had memorized. Ten columns. A date on the far left, followed by a check number, a name, a description in Russian, and a final amount. It was the record of cash disbursements for the entire foundation.
    Leaving the binder open, she took out her cell phone. The guard who searched her purse each day wouldn’t have allowed her to bring a camera into the building, but fortunately, the camera in her phone worked just fine.
    Maddy switched on the camera and held it above the binder. A blurred grid of numbers appeared on the preview screen. She pulled back until it snapped into focus, holding the camera a foot above the desk, and snapped a picture covering slightly more than half the page.
    She studied the result. The numbers were small but readable. Going back to camera mode, she took a shot of the second half, then repeated the process on the next page, continuing until she had images of cash disbursements for a total of six months. She had just taken the final picture, and was about to close the journal and slide it into her desk, when there was a knock on her office door.
    There was no time to think. Maddy pocketed her phone, then took the stack of files that had been on her desk all morning and dropped it on top of the open binder. Sitting in her chair, she pretended to be looking at something on her computer and called out in a voice that was almost totally calm: “Come in.”
    The door opened. It was Elena Usova. “We need to talk. Do you have a minute?”
    â€œOf course,” Maddy said, clicking her mouse as if to