Andrea Davison had always been a whiz when it came to research. Even when she was a child, she would pour through volumes of books, articles, and encyclopaedias, cross-referencing them for accuracy, in her quest for knowledge on a given subject. One week she would be trying to ascertain how many varieties of apples there were in the world. The next, she would be on a quest to discover the five smallest countries in continental Europe. Her appetite for knowledge was insatiable. Naturally, she toyed with the idea of a career in journalism (the idea of doing in-depth research for BBC-esque articles appealed to her immensely) when she first started at Vassar, but a kind professor persuaded her to try for a masters in Library Studies instead.
So it was that she found herself a coveted job in the Stephen A. Schwartzman Building or Main Branch of the New York Public Library. Every morning, whether she was working or not, she would make it her way to the intersection of 5th Avenue and 42nd Street, mount the majestic stairs, pass under the watchful gaze of the stone lions, and enter the most beautiful research library she had ever seen. She loved everything about her job, from the smell of the books, to sheer amount of information she had access to at one of the premier research libraries in the northeast, to helping the library's customers find the information they were looking for and more.
In fact, she loved helping people on their research projects so much and excelled at the task so greatly that people soon began slipping tips into her hand for the help. At first, it was the odd five or ten dollar bill given by a thankful grad student with a thesis deadline looming, but soon word of her ability to find the most useful information in the dense, vast volumes of collected and written knowledge contained in the library's closed stacks must have spread. Men in ridiculously expensive suits who exuded power in their every mannerism began asking for her help and quietly palming her stacks of fifty and hundred dollar bills with a quiet nod or conspiratorial wink. She never denied their requests knowledge even though she suspected that the information she was directing them towards was being used to assist them in shady business or personal dealings. She suspected one man in particular, who always requested public records, of trying to track down blackmail-worthy material on his competitors. Still, more unnerving – and she suspected more dangerous – were the plainly-dressed, non-descript young men and women who requested large volumes of records, tipped her in the thousands, and didn't return. Andrea was uncertain, but she suspected that in helping those people she had become party to some governmental spying or criminal organization's operations. At least, Andrea thought, if her life had been a novel or a film, that is what would have been going on. However, the rational part of her brain told her the explanation for the tips, as she called them, was likely much more mundane.
In fact, she was more correct in her wilder assumptions that she could have known. Her wealthiest clients were in fact a ring of international spies, convicts, mobsters, and criminal masters of the highest order. Some of those plain-clothes young people worked for individuals who were capable of erasing identities completely, making witnesses disappear, and committing money-laundering and fraud on a mass trans-national scale. Others were criminal masterminds in their own right, from hackers capable of penetrating national defenses to moles embedded in governmental agencies all over the world. Unbeknownst to sweet, brilliant Andrea Davison, these individuals were using her as a courier for their coded messages and communications. In the books she pulled for them, they would leave concealed scraps of paper with cleverly disguised messages and would leave tiny, nearly imperceptible pencil marks on the page, as clues to decoding them. For over a year, Andrea Davison and the Stephen A. Schwarzman Library Building were at the center of the criminal activities which secretly governed national policy and international trade.
But all of that changed on the 3rd of June 2002…
Andrea Davison woke up alone in her apartment at 6:45am as usual. She made her bed and turned on the radio. At 6:50am she showered, shampooed and conditioned her waist-length curly auburn hair, and shaved her legs. Meticulously, she dried her hair and secured it into a bun at the back of her head. Already, the heat was on the rise for the day, bringing with it the humidity and sticky feeling that characterized summer in NYC and caused errant curls to escape the elastic and bobby pins and hang in loose, romantic tendrils around her head. Wrapping the towel around her body, she padded barefoot back into her bedroom and opened the closet. Humming along to a song on the radio, she selected her outfit for the day: an olive-green silk sleeveless top that tied into a big, floppy bow at her throat, a thin oatmeal-coloured cardigan to keep her warm in the air-conditioned stacks, a tea-length black A-line skirt that fastened at the waist and highlighted her slim, Audrey-Hepburn-like figure, and a pair of low, black leather heels. Then, fully dressed, at 7:10am, she made her way back into the bathroom where she dabbed her cheeks with a light ruby-tinged stain and added a thin coat of mascara to her lashes. Perfectly on time, she started towards the miniscule kitchen in her apartment to assemble her usual bowl of bran cereal. She opened the cupboard and got up on her tip-toes to reach for a bowl.
Suddenly and silently, someone grabbed her from behind and clamped a hand over her mouth. Instinctively, she fought back. She couldn't hear anything but the beating of her own heart, loud and frantic, pulsing in her ears. She didn't even realise she'd dropped the bowl that she'd grabbed from the shelf. The bowl shattered, sending shards across the floor. As she thrashed, trying to escape the clutches of her attacker, she stepped on the shards, cutting up her feet without even realising it. She didn't feel the ceramic slicing through her skin or the blood trickling from between her toes. She was too focused on the feeling of the cool metal of the knife being held at her throat. She forced her body to move, trying as hard as she could to break free, but the grip of the attacker was vice-like, closing in on her until she could barely even squirm.
"Stop moving. Do as I say and you won't be hurt," a deep voice with a slight accent whispered into her ear.
Knowing that there was no way she could escape or overpower the man behind her, Andrea had no choice but to obey. She froze like a statue. Slowly, the arm that was across her chest was withdrawn, but the knife at her throat stayed in place. She stared blankly at the dingy cupboards in front of her as the man grabbed wrists and handcuffed them together. Then, he withdrew the knife, grabbed her by the shoulder, spun her around. She noted the man's height and breadth with some fear. He was dressed in non-descript, fitted all-black clothing which blended in with his dark skin. He marched her to the futon in the cramped living room. She sat down, numb with terror.
That was when she noticed the second man, sitting in the chair opposite the futon. He wore a bespoke pinstriped three-piece suit, a dark-coloured fedora, and polished loafers. He was pale and of average height and didn't look particularly muscular, but by the way he flexed his fingers, Andrea could tell that he was a man who was used to feeling and being powerful. His actions were smooth and deliberate and there was something lethal about the slight crooked grin that played on his lips but didn't touch his eyes.
"Hello, Andrea," he said, calmly.
She stared at him, trying to place his face. She wondered if he was one of the suspicious businessmen she had accepted tips from – or were they truly bribes for her complicity in their questionable activities? – at work. She drew a blank. She could not remember having seen this man or his muscular accomplice before in her life.
"Too shaken to speak?" the man in the fedora prompted, cocking his head to one side and looking at her inquisitively.
"Ah… I…" Andrea tried to find the words, but drew a blank. She settled for a nod, instead.
"Hmmm," he said, forming a steeple with his fingers and resting his chin on them.
"I… I don't know you, do I?" Andrea asked, stupidly blurting out the only sentence in her head which made sense at that moment in time.
"No, Andy… may I call you Andy? We've not been acquainted," he replied, removing his fedora to reveal a head of closely cropped hair somewhere between blonde and brown in colour. "I will admit I was expecting more from someone international criminal masterminds speak of in hushed tones after they've been liberally plied with the finest Polish and Russian vodkas in lovely little establishments in Minsk."
"What?" Andrea replied, confused.
"Is she the wrong one?" the strong, dark man interjected in his deep voice.
"No," the man in the suit replied casually. "She is our target. Andrea Davison, librarian at the Main Branch, brilliant talent for research, famed courier of all manner of juicy little criminal communications… You know, darling… Andy… for someone the Serbians call "The Database" and the Russians, Chinese, and others pay in the thousands for services rendered, you really are disappointing me. This injured little girl thing is rather tiresome."
"I… I thought… they were just t…tips… gifts in gratitude for my services in helping them find the books they were looking for…" she replied fearfully.
The man in the suit laughed, but his eyes remained on Andrea, piercing and fierce. "Well, at least you have the decency not to deny they paid you," he said, almost gently.
"I… I never questioned what they were looking for… everyone should… should have free access to information… I… I just brought them books!" she exclaimed, certain that these men had it all wrong. She wasn't a criminal, she was just a librarian.
"Ah… but here is the thing: in those books, those dusty old volumes of shipping records or whatever other nonsense that no one in their right mind would be interested in reading, your "clients" have been hiding a number of very valuable messages which are passed on from spy to criminal franchise and such. When the next operative comes in, asking you for the sort of things that could be found in the same sort of books, you would of course bring it to them - because you are a specialist in finding obscure information in books most people wouldn't think to consult - bringing with it the coded messages pressed between the pages," the man explained.
"I… I never knew… I am… am just a libr… librarian," Andrea stuttered.
"Well I suspected that you might be an unwitting party to these criminal communications, given the fact that you hadn't sold any of the information you could have readily laid your hands on – not even one tiny scrap – despite the fact that you could have made a fortune on it. You were indeed too perfect a courier to be true. Yet, you took their money all the same, so I couldn't be certain. I suppose that could be boiled down to human greed, yes? I mean who turns down a couple thousand dollars a week tax-free for simply going about their business… it's the free market in all its glorious bizarre oddity… still, you will have to come with us," the man concluded.
Andrea felt the blood drain from her face. Where were they going to take her? Was she being arrested? Would she go to jail?
"Quickly now," the suited man urged in clipped tones.
The two men grabbed her purse and led her out of her apartment, quietly and efficiently, to a car waiting in the back alley below. The strong man jumped in the driver's seat, while the man in the fedora shoved her in the back seat and hopped in after her.
"Are you FBI? CIA?" Andrea asked, figuring she was about to be brought up on charges of accessory to treason, or something like it, if such a thing existed. She wondered if cop shows were an entirely accurate source of information on the finer points of criminal law, and decided to research it all at length when these men let her go... if they let her go.
"Not quite," the man replied with a genuine chuckle and smile that almost touched his eyes.
"Where are you taking me?" she asked, knowing they probably wouldn't tell her the truth, but figuring that even knowing a lie would be more comfortable that knowing nothing at all.
"To the Library. It wouldn't do for you to be uncharacteristically late for work. And, I happen to need a favour," he began, before outlining the plan to her.
Andrea agreed, knowing that she had no choice really. She was fully embroiled in the criminal underbelly of the world, even though she'd never realised it until today. And if she wanted to live to see tomorrow, she know she would have to do as this man, who at last told her his name was Raymond Reddington, told her.