The Keepers of the Library

by Glenn Cooper

  “You think I should?” Laura asked.

  “The truth shall set you free. At least that’s the saying.”

  Greg’s office screen woke from sleep mode with Laura’s command since she was an authorized user. She steered the device to Greg’s e-mail account and as she’d thought, his account hadn’t been logged off.

  Nancy spotted it immediately: an e-mail from Phillip! She sputtered, “My God,” and had Laura open it.

  Nancy read the message line, and said, “It’s encrypted.” She looked at her watch. “It was sent two hours ago. It’s from Phillip, but Will’s got to be involved. I don’t know what Laura’s Latin eyes means but it doesn’t sound like something that would come out of his mouth. It sounds like Will.”

  “I know what it means!” Laura said. “When Greg was working with his IT guy, they asked me what my eye condition was called—you know, the way my eyes are different colors. It’s a Latin term: Heterochromia iridum.”

  “That’s got to be the decryption key,” Nancy said. “Will’s still the smartest guy in the room. Laura, give me voice control of the computer.”

  Nancy quickly summoned up a tunneling program, transferred the coded message, and entered Heterochromia iridum as the key.

  And there it was.

  Nancy began to visibly tremble as she read the message. She fought to keep herself composed but her internal struggle between wife and mother and law-enforcement officer was showing.

  “A second Library,” she said, her voice wavering. “Someone wanted Phillip to know about it. Now Will wants Greg to know about it. It’s history repeating itself. Listen, Laura. I know this is hard but for the sake of all of them you’ve got to keep this to yourself, okay?”

  Laura was rummaging through a drawer. Behind some copy paper she pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. “Emergency stash,” she said, lighting up. Her hand was shaking as she lit up. “I won’t say anything to anybody. What are you going to do?”

  Nancy was already in action. She had her assistant on the phone asking her to find out what flight Greg Davis was booked on. While she waited, she rehearsed what she was going to say to her boss. Since Will didn’t want her to know about this it meant he didn’t want the FBI to know. He had his reasons and she was going to follow his lead. When it came to other women, she didn’t trust him as far as she could throw him. When it came to a case she trusted him with her life. And their son’s.

  The answer came. Greg was on BA Flight 231 to Glasgow, departing at 7 P.M. Nancy had the assistant book her a ticket on the same flight. Then she asked Laura for privacy so she could call her boss.

  Director Parish sounded angry before the conversation even got going.

  “Where the hell are you, Nancy?”

  “I’m in New York City.”

  “Why?”

  “Following up on a lead.”

  “Anything promising?”

  “It’s too early to tell. I’m going to need a few days to see how it pans out.”

  “Well, you don’t have a few days. I want you at Andrews Air Force Base tomorrow morning on the State Department flight to Beijing.”

  She held her breath, then blurted out, “I’m sorry, sir, I can’t be there.”

  There was an uncomfortable pause on the line. “I don’t think I heard you properly. This is a direct order, Nancy.”

  “I’m aware of that. If you feel you need to relieve me of duty for this, I’ll drop off my badge and weapon at the New York office. But I’ve got to run this lead down and I’m going to do it with or without a badge.”

  She couldn’t tell whether the sound she heard was a sigh or a hiss of steam coming out of Parish’s ears. “Jesus, Nancy, I hope to hell you know what you’re doing. I’d hate to lose you. This is your first and last hall pass for insubordination.”

  Nancy spotted Greg at the British Airways departures pod buying a candy bar. She watched him for a while, trying to get a feel for his state of mind. She thought he was on the twitchy side but he was never a mellow guy. She’d always tried to be objective about him. It would have been easy enough to go along with Will’s assessment, that he was opportunistic, that he had a chip on his shoulder for not living up to the promise of his early career, that he wasn’t good enough for his daughter—but she preferred to see Greg through her own lens. In her book, he was a nice enough guy, a little on the ineffectual side, but she wouldn’t wish the burden of being Will Piper’s son-in-law on any man.

  She had her own shopping to do having arrived with nothing but her handbag. She’d left her pistol with her driver so even her purse was light as a feather. She started by buying a roller bag at a luggage shop and proceeded to jump from store to store, filling it up with clothes and toiletries. When she was outfitted, she rolled the bag over to where Greg was seated and acted out a small scene.

  “Greg? What are you doing here?”

  His look of shock struck her as a rough blend of surprise and guilt.

  “Nancy! Wow! I’m going to Scotland on business. What about you?”

  She let the mask fall away. She said soberly, “I’m going to bring Will and Phillip home, Greg.”

  “Has anything changed?” he asked excitedly. “When I talked to Laura just a while ago, there was no news.”

  “That was before I knew for sure they were in that farmhouse in Pinn. Now I do.”

  “How’d you find out?”

  She sat down beside him. “By reading your e-mail.”

  He deflated like a day-old soufflé. “I’m sorry, Nancy. You saw what Will wrote. He told me not to tell you. What was I supposed to do?”

  She touched his sleeve. “You did what you thought you had to do. I don’t blame you for it. But now I know, and I’m going with you. Can you believe it? A second Library?”

  He nodded sharply. “It’s incredible. It changes everything.” He looked at her hard. “Does the FBI know too?”

  She shook her head emphatically. “I’m a private citizen for the next few days. Maybe longer. My boss is furious at me.”

  “Why?”

  “For bailing on the China case.”

  “Still no leads?”

  “None that I can talk about.”

  He nodded, then fidgeted in his seat and seemed on the brink of asking a question. Finally, he said, “How’d you get here so fast? I got the e-mail this afternoon. And how’d you decipher it?”

  “I was at your apartment.”

  He was taken aback. “Why?”

  “I was in New York. I thought I’d see Laura, give her some support. We got to talking, and one thing led to another. It was pretty apparent her eye condition was the cipher key.”

  “She looked at my e-mails?” he said with a certain resentment.

  “It was my doing, Greg. She thought you were having an affair.”

  “Me? I’d be the last person.”

  “It’s not my place but I think you guys may need to do some work on your marriage.”

  His face seemed to say, yeah, it’s not your place. Instead, he said, “So what’s the plan?”

  “We follow Will’s instructions to the letter,” she said. “Hopefully he’s worked out the endgame. If not, we’re going to have to improvise, aren’t we?”

  As Nancy and Greg were negotiating their way to the rental-car lot at Glasgow Airport, Kenney was unzipping his sleeping bag, his breath producing pleasant puffs of vapor.

  He asked Harper, who’d had the last four-hour watch, “Any developments?”

  “Nothing. The police haven’t made any moves. It’s been quiet.”

  “They got tired of their bullshit bullhorn just in time for me to get some shut-eye. How good was that? What’s for breakfast?”

  “Energy bars or shit stew.”

  “I’ll go with the bars.”

  Kenney’s NetPen vibrated. As he read the screen message, a smile creased his face.

  He looked like he wanted to shout it out, but he kept the decibels down. “Hallelujah! Klepser broke the
encryption.” He touched the screen to open the attachment and read it, and as he did, his jaw went slack. “Wake up Lopez,” he said to Harper. “This is going to be a day we’re going to remember for the rest of our lives.”

  In Nevada, Admiral Sage hadn’t been asleep very long when his phone rang. His wife grumbled and pulled the covers over her head as he fumbled around the nightstand.

  “Yeah?”

  “Admiral, it’s Kenney. I’ve got something.”

  “What is it?”

  “We decrypted a message from Piper to his son-in-law, Greg Davis, the reporter who was involved . . .”

  “I know who he is,” the admiral growled.

  “You need to hear the message verbatim.”

  As Kenney read it, the admiral shifted his posture from lying to sitting to standing beside the bed.

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” he said, when Kenney was done.

  “Yes, sir. Jesus fucking Christ.”

  “Stand by while I call the Pentagon. And Kenney?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “We may not be out of a job after all.”

  Chapter 25

  Neither Greg nor Nancy talked much during their two-and-a-half-hour ride from Glasgow to Pinn. For the most part Greg drove, relying on the nav system while Nancy stared at the misty landscape. Although there was no snow, save for the tops of the fells, the morning frost was still clinging to the verges and the meadows, and small melting icicles were dripping from the downspouts and gutters of village roofs.

  They arrived in Kirkby Stephen at lunchtime, and with time to kill, they stopped at a café for sandwiches. There, they read the local newspaper splashed with stories on the front page about a mysterious police action in Pinn. At other tables it was clear that this was all that people were talking about but it was equally clear that no one knew the underlying facts. Nancy asked their waitress what she thought and got the two favorite theories: there was either a drugs factory at the farmhouse or some kind of armed religious cult. The girl added, “Fowks at Mallerstang are weird, ya know.”

  They waited until three to make the final drive to Lightburn Farm, and at three thirty, with only four kilometers to go to their destination, they hit a wall of traffic on the B road to Pinn. Nancy got out of the stopped car and asked one of the people milling beside their own halted vehicle.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked.

  “There’s a roadblock ahead,” the motorist answered. “Some kind of police business.” Some cars were executing three-point turns and reversing. “That’s what I’m going t’ do,” the man said, climbing back into his car.

  She poked her head into the open car window and told Greg, “We don’t have all the time in the world. Let’s pull off the road and hike the rest of the way.”

  Officer Wilson awoke with a start in the backseat of his patrol car. One of his fellow community patrol officers, a crusty older officer named Perkins, tossed a foil-wrapped bacon sandwich into his lap from the front.

  “They passed these out but I let you have your kip,” he said. “Sweet dreams?”

  Wilson tried to stretch his legs without success. “Not likely. Can they do this?”

  “Do what, marra?”

  “Keep us on duty round th’ clock without proper breaks.”

  “Don’t bother ringin’ your union steward. Since they’ve declared a police emergency they own your bollocks. Unless you choose t’ return t’ civilian life.”

  “I might just do that,” Wilson said, unwrapping the sandwich. “I’ve got enough saved t’ make it till th’ Horizon without working.”

  Perkins snorted. “Your luck, the Horizon’ll come and go, the world’ll be dancing and singing, and you’ll have t’ blow your brains out ’cause you’re bankrupt.”

  The sandwich was gone, wolfed down in a few bites. Wilson looked at his watch. “Half two, and th’ light’s already startin’ t’ go. Let’s take our posts.”

  “Thought you were packin’ it in?”

  “My missus would kill me if I spent the next year sittin’ at home,” Wilson said. Something caught his attention on the fells. “See that?”

  “What?”

  “There’s some walkers over yon headin’ toward th’ farm.”

  “Christ’s sake,” Perkins said, opening his door. The cold air rushed in. “Tapped fools don’t realize they’re likely t’ be shot. Come on.”

  The two officers strode up the fells waving their arms to get the attention of the walkers.

  Nancy and Greg saw the policemen in the distance and swore. The hike had taken longer than Nancy thought it would. They’d taken a tack away from the easy visibility of the road which meant having to go partway up the fells. Their leather-soled shoes gripped the slippery slope poorly and there were stone walls to traverse.

  “What do we do?” Greg asked. The stone outbuilding Will had described was within view.

  “We’ve got to talk our way around them,” she said.

  They gingerly made their way down the fells toward the policemen. Nancy whispered to Greg to let her do the talking.

  “Hello, Officers, is there a problem?”

  “What do th’ two of ya think you’re doing?” Perkins asked.

  “We’re having a walk,” she said.

  “Is that right?” Wilson asked. “Didn’t ya see th’ roadblock up there?”

  “We thought that was just for cars.”

  Perkins was looking at their street shoes. “If you lot are fells walkers then I’m the king of England.”

  Nancy smiled at them as coquettishly as she could. “Look, Officers, the truth is we’re journalists. We’re just trying to get close enough to observe what’s going on and get a good story out. Could you give us a break?”

  “Look, missy,” Perkins said. “There’s a police action in progress. If we had a few miles of incident tape we would’ve marked out a perimeter. So, we won’t arrest ya for perverting the course of justice if you turn around and go back t’ your vehicle wherever you’ve left it.”

  Nancy and Greg exchanged glances. They had no options. With desperate glances at the outbuilding ahead, they turned around and walked away.

  Deep in a bunker at RAF Fylingdales, the joint UK and US Ballistic Weapons Warning System on the North York Moors, a British RAF radar tech and his US Air Force counterpart were manning their work screens during the evening shift.

  At 16:33, a faint green circle appeared six kilometers north of Whitby, heading east to west from the direction of the North Sea. It was on-screen for under two seconds then disappeared. None of the autoalarms triggered.

  “Did you see that?” the British tech said.

  “I think it’s a glitch,” the American answered.

  The British tech didn’t seem satisfied. “I’m playing it back.”

  He went into playback mode on another screen and slowed the image down. The ultrafaint signal from Fylingdale’s phased-array radar system, if not an anomaly, was moving at 320 kilometers per hour close to the deck.

  “I think it’s birds,” the American said.

  “Pretty fast flippin’ birds,” the Brit answered. “It could be a stealth signal.” He reached for a red handset.

  “You’re not telling me you’re going to scramble jets over that piece of crap shadow!” the American exclaimed.

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying. I live here, mate. You don’t.”

  Low clouds filled the Mallerstang Valley and filtered out much of the last afternoon light. The towering Wild Boar Fell rose to the east of Lightburn Farm and High Seat was to its west. The geography seemed to guard the farm from the coming night. Down on the valley floor, high-intensity floodlights powered by humming generators lit the terrain as if it were a film set.

  The police on foot patrol were the first to hear it, a high-pitched whine that rapidly flared in volume. Something seemed to be approaching from the northeast. Officers Wilson and Perkins in position on the north side of the farm strained to see what they heard
. The whine stabilized as if something that had been moving was now stationary.

  Although he was half a mile away on the opposite side of the valley, Kenney was perhaps the first to identify the source of the noise.

  He trained his night-vision scope on the western slope of the High Seat fell and saw a hovering helicopter and men making a rope egress.

  “What the hell is going on?” he mumbled.

  “What is it, chief?” Lopez asked.

  “Someone’s dropped in a special ops team.”

  “Is it us?” Harper said.

  “Of course it’s not us! I think we’d know about it, don’t you?”

  “Do you think the Brits know what’s going on in there?” Harper asked.

  “No way,” Kenney said. “We’re listening to all their comm. We haven’t heard jack shit about a Library. Still, it’s got to be the Brits. I mean, who the hell else could it be?”

  “Can you make out any insignia on the chopper?” Lopez asked.

  Kenney grunted a no and called Groom Lake.

  A dozen special ops troops outfitted with short-barrel automatic rifles and night-vision headgear hit the slope of the fell and began racing downhill, sure-footed despite the slick grass.

  Officer Wilson thought he saw the distant form of a man through the mist and radioed to the incident van. The Assistant Chief Constable picked up, and Wilson said, “ ’Scuse me, Guv, do we have any of our blokes coming down High Seat?”

  “Course we don’t. What’s making that bloody noise? Can you see anything?”

  “I think . . .” Wilson dropped the radio and it dangled by his side. He instinctively felt his chest, and the last thing he saw before falling backward was his hands, wet and red.

  Perkins managed to transmit a frantic, “Officer down! Officer down!” before he took a .50-caliber sniper round to his head and dropped stone-dead beside his partner.

  Inside the incident van, Chief Constable Raab responded by shouting questions over the radio.

  “All units, is the fire coming from the house or the barn?”

  A series of responses flooded in jamming the airwaves and making it hard for Raab to process the info.