Chapter 8

Robert Fry rubbed his eyes and tried to think when he had last slept. His investigation of the Kane Library bombing had been hampered by lack of staff and too many bases to cover for his little division of Homeland Security. He did as much of the footwork work as anyone. A list of the ten most likely libraries in the U.S. that might be targets was being watched closely by his small team. The top candidates were libraries from which the note claiming responsibility for the first explosion had been posted to news forums. Others were on the list because of the type of collections they held, the name attached to the library, or their sheer size. A series of phone calls from his office had reached most of the head librarians and fortunately they took the threat seriously. It seemed like such a stretch to think that terrorists might target libraries, but already a series of Internet articles had appeared speculating government involvement and denouncing the attack on the Kane. Conspiracy theorists were coming out of the woodwork.

The Library of Congress and the National Archives were nearly impregnable, but conspicuous pieces in their collections had been temporarily removed under the guise of conducting maintenance on the climate control for their displays. The Declaration of Independence, Constitution of the United States, and the Two Volume Gutenberg Bible were no longer in their cases, but were in a vault deep beneath Washington, D.C. Very respectable duplicates had replaced originals of some historic documents. Twice the usual number of guards patrolled the perimeter of the library and security had been tightened at every entrance.

Management of the New York Public Library knew only that government agents patrolled its premises. The larger public libraries had taken steps to protect their most precious works. Universities had taken advantage of the attack on the Kane Memorial Library to approach their boards with requests for better security and monitoring of their prized possessions. The ten regional branches of the National Archives each had federal security guards, but the buildings that housed the collections were by-and-large warehouses with no historic or architectural significance. Fry dismissed them as likely candidates for attack.

There were a few good-natured jokes in his office. A colleague brought his partner in cuffs saying he’d written in the margins of a book and was being charged with biblio-terrorism. Everyone had a good laugh but they were taking the work seriously. The worst part was waiting for another move. They tracked all the leads they had, but little was forthcoming. They waited and watched.

Nearly a million people in the United States had top secret clearance, a third of which were independent contractors. The network of intelligence agents was so massive that no one knew exactly what any other branch was responsible for. Over a hundred congressional committees and subcommittees monitored the activity of Homeland Security alone, and it was only one of sixteen different intelligence agencies. Obviously, not everyone was as concerned about the security of libraries as Robert Fry was.

“Rob, you should see this,” his chief said, entering his office without knocking. “We’ve got another hit.”

“Which one?” Fry asked quickly.

“Not on your list,” the chief said with a hint of disappointment and censure. “Indianapolis. The National Historical and Genealogical Archives.”

“Way down the list,” Fry said. He never thought that library would make the top ten, let alone be the next target. “How bad is it?” The chief sat at the conference table in the situation room. Leroy Anderson, Fry’s second was already in the room and turned on a monitor.”

“Ten minutes after closing, a tourist was filming his family outside the Archives where they had spent the day. This is what he caught,” Anderson said. They watched as two small explosions burst behind the pillars in front of the Library behind a woman and two children who were thrown to the ground by the blast. It looked like the film had paused for a fraction of a second, then the portico and façade of the building collapsed. Dust rose into the air and settled rapidly, smothering the small fires that sprang from the points of explosion. The camera was moving rapidly toward the building, no longer focused on the damage, but bobbing along as if at the side of the cameraman who put it down to tend to his family. They could hear his call to 911 as he frantically tried to explain that his family had been injured when a library exploded. The video was still running when the ambulance and fire department arrived, then went blank.

“His battery died,” Anderson said.

“Any indication of who was responsible?” Fry asked.

“Not yet. We’ve got a flag out on any forum or email sent with indicators from this location or the key words from the first message,” Anderson said.

“What are our chances of finding something?” the chief asked.

“We flag 1.5 billion messages and forum posts a day as it is,” Anderson said. “Adding a few keywords won’t speed or slow down the search. But we are better at picking up the right messages after the fact than before. We’ll get something.”

“Get Hu onto this,” Fry said. “As soon as we spot a message that claims credit, track it back to the original IP address. I’m betting it will come from overseas. Compile a list of every international call out of Indianapolis within the bracket of the explosion and when the message appears. Correlate that information with the IP address. They have to find out when the bomb went off before they can post a message. Is any of this on TV yet? As soon as it hits the airwaves we lose the edge. I want a list of every name we’ve entered since the Kane bombing. Find out where every person is who is on that list and whether any of them were in Indianapolis. Get plane tickets, credit card charges, phone records. Anyone who has come on our radar in the past week ... make that ten days to be safe ... who was in Indianapolis any time in the past twenty-four hours. Get public records and Internet searches. I want to know which ones were in Indianapolis today.

“We’re on it,” Anderson said. He left the room yelling names, starting with Agent Hu.

“Get out there,” the chief said. “You are the only one with a chance of seeing the pattern. Don’t worry about security at the other libraries. I’ll shake people loose for numbers 11-20.”

“Chief, we can’t do it that way,” Fry said. “We’ve got to pinpoint what they are after. We can’t guard every library. There’s 3,200 of them named Carnegie alone. If we spread ourselves out trying to cover everything we’ll leave something really valuable vulnerable.”

“And your suggestion?” the chief asked.

“Put all forces on the high-value targets. Send notices to everyone else to button up their valuables like we did at the Library of Congress,” Fry said. “We’ve been lucky with these two. The terrorists didn’t penetrate the building. All the explosives were set outside. Lots of cosmetic damage, but nothing structural. Let’s not let them get deep inside the Library of Congress or New York Public. Let’s keep them on the perimeter.”

“I’ll take care of troop deployment,” the chief said. “Get on a plane.”

“I’m gone,” Fry said. He stopped in his office just long enough to arm himself and then he was on his way to Indianapolis.

Homeland security depends on local agents to respond to emergencies rather than moving agents from place to place. It was an exceptional sign of Fry’s importance to this investigation that he was loaded into an Air Force jet and hustled across the country. There was scarcely enough time to get a nap in before he was unloaded at Wier Cook International Airport. A nondescript black car met him on the tarmac and swept him into the heart of Indianapolis. The area around the library north of Monument Circle was cordoned off and the National Guard stood at attention around the block. Spotlights were trained on the damaged building and forensics experts were sifting through the rubble. Search dogs still prowled the area. Fry flashed his I.D. and walked purposefully toward the front of the building.