The Keepers of the Library (4 page)

In the fifties and sixties, as soon as Area 51 analysts worked out the methodology for correlating names with addresses and geographic coordinates, attention turned to exploiting the data. Clearly, there were singular dates of national importance. A stunned Vice President Lyndon Johnson was notified on November 19 that John Fitzgerald Kennedy would die on November 22, 1963. He had four days to work out a succession plan smooth enough to steady a shaken world.

But there were bigger geopolitical treasures to mine. Outcomes could not be altered but large events that included fatalities could be predicted. If you could predict large events you could plan around them, budget for them, set policy, perhaps soften their blow or exploit their outcome. Ever-more-powerful computers processed data around the clock, searching for worldwide patterns. Area 51 analysts predicted the Korean War, the Chinese purges under Mao, the Vietnam War, Pol Pot in Cambodia, the Gulf Wars, September 11, famines in Africa, natural disasters like floods and tsunamis. When Pakistan and India each launched a single nuclear missile against each other on March 25, 2023 resulting in over half a million casualties, the US government was as prepared for the disaster as humanly possible.

And from the moment the Library was discovered, the secrecy and integrity of the database was paramount. Because of that, the watchers were supreme. Their prime job was assuring that the existence of the database was never leaked and that the United States never lost its first-mover advantage. Furthermore, they were charged with keeping a tight lid on individual pieces of data. There were enormous concerns about what might occur if the public had access to any of it. Would society become altered or even paralyzed if people knew the day they were going to die—or their wife, or their parents or children or friends? Would whole segments of the population succumb to a predeterminist funk and drop out of their productive routines thinking, what’s the point, everything’s already been decided? Would criminals commit more crimes if they knew they weren’t going to be killed on the day. All manner of unpleasant scenarios were on the table.

Over the years, the watchers kept the drum sealed. Yes, there were isolated incidents of an analyst here, a research assistant there, violating confidentiality and looking up the name of a family member or an enemy—and these incidents were dealt with in the most draconian ways, including, it was rumored, assassination, but there had never been anything like the Shackleton affair.

Post-Shackleton, there had been a shake-up—more of a purge, really—among the ranks of the watchers. Even more layers of security were added. Shackleton had been a high-level programmer, an expert in database security, a fox very much inside the chicken coop. The hole he exploited to purloin the database was plugged. But the US database was already out of their control, in the hands of
The Washington Post
’s lawyers. For that reason the government conducted
the largest cyberinvestigation in its history to ascertain that the
Post
’s copy from Will Piper was the only one in existence. When the copy was returned following the Supreme Court ruling in the government’s favor, Area 51 was confident the situation had been contained. And in the years that followed, Kenney lived up to the potential that Malcolm Frazier had recognized in him and steadily rose through the ranks of the watchers until he got the promotion that put him behind Frazier’s old desk.

Sage’s secretary answered her phone. “The admiral will see you now,” she told Kenney.

Admiral Sage had a full beard. He was a portly throwback to the naval officers of a bygone era and seemed better suited to a nineteenth-century world of sailing the bounding main in brass buttons and gold braid than being a technocrat in the modern military.

He told Kenney to sit and grumbled at him, “You don’t want my job, Kenney. Believe me, you don’t want it.”

“No, sir, I don’t.”

“I mean, I come here with the expectation it’s going to be a plum assignment: I preside over the last few years of database functionality, I mothball the base, send the Library packing to the Smithsonian, pick up my second star, and if the goddamned world doesn’t blow up next February, I retire to Rancho Mirage and play golf till I keel over. But that hasn’t happened, has it?”

“No, sir.”

“Instead, we get Doomsday II, and I’m in the middle of an international incident. The Pentagon is up my butt. The White House is up my butt. I’m late to supper every night, so my wife is up my butt. So who’s butt am I going to get up?”

“Mine, sir.”

“You’re damn right. Give me your report.”

My report, Kenney thought. You mean my Kabuki dance, where I pretend to bring new facts to the table and you pretend to listen.

As the investigation dragged on there were no new substantive facts, so Kenney had come to repeat himself, laboring to find a few incremental tidbits to extend the briefing long enough to save each party from the embarrassment of vacuous silence.

In the days after the appearance of the first tranche of postcards, the investigation had proceeded along two fronts. The FBI took the lead on reopening Doomsday I and the watchers spearheaded the search for a new Area 51 leak.

On the FBI side, the chain of custody of the
Post
’s copy of the database was reexamined and all living personnel who had been involved were reinterviewed. That list included Will Piper, Will’s son-in-law, Greg, and Nancy Piper. Nancy Piper who was now running the investigation made doubly sure that no punches were pulled with her or her family lest she be accused of a conflict of interest. The FBI ran the traps and concluded that their original 2011 investigation had been complete and proper, that no hard copy of the database had ever been printed out and that the
Post
’s only copy of Shackleton’s digital file had been returned to the government.

That threw the spotlight onto Area 51.

On the first day the case broke Kenney had assembled his cadre of watchers and addressed them in his easy Oklahoma drawl, “Okay, boys and girl,” he began—he had a single female on his staff, an ex–military policewoman. “I’d rather lick a cat’s ass than have to do this to you, but until further notice, you’re all mine, twenty-four/seven. Forget about weekends and vacations, forget about your precious
kid’s softball game and your wife’s birthday. You are restricted to base. We are in emergency ops mode. You are going to work your tails off until we find the leaker or prove this is coming from outside our shop. Is that clear?”

Redmond, the lone woman had said, “I’m going to need to work out more babysitting.”

“Well, work it out then,” Kenney had snapped.

“Can I claim for it?”

“Are you dumb as a sack of hammers, Redmond? You know you can’t claim for that kind of shit.”

Lopez, a muscular former Ranger who lived in the same Las Vegas subdivision, had said, “Keisha can stay with us.”

“Aren’t we just one big happy family?” Kenney had muttered before continuing his briefing.

They started by running all 134 employees through lie-detector tests, including, by protocol, the watchers and the base commander. A half dozen tests came back equivocal and those lucky few got put through the ringer.

Then the forensic audits began. The database-security group, the algorithm jockeys, as Kenney referred to them, began scouring the servers for any sign of data intrusion they might have previously missed. Shackleton had been an algorithm jockey in his day so Kenney got permission to get a super-nerd to check up on the nerds. In the old days, that would have been impossible since it took a year or more to grind through the Pentagon’s security clearance system before someone could be brought inside the Area 51 tent. Now that every ten-year-old in the world knew what went on at Groom Lake, it wasn’t a problem. On the recommendation of CIA database and encryption analysts, a professor of computational sciences from Stanford was airlifted in and
given unfettered access to the system. He’d been at it since the first week but he still couldn’t find a damn thing.

Kenney believed in a multipronged approach. He didn’t understand database-security algorithms on a technical level but he believed he had a pretty good understanding of people. He started delving into personnel files looking for personal data and psychological nuggets that might add up to motive. That’s how he became focused on Frank Lim, one of Area 51’s China analysts.

Lim had his Area 51 twenty-five-year pin. He was a slight, unassuming man who did his job thoroughly, kept largely to himself and didn’t share much of his aboveground life with colleagues. As operations in the Truman Building wound down and head counts were progressively cut, the department that suffered the fewest hits was the China desk. With the collapse in the Russian economy and the hobbling of India in the wake of its nuclear disaster, China was the only country that really mattered to the US. Every geopolitical equation had the China factor on one side and the US factor on the other. So even though there was only one more year of functionality in the Library, the China database was still being milked every day.

The more Kenney dug into Frank Lim, the more he distrusted him. He was the only Chinese-American analyst. His parents had both been born in Taiwan. A branch of the Lim family was still there. He had a history of wiring money to cousins, ostensibly to help with their children’s education. One of his cousins was a prominent KMT nationalist politician who was a sharp advocate for full Taiwanese independence. Was it a huge stretch to think that Lim was behind some kind of act of political theater designed to intimidate the People’s Republic of China? Were
the Doomsday postcards a veiled threat to the government, as in, “Your days are numbered too”? Besides, Lim was one of the Area 51 personnel with a less-than-pristine lie-detector-test result.

A week into the crisis, Kenney and Sage, with the backing of the CIA and the Pentagon, agreed to roll up Lim and place him on administrative leave. Subject to the draconian terms of his employment agreement with Groom Lake, the watchers did not need judicial clearance to search his personal computers and phone records. When you entered the murky world of Area 51 you voluntarily gave up due process. The search came up empty but he remained under suspicion, and his house in Henderson was under twenty-four-hour surveillance.

When Kenney described the mundane details of Lim’s visit of the day before to the supermarket and Home Depot, Sage seemed to perk up.

“How did he look?” the admiral asked.

“Look? I don’t know. I wasn’t personally on the surveillance,” Kenney replied testily.

“You get photos, don’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, let’s see them.”

Kenney pulled out his NetPen and unfurled its retractable screen. A couple of swipes later he had the images from the most-recent reconnaissance. He handed the device to Sage.

“Look at his face,” Sage said, peering at a close-up. “He looks like he’s hiding something.”

“That may well be,” Kenney said.

“Question him again. Do it personally.”

“Yes, sir.”

Sage closed his file folder, his way of showing a meeting was over. “On your way out, tell my PA I want to see her.”

I’ll bet you do, Kenney thought, you damned banana slug.

Inside the Truman Building Kenney strode into Elevator One and was about to push the –6 button for his office when he was seized by an urge he hadn’t had for years.

He stepped out before the doors closed and headed for the V Elevator. He summoned it with a special access key and entered the brushed-aluminum interior. There were only two buttons, G and V. He hit V and inserted his security card in the slot below the button. The doors closed, and he began the smooth sixty-foot descent.

Kenney had personal knowledge that no one except for the environmental monitoring team had visited the Vault for a year or more. In years past, visits had been more frequent. There was a tradition at Area 51. On their first day, new employees would be escorted by the Executive Director of the Research Lab for a personal tour, but there hadn’t been a newbie in a good while.

Stony-faced watchers with sidearms would flank the steel doors. Codes would be punched, and the bomb-proof doors would swing open. Then the newcomer would be led into the enormous, softly lit chamber with the rarefied atmosphere of a deserted cathedral and stand in awe at the sight before them.

The Library.

But now the existence of the physical Library had become something of an afterthought, fading into the dim recesses of collective memory. But in the midst of his first major crisis as the head of security, Kenney suddenly felt a need to connect with the past.

He emerged, the only soul on the Vault level. Outside the massive doors he entered the appropriate
codes and stooped slightly for the retinal scan which triggered the hydraulics.

He stepped into the chilled dehumidified atmosphere and began walking, first a few feet, then a few dozen, finally a few hundred. He periodically looked up at the domed, stadium-like ceiling. As he walked among the bookcases he randomly touched some of the bindings, something that would lead to a reprimand if it were detected and reported up the chain. He assumed one of his own men was watching on CCTV from the sixth floor but no one would be filing a report on him.

The leather was smooth and cool, the color of mottled buckskin. Tooled onto the spine were years, escalating as he moved toward the rear: 1347—replete, no doubt, with victims of the Black Death in Europe, 1865—Abraham Lincoln’s name was buried inside one of these volumes, 1914—filled with World War I victims. At the rear were the last volumes, thousands for the present year, 2026, but many fewer for 2027. The last recorded date was February 8.

He made his way to one side of the Vault, where a narrow stairway took him to a high catwalk. There, he leaned into a railing and took in the totality of the Library.

There were thousands of steel bookcases stretching into the distance, over 700,000 thick leather books, over 240 billion inscribed names. He took it in, absorbing the enormity of it all.