The Keepers of the Library (7 page)

T
he economy cabin of the Boeing 807
was darkened for sleeping and most of the passengers were at least trying to get some shut-eye. Will was an exception, uncomfortably shifting his large frame in his middle seat, staring at the plane’s flight path on the chair-back screen.

The last time he’d been to England was when Phillip was an infant. He’d taken Nancy and the baby to the Isle of Wight to have a look at the ruins of Vectis Abbey. They’d strolled on the grassy field among grazing sheep and looked out over the rolling waves and chop of the Solent. Beneath their feet was the ruined vault of the Library, destroyed by army demo men after the books had been cleared out in 1947 and turned over to the Americans. At the time he’d felt he had to go there, to see it for himself, but when it was done, he moved on and didn’t dwell on it. He had a life to live. He’d resisted the pleas to lecture and do TV appearances, and decided to tell his story once, and once only in a book. And when the book finally faded from the best-seller lists, he faded too, onto his boat, into the blue-green waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

On the flight fifteen years earlier, Phillip had irritated Will by crying his way from Newfoundland to Ireland. Now the boy was irritating him again. He stewed fitfully: Why had he run off? What was he trying to accomplish? Was it rebellion? Was Phillip so angry at him for being a lousy father that this was the way he chose to express himself? Had he met a girl on the Net who snake-charmed him across the Atlantic? Or was something more ominous afoot?

When he had mulled over every conceivable scenario, he started to fret over his heart. Sure he’d told Nancy he was fit enough for the journey, but truth be told, he wasn’t convinced. He had lied. He never called his cardiologist for clearance. You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do, he had told himself. Mind over matter.

At Heathrow’s Terminal Six he cleared customs, picked up some currency and rolled his bag to the meeting point. A man in an overcoat held a paper sign with his name. He followed the driver outside and waited while he retrieved the car and brought it around. It was chilly and damp; the sky was dull and monochromatic, just like his mood.

A traffic-filled hour later he was in central London at Thames House on Millbank. On one hand it was the London he remembered, a bustling mix of old and new, but the sounds and smells were different. It was as if he were wearing earplugs. Gone was the rumble of diesel and petrol engines and their stinky chemical haze. All the buses and cars were electric or the newer fuel-cell models and street noises were reduced to the soft whine of drive trains and the whir of rubber on asphalt. Back home, especially in the smaller towns and cities like Panama City, there were still some holdouts spending twenty bucks a gallon for the privilege of being petroleum throwbacks, but
these were dinosaurs like himself who couldn’t give up their youths. His own toy was a 1969 Firebird, a beautifully restored machine he’d bought for himself in 2012 with some of the advance money from his book. It got six miles per gallon—a very expensive baby to run but worth every penny when he gunned it at a light change.

Will passed through the massive arched entry into Thames House where he presented himself to reception. He figured he wouldn’t be getting priority treatment, and forty minutes later, his suspicions were confirmed when he was still waiting. Finally, a young woman came down to fetch him. He initially thought she was a PA—partly because of her youth and partly because her skirt seemed too tight to be an agent’s. In his experience, albeit outdated, operatives usually didn’t try to draw attention to their asses. But he was wrong.

“Is this Mr. Piper?” she asked him. “I’m Annie Locke, the case officer assigned to assist you.”

She had short blond hair, intensely blue eyes and very white skin.

Another pretty thirtysomething with good legs, he thought, disdainfully. Just what I don’t need right now.

“Call me Will,” he said.

“Right, Will, hope you had a good flight over. Let’s go back to my office, shall we?”

“You lead, I’ll follow,” he said, positioning himself to take in her swaying rear.

Her office on the fifth floor was tiny and it said everything he needed to know about her rank. Without Nancy’s connections, he wouldn’t be here at all, but this was clearly a lip-service assignment with no horsepower behind it.

“How long’ve you been with the Security Service?” he asked.

“Five years now,” she said, sitting at her desk and offering him a chair.

“And before that?”

“University,” she said.

Jesus, not even thirty, he thought. “I see.”

“So,” she said. “Your son. Any new developments since last night?”

He shook his head. “I called my wife from the car. There’s nothing.”

“And nothing other than timing to suggest that his sojourn to Britain has anything to do with the Chinese Doomsday case.”

“No.”

“I’m sure you understand, Will, that the upstairs boys agreed to devote resources to the case only based upon the slimmest of chances that there might be a connection.”

“I understand that, Annie.” He didn’t ask for permission to use her first name. “I also understand that this is being done as an interagency courtesy.”

“Quite so.”

“Well, I appreciate it. And I’m grateful. I hope I’m not pulling you off something you consider more important.”

She gave a voice command and Phillip’s face appeared on her wall screen. “Let’s just find your son, shall we?”

She was efficient, he’d give her that. She had all the relevant intel at her fingertips and on her screen. CCTV image captures at Heathrow, the underground, King’s Cross station. And her presentation was crisp. In some ways she reminded him of a young Special Agent Nancy Lipinski back when she was thrust upon
him on the Doomsday case. But Annie Locke was less earnest, less eager, and she possessed a dash of cynicism, a quality which had always been dear to him.

He watched the screen grabs of Phillip with a certain pride. The boy was clearly on his own. Someone might well have been tailing him, but no one was guiding him. He was out there, maneuvering a foreign city alone. The few shots that captured his face suggested to Will a trace of anxiety tempered with a determination to accomplish his mission—whatever that mission was.

“This is not the picture of a child who’s been kidnapped or coerced,” Annie said. “He’s purposeful. No meandering or sightseeing. He uses his NetPen to buy notes after he clears customs, leaves Heathrow on the Piccadilly Line and goes directly to King’s Cross station, presumably purchases a ticket with cash, and disappears.”

“You don’t know what train he caught?”

“Afraid not. We couldn’t pick him up on CCTV.”

“Where can someone go from King’s Cross?”

“Points north. The Midlands, Cumbria, Yorkshire, Scotland.”

“You couldn’t track him on his mobile?”

“Seems he’s turned it off.”

“Son of a …”

“I expect he knows his parents have the wherewithal to locate him more easily than most parents.”

“He’s a smart kid.”

“Will Piper’s son. That’s what you’d expect, right? We had a case study on you in our training program, you know.”

The remark made him feel like a fossil. “I’m flattered,” he lied, “but Phillip takes after his mother. She’s the one with the brains. So that’s it? He’s missing somewhere in the north?”

“Not exactly. What do you know about this Hawkbit girl?”

“Nothing. From their conversation, it looks like it was a fresh interaction.”

“I agree. It’s also a new moniker. I haven’t completely exhausted the databases, but I haven’t found a single other SocMedia or NetMail instance of a Hawkbit.”

“Apparently it’s a wildflower.”

“So I understand. Not really into botany.”

Will leaned into her desk. “So what do you have?”

“The message to your son on Socco was sent from a NetPoint in a public library. Don’t look so shocked: we still have a few left! It’s in a small town, Kirkby Stephen, in Cumbria, the westernmost part of the Yorkshire Dales. It’s a point served by a rail line that originates at King’s Cross, so it all fits well enough.”

Will snapped himself to a standing position. “So let’s go to Kirkby Stephen.”

“I’ve already booked us train tickets,” she said. “We’ve got enough time to stop at the commissary for a bit of breakfast and a coffee.”

“Trains? We’re not flying?” he asked.

“You surely haven’t seen our budget. Don’t worry, we’ll get there in excellent time.”

T
he northbound train sliced through the middle of Britain: Peterborough, Doncaster, Leeds, Bradford. With the population of the country swelling to nearly 70 million, the concentric sprawls around each metropolitan area meant fewer expanses of green farmland and countryside than Will had remembered from his last English train ride years earlier. He sat by the window welcoming the periodic splashes of sun that worked through cloud breaks and made the
morning seem less dismal. But north of Peterborough, the clouds formed a dense blanket; then there was no respite to the gloom.

Annie sat opposite him nursing an orange soda, glued to her unfurled NetScreen, a pair of wireless earbuds firmly planted. He couldn’t tell whether she was doing work, chatting with friends, or playing a damn game. And he didn’t much care. This was a babysitting assignment for her—he understood that. If he got one or two useful things out of her a day, that would be good enough. Phillip was his son, and if you wanted to call this a case—it was his.

He got up a couple of times, ambled down the aisle to the lavatory to splash his face. The bar car was open. He was sorely tempted.

It was midafternoon, cool and misty when they pulled into Kirkby Stephen. There were few people on the platform and they had no competition at the taxi rank. The driver got out and unplugged the car from its power point. He climbed back in and dully asked with the look of a man who’d been napping, “Where to?”

“Do you want to check in first?” Annie asked.

“No,” Will answered abruptly. “The public library.”

“No libraries down south, marra?” the driver asked.

T
he library in Kirkby Stephen, though relatively new, was housed in the oldest building in town, the sixteenth-century Old Grammar School. It stood in Vicarage Lane across from an old rectory and boardinghouse. Like most of the ancient town structures, it was built of coarse red sandstone. The library windows were plastered with posters of town events and book readings.

When they entered Will was struck by the emptiness of the place. There were some stacks of books by the entrance but they seemed to be there mostly for show. Who read real books anymore? Only the old guard, the diehard, clinging to the feel and smell of paper with their last breaths. The few libraries that had survived state funding cuts had mostly reinvented themselves as social clubs for seniors and places to leave off children while busy mums shopped. Add to that Net access. Net devices were cheap, and most everyone had one, but this was a poor part of the country, and there were household gaps. The entire middle of the ground floor was given over to Net-Points with sound-resistant baffles so people could use voice commands to navigate the tilted wafer-thin screens without disturbing their neighbors.

Annie went to the central desk and got the attention of the librarian, a prim white-haired lady with a bright, hand-knit jumper.

“Hallo, is this Mrs. Mitchell?” she asked.

The woman smiled. “Yes, Gabrielle Mitchell. You must be the government lady.”

“I am indeed.” Annie showed her ID card, which seemed to impress Mrs. Mitchell no end. “I love books about spies,” she cooed.

“Me too,” Annie said.

“So I take it you haven’t found the boy yet,” the librarian whispered, as if there were people crowded around the desk who ought not hear the conversation.

“I’m afraid not. This is the boy’s father, Mr. Piper.”

The librarian’s concern for Will’s plight melted into something else as she took on the demeanor of a red-carpet gawker. “I’m very pleased to meet you, despite the circumstances, Mr. Piper. We don’t get many celebrities up here.” She wanted a handshake,
and he obliged. “He’s so handsome,” she whispered to Annie as a gossipy schoolgirl might.

He put an end to the nonsense. “Could you show us the NetPoint used to message my son.”

It was at the end of a row, no different from any of the rest, a padded chair, a desk, a blank polymer screen that came to life with the Cumbria County logo at the wave of a hand. Of the twenty workstations only half a dozen were occupied.

“Is there a user log?” Annie asked.

“No, we don’t do that,” the librarian said. “There’d only be a user identifier recorded if they logged in to borrow an e-book, and that apparently did not happen during the session in question.”

“So anyone can use these terminals anonymously?” Will asked.

“Absolutely. We don’t have a watchdog mentality. We wish to encourage the use of the Net for learning and recreation.”

“Most public places make some sites off-limits,” Annie offered.

“We use filters to restrict pornography and locations with objectionable content for minors. It’s the standard Public Libraries Association filter. Which site was used to communicate with your son, Mr. Piper?”

“Socco.”

“Popular, very popular,” Mitchell observed. “Especially among the younger ones, as I understand. It’s very technical, a little too colorful for our seniors.”

“It was three days ago, around 8:40
A.M.
,” Annie said. “By the look of things, there aren’t many people about on weekdays.”

“Every day is different, dear.”

“Get many people in before 9
A.M.
?” Will asked.

“We open at 8
A.M
. Some mornings, we have students
stopping by on the way to school to meet up with friends. We have snack- and coffee-vending machines that are highly rated. You have to offer these kinds of services to be relevant, you see.”

“Were you here that morning?” Annie asked.

“I was.”

“There was a girl. Or a woman. She used the screen name Hawkbit,” Will said.