Contents

The Gutenberg Rubric

Eleven

FRY WAS ON THE GROUND and buzzed on caffeine. He was at least twelve hours behind Drucker and Zayne, but Intelligence showed no sign of Zayne’s brother being in the same area. German security was on alert and even though they doubted Fry’s assessment, they considered the Gutenberg Museum too precious a treasure not to protect.

There was only one significant shrine to ancient works in Germany. The three great repositories of Europe were the Vatican, the British Library, and the Gutenberg Museum. If Drucker and Zayne were headed to the Gutenberg, then so were the terrorists.

A driver and an interpreter met him at the airport. Fry was fluent in Farsi, but was not familiar with German. He needed to communicate clearly with his international counterparts and Homeland Security had come through with just the sort of person to whom both Fry and the Germans could relate. Gretchen Holtz was a tall blonde with obvious Nordic heritage. A woman of restrained good looks, she dressed professionally in a conservative suit with moderate heels. Fry speculated that she might be a world of fun when she was off-duty, but on-duty she was a serious agent for the United States Government.

“What’s our status?” Fry asked once they were in the car.

“The Bundeskriminalamt or BKA has guards patrolling the Platz and area immediately surrounding the museum and library,” Gretchen said, pulling a folder and map out of her briefcase. “Bomb-sniffing dogs have gone over every inch of the exterior to check for anything that could have been planted before the alert. All negative. Based on the previous modus operandi, guards were doubled during the time immediately before and after closing. Nothing threatening was spotted. They are waiting for a full briefing as soon as you get to Mainz.”

“What about Drucker and Zayne?”

“They arrived, checked into their hotel and left about three hours later,” Gretchen continued. “They went to the home of Dr. Rolf Schneider, a respected antiquarian and professor. Drucker studied under him in college. They have not yet left the home to return to the hotel.”

“If they aren’t back by the time we finish with the BKA, we’ll visit them there,” Fry said.

“There is one other thing.”

“Yes?”

“Dr. Drucker’s grandfather is also staying at the home of Dr. Schneider,” Gretchen said. “We do not have a record of their relationship, but the senior Drucker did not check into a hotel. He arrived a day before Drucker and Zayne.” Fry considered the news. Keith had told him they visited his grandfather in California when he checked out of the hospital, but didn’t mention the old man was meeting them in Germany. Fry hated it when whole families were involved in a case. If the people of interest were all unrelated, you could draw conclusions based on their meetings. But if they were all related, there were hundreds of reasons they might get together. Perhaps they were simply on a genealogical expedition as Keith had suggested. But with Madeline Zayne’s brother in Indianapolis at the same time they were, it suggested things were more complicated. They had no record of the brother being near the Kane Library as yet, but the search had just begun.

“Drucker is a German name, isn’t it?” Fry asked Gretchen.

“Ja. It means ‘printer,’” she replied.

“Do all German names mean something?” he pressed.

“Many do, or did at one time,” Gretchen answered. “Holtz is a derivative of the word for woodcutter. It doesn’t mean that we become what our names suggest, anymore than people in America named Smith shoe horses or that people named Fry are cooks.”

Agent Fry laughed in return. “You may have noticed that I’m not of English ancestry. Traditionally, Kurds don’t have surnames. Mine was kindly provided to my parents by the INS. We should find out, though, if the senior Drucker is an immigrant from Germany, or if he has dual citizenship, and what his relationship is to Professor Schneider.” Gretchen opened her cell phone and began making inquiries at once. Fry checked in with his team in Indianapolis, but there was no new information available. He decided to check in with Keith and warn him he was on his way. He was greeted by voice mail and a message that the phone he dialed was not connected to a network at this time. Damn him for shutting off his phone, Fry thought.

The meeting with the BKA was long and tedious. Gretchen managed to keep Agent Fry and his German counterparts from breaking off the heated talks, and ultimately negotiated agreement on a strategy that did not include the immediate arrest of Drucker and Zayne. It involved Fry revealing much more about his investigation than he intended. Contrary to current news reports, attacks on libraries had not been unknown before the bombing of the Kane Memorial Library. It was part of a much larger initiative that Fry had been working on for three years to track down the source of attacks on large portions of the world’s information infrastructure. So far these attempts had been thwarted, but no arrests had been made and comparatively few leads to the source of the threats had been uncovered.

“The world’s idea of cyber-terrorism is that teenaged hackers try to plant viruses on computer networks, or that phishing scams capture credit card information,” Fry said as Gretchen translated. “The truth goes deeper. A number of cyber-attacks are cover for a larger scheme. We believed at first that the social aspects of the World Wide Web would be a positive thing, preventing government disinformation from overwhelming citizen-reporters as they delivered eyewitness accounts of political movements and even natural disasters around the world. That popular notion, however, has proven false. The social Internet is remarkably easy to manipulate.”

“Who would want to do this?” asked Major Jürgen Dern, the coordinator of the German operation.

“We are not sure,” Agent Fry admitted. “But we have evidence suggesting a number of news stories brought to the public through blogs and social networks have actually been planted through careful manipulation of popularity ratings and exposure through multiple networks. Take a look at this.” Fry called a news story and photo up on his cell phone. The headline read, “Police turn their backs while library explodes.” The photo was of two police officers looking away from the exploding pillars of the NHGA.

“It’s completely specious. The officers were over a block away at the time of the explosion. The camera’s telephoto lens collapsed the depth of field on the picture so it looks like they are standing right in front of the building. The story appeared in early morning editions of newspapers outside the Indianapolis area who thought they’d received newswires from Indianapolis. The story was false, but almost impossible to counter by the time legitimate channels got the facts. We believe the people responsible are computer-savvy far beyond even the typical hackers, maybe even using supercomputer technology to create a presence that appears larger than its reality.”

“Why libraries?” asked the Major.

“We’re still working on that, but the world over, people view libraries as being authoritative sources of information on every subject. We believe the group is gearing up to make a major attack that will discourage people from going to the most respected of these libraries, either closing them down, or simply making them appear to be too unsafe to frequent,” said Agent Fry. “That would cut people off from the one source of information that they consider to be more reliable than the Internet.”

Ultimately, the Major agreed that there was a credible threat. Police would be on guard in the morning when Drucker and Zayne entered the museum and would remain vigilant throughout the day. Fry had his files emailed to the BKA from his office in Washington, including a last-known photo of Keith, Frank, Madeline, and Madeline’s brother Yousef. The latter had not surfaced yet after his flight from Indianapolis to Egypt. Leroy Anderson would be in Cairo in a few hours and would begin coordinating efforts with the Egyptian police.

“I need food,” Fry said flatly to Agent Holtz as they left the German police and headed toward his hotel. He had requested rooms at the Sheraton where Drucker and Zayne were staying to set up as a mobile headquarters. Two of the guards watching the librarians were contracted directly by Homeland Security. Fry wasn’t sure how many the Germans had on the couple, but they could figure out their own housing. His negotiations with the Germans had been intense, but successful. It was nearly midnight and he’d been informed that Drucker and Zayne had returned to their room. He was pretty confident they would stay put until he got there, so food seemed like a good idea.

“Restaurants in Germany don’t normally stay open all night,” Gretchen said. “But there is a bierstube two blocks from here that serves food until it closes. I must ask, do you eat pork?”

“Yes,” said Fry. “I’m Kurdish, but not Muslim. Zoroastrians are traditionally omnivores and drinking alcohol is considered a religious duty.”

“What an interesting background you must have,” she said, guiding him into the tiny pub. “I only ask because the staple of a bierstube is sausage and potatoes. I wanted to make sure you could eat.”

“I’d be happy to have you order for me,” Fry said. “All I could do is point at a picture if I saw something that looked good.”

“No problem. Beer?” Fry nodded.

The sausages and pomme frites they were served were exactly what Fry imagined they should be. He had polished off a second beer while engaged in an animated conversation with Agent Holz—now just Gretchen to Fry—before he ever thought about Keith and Maddie.

“So I never did go back to finish college,” Gretchen was saying. “From my first assignment as a summer intern, I was hooked. At that time, Homeland Security was in such chaos they didn’t make a college degree a requirement. It was all about who you knew, and an intern had an immediate opening.”

“I was already working in cybercrimes when they slammed the department together,” Fry said. He looked at his watch. Gretchen called for the check. “As much as I want this conversation to go on all night, I have a call to make on our librarians. Here’s hoping they’ve had enough sleep to be coherent when I get there.”

“Our field quarters are next door to them…” Gretchen began. “Just in case we need more intense surveillance. I’ll walk you there.”

At 1:45 a.m., Agent Fry stood at the door of Maddie and Keith’s hotel room and knocked. Loudly.

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