Trapped!

by James Ponti

  “Margaret and I stayed up pretty late last night working out the specifics of how this code works,” I said as I unfolded the paper and put it in front of them. “Here’s a list of all the branches of the DC Public Library. We’ve circled nine of them.”

  These were the libraries that were circled:

  Chevy Chase—5625 Connecticut Avenue NW

  Cleveland Park—4340 Connecticut Avenue NW

  Francis Gregory—3660 Alabama Avenue SE

  Lamond-Riggs—5401 South Dakota Avenue SE

  Parklands-Turner—1547 Alabama Avenue SE

  Petworth—4200 Kansas Avenue NW

  Shepherd Park—7420 Georgia Avenue NW

  Tenley-Friendship—4450 Wisconsin Avenue NW

  West End—2522 Virginia Avenue NW

  “Why these nine?” asked Dawkins.

  “Think TOAST,” said Margaret.

  Dawkins was confused, but the admiral smiled. “It’s the technique they use for solving mysteries,” he explained. “They call it the Theory of All Small Things, or TOAST.”

  It didn’t take long for the admiral to see what we’d found.

  “The streets,” he said. “All of these libraries are located on avenues that are named after states.”

  “Exactly,” said Margaret.

  I reached back into the evidence box and pulled out one of the parking tickets and the ATM receipt. “The day before meeting Agent Rivers, Petrov got this parking ticket and withdrew two hundred dollars from an ATM.”

  “What was the money for?” asked Dawkins.

  “The money’s not important,” I said. “What is important is the location. Both the ticket and the withdrawal were at different locations along Alabama Avenue. If you check that list, you’ll see two of the libraries are located on Alabama.

  “Petrov received the parking ticket across the street from the Francis Gregory branch, and he withdrew the money from a bank next door to the Parklands-Turner branch.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “You’ve lost me.”

  “The zip code gives the Dewey decimal number,” I explained. “But the state in the return address gives you the branch where that book can be found. The address is in Birmingham, Alabama. So he knew which street to use.”

  “But he didn’t know which of the two branches,” said Dawkins, getting it. “So he had to go to both.”

  “Right,” I said. “And he found it at the Parklands-Turner branch.”

  “How do you know?” she asked.

  “Two ways,” I said. “The time printed on the ATM receipt is later than the time written on the ticket.”

  “And there are three letters underneath the Dewey decimal number on the book,” Margaret said. “P-A-R. It’s the code DC Public Libraries use to make sure books get returned to the branch where they belong. It stands for Parklands.”

  “That’s amazing,” said Dawkins. “It’s so out in the open, no one would even question it. But we don’t know for sure that they used the code more than once.”

  “Actually, I think we do.”

  I opened the other evidence box and pulled out the book on the theory of relativity that started everything.

  “This is the book in which Herman Prothro found the key to the post office box that contained the government secrets. He checked it out from the Tenley-Friendship branch of the library, which you’ll see on the sheet in front of you is on Wisconsin Avenue.”

  Admiral Douglas picked up the book and looked at its spine. “The Dewey number is five thirty point eleven.”

  “And five three zero one one is the zip code for the town of Cascade, Wisconsin,” said Margaret. “We looked it up last night.”

  “I think you have the ability to confirm that we’re right, Agent Dawkins,” I said. “I know that the mail is sorted by computers that take pictures of each letter in order to send them to their proper destination. I assume that either the NSA or the CIA keeps track of all the letters that are sent to the Russian embassy. My bet is that if you go through the letters that were sent to the embassy in the days before Prothro checked out the book, you will find a letter addressed to Andrei Morozov from somebody in Cascade, Wisconsin.”

  “And the stamp will be upside down,” said Margaret.

  “Why?”

  “Like on the envelope you have there,” she said. “The stamp is upside down. That lets whomever is sorting the mail know that the letter has the code.”

  “You’ll also find that the postmark is not from Wisconsin.”

  Douglas gave Dawkins a long hard look. There was no doubt he believed us.

  “I can neither confirm nor deny that any agency tracks the mail sent to the Russian embassy,” she said. “But I would like to excuse myself a minute to make a phone call.”

  She left us alone with Admiral Douglas, who shook his head as he turned to us. “You two never cease to amaze me.”

  “Thank you, sir,” I said.

  “You can’t let Marcus quit,” Margaret said to him.

  “I can’t stop him,” he said. “I’ve tried to talk him out of it for two days. I’ve told him that all he has to do is ride it out, but he is determined to end this right now. He can be a stubborn man.”

  That’s when I realized that Marcus hadn’t told the admiral about Margaret and Nic the Knife. If the admiral knew that, then he’d understand why Marcus was being so insistent.

  “How do the books work into this?” asked Douglas. “I understand passing the secrets back to the embassy, but why include the books? Maybe to help finance the operation.”

  “Actually, Margaret came up with the theory that I think works best,” I said.

  He turned to her. “What is it?”

  “I don’t think the books were supposed to be sold,” she said. “I think the books were supposed to be returned to Russia.”

  The admiral gave her a curious look.

  “When Alistair Toombs was showing us around the Library of Congress, he talked about the books being the DNA of the country,” explained Margaret. “I think the spy feels like the books from the Russia Imperial Collection belong back in Russia. So I think he or she is placing them with the secrets with the expectation that they’ll be returned home.”

  “In which case Alexander Petrov just wanted the money and figured nobody would ever know what he’d done.”

  “Exactly.”

  When Agent Dawkins returned to the room, she had a sly smile.

  “What did you find out?” asked the admiral.

  “Off the record?” she asked.

  “In this room,” he said, “everything is off the record.”

  “The day Prothro checked out the book on the theory of relativity, Andrei Morozov received a letter from a Josh Newhouse of Cascade, Wisconsin. The stamp on the letter was upside down, and the postmark was Harrisonburg, Virginia.”

  “That’s great,” said Margaret. “We can use the code to catch the spy. And when we catch the spy, we can prove that Marcus is innocent.”

  Both Douglas and Dawkins gave her grim looks.

  “I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way,” she said.

  “What doesn’t?”

  “We can’t use this code to arrest anybody.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because then they would know that we have the code and they’d stop using it. We have at least ten years of mail to sort through. We have countless letters in the future to look through. You two have given us something amazing to work with. You’ve helped the country tremendously.”

  “But what about Marcus?” Margaret asked.

  “We have to put the good of the country ahead of one person’s career,” Agent Dawkins said. “When the British cracked Germany’s Enigma code during World War Two, they had to let entire ships be torpedoed to keep the enemy from knowing it had been broken.”

  “It’s the way it has to be,” said Admiral Douglas.

  “Then how do we help him?” Margaret asked. “You can’t talk him out of it. We can’t catch the spy
.”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “You can probably help him best by supporting his decision.”

  “What if we catch the spy without the code?” I asked. “If we catch the spy and can prove that Marcus didn’t steal those books, then all his problems would be solved, right?”

  “If you do it without using this code,” said Agent Dawkins, “then yes, I believe so.”

  I turned to Douglas. “Don’t accept his resignation for twenty-four hours,” I said. “For it to be official, you have to accept it, right?”

  “Yes, but . . .”

  “No buts,” I said. “We just broke a code that you both said is vitally important to this country. I think the least we deserve is twenty-four hours.”

  He thought about it for a moment.

  “Okay,” he said. “I believe you deserve at least that much.”

  “Come on, Margaret,” I said, getting up and heading toward the door. “I know where we have to go.”

  Margaret followed me, but before we left, I realized a problem with my plan. I stopped and turned back to them.

  “Can one of you give us a ride? We sent my mom home, and we’re in a hurry.”

  Admiral Douglas laughed. “I’ll instruct an agent to take you wherever you’d like to go.”

  “And another thing,” said Margaret. “We’re going to need the FBI to pay for a wall to be repaired at the Library of Congress.”

  31.

  Petworth

  BECAUSE THE DAY HAD GOTTEN off to such an early start, which caused both of us to skip breakfast, and because the Petworth Library wasn’t going to open for another twenty minutes, Margaret and I decided to take full advantage of the admiral’s instruction for the agent to drive us wherever we wanted to go. We made a brief pit stop at the Smoothie Shack and each got a large strawberry-banana smoothie. Much to our surprise, the agent insisted on paying for them.

  “The admiral told me to take good care of you,” he said.

  “We appreciate it,” I told him.

  As we rode in the SUV and sucked down our smoothies, Margaret and I worked out a plan that had two glaring weaknesses. First of all, we were doomed if Lucia refused to help us, which was very possible. Second, it all hinged on Marcus being right when he told me that there was no way she was guilty. I thought Margaret had discovered a third weakness at one point because she exclaimed, “Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh!”

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Brain freeze,” she yelped as she started massaging a spot in the middle of her forehead.

  The rain was clearing up, but because it was still sprinkling, the agent insisted we wait in the back seat until the library opened. When we saw someone from the staff unlock the door, we thanked him for the ride and got out.

  We were halfway to the door when Margaret did another “Ooh, ooh, ooh!”

  “More brain freeze?” I asked.

  “No,” she said. “I just thought of a problem. What if she’s not working today?”

  I stopped momentarily. “Then we’ll just have to make it up as we go along. Just like we did last night.”

  “Okay,” she replied. “But I hope we don’t have to do any more crawling. My knees are pretty sore. Fingers crossed.”

  We both crossed our fingers, and Margaret did what I could only assume was a good luck dance. I tried my best to mimic it. I failed miserably.

  Because the door had just been unlocked, we were the first patrons of the day. There was no sign of Lucia at the main circulation desk, so we walked up the stairs to the second floor. We found her in the story time room arranging chairs.

  “Our first stroke of luck,” said Margaret.

  “Let’s hope it’s not our last.”

  The advantage of being early was that there was no one else there to distract her. The disadvantage was that, with no little kids present, she was free to express her displeasure at seeing us.

  “Well, look who it is,” she said, her anger rising. “I don’t know who you two are but—”

  That’s as far as she got.

  “Marcus needs your help,” Margaret said. “We’re sorry if we’ve been less than honest with you, but he’s like family to us, and you’re the only one who can help him.”

  She had a confused look. “Marcus . . . Rivers?”

  “Yes,” said Margaret. “He’s in serious trouble, and he needs—”

  “Stop, right there.” She studied us for a moment, trying to make sense of the situation. “Marcus sent you?”

  “No,” I said. “In fact, if he knew we were here, he’d be furious. But he can be a bit pigheaded that way. And whether he knows it or not, or you know it or not, you’re his best hope.”

  She had moved past confusion to anger. “Well, then that’s too bad for him.”

  She turned her back to us and went back to arranging the chairs.

  “You know they went through his parents’ house with a search warrant two nights ago,” said Margaret.

  She still kept her back to us, but I could tell she was listening.

  “Mr. Rivers had to stay up half the night trying to put things back where they belong,” Margaret continued. “Can you imagine how they felt, after all they’ve done, to have their son treated like a criminal?”

  It was a brilliant move by Margaret, and not one we’d planned in the SUV. She knew that Lucia cared about Marcus’s parents.

  Lucia turned back toward us and sat down on one of the little story time chairs. She let out a long sigh. “Anntionette and William?” She shook her head. “What kind of trouble is he in?”

  “All sorts,” I said. “But basically he’s being blamed for stealing rare books from the Library of Congress, conspiring with organized criminals, and passing US government secrets to the Russian government.”

  She laughed at the magnitude of it all. “There’s no way Marcus did any of that.”

  “We know that, and you know that,” said Margaret. “But will you help us prove it?”

  She crossed her arms over her chest as she considered this.

  “I don’t know if it matters,” I said, “but yesterday he was trying to give me some advice, and he told me that what happened between you and him was the biggest mistake of his life. He told me to remember that people always matter more than careers and your heart always matters more than your brain.”

  There were some tears in her eyes as she stared at me. “Did he really say that? Or are you just trying to get me to help you?”

  “Both,” I said. “We do want you to help, and he really said that.”

  She scanned the library and saw that there were now a few combinations of parents and kids looking through shelves, but they all seemed to be taking care of themselves. Then she looked at us as she thought through everything.

  “Okay,” she said. “What do you need?”

  Margaret and I shared a smile.

  “There are two books that are essential to figuring this out,” I said. “We know the last person to check out each. But we need to know everyone who checked them out before that.”

  It had dawned on me during our meeting with Admiral Douglas and Agent Dawkins that we never heard about the history of the book with the hidden key. The FBI was trying to create a time line of who’d checked it out before, but we weren’t around when that information came back. And now we had Mrs. Hoover Speaks Mandarin to compare it to. If there was one common name for both books, that would be huge.

  “I can show you the entire history of any book in the system,” she said. “When it was checked out. How long it was checked out for. Where it was returned. But the one thing I can’t tell you is who checked it out.”

  “Why not?” I asked, crestfallen.

  “It’s against the law for us to keep those records,” she said. “The books you read are a matter of privacy and not something we keep track of.”

  It felt like we’d hit a dead end.

  “But we can still tell a lot by what we can see,” she said.

  We walked
over to her desk, and she logged onto her computer. As she waited for it to boot up, she asked, “You must care about him a great deal.”

  “Very much,” I said.

  “Believe it or not,” she replied, “so do I.”

  “If we didn’t already believe that, we wouldn’t have come,” said Margaret.

  She searched for the information on Mrs. Hoover Speaks Mandarin and Other Fun Facts about the First Ladies and Relativity. There were multiple copies of both in the library system, but because we knew the dates that each was checked out last, she was able to find the borrowing history of the copies we were interested in.

  “Okay, here’s something,” she said. “Each book was temporarily withdrawn from the system in the period before it was checked out.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “If something’s wrong with a book and it can’t circulate, it’s withdrawn from the system so that it doesn’t come up when people search for it.”

  “Why would a book be withdrawn?” I asked.

  “If it’s lost or stolen; if a librarian wants to reserve it for a program; if it’s damaged.”

  “Wait, what happens if it’s damaged?” asked Margaret.

  “It depends on the nature of the damage,” she said. “If the damage is extensive, the book is removed from the collection permanently. But if it’s fixable, we send it out for repairs and then return it to the system when it comes back.”

  “So you’re saying these books might have been sent for repairs?”

  She scanned their histories. “Well, neither of them was checked out for a long period, so they weren’t lost, so yes, I’d say they were probably sent for repairs.”

  Margaret and I turned to each other and said it at the same time. “Brooke King!”

  32.

  The Stamp Act

  AS WE RODE THE METRO to Dupont Circle, we tried to formulate a plan. We felt positive that Brooke King was the spy, but it wasn’t like the FBI would just take our word for it. Admiral Douglas had promised us twenty-four hours, so we were hoping to collect enough evidence to convince him we were right.

  “What’s our excuse going to be?” I asked. “How do we explain coming back for the third time in a week?”