Swell. I hit pause and toggle over to Manning’s lapel cam. It’s 0743. He’s digging into a plate of eggs with hash browns and wheat toast at Donovan’s on Fifty-Seventh and Sixth.

I go back to Golokoff, our Russian Victim #2. Could he be called “righteous”? He served four and a half years at Dostoenko Prison outside Saint Petersburg for publishing works by dissident writers. His wife and eldest daughter were killed by a runaway panel van that jumped the sidewalk outside the GUM department store in the Kitay-gorod section of Moscow, facing onto Red Square. The driver fled and was never apprehended.

Back to the TED talk.

BEN-DAVID

Is this possible? Technologically, yes. Politically? My view is considerably more pessimistic. Forecast: global ecological catastrophe on a biblical scale within our lifetime. Everything in the Book of Revelation about the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse—famine, pestilence, war, and death—is on course to take place. I see nothing to stop it. The end of human life on Earth within a generation and possibly considerably sooner.

Wow, that’s cheery. I work on Golokoff for another ninety minutes, then click back to Manning.

He has exited Donovan’s, schlepped across to Fifth, then hiked south another fifteen blocks. He is just now entering the Public Library, the main branch with the stone lions out front at Fifth between Fortieth and Forty-Second. I monitor his progress via his lapel cam, past the security station, jog to the right and up the stairwell to the third floor. Manning emerges into a broad, marble-floored hallway and turns left. A clutch of Orthodox students passes him, speaking in Hebrew, or maybe it’s Yiddish, I can’t tell. A sign appears ahead:

DOROT LIBRARY

Manning turns left and enters. I google “Dorot.” It’s a research library of Judaica, funded by various Jewish individuals and philanthropic agencies.

The library’s physical plant is laid out in the three sections—the main reading room, the librarian’s station, and an inner reading room adjacent.

A few minutes later Manning has taken a seat in this latter chamber.

He’s at one end of a lamplit oaken table. Three or four students or scholars sit in chairs at this same table. All are immersed in arcane volumes.

Manning’s glance scans the scholars (all male). He takes in the beards, the payot side curls, the black jackets, and the knotted strings extending from the hems of the tzitzit vests under their white shirts.

The research librarian enters from the adjacent station. He’s an academic-looking fellow about forty, wearing a kippah skullcap. He crosses to Manning, carrying three oversized, occult-looking volumes.

LIBRARIAN

(to Manning, in a whisper)

These are the books you asked for on the lamed-vav-niks . . .