9.

The celebration was postponed until the four hunters arrived at the cabin, deep in the Poconos. Denny had leased the small A-frame for the hunting season, with funds that would be repaid when they cashed in, and had been living there for two months. Of the four, only Jerry had a permanent address. He’d been renting a small apartment with his girlfriend in Rochester, New York. Trey, as an escapee, had been living on the run most of his adult life. Mark lived part-time with an ex-wife near Baltimore, but there were no records to prove it.

All four had multiple forms of fake identification, including passports that would fool any customs agent.

Three bottles of cheap champagne were in the fridge. Denny opened one, emptied it into four mismatched coffee cups, and offered a hearty “Cheers, boys, and congratulations. We did it!” The three bottles were gone in half an hour and the weary hunters fell into long naps. The manuscripts, still in the identical archival storage boxes, were stacked like bricks of gold in a gun safe in a storage room, where they would be guarded by Denny and Trey for the next few days. Tomorrow, Jerry and Mark would drift back home, exhausted from a long week in the woods hunting deer.

10.

While Jerry slept, the full weight and fury of the federal government was moving rapidly against him. An FBI technician noticed a tiny spot on the first step of the stairway leading to and from the library’s vault. She thought, correctly, that it was a drop of blood and that it had not been there long enough to turn dark maroon, almost black. She gathered it, told her supervisor, and the sample was rushed to an FBI lab in Philadelphia. DNA testing was done immediately, and the results were rammed into the national data bank. In less than an hour, it tagged a match in Massachusetts: one Gerald A. Steengarden, a paroled felon convicted seven years earlier of stealing paintings from an art dealer in Boston. A squad of analysts worked feverishly to find any trace of Mr. Steengarden. There were at least five in the U.S. Four were quickly eliminated. Search warrants for the apartment, cell phone records, and credit card records of the fifth Mr. Steengarden were obtained. When Jerry woke up from his long nap deep in the Poconos, the FBI was already watching his apartment in Rochester. The decision was made not to go in with a warrant, but to watch and wait.

Maybe, just maybe, Mr. Steengarden would lead them to the others.

Back at Princeton, lists were being made of all students who had used the library in the past week. Their ID cards recorded each visit to any of the libraries on campus. The fake ones stood out because in college fake IDs were used for the underage purchase of alcohol, not to sneak into libraries. The exact times of their use were determined, then matched against video footage from the library’s surveillance cameras. By noon the FBI had clear images of Denny, Jerry, and Mark, though these would prove to be of little value at the moment. All were well disguised.