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The guard closed the metal door The lock bolt clanked shut autoht, not for the first ti-featured, blue-eyed His looks partly explained why he could brazenly carry explosives into the institute without expecting to be searched Nothing about hielic when he smiled, and his devotion to country would never be questioned by men like Viktor, men whose blind obedience to the state and whose beery, senti clearly about a lot of things A lot of things

He rode the elevator to the third floor and went directly to his office where he turned on a brass, gooseneck la his rubber boots and trenchcoat, he selected a ed its contents across the desk to create a convincing impression that as underway In the unlikely event that another staff ht, asthe suitcase and a flashlight that he had taken from an inner pocket of his trenchcoat, he climbed the stairs past the fourth floor and ascended all the way to the attic The flashlight revealed huge timbers froh the attic had a rough wood floor, it was not used for storage and was eray dust and spiderwebs The space under the highly pitched slate roof was sufficient to allow hih he would have to drop to his hands and knees when he worked closer to the eaves

With the roof only inches away, the steady roar of the rain was as thunderous as the flight of an endless fleet of boe came to mind perhaps because he believed that exactly such ruination would be the inevitable fate of his city

He opened the suitcase Working with the speed and confidence of a demolitions expert, he placed the bricks of plastic explosives and shaped each charge to direct the power of the explosion doard and inward The blast must not merely blow the roof off but pulverize thethe heavy roof slates and tih the debris to cause further destruction He secreted the plastique a room, even pried up a couple of floorboards and left explosives under them

Outside, the storm briefly abated But soon ht, and the rain returned, falling harder than before The long-delayed wind arrived, too, keening along the gutters and e, hollow voice seemed simultaneously to threaten and mourn the city

Chilled by the unheated attic air, he conducted his delicate ith increasingly tre, he broke out in a sweat

He inserted a detonator in every charge and strung wire froes to the northwest corner of the attic He braided thele copper line and dropped it down a ventilation chase that went all the way to the basement

The charges and ere as well concealed as possible and would not be spotted by someone who merely opened the attic door for a quick look But on closer inspection or if the space was needed for storage, the wires and molded plastique surely would be noticed

He needed twenty-four hours during which no one would go into the attic That wasn’tthat he was the only one who had visited the institute’s garret in ht he would return with a second suitcase and plant charges in the base between simultaneous explosions above and beloas the only way to be certain of reducing it-and its contents-to splinters, gravel, and twisted scraps After the blast and accoerous research now conducted there

The great quantity of explosives, although carefully placed and shaped, would dae structures on all sides of the institute, and he was afraid that other people, some of them no doubt innocent, would be killed in the blast Those deaths could not be avoided He dared not use less plastique, for if every file and every duplicate of every file throughout the institute were not utterly destroyed, the project ht be quickly relaunched And this was a project that ht to an end swiftly, for the hope of all ed on its destruction If innocent people perished, he would just have to live with the guilt

In two hours, at a few minutes past three o’clock, he finished his work in the attic

He returned to his office on the third floor and sat for a while behind his desk He did not want to leave until his sweat-soaked hair had dried and he had stopped treht notice

He closed his eyes In his mind he summoned Laura’s face He could always calhts of her The reater courage

Bob Shane’s friends did not want Laura to attend her father’s funeral They believed that a twelve-year-old girl ought to be spared such a gri as badly as she wanted to say one last goodbye to her father, no one could thwart her

That Thursday, July 24, 1967, was the worst day of her life, evenTuesday when her father had died Soer felt numb; her emotions were closer to the surface and less easily controlled She was beginning to realize fully how much she had lost

She chose a dark blue dress because she did not own a black one She wore black shoes and dark blue socks, and she worried about the socks because theynever worn nylons, however, she didn’t think it a good idea to don them for the first time at the funeral She expected her father to look down fro the service, and she intended to be just the way he re aardly to be grown up, he ht be embarrassed for her

At the funeral home she sat in the front roeen Cora Lance, ned a beauty shop half a block from Shane’s Grocery, and Anita Passadopolis, who had done charity ith Bob at St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church Both were in their late fifties, grandly and watched her with concern

They did not need to worry about her She would not cry, become hysterical, or tear out her hair She understood death Everyone had to die People died, dogs died, cats died, birds died, flowers died Even the ancient redwood trees died sooner or later, though they lived twenty or thirty tiht On the other hand, living a thousand years as a tree would be a lot duller than living just forty-two years as a happy hu Her father had been forty-then his heart failed-bang, a sudden attack-which was too young But that was the way of the world, and crying about it was pointless Laura prided herself on her sensibleness

Besides, death was not the end of a person Death was actually only the beginning Another and better life followed She knew that must be true because her father had told her so, and her father never lied Her father was the most truthful man, and kind, and sweet

As the minister approached the lectern to the left of the casket, Cora Lance leaned close to Laura "Are you okay, dear?"

"Yes I’m fine," she said, but she did not look at Cora She dared not reat interest