What Are Three Teenagers Supposed to Do When the FBI Raids Their House?

The Wild Story of My Dad’s Mysterious Scraps of Paper, the Agents Who Wanted Them, and Our Race to Find Them First

A Rangers hockey game was on TV as I folded the warm pile of laundry splayed out on the couch. It was a brisk, fall Saturday afternoon in the suburban part of Schenectady, upstate New York’s Electric City. I was 12 years old and into hockey back then before the sport became the joke: I went to a fight and a hockey game broke out.

My mother was in the kitchen doing what she characteristically does on a Saturday, making spaghetti sauce, meatballs, sausage, and braciole for the week. The comforting …