by Mark Alpert
This last question was harder to answer. All David knew for certain was that Michael had been kidnapped from the Upper Manhattan Autism Center and that one of his teachers, Dr. Irwin Parsons, had been shot to death. David could guess the reason for the abduction—the kidnappers wanted the Einheitliche Feldtheorie, the equations locked in Michael’s head—but he had no clue who the bastards were or where they could’ve taken the boy. “There’s nothing to worry about, okay? Michael is missing, but the police—”
“Missing? What do you mean, missing?”
“It looks like he might’ve wandered off from his school.” It was a pitiful lie, but David was too anxious to come up with something better. He couldn’t stop thinking about the kidnappers and what they might be doing to Michael. “But don’t worry, the police are going to find him. Sooner or later they’ll—”
“What happened? Where did he go?”
Jonah furrowed his doughy brow, trying to look defiant, but his lower lip trembled. He and Michael had grown close since the autistic teenager had moved into their apartment two years ago. Even though Jonah was a full decade younger, he’d taken charge of Michael, introducing him to the customs and rituals of the Swift household. They’d played countless games of Stratego using special rules that Jonah had devised to keep Michael from winning every time. Jonah got frustrated occasionally by Michael’s lack of responsiveness—the boy couldn’t understand jokes, much less laugh at them—but he’d learned to live with it. He’d always wanted a brother, and now he had one.
While David stood there, not knowing what to say, his wife handed him Baby Lisa, who squirmed for a moment before nestling against his chest. Then Monique sat down in the chair next to Jonah’s. “Look, Michael’s going to be all right,” she assured him. “He’s made a lot of progress over the past two years and he knows how to take care of himself now. He’ll find his way home. You just have to be patient, okay?”
“Where is he?” Jonah’s face crumpled and the tears began to flow again. “Where did he go?”
Instead of answering, Monique wrapped her arms around the boy. At first Jonah fought her, furiously twisting in her embrace. But after a while he gave up the fight and sobbed against her T-shirt, shaking uncontrollably. And as David watched them, his own eyes began to sting.
He and Monique had also fallen in love with Michael. In the beginning it was more of a charitable impulse, a simple desire to help this poor kid who’d been abandoned by his family. David had enrolled him in the best autism program in New York and conferred weekly with his therapists. As the months passed, Michael’s behavior improved: he no longer screamed if you accidentally touched him, and he started reading science textbooks instead of playing computer games all day long. The veil of autism seemed to lift a bit, allowing David to catch a glimpse of the boy’s essential nature, which was sweet and curious and trusting. Although he understood that Michael would never fully emerge from his isolation, there was already more than enough of him to love.
After a couple of minutes Jonah stopped crying. Monique stood up and took hold of Baby Lisa, who was fast asleep now. She carried the child to an adjoining room and laid her down in a portable crib that the FBI had provided. Just as she returned to David and Jonah, the door to the interrogation room opened and Special Agent Lucille Parker stepped inside.
She wore the same outfit David remembered from two years ago, a bright red jacket over a loose-fitting white blouse and a matching skirt. A pair of reading glasses hung from a beaded chain around her neck. She looked more like a librarian than an FBI agent, but David knew she wore a shoulder holder under her garish jacket, and tucked in the holster was a Glock 17.
“We found Karen Atwood,” she announced in her familiar Texas drawl. “Our agents in Philadelphia picked her up and they’re bringing her here.”
David let out a sigh of relief. His first wife, who shared custody of Jonah, had gone to a lawyers’ conference in Philly and hadn’t returned any of the frantic phone calls David had made after he learned of Michael’s disappearance. He couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to kidnap Karen—unlike Michael, she knew nothing about the Einheitliche Feldtheorie—but it was still good to hear she was safe.
Jonah leaped to his feet. “You found my mom? Is she okay?”
Lucille gave the boy a smile. Her lipstick was the same shade of red as her jacket. “Yes, honey, she’s fine. We got her on the phone right now and she’s itching to talk to you.” She pointed at another agent standing in the hallway, a stone-faced woman in a gray pantsuit. “This is Agent Carson. She’ll take you to my office. Go on, you can use the telephone there.”
Jonah looked uncertainly at the pair of agents. David squeezed his son’s shoulder. “It’s all right. Go ahead.”
The boy walked toward Agent Carson, who took Jonah’s hand and briskly escorted him down the hallway. Lucille waited a moment, watching them go, then closed the door and turned to David and Monique. She wasn’t smiling anymore. Dozens of creases etched her forehead and the skin below her eyes.
David swallowed hard. “What’s going on? Have you found Michael?”
She shook her head. “We sent alerts to Homeland Security and every police department in the Northeast. But so far we haven’t heard anything.” She walked over to the table and pointed at the chairs. “Have a seat.”
David was too anxious to sit. “How could this happen? How could they just walk into the autism center and take him?”
Lucille pulled out a chair and sat down. She winced as she stretched her legs under the table. “The kidnappers were professionals. They disguised themselves as paramedics, driving a real ambulance they’d stolen from Lenox Hill Hospital. It looked like a genuine emergency call.”
“Were there any witnesses?”
“We interviewed some folks who were on Ninety-eighth Street at the time, but they didn’t give us much in the way of ID for the paramedics. That’s typical—when people see an ambulance crew, they’re usually too busy gawking at the guy in the stretcher to notice anything else.”
Monique stepped toward the table. She stood shoulder to shoulder with David. “What about surveillance cameras?” she asked. “There must be some at the autism center.”
“Yeah, about half a dozen. And every damn one was disabled just before the abduction. Like I said, these guys were professionals.”
“Well, what about the ambulance? That should be easy to track down, shouldn’t it?”
Lucille frowned. “The New Jersey State Police found it an hour ago. The kidnappers dumped it near an abandoned warehouse in the Meadowlands. They must’ve switched to another vehicle.”
Shit, David thought. The New Jersey Meadowlands was next to I-95, the Newark shipping terminal, and two airports. Michael could be anywhere by now. “So what are you saying? You don’t have anything?”
“Calm down, Swift. We’re pursuing every lead. We got the ballistics from the two homicides at the autism center and the—”
“Two homicides? Someone else was killed there besides Dr. Parsons?”
Lucille nodded grimly. “One of our undercover agents was stationed on the first floor, just down the hall from the behavioral therapy room. The kidnappers shot him and threw his body into a closet. Then they went into the therapy room and shot Irwin Parsons.” She curled her upper lip, baring clenched teeth. “That’s how we found out about the abduction so quickly. We knew something bad had happened when our undercover didn’t radio in.”
Monique looked confused. She tilted her head and stared intently at Lucille. “Wait a second. Why was one of your agents at the autism center?”
“You can probably figure it out. We’ve had Michael under surveillance for the past two years.”
David told himself he shouldn’t be surprised. After the Amil Gupta fiasco, Agent Parker had thoroughly interrogated everyone involved. Lucille knew they were hiding something from her, and although neither David nor Monique had said a word about the unified field theory, she’d obviously deduced wher
e the equations were hidden.
“It’s my fault,” Lucille added. The creases under her eyes seemed to deepen. “I went easy on you. I let you keep your secrets. But I knew there were people who wouldn’t be as kindhearted if they discovered what was inside Michael’s head. I knew they’d do anything to get the information. So in the interest of national security, I ordered protection for the boy. We put him under surveillance to prevent any foreign operatives from getting their hands on the unified theory. Unfortunately, I underestimated the threat.”
She lowered her head and stared at the tabletop. All of a sudden she looked old. Although she was still in her early sixties, at that moment she seemed at least ten years older. When David looked at her, he saw a stiff-jointed, overweight agent who should’ve stepped down from active duty a long time ago. It was a little jarring to see her this way. Two years ago Lucille had pursued him relentlessly, chasing him halfway across the country. He’d never noticed her age because he was too busy running away from her. But this time was different, he thought. Agent Parker was trying to help them now. And they needed her help.
David decided to trust her. He’d already told Monique about his conversation with Jacob Steele. Now it was time to tell Lucille. “I have a lead for you,” he said. “I can’t say for sure if it has anything to do with the kidnapping. But it might.”
Lucille raised her eyes. They narrowed, instantly alert. “What?”
“Just before you came to get me, I talked to Jacob Steele at the conference. He’s the director of the Advanced Quantum Institute at the University of Maryland. We were talking about the Iranian nuclear test and Jacob said he’d detected a spacetime disruption at the exact moment of the explosion.”
“Spacetime is the coordinate grid of our universe,” Monique added. “It’s the three dimensions of space—length, width, and height—plus the dimension of time. Einstein showed that space and time are joined together in a continuum that changes its shape near massive objects, bending around stars and planets and—”
“I know what spacetime is.” Lucille pulled a notebook and pencil out of the inside pocket of her jacket. “I’ve had to learn a lot of this physics crap because of you two.” She jotted something in her notebook, then turned to David. “Tell me more about this disruption. What did Steele say exactly?”
“Well, we didn’t get a chance to talk for long. He said the disturbance spread from the nuclear test site, mangling the dimensions of space and time as it moved outward. And he detected it with an instrument he called the Caduceus Array, which is a strange name for a physics experiment. A caduceus is the twisting-snakes symbol that you usually see at hospitals and doctors’ offices.”
Monique shook her head. “I never heard of this instrument. Jacob’s never written about it in any of his papers. It must be something new.”
“Anything else?” Lucille asked.
David searched his memory for the exact words Jacob had used. “He said the disruption was like a rip in the fabric of reality, a break in the continuity of the universe. And it showed that someone was deliberately tampering with spacetime.”
Lucille jotted a few more words in her notebook. “You said it occurred at the same time as the Iranian nuclear test, right? So was it like a shock wave from the explosion?”
Monique stepped forward. She was better than David at explaining the physics. “It wasn’t just an explosion. The universe has big explosions all the time, novas and supernovas and gamma-ray bursts that are trillions of times more powerful than atomic bombs. The energy they release can change the shape of spacetime, but none of these events can tear the fabric apart.” She shook her head again. “No, you’d have to know the unified theory to do that. The theory is like the blueprints for the universe—it shows the whole structure of spacetime. And if you have the blueprints, you can see how to change the structure.” As she spoke she gestured at the walls of the interrogation room. David had seen her do the same thing during her lectures in Pupin Hall. “That’s what happened two years ago with Amil Gupta. He used the theory to build a weapon that could focus vast amounts of energy on any point in spacetime. And this event in Iran looks awfully similar.”
“So you’re saying the Iranians have the theory now? And they’re using it to build a weapon?”
“Who knows?” Monique threw her hands in the air. “We thought Michael was the only one who knew the equations. But maybe someone else has figured them out.”
Lucille thought about it for a moment. She pursed her lips and tapped the eraser end of her pencil against her chin. “Okay, but what does all this have to do with the kidnapping? If the Iranians already know the unified theory, why would they kidnap Michael?”
Monique opened her mouth to answer, but David spoke first. “Look, it can’t be a coincidence. We should talk to Jacob. I want to know what he’s working on.”
“Yeah, I agree,” Monique said. “There’s a connection here. The sooner we talk to Jacob, the faster we’ll find Michael.”
The room was silent for several seconds. Lucille leaned back in her chair, still tapping the pencil against her chin. Then, with a grunt, she rose to her feet. “All right. It couldn’t hurt to have a chat with the guy.” She headed for the door. “I’m gonna make some calls. You two sit tight.”
After she left, David sank into one of the chairs by the table. He was tired. All the stress of the past few hours had exhausted him. Monique sat down in the chair next to his. She put her hand on his shoulder and squeezed it. “This is good, David. I think we’re getting somewhere.”
He nodded, but he didn’t believe her. When he closed his eyes, he kept seeing Michael. Michael in his therapy room at the autism center. Michael crouching on the floor with his hands clamped over his ears. Michael screaming inside an ambulance. The pictures in David’s head were so terrible and he couldn’t shut them out.
They sat there without talking. David lowered his head and rubbed his eyes. Monique moved her hand to the back of his neck and kneaded the muscles there. Then she started scratching his back. The room became so quiet they could hear the hum of the fluorescent lights overhead.
After several minutes Monique began to talk again. She spoke in a calm, quiet, logical voice, the voice she always used when she talked to herself. “You know what I don’t get? Jacob’s specialty is building quantum computers, not investigating fundamental physics. He’s never written a single paper on the nature of spacetime. So why has he suddenly developed an interest? Doesn’t that seem a little strange?” She paused but didn’t wait for an answer. “And do you know who provides most of the funds for Jacob’s research? The good ol’ Defense Department. They awarded him a ten-million-dollar grant to develop his quantum computers. Everyone else in his field is jealous as hell.” She paused again. “And that name, the Caduceus Array. That’s odd, too. In astronomy, the caduceus is a symbol for the planet Mercury. But what’s the connection with spacetime disruptions?”
David finally raised his head and looked at Monique. “We’ve got to find him. We’ve got to find Michael.”
“Yes, baby, we’ll find him . . .”
“We have to be involved in this. We have to convince Parker to let us help.”
“We’ll talk to her, okay? I’m sure—”
“She won’t find him without us. Because this isn’t an ordinary kidnapping case. This is—”
The door to the interrogation room suddenly opened. Lucille appeared in the doorway but made no move to come inside. Her face was blank and her eyes showed nothing, but her jaw muscles quivered slightly. “We got problems,” she announced. “Two of them.”
Monique took her hand off David’s back. He stood up. “What do you mean?”
“I tried calling Steele’s office at the University of Maryland. I figured some lab assistant might be working late. But I got a message saying the whole university switchboard was down.” Lucille’s cheek twitched. “I got curious, so I checked with the local police. There was an explosion at the Advanced Quantum
Institute an hour ago.”
“Jesus.” David gripped the edge of the table. “What’s the other problem?”
“After I hung up the phone, I saw an e-mail from one of my contacts in the New York Police Department. A Columbia University student found a body in Pupin Hall. In an old laboratory right next to the lecture hall. It’s Steele.”
5
THE PRESIDENT SAT ALONE IN THE WHITE HOUSE SITUATION ROOM, STARING at a stack of loose-leaf binders on the conference table. He’d spent most of the evening in a meeting with his defense secretary and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. At eight o’clock the Joint Chiefs had headed back to the Pentagon, giving the president a few precious minutes to think about what they’d just told him. The loose-leaf binders they’d left behind contained their plans for eliminating Iran’s nuclear facilities.
He leaned back in his chair. His head was splitting and he was desperate for a cigarette. Massaging his temples, he gazed at the flat-panel screen at the front of the room, which showed the positions of American strike forces in the Middle East—aircraft carrier groups in the Persian Gulf, fighter-bomber wings at the air bases in Qatar and Kuwait. And as he stared at the map he thought of his wife and daughters, who’d already been escorted by the Secret Service to the relative safety of Camp David. He pictured his two little girls in the backseat of the presidential limousine, gazing at the Maryland woods through tinted, bulletproof windows.
The Iranian nuclear test was the biggest crisis of his administration. The mullahs in Teheran had rejected all his overtures and flouted all his warnings, and now he had to respond. It was too dangerous to let Iran become a nuclear power—there was too great a chance that they’d use the bomb against Israel, or that Israel would launch a preemptive strike against them. And if he acted quickly enough, he could obliterate their nuclear program, and the whole world could breathe a sigh of relief. According to military communications intercepted by the National Security Agency, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard possessed only two more nukes and had moved both to a secure facility near the town of Ashkhaneh, in the northern part of the country. Photos taken by U.S. reconnaissance satellites confirmed the reports, showing the Guard’s convoys traveling to the mountain range where the facility was hidden.
