Final Theory

by Mark Alpert

  Clever, he thought. It was probably a standard technique that the FBI taught at its academy. First show the subject that you already know his secrets. Then move in for the kill. “You have quite a research department here,” David observed. “Did you dig up all this stuff in the past half hour?”

  “No, we started your file a few days ago. We collected material on everyone who worked with Kleinman, and you were listed as a coauthor on one of his papers.” She picked up the thick folder. “This is the file for the late professor himself.” She opened the folder, shaking her head as she leafed through it. “Let me tell you, some of this physics is rough going. I mean, what the hell is the Kleinman-Gupta effect anyway? It’s mentioned half a dozen times in here but I can’t make heads or tails of it.”

  David examined her closely. He couldn’t tell whether she was sincerely ignorant or just playing dumb to get him to talk. “It’s a phenomenon that happens when certain unstable atoms decay. Dr. Kleinman discovered it with his colleague Amil Gupta in 1965.”

  “That’s where the radiation comes from, right? When the atoms decay?”

  He frowned. “Look, I’d be happy to tell you all about it, but I’m not going to do it here. Take me to my office and we can talk.”

  Lucille took off her reading glasses. “I can see you’re getting impatient, Mr. Swift, but you’ll have to bear with me. You see, Professor Kleinman had access to classified information, and we suspect there may have been a breach.”

  David looked askance. “What are you talking about? It’s been forty years since he worked for the government. He stopped doing military work after he finished his radiation studies.”

  “This ain’t the kind of thing he would’ve advertised. After Kleinman retired from Columbia, he participated in a Defense Department project.”

  “And you think that’s why he was attacked?”

  “All I can say is that Kleinman possessed some highly sensitive material and now we have to track it down. If he told you anything when you were in his hospital room, you need to let us know.”

  Lucille leaned toward him, her elbows on the table. She wasn’t smiling or calling him honey anymore; her face had turned dead serious. David had no trouble believing she was an FBI agent now. He just didn’t believe her story. “I’m sorry, but this doesn’t sound right. It doesn’t sound like Dr. Kleinman. He regretted the military work he did. He said it was immoral.”

  “Maybe you didn’t know him as well as you thought.”

  David shook his head. “No, it doesn’t make sense. He organized protests at Columbia. He persuaded every physicist there to sign a statement against nuclear weapons.”

  “I never said he was working on weapons. He approached the Defense Department after 9/11. He offered to help the counterterrorism effort.”

  David considered the possibility. It was far-fetched but not inconceivable. Kleinman was an expert on radioactive decay, particularly the decay of the uranium atoms used in nuclear warheads. That kind of knowledge could certainly be applied to counterterrorism. “So what was he working on?” David asked. “A new kind of radiation detector?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say. But I can show you something.” She picked up Kleinman’s folder again and riffled through its contents. After some searching, she pulled out a reprint of an old research paper and handed it to David. It was about ten pages long and slightly yellowed with age. “You can look at this. It’s one of the few things in his file that ain’t classified.”

  The paper had been published in Physical Review in 1975. The title was “Measurements of the Flux of Rho Mesons” and the author was H. W. Kleinman. David had never seen this paper before; the topic was fairly obscure, and he hadn’t studied it in graduate school. Worse, the article was loaded with fantastically complex equations.

  “This is why we brought you here, Mr. Swift. The first priority of a counterterrorism operation is to make sure the terrorists don’t know our defenses. So we have to find out what Kleinman might’ve told them about our work.”

  David scrutinized the article, trying his best to understand. Kleinman had apparently discovered that focusing a beam of radiation on uranium atoms could generate intense showers of particles called rho mesons. Although the article said nothing about the practical uses of the research, the implications seemed clear: this technology could detect the enriched uranium in a nuclear warhead, even if the bomb was enclosed in lead shielding. David thought again of his last conversation with Kleinman and began to wonder if he’d misinterpreted the professor’s final words. When Kleinman had warned about the “destroyer of worlds,” could he have been thinking of a nuclear weapon smuggled into the United States?

  “Was he working on an active scanning system?” David asked. “Something that could detect a warhead hidden in a truck or a shipping container?”

  “I can neither confirm nor deny,” Lucille answered. “But I think you see now why we’re taking this so seriously.”

  David was just about to look up from the paper when he noticed something on the last page. There was a table comparing the properties of the rho meson with those of its close cousins, the omega and phi mesons. The thing that caught David’s eye was the last column of the table, which listed the lifetimes of the particles. He stared at the numbers for several seconds.

  “So what did Kleinman say, Mr. Swift? What did he tell you?” Lucille gazed at him earnestly, acting like a doting grandmother again. But now David saw through it.

  “You’re lying,” he said. “Dr. Kleinman wasn’t working on a detector. He wasn’t working for the government at all.”

  Lucille put on a hurt, uncomprehending look, opening her mouth wide. “What? Are you…”

  David tapped his finger on the last page of Kleinman’s paper. “The lifetime of a rho meson is less than 10–23 second.”

  “So? What does that mean?”

  “It means your research department screwed up when they concocted this cover story. Even if a rho meson were moving at the speed of light, it would go less than a trillionth of an inch before it decayed. You couldn’t detect those particles coming from a nuclear warhead, so it would be impossible to build a scanning system based on this paper.”

  The hurt look remained on Lucille’s face, and for a moment David thought she was going to play innocent. After a couple of seconds, though, she closed her mouth, firmly pressing her lips together. The lines around her eyes deepened, but these weren’t laughter lines. Lucille was pissed.

  “Okay, let’s start over,” David said. “Why don’t you tell me the real reason why you’re so interested in Dr. Kleinman? It’s some kind of weapon, isn’t it? Some classified weapon that you won’t breathe a word about, but you’re spending billions of dollars on it anyway?”

  She didn’t reply. Instead she took off her jacket and draped it over the back of her chair. A shoulder holster rode against the side of her blouse, and in the holster was a sleek black pistol.

  As David stared at the gun, Lucille turned to the two agents who were still inspecting the Super Soaker. “You boys finished with that damn thing yet?”

  One of the agents came over and placed the water gun on the table. “It’s clean, ma’am,” he reported.

  “What a relief. Now contact logistics and tell ’em we’re gonna need transportation to the airport in ten minutes.”

  The agent retreated to the far end of the room and began muttering into the microphone hidden in his sleeve. Meanwhile, Lucille twisted around in her chair and reached into the pocket of her jacket again. This time she pulled out a pack of Marlboros and a Zippo lighter emblazoned with the Lone Star of Texas. She glared at David as she shook a cigarette out of the pack. “You’re a real pain in the ass, you know that?” She turned to Hawley, who was still standing beside David’s chair. “Ain’t this guy a pain in the ass, Hawley?”

  “Big-time,” he replied.

  Lucille stuck the cigarette in the corner of her mouth. “Just look at him. He probably don’t approve of smoki
ng either. Probably thinks we should go outside if we want to light up.” With a flick of her wrist she opened the Zippo and lit her cigarette, blowing the first plume of smoke into David’s face. “Well, I got some news for you, Swift. We can do whatever the fuck we want.” She closed the Zippo and slipped it back in her jacket. “You understand?”

  While David wondered how to respond, Lucille gave Agent Hawley a nod. A moment later he smacked the side of David’s head. “You got a hearing problem?” he shouted. “Agent Parker asked you a question.”

  David gritted his teeth. It was a hard smack and it stung like hell, but in this case the insult was worse than the injury. His stomach churned with outrage as he looked up at Hawley. Only the presence of the semiautomatics in the agents’ holsters kept him in his seat.

  Lucille smiled. “I got another piece of news for you. Remember the nurse who was in Kleinman’s hospital room? Well, one of our agents talked to her.” She took a deep drag on her cigarette and blew out another plume of smoke. “She said the professor whispered some numbers in your ear.”

  Shit, David thought. The nurse.

  “A long string of numbers, she said. She don’t remember them, of course. But I bet you do.”

  He did. He saw the sequence of numbers in his mind’s eye, almost as if they were floating in the air in front of him. That was the way David’s memory worked. The digits crossed his field of view in the same order that Dr. Kleinman had gasped them.

  “You’re gonna tell us those numbers now,” Lucille said. She rolled up the left sleeve of her blouse, exposing an antique watch on a silver band. “I’m gonna give you thirty seconds.”

  While Lucille leaned back in her chair, Agent Hawley removed the black hood from his pocket. David’s throat tightened as he stared at the thing. Jesus, he thought, how the hell did this happen? These agents seemed to think it was perfectly within their rights to put a hood over his head and beat him to a pulp. And now the only sensible choice was to forget Dr. Kleinman’s warnings and tell them the numbers. For all David knew, the sequence could be meaningless anyway. And even if the numbers weren’t random, even if they were the key to something horrendous, why should he be responsible for keeping the secret? He hadn’t asked for this. All he’d done was write a research paper on relativity.

  He gripped the edge of the table to steady himself. He had five, maybe ten seconds left. Lucille’s eyes were fixed on her watch and Hawley was straightening out the black hood, and as David stared at them he realized that even if he revealed the numbers, the agents wouldn’t let him go. As long as the digits remained in his head, he was a security risk. His only hope was to make a deal, preferably with someone higher in the chain of command than Agents Parker and Hawley. “I need some assurances before I tell you anything,” he said. “I want to speak with someone higher up.”

  Lucille frowned. “What do you think this is, a department store? You think you can complain to the manager if you don’t like the service?”

  “I need to get some idea why you want the numbers. If you can’t tell me the reason, take me to someone who can.”

  Lucille let out a long sigh. She took the cigarette out of her mouth and drowned it in one of the Dixie cups. Then she pushed her chair back and stood up, wincing a bit as she straightened her knees. “All right, Mr. Swift, you’re gonna get your wish. We’re gonna take you to a place where you’ll have plenty of folks to chat with.”

  “Where? Washington?”

  She chuckled. “No, this place is a bit farther south. A lovely little spot called Guantánamo Bay.”

  Adrenaline flooded David’s body. “Wait a second! I’m a citizen! You can’t—”

  “Under the authorization of the Patriot Act, I’m declaring you an enemy combatant.” She turned to Hawley. “Put the cuffs back on him. We’ll do the shackles after we get in the car.”

  Hawley grabbed his arm and shouted, “Get up!” but David remained frozen in his seat, his heart pumping fast and his legs quivering. Hawley raised his voice still louder: “I said GET UP!” and he was just about to yank David to his feet when one of the other agents tapped him on the shoulder. It was the guy who was supposed to call logistics on the radio. He looked a little pale.

  “Uh, sir?” he whispered. “I think we have a problem.”

  Lucille overheard him. She butted between Hawley and his partner. “What is it? What’s the problem?”

  The pale agent was so flustered it took him a couple of seconds to find his voice. “I can’t raise logistics. I tried every frequency but there’s no response. There’s nothing but static on every channel.”

  Lucille gave him a skeptical look. “There’s something wrong with your radio.” She reached for the microphone that was clipped to the collar of her blouse and pressed the push-to-talk button. “Black One to logistics. Logistics, do you read?”

  But before she could get an answer, a deep percussive boom shook the walls.

  AS SIMON WALKED TOWARD THE garage where the black Suburban was parked, it occurred to him that if he ever wanted to switch careers he could always find work as a security consultant. After all, who could offer better advice on how to defend a government or corporate facility than someone who had some experience breaking into them?

  He could certainly give the FBI a few tips. Inside the guardhouse booth at the entrance to the garage there was only one agent, a stocky young grunt in an orange windbreaker and a New York Yankees cap, which was his not-so-convincing attempt to look like an ordinary parking attendant. Stationing one agent in the guardhouse instead of two was a mistake, Simon thought. You should never cut corners on perimeter defense, and most especially not on the night shift.

  Simon had changed into a stylish business suit and carried a leather briefcase now. When he knocked on the booth’s bulletproof glass, the agent looked him over, then opened the door a crack. “What is it?” he asked.

  “Sorry to bother you,” Simon said, “but I was wondering about the monthly rates for parking here.”

  “We don’t—”

  Simon wrenched the door open and slammed his shoulder into the agent’s gut, knocking him down on his back. There was only one surveillance camera in the booth and it was pointed so high it couldn’t view the floor. Another mistake. Lying on top of the agent, Simon thrust his combat knife into the man’s heart and kept him pinned to the floor until he stopped moving. It wasn’t really his fault, Simon thought. It was an institutional failure.

  When Simon stood up he was wearing the windbreaker and the Yankees cap. He’d also removed the Uzi and the field munitions from his briefcase. Hiding the submachine gun under the windbreaker, he exited the booth and walked down the long ramp to the garage.

  There were plenty of video cameras trained on him now, so he kept his head down. He turned a corner and saw half a dozen Suburbans parked near an unmarked steel door. When he was about ten meters away the door opened and an agitated man in a gray suit peered out. “Anderson!” he shouted. “What the hell are you—”

  Simon lifted his head and fired his Uzi at the same time. Conveniently, the agent fell facedown and his prostrate body kept the door from closing. Simon raced to the doorway, arriving just in time to cut down a third agent who’d rushed to his partner’s aid. This is atrocious, Simon thought. They’re making it too easy.

  Just past the doorway was the command-and-control room where the unfortunate agents had been stationed. Simon first disabled the radio transceiver, then scanned the bank of video monitors. He found his target on the screen marked SUB-3A, which showed one of the interrogation rooms on the sub-basement level. Simon was already familiar with the layout of the complex; over the years he’d developed several sources in American intelligence who’d revealed, for a small fee, a great deal about the workings of their agencies.

  Only one more barrier remained, a second steel door at the far end of the room. This door had an alphanumeric keypad controlling the lock. For a moment Simon regretted killing the agents so quickly—he should’ve k
ept at least one of them alive long enough to surrender the entry code. Luckily for him, the FBI had committed yet another foolish error, installing a single dead bolt on the door instead of a stronger locking mechanism.

  Simon removed half a kilogram of C-4 from his munitions bag. It took him eighty-three seconds to mold the explosive around the bolt, insert the blasting caps, and run the detonator cord across the control room. Crouched behind a pillar, Simon called out, “Na zdorovya!”—a traditional drinking toast, the Russian equivalent of “Cheers!” Then he detonated the charge.

  AS SOON AS THEY HEARD the blast, Lucille and Hawley and the two other agents pulled out their Glocks. There was no enemy in sight, but they took out their semiautomatics anyway and pointed them at the closed door of the interrogation room. For the first time in his life, David wished he had a gun, too.

  “Son of a bitch!” Hawley cried. “What the hell was that?”

  Lucille seemed a bit calmer. She gave her agents a hand signal, holding up her index and middle fingers. The three men slowly approached the door. Then Hawley grasped the knob and flung the door open, and his two partners dashed into the corridor. After an anxious second they both yelled, “Clear!”

  Lucille breathed a whoosh of relief. “All right, listen up. Hawley stays here to secure our detainee. The others come with me to identify the threat and reestablish communications.” She gathered the folders that were lying on the table and scooped them under her arm. Then she turned to David. “You’re gonna sit in that chair, Mr. Swift, and you ain’t gonna make a sound. Agent Hawley’s gonna be standing just outside that door. If you make so much as a peep, he’s gonna come back in here and shoot your sorry ass. Understand?”

  She didn’t wait for an answer, which was just as well—David was too terrified to speak. Instead she barreled into the corridor, brushing past Hawley, who still had his hand on the doorknob. “Uh, ma’am?” he asked. “What’s the fallback? What if I can’t hold the position?”