Quantum

by Tom Grace

  ‘You look like a model for L. L. Bean,’ Cooper said.

  ‘Thanks, and judging by that old suit you’re wearing, Mr GQ, I’d refrain from making any more fashion statements. Glass houses, you know.’

  ‘Very funny, but we’ll pass for amerikanski biznesmeny,’ Cooper said with a wry smile. ‘Let’s get moving.’

  At the main entrance of the hotel, the doorman escorted them to the curb and waved for one of the queued taxis to pull up. A battered yellow Lada stopped at the curb, and Cooper and Kilkenny got in.

  ‘The FinProm building on Prospekt Mira, da?’ the driver asked, confirming the instructions given him by Fydorov.

  ‘Da,’ Cooper replied.

  The driver expertly negotiated the medieval maze of streets in Moscow’s core out to the Sadovoye Koltso. He followed the former garden beltway until it reached Prospekt Mira, where he turned and drove into Moscow’s northern periphery. In the distance, Kilkenny saw a three-hundred-meter-tall obelisk of polished metal.

  ‘What is that?’ Kilkenny asked.

  ‘What?’ Cooper replied absently. ‘Oh, that’s right. This is your first trip here. That tower commemorates Soviet achievements in space travel.’

  ‘They’re not much on subtle gestures, are they?’

  ‘Not when it comes to bragging rights.’

  A few minutes later the driver guided the Lada up against the curb in front of a stark, concrete-and-glass building. A westerly breeze pulled at the deep blue flag mounted near the roof, exposing the outstretched wings of a golden two-headed eagle. Beneath the flag, mounted to the face of the parapet, the building bore the name VIO FINPROM. Kilkenny noticed surveillance cameras discreetly mounted on the parapet and near the main entrance.

  Cooper slipped the driver an American twenty, both as a courtesy, since the driver actually worked for the FSB, and to make the transaction appear ordinary, in case anyone inside was watching. Kilkenny grabbed his soft-sided briefcase and exited the taxi.

  A giant of a man stuffed into an ill-fitting suit unlocked the vestibule door as they approached.

  ‘Cooper and Kilkenny?’ he asked, as if he’d memorized the line.

  ‘Da,’ Cooper replied.

  The large man opened the door wide and allowed them to enter; he then locked it once they were inside. In the lobby, Dmitri Leskov stood leaning against the reception desk. Leskov took scant notice of Cooper, focusing instead on Kilkenny with a venomous glare that would have looked more appropriate had he been aiming a pistol.

  Kilkenny leaned close to Cooper and whispered, ‘Looks like he remembers me.’

  ‘What did you expect, flowers?’ Cooper joked. ‘Just remember, revenge is part of the Russian national psyche.’

  ‘I get the picture.’

  ‘Stop,’ Leskov ordered.

  Leskov straightened up and motioned for the doorman to frisk Cooper and Kilkenny. The man patted down Cooper thoroughly, showing no reluctance to investigate even the apex of Cooper’s inseam in search of weapons or microphones.

  ‘Search his bag,’ Leskov ordered when the doorman approached Kilkenny. ‘I’ll search this one myself.’

  Kilkenny handed his briefcase to the doorman. Leskov began searching Kilkenny as if he were probing for a physical weakness rather than a weapon. Kilkenny sensed he was being appraised as both an opponent and a target, knowing it was an effort to intimidate him. Leskov finished with his front and moved behind.

  ‘I enjoyed doing this to your woman,’ Leskov sneered, baiting Kilkenny.

  Kilkenny slowly turned his head and looked over his left shoulder at Leskov, who smiled, amused by his taunt.

  ‘Not half as much as you seem to be enjoying doing it to me.’

  Leskov’s smile vanished.

  Kilkenny pursed his lips and made the sound of a kiss.

  ‘Yop t’voi yo mat!’ Leskov spat, his face flushing to deep red.

  Leskov wound his right arm back, curling his hand into a fist. Pivoting on his left foot, Kilkenny turned his body ninety degrees to Leskov. As he spun, Kilkenny raised his left arm, blocking the incoming punch, and then wrapped his arm around Leskov’s. Kilkenny snapped his arm like a whip, locking Leskov’s elbow as he ground the knuckles of his fist into the soft flesh of the man’s armpit. Leskov’s arm went numb and was effectively immobilized, leaving his chest and abdomen open to attack.

  Kilkenny snapped a quick punch into Leskov’s solar plexus, knocking the wind out of him. Out of the corner of his eye, Kilkenny saw the oversize doorman drop the briefcase and begin moving to Leskov’s aid. With a quick lunge, Kilkenny reached up and grabbed Leskov’s throat, the tips of his fingers pressing deep into the flesh around the man’s windpipe.

  ‘Tell that trained grizzly of yours to back off, or I’m going to rip your fucking throat out!’

  Kilkenny’s fingers constricted just enough to let them both know this was no idle threat. Cooper hastily translated Kilkenny’s demand for both Leskov and the doorman, hoping the situation wouldn’t escalate further.

  Leskov nodded and held up his hand; the mountain-sized man backed away.

  ‘Dmitri,’ a voice called out sternly from the doorway at the far end of the lobby. It was Victor Orlov. ‘What is going on here?’

  ‘I believe it’s a cultural misunderstanding,’ Kilkenny quipped, his eyes fixed on Leskov. ‘But Leskov and I have worked out our differences, haven’t we?’

  Leskov stared straight back into Kilkenny’s eyes, unwilling to give an inch. Had the choice been his, he would finish Kilkenny now or die trying.

  ‘Da,’ his voice croaked hoarsely.

  Kilkenny loosened his grip on Leskov’s arm and throat, then backed away with his hands held up at chest level. Leskov retreated as well, with one hand massaging his throat.

  ‘Did they have anything on them?’ Orlov asked.

  ‘Nyet,’ Leskov replied, his voice coming back. ‘They’re clean.’

  ‘Very well, Mr Cooper, Mr Kilkenny, if you’ll follow me, we can get down to business.’

  Kilkenny picked up his briefcase from where the doorman had dropped it – checking to see that the laptop computer inside was still in one piece – then slung it over his shoulder and followed Cooper. Leskov trailed a few steps behind, nursing wounds to both his body and his pride.

  ‘What the hell do you think you were doing back there?’ Cooper whispered harshly. ‘Recon, Bart.’

  Orlov led them down a wide hallway that still held a faint aroma of fresh paint and new carpet. Orlov led the group into his office suite, and Leskov closed the large, paneled wooden door behind them and took up station beside it.

  ‘Gentlemen, before we begin,’ Orlov said, assuming the role of gracious host, ‘I would like to introduce Oksanna Zoshchenko, my scientific adviser.’

  ‘Good evening, gentlemen,’ Zoshchenko said with cool, professional detachment.

  ‘Please, sit down.’ Orlov gestured to a broad sofa.

  They sat on the sofa with their backs to Leskov. Orlov and Zoshchenko seated themselves in a pair of upholstered chairs from the era of Louis XV.

  Cooper coughed lightly to clear his throat. ‘Our presence here is a sign of our good faith. Now it’s time for a similar show from you.’

  Orlov nodded and pulled a thin notebook from the inside breast pocket of his suit coat. He quickly thumbed through the pages until he found what he was looking for, then dialed a number into the speakerphone that sat on the hand-carved table beside him.

  The sound of a distant phone purred from the speaker; after two rings it was answered.

  ‘Yes?’ a deep voice asked.

  ‘This is Orlov. Put the women on.’

  There was silence for a moment, then Kelsey Newton came on the line.

  ‘Hello? Nolan?’

  ‘I’m here, Kelsey. How are you and Elli?’

  ‘We’re okay. They haven’t harmed us.’

  ‘That’s great. Hang in there, Kelsey, this will soon be over. Can you put Elli on?’

 
; ‘Sure.’

  ‘Hello, Nolan,’ Elli called out.

  ‘Hi, Elli. It’s good to hear your voice. I just wanted to make sure you were all right.’

  ‘Other than it’s too hot and humid, I’m fine.’

  ‘Great, I’ll see you both very soon.’

  ‘Satisfied?’ Orlov asked.

  ‘What about their release?’ Cooper asked.

  ‘Once I’m satisfied that you can decode the notebooks, the women will be released.’

  ‘Nolan, show the man.’

  Kilkenny pulled his laptop out of the briefcase and set it on the polished oval top of the coffee table in front of him. The machine booted up quickly.

  ‘I’m going to show you the algorithm that Wolff created to encode his research,’ Kilkenny announced. ‘He recorded it on the endpapers of each notebook.’

  Kilkenny brought up a text file that displayed a complex mathematical formula, then turned the laptop to face Orlov and Zoshchenko. Both looked puzzled by what they saw.

  ‘In case you’re wondering, it’s an algorithm designed to run on a quantum computer.’

  ‘There’s no such thing,’ Zoshchenko said skeptically.

  ‘No, not yet there isn’t. Wolff’s math is valid, though difficult to replicate in conventional terms. When he encoded his notebooks, he used this algorithm and did the work in his head. I’ve rewritten the algorithm to run on a conventional computer.’

  Orlov scowled, looking for some deception in what he plainly didn’t understand.

  ‘What about the key?’ Orlov asked. ‘Where is the ring?’

  ‘It’s safely waiting for its owner. You don’t need the ring anyway, only the inscription’ – Kilkenny opened a text file and showed them Wolff’s key – ‘which I’ve built into the decoding program.’

  ‘Cooper said you decoded some of the notebooks.’

  ‘Yes, I did,’ Kilkenny replied.

  ‘Show me.’

  Kilkenny pulled six file folders from his briefcase and handed them to Orlov. ‘Here’s a few pages from the first notebook. Each folder contains a facsimile of the original notebook page, followed by our decoded version of the text.’

  Orlov opened the first folder and saw a laser-printed version of a page from Wolff’s notebooks. Turning the page, he discovered Kilkenny’s plain-text version of Wolff’s research.

  ‘It’s in German?’ Orlov asked.

  ‘Wolff’s native tongue. We haven’t had time to translate very much of it, just enough to know that it’s not gibberish.’

  ‘What do you think, Oksanna?’ Orlov asked, handing the first folder over to her.

  Zoshchenko studied the document, mentally translating from German to Russian. She spent ten silent minutes reading before she looked up from the page.

  ‘Victor, I have to admit I don’t understand this.’

  ‘Then this is a fraud?’

  ‘No, not necessarily,’ she replied. ‘It looks genuine, but the science is well beyond my ability. We need an expert in this field to make any meaningful determination.’

  ‘Avvakum?’

  ‘Da.’

  Orlov thought for a moment. ‘Dmitri, have Avvakum brought here.’

  Leskov nodded and issued the order into his lip mike. A few minutes later Leskov opened the door. A woman with long, wavy black hair entered Orlov’s office. Her clothes were rumpled, as if she’d slept in them. The dark circles beneath her eyes implied that, in recent days, she probably hadn’t slept at all.

  ‘Come here, Doctor,’ Orlov demanded.

  Avvakum walked toward Orlov numbly. When she drew near, Orlov indicated that she was to sit in the chair to his right. Avvakum complied.

  ‘I would like your opinion on something, Doctor,’ Orlov said.

  Orlov then handed Avvakum one of the folders. She opened it and looked at the first page.

  ‘This is a page from the notebooks,’ she said.

  ‘Da. Look at the next page and tell me what you think.’

  Avvakum turned to the next page and began to read. She said nothing, but Kilkenny read her body language. Her eyes widened slightly, as if the larger aperture would somehow allow more of what she saw to enter her mind more quickly.

  ‘Boja moi,’ Avvakum said softly. ‘Is there more?’

  ‘Yes, there is,’ Orlov replied. ‘What do you think? Do you believe it to be the true text of the notebooks?’

  ‘Da,’ Avvakum replied.

  To Kilkenny, it was clear that reading the decoded page had brought some of the life back to this defeated woman.

  ‘Would you like to see how I did it?’ Kilkenny asked her directly.

  ‘Please,’ Avvakum replied.

  Kilkenny showed her the original equation string, then briefly described how he and Grin reworked Wolff’s quantum algorithm so it could be run on a conventional computer.

  ‘How did you simulate the principle of superposition in your program?’ Avvakum asked.

  ‘We didn’t,’ Kilkenny admitted. ‘We avoided it altogether. We translated Wolff’s equation from a quantum language into something we could work with. It’s certainly not as pretty as his code, and probably not as fast, but it gets the job done.’

  ‘Can I see the rest?’ she asked.

  Orlov handed her the remaining files, which she eagerly pored over.

  ‘Each page takes about half an hour to forty-five minutes to decode,’ Kilkenny explained, ‘depending on how much text there is on it.’

  Orlov waited until Avvakum closed the sixth folder. ‘What is your opinion, Lara?’

  ‘These men can decode the notebooks.’

  ‘Thank you. That will be all,’ Orlov said. Then he looked over at Leskov. ‘Dmitri, please have the doctor escorted back to her lab.’

  After Avvakum was gone, Cooper leaned back and crossed his legs. ‘Satisfied?’ he asked.

  ‘I am, Victor,’ Zoshchenko offered.

  ‘So am I.’ Orlov leaned to the side and pressed the REDIAL button on the phone. This time the deep-voiced man answered after only one ring. ‘Josef, release our guests.’

  ‘Da, Victor Ivanovich,’ the man replied.

  Orlov pressed the button that ended the call. ‘The women will be dropped off at a very public location within the hour.’

  ‘Good,’ Cooper replied. ‘Now, let’s work out the rest of this. In exchange for Kilkenny’s decoding program, we want not only the release of the two women but your word that this is where all this ends.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Orlov asked.

  ‘I mean that your attacks are over. This shouldn’t be a tough point for you to agree to; you’ve already got everything you want.’

  ‘If your people watching Sandstrom have kept you up to date,’ Kilkenny added, ‘then you know that even if he survives, it’ll be a long time before he’ll be well enough to return to a laboratory again. There’s nobody else in the world right now even close to catching up with you.’

  Orlov smiled with satisfaction at Cooper and Kilkenny’s appraisal of the situation.

  ‘When Kilkenny and I walk out of here, that’s the end of this whole affair. Agreed?’

  Orlov thought about it for a moment, weighing it as he would any other decision. ‘Agreed.’

  ‘Great. Now, as a further sign of our good faith while we wait for the women to be released, I would like to offer Kilkenny’s services in decoding more of Wolff’s journal. If you like, he can instruct Doctor’ – Cooper hesitated, as if trying to recall a name – ‘Avvakum in how to use the program.’

  ‘That is acceptable,’ Orlov said. ‘Dmitri, have Kilkenny taken to Avvakum’s lab.’

  58

  JULY 31

  Moscow, Russia

  Kilkenny followed the lean, muscular man into the deeper recesses of the building. Temporary walls of unfinished gypsum board blocked off large portions of the facility that were still under renovation, and mirrored half domes covering security cameras appeared in the corridors at regular intervals.


  The security man led Kilkenny upstairs to an interior suite that was divided into a large laboratory space – which currently stood empty – and a row of offices. Several of the boxes stored along one side of the future lab space still bore the packing labels Sandstrom had placed on them back in June.

  Kilkenny’s escort pointed to the first door, then turned and departed. Avvakum’s guard opened the office door, motioning for Kilkenny to step inside. Avvakum all but ignored his arrival.

  ‘Hello,’ Kilkenny said in a friendly voice as he entered the office. The guard closed the door behind him. ‘We weren’t introduced earlier. My name is Nolan Kilkenny.’

  ‘Kilkenny?’ she questioned, looking up from the papers on her desk. ‘You are the one I sent the message to?’

  ‘Yes, and I wanted to thank you for that.’

  ‘Why? It did no good, and now I am a prisoner here.’

  ‘It helped me discover who was responsible for the attack on Sandstrom and, more recently, the kidnapping of two women, one of whom is very special to me.’

  Avvakum smiled weakly at the thought that Kilkenny would travel halfway around the world in order to free the woman he loved. All her years of isolation had left Avvakum with no one to do the same for her.

  ‘Why did Orlov send you here?’

  ‘I’m supposed to teach you how to decode the notebooks his men stole from us.’

  ‘I don’t want to give him what’s in those notebooks,’ Avvakum said with a sigh. ‘He doesn’t deserve it.’

  ‘I couldn’t agree more, but I don’t think either of us really has much choice in the matter.’

  ‘Let me clear off some of this mess for you.’

  Kilkenny gave Avvakum a hand in moving several piles of computer printouts onto the floor, then he moved a second chair around so that they both could sit on the same side of her long desk. He unzipped his briefcase, set his laptop on the desk near Avvakum’s computer, and connected the two machines together with a gray cable. He then pressed the power switch and booted up the laptop.

  ‘Are the image files from the notebooks on your computer?’

  ‘No, they’re kept on one of the network servers in the company’s main building in Moscow.’